As a long-time (+20 years) audiophile, I can tell you right now that many of the tweaks and products in the business has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with psychology. But that's ok. If Speaker Cable A sounds better than Speaker Cable B to me, why souldn't I buy it? It makes me think I've bought the better product.
Ofcourse - the whole industry is based on me thinking that there's some better product out there that I still haven't bought... Just around the corner is Eternal Bliss ®
I have this pill, it's made from ancient Chinese herbs and I am the only distributor in the entire country. It's made using European secrets of eternal youth and includes rare Brazilian nut extracts and has tight homeopathic properties. A bottle of 10 can be yours for only $100. And I guarantee if you never tell anyone about it that you'll likely feel better after taking them!!!!
Yeah but digital is digital... Monster also sells HDMI cables for insane prices ($100 for 6 feet). Correct me if I'm wrong, but if a digital cable is working at all, you're going to get the perfect signal from it. Basically, if the cheap $12 internet HDMI cable works at all, you aren't going to get a crisper image going to a fancier Monster cable. Any signal loss from the cheap cable would likely be pretty drastic and noticeable, given that the data is transferred in binary.
I have a few friends in electronics retail. Monster sells then the cable for almost thing($10), the store marks it up x10 and instructs them to push it to the middle aged guys who are pretending they know what their talking about. You can get HDMI cables for $10-$100. Not sure what the difference is, but they all do the same job in general.
I wouldn't feel guilty about the guitar cables, that's a completely different thing...
There, the reason for buying expensive cables isn't usually much one of sound quality. Since the cable of an electric guitar is constantly bent,flexed and stepped on, it is more one about reliability.
There are few things more irritating than crappy, stiff and badly soldered guitar cables that break after five sessions.
True enough.. but that reliability tops out at around 100-200 bucks and then it becomes better to just replace your cables often. $7000 cables are a bit of overkill. nothing they can add for $6800 will make it worth it unless throw in a Russian nude model of your choice in the bargain (even then you're over paying).
No, there won't be a major Linux malware epidemic. For these reasons:
1. The average user won't be running as root so when you are there, theres nothing you can mess up enough to make the system unusable 2. Linux was designed with the Internet in mind, Windows wasn't, for example, binary files must be flagged to execute them before they execute making it nearly impossible for you to just "visit a webpage" and be infected 3. The code is open and more people will be finding out security flaws before crackers do, also there are faster patches then Windows and you can patch it yourself. 4. There are enough differences to make there be just about impossible to make a script to infect the core portions such as there are many different web browsers, lynx, elinks, Firefox, Konqueror, Galeon.... and many programs can run in non-interactive mode making hiding malware harder. 5. The base of developers grows proportional to the base of users, where as MS has to hire more people, Linux programmers don't need to get paid and can be from ANY country, ANY age, ANY religion etc. to contribute code.
Your forgot
0. The average Linux user is not an technically illiterate nor convinced that 55k is the real size of Bioshock.
I understand inflation. I also understand why electronics get faster and cheaper over time. That wasn't the point of my post.
Maybe I should of said: "Buyers do not adjust for inflation when it comes to consoles or PCs."
The PS3 may be equal to the adjusted price of the PS2, but all consumers see is that the price is double what they paid for their last system.
*for this post all currency in USD* What consumers expected doesn't work either. No expects the 360 to be the same price as the Xbox of the same time frame (the "core" launch price was the same as the xbox launch price but almost double what the price was at the 360 launch, the core version lacked an HD too). No expected the SNES to be the same price as the 7 year old NES (SNES at launch was x2 the price of a NES at launch due mostly to inflation). So why would anyone expect the PS3 to be less then the launch price of the PS2? The "almost double" is relative. The "double" was due to a deep decline in the US currency in the last 8 years. In most markets including japan it was around the same. The 360 matched the price due to skimping on components. The wii went with cheaper components as well. Sony's mistake was not reading the writing on the wall and using more expensive components.
They've noted their error and have worked to reduce costs. At least I hope.
As we've seen time and time again, you can not adjust for inflation when it comes to consoles or PCs.
I'm not sure why this is, but there is some weird "stasis bubble" around the price which is why my first console (Atari 2600) and my latest console (Wii) both cost $249.99 (and each came with one game).
Inflation does work with consoles. It works with everything as it's a statement of the amount of things you can buy in general with a certain amount of money. So a amount of money at time X is worth a different amount at time Y. Inflation is about the money not the products.
What you mean is that PC's go counter to the general trend of inflation. But Consoles aren't PC's. Games increase in cost along with inflation while Consoles themselves do but in a convoluted way. A PS2 launch vs a Ps2 slimline is a set of hardware which has gotten progressively cheaper to make. Thus it's price decreased. But the next major revision has a higher price because it's not the same hardware. Similarly Hard drives come down in price per GB but remain at approximately the same slowly inflating price point when you consider "product segment" vs GB. A commodity HD is around the same price point of the same HD product segment the year before but with a larger capacity. (HDTV's have a similar trend. At any particular size the price has dropped but in broad categories of "top end" "middle end" and "low end" you find the general price point following inflation.)
PC's get cheaper not due to some strange voodoo about electronics but because they get cheaper to make due to various technological factors. They pass those savings on and reprice as technology advances. But some components don't' follow this trend. Item's like sound cards, Keyboard, Mice, Monitors tend to move with inflation but the reduction in price of CPU's, GPU's motherboards and such counteract it.
This works largely due to a almost ideal free market in those devices and progress in technology related to yield and expense of manufacturing. If they hit a floor on the cost of manufacturing then you'll see all PC component following the inflationary trend.
If it gets games out by their release dates great! But I'm not shelling out 90 bucks a game!
It'll likely lead to saner game release schedules. Instead of saying "Oct 9th 2007, no matter hell or high water", it'll be "forth quarter 2007, probably".
I don't think Microsoft, or anyone else, seriously expected the 360 to do well in Japan - not after the Xbox, anyways.
However, even in Japan, the PS3 is still struggling because of the Wii. The Wii's been going strong worldwide, but in Japan, it's burying the PS3 (and the 360) by a huge margin. This makes me wonder what the fate of all those JRPGs that were looking to the PS3 as their chosen platform. Will the 360 get more JRPGs this time around? Or will we see them all migrate to the Wii? The 360 already has more RPGs than the PS3 - which is pretty pathetic in my opinion.
The 360 has more of everything in general for title due to the year lead. The PS3 is in the first year slump where many studious are still in production with their products. Like the 360 the first gen of titles didn't look that great, trickled in, and lacked variety or polish (in fact the generation winner suffer from the same issues. The existing wii library isn't that great). Give it a year before you call it dead. Right now there is approx. 4.6 million Ps3 out there with 6 million shipped. Which is right about where the 360 was at the same point in it's lifespan. I think we're looking at a two horse race for second and the Wii may get more title but I would greatly prefer if Nintendo didn't force everyone to include a wii mote specific function. I'm getting really sick of shaking that damned thing.
Also, living in Canada, I see the launch price of the PS3 to be about 2 times higher than the PS2. I remember the PS2 being $299, while the PS3 was $599 and $699. Not sure where your information comes from, but I think its false.
No my information is not false go back and look at the launch price, then adjust for inflation. You'll find the 20gb version is withing $50.
PS2 Release Oct 26, 2000 price : $449 CND ($524.07 CND after inflation) PS3 20gb launch price: $549 CND
The $299 price was the price of a PS2 2 years after launch.
whilst I would like to see some research done into this I think that it seems like a fairly sensible policy if there is insufficient knowledge currently to be sure of the effect that it might have. If it saves even one life it seems to be worth the inconvenience (which is pretty minor anyway).
That idea can get pretty silly. For instance Peanut butter can kill people with severe allergies, ought we ban all peanut butter in public places? Bee stings can kill certian people, ought we ban bees? A CD could presumably kill someone in exactly the right circumstance ought we ban CD's? A Scarf could kill someone too (and have killed many children), it's only a small inconvenience to go without one so ought we ban scarves?
When were the sales numbers for the PS3 ever acceptable? With Sony being so confident before release, saying that everyone was going to want one, no matter how much it cost, just because it's a playstation, I would say that there numbers have always been pretty low.
Their at 1/3 of what the 360 is at (4.6 mil sold vs ~12 mil sold; pre halo 3 numbers). They are "catching up" but not int he US market. Mostly Japan and other markets where the 360 doesn't expand as fast. The 360 is doing pitifully in Japan likely due to not having a single clue how to market it there. The iPod example defeats any notion that it's nationalistic pride keeping the 360 down.
It keeps getting worse for Sony and the PS3, it seems like all the good games have been delayed until 2008 or later. I won't be buying one until Final Fantasy 13 comes out.
By then it'll be a more reasonable price. I paid full price and I feel okay with it. It's a nice machine. Doubles as a linux boxen/truly open media center. It has soem okay games no major unit movers yet but I'm hoping MGS4 and FFXII will bring it some respect.
Did anyone stop to think that the reason they have delayed the release of the PS3 version of the game is that nobody owns a PS3? It's the lowest selling system in the current generation, eclipsed by both the XBOX 360 and the Wii. The primary reason for this is that there is such a high price tag. I think that Sony made a mistake when they decided to go with such high-end hardware for their console. For the price of a PS3, I could buy both a 360 and a Wii. So, would I buy one console, and limit myself to the expensive games released for said console, or would I prefer to buy two consoles, opening up the opportunity to play a wider variety of games with the same quality as that of the more expensive alternative? I think the answer is obvious.
No because a low install base doesn't stop you from shipping. Perfect dark wasn't stalled simply because the n64 had low numbers.The PS3 launch price in Canada is within $50 of the PS2 launch price. Sony misjudged which direction the US dollar was going in not the machine as a whole. The machine itself is very nice. Sony might have made a mistake in the price tag, they badly misjudged how the economies of it's two largest markets were going but I think the delays are due to the newness and complexity of the architecture. It's a lot easier to get near optimal results from an API that has many experienced programmers (Dirext X) and universal shaders help (360). The Ps3 takes more work to get juice out. Many have already pointed this out. It likely has a higher maximum performance but takes more tinkering to get there.
I got a ps3 and a wii so I got games covered. Casual and pretty/hardcore. The answer isn't so straight forward as most of the games on the 360 have PC peers/superiors. So it's really about how much money you have and what you play.
Indiana Jones belongs with Star Wars, Transformers, TMNT etc.. of things that were popular when we were young. Since geeks tend not to grow out of things we have this tingly nostalgia for these things. So it might fit. bedsides, he's an archaeologist.. their sort of pottery geeks.
I think the RIAA would be perfectly consistent and argue that people were stealing in the 80's when they made mix tapes. Keep in mind that in those days that few people were on the internet. CD-R didn't exist. The only way consumers could copy music was to do so via low quality cassette tapes. The RIAA wasn't happy about home taping from day one and fought a losing battle against it, but since practical concerns (time involved in duplication, generational quality loss, and cost of media) made it impractical for people to engage in large scale duplication of music at home, they just turned a blind eye to the idea that a few people would share music with their friends via cassette tapes. However, choosing not to prosecute some guy for making one or two tapes for friends doesn't mean that they ever agreed that the practice was legal. It just would cost more to prosecute than it was worth.
Of course they sued the cassette recorder manufacturers, lost, and set a president that copying is fair use. They've been fighting to prove that distributing over the internet is legally different (which is likely is). So while putting songs on kazzaa might be illegal ripping CD's has already been set as fair use. So her statement ignores history. It's inconsistent with the legal history that exists. She might want to go and buy off American politicians but you need to make sure that doesn't happen.
Umm... no thats the exact reason to "throw down" on those people who make stereo equipment with contradiction to what the douchbags at Sony BMG say. These asshats need to be leashed in and one way is totally holding the rest of the corporation accountable. When they don't have their head up their asses, they reply to one thing, and one thing only: money.
From most indications the Various music labels are fighting above their weight class as they seem to have more influence then industries that make much much more. They should be leashed just by realizing how much they contribute to the economy (as greedy distributors/middlemen) vs possible damage due to the suppression of fair use. We are the ones giving them the ability to copyright to promote artistic expression. Not them giving us fair use.
Last I check Canada and China weren't too high on the "foaming at the mouth" priority list.
When you respect people who haven't earned it, like drug addicts and mental patients, you end up with things like "Major Linux Hardware Donor Is a CNN Hero". Take a fucking note.
Isn't that how a democracy with freedom is supposed to work?
Complementing Islam on it's freedom and democracy... thats a stretch. Even "democracies" like Malaysia and Indonesia are oppressive wiht their minorities and extremely corrupt.
When there is no need to be ruled, there is no central rule, and when there is a common threat, there is cohesion. Despite cowards dropping bombs from the sky and laying their cities to waste, they still are not ruled in their hearts and continue to fight.
Actually the only reason we hear about it is because it's politically useful. Trust me if they were serious about "wiping out terrorism" they'd take out the funders in Saudi Arabia, UAE, and jordan. They pay lip service to it simply because it's politically expedient. You don't hear much about the brave Chechen's over on this side of the ocean because the Russian killed a large number of them and mostly suppressed it. You hear nothing at all about the oppressed northern Chinese Muslims because the Chinese have them under wraps.
Seriously, show some fucking respect. The respect due a valiant enemy, if nothing else.
Respect is not given but earned. I needn't respect them, their cause nor their leadership, their unwitting pawns, their funders, etc.. Their mostly bumbling idiots with a few compliments. They may be brave but bravery is simply the lower valuation of your life over a "side" and if that side is one of "theocracy and oppression" bravery isn't worth shit. I respect the students in Iran bucking for more openness in Iran. I despise the nim rods who rolled a burning van into an air port because they watched too many moves and thought gasoline explodes all by itself. I respect Theo van gough, a victim of free speech I despise every single one of the clerics who condemned him or the drawings of Mohammad. What it amounts to it a whole bunch of dictators paying lip service to a cause, a whole bunch of spoiled Saudi's funding a cause, a whole bunch of low IQ poverty stricken nimrods looking for a way up or out, and a mass of angry people with little to no power taking it out on any neighbor they can pick out as different.
When a civilization decides to just discard the lessons entirely and switch to an enlightened and free age of science and reason, they only survive a few generations before their decline and collapse. Happens over and over again through history
examples? I bet all your examples are when an empire rises, gives into rampant internal/external corruption and collapses in on itself. Not exactly "switch to enlightened and free age of science and reason". I doubt if even 1 of your examples actually"discarded the lessons entirely". A solid cohesive nation needs some common culture but it remains to be seen if "religiousness" imparts enough of a survival advantage to compensate for it's down sides.
Islam might have declined the Arab worlds capacity for science, but the Arab world is not weak because of it. We are. We are weaklings with clever tricks. We are few where we might have been many, we are soft and spoiled where we might have been hard and powerful, and we did it to ourselves.
Islam is pretty weak. Religiously motivated Infighting have split the religion many ways. Right now it appears cohesive because it has a common cause to fight against. Leave it on it's own and it's just a big mob of separate nations. Nations like Indonesia pay lip service to "Muslim unity" but they have completely different concerns then UAE or Jordan or Algeria. China, Korea, Japan, Russia and most of the west have a very low degree of "religiousness" and they represent 90% of all economic and military power on earth. It seems Islam has indeed hampered the resource rich Middle East/Africa/non South east Asia.
So this is something new? It seems to me that the US is moving away from religion, not towards it. Compare the laws and liberties that we have today and compare them to what we had over the past 100 years. Hell, when I was a child (1970's), I remember "blue laws" that would prevent grocery stores from selling anything other than the absolute necessities. I remember management would place carts to block off the toy and alcohol aisles. And yet, in November, 1971, a company called Intel publicly introduced the world's first single chip microprocessor, the Intel 4004 (U.S. Patent #3,821,715), invented by Intel engineers Federico Faggin, Ted Hoff, and Stan Mazor.
That varies form region to region but one of the power blocks (fundamentalists) have gotten more tracking recently. So while the US is likely less religious now then 10 year sago the religious have more power due to politics.
Maple Story and Ragnarok Online have iterations forthcoming on DS. I'm not sure if these will forego the MMO format for a Multiverse or stick with traditional multiplay, but I do know they have been talked about.
I have many fond memories of Ragnarök online. It was a mostly empty game world but it had interesting game play. Like secret of mana with more character types. I hope the Ds iteration will preserve that game play but maybe populate the world more. I could take or leave the MMO component. Having a offline version would rock.
Maybe you just haven't been paying attention. People can and do criticize Islamic culture without being threatened. No fanatic is going to bother this guy. The fatwas come out when someone disses Allah or Mohammad. Not that that is ok either. But you sound like you get your Islam info from the movies and Fox.
I get my news for a myriad of sources, from CBC Canada to Xin Hua news service to NY times as well. There are many well documented cases of threats to silence critics. From Theo Van Gough to Salman Rushdie to the incident with the "Fuck Islam" facebook thread. Islam does not take criticism well.
Slashdot Mirror
As a long-time (+20 years) audiophile, I can tell you right now that many of the tweaks and products in the business has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with psychology. But that's ok. If Speaker Cable A sounds better than Speaker Cable B to me, why souldn't I buy it? It makes me think I've bought the better product.
Ofcourse - the whole industry is based on me thinking that there's some better product out there that I still haven't bought... Just around the corner is Eternal Bliss ®
I have this pill, it's made from ancient Chinese herbs and I am the only distributor in the entire country. It's made using European secrets of eternal youth and includes rare Brazilian nut extracts and has tight homeopathic properties. A bottle of 10 can be yours for only $100. And I guarantee if you never tell anyone about it that you'll likely feel better after taking them!!!!
Yeah but digital is digital... Monster also sells HDMI cables for insane prices ($100 for 6 feet). Correct me if I'm wrong, but if a digital cable is working at all, you're going to get the perfect signal from it. Basically, if the cheap $12 internet HDMI cable works at all, you aren't going to get a crisper image going to a fancier Monster cable. Any signal loss from the cheap cable would likely be pretty drastic and noticeable, given that the data is transferred in binary.
I have a few friends in electronics retail. Monster sells then the cable for almost thing($10), the store marks it up x10 and instructs them to push it to the middle aged guys who are pretending they know what their talking about. You can get HDMI cables for $10-$100. Not sure what the difference is, but they all do the same job in general.
I wouldn't feel guilty about the guitar cables, that's a completely different thing...
There, the reason for buying expensive cables isn't usually much one of sound quality.
Since the cable of an electric guitar is constantly bent,flexed and stepped on, it is more one about reliability.
There are few things more irritating than crappy, stiff and badly soldered guitar cables that break after five sessions.
True enough.. but that reliability tops out at around 100-200 bucks and then it becomes better to just replace your cables often. $7000 cables are a bit of overkill. nothing they can add for $6800 will make it worth it unless throw in a Russian nude model of your choice in the bargain (even then you're over paying).
No, there won't be a major Linux malware epidemic. For these reasons:
1. The average user won't be running as root so when you are there, theres nothing you can mess up enough to make the system unusable
2. Linux was designed with the Internet in mind, Windows wasn't, for example, binary files must be flagged to execute them before they execute making it nearly impossible for you to just "visit a webpage" and be infected
3. The code is open and more people will be finding out security flaws before crackers do, also there are faster patches then Windows and you can patch it yourself.
4. There are enough differences to make there be just about impossible to make a script to infect the core portions such as there are many different web browsers, lynx, elinks, Firefox, Konqueror, Galeon.... and many programs can run in non-interactive mode making hiding malware harder.
5. The base of developers grows proportional to the base of users, where as MS has to hire more people, Linux programmers don't need to get paid and can be from ANY country, ANY age, ANY religion etc. to contribute code.
Your forgot
0. The average Linux user is not an technically illiterate nor convinced that 55k is the real size of Bioshock.
Yeah, and there could be a huge Linux virus epidemic. Its just stealthy enough that its not being detected!
Yes it's called vi. *dons asbestos vest*
I understand inflation. I also understand why electronics get faster and cheaper over time. That wasn't the point of my post.
Maybe I should of said: "Buyers do not adjust for inflation when it comes to consoles or PCs."
The PS3 may be equal to the adjusted price of the PS2, but all consumers see is that the price is double what they paid for their last system.
*for this post all currency in USD*
What consumers expected doesn't work either. No expects the 360 to be the same price as the Xbox of the same time frame (the "core" launch price was the same as the xbox launch price but almost double what the price was at the 360 launch, the core version lacked an HD too). No expected the SNES to be the same price as the 7 year old NES (SNES at launch was x2 the price of a NES at launch due mostly to inflation). So why would anyone expect the PS3 to be less then the launch price of the PS2? The "almost double" is relative. The "double" was due to a deep decline in the US currency in the last 8 years. In most markets including japan it was around the same. The 360 matched the price due to skimping on components. The wii went with cheaper components as well. Sony's mistake was not reading the writing on the wall and using more expensive components.
They've noted their error and have worked to reduce costs. At least I hope.
that was a pretty poor modding of your post.
As we've seen time and time again, you can not adjust for inflation when it comes to consoles or PCs.
I'm not sure why this is, but there is some weird "stasis bubble" around the price which is why my first console (Atari 2600) and my latest console (Wii) both cost $249.99 (and each came with one game).
Inflation does work with consoles. It works with everything as it's a statement of the amount of things you can buy in general with a certain amount of money. So a amount of money at time X is worth a different amount at time Y. Inflation is about the money not the products.
What you mean is that PC's go counter to the general trend of inflation. But Consoles aren't PC's. Games increase in cost along with inflation while Consoles themselves do but in a convoluted way. A PS2 launch vs a Ps2 slimline is a set of hardware which has gotten progressively cheaper to make. Thus it's price decreased. But the next major revision has a higher price because it's not the same hardware. Similarly Hard drives come down in price per GB but remain at approximately the same slowly inflating price point when you consider "product segment" vs GB. A commodity HD is around the same price point of the same HD product segment the year before but with a larger capacity. (HDTV's have a similar trend. At any particular size the price has dropped but in broad categories of "top end" "middle end" and "low end" you find the general price point following inflation.)
PC's get cheaper not due to some strange voodoo about electronics but because they get cheaper to make due to various technological factors. They pass those savings on and reprice as technology advances. But some components don't' follow this trend. Item's like sound cards, Keyboard, Mice, Monitors tend to move with inflation but the reduction in price of CPU's, GPU's motherboards and such counteract it.
This works largely due to a almost ideal free market in those devices and progress in technology related to yield and expense of manufacturing. If they hit a floor on the cost of manufacturing then you'll see all PC component following the inflationary trend.
If it gets games out by their release dates great! But I'm not shelling out 90 bucks a game!
It'll likely lead to saner game release schedules. Instead of saying "Oct 9th 2007, no matter hell or high water", it'll be "forth quarter 2007, probably".
I don't think Microsoft, or anyone else, seriously expected the 360 to do well in Japan - not after the Xbox, anyways.
However, even in Japan, the PS3 is still struggling because of the Wii. The Wii's been going strong worldwide, but in Japan, it's burying the PS3 (and the 360) by a huge margin. This makes me wonder what the fate of all those JRPGs that were looking to the PS3 as their chosen platform. Will the 360 get more JRPGs this time around? Or will we see them all migrate to the Wii? The 360 already has more RPGs than the PS3 - which is pretty pathetic in my opinion.
The 360 has more of everything in general for title due to the year lead. The PS3 is in the first year slump where many studious are still in production with their products. Like the 360 the first gen of titles didn't look that great, trickled in, and lacked variety or polish (in fact the generation winner suffer from the same issues. The existing wii library isn't that great). Give it a year before you call it dead. Right now there is approx. 4.6 million Ps3 out there with 6 million shipped. Which is right about where the 360 was at the same point in it's lifespan. I think we're looking at a two horse race for second and the Wii may get more title but I would greatly prefer if Nintendo didn't force everyone to include a wii mote specific function. I'm getting really sick of shaking that damned thing.
Also, living in Canada, I see the launch price of the PS3 to be about 2 times higher than the PS2. I remember the PS2 being $299, while the PS3 was $599 and $699. Not sure where your information comes from, but I think its false.
No my information is not false go back and look at the launch price, then adjust for inflation. You'll find the 20gb version is withing $50.
PS2 Release Oct 26, 2000 price : $449 CND ($524.07 CND after inflation)
PS3 20gb launch price: $549 CND
The $299 price was the price of a PS2 2 years after launch.
whilst I would like to see some research done into this I think that it seems like a fairly sensible policy if there is insufficient knowledge currently to be sure of the effect that it might have. If it saves even one life it seems to be worth the inconvenience (which is pretty minor anyway).
That idea can get pretty silly. For instance Peanut butter can kill people with severe allergies, ought we ban all peanut butter in public places? Bee stings can kill certian people, ought we ban bees? A CD could presumably kill someone in exactly the right circumstance ought we ban CD's? A Scarf could kill someone too (and have killed many children), it's only a small inconvenience to go without one so ought we ban scarves?
When were the sales numbers for the PS3 ever acceptable? With Sony being so confident before release, saying that everyone was going to want one, no matter how much it cost, just because it's a playstation, I would say that there numbers have always been pretty low.
Their at 1/3 of what the 360 is at (4.6 mil sold vs ~12 mil sold; pre halo 3 numbers). They are "catching up" but not int he US market. Mostly Japan and other markets where the 360 doesn't expand as fast. The 360 is doing pitifully in Japan likely due to not having a single clue how to market it there. The iPod example defeats any notion that it's nationalistic pride keeping the 360 down.
It keeps getting worse for Sony and the PS3, it seems like all the good games have been delayed until 2008 or later. I won't be buying one until Final Fantasy 13 comes out.
By then it'll be a more reasonable price. I paid full price and I feel okay with it. It's a nice machine. Doubles as a linux boxen/truly open media center. It has soem okay games no major unit movers yet but I'm hoping MGS4 and FFXII will bring it some respect.
Did anyone stop to think that the reason they have delayed the release of the PS3 version of the game is that nobody owns a PS3? It's the lowest selling system in the current generation, eclipsed by both the XBOX 360 and the Wii. The primary reason for this is that there is such a high price tag. I think that Sony made a mistake when they decided to go with such high-end hardware for their console. For the price of a PS3, I could buy both a 360 and a Wii. So, would I buy one console, and limit myself to the expensive games released for said console, or would I prefer to buy two consoles, opening up the opportunity to play a wider variety of games with the same quality as that of the more expensive alternative? I think the answer is obvious.
.The PS3 launch price in Canada is within $50 of the PS2 launch price. Sony misjudged which direction the US dollar was going in not the machine as a whole. The machine itself is very nice. Sony might have made a mistake in the price tag, they badly misjudged how the economies of it's two largest markets were going but I think the delays are due to the newness and complexity of the architecture. It's a lot easier to get near optimal results from an API that has many experienced programmers (Dirext X) and universal shaders help (360). The Ps3 takes more work to get juice out. Many have already pointed this out. It likely has a higher maximum performance but takes more tinkering to get there.
No because a low install base doesn't stop you from shipping. Perfect dark wasn't stalled simply because the n64 had low numbers
I got a ps3 and a wii so I got games covered. Casual and pretty/hardcore. The answer isn't so straight forward as most of the games on the 360 have PC peers/superiors. So it's really about how much money you have and what you play.
Indiana Jones belongs with Star Wars, Transformers, TMNT etc.. of things that were popular when we were young. Since geeks tend not to grow out of things we have this tingly nostalgia for these things. So it might fit. bedsides, he's an archaeologist.. their sort of pottery geeks.
I think the RIAA would be perfectly consistent and argue that people were stealing in the 80's when they made mix tapes. Keep in mind that in those days that few people were on the internet. CD-R didn't exist. The only way consumers could copy music was to do so via low quality cassette tapes. The RIAA wasn't happy about home taping from day one and fought a losing battle against it, but since practical concerns (time involved in duplication, generational quality loss, and cost of media) made it impractical for people to engage in large scale duplication of music at home, they just turned a blind eye to the idea that a few people would share music with their friends via cassette tapes. However, choosing not to prosecute some guy for making one or two tapes for friends doesn't mean that they ever agreed that the practice was legal. It just would cost more to prosecute than it was worth.
Of course they sued the cassette recorder manufacturers, lost, and set a president that copying is fair use. They've been fighting to prove that distributing over the internet is legally different (which is likely is). So while putting songs on kazzaa might be illegal ripping CD's has already been set as fair use. So her statement ignores history. It's inconsistent with the legal history that exists. She might want to go and buy off American politicians but you need to make sure that doesn't happen.
Umm... no thats the exact reason to "throw down" on those people who make stereo equipment with contradiction to what the douchbags at Sony BMG say. These asshats need to be leashed in and one way is totally holding the rest of the corporation accountable. When they don't have their head up their asses, they reply to one thing, and one thing only: money.
From most indications the Various music labels are fighting above their weight class as they seem to have more influence then industries that make much much more. They should be leashed just by realizing how much they contribute to the economy (as greedy distributors/middlemen) vs possible damage due to the suppression of fair use. We are the ones giving them the ability to copyright to promote artistic expression. Not them giving us fair use.
It was a long time ago that I played. Not beta but early in it's offering. I didn't find that there was too much making me stay so I left.
Yeah, that's why they want to kill your people.
Last I check Canada and China weren't too high on the "foaming at the mouth" priority list.
When you respect people who haven't earned it, like drug addicts and mental patients, you end up with things like "Major Linux Hardware Donor Is a CNN Hero". Take a fucking note.
Double response. classy.
Isn't that how a democracy with freedom is supposed to work?
Complementing Islam on it's freedom and democracy... thats a stretch. Even "democracies" like Malaysia and Indonesia are oppressive wiht their minorities and extremely corrupt.
When there is no need to be ruled, there is no central rule, and when there is a common threat, there is cohesion. Despite cowards dropping bombs from the sky and laying their cities to waste, they still are not ruled in their hearts and continue to fight.
Actually the only reason we hear about it is because it's politically useful. Trust me if they were serious about "wiping out terrorism" they'd take out the funders in Saudi Arabia, UAE, and jordan. They pay lip service to it simply because it's politically expedient. You don't hear much about the brave Chechen's over on this side of the ocean because the Russian killed a large number of them and mostly suppressed it. You hear nothing at all about the oppressed northern Chinese Muslims because the Chinese have them under wraps.
Seriously, show some fucking respect. The respect due a valiant enemy, if nothing else.
Respect is not given but earned. I needn't respect them, their cause nor their leadership, their unwitting pawns, their funders, etc.. Their mostly bumbling idiots with a few compliments. They may be brave but bravery is simply the lower valuation of your life over a "side" and if that side is one of "theocracy and oppression" bravery isn't worth shit. I respect the students in Iran bucking for more openness in Iran. I despise the nim rods who rolled a burning van into an air port because they watched too many moves and thought gasoline explodes all by itself. I respect Theo van gough, a victim of free speech I despise every single one of the clerics who condemned him or the drawings of Mohammad. What it amounts to it a whole bunch of dictators paying lip service to a cause, a whole bunch of spoiled Saudi's funding a cause, a whole bunch of low IQ poverty stricken nimrods looking for a way up or out, and a mass of angry people with little to no power taking it out on any neighbor they can pick out as different.
When a civilization decides to just discard the lessons entirely and switch to an enlightened and free age of science and reason, they only survive a few generations before their decline and collapse. Happens over and over again through history
examples? I bet all your examples are when an empire rises, gives into rampant internal/external corruption and collapses in on itself. Not exactly "switch to enlightened and free age of science and reason". I doubt if even 1 of your examples actually"discarded the lessons entirely". A solid cohesive nation needs some common culture but it remains to be seen if "religiousness" imparts enough of a survival advantage to compensate for it's down sides.
Islam might have declined the Arab worlds capacity for science, but the Arab world is not weak because of it. We are. We are weaklings with clever tricks. We are few where we might have been many, we are soft and spoiled where we might have been hard and powerful, and we did it to ourselves.
Islam is pretty weak. Religiously motivated Infighting have split the religion many ways. Right now it appears cohesive because it has a common cause to fight against. Leave it on it's own and it's just a big mob of separate nations. Nations like Indonesia pay lip service to "Muslim unity" but they have completely different concerns then UAE or Jordan or Algeria. China, Korea, Japan, Russia and most of the west have a very low degree of "religiousness" and they represent 90% of all economic and military power on earth. It seems Islam has indeed hampered the resource rich Middle East/Africa/non South east Asia.
The facts don't seem to support your opinion.
So this is something new? It seems to me that the US is moving away from religion, not towards it. Compare the laws and liberties that we have today and compare them to what we had over the past 100 years. Hell, when I was a child (1970's), I remember "blue laws" that would prevent grocery stores from selling anything other than the absolute necessities. I remember management would place carts to block off the toy and alcohol aisles. And yet, in November, 1971, a company called Intel publicly introduced the world's first single chip microprocessor, the Intel 4004 (U.S. Patent #3,821,715), invented by Intel engineers Federico Faggin, Ted Hoff, and Stan Mazor.
That varies form region to region but one of the power blocks (fundamentalists) have gotten more tracking recently. So while the US is likely less religious now then 10 year sago the religious have more power due to politics.
Maple Story and Ragnarok Online have iterations forthcoming on DS. I'm not sure if these will forego the MMO format for a Multiverse or stick with traditional multiplay, but I do know they have been talked about.
I have many fond memories of Ragnarök online. It was a mostly empty game world but it had interesting game play. Like secret of mana with more character types. I hope the Ds iteration will preserve that game play but maybe populate the world more. I could take or leave the MMO component. Having a offline version would rock.
Maybe you just haven't been paying attention. People can and do criticize Islamic culture without being threatened. No fanatic is going to bother this guy. The fatwas come out when someone disses Allah or Mohammad. Not that that is ok either. But you sound like you get your Islam info from the movies and Fox.
I get my news for a myriad of sources, from CBC Canada to Xin Hua news service to NY times as well. There are many well documented cases of threats to silence critics. From Theo Van Gough to Salman Rushdie to the incident with the "Fuck Islam" facebook thread. Islam does not take criticism well.