Same amount I would pay for a bottle of water, probably.
If Evian came out of my faucet at home I wouldn't buy bottled water. Instead what comes out is some foul tasting sludge that only once put through the Brita filter is drinkable and then still tastes off. This is why I buy bottled water. So what's your point here?:-)
You using the NVIDIA drivers for XFree86? I've heard that for some reason Gnome/GTK2 has in the past (and maybe still has) problems with those drivers making it run slow.
Although I'm not saying that music isn't overpriced (it is), it's clear that you'll get alot more use out of a $15 CD than a $15 DVD. For one thing unless you're a massive movie buff you probably won't watch that DVD any more than 5-10 times in your life. Yet a music CD you'll listen to at work, on your computer, in your car, walking down the street.. you get the idea - many more times. For this reason alone in terms of total entertainment hours something gives you a good CD is much more valuable than a DVD.
Simple - we go to congress and lobby for powers for our "GNU Software Alliance". Then get the Federal marshalls along and bust down the doors of proprietary software vendors demanding a "GPL Compliance Audit" or a hefty fine.
Why is this modded up as Interesting when it should be Funny? This is clearly a humorous attempt at parodying what people were saying about Nuclear power back in the 1950s.
I'm not an American BTW. Having played DOA:XB I'm not horrified or puritanical about it, it's just obvious that the game's main focus is ogling at digital girls. Nothing wrong with that I guess, but it's clearly the game's selling point, as it's at best a mediocre volleyball sim with a typical japanese "relationship sim" attached to it (not something that has a history of being a smash sucess in the US). I'm not saying it's without merit, all I'm saying is that you have to admit that the reason it sold so well is the girls, not the game contents.
There's plenty of excellent games that have "sexy" characters in them that I enjoy (I mentioned Soul Calibur in my post), but I also have DOA2 on the Dreamcast and have played and enjoyed several Tomb Raider games.
Sorry, just trying to attack your idea that I'm a puritanical American:-)
I really don't think these statistics really indicate the truth.
Absolutely! These researched results presented here can't possibly be true. What must be true is your conjecture and supposition based on limited personal experience!
Apologies for the sarcasm, but for everyone who posts here saying that there can't be "that many female gamers", there's someone like me who knows quite a few (including my girlfriend).
The fact is that gaming is becoming a mainstream activity - it's got nothing at all to do with girls being more "technically inclined" (what a ridiculous notion). Mainstream means girls as well as boys. For every Lara Croft that supposedly alienates girls (actually I remember reading an article that Lara Croft was actually popular with female gamers), there are plenty of games that don't have any "sexual" characters that are make excellent games that appeal to both sexes (e.g. Zelda, Super Monkey Ball, Mario, Pikmin - OK these are all Nintendo but my main gaming is on my Gamecube!).
Those games with the "big tittie girls" (e.g. DOA:XB) are marketed at a 13-18 year old boy market, and I'm as disinterested in them as my girlfriend is. In fact in almost every game type we have very similar tastes. OK, she likes Animal Crossing more than me, and I like Soul Calibur more than her - but we both still play these games as well.
As for your comment about "Adventures of Barbie" - these games are targeted at pre-teen girls. Women don't really have any interest in them - you do know there's a difference between women and little girls right?
Sorry for not fitting into your idea of what the world's like - but in my experience the findings of this survey are pretty spot on.
Blaming "Texting" is just another way of blaming word-of-mouth. In the past Word-of-mouth has worked wonders for the movie industry if the movie is good, making marketing less necessary. Think "My Big Fat Greek Wedding", a movie that had little PR and went on to make 100s of millions because people liked it. When word of mouth works for the movie industry you don't hear anyone complaining about it.
Sadly for the movie industry word of mouth works both ways. The reason movies like The Hulk crash and burn in their second week is that people tell their friends its shit. So word of mouth works or doesn't work based on the whether a movie is any good or not.
The problem is that in the movie industry the question of the quality of a movie never arises (until Oscar time that is). I've heard all sorts of excuses out of Hollywood as to why movies don't do well. For example, for Pearl Harbor it was: "Too long", "Not big enough star power", and most humorously: "Bad reviews". The fact that a movie does poorly because it's crap doesn't even seem to enter the minds of these people (i.e. quoting not the movie was bad, but rather got "bad reviews", as if that somehow has nothing to do with the movie itself).
"Texting" is just another excuse to give the big boss as to why your studio is losing money. Kudos to people like Ben Affleck who actually had the guts to say that Gigli failed because it sucked
For the love of Mike, most Slashdot readers here are geeks; they build their own machines, not buy machines bundled with Windows. All jokes/flames aside, just how many of you out there are actually using a machine that came with Windows, but you never used that copy?
True I built my own desktop, but laptops are a different matter. If you want a x86 based laptop, getting a decent one without Windows is a chore, especially if you're like me and equate "a decent one" as "it has the Thinkpad logo on it".
That said I can't really comment because I have my laptop dual boot with Win2K, so am not eligible for a refund. However my Windows usage has dropped so much now that OpenOffice is actually a viable alternative to MS, that my next laptop will most likely be a single boot machine, and I might be tempted to follow the advice here, as I'm guessing Windows will still come as standard with my next laptop.
I'm confused. This means that half the people that buy products from telemarketers will sign up and therefore prevent themselves from buying new products?
That's exactly what'll happen. I've often heard from people that the do not call list will help telemarketers, as it will cut out people who never buy stuff from telemarketers. This is true, but the do not call list will also remove from the list telemarketers bread and butter: People who can't say no.
There are a lot of people out there, I know a few, who just can't say no to telemarketers, get drawn in and buy stuff they know they don't want. These people know they have a problem, but still get caught out everytime the telemarketer calls. So going on the do not call list is the easy way out for them.
Its the loss of these people that will telemarketers hurt telemarketers the worst.
I mean - who comes up with the cash to pay for the development of crap like this. Are VCs really idiots. If I ran a VC company the meeting between me and Infinium Labs would go something like this:
Me: So what's you idea IL: We're going to make a console that will compete with Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft in an already saturated market. Me: Next!
In the UK there are none of the laugably bad local commericals that u get in the US, for eg 'Bobs Furniture Store'.
These ads tend to be placed not even at the local TV station level, but by the local cable company, leading to having laughbly bad ads for places that are within 5 miles of your house.
I alleviated the pain of having watch these by dumping the cable company and getting a satellite dish, which has all the same local stations (LA area), but without the crappy ads for "Hanks used car center".:-)
The water cooler phenonemon is common everywhere. You probably haven't seen it because I'm not going to assume that someone visiting the US from the UK has seen a specific commercial, thus I wouldn't bring it up.
I've lived in the US for over 4 years so am fully integrated into the water cooler community. My comment was based on my experience of comparing UK and US ads and people's reactions to them. There are some ads that provoke discussion, e.g. the Superbowl halftime ads, but ads of the ingenuity shown during the Superbowl are nowhere near as common as on UK TV.
Actually the Superbowl ads reinforces my main point - when the ads are good people will actively want to watch them.
In the UK theres a strange phenomenon in TV ad viewing, that is the "cup of Tea". On UK TV ad breaks tend to be longer and less frequent. UK dwellers also tend to drink alot of tea during the evening, and making a cup of tea takes about the same time as an ad break. For example during the half time break in the soap opera "Coronation Street" the load on the National Grid goes up something like double as 15 million viewers get off the couch and turn on their electric kettles.
So in essense this activity means that alot less viewers are actually present during the ad breaks than in the US when watching live TV. So what's the solution: Make ads that people actually want to see. British ads on the whole are funnier and more episodic than their US counterparts. I've never heard anyone in my time in the US talk about "The new ad for Coke" around the water cooler at work, but in the UK this regularly happens for the soft drink "Tango" for example.
So perhaps the answer is to make ads more entertaining, less repeated (why oh why show the same ad twice in an ad break), and less formulaic. If US ad agencies showed half the imagination that the UK ad agencies showed then people might actually be less tempted to skip over the ads or leave the room.
additionaly, has any other company besides Cingular done rollover minutes?
Well they don't have to because despite their best efforts Cingular are hemorraging customers. Personally I've yet to meet a happy Cingular customer, 5 of my friends who had them dumped them, two of them paying off the $175 fee to quit their contract.
Slashdot reader in decent music taste shock! I was beginning to think that all Slashdot readers where listening 70s prog rock, given all the "all new albums are just collections of singles" crap.
Look, I've never treated the Police with anything other than utmost respect, especially when they're dealing with me. Is it to much to ask for the same treatment in return? Your blanket characterisation of people who have issues with the police being "beligerent a-holes" is simply not true. If you think its OK for police to stop you randomly, demand your ID and hassle you for no good reason, then what else will you accept? Your phone tapped to "keep you safe"?
I realise that being a cop is a difficult job and dealing with criminals all day must make one somewhat jaded with humanity. But the cops I've had the most problems with are in a city that has almost zero real crime, with 99.9% of the action the cops see is arresting drunk college kids.
I've met both good and bad cops. Strangely my best experiences with them was when I was actually in the wrong (getting a fixer ticket). In that case the two officers I dealt with were polite, calm and friendly.
It just doesn't get over the fact that my experience and alot of people who I know of when you actually **need** police help, they often aren't much use.
Agreed entirely. You're story is one I've heard a thousand times, and one I've experienced myself. I was once when I was 16 years old knocked of my bicycle by a guy in van. The police got involved as I was pretty seriously injured (an almost ran over by a bus as part of the incident). Turns out the guy has no driving license, insurance and has not paid his car tax. He shouldn't have been driving the van in the first place.
I was told in no uncertain terms that the guy would not be procescuted in any way.
Just like you I've also been hassled by te police on many occasions for no good reason, been forced to show ID for such crimes as "walking home after 3am" etc. I know that police have a hard job to do, but really they need to remember that their motto is "To Protect and Serve" not "To Hassle and Intimidate".
Oh and I suggest you don't watch the film at all. It'll make you all excited about the sequel and that's just going to piss you off. I also suggest not watching Star Wars.
Anything will get posted on Slashdot these days
on
The Cassini Division
·
· Score: 0, Troll
Isn't Slashdot a News site? There must be things better to publish than a review of a 5 year old Sci-Fi novel that apparently is not that great. Did the author of this piece really feel that his review was that necessary? How about me reviewing "The Matrix" for Slashdot for tomorrow.
I can understand if the author thought that this book was an excellent overlooked novel that all Slashdot readers should pick up. But really - what's the motivation behind this story and why on earth did the Slashdot editors believe it worthy for the front page?
Number of mentions of the word innovations per page is roughtly equivalent to the probability that this report was funded and ghost written by Microsoft.
Lets see: 3 mentions in 4 pages. MS probabilty factor - 75%.
As an adaption for for the huge LA car market, Honda have announced that the car will also automatically wildly swerve into the should a crash about to occur. Also adjusted in the LA model will be the radar's range which will be reduced from the highly redundant 300 feet, to a much more practicle and efficient 5 feet.
Slashdot Mirror
Same amount I would pay for a bottle of water, probably.
:-)
If Evian came out of my faucet at home I wouldn't buy bottled water. Instead what comes out is some foul tasting sludge that only once put through the Brita filter is drinkable and then still tastes off. This is why I buy bottled water. So what's your point here?
You using the NVIDIA drivers for XFree86? I've heard that for some reason Gnome/GTK2 has in the past (and maybe still has) problems with those drivers making it run slow.
I'm sorry but this is a bullshit arguement.
Although I'm not saying that music isn't overpriced (it is), it's clear that you'll get alot more use out of a $15 CD than a $15 DVD. For one thing unless you're a massive movie buff you probably won't watch that DVD any more than 5-10 times in your life. Yet a music CD you'll listen to at work, on your computer, in your car, walking down the street.. you get the idea - many more times. For this reason alone in terms of total entertainment hours something gives you a good CD is much more valuable than a DVD.
Simple - we go to congress and lobby for powers for our "GNU Software Alliance". Then get the Federal marshalls along and bust down the doors of proprietary software vendors demanding a "GPL Compliance Audit" or a hefty fine.
Why is this modded up as Interesting when it should be Funny? This is clearly a humorous attempt at parodying what people were saying about Nuclear power back in the 1950s.
Anyone know when the first "season" is coming out on DVD?
:-)
December apparently. Of course you'd know this if you read the article
I'm not an American BTW. Having played DOA:XB I'm not horrified or puritanical about it, it's just obvious that the game's main focus is ogling at digital girls. Nothing wrong with that I guess, but it's clearly the game's selling point, as it's at best a mediocre volleyball sim with a typical japanese "relationship sim" attached to it (not something that has a history of being a smash sucess in the US). I'm not saying it's without merit, all I'm saying is that you have to admit that the reason it sold so well is the girls, not the game contents.
:-)
There's plenty of excellent games that have "sexy" characters in them that I enjoy (I mentioned Soul Calibur in my post), but I also have DOA2 on the Dreamcast and have played and enjoyed several Tomb Raider games.
Sorry, just trying to attack your idea that I'm a puritanical American
I really don't think these statistics really indicate the truth.
Absolutely! These researched results presented here can't possibly be true. What must be true is your conjecture and supposition based on limited personal experience!
Apologies for the sarcasm, but for everyone who posts here saying that there can't be "that many female gamers", there's someone like me who knows quite a few (including my girlfriend).
The fact is that gaming is becoming a mainstream activity - it's got nothing at all to do with girls being more "technically inclined" (what a ridiculous notion). Mainstream means girls as well as boys. For every Lara Croft that supposedly alienates girls (actually I remember reading an article that Lara Croft was actually popular with female gamers), there are plenty of games that don't have any "sexual" characters that are make excellent games that appeal to both sexes (e.g. Zelda, Super Monkey Ball, Mario, Pikmin - OK these are all Nintendo but my main gaming is on my Gamecube!).
Those games with the "big tittie girls" (e.g. DOA:XB) are marketed at a 13-18 year old boy market, and I'm as disinterested in them as my girlfriend is. In fact in almost every game type we have very similar tastes. OK, she likes Animal Crossing more than me, and I like Soul Calibur more than her - but we both still play these games as well.
As for your comment about "Adventures of Barbie" - these games are targeted at pre-teen girls. Women don't really have any interest in them - you do know there's a difference between women and little girls right?
Sorry for not fitting into your idea of what the world's like - but in my experience the findings of this survey are pretty spot on.
Death of dinosaur markets, resulting in a narrowing of profit vectors.
Is this CorpSpeak(TM) way of saying that the last couple of Jurassic Park movies don't make any money any more?
Sadly for the movie industry word of mouth works both ways. The reason movies like The Hulk crash and burn in their second week is that people tell their friends its shit. So word of mouth works or doesn't work based on the whether a movie is any good or not.
The problem is that in the movie industry the question of the quality of a movie never arises (until Oscar time that is). I've heard all sorts of excuses out of Hollywood as to why movies don't do well. For example, for Pearl Harbor it was: "Too long", "Not big enough star power", and most humorously: "Bad reviews". The fact that a movie does poorly because it's crap doesn't even seem to enter the minds of these people (i.e. quoting not the movie was bad, but rather got "bad reviews", as if that somehow has nothing to do with the movie itself). "Texting" is just another excuse to give the big boss as to why your studio is losing money. Kudos to people like Ben Affleck who actually had the guts to say that Gigli failed because it sucked
For charges related to purchasing alcohol based screen wipes due to excessive coffee stains splattered on computer monitor.
For the love of Mike, most Slashdot readers here are geeks; they build their own machines, not buy machines bundled with Windows. All jokes/flames aside, just how many of you out there are actually using a machine that came with Windows, but you never used that copy?
True I built my own desktop, but laptops are a different matter. If you want a x86 based laptop, getting a decent one without Windows is a chore, especially if you're like me and equate "a decent one" as "it has the Thinkpad logo on it".
That said I can't really comment because I have my laptop dual boot with Win2K, so am not eligible for a refund. However my Windows usage has dropped so much now that OpenOffice is actually a viable alternative to MS, that my next laptop will most likely be a single boot machine, and I might be tempted to follow the advice here, as I'm guessing Windows will still come as standard with my next laptop.
I'm confused. This means that half the people that buy products from telemarketers will sign up and therefore prevent themselves from buying new products?
That's exactly what'll happen. I've often heard from people that the do not call list will help telemarketers, as it will cut out people who never buy stuff from telemarketers. This is true, but the do not call list will also remove from the list telemarketers bread and butter: People who can't say no.
There are a lot of people out there, I know a few, who just can't say no to telemarketers, get drawn in and buy stuff they know they don't want. These people know they have a problem, but still get caught out everytime the telemarketer calls. So going on the do not call list is the easy way out for them.
Its the loss of these people that will telemarketers hurt telemarketers the worst.
I mean - who comes up with the cash to pay for the development of crap like this. Are VCs really idiots. If I ran a VC company the meeting between me and Infinium Labs would go something like this:
Me: So what's you idea
IL: We're going to make a console that will compete with Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft in an already saturated market.
Me: Next!
In the UK there are none of the laugably bad local commericals that u get in the US, for eg 'Bobs Furniture Store'.
:-)
These ads tend to be placed not even at the local TV station level, but by the local cable company, leading to having laughbly bad ads for places that are within 5 miles of your house.
I alleviated the pain of having watch these by dumping the cable company and getting a satellite dish, which has all the same local stations (LA area), but without the crappy ads for "Hanks used car center".
The water cooler phenonemon is common everywhere. You probably haven't seen it because I'm not going to assume that someone visiting the US from the UK has seen a specific commercial, thus I wouldn't bring it up.
I've lived in the US for over 4 years so am fully integrated into the water cooler community. My comment was based on my experience of comparing UK and US ads and people's reactions to them. There are some ads that provoke discussion, e.g. the Superbowl halftime ads, but ads of the ingenuity shown during the Superbowl are nowhere near as common as on UK TV.
Actually the Superbowl ads reinforces my main point - when the ads are good people will actively want to watch them.
In the UK theres a strange phenomenon in TV ad viewing, that is the "cup of Tea". On UK TV ad breaks tend to be longer and less frequent. UK dwellers also tend to drink alot of tea during the evening, and making a cup of tea takes about the same time as an ad break. For example during the half time break in the soap opera "Coronation Street" the load on the National Grid goes up something like double as 15 million viewers get off the couch and turn on their electric kettles.
So in essense this activity means that alot less viewers are actually present during the ad breaks than in the US when watching live TV. So what's the solution: Make ads that people actually want to see. British ads on the whole are funnier and more episodic than their US counterparts. I've never heard anyone in my time in the US talk about "The new ad for Coke" around the water cooler at work, but in the UK this regularly happens for the soft drink "Tango" for example.
So perhaps the answer is to make ads more entertaining, less repeated (why oh why show the same ad twice in an ad break), and less formulaic. If US ad agencies showed half the imagination that the UK ad agencies showed then people might actually be less tempted to skip over the ads or leave the room.
additionaly, has any other company besides Cingular done rollover minutes?
Well they don't have to because despite their best efforts Cingular are hemorraging customers. Personally I've yet to meet a happy Cingular customer, 5 of my friends who had them dumped them, two of them paying off the $175 fee to quit their contract.
The Avalanches: Since I Left You (2001)
Slashdot reader in decent music taste shock! I was beginning to think that all Slashdot readers where listening 70s prog rock, given all the "all new albums are just collections of singles" crap.
Look, I've never treated the Police with anything other than utmost respect, especially when they're dealing with me. Is it to much to ask for the same treatment in return? Your blanket characterisation of people who have issues with the police being "beligerent a-holes" is simply not true. If you think its OK for police to stop you randomly, demand your ID and hassle you for no good reason, then what else will you accept? Your phone tapped to "keep you safe"?
I realise that being a cop is a difficult job and dealing with criminals all day must make one somewhat jaded with humanity. But the cops I've had the most problems with are in a city that has almost zero real crime, with 99.9% of the action the cops see is arresting drunk college kids.
I've met both good and bad cops. Strangely my best experiences with them was when I was actually in the wrong (getting a fixer ticket). In that case the two officers I dealt with were polite, calm and friendly.
It just doesn't get over the fact that my experience and alot of people who I know of when you actually **need** police help, they often aren't much use.
Agreed entirely. You're story is one I've heard a thousand times, and one I've experienced myself. I was once when I was 16 years old knocked of my bicycle by a guy in van. The police got involved as I was pretty seriously injured (an almost ran over by a bus as part of the incident). Turns out the guy has no driving license, insurance and has not paid his car tax. He shouldn't have been driving the van in the first place.
I was told in no uncertain terms that the guy would not be procescuted in any way.
Just like you I've also been hassled by te police on many occasions for no good reason, been forced to show ID for such crimes as "walking home after 3am" etc. I know that police have a hard job to do, but really they need to remember that their motto is "To Protect and Serve" not "To Hassle and Intimidate".
OK, but no spoilers...
We're all coppertops.
Sorry if I ruined it for you.
Oh and I suggest you don't watch the film at all. It'll make you all excited about the sequel and that's just going to piss you off. I also suggest not watching Star Wars.
Isn't Slashdot a News site? There must be things better to publish than a review of a 5 year old Sci-Fi novel that apparently is not that great. Did the author of this piece really feel that his review was that necessary? How about me reviewing "The Matrix" for Slashdot for tomorrow.
I can understand if the author thought that this book was an excellent overlooked novel that all Slashdot readers should pick up. But really - what's the motivation behind this story and why on earth did the Slashdot editors believe it worthy for the front page?
Number of mentions of the word innovations per page is roughtly equivalent to the probability that this report was funded and ghost written by Microsoft.
Lets see: 3 mentions in 4 pages. MS probabilty factor - 75%.
As an adaption for for the huge LA car market, Honda have announced that the car will also automatically wildly swerve into the should a crash about to occur. Also adjusted in the LA model will be the radar's range which will be reduced from the highly redundant 300 feet, to a much more practicle and efficient 5 feet.