Amazon sells it, but only through their third-party sellers;
You've just described about 70% of everything I've searched for on Amazon in recent years. It seems they're more interested in being another eBay than an actual retailer, and if I wanted to put up with the frustrations of eBay, that's where I'd be.
If you don't have it, you don't have it; don't give me this "used & new from..." bullshit.
"The old one -- even the Democratic members -- did not."
And what planet do you live on?
With our wonderful 90%+ incumbency rate in federal and state elections (more likely to be indicted and "retire to spend more time with family" than to actually lose an election), this is the old Congress!
I mean, in 1994, there was a net change of 54 seats out of 435, slightly more than 10%, and they called that a "revolution." So what will we call this shift of ~30 seats, a "civil war?" Perhaps a "military coup?" And the irony is that it would take a true revolution to actually unseat 50%+1 of the members of the House, even though they're supposedly contested every other year.
The GameCube version doesn't come out until Wednesday or so. My guess is they didn't want it cannibalizing into Wii sales. Personally, I'll probably be getting the GCN version simply because I can't find a Wii to play on.
"You quoted something as being illegal when it's not even illegal in your own state! "
Not that I live in Maryland any more, but another topic that came up as "legal here, not legal elsehwere" was the then-legal blood-alcohol content of 0.10 when your home state was already at the lower 0.08.
"I'm from Virginia and passing on the right is fine."
Is a hazard to others with the intent to harass, intimidate, injure or obstruct another person and commits at least one of the following: failure to drive on the right side of highway, failure to drive in lanes marked for traffic, following too closely, failure to yield right of way, failure to obey traffic control device, passing on right, speeding, stopping on a highway.
Source. I'll grant you that it's the only offense that will net you an aggresive driving conviction that isn't illegal outright, but I woudln't exactly call including it on the list of things any one of which can get you written up for aggressive driving as "being fine with it."
"Wikipedia, as well, provided 0 examples of a state that enforces this, though it said it's still on the books in Massachusetts (which we fondly call 'mass of two shits')."
From Wikipedia:
In some U.S. states such as Massachusetts, although there are laws requiring all traffic on a public way to use the right-most lane unless overtaking,
Nice slam on Massachusetts and those other states like them, but which are those "some states?" Accoring to the NHTSA:
The following states reserve the left lane for passing: Arkansas, Connecticut, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, and Washington. However, restrictions vary from state to state. Check with your motor vehicle department.
How does your foot taste?
"Seems to me that if you'd done half the research yourself you'd have realized you were wrong."
I've apparently done more than you have. We wouldn't be having this conversation if you hadn't assumed both that you know the traffic laws of your own state and that laws against passing on the right are a fabrication. You could have spent some time yourself to verify the validity of your filippant comments, but instead you left yourself open to equating yourself with those you insult.
"But to make an argument that "most places are X" when EVEN YOUR OWN STATE is not X just proves that you are a tailgaiting apologist in my book."
I never said "most."
Yes, state driver's ed courses teach traffic laws from other states, because (ZOMG) roads cross state lines and it's a common courtesy when you have your state's driver's licenses respected via the "Full Faith and Credit" clause.
Non sequitur. This entire thread started because I pointed out that slower traffic does not have the opportunity to keep to the right when people are busily passing on the right. I at no point stated that those passing on the right would be better off tailgating; if anything, relying on my own personal experience from religiously setting my cruise control at the speed limit, I'd rather those impatient drivers to both get off my ass and give me half a second to move into the hole to my right instead of using said hole to pass me.
"If you find a chart of current laws, that encompasses all 50 states,"
And why is the burden of proof on me again? Why must I be the one to inform you of the laws that you must abide by?
"if more than 25 of those states actively enforce what you claim."
Again, I never said "most." And no matter how many states it's le
"For example, try playing Half-Life on the PS2 sometime. It sucks horribly, mostly due to the low resolution"
It is possible to be in the right lane, going faster than the person in front of you, but slower to the people in the lane to your left. I have often found myself moving into the left lane to pass somebody in front of me, but then was unable to move back into the right lane because of the steady stream of traffic using the hole I'd like to get into to pass me on the right.
"What strange world do I keep hearing about, where passing on the right is illegal?"
It's the world I was taught about in the early 1990's in a driver's ed course sanctioned by the State of Maryland. In it I was taught that, while passing on the right was legal in Maryland, it is not in all states of the Union. Consider it an extension of "Slower traffic keep right."
"For example, try playing Half-Life on the PS2 sometime. It sucks horribly, mostly due to the low resolution"
The problem isn't the raw resolution per se but rather the resolution the game was designed to play at. I find it telling that you point to a port of a PC game as an example of poor quality of gaming on a television.
However, if it were all about nothing but raw resolution power, then there would be no discernable difference between playing the PS2 version of Half-Life on a television and playing the PC version of Half-Life on the same television. But lo and behold, despite most people's best efforts and dealing with frustrating graphics card tweaking, playing the PC version on a television will look far worse than playing the PS2 version (and that's before we start talking about games designed with NTSC in mind from the beginning). It would seem that PC gaming does 800x600 as a minimum because they just don't know how to handle anything less (Windows itself will balk at you if you have your resolution set below 800x600, even if you're using Media Center Edition).
I've had enough problems with LCD displays on laptops and handheld devices that I simply will not buy an LCD television until the manufacturer's dead pixel policy is something other than "It's not a bug, it's a feature!" I'm not going to spend upwards of $1000 for the device's manual to include a note in the Troubleshooting section telling me not to worry about little dots that won't go away.
With that said, personally, I just want an old-fashioned CRT, and I've been tempted by the likes of these. No rear projects or having to rethink A/V furniture, no young technologies that have new and interesting problems that have yet to be acceptably solved (be it dead pixels or greater susceptibility to burn-in), not even a rear projection, just good old-fashioned ions-on-phosphorous, and for a reasonable price. However, I'm relutctant to purchase even these because I've yet to see a direct view CRT that supports 1080p, and I see no point in getting a television that doesn't support features that will probably be worth having in the next ten years.
And speaking of "ten years," I want an appliance, not yet another piece of technology that gets thrown out after 3-4 years. If I cannot be reasonably assured that the television I'm considering buying will neither be obsolete in three years nor outright non-functioning, my NTSC set continues to work (from back when the most complicated question I had while shopping was "What kind of inputs does it have?")
"Lobbying could be seen as a "short cut" to avoid having to deal with the market pressures of capitalism."
A business is dealing with market pressures by following the path of least resistance. I was under the impression that this is one of the basic principles of capitalism; after all, a business isn't supposed to actually resist those market pressures, but give way to demands and adapt. So it seems that you're saying that it's not capitalism not because it violates core philosophy, but because this particular path of least resistance, this adaptation is personally disagreable to you.
And what would you do about removing this distasteful "short cut" of yours? Preserve "capitalism" by enacting a new law restricting what busnisses can do?
Then you should do it behind something large, like a bus or a semi, something that creates a large vortex and has an obnoxiously long stopping distance. In other words, not my Hyundai!
"It never fails that those who criticize "Capitalism" are always actually criticizing the lack of Capitalism. Monopolization is the opposite of Capitalism."
First off, you're assuming that I didn't recognize this, even though I pointed out the lack of any sort of free market thanks to lobbying.
However, beyond that, you're assuming that monopolization has nothing to do with capitalism, denying that a monopoly (or at least an oligopoly) might simply be the natural outcome of a capitalistic market with no state intervention, if only in certain industries. Often in the United States, the state does not create a monopoly but rather passes legislation that merely recognizes that a de facto monopoly has come about. Examples that come to mind are the telephone industry and, until recent decades, the airline industry.
Denying that monopolies have anything to do with capitalism is like denying the collapse of the Soviet Union had anything to do with socialism.
" Microsoft lobbyist Brian Burke was spearheading an effort to bring pressure on the state's Information Technology Division (ITD) by promoting an amendment that would have taken away much of the ITD's power to make technology policy."
So, instead of spending time and money on making a better product, Microsoft decides to spend it on removing the power of choice from potential consumers? It's beginning to seem like the only products actually available in a free market here are the legislators themselves.
We're talking about contract law here. What's important is what is written on the paper and how it stands up in court, what judges and civil juries think it means, not what the author thinks. Unless there's some sort of clause in the GPL requiring arbitration by Stallman for all disagreements (and there isn't), his opinion and statements aren't worth more than anybody who posts on Slashdot.
The murder makes headlines the world over before the guy even actually dies, and you call this "elegant?" Elegant compared to what, the average GTA game? More elegant than dropping a piano on his head? WTF?
You don't get away with murder either with such an exoctic and obvious poison, nor nor by murdering others around him in exactly the same, easily-identifiable way, giving investigators yet more evidence to work with. Elegant would have been some chemical substance that has all the earmarks of heart disease or some other common killer.
My God, if this is what passes for "elegant" in the field of murder these days, no wonder prisons are overflowing with captured criminals.
"It's beautiful. Nobody other than state-sponsored assassins would have the resources"
EXACTLY! Narrows that list of suspects right down, doesn't it? If it weren't for the fact that nuclear security in Russia is a joke, if the Russian government actually did this, they'd have a better chance of deflecting blame and avoiding suspicion if they just sent a MiG over his house to drop a bomb down his chimney!
If this is a state-sponsored political assassination, this is the worst one evar. Tin-plated generalissimos in banana republics do a better job of disappearing enemies. It is far, far more likely that this was done by somebody with the mentality of a 12 year old in an effort to blame the Russian government for this. Heck, I'd believe that this was done by those who believe themselves to be friends of the Russian government, because then the rationale of the motive would be as stupid as the actual murder.
"you could probably even get away with using heat pumps for climate control since the winter temperatures (at least in Southern England) seldom stay below freezing for long."
Better yet, in a region that's been industrialized for so long, they likley still have networks for pumping hot steam from point A to point B for heating. Making steam is what nuclear reactors do very well.
We're talking about Russia here, the black marketeer's darling. Just because the material came from Russia doesn't mean it was used by an agent of, or at least the consent of, the Russian government.
"More FUD from the Sony bashers. PS3 does 1080p just fine. What it doesn't do is upscale 720p content up to 1080i if the TV only doesn't do 1080p."
Yeah yeah yeah, I got that from the blurb. My issue, when all is said and done, is that I can get a decent 1080i television for less money than the PS3 itself, while the only 1080p options I'm seeing on the market right now are all very expensive and all involve the possibility/probability of dead pixels. Most people that have an HDTV do not have 1080p, and that's going to be true until even well after most PS3 owners have an HDTV to plug it into (if such a majority existed today, the PS3 would have come packaged with component cables).
This is an issue that affects or would affect the vast majority of HDTV owners today, people who likely already spent over a grand on their spiffy 1080i sets are are not interested in running out and replacing it less than a year after buying it.
"Though I'm always glad to see someone take MS down a peg, I am not sure that it would be a good thing to have them successfully sued for vulnerabilities."
Then maybe you should rethink your priorities. If F/OSS projects are unwilling to publish if they are unable to escape liability for security flaws, how is that better than Microsoft's stance and do you really want to rely on such software for security? Trying to limit liability in any field often sounds nice until you end up the victim.
This may or may not be a bad thing for free software, but I'm a user, not a coder, and I want results, regardless of who crafted the code or how. I am not willing to hold free software to a different standard than any other software I might choose to use simply because it's free.
The thing is, these consoles are put out by corporations and they have to cater to investors as well as customers. And those investors want to know whether the product being put out is good enough to justify an investment. The "wait for the dust to settle" approach will satisfy neither the investors, who want as much meaningful information as possible before deciding to take the plunge, nor the corporation itself, which needs to entice those investors in order to stay afloat. This is why we're getting these articles from financial news sources to begin with.
"We can not and should not be saying anything yet because we dont know anything."
Somebody knows something, or, at least, somebody should. That somebody is Sony themselves, and whatever the value of the speculation these financial mags are putting out, Sony is about the only of the three players in the market that are being curiously tight-lipped about how many consoles they've sold, how many are shipped, how many are in the pipe, and what their production capacity looks like.
"Let the market saturate,"
The question for investors is what that market saturation will look like (supply is definatley not meeting demand, but what is the raw demand itself?). They want to know, beforehand, whether this will be another PS2 or another NeoGeo, before they give Sony the money Sony needs to continue producing PS3s at a loss (that money has to come from somewhere).
"give a year of manufacturering costs and shipments numbers to adjust,"
Again, neither the investors nor Sony are all that interested in relying wholly on this year's numbers to stay afloat (especially when Sony admits the big hit they took in PS3 R&D). In order for Sony to still be around this time next year, there needs to be something to put on paper at the end of this reporting period, something that will convince investors to give them money.
"Spurred by the scarcity of the PlayStation 3, hungry consumers are buying all the PSP and PS2 units they can get their hands on."
I don't doubt people are buying the PSP or the PS2 in large numbers, but I doubt it's the scarcity of the PS3 causing it. If you're going out to buy a PS3 and can't, that means you have $600 burning a hole in your pocket. Even if you get a PSP, you'll still have $400 you'll feel the need to spend. You can get a low-end HDTV with $400.
No, instead I can see the sales of the PS2 and the PSP spurred on by the unavailability of something in the $250 price range.
Slashdot Mirror
Amazon sells it, but only through their third-party sellers;
You've just described about 70% of everything I've searched for on Amazon in recent years. It seems they're more interested in being another eBay than an actual retailer, and if I wanted to put up with the frustrations of eBay, that's where I'd be.
If you don't have it, you don't have it; don't give me this "used & new from..." bullshit.
"The old one -- even the Democratic members -- did not."
And what planet do you live on?
With our wonderful 90%+ incumbency rate in federal and state elections (more likely to be indicted and "retire to spend more time with family" than to actually lose an election), this is the old Congress!
I mean, in 1994, there was a net change of 54 seats out of 435, slightly more than 10%, and they called that a "revolution." So what will we call this shift of ~30 seats, a "civil war?" Perhaps a "military coup?" And the irony is that it would take a true revolution to actually unseat 50%+1 of the members of the House, even though they're supposedly contested every other year.
The GameCube version doesn't come out until Wednesday or so. My guess is they didn't want it cannibalizing into Wii sales. Personally, I'll probably be getting the GCN version simply because I can't find a Wii to play on.
"people who bought and used the thing have to split $75,000."
Over about 1000 people, that averages out to $75 for what they paid $50 for.
Not that I live in Maryland any more, but another topic that came up as "legal here, not legal elsehwere" was the then-legal blood-alcohol content of 0.10 when your home state was already at the lower 0.08.
"I'm from Virginia and passing on the right is fine."
Source. I'll grant you that it's the only offense that will net you an aggresive driving conviction that isn't illegal outright, but I woudln't exactly call including it on the list of things any one of which can get you written up for aggressive driving as "being fine with it."
"Wikipedia, as well, provided 0 examples of a state that enforces this, though it said it's still on the books in Massachusetts (which we fondly call 'mass of two shits')."
From Wikipedia:
Nice slam on Massachusetts and those other states like them, but which are those "some states?" Accoring to the NHTSA:
How does your foot taste?
"Seems to me that if you'd done half the research yourself you'd have realized you were wrong."
I've apparently done more than you have. We wouldn't be having this conversation if you hadn't assumed both that you know the traffic laws of your own state and that laws against passing on the right are a fabrication. You could have spent some time yourself to verify the validity of your filippant comments, but instead you left yourself open to equating yourself with those you insult.
"But to make an argument that "most places are X" when EVEN YOUR OWN STATE is not X just proves that you are a tailgaiting apologist in my book."
"If you find a chart of current laws, that encompasses all 50 states,"
And why is the burden of proof on me again? Why must I be the one to inform you of the laws that you must abide by?
"if more than 25 of those states actively enforce what you claim."
Again, I never said "most." And no matter how many states it's le
"For example, try playing Half-Life on the PS2 sometime. It sucks horribly, mostly due to the low resolution"
It is possible to be in the right lane, going faster than the person in front of you, but slower to the people in the lane to your left. I have often found myself moving into the left lane to pass somebody in front of me, but then was unable to move back into the right lane because of the steady stream of traffic using the hole I'd like to get into to pass me on the right.
"What strange world do I keep hearing about, where passing on the right is illegal?"
It's the world I was taught about in the early 1990's in a driver's ed course sanctioned by the State of Maryland. In it I was taught that, while passing on the right was legal in Maryland, it is not in all states of the Union. Consider it an extension of "Slower traffic keep right."
Google.
"For example, try playing Half-Life on the PS2 sometime. It sucks horribly, mostly due to the low resolution"
The problem isn't the raw resolution per se but rather the resolution the game was designed to play at. I find it telling that you point to a port of a PC game as an example of poor quality of gaming on a television.
However, if it were all about nothing but raw resolution power, then there would be no discernable difference between playing the PS2 version of Half-Life on a television and playing the PC version of Half-Life on the same television. But lo and behold, despite most people's best efforts and dealing with frustrating graphics card tweaking, playing the PC version on a television will look far worse than playing the PS2 version (and that's before we start talking about games designed with NTSC in mind from the beginning). It would seem that PC gaming does 800x600 as a minimum because they just don't know how to handle anything less (Windows itself will balk at you if you have your resolution set below 800x600, even if you're using Media Center Edition).
I've had enough problems with LCD displays on laptops and handheld devices that I simply will not buy an LCD television until the manufacturer's dead pixel policy is something other than "It's not a bug, it's a feature!" I'm not going to spend upwards of $1000 for the device's manual to include a note in the Troubleshooting section telling me not to worry about little dots that won't go away.
With that said, personally, I just want an old-fashioned CRT, and I've been tempted by the likes of these. No rear projects or having to rethink A/V furniture, no young technologies that have new and interesting problems that have yet to be acceptably solved (be it dead pixels or greater susceptibility to burn-in), not even a rear projection, just good old-fashioned ions-on-phosphorous, and for a reasonable price. However, I'm relutctant to purchase even these because I've yet to see a direct view CRT that supports 1080p, and I see no point in getting a television that doesn't support features that will probably be worth having in the next ten years.
And speaking of "ten years," I want an appliance, not yet another piece of technology that gets thrown out after 3-4 years. If I cannot be reasonably assured that the television I'm considering buying will neither be obsolete in three years nor outright non-functioning, my NTSC set continues to work (from back when the most complicated question I had while shopping was "What kind of inputs does it have?")
"Lobbying could be seen as a "short cut" to avoid having to deal with the market pressures of capitalism."
A business is dealing with market pressures by following the path of least resistance. I was under the impression that this is one of the basic principles of capitalism; after all, a business isn't supposed to actually resist those market pressures, but give way to demands and adapt. So it seems that you're saying that it's not capitalism not because it violates core philosophy, but because this particular path of least resistance, this adaptation is personally disagreable to you.
And what would you do about removing this distasteful "short cut" of yours? Preserve "capitalism" by enacting a new law restricting what busnisses can do?
"Ever see those signs on the highway that say "slower traffic keep right?""
Much easier to abide by when you're not being passed on the right, something else illegal in many states
"It's not tailgating, it's drafting!"
Then you should do it behind something large, like a bus or a semi, something that creates a large vortex and has an obnoxiously long stopping distance. In other words, not my Hyundai!
"It never fails that those who criticize "Capitalism" are always actually criticizing the lack of Capitalism. Monopolization is the opposite of Capitalism."
First off, you're assuming that I didn't recognize this, even though I pointed out the lack of any sort of free market thanks to lobbying.
However, beyond that, you're assuming that monopolization has nothing to do with capitalism, denying that a monopoly (or at least an oligopoly) might simply be the natural outcome of a capitalistic market with no state intervention, if only in certain industries. Often in the United States, the state does not create a monopoly but rather passes legislation that merely recognizes that a de facto monopoly has come about. Examples that come to mind are the telephone industry and, until recent decades, the airline industry.
Denying that monopolies have anything to do with capitalism is like denying the collapse of the Soviet Union had anything to do with socialism.
" Microsoft lobbyist Brian Burke was spearheading an effort to bring pressure on the state's Information Technology Division (ITD) by promoting an amendment that would have taken away much of the ITD's power to make technology policy."
So, instead of spending time and money on making a better product, Microsoft decides to spend it on removing the power of choice from potential consumers? It's beginning to seem like the only products actually available in a free market here are the legislators themselves.
If Office is so good, why is Microsoft so afraid?
"Tom Cruise survives"
Any movie in which Tom Cruise survives is a bad movie.
We're talking about contract law here. What's important is what is written on the paper and how it stands up in court, what judges and civil juries think it means, not what the author thinks. Unless there's some sort of clause in the GPL requiring arbitration by Stallman for all disagreements (and there isn't), his opinion and statements aren't worth more than anybody who posts on Slashdot.
"But it's so elegant."
The murder makes headlines the world over before the guy even actually dies, and you call this "elegant?" Elegant compared to what, the average GTA game? More elegant than dropping a piano on his head? WTF?
You don't get away with murder either with such an exoctic and obvious poison, nor nor by murdering others around him in exactly the same, easily-identifiable way, giving investigators yet more evidence to work with. Elegant would have been some chemical substance that has all the earmarks of heart disease or some other common killer.
My God, if this is what passes for "elegant" in the field of murder these days, no wonder prisons are overflowing with captured criminals.
"It's beautiful. Nobody other than state-sponsored assassins would have the resources"
EXACTLY! Narrows that list of suspects right down, doesn't it? If it weren't for the fact that nuclear security in Russia is a joke, if the Russian government actually did this, they'd have a better chance of deflecting blame and avoiding suspicion if they just sent a MiG over his house to drop a bomb down his chimney!
If this is a state-sponsored political assassination, this is the worst one evar. Tin-plated generalissimos in banana republics do a better job of disappearing enemies. It is far, far more likely that this was done by somebody with the mentality of a 12 year old in an effort to blame the Russian government for this. Heck, I'd believe that this was done by those who believe themselves to be friends of the Russian government, because then the rationale of the motive would be as stupid as the actual murder.
"you could probably even get away with using heat pumps for climate control since the winter temperatures (at least in Southern England) seldom stay below freezing for long."
Better yet, in a region that's been industrialized for so long, they likley still have networks for pumping hot steam from point A to point B for heating. Making steam is what nuclear reactors do very well.
We're talking about Russia here, the black marketeer's darling. Just because the material came from Russia doesn't mean it was used by an agent of, or at least the consent of, the Russian government.
"the authorities have identified the source of the poison to be Russia. Bloomberg ominously reports,"
OK, where else would you rather have seen the polonium come from? The US? Pakistan? North Korea?
It's bad enough that this polonium got out in the wild, I don't see why it's "more bad" that it came from Russia.
"for ~$1300."
Not what I would call inexpensive or mass-market.
"More FUD from the Sony bashers. PS3 does 1080p just fine. What it doesn't do is upscale 720p content up to 1080i if the TV only doesn't do 1080p."
Yeah yeah yeah, I got that from the blurb. My issue, when all is said and done, is that I can get a decent 1080i television for less money than the PS3 itself, while the only 1080p options I'm seeing on the market right now are all very expensive and all involve the possibility/probability of dead pixels. Most people that have an HDTV do not have 1080p, and that's going to be true until even well after most PS3 owners have an HDTV to plug it into (if such a majority existed today, the PS3 would have come packaged with component cables).
This is an issue that affects or would affect the vast majority of HDTV owners today, people who likely already spent over a grand on their spiffy 1080i sets are are not interested in running out and replacing it less than a year after buying it.
"Though I'm always glad to see someone take MS down a peg, I am not sure that it would be a good thing to have them successfully sued for vulnerabilities."
Then maybe you should rethink your priorities. If F/OSS projects are unwilling to publish if they are unable to escape liability for security flaws, how is that better than Microsoft's stance and do you really want to rely on such software for security? Trying to limit liability in any field often sounds nice until you end up the victim.
This may or may not be a bad thing for free software, but I'm a user, not a coder, and I want results, regardless of who crafted the code or how. I am not willing to hold free software to a different standard than any other software I might choose to use simply because it's free.
"Is Ford responsible for every accident on the road?"
Is Ford responsible for every accident on the road caused by the driver's side rear tire on a Ford Explorer inexplicably exploding?
The thing is, these consoles are put out by corporations and they have to cater to investors as well as customers. And those investors want to know whether the product being put out is good enough to justify an investment. The "wait for the dust to settle" approach will satisfy neither the investors, who want as much meaningful information as possible before deciding to take the plunge, nor the corporation itself, which needs to entice those investors in order to stay afloat. This is why we're getting these articles from financial news sources to begin with.
"We can not and should not be saying anything yet because we dont know anything."
Somebody knows something, or, at least, somebody should. That somebody is Sony themselves, and whatever the value of the speculation these financial mags are putting out, Sony is about the only of the three players in the market that are being curiously tight-lipped about how many consoles they've sold, how many are shipped, how many are in the pipe, and what their production capacity looks like.
"Let the market saturate,"
The question for investors is what that market saturation will look like (supply is definatley not meeting demand, but what is the raw demand itself?). They want to know, beforehand, whether this will be another PS2 or another NeoGeo, before they give Sony the money Sony needs to continue producing PS3s at a loss (that money has to come from somewhere).
"give a year of manufacturering costs and shipments numbers to adjust,"
Again, neither the investors nor Sony are all that interested in relying wholly on this year's numbers to stay afloat (especially when Sony admits the big hit they took in PS3 R&D). In order for Sony to still be around this time next year, there needs to be something to put on paper at the end of this reporting period, something that will convince investors to give them money.
"Spurred by the scarcity of the PlayStation 3, hungry consumers are buying all the PSP and PS2 units they can get their hands on."
I don't doubt people are buying the PSP or the PS2 in large numbers, but I doubt it's the scarcity of the PS3 causing it. If you're going out to buy a PS3 and can't, that means you have $600 burning a hole in your pocket. Even if you get a PSP, you'll still have $400 you'll feel the need to spend. You can get a low-end HDTV with $400.
No, instead I can see the sales of the PS2 and the PSP spurred on by the unavailability of something in the $250 price range.