"Make no mistake, DirectTV would sell its own mother into prostitution if (whenever) it can. These lying/stealing/cheating/ maybe even murdering pack of thieves (just ask thier stock holders) are a blight on the ass of society."
This flamebait brought to you by your nice, friendly neighborhood Time-Warner Cable provider!
"You said he quote 18.00 for S/H but it only cost 8.00 for shipping. Unless the auction in question said 'buys pays actual shipping charges' he did not cheat you. Charging a lot for S/H is not cheating."
eBay's policy on excessive S&H charges is a bit fuzzy.
Whether or not it's cheating is besides the point. I as a customer would like to know whether the $18.00 S&H fee the seller is charging is really worth it. If I'd be paying $18.00 for a crumpled old cardboard box and a shipper that can't even be bothered to spring for bubble wrap, I'd rather know that ahead of time and take my money elsewhere.
"People would pay with a money order with no return address and no note of what it was for even though I e-mail out detailed instructions."
Did you cash them anyway? Not depositing them until you know what they're for seems to be the best choice legal-wise.
"They claimed I had failed to ship items even though these people were paying for parcel post mailing which takes up to 2 week sometimes."
Delivery Confirmation on Parcel Post is only $0.55 (or $0.13 if you use the electronic option... gotta love Endicia!).
"Remember catalogs quote 4-6 weeks."
Catalogs have been saying that since the nineteenth century. Things have come a long way since then. I believe they still use those numbers to cover their own asses.
"Dont expect a week off ebay."
With a relatively small operation, there really isn't any reason why you couldn't ship things out the next day after receiving a money order in the mail. While I admit my own dabblings in eBay aren't anywhere near the size of yours (yet), I don't see why you can't expect less than a week's turn-around as long as you maintain decent record-keeping. For example, I've found that the problem of mystery payments can be helped if you're able to cross-reference the payment amount with a database of outstanding transactions.
"What's more subtle is that all the high-tech weaponry that you have is also being used by your competition! Not exactly a realistic situation in "the real world"."
In combat in "the real world," you have to plan for the worst-case scenario. That scenario involves an enemy with technological parity (if not superiority).
The Australians hold a war game every once in a while where the scenario involves staving off an aircraft carrier battlegroup. Is the only country in the world that has such a naval formation going to attack Australia any time soon? No. But if you can hold a US carrier battlegroup, you can defend against anything.
"Has anyone noticed that on one of the desert missions you play the American's and of course you must fight the "terrorists" who are obviously arab."
Not one who studied geography much, are you? When you think of the stereotypical Hollywood desert, with your rolling sand dunes and the like, you're thinking of either the Middle East or the Sahara region. Places in the world where the vast majority of countries have Islam as the state-sanctioned religion and Arabic as the only official language. The other deserts don't look like that (with scenery ranging from the southwest US to Antarctica).
"Does anyone else see something wrong with calling arabs terrorists"
Um... how does the game say that? Are there no Arab civillians in this particular mission while there are civillians in all other missions?
If anybody is showing predjudicial bias, it's you for assuming that the game is written that way out of some sort of policy of racist bias.
"Nation states evolved from the personal fiefdoms of kings, but, at some point, the rule of law stopped counting. Oh, that's right, presidents and kings aren't bound by law."
Um... how exactly are presidents and kings supposed to be tried in a civil court? And if you do manage to find a court that rules against them, how do you intend to enforce the court's decision on an unwilling participant (say, Milosevic or Hussein) without, oh, I don't know... sending in the military?
You know the people who complain about the US being the world's "police force?" There's a reason why they use that phrase.
"Yes! Immagine all that money being used on education, safety of healthcare instead of being used as some military recruitment/propaganda toy."
Yeah, how dare the federal government not spend money on things that should be the states' responsibility? Federal money is the solution to all our woes, no matter what!
You assume she mastermined the whole thing. Rosen isn't the evil mastermind here, she's just a patsy/puppet/lackey/middleman/figurehead/etc. to the big RIAA members (Sony, EMI, AOL/TW, etc.). Replacing her isn't going to change any of the policies of the RIAA, just the name and face of the person espousing the ideas.
Earlier this week I decided that I'm going to sell off most of my CD collection (I refuse to own anything publised by a member of the RIAA). This news doesn't change my intentions because it doesn't change theirs.
"Expect more executives to be be forced out as more and more people get tired of their crap, and stop buying CDs."
Yeah, right. What dreamworld do you live in? You can't even organize a Slashdot-wide boycott of the media conglomerates (Stupid evil Jack Valenti. OOOH! LotR!), what makes you think the general public give's a rat's ass?
Boycotting CDs is little more than a personal political statement that ultimately will have little weight beyond your own circle of friends. If you're doing it to "stick it to The Man," not only are you deluding yourself but you're doing it for the wrong reasons.
"whilst on historical grounds it has been the United States military which has countenanced the use of nuclear weapons in a series of conflicts."
The threat of force as a diplomatic tool != the use of force. Gunboat diplomacy may not be pretty, but it's still diplomacy.
If we were actually as willing to use them as you suggest, the Soviet Union wouldn't have survived the 1950's, when the warhead gap was in our favor and we knew it.
"None of them are so stupid as to threaten the United States with the handful of weapons that they possess."
Yeah, and no country would be so stupid as to knowingly harbor Osama bin Laden after 9/11/01.
"Yes North Korea is run by an evil man - but he's not insane enough to fire a missile at America."
Then why, exactly, is he interested in developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles? North Korea is barely even a regional power and doesn't have any real political/economic/military interests outside the penninsula, and yet DPRK currently has enough missile range to hit Alaska (and working to increase that range). So are they building these things because Kim thinks they'll look nifty in his living room?
Let's look at the possible reasons for him building these things:
The US. They could be used to "defend" North Korea against American aggression (real or imagined). Except they'd have to be developed first, which takes time. DPRK would have to rely on the assumption that "aggressive" America would allow North Korea the years/decades needed to develop missiles with enough range to hit US population centers. Obviously flawed logic. If this is their reasoning, they're crazy.
South Korea. They want to nuke South Korea into submission. Except doing that would violate the cease-fire and drag the UN (including/especially the US) into the conflict instantly, resulting in the annihilation of the DPRK, just like the previous possibility. If this is their reasoning, they're crazy.
Japan. Aside from being an historic enemy, it also happens to be the home of several key US military bases (the entire Seventh Fleet is based out of Japan). These bases could be hit as part of a preemptive strike before/during an invasion of South Korea. But aside from bringing about the same consequences as nuking the US itself, Japan would then have more than enough motivation to have its own military again. The mere fact that DPRK posesses nukes may be enough to convince Japan to militarize again (if not develop their own nuclear weapons, which would inspire China to work more on its own weapons program, so on and so forth...). If this is their reasoning, they're crazy
If they're crazy enough to build them, they're likely to be crazy enough to use them.
"Those countries faced with any ABM system have one easy remedy. Assuming that few, if any countries out there can defeat America technologically, the only solution is to build more nuclear missiles with multiple warheads. History will repeat itself, except it won't be the US versus the Soviet Union, it will be dozens of countries proliferating advanced weapons like crazy. "
More flawed reasoning. The old US/Soviet arms race you mentioned gives the US a 2000+ warhead lead in any future nuclear arms races. Nobody other than Russia (with whom US relations are still steadily warming) can possibly close that gap in under two decades, and that's assuming the US lets them catch up.
There's also the matter of public relations. The US can point out that ABM is a purely defensive measure. DPRK/PRC/whatever can't say that about their new warheads. Sure, they could point out that the US would have the ability to nuke them with impunity if they deploy their ABM, but the US could have struck with even more impunity before they had nuclear weapons to begin with.
"The US and UK have already said that they would use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear opponent that they believed was going to use chemical or biological weapons."
As far as international law is concerned, weapons of mass destruction are weapons of mass destruction. As far as public relations are concerned, chemical and biological weapons against a world power (like the US and UK) would only be effective against civillian populations, while nukes still have genuinely military uses (still effective against military targets) and their use alone wouldn't by itself violate treaties like the Geneva Conventions.
"President Bush has approved money to the Department of Defense and Department of Energy for the development of 'bunker buster' nuclear warheads "
First off, as I just said, use of nuclear weapons alone does not constitute a violation of the Geneva Conventions. If they're bunker busters, they're for use against bunkers.
Secondly, there is a great deal of difference between stratiegic nuclear weapons (what most people think of) and tactical nukes. Tactical nukes by definition are smaller by several orders of magnitude. Typical stratiegic arms yield around 20,000 kilotons, while those bunker busters you mention will likely have a yield less than a single kiloton. Tactical nukes are also designed to minimize (if not outright eliminate) fallout, because fallout is a tactical hinderance (and detonnating these things underground will bury the insignifigant amount of fallout produced). They're not trying to make a bomb with a blast yield bigger than a Daisy Cutter, they're trying to put the power of a Daisy Cutter into a package small enough to burrow.
In short, apples and oranges. ABM and tactical nukes have nothing to do with each other.
"why shouldn't other countries have the right to the ultimate protection?"
They are also free to develop their own ABM or buy one from us.
"Saddam Hussein must be kicking himself that he didn't wait a couple of years before invading Kuwait under the protection of a nuclear bomb."
Wouldn't have done a damn thing for him. The US nuclear arsenal is why he didn't use chemical or biological weapons in the invasion of Kuwait and the ensuing Gulf War. Why would have he been more inclined to use a nuke?
"Let's hope it never happens, but ABM can be seen as part of an offensive capability."
Only if you have your own nuclear arsenal under it. Bush has already shown interest in scaling down if not outright eliminating the US stratiegic arsenal once ABM is operational and deployed. The warheads may or may not be put into storage instead of outright destroyed, but mothballing these things is far more effective than, say, agreeing to stop actively aiming ICBMs at each other. It would take too much time to take them out of storage and put them on top of a rocket.
And this assumes that nuclear electricity generation doesn't come back into fashion in the US. Why build breeder reactors when you have a ready supply of fissionable material is right there?
Now, the truly sad thing is that, for all your hypotheticals and conspiracy theories, you missed the one true problem of ABM: Before it's fully operational and deployed, countries that already have the ability and desire to hit the US (like PRC) are faced with the dillema of "Use 'em or lose 'em."
(And no, the "nuke on a cargo ship" scenario isn't a problem with ABM either. It's far easier for US intelligence services to intercept a nuke on a cargo ship than stop a missile launch.)
"Good point, but with our much hyped 'smart weapons' it would be interesting to know why we had to black out an entire city to achieve the same aim."
Because the power plant is on the outskirts of town and the numerous radar sites it powers are all over the city, some of which are in residential districts (often deliberately in Iraq's case).
Sure, we can drop a bomb down your chimney, but when all is said and done it's still a bomb and liable to flatten your neighbors' homes as well as your own. And there's also that pesky "law of averages" to deal with that says you're bound to miss sooner or later.
"It would become a federal crime to sell or rent a violent video game to anyone under 18."
I know Congress has stretched the "interstate commerce" clause of the constitution all out of proportion, but come on! Unless you buy the games mail-order or otherwise cross state lines to buy your games, how can this law apply?
Those casualty numbers can be more blamed on Clauswitz than technology. Even with the development of machine guns, European tacticians and strategists were still reading out of the Napoleonic playbook. They got too accustomed to slaughtering natives and never really learned how to deal with an enemy with technological parity until, well, the end of the Great War.
"Xbox is the #2 selling game console, in front of the Cube"
No, it's not. At last count in November, Xbox sales were tied with GameCube in North America (about 468,000 units each) and still way behind in Japan. Unless European Xbox sales were enough to close the Japan/NA gap and then some (fat chance), this puts Xbox squarely in third. November's numbers also showed that Microsoft was the only one of the three competitors to actually lose ground in the hardware market (giving it up to both Nintendo and Sony). Even after their "two games free" deal and the release of Xbox Live.
I also seem to recall Metroid Prime outselling Xbox Live by a more-than-comfortable margin (came out on same day, same price, etc.). This by itself is telling when you consider that you need to have hardware sales ahead of software.
I stand by my original post: Xbox is keeping its head above water.
Slashdot Mirror
"Make no mistake, DirectTV would sell its own mother into prostitution if (whenever) it can. These lying/stealing/cheating/ maybe even murdering pack of thieves (just ask thier stock holders) are a blight on the ass of society."
This flamebait brought to you by your nice, friendly neighborhood Time-Warner Cable provider!
If CmdrTaco posted an article talking about the way he posts dupes, would he duplicate that posting as well?
"It's in binary:"
ASCII or EBCDIC?
"last year researchers found themselves dumbfounded by an ET-face with an accompanying encoded CD-disc"
Let me guess: It was only readable on a Mac, right?
"MSNBC is running a story on an attorney who is suing ebay over negative feedback a seller left about him."
Obviously he never saw Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. I mean, hell, he already has the address he needs to go to...
"The '1991' on the front page is his BirthDate."
Please don't say that! I feel old enough already!
Get out of my yard, you damn kids!
"People would pay with a money order with no return address and no note of what it was for even though I e-mail out detailed instructions."
Did you cash them anyway? Not depositing them until you know what they're for seems to be the best choice legal-wise.
"They claimed I had failed to ship items even though these people were paying for parcel post mailing which takes up to 2 week sometimes."
Delivery Confirmation on Parcel Post is only $0.55 (or $0.13 if you use the electronic option... gotta love Endicia!).
"Remember catalogs quote 4-6 weeks."
Catalogs have been saying that since the nineteenth century. Things have come a long way since then. I believe they still use those numbers to cover their own asses.
"Dont expect a week off ebay."
With a relatively small operation, there really isn't any reason why you couldn't ship things out the next day after receiving a money order in the mail. While I admit my own dabblings in eBay aren't anywhere near the size of yours (yet), I don't see why you can't expect less than a week's turn-around as long as you maintain decent record-keeping. For example, I've found that the problem of mystery payments can be helped if you're able to cross-reference the payment amount with a database of outstanding transactions.
"Have you ever heard of Open Source? If people are treated fairly and with respect this is natural."
You mean "If people get fame and mindshare for what they do this is natural." They're still getting paid, just not with money (at least not directly).
If OSS is nothing more than people writing code "for the good of humanity," they'd all be releasing their code under the BSD license instead of GPL.
"What's more subtle is that all the high-tech weaponry that you
have is also being used by your competition! Not exactly
a realistic situation in "the real world"."
In combat in "the real world," you have to plan for the worst-case scenario. That scenario involves an enemy with technological parity (if not superiority).
The Australians hold a war game every once in a while where the scenario involves staving off an aircraft carrier battlegroup. Is the only country in the world that has such a naval formation going to attack Australia any time soon? No. But if you can hold a US carrier battlegroup, you can defend against anything.
"Has anyone noticed that on one of the desert missions you play the American's and of course you must fight the "terrorists" who are obviously arab."
Not one who studied geography much, are you? When you think of the stereotypical Hollywood desert, with your rolling sand dunes and the like, you're thinking of either the Middle East or the Sahara region. Places in the world where the vast majority of countries have Islam as the state-sanctioned religion and Arabic as the only official language. The other deserts don't look like that (with scenery ranging from the southwest US to Antarctica).
"Does anyone else see something wrong with calling arabs terrorists"
Um... how does the game say that? Are there no Arab civillians in this particular mission while there are civillians in all other missions?
If anybody is showing predjudicial bias, it's you for assuming that the game is written that way out of some sort of policy of racist bias.
"Nation states evolved from the personal fiefdoms of kings, but, at some point, the rule of law stopped counting. Oh, that's right, presidents and kings aren't bound by law."
Um... how exactly are presidents and kings supposed to be tried in a civil court? And if you do manage to find a court that rules against them, how do you intend to enforce the court's decision on an unwilling participant (say, Milosevic or Hussein) without, oh, I don't know... sending in the military?
You know the people who complain about the US being the world's "police force?" There's a reason why they use that phrase.
"Yes! Immagine all that money being used on education, safety of healthcare instead of being used as some military recruitment/propaganda toy."
Yeah, how dare the federal government not spend money on things that should be the states' responsibility? Federal money is the solution to all our woes, no matter what!
Hey, all I know is that the Atari and ColecoVision version of the games were distributed by Parker Brothers.
It looks like in less than three days NASA has manged to get over 1000 applications.
"the three time world champs for a human powered submarine."
Ah, but did you manage to sink the Housatonic?
"I would hate to see big bouncing breast volleyball games with medicore ratings instead of a damn good Mario game."
Yeah! Bouncing breasts is what I have the internet for! I want more sports games with cartoon violence!
You're confusing music with beer again.
"She has harmed her industry beyond repair by"
You assume she mastermined the whole thing. Rosen isn't the evil mastermind here, she's just a patsy/puppet/lackey/middleman/figurehead/etc. to the big RIAA members (Sony, EMI, AOL/TW, etc.). Replacing her isn't going to change any of the policies of the RIAA, just the name and face of the person espousing the ideas.
Earlier this week I decided that I'm going to sell off most of my CD collection (I refuse to own anything publised by a member of the RIAA). This news doesn't change my intentions because it doesn't change theirs.
"Expect more executives to be be forced out as more and more people get tired of their crap, and stop buying CDs."
Yeah, right. What dreamworld do you live in? You can't even organize a Slashdot-wide boycott of the media conglomerates (Stupid evil Jack Valenti. OOOH! LotR!), what makes you think the general public give's a rat's ass?
Boycotting CDs is little more than a personal political statement that ultimately will have little weight beyond your own circle of friends. If you're doing it to "stick it to The Man," not only are you deluding yourself but you're doing it for the wrong reasons.
"isn't that song copyrighted?"
By a member of the MPAA. We're busy talking about Natasha right now, not Boris.
The threat of force as a diplomatic tool != the use of force. Gunboat diplomacy may not be pretty, but it's still diplomacy.
If we were actually as willing to use them as you suggest, the Soviet Union wouldn't have survived the 1950's, when the warhead gap was in our favor and we knew it.
"None of them are so stupid as to threaten the United States with the handful of weapons that they possess."
Yeah, and no country would be so stupid as to knowingly harbor Osama bin Laden after 9/11/01.
"Yes North Korea is run by an evil man - but he's not insane enough to fire a missile at America."
Then why, exactly, is he interested in developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles? North Korea is barely even a regional power and doesn't have any real political/economic/military interests outside the penninsula, and yet DPRK currently has enough missile range to hit Alaska (and working to increase that range). So are they building these things because Kim thinks they'll look nifty in his living room?
Let's look at the possible reasons for him building these things:
- The US. They could be used to "defend" North Korea against American aggression (real or imagined). Except they'd have to be developed first, which takes time. DPRK would have to rely on the assumption that "aggressive" America would allow North Korea the years/decades needed to develop missiles with enough range to hit US population centers. Obviously flawed logic. If this is their reasoning, they're crazy.
- South Korea. They want to nuke South Korea into submission. Except doing that would violate the cease-fire and drag the UN (including/especially the US) into the conflict instantly, resulting in the annihilation of the DPRK, just like the previous possibility. If this is their reasoning, they're crazy.
- Japan. Aside from being an historic enemy, it also happens to be the home of several key US military bases (the entire Seventh Fleet is based out of Japan). These bases could be hit as part of a preemptive strike before/during an invasion of South Korea. But aside from bringing about the same consequences as nuking the US itself, Japan would then have more than enough motivation to have its own military again. The mere fact that DPRK posesses nukes may be enough to convince Japan to militarize again (if not develop their own nuclear weapons, which would inspire China to work more on its own weapons program, so on and so forth...). If this is their reasoning, they're crazy
If they're crazy enough to build them, they're likely to be crazy enough to use them."Those countries faced with any ABM system have one easy remedy. Assuming that few, if any countries out there can defeat America technologically, the only solution is to build more nuclear missiles with multiple warheads. History will repeat itself, except it won't be the US versus the Soviet Union, it will be dozens of countries proliferating advanced weapons like crazy. "
More flawed reasoning. The old US/Soviet arms race you mentioned gives the US a 2000+ warhead lead in any future nuclear arms races. Nobody other than Russia (with whom US relations are still steadily warming) can possibly close that gap in under two decades, and that's assuming the US lets them catch up.
There's also the matter of public relations. The US can point out that ABM is a purely defensive measure. DPRK/PRC/whatever can't say that about their new warheads. Sure, they could point out that the US would have the ability to nuke them with impunity if they deploy their ABM, but the US could have struck with even more impunity before they had nuclear weapons to begin with.
"The US and UK have already said that they would use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear opponent that they believed was going to use chemical or biological weapons."
As far as international law is concerned, weapons of mass destruction are weapons of mass destruction. As far as public relations are concerned, chemical and biological weapons against a world power (like the US and UK) would only be effective against civillian populations, while nukes still have genuinely military uses (still effective against military targets) and their use alone wouldn't by itself violate treaties like the Geneva Conventions.
"President Bush has approved money to the Department of Defense and Department of Energy for the development of 'bunker buster' nuclear warheads "
First off, as I just said, use of nuclear weapons alone does not constitute a violation of the Geneva Conventions. If they're bunker busters, they're for use against bunkers.
Secondly, there is a great deal of difference between stratiegic nuclear weapons (what most people think of) and tactical nukes. Tactical nukes by definition are smaller by several orders of magnitude. Typical stratiegic arms yield around 20,000 kilotons, while those bunker busters you mention will likely have a yield less than a single kiloton. Tactical nukes are also designed to minimize (if not outright eliminate) fallout, because fallout is a tactical hinderance (and detonnating these things underground will bury the insignifigant amount of fallout produced). They're not trying to make a bomb with a blast yield bigger than a Daisy Cutter, they're trying to put the power of a Daisy Cutter into a package small enough to burrow.
In short, apples and oranges. ABM and tactical nukes have nothing to do with each other.
"why shouldn't other countries have the right to the ultimate protection?"
They are also free to develop their own ABM or buy one from us.
"Saddam Hussein must be kicking himself that he didn't wait a couple of years before invading Kuwait under the protection of a nuclear bomb."
Wouldn't have done a damn thing for him. The US nuclear arsenal is why he didn't use chemical or biological weapons in the invasion of Kuwait and the ensuing Gulf War. Why would have he been more inclined to use a nuke?
"Let's hope it never happens, but ABM can be seen as part of an offensive capability."
Only if you have your own nuclear arsenal under it. Bush has already shown interest in scaling down if not outright eliminating the US stratiegic arsenal once ABM is operational and deployed. The warheads may or may not be put into storage instead of outright destroyed, but mothballing these things is far more effective than, say, agreeing to stop actively aiming ICBMs at each other. It would take too much time to take them out of storage and put them on top of a rocket.
And this assumes that nuclear electricity generation doesn't come back into fashion in the US. Why build breeder reactors when you have a ready supply of fissionable material is right there?
Now, the truly sad thing is that, for all your hypotheticals and conspiracy theories, you missed the one true problem of ABM: Before it's fully operational and deployed, countries that already have the ability and desire to hit the US (like PRC) are faced with the dillema of "Use 'em or lose 'em."
(And no, the "nuke on a cargo ship" scenario isn't a problem with ABM either. It's far easier for US intelligence services to intercept a nuke on a cargo ship than stop a missile launch.)
"Good point, but with our much hyped 'smart weapons' it would be interesting to know why we had to black out an entire city to achieve the same aim."
Because the power plant is on the outskirts of town and the numerous radar sites it powers are all over the city, some of which are in residential districts (often deliberately in Iraq's case).
Sure, we can drop a bomb down your chimney, but when all is said and done it's still a bomb and liable to flatten your neighbors' homes as well as your own. And there's also that pesky "law of averages" to deal with that says you're bound to miss sooner or later.
"It would become a federal crime to sell or rent a violent video game to anyone under 18."
I know Congress has stretched the "interstate commerce" clause of the constitution all out of proportion, but come on! Unless you buy the games mail-order or otherwise cross state lines to buy your games, how can this law apply?
"Thousands of people died in a day."
Those casualty numbers can be more blamed on Clauswitz than technology. Even with the development of machine guns, European tacticians and strategists were still reading out of the Napoleonic playbook. They got too accustomed to slaughtering natives and never really learned how to deal with an enemy with technological parity until, well, the end of the Great War.
"Xbox is the #2 selling game console, in front of the Cube"
No, it's not. At last count in November, Xbox sales were tied with GameCube in North America (about 468,000 units each) and still way behind in Japan. Unless European Xbox sales were enough to close the Japan/NA gap and then some (fat chance), this puts Xbox squarely in third. November's numbers also showed that Microsoft was the only one of the three competitors to actually lose ground in the hardware market (giving it up to both Nintendo and Sony). Even after their "two games free" deal and the release of Xbox Live.
I also seem to recall Metroid Prime outselling Xbox Live by a more-than-comfortable margin (came out on same day, same price, etc.). This by itself is telling when you consider that you need to have hardware sales ahead of software.
I stand by my original post: Xbox is keeping its head above water.