The initial offering was 3yr deal + $500 upfront to get the Iphone. So the $500 is after a 3yr subsidy by cingular. They may revise this but it means compared to other phones it's the quivalent to a $800 phone. My moto Q would have been 500 CND on it's own, 199 CND with a 3yr deal. Takign the same subsidy that means either apple is not taking a subsidy on a 3yr deal or apply is makign a $800 phone.
PS. my moto Q was free with a 0$ plan. Sweetness workign for a telecom.
If Sony only sold 5,000,000 PS3 systems in its first year third party developers would abandon their projects and the PS3 would die; if Apple sells 500,000 iPones in its first year they can continue to sell them the following year without any lost value for the system (and the iPhone will eventually become an affordable product).
MS only sold ~5 mil in it's first 4 quarters of the 360's lifespan. I didn't see the mass exodus of third paties, did you? In Q4 2006 (fifth quarter of its' lifespan) they almost doubled that. Sony needs to be on par tof better and have a good Q4 2007 but ~5 mil will not spell it's death. 3 mil this year may or if they don't move ~10 mil by Q2 2008 perhaps.
The argument that video games make kids into little killing machines, that's a different kind of claim altogether. There is no such study, doing one would be completely unethical.
Child soldier all over africa could be used. A control group that gets just a regular upbringing, a test group that gets brain washing, physical abuse and violent video games, a test group that just get violent video games, and maybe a group that just gets the brain washing and abuse. I'm sure if mercenary corps get big enough they'd try it.
psychology is a very slim science. Large scale studies might have strong science behind them but far too often you have sample sizes of 1 and psychologists drawing conclusions from that. Those "case studies" are what make the rest of science think very lightly of psychology. I think this psychiatrists study seems better. psychiatrist tends to be closer to real science. But I'd like a few more studies before I'd change my mind about the effects of violence on people.
It doesn't solve the problem when adults buy it and turn around and give it to a kid, but do we really need big huge scary laws with fines and jailtime for something the industry is already doing?
Is that actually a problem? TV has as much or more violence then GTA. Just watch greys anatomy or CSI. There is no way to gerentee young children are watching and there is actually little evidence that it actually harms the children. A troubled teen doesn't need doom to push him over the edge and a healthy teen will not be altered by violent games. Sex for the matter is the same. Porn won't turn a healthy teen into some degenerate. I find the nanny state mentality more harmful then the actual content in question.
I noticed 1 sony fanboy this thread, a half dozen of obvious 360 fanboys and a few dozen Wii fanboys. Although the Wii fanboys are hard to tell from people who know the situation well. The Wii has been a smashing success of marketting and good timing. I think the 360 fanboys are more numerous on slashdot but there has been a mass conversion recently.
Just to burst your luddite bubble, HD adoption rates are fiarly high amongst new TV purchases. There is more then PS3/360 driving that. That won't be the largest barrier. Gamers tend to be early adopters / high margin consumers. the % of the average joe with an HD is not indicative of how many gamers have HDTVs. The vast sea of SDTV's belong to the late adopters. ie. older low income. A large pecentage of these people will likely never sign on th HD. They will expire before they are forced to when they drop SD broadcasts or circumstances allow them to.
It should be noted that while Wii is smacking around the PS3/360, it may not actually be competing for the same customers. Wii's target a "casual" gamer. Who enojoyed playing it at an earlier adopters hosue wante done for themselves. PS3/360 target the existing market. Generally gamers will get 2. I have a Ps2/GC, the last gen I had a PS1/N64. We might see the core gamer market go Ps3/Wii or 360/wii.
Casual gamers are likely to have a lower attach rate for games because it takes them longer to go through them. Mario Galaxy might only last a gamer a weekend but a casual three months. So we may see a 3:1:1 install base and still have PS3/360 get more exclusives because they can still sell more games. Hard to say. I myself spend between $100-$225 (a new games costs $69.99 CND for the ps2 on avg) CND a mo for games. I'm not sure what a casual gamer will spend.
Actually it's pretty easy to imagine. If they wanted superior graphics, FF would never have been on a Sony Platform. There were more powerful systems competing with both the PS1, and the PS2.
They also had a high profile falling out with nintendo too. They have since reconciled.
Thank you for the suggestion. I think we'll move on. The legal fees would exceed the amount to be recouped. I'm in canada and we have a loser pays system. The bank themselves were somewhat gracious but Visa itself was beeing bullies. The bank waived their commission ont he transaction but Visa was the one demanding their cut. Small claims may not incur very must legals fees but the lose rpays system doubel it if we lose and a win would recoup less then the $2456. We'd spend th time and labour; and then still face the possibilities of losing and losing the legals fees of both parties.
In real life or after the photoshopping? My SO and prev SO have all had edges on Ms. Jolie. Ms. Jolie looks like a heroin addict with deep dark circles and a distinctly aged face. My SO's have been former teen models, ballerinas, gold diggers ect.. Whom all look beutiful because their young. Keira Knightly or Kate Blanchette may be a better template. Ms. Jolie belongs in the britany spear camp of hollywood "attractive". That is pretty with makeup and post production but fugly in real life.
I'm not so certain. The general public gets bored of seeing the same faces all the time. So there is also room for new people. If you remove age from the equation, there is still roles that require new faces or perhaps a upcoming indie director can't afford tom hanks 3.0 so goes with real actors from a local troop.
The point wasn't that China = US. It was the difference between those two is not as great as many american demigogues would have you beleive. And the gap is closing. The US is getting more authoritarian and china is getting more free market if not democratic. I doubt they will ever be equivalent but the US is pretty low for liberty when compared to the other western powers.
Again it is personal preference. Wii games are short term fun. I need some more depth. 360 doesn't offer the game styles I like. The GBA/DS and PS2 do. If the Ps3 follows in the same foot steps as the ps2 it will justify my purchase. The Iphone if a non product until it comes into my area. My Q does the things I need and it is responsive enough(and for me free with a $0 month plan). The 360 and xbox have 4 games between them that has ever even remotely interested me. the Wii is my #2 system after my Ps2 then Ps3 once I finally go down and get one. My ps2 is startign to stutter (first run, almost 6 years old) and I still have about a dozen games still in the plastic. So the PS3 is a natural upgrade. The BC locks me in. Ditto with the DS.
My Motorola Q does the majority of the things the Iphone does. with the exception of having a touch screen. perhaps the iphone will render web pages better or let me do play lists more easily but Q was $299 CND with a 3yr. The Iphone is ~$650 CND with a 3yr if it ever comes to canada. For a PS3 I get a PS2 replacement, a blu-ray player, a console that plays my favorite franchises (MGS, FF, ect..), and a mini media center for $650 CND. It is also ~$650 CND for the Iphone. Again the Wii does some of what the ps3 does for less. IT's got good franchises (metroid, mario, zelda) but lacks some of the functions(blu ray, media center, PS2 BC, MGS, FF etc..). And while the Wii is a fun party machine. The games so far have all been rather hsallow for me. Fun when you have non gamers but it doen't hold me on my own. I still play way more ps2 games like disgea 2. the Wii may get these eventually but right now the PS3 has more value to me. And my Q has enough functionality that upgrading to an Iphone is it not een a thought.
My family owns a very small chinese food place. We had a mastercard account. My parents were ludites and refused to upgrade to an electronic terminal because they didn't understand how to use it. Our bank/merchant account reseller droped the imprinter proccess and implemented a complicated IVR. My sister registered a transaction on the ivr for 62.86. The IVR registere dit as 44,400.00 instead. We got a notice about it after and co-operated in resolving it for our customer. Despite the fact it was an obvious mistake and was greater then the actual limit of the customers card we got a charge back of $2456.00. Which is more then the total MC orders we get in a year. We tried for weeks to address this since we were sure it was a ivr error. especially since it exceeded the customers limit. but we had no course of action to resolve it as an error. we were stuck with a $2456.00 chargeback because the IVR either had a bug or did not do a proper check ont he amount. We dropped MC support and dropped all of our MC cards because of this. but it won't protect merchants form other arbitray decisions Visa/MC/AMEX make.
or they are gouging. Ther eis no garentee they are simply charging a fair price. It may nto be collusion but they compete wiht each other and many industries no longer compete on price. They compete only on marketting.
good actors are cheap. Benicio del toro does not make 20 mil per film. Marquee (ben afleck) actors are expensive because hordes of teen/tween/thirtish girls are willing to make 20 mil for ben affleck viable but not enough film buffs to make 20 mil for benicio del toro worth it.
I'd like to bring your attention to Maher Arar. A computer program who is a canadian citizen. He was intercepted by the US while on a trip then sent to syria for torture. It turns out he was an innocent man with no links to terrorism and was denied due proccess and the right to a trial or freedom from cruel or unussual punishment.
There are other examples such as marijauna activist Todd McCormick and Steve Kubby. Proponents of medical marijauana who were arrested on drug charges stemming from their use of marijuana. Although the act is illegal the reasons for it are not exactly logical. The punishments for possession are also draconian compared to any western nation. There is also the arrest of Katharine Gun, who released info regaurding the information the US had before initiating the Iraq invassion. These people are just individuals off the top of my head. There are others.
With the exception of Mr. Arar and several suspected "terrorists", these people have had some form of due proccess which china will skip. But the powers that be will make your life difficult if you in some way oppose their actions and views. Much like the US complicancy with the intimidation tactics of the RIAA which the majority of the western world has rejected as a valid defence of IP.
The major difference is China does not try very hard to provide due process and will arrest individuals and will be tight lipped about their fates as the case for Huseyin Celil. They often convict on almost no evidence and they set the bar for "rocking the boat" lower then in the US. But in the past 4 years the amount of individuals who do not recive due proccess in the US has drastically increased. Now it's "suspected" terrorists as well as drug related offences that do not recieve due proccess.
Your ad hominem attack betrays your ignorance of the actions of your country. I rock the boat in the smalls ways that I can but I am a Canadian citizen. Also, I didn't mention bush in my original post. You assumed that. You lack the mental faculties to distinguish real criticism from bipartisan rhetoric. People like you are too common in the states. Your existance itself degrade liberty in general. It's not Demo vs Repub it's a liberty resticting regime vs your rights.
Solid state storage could have an immediate impact on computer processing, but its long-term effects are even more important. These include reliability and changes in the way hardware is designed, to take advantage of faster I/O.
So instead of a failure rate based with a mean of 4 years and a stardard deviation of 1, we have a drive that si garenteed ot be bricked in 1 year. I guess thats improved reliability. We can reliably say it will will soon. Remember flash memory has a finite write life. 500,000 writes or so. They may improve this but it woudl increase the costs significantly. Right now flash ram is used as temp storage. Using a part of it as a swap disk will brick in in a month.
The guy who is #1 can charge higher licence fees and they demand that developers learn to program for the cell. As for the consumer, you get what you pay for in general. Blu-Ray is an attractive feature to people like me with excess cash and a HDTV without a cable provider with HD content.
Ken Kutaragi: Our product is so good we want the whole industry to bend over backwards, kiss our ass, then take a good old anal reaming and for our customers to pay $600 for our product. Slashdot: Arrogant asshole.
Steve Jobs: Our product is so good we want the whole industry to bend over backwards, kiss our ass, then take a good old anal reaming and for our customers to pay $600 for our product. Slashdot: OMG!!1! you are such a massive visionary. please come here and ream me right now.
The advantage the Wii gets is that, if you do a game for the Wii, and you make good use of the controller, a port to 360 or PS3 will just seem lame by comparison.
The inverse of this is ports from other systems will not look as good and the controller is a bit simple for a lot of games. So porting GTA, MGS4, Gears of war will not happen or will be very poor. Unless they figure out how to translate the control schemes well.
Slashdot Mirror
The initial offering was 3yr deal + $500 upfront to get the Iphone. So the $500 is after a 3yr subsidy by cingular. They may revise this but it means compared to other phones it's the quivalent to a $800 phone. My moto Q would have been 500 CND on it's own, 199 CND with a 3yr deal. Takign the same subsidy that means either apple is not taking a subsidy on a 3yr deal or apply is makign a $800 phone.
PS. my moto Q was free with a 0$ plan. Sweetness workign for a telecom.
If Sony only sold 5,000,000 PS3 systems in its first year third party developers would abandon their projects and the PS3 would die; if Apple sells 500,000 iPones in its first year they can continue to sell them the following year without any lost value for the system (and the iPhone will eventually become an affordable product).
MS only sold ~5 mil in it's first 4 quarters of the 360's lifespan. I didn't see the mass exodus of third paties, did you? In Q4 2006 (fifth quarter of its' lifespan) they almost doubled that. Sony needs to be on par tof better and have a good Q4 2007 but ~5 mil will not spell it's death. 3 mil this year may or if they don't move ~10 mil by Q2 2008 perhaps.
The argument that video games make kids into little killing machines, that's a different kind of claim altogether. There is no such study, doing one would be completely unethical.
Child soldier all over africa could be used. A control group that gets just a regular upbringing, a test group that gets brain washing, physical abuse and violent video games, a test group that just get violent video games, and maybe a group that just gets the brain washing and abuse. I'm sure if mercenary corps get big enough they'd try it.
psychology is a very slim science. Large scale studies might have strong science behind them but far too often you have sample sizes of 1 and psychologists drawing conclusions from that. Those "case studies" are what make the rest of science think very lightly of psychology. I think this psychiatrists study seems better. psychiatrist tends to be closer to real science. But I'd like a few more studies before I'd change my mind about the effects of violence on people.
It doesn't solve the problem when adults buy it and turn around and give it to a kid, but do we really need big huge scary laws with fines and jailtime for something the industry is already doing?
Is that actually a problem? TV has as much or more violence then GTA. Just watch greys anatomy or CSI. There is no way to gerentee young children are watching and there is actually little evidence that it actually harms the children. A troubled teen doesn't need doom to push him over the edge and a healthy teen will not be altered by violent games. Sex for the matter is the same. Porn won't turn a healthy teen into some degenerate. I find the nanny state mentality more harmful then the actual content in question.
The attach rate for both of them so far are the same. Roughly 2 games : 1 console for both the wii and PS3.
I noticed 1 sony fanboy this thread, a half dozen of obvious 360 fanboys and a few dozen Wii fanboys. Although the Wii fanboys are hard to tell from people who know the situation well. The Wii has been a smashing success of marketting and good timing. I think the 360 fanboys are more numerous on slashdot but there has been a mass conversion recently.
Just to burst your luddite bubble, HD adoption rates are fiarly high amongst new TV purchases. There is more then PS3/360 driving that. That won't be the largest barrier. Gamers tend to be early adopters / high margin consumers. the % of the average joe with an HD is not indicative of how many gamers have HDTVs. The vast sea of SDTV's belong to the late adopters. ie. older low income. A large pecentage of these people will likely never sign on th HD. They will expire before they are forced to when they drop SD broadcasts or circumstances allow them to.
It should be noted that while Wii is smacking around the PS3/360, it may not actually be competing for the same customers. Wii's target a "casual" gamer. Who enojoyed playing it at an earlier adopters hosue wante done for themselves. PS3/360 target the existing market. Generally gamers will get 2. I have a Ps2/GC, the last gen I had a PS1/N64. We might see the core gamer market go Ps3/Wii or 360/wii.
Casual gamers are likely to have a lower attach rate for games because it takes them longer to go through them. Mario Galaxy might only last a gamer a weekend but a casual three months. So we may see a 3:1:1 install base and still have PS3/360 get more exclusives because they can still sell more games. Hard to say. I myself spend between $100-$225 (a new games costs $69.99 CND for the ps2 on avg) CND a mo for games. I'm not sure what a casual gamer will spend.
Actually it's pretty easy to imagine. If they wanted superior graphics, FF would never have been on a Sony Platform. There were more powerful systems competing with both the PS1, and the PS2.
They also had a high profile falling out with nintendo too. They have since reconciled.
The problem is it's set up so that a "win" still is as much of a loss as the current situation. A lose would double our loss.
Thank you for the suggestion. I think we'll move on. The legal fees would exceed the amount to be recouped. I'm in canada and we have a loser pays system. The bank themselves were somewhat gracious but Visa itself was beeing bullies. The bank waived their commission ont he transaction but Visa was the one demanding their cut. Small claims may not incur very must legals fees but the lose rpays system doubel it if we lose and a win would recoup less then the $2456. We'd spend th time and labour; and then still face the possibilities of losing and losing the legals fees of both parties.
In real life or after the photoshopping? My SO and prev SO have all had edges on Ms. Jolie. Ms. Jolie looks like a heroin addict with deep dark circles and a distinctly aged face. My SO's have been former teen models, ballerinas, gold diggers ect.. Whom all look beutiful because their young. Keira Knightly or Kate Blanchette may be a better template. Ms. Jolie belongs in the britany spear camp of hollywood "attractive". That is pretty with makeup and post production but fugly in real life.
I'm not so certain. The general public gets bored of seeing the same faces all the time. So there is also room for new people. If you remove age from the equation, there is still roles that require new faces or perhaps a upcoming indie director can't afford tom hanks 3.0 so goes with real actors from a local troop.
The point wasn't that China = US. It was the difference between those two is not as great as many american demigogues would have you beleive. And the gap is closing. The US is getting more authoritarian and china is getting more free market if not democratic. I doubt they will ever be equivalent but the US is pretty low for liberty when compared to the other western powers.
Again it is personal preference. Wii games are short term fun. I need some more depth. 360 doesn't offer the game styles I like. The GBA/DS and PS2 do. If the Ps3 follows in the same foot steps as the ps2 it will justify my purchase. The Iphone if a non product until it comes into my area. My Q does the things I need and it is responsive enough(and for me free with a $0 month plan). The 360 and xbox have 4 games between them that has ever even remotely interested me. the Wii is my #2 system after my Ps2 then Ps3 once I finally go down and get one. My ps2 is startign to stutter (first run, almost 6 years old) and I still have about a dozen games still in the plastic. So the PS3 is a natural upgrade. The BC locks me in. Ditto with the DS.
My Motorola Q does the majority of the things the Iphone does. with the exception of having a touch screen. perhaps the iphone will render web pages better or let me do play lists more easily but Q was $299 CND with a 3yr. The Iphone is ~$650 CND with a 3yr if it ever comes to canada. For a PS3 I get a PS2 replacement, a blu-ray player, a console that plays my favorite franchises (MGS, FF, ect..), and a mini media center for $650 CND. It is also ~$650 CND for the Iphone. Again the Wii does some of what the ps3 does for less. IT's got good franchises (metroid, mario, zelda) but lacks some of the functions(blu ray, media center, PS2 BC, MGS, FF etc..). And while the Wii is a fun party machine. The games so far have all been rather hsallow for me. Fun when you have non gamers but it doen't hold me on my own. I still play way more ps2 games like disgea 2. the Wii may get these eventually but right now the PS3 has more value to me. And my Q has enough functionality that upgrading to an Iphone is it not een a thought.
My family owns a very small chinese food place. We had a mastercard account. My parents were ludites and refused to upgrade to an electronic terminal because they didn't understand how to use it. Our bank/merchant account reseller droped the imprinter proccess and implemented a complicated IVR. My sister registered a transaction on the ivr for 62.86. The IVR registere dit as 44,400.00 instead. We got a notice about it after and co-operated in resolving it for our customer. Despite the fact it was an obvious mistake and was greater then the actual limit of the customers card we got a charge back of $2456.00. Which is more then the total MC orders we get in a year. We tried for weeks to address this since we were sure it was a ivr error. especially since it exceeded the customers limit. but we had no course of action to resolve it as an error. we were stuck with a $2456.00 chargeback because the IVR either had a bug or did not do a proper check ont he amount. We dropped MC support and dropped all of our MC cards because of this. but it won't protect merchants form other arbitray decisions Visa/MC/AMEX make.
or they are gouging. Ther eis no garentee they are simply charging a fair price. It may nto be collusion but they compete wiht each other and many industries no longer compete on price. They compete only on marketting.
good actors are cheap. Benicio del toro does not make 20 mil per film. Marquee (ben afleck) actors are expensive because hordes of teen/tween/thirtish girls are willing to make 20 mil for ben affleck viable but not enough film buffs to make 20 mil for benicio del toro worth it.
But Maher Arar was sent to syria for being brown. examples exist. not as numerous as China but they exist.
I'd like to bring your attention to Maher Arar. A computer program who is a canadian citizen. He was intercepted by the US while on a trip then sent to syria for torture. It turns out he was an innocent man with no links to terrorism and was denied due proccess and the right to a trial or freedom from cruel or unussual punishment.
There are other examples such as marijauna activist Todd McCormick and Steve Kubby. Proponents of medical marijauana who were arrested on drug charges stemming from their use of marijuana. Although the act is illegal the reasons for it are not exactly logical. The punishments for possession are also draconian compared to any western nation. There is also the arrest of Katharine Gun, who released info regaurding the information the US had before initiating the Iraq invassion. These people are just individuals off the top of my head. There are others.
With the exception of Mr. Arar and several suspected "terrorists", these people have had some form of due proccess which china will skip. But the powers that be will make your life difficult if you in some way oppose their actions and views. Much like the US complicancy with the intimidation tactics of the RIAA which the majority of the western world has rejected as a valid defence of IP.
The major difference is China does not try very hard to provide due process and will arrest individuals and will be tight lipped about their fates as the case for Huseyin Celil. They often convict on almost no evidence and they set the bar for "rocking the boat" lower then in the US. But in the past 4 years the amount of individuals who do not recive due proccess in the US has drastically increased. Now it's "suspected" terrorists as well as drug related offences that do not recieve due proccess.
Your ad hominem attack betrays your ignorance of the actions of your country. I rock the boat in the smalls ways that I can but I am a Canadian citizen. Also, I didn't mention bush in my original post. You assumed that. You lack the mental faculties to distinguish real criticism from bipartisan rhetoric. People like you are too common in the states. Your existance itself degrade liberty in general. It's not Demo vs Repub it's a liberty resticting regime vs your rights.
Solid state storage could have an immediate impact on computer processing, but its long-term effects are even more important. These include reliability and changes in the way hardware is designed, to take advantage of faster I/O.
So instead of a failure rate based with a mean of 4 years and a stardard deviation of 1, we have a drive that si garenteed ot be bricked in 1 year. I guess thats improved reliability. We can reliably say it will will soon. Remember flash memory has a finite write life. 500,000 writes or so. They may improve this but it woudl increase the costs significantly. Right now flash ram is used as temp storage. Using a part of it as a swap disk will brick in in a month.
The guy who is #1 can charge higher licence fees and they demand that developers learn to program for the cell. As for the consumer, you get what you pay for in general. Blu-Ray is an attractive feature to people like me with excess cash and a HDTV without a cable provider with HD content.
Ken Kutaragi: Our product is so good we want the whole industry to bend over backwards, kiss our ass, then take a good old anal reaming and for our customers to pay $600 for our product.
Slashdot: Arrogant asshole.
Steve Jobs: Our product is so good we want the whole industry to bend over backwards, kiss our ass, then take a good old anal reaming and for our customers to pay $600 for our product.
Slashdot: OMG!!1! you are such a massive visionary. please come here and ream me right now.
The advantage the Wii gets is that, if you do a game for the Wii, and you make good use of the controller, a port to 360 or PS3 will just seem lame by comparison.
The inverse of this is ports from other systems will not look as good and the controller is a bit simple for a lot of games. So porting GTA, MGS4, Gears of war will not happen or will be very poor. Unless they figure out how to translate the control schemes well.