I'll be there in spirit. The roads are way too slick for me to come down from Edmonton. But I made a call, sent a letter, and whispered stuff into the ears of the wife of a liberal senator....
I keep hearing about how wonderful Canada is, compared to their neighbor to the south, and then stuff like this happens which seems to show no regard for the common citizen at all! You'll keep hearing wonderful things because we actually have a fairly highly motivated political class who more or less raises enough outrage to keep laws on the better side of sane. Sometimes it's an uphill battle though. I think this minority government wouldn't risk power over this. Hopefully they'll tone it down so much it won't be a threat or they'll ditch it.
I made a call to Mr. Prentice's Ottawa office this morning. I got a reply instantly and left a polite note stating my extreme dissatisfaction with the direction in which they were going and noting I would drop my Conservative membership if this bill is even read. I've also been mobilizing my friends and my office (one of the ladies is the wife of a senator) to kibosh this bill if it's not kosher.
While it isn't _proven_ that exposure to violent imagery leads to more aggressive behavior, the correlation had already been established. The question isn't whether exposure to violent media makes ordinary people into serial killers, it's if it makes ordinary people more violent than they were. Serial killers are statistical outliers, I don't think they are testing for that anyway. Is more aggressive behavior violence? I am aware of the correlations with "violent image" => "more aggressive thoughts" but thus far "violent image" !=> "will murder or maim people". In a more general social context in the last 25 years violence in society has declined while violence in media has increased. Thus either media isn't a big factor, there is no direct causation between real violence or violent images, there is a reverse correlation.
The second problem is that people will use these studies to assert claims far beyond what they say ala "Doom is a murder trainer".
The brain reacts to violent imagery, may affect impulse control after
What they didn't prove:
Violent imagery makes you violent.
Most of the studies present a violent image and ask you questions after. Partly because it'd be unethical to show them imagery and then attempt to induce violence. Thus they must use proxies which only prove a relationship from the imagery to the proxy.
Common Study: Show a 3 min clip from bioshock - ask "are you feeling more or less violent" or "please push this button as hard as you want" and then write a conclusion " Bioshock makes you violent".
I doubt violent imagery has no effect on you, it likely agitates the flight or fight response but I am skeptical on whether it can induce violence in a normal/average person. I dislike how media and various groups try to portray a stronger relationship. Doom 3 has not made me a serial killer, it's highly unlikely doom 6 will make my children serial killers, and if it does it's probably partly mine and my communities fault. It my kid does end up being a serial killer there is most likely a biological factor too. Media alone does not make a killer.
We'll take a parallel into Hollywood. The fact that there's entertainment based off of lies or misinformation is no big deal. Annoyingly common Hollywood propagated ideas:
1- All explosives are incidaries that induce huge orange fireballs.
2- Everything explodes
3- Being shot with a gun will propel you backwards like you were tackled by a line backer
4- You can accurately hit a target with a shotgun at any range
5- Useful GUI's are all extremely pretty
6- A bruteforce attack on a covert government agency takes less then 30s
7- really really really smart people will assign probabilities to complex events for which they don't know most of the variables. Inevitably the odds will be severely against our hero, invariably the hero will overcome the odds because really really really smart people are idiots.
8- Dangerous biological agents will be stored in transparent vials with some silvery metal bits. It'll be very distinctly colored, and lightly guarded.
9- Submachine guns all have a clip of 3000 shots and can hit target accurately at 100m
10- Being stopped suddenly by a non-elastic rope tied around your waste an inch from the ground is somehow less damaging then hitting the ground.
11- For ever action there is a variably powerful variably direction reaction, the magnitude and the direction is dictated by camera angles.
12- Inertia only applies to whimps.
13- All objects have a mass relative to the narrative value of having mass. ie. A super hero stopping a train has infinite mass, although he's constantly flying and thus why he doesn't fall into the middle of the earth.
14- Distance scale proportionate with familiarity. 1m = 1m, 1 light year = 100 km.
15- Every poison or biological agents has an antidote
16- The last second on all bomb timers actually last 3 minutes thus why we think it always counts down to 1 and gets diffused
17- Every thinking being speaks English
18- All interfaces are easily learned and intuitive
I'll spout some anecdotal evidence, though YMMV. Being an old-timer, I can tell you that when I went to school all we had were polio vaccinations and tetanus. Out of a class of about 200 kids, 1 in 25 may have had bizarre allergies, (milk, grass, wheat, eggs etc.) Now it seems that most kids have some type of allergy or asthma, yet we live in such sterile times. It's not hard to conclude/perceive that something happened in the 70's and beyond. Was it in the vaccinations?
It's probably very easy for a lot of trepidation about vaccines because of past experience, anecdotal it may very-well be, however it does not help when polititians, school boards, professional organizations (AMA) AND big drugcos all gang up and require new vaccines mandatory as soon as the trial period is complete. I'm glad I don't have children in school (or children at all for that matter). I'd be leery too. (hope my tinfoil hat isn't showing)
Do you get the flu shot every year? That's a vaccine. Do you realize it's a crap-shoot as to whether -or- not it will even be effective against the "projected strain" the powers that be are pushing? I thought not.
No wonder a good portion of society distrust vaccines in general. In science Correlation != causation. Correlation suggests some relationship. In the same time span premature babies survived a lot more often as well, anti-bacterial stuff became more common, your food is pumped with more steroids and anti biotics, infant mortality in general has declined and George bush sr. was alive. So you can use bad logic and say George bush Sr. causes higher rates of allergies or you can try to actually do a study that will means something.
My own opinion is that since immunizations drastically reduced the rate of serious disease the infant mortality rate has dropped. The survivors which may have previously been killed before widespread immunization likely are the frequently allergic kids. Makes sense biologically, and how much of supposed side effects of immunizations don't appear in real scientific studies. because it's correlation not causation.
Okay, I'm feeding the trolls. I know I'm not supposed to, but I wish I had mod points instead.
"We have to remember there is a large sub-culture in the US/Canada and Europe who still think that evolution is a myth, and the world was created 6,000 years ago."
What the HELL does this have to do with Vaccinations? I know plenty of Atheist who don't like vaccinations either, because they don't trust the science that is performed for profit. This has NOTHING to do with Evolution or Bible believers, but is a snide comment. Hope you're happy in your smugness. Both viewpoints are part of a general popular movement against science and scientific knowledge. They feed into each other. They are also much more incestuous then you'd think. Phillip morris got their hands caught in propaganda campaign when they were forced by a court to release documents as part of a lawsuit. Apparently they've been funding anti-science initiatives to undermine the science that paints cigarettes in such a bad light. Creationist too have decided the best way to fight science undermining the indoctrination of their youth was to discredit it by causing controversy. Thus it turns out that a lot of Global warming opposition was funded by both big tobacco and ID proponents. Both attempting to under mine the common belief of the power and validity of science. Big tobacco by hiring the same scientist shills they hired to say "tobacco is not dangerous to your health" to say "we disagree that the world is warming", and ID proponents by funding various non-scientists to pound the same message.
The audience for both are the same, the under educated masses of America. Who also believe vaccines are government mind control along with fluoride and that secretly a Cabal of jewish businessmen run the nation in conjunction with aliens they keep at area 51 etc...
Spammers represent a large illicit underground economy, I somehow doubt most spammers are on the up and up with their taxes. Thus many of these laws are just the revenue service finding extra things to press this group. There are several groups you ought never fuck with. The Taxman, The mailman, and The FDA.
Let's be fair. It is their best interests (and ours) to save specimens of original seed stocks. It's always good to be able to look back to see how you got from there to here...and maybe try and fix some huge mistake so you don't get your ass sued into oblivion. Or, worse case scenario, save the world from your "innovations". We should look at this as a plus. It's like a back-up of your thesis project just before you attempt to rewrite the kernel after 8 beers.
Unfortunately, the day of the garage game developer are over -Flow (a couple grad students, a few years) -Bejewelled (a small team a half a dozen months) -Everyday shooter (one, guy, loads of time) -Counter strike (1 lead, small community) -MS XNA
Small scale development is alive and well. You just don't get it for $49.95 at radio shack like you did in the days of yore. It's now $10-$20 off one of the various game stores. The maga budget games are like block busters in hollywood but indie hits still come. You just have to fit yoru idea with the technology available. You won't be able to make WOW for $250,000 and 5 developers but you can make Bejewelled. You won't be able to make MGS4 in your spare time but you can make flow.
Although Gimp resembles Photoshop it isn't the same. Some skills are transferable but if you are teaching graphic design it's silly to teach anything other then what industry uses. It means they must relearn many skills once they enter the job market. If your teaching at a higher more theoretical level then it might be acceptable because more of it transfers. But if it's a trades school or technical college you're better off teaching the actual industry tools regardless of cost.
True, once you get past a certan point, streaming or downloading will beat having a hard copy. It works now for games, I have a bunch of games on Steam that I've never owned a hard copy for. What I'm worried about though, is them going the way of Divx. So long as they don't try to screw over the customers, which I know, will be very difficult, then I think it could work. Heh, It'd save space for sure. I think the break point is 20 minutes. If they can throw an HD movie at you in under 20 min and make it easy the mass market will adopt it.
It also doesn't make much logical sense. Bay claims that MS is prolonging the format war until they can get downloadable video working right, then swoop in and be declared "A winner is you!" Seems to me that Bay as been watching too many of his own movies. One of their largest competitors in a huge emerging market has financially backed the other format(Sony). If Sony dominates with blu-ray then it becomes a more attractive feature to potential buyers. If there in uncertainty over the format then it blunts the attractiveness of such a feature. Remember MS real goal, to place a MS controlled media system format into out living rooms.
True, Downloadable video is nice, as is stuff like Video on demand. I can picture telling my kids that "In my day, if you wanted to watch a show? You just had to wait until it was on." However, I don't think that downloadable movies will ever overtake actually having the disk in hand. If I want to watch Army Of Darkness, I don't want to wait 20 minutes for it to stream, then hope that my connection stays steady enough to prevent it from freezing. Just pop in the disk, no problem. The more steps you take from wanting to watch a movie, and pressing play, the worse off it is, in my opinion. The idea would be DRM'ed download files. So you want Army of Darkness, well you could spend $9.95 and go to the mall for the DVD, go to best buy and get the blu-ray for $29.95, or 12.95 on the download and never have to leave home. They're banking on your laziness.
Given that it was an extraordinary case, and happened to only one guy. I'll go with the 5%. Otherwise, using your numbers, one out of every 2000 people who bought an xbox would have to replace it 7 times. It's not unique, Another story Different guy, 11 replacement 360's. Different guy goes through a few machines. This Journalist went through 2 himself, with anecdote about 6 of his friends also having theirs die. My original anecdote of 15 people with failed 360's puts the 5% number to question. 15 people, 17 xbox 360's. One of them was bought 3 months ago, others from launch and onwards. There isn't any reasonable way to think a 5% failure rate would explain this. The cases of multiple failure are likely due to the much higher failure rate of refurbished goods but the 15 independent failures all within 2 years of the consoles lifespan cannot be explained by a 5% failure rate. The actual failure rate will remain unknown unless people are successful with a class action suit.
This former repair contractor. You can think of no reason why they might give some fairly negative press? So let me get this straight: I have a business that repairs consoles. This is my business. Its how I make money. And there is a console which I repair, that breaks a lot. "Cha ching!!!!". Hm. But no, this company says "we don't want to repair this console anymore". Come on! Story
Someone might pay $50-$150 to repair a console but when the console itself has physically destroyed it's own motherboard the cost of repairs (labor and materials) now approaches the cost of replacement. The company simply could not keep up with demand nor guarantee the badly designed motherboards wouldn't break again in the near future. Given the nature of the RROD problem you can't fault the repair team, even if they restored it to factory manufactured states they'd still stand a good chance of breaking whith in a year.
Ah, so your argument for using anecdotal evidence is that everyone else is doing it? Well, isn't that righteous. I hate to have to be the parental figure you so desperately need but if all of your friends were jumping off of bridges, would you as well?
Fuck you. Really you are a twit.
The odds of 15 failures given a 5% failure rate and random distirbution: 1:3.2768 × 10^19
Odds if it is 33% failure rate: 1:14 348 907
Thus the anecdotes implies it is an order of magnitute more likely the failure rate is 33% then 5%.
Given that all examples have been from a particular city in Canada and neighboring burbs you might say it's simply a bad batch. However they are temporally disconnected and came from several vendors. As well the stats for competing systems aren't as bad. For the wii out of the 13 people i know with one only 1 had failed (mine: defective optical drive out of the box), of the PS3 owners 0/6 have advised me their machine has failed. For the Ps2 3/28 have failed, 1 because it fell off the shelf. Xbox1 owners are 0/12, GC owners are 0/5. All in all we can rule out usage patterns or some weird local phenomenon. Thus we must conclude it's likely higher then 5%.
As well previously there was a slashdot story of a seven dead 360's. Statistically that is 1:1 280 000 000 chance if 5% failure rate or 1:2 187 if it's 33%. Assuming random distribution. Considering the guy has a well documented case you can't accuse him of lying.
Sometimes that is the purpose. Other times it is for assholes to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt without having real evidence. In this case, it sure as fuck isn't the former. I sense a over investment into a consumer retail product. Was there an offer to give you a penis (clearly you are lacking) if you stuck up for the gaming division of microsoft in an asinine manner? Since 33% is a widespread, well supported, and widely believed figure for which all evidence suggests is true or close then no in fact it's not simply FUD you little shill.
Anecdotal evidence had no place in the discussion. There is nothing you can say about me as a person that will change that fact. You were in the wrong to mention it. Anecdotes are very much parts of discussion. If true, they represent self selected non-random datapoints which are something, not as good as 10,000 datapoints but no worse then the opinion of one coprolalia addled Slashdotter. so really you can take your self righteousness and go dig for evidence contravening my assertion.
The point is that your great evidence had no place in the discussion. Find a forum where no one gives anecdotes. post there. I doubt you will find a front page thread on slashdot, where for all post there does not exist an anecdote. The purpose of an anecdote it to convey personal experience and opinion. Which is a large part of slashdot. You can really make as much noise as you want but expletives and pejoratives does not make one right.
My complaints are facetious. Yours showed that you had no argument. While I insulted you in the context of destroying your argument, the best you could muster was to call me a troll. I have thoroughly destroyed you. Now go do the right thing and kill yourself You did nothing except say anecdotes are anecdotes. Troll.
Public officials (and everyone else) should be protected from false accusations that have no evidence and were said/printed with malicious intent. Notice I said "should". This isn't really the case today as far as I know. The reason it ought not be is that such laws tend to be used to silence opposition. Notice how certain jurisdictions(china, parts of south America, parts of Africa, parts of Asia) have laws explicitly protecting the "dignity" of public officials. Current slander/libel laws are a bit softer on critics of public officials expressly to allow for criticism. A person declaring "Sean J everyman" shot a man may be libelous but accusations "Dick Cheney" shot a man likely not. Publishing frequent and repeated "false" accusations of a public figure is not allowed. Libel and slander will handle it if it's false, and malicious.
None of the articles you reference provide any direct evidence. Even PCW says "Anecdotal evidence suggests the Xbox 360 failure rate may be as high as one of every three machines according to retailers." Not "EB COO states return rate was 2.9m consoles", but "Anecdotal evidence" from and EB "Employee". Your evidence is pretty paltry.
I do find it interesting, however, that the source of these stories will happily sell you a warranty for it. Direct evidence would be MS releasing Data. However they have declined to do so. Thus we are left with anecdotal, deductive, inductive, self-selected poll results, and retailer insiders. As well there is more then EB/gamestop/best buy, a former 360 repair contractor (not a single person but the company) gave some fairly negative press on high fail rates of repaired units. With such a large cross section it confirms at the very least that the 3-5% "within industry standard fail rates" is unlikely to be true..
Are you saying that I should just ignore your personal attacks? Remember who threw the first Ad hominem before bemoaning of mis treatment.
Seriously - your anecdotal evidence had no place in the discussion. It is meaningless and caters to the weak-minded. The fact that you knew it was worthless only underlines the fact that you were being intellectually dishonest in bringing it up. Well now that we're done with the profanity.
Note the word estimates in the original post, also note when I referred to a EB/gamestop I did not specify it was in the original post. The 30-33% estimates come from several retail insiders not just one. here are some links:
It is accepted that the true failure rates is greater then the 3-5% MS publicly claimed. It's estimated to be ~33%, many pundits from many media agencies accept that is a reasonable estimate given the evidence. There was such a flurry of media attention on it I was surprised you had "missed it", the media flurry.
As for my anecdote, I assume anyone who isn't new to slashdot will take any anecdote with a grain of salt. As your lack of machine failure represents a data point of 1 case, while my anecdote of 100% machine failure represents a data point of 15 cases. This is 16 data points/11 million possible; non-random/self selected data points. I prefaced it with a verbal warning.
Your anecdotal evidence served no point in this discussion. It had no place here.
I may have resorted to personal attacks but at least I had content to go along with those attacks. You just launched a personal attack against me with no discussion of the valid points I raised.
Since we've previously established that you're not a moron, it appears you realize that you are beat but still want the last word. Sorry asshole, you lost. Shut the fuck up. You need not refute juvenile drivel. Only acknowledge the child lest they throw a bigger tantrum.
How could I have missed "the part" when you did not mention EB/Gamestop in your original post? Also - you'll need to cite a statistically valid study that shows 33%, not some manager from an EB. I'll also thank you very much for losing the fucking tone with me. Seriously - I missed the part of your post where you mentioned EB/Gamestop? I'm still missing it because it's not fucking there asshole.
But honestly, and here's where you really failed - my point was that your anecdotal evidence has no fucking place in any discussion. The fact that you said "informally" only underlines the fact that you already understood that your anecdotal evidence was completely fucking worthless but still chose to bring it up. That means you're not a moron but instead, just an asshole. Too bad, I would have liked you better if you were a moron. Now fuck off and die, asshole. well thats what i get for feeding the trolls. ohh well.
Ain't anecdotal evidence great? I know at least 10 people with Xbox 360's, and not one of them have had to have it replaced. It's no secret that the 360 has comparatively high failure rates, but 33%? Please link to the publication where you got that number, otherwise you're just spreading FUD./quote>
They do have a small base to draw their numbers from. However the 1.3 bil they allocated for RROD warranty replacement is enough to replace 1/3 of all 360's out there if the replacement cost is retail. More if it isn't. So the figure seems to make sense if the failure rate is close to 33%.
There seems to be a consistent number offered by at least 3 independent sources (many of the articles quote from each other). This estimate conforms with the money allocated. thus it's reasonable to assume the number is a fair estimate.
Slashdot Mirror
1318 Centre Street NE, Suite 105, Calgary, AB
Website here: http://jimprentice.ca/
I'll be there in spirit. The roads are way too slick for me to come down from Edmonton. But I made a call, sent a letter, and whispered stuff into the ears of the wife of a liberal senator....
I made a call to Mr. Prentice's Ottawa office this morning. I got a reply instantly and left a polite note stating my extreme dissatisfaction with the direction in which they were going and noting I would drop my Conservative membership if this bill is even read. I've also been mobilizing my friends and my office (one of the ladies is the wife of a senator) to kibosh this bill if it's not kosher.
The second problem is that people will use these studies to assert claims far beyond what they say ala "Doom is a murder trainer".
The brain reacts to violent imagery, may affect impulse control after
What they didn't prove:
Violent imagery makes you violent.
Most of the studies present a violent image and ask you questions after. Partly because it'd be unethical to show them imagery and then attempt to induce violence. Thus they must use proxies which only prove a relationship from the imagery to the proxy.
Common Study:
Show a 3 min clip from bioshock - ask "are you feeling more or less violent" or "please push this button as hard as you want" and then write a conclusion " Bioshock makes you violent".
I doubt violent imagery has no effect on you, it likely agitates the flight or fight response but I am skeptical on whether it can induce violence in a normal/average person. I dislike how media and various groups try to portray a stronger relationship. Doom 3 has not made me a serial killer, it's highly unlikely doom 6 will make my children serial killers, and if it does it's probably partly mine and my communities fault. It my kid does end up being a serial killer there is most likely a biological factor too. Media alone does not make a killer.
1- All explosives are incidaries that induce huge orange fireballs.
2- Everything explodes
3- Being shot with a gun will propel you backwards like you were tackled by a line backer
4- You can accurately hit a target with a shotgun at any range
5- Useful GUI's are all extremely pretty
6- A bruteforce attack on a covert government agency takes less then 30s
7- really really really smart people will assign probabilities to complex events for which they don't know most of the variables. Inevitably the odds will be severely against our hero, invariably the hero will overcome the odds because really really really smart people are idiots.
8- Dangerous biological agents will be stored in transparent vials with some silvery metal bits. It'll be very distinctly colored, and lightly guarded.
9- Submachine guns all have a clip of 3000 shots and can hit target accurately at 100m
10- Being stopped suddenly by a non-elastic rope tied around your waste an inch from the ground is somehow less damaging then hitting the ground.
11- For ever action there is a variably powerful variably direction reaction, the magnitude and the direction is dictated by camera angles.
12- Inertia only applies to whimps.
13- All objects have a mass relative to the narrative value of having mass. ie. A super hero stopping a train has infinite mass, although he's constantly flying and thus why he doesn't fall into the middle of the earth.
14- Distance scale proportionate with familiarity. 1m = 1m, 1 light year = 100 km.
15- Every poison or biological agents has an antidote
16- The last second on all bomb timers actually last 3 minutes thus why we think it always counts down to 1 and gets diffused
17- Every thinking being speaks English
18- All interfaces are easily learned and intuitive
Being an old-timer, I can tell you that when I went to school all we had were polio vaccinations and tetanus. Out of a class of about 200 kids, 1 in 25 may have had bizarre allergies, (milk, grass, wheat, eggs etc.) Now it seems that most kids have some type of allergy or asthma, yet we live in such sterile times. It's not hard to conclude/perceive that something happened in the 70's and beyond. Was it in the vaccinations?
It's probably very easy for a lot of trepidation about vaccines because of past experience, anecdotal it may very-well be, however it does not help when polititians, school boards, professional organizations (AMA) AND big drugcos all gang up and require new vaccines mandatory as soon as the trial period is complete. I'm glad I don't have children in school (or children at all for that matter). I'd be leery too. (hope my tinfoil hat isn't showing)
Do you get the flu shot every year? That's a vaccine. Do you realize it's a crap-shoot as to whether -or- not it will even be effective against the "projected strain" the powers that be are pushing? I thought not.
No wonder a good portion of society distrust vaccines in general. In science Correlation != causation. Correlation suggests some relationship. In the same time span premature babies survived a lot more often as well, anti-bacterial stuff became more common, your food is pumped with more steroids and anti biotics, infant mortality in general has declined and George bush sr. was alive. So you can use bad logic and say George bush Sr. causes higher rates of allergies or you can try to actually do a study that will means something.
My own opinion is that since immunizations drastically reduced the rate of serious disease the infant mortality rate has dropped. The survivors which may have previously been killed before widespread immunization likely are the frequently allergic kids. Makes sense biologically, and how much of supposed side effects of immunizations don't appear in real scientific studies. because it's correlation not causation.
"We have to remember there is a large sub-culture in the US/Canada and Europe who still think that evolution is a myth, and the world was created 6,000 years ago."
What the HELL does this have to do with Vaccinations? I know plenty of Atheist who don't like vaccinations either, because they don't trust the science that is performed for profit. This has NOTHING to do with Evolution or Bible believers, but is a snide comment. Hope you're happy in your smugness. Both viewpoints are part of a general popular movement against science and scientific knowledge. They feed into each other. They are also much more incestuous then you'd think. Phillip morris got their hands caught in propaganda campaign when they were forced by a court to release documents as part of a lawsuit. Apparently they've been funding anti-science initiatives to undermine the science that paints cigarettes in such a bad light. Creationist too have decided the best way to fight science undermining the indoctrination of their youth was to discredit it by causing controversy. Thus it turns out that a lot of Global warming opposition was funded by both big tobacco and ID proponents. Both attempting to under mine the common belief of the power and validity of science. Big tobacco by hiring the same scientist shills they hired to say "tobacco is not dangerous to your health" to say "we disagree that the world is warming", and ID proponents by funding various non-scientists to pound the same message.
The audience for both are the same, the under educated masses of America. Who also believe vaccines are government mind control along with fluoride and that secretly a Cabal of jewish businessmen run the nation in conjunction with aliens they keep at area 51 etc...
Spammers represent a large illicit underground economy, I somehow doubt most spammers are on the up and up with their taxes. Thus many of these laws are just the revenue service finding extra things to press this group. There are several groups you ought never fuck with. The Taxman, The mailman, and The FDA.
-Bejewelled (a small team a half a dozen months)
-Everyday shooter (one, guy, loads of time)
-Counter strike (1 lead, small community)
-MS XNA
Small scale development is alive and well. You just don't get it for $49.95 at radio shack like you did in the days of yore. It's now $10-$20 off one of the various game stores. The maga budget games are like block busters in hollywood but indie hits still come. You just have to fit yoru idea with the technology available. You won't be able to make WOW for $250,000 and 5 developers but you can make Bejewelled. You won't be able to make MGS4 in your spare time but you can make flow.
Although Gimp resembles Photoshop it isn't the same. Some skills are transferable but if you are teaching graphic design it's silly to teach anything other then what industry uses. It means they must relearn many skills once they enter the job market. If your teaching at a higher more theoretical level then it might be acceptable because more of it transfers. But if it's a trades school or technical college you're better off teaching the actual industry tools regardless of cost.
Someone might pay $50-$150 to repair a console but when the console itself has physically destroyed it's own motherboard the cost of repairs (labor and materials) now approaches the cost of replacement. The company simply could not keep up with demand nor guarantee the badly designed motherboards wouldn't break again in the near future. Given the nature of the RROD problem you can't fault the repair team, even if they restored it to factory manufactured states they'd still stand a good chance of breaking whith in a year.
Fuck you. Really you are a twit.
The odds of 15 failures given a 5% failure rate and random distirbution:
1:3.2768 × 10^19
Odds if it is 33% failure rate:
1:14 348 907
Thus the anecdotes implies it is an order of magnitute more likely the failure rate is 33% then 5%.
Given that all examples have been from a particular city in Canada and neighboring burbs you might say it's simply a bad batch. However they are temporally disconnected and came from several vendors. As well the stats for competing systems aren't as bad. For the wii out of the 13 people i know with one only 1 had failed (mine: defective optical drive out of the box), of the PS3 owners 0/6 have advised me their machine has failed. For the Ps2 3/28 have failed, 1 because it fell off the shelf. Xbox1 owners are 0/12, GC owners are 0/5. All in all we can rule out usage patterns or some weird local phenomenon. Thus we must conclude it's likely higher then 5%.
As well previously there was a slashdot story of a seven dead 360's. Statistically that is
1:1 280 000 000 chance if 5% failure rate or
1:2 187 if it's 33%. Assuming random distribution. Considering the guy has a well documented case you can't accuse him of lying. Sometimes that is the purpose. Other times it is for assholes to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt without having real evidence. In this case, it sure as fuck isn't the former. I sense a over investment into a consumer retail product. Was there an offer to give you a penis (clearly you are lacking) if you stuck up for the gaming division of microsoft in an asinine manner? Since 33% is a widespread, well supported, and widely believed figure for which all evidence suggests is true or close then no in fact it's not simply FUD you little shill. Anecdotal evidence had no place in the discussion. There is nothing you can say about me as a person that will change that fact. You were in the wrong to mention it. Anecdotes are very much parts of discussion. If true, they represent self selected non-random datapoints which are something, not as good as 10,000 datapoints but no worse then the opinion of one coprolalia addled Slashdotter. so really you can take your self righteousness and go dig for evidence contravening my assertion.
The point is that your great evidence had no place in the discussion. Find a forum where no one gives anecdotes. post there. I doubt you will find a front page thread on slashdot, where for all post there does not exist an anecdote. The purpose of an anecdote it to convey personal experience and opinion. Which is a large part of slashdot. You can really make as much noise as you want but expletives and pejoratives does not make one right.
I do find it interesting, however, that the source of these stories will happily sell you a warranty for it. Direct evidence would be MS releasing Data. However they have declined to do so. Thus we are left with anecdotal, deductive, inductive, self-selected poll results, and retailer insiders. As well there is more then EB/gamestop/best buy, a former 360 repair contractor (not a single person but the company) gave some fairly negative press on high fail rates of repaired units. With such a large cross section it confirms at the very least that the 3-5% "within industry standard fail rates" is unlikely to be true..
Note the word estimates in the original post, also note when I referred to a EB/gamestop I did not specify it was in the original post. The 30-33% estimates come from several retail insiders not just one. here are some links:
here
here
some here
and here.
An Analysis.
It is accepted that the true failure rates is greater then the 3-5% MS publicly claimed. It's estimated to be ~33%, many pundits from many media agencies accept that is a reasonable estimate given the evidence. There was such a flurry of media attention on it I was surprised you had "missed it", the media flurry.
As for my anecdote, I assume anyone who isn't new to slashdot will take any anecdote with a grain of salt. As your lack of machine failure represents a data point of 1 case, while my anecdote of 100% machine failure represents a data point of 15 cases. This is 16 data points/11 million possible; non-random/self selected data points. I prefaced it with a verbal warning.
Your anecdotal evidence served no point in this discussion. It had no place here.
I may have resorted to personal attacks but at least I had content to go along with those attacks. You just launched a personal attack against me with no discussion of the valid points I raised.
Since we've previously established that you're not a moron, it appears you realize that you are beat but still want the last word. Sorry asshole, you lost. Shut the fuck up. You need not refute juvenile drivel. Only acknowledge the child lest they throw a bigger tantrum.
But honestly, and here's where you really failed - my point was that your anecdotal evidence has no fucking place in any discussion. The fact that you said "informally" only underlines the fact that you already understood that your anecdotal evidence was completely fucking worthless but still chose to bring it up. That means you're not a moron but instead, just an asshole. Too bad, I would have liked you better if you were a moron. Now fuck off and die, asshole. well thats what i get for feeding the trolls. ohh well.
here is some more and yet more.
They do have a small base to draw their numbers from. However the 1.3 bil they allocated for RROD warranty replacement is enough to replace 1/3 of all 360's out there if the replacement cost is retail. More if it isn't. So the figure seems to make sense if the failure rate is close to 33%.
There seems to be a consistent number offered by at least 3 independent sources (many of the articles quote from each other). This estimate conforms with the money allocated. thus it's reasonable to assume the number is a fair estimate.