"Like alcohol and cigarettes, if you give your kid a video game, movie, book, or CD that the government deems harmful, you'll lose your kid."
So, when do we start seeing federal agents waiting by McDonald's, ready to arrest anyone who brings his kid in for a Happy Meal?
Seriously though, how is this bill going to get by the 1st ammendment?
According to the bill, all games would have to have enforced ratings. The V-tech game has no rating, therefore all online games would have to be rated, but then, why not the whole internet? Libraries are also online, as are a number of books. Does this mean that the government is in favor of determining what books are ok for children to view? Isn't that government censorship?
One has to remember what Sony's competition was with the PS1 and PS2.
Sony has never launched first in a generation. The PS1, PS2 and now PS3 have all launched into a market where at least one other competitor had been around for awhile.
With the PS1, there was the Saturn and the N64. Sega was begining to struggle at that point, and Sony had managed to pick up several developers after Nintendo decided the N64 was going to be cartridge based.
With the PS2, the Dreamcast had a full year to try to build up a market, but just couldn't get going due to mostly cool receptions from both 3rd party developers (like EA) and gamers alike - partially due to the way Sega treated the Saturn...
By the time the Xbox came out, the PS2 had arguably been established as #1 for the generation. The Xbox's lineup consisted mainly of multiplatform games that were available for the PS2 or the PC and that didn't help either, despite having superior hardware compared to the PS2.
Nintendo hadn't fully recovered from the N64 when the GameCube came out, though it remained quite sucessful in its niche.
While I agree it's too early to say the PS3 is doomed, things certainly look a lot worse for the PS3 than they did for the PS1 or PS2 at the same time in their lifecycles.
For one thing, both the PS1 and PS2 were $300 - a lot less intimidating than the PS3's $600. For another, both the PS1 and PS2 had some decent exclusive (at launch, anyways) games. What did the PS3 have? One "ok" launch game, and a bunch of multiplatform titles that didn't look any better on the PS3 than on its cheaper competitor, the 360.
This makes the PS3's biggest problems Cost, Time, and (lack of) Games.
Sure, the PS3's biggest titles are yet to come out. But in the meantime, what does Sony expect people to do? Buy a $600 console with virtually no games and just wait? It's not as if the 360 or the Wii are standing still, either. Both Nintendo and Microsoft have announced their lineups for this year and both have heavy-hitting, console-selling titles. Halo3 will sell consoles. What does the PS3 have that even approaches that? And before you say 'Final Fantasy', remember that we probably won't see FFXIII in the US until next summer - at best. What the PS3 really needs is something like MGS2 for the PS2, or Halo3 for the 360. People were willing to buy the console months before those titles even hit the shelves. Nothing in the PS3's lineup has that same "I *GOTTA* GET ONE NOW!" feeling. Not FFXIII, not Ratchet & Clank, nor anything else previewed so far.
Last I heard Warhawk had gone from being a full PS3 release with offline and online play to being just a free download containing 4 multiplayer maps - No thanks.
SOCOM - yet another FPS. I'll pass.
SingStar - I'll pass.
Lair & Heavenly Sword look good, but so far all I've seen are screenshots and movies. Let's wait until we get some reviews about the actual gameplay.
Ratchet & Clank - not coming out this year.
FFXIII - not coming out this year.
MGS4 - not coming out this year, and MAY become a multi-platform title simultaneously released for the 360.
Folding@Home - you have got to be kidding to me. No no, I don't doubt your stats, but seriously, THIS is the best use for a $600 GAMING console?!? That's like buying one of those stupid $3k fridges with the built-in LCD screen, and bragging that it's the best TV on the market.
As for HOME, Sony and you are delusional if you think the average person is going to spend (real!) money decorating his virtual apartment so he can invite others' avatars over to look at his trophies. This goes waaaaaay beyond "geeky" here - and I'm a geek!
Blu-Ray Player - This is the only legitimate strength you've listed. Too bad we'll see cheaper standalone Blu-ray players soon, and later this year, we'll see a hybrid Blu-Ray/HD-DVD player that'll make anything that only plays one HD format obsolete. At that point, the PS3 had better have something more to crow about like, oh, I don't know...HOW ABOUT GAMES?! Because seriously, no one's going to buy a $600 gaming console because it can run Folding@Home and a bad Second-Life ripoff.
1: Funds from DHS - hey, it got the Hydra project funding, didn't it? And from TFA, it will make that small segment impervious to attack/disasters/blackout.
2: Considering that the whole infrastructure has to be upgraded, you gotta start somewhere. Rome wasn't built in day, neither was our electrical infracstructure, and neither will its replacement/upgrade.
Considering the thousands and thousands of miles of power cables you're talking about here, it's just not feasible to do them all at once. Also, this is a pilot program - a life-sized prototype, if you will. There's sure to be plenty of kinks that'll need to be worked out as this thing is built and tested. I'm also sure that if it proves successful, we'll see similar installations going into other cities, and eventually, they'll link together.
Look at how long it took the internet to get to where it is today - and it's STILL got quite a ways to go in terms of raw geographical coverage.
Frys (no website to speak of) has $15-20 HDMI cables - just don't go to their AV section. For some odd reason, they have a better selection of cables over in their electronics section, near the security camera stuff. It makes no sense to me. I even found the *SAME* cable (same company, barcode and everything!) over there for $20, while the AV section sold it for $60! And in the same store! It doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever, but if you have a Frys near you, only go to the electronics section - avoid the A/V section entirely.
But there's another store near me, just off Lawrence Expressway in Sunnyvale, where all those little stores and restaurants are. I don't remember the store's name, but it's right next to the Subway. They don't have a website, just cheap stuff. Bins full of component cables for $5 a set...
Avoid Best Buy and Circuit City - the store clerks will try to give you a song and dance about how much better their cables are, but really, the only difference you'll see is at the cash register.
Nothing new here... Companies have been treating their customers like thieves for decades. Meanwhile, the REAL thieves just go on their daily business oblivious to any sort of DRM or copy protection that the companies inflict on their legitimate customers.]
It's pretty much a given that things are only going to get worse before they get better.
Since when is the 360 HDMI only? The Elite may have a HDMI port, but can still do component (or svideo or composite if you really wanted) The Elite even comes with HDMI, component and composite cabling kits - just to annoy Sony with their "True HD - cables sold separately" PS3.
Also, where are you shopping where a 3' HDMI cable is $90? My local non-chain computer store has HDMI cables for $10-15. I'd gladly ship some to you for $70/ea. Shipping included.
How is that redundant? While a PS3 can play both PS3 game and Blu-ray movies, it can't play HD-DVD movies, nor 360 games. Even then, the 360 needs the external HD-DVD add-on to play HD-DVD movies, but it would still be considered "one device" in terms of connections to your TV/Receiver.
That said, I can easily see having a hybrid player for DVD, Blu-Ray, and HD-DVD, as well as a 360, PS3, and a HD cable or satellite receiver/DVR - that's potentially 4 devices that can use HDMI, not to mention some older devices connected via component or s-video cables.
That doesn't cover future devices, like a video camera, or a HD-DVD/Blu-Ray recorder.
My TV may have 2 HDMI ports, but only 1 of them does video+sound - the other is video only. Neither of them are HDMI v1.3, not that that matters to me really. However, it bothers me that this so-called "standard" is still evolving.
Oh this is ridiculous. It's illegal to *translate* something? Selling that translation - like the unauthorized Harry Potter book mentioned - should be adequately dealt with by other areas of copyright.
But just the act of taking something from one languge to another would mean that even viewing a foreign language (non-Polish in this case) website using a website translator like Babelfish or Google's translation service would be *ILLEGAL*.
Also, what about learning a foreign language? Even if you're not producing a formal translation on paper, you're still doing the same operations IN YOUR HEAD. Yay! Being multi-lingual is now a thoughtcrime in Poland.
Don't talk about the "wrong" choices first. Think about it - if you were CEO, you don't want to hear what's NOT going to solve the problem. You just want to know a problem has been identified, and what the solution is - not what the solution isn't.
Between your introduction and high-level description of the "right" choice, you shouldn't use more than a few paragraphs. Seriously, most folks won't bother to read more than a page - maybe two.
And KEEP IT SIMPLE. Don't write something like "The ambient temperature in the enterprise equipment room has risen beyond reccomended levels. To address this, we are requesting additional infrastrctures for waste heat management". Instead write "The server room is too hot. We should buy a second air conditioner." After that, you can explain things like why this is a problem, what other choices could be, and why they're wrong. Even go into mathematical analysis that would make your thermodynamics prof. proud - just don't do it on the first page.
I wouldn't have thought that a writing class would have been among the most useful classes I took in college until one of my reports ended up being presented at a board meeting, where it was used as the basis for making a rather large-scale decision affecting the entire company. Eep...
Based on what I've seen of "Home", I'm not interested.
Does Sony honestly expect people to spend time (and money?!?) decorating their virtual "apartment" and arranging their gaming trophies so they can invite other virtual friends over to look at them?
I'm sorry, but that's insane.
Furthermore, does Sony honestly expect me to log into Home, walk my virtual person out the door, and down the street to the virtual store so I can see what new games or demos are for sale? Again, that's insane. I don't want the hassle of having to play with Home just to do what should be rather straight-forward, non-multiplayer-activities.
Now I have heard some other good stuff about Home - such as better coordination between players when setting up a game - but this just shows that Sony should have had Home ready to go a long, long time ago, instead of launching the PS3 with a sort of hacked-together mess of an online service that doesn't even support every game.
There are already plenty of PS3s "in the wild". If you want one, just go to your local store and get one. No waiting. It's not like Sony is hoarding PS3s or anything, nor are stores facing a shortage (real or artifical) as they are with the Wii. I see plenty of PS3s (and 360s for that matter) in stores, but I've yet to actually see a Wiii on a shelf.
The problem is, they just aren't selling. It's overpriced, it doesn't have enough exclusive games, and its multiplatform titles don't look any better than its cheaper competitor, the Xbox360. As for Blu-Ray, no one really cares about that either. The total of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD COMBINED have yet to account for even 1 percent of what DVD sells in a month. Even Blu-Ray's target market - the high-end videophile - isn't interested because no one likes a format war. Furthermore, there's strong evidence that we'll see a hybrid player later this year that'll play DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-Ray. At that point, the PS3-as-a-Blu-Ray-player will be obsolete, just like every other single HD format device out there.
Putting more PS3s on shelves isn't going to help Sony sell more games. Getting people to buy PS3s will help Sony sell more games - but at what cost? Yes, yes, selling consoles at a loss and making that money back with the sales of game and accessories is the common business practice here.
Right now, the PS3 is too expensive (based on its performance compared to the 360) and doesn't have a large enough and compelling enough library of games - especially exclusive games.
Sony has built 6 million consoles. Let's say each console costs Sony about $800 to make (probably a low figure). That's an immediate cost of $4.8 billion. Regardless of what they actually sell each console for, they had to spend $4.8 billion first.
3 million consoles so far have been purchased by consumers for $600 each, so Sony made $1.8 billion, and is now only $3 billion in the hole. (heh..."only -$3bil...")
If Sony drops the price to $500, and sells the remaining 3 million consoles, they'll only make an additional $1.5 billion, leaving them with -$1.5 billion.
Even assuming Sony incurs no more expenses for their fiscal year (additional consoles, marketing, salaries, rent, utilities, etc etc etc.) to eliminate 80% of their debt, as they stated, they'll have to make approximately $1.2 billion from sales of games and accessories. If we assume an average of $20 in profit to Sony for each game or accessory sold, that's still means every one of those 6 million PS3 owners will have to buy - at a minimum - 10 accessories or games.
Granted, Sony has been able to improve their manufacturing processes for some of their more expensive components, and will undoubtely also save a little money on each console that doesn't ship with PS2 hardware inside for backwards compatibility, so newer PS3s won't cost Sony as much to build. Even so, Sony will still have to depend on each and every PS3 owner out there to buy a solid dozen games or accessories within the next 12 months.
At a company I used to work at, our lab was stocked with machines that the vendor had decided to use a freakishly bright blue LED for the power button. You could not look at the rack without feeling the back of your eyeball begining to sizzle from these things. We eventually did the tape trick to avoid the unwanted eyeball surgery every time we went into the lab.
I remember my university purchased a couple of massively parallel computing systems from IBM which essentially looked like large black monolinths with a bank of LEDs running around the center.
The LEDs didn't serve any particular purpose. Customers requested a bank of LEDs so they had "something" to show their bosses/finance department what they'd just spend one million dollars on. The LEDs were programmable, and you could hook into the API in whatever script or program you were running. Several demo scripts were included, to make the lights do various patterns - even turn them into one of those scrolling message boards.
Is there any point to watching these shows on TV anymore?
They get released onto DVD almost as soon as the season ends, and personally, I really don't like having to wait a week, much less months on end, just to get the next episode in a season.
I haven't watched anything on Sci-Fi since they cancelled Farscape, and even then, I had already started collecting the DVDs. Why watch the Sci-Fi channel when my cable system makes it look Comcastically horrible?
Anything even halfway decent they DO show ends up on DVD, and therefore, on my Netflix queue. Anything I find worth watching again goes onto my shopping list.
Personally, I'd rather just have a subscription type service. If I decide I like a show, I'd be willing to pre-buy the DVD sets. Here's my cash, do the show, make it look good, put it in a box, and ship it to me. I suspect many others would be willing to do the same thing.
At one place, I was doing well, and had just gotten a good raise. Then we found out the company missed its sales numbers for the second quarter in a row and 2 weeks later, my boss is telling me I've been laid off.
Well, I've worked at a lot of startups and small companies.
I thought I had done well on one interview, and even the recruiter thought I would be getting a job offer soon. Then he called back and said that one of my references didn't say good things about me. Later, it turned out that they didn't even use my references, but called my previous employer even though I had explicitly said not to.
The company refused to disclose what had been said, or even who they had talked to - claiming privacy issues (wtf?!?) The recruiter was pretty upset with the company as well, but without any actual evidence the only thing we could do was to just continue my job search.
The thing I don't understand about this whole thing is that it's always the HR department that wants professional references - preferably your former coworkers or managers. However, as pointed out, most companies have a strict "no references" policies. These HR departments know that - they probably have a similar policy at their own company. Yet they have no problems asking OTHERS to break their company's policy. Very hypocritical.
I simply meant that Microsoft is selling the 360 for slightly more than what it costs them to make. While not a ton of money, at least they aren't bleeding money each time they build a 360 - unlike Sony who is losing an estimated $200-300 for each PS3 they sell to a retailer.
This also means that even if Sony comes up with a way to drop the PS3's price $100 or even $200, Microsoft could still comfortably lower their price, even if it meant losing a little money on each console again.
I doubt Microsoft will initiate a price drop, however. They have no reason to do so since the PS3 is still more expensive, still isn't selling as well as the 360, and the 360 continues to sell well.
Slashdot Mirror
"Like alcohol and cigarettes, if you give your kid a video game, movie, book, or CD that the government deems harmful, you'll lose your kid."
So, when do we start seeing federal agents waiting by McDonald's, ready to arrest anyone who brings his kid in for a Happy Meal?
Seriously though, how is this bill going to get by the 1st ammendment?
According to the bill, all games would have to have enforced ratings. The V-tech game has no rating, therefore all online games would have to be rated, but then, why not the whole internet? Libraries are also online, as are a number of books. Does this mean that the government is in favor of determining what books are ok for children to view? Isn't that government censorship?
One has to remember what Sony's competition was with the PS1 and PS2.
Sony has never launched first in a generation. The PS1, PS2 and now PS3 have all launched into a market where at least one other competitor had been around for awhile.
With the PS1, there was the Saturn and the N64. Sega was begining to struggle at that point, and Sony had managed to pick up several developers after Nintendo decided the N64 was going to be cartridge based.
With the PS2, the Dreamcast had a full year to try to build up a market, but just couldn't get going due to mostly cool receptions from both 3rd party developers (like EA) and gamers alike - partially due to the way Sega treated the Saturn...
By the time the Xbox came out, the PS2 had arguably been established as #1 for the generation. The Xbox's lineup consisted mainly of multiplatform games that were available for the PS2 or the PC and that didn't help either, despite having superior hardware compared to the PS2.
Nintendo hadn't fully recovered from the N64 when the GameCube came out, though it remained quite sucessful in its niche.
While I agree it's too early to say the PS3 is doomed, things certainly look a lot worse for the PS3 than they did for the PS1 or PS2 at the same time in their lifecycles.
For one thing, both the PS1 and PS2 were $300 - a lot less intimidating than the PS3's $600. For another, both the PS1 and PS2 had some decent exclusive (at launch, anyways) games. What did the PS3 have? One "ok" launch game, and a bunch of multiplatform titles that didn't look any better on the PS3 than on its cheaper competitor, the 360.
This makes the PS3's biggest problems Cost, Time, and (lack of) Games.
Sure, the PS3's biggest titles are yet to come out. But in the meantime, what does Sony expect people to do? Buy a $600 console with virtually no games and just wait? It's not as if the 360 or the Wii are standing still, either. Both Nintendo and Microsoft have announced their lineups for this year and both have heavy-hitting, console-selling titles. Halo3 will sell consoles. What does the PS3 have that even approaches that? And before you say 'Final Fantasy', remember that we probably won't see FFXIII in the US until next summer - at best. What the PS3 really needs is something like MGS2 for the PS2, or Halo3 for the 360. People were willing to buy the console months before those titles even hit the shelves. Nothing in the PS3's lineup has that same "I *GOTTA* GET ONE NOW!" feeling. Not FFXIII, not Ratchet & Clank, nor anything else previewed so far.
Last I heard Warhawk had gone from being a full PS3 release with offline and online play to being just a free download containing 4 multiplayer maps - No thanks.
SOCOM - yet another FPS. I'll pass.
SingStar - I'll pass.
Lair & Heavenly Sword look good, but so far all I've seen are screenshots and movies. Let's wait until we get some reviews about the actual gameplay.
Ratchet & Clank - not coming out this year.
FFXIII - not coming out this year.
MGS4 - not coming out this year, and MAY become a multi-platform title simultaneously released for the 360.
Folding@Home - you have got to be kidding to me. No no, I don't doubt your stats, but seriously, THIS is the best use for a $600 GAMING console?!? That's like buying one of those stupid $3k fridges with the built-in LCD screen, and bragging that it's the best TV on the market.
As for HOME, Sony and you are delusional if you think the average person is going to spend (real!) money decorating his virtual apartment so he can invite others' avatars over to look at his trophies. This goes waaaaaay beyond "geeky" here - and I'm a geek!
Blu-Ray Player - This is the only legitimate strength you've listed. Too bad we'll see cheaper standalone Blu-ray players soon, and later this year, we'll see a hybrid Blu-Ray/HD-DVD player that'll make anything that only plays one HD format obsolete. At that point, the PS3 had better have something more to crow about like, oh, I don't know...HOW ABOUT GAMES?! Because seriously, no one's going to buy a $600 gaming console because it can run Folding@Home and a bad Second-Life ripoff.
Two things:
1: Funds from DHS - hey, it got the Hydra project funding, didn't it? And from TFA, it will make that small segment impervious to attack/disasters/blackout.
2: Considering that the whole infrastructure has to be upgraded, you gotta start somewhere. Rome wasn't built in day, neither was our electrical infracstructure, and neither will its replacement/upgrade.
Considering the thousands and thousands of miles of power cables you're talking about here, it's just not feasible to do them all at once. Also, this is a pilot program - a life-sized prototype, if you will. There's sure to be plenty of kinks that'll need to be worked out as this thing is built and tested. I'm also sure that if it proves successful, we'll see similar installations going into other cities, and eventually, they'll link together.
Look at how long it took the internet to get to where it is today - and it's STILL got quite a ways to go in terms of raw geographical coverage.
None of those things can hold a candle to the biggest threat to underground cables - The Backhoe.
Granted, as deep as this cable will be buried, you'll need a larger backhoe.
Isn't Terrorism the new boogieman of the 21st century? During the late 20th century, it was "Nuclear Attack/Annihilation"
That was the original point of the internet, wasn't it? A redundant self healing communication network capable of surviving a nuclear attack?
Frys (no website to speak of) has $15-20 HDMI cables - just don't go to their AV section. For some odd reason, they have a better selection of cables over in their electronics section, near the security camera stuff. It makes no sense to me. I even found the *SAME* cable (same company, barcode and everything!) over there for $20, while the AV section sold it for $60! And in the same store! It doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever, but if you have a Frys near you, only go to the electronics section - avoid the A/V section entirely.
2 .html - 3' HDMI cable for $15, 6' for $20, free shipping.
Also, a quick check on google came up with this site: http://www.optimization-world.com/products/catid/
But there's another store near me, just off Lawrence Expressway in Sunnyvale, where all those little stores and restaurants are. I don't remember the store's name, but it's right next to the Subway. They don't have a website, just cheap stuff. Bins full of component cables for $5 a set...
Avoid Best Buy and Circuit City - the store clerks will try to give you a song and dance about how much better their cables are, but really, the only difference you'll see is at the cash register.
Nothing new here... Companies have been treating their customers like thieves for decades. Meanwhile, the REAL thieves just go on their daily business oblivious to any sort of DRM or copy protection that the companies inflict on their legitimate customers.]
It's pretty much a given that things are only going to get worse before they get better.
Since when is the 360 HDMI only? The Elite may have a HDMI port, but can still do component (or svideo or composite if you really wanted) The Elite even comes with HDMI, component and composite cabling kits - just to annoy Sony with their "True HD - cables sold separately" PS3.
Also, where are you shopping where a 3' HDMI cable is $90? My local non-chain computer store has HDMI cables for $10-15. I'd gladly ship some to you for $70/ea. Shipping included.
How is that redundant? While a PS3 can play both PS3 game and Blu-ray movies, it can't play HD-DVD movies, nor 360 games. Even then, the 360 needs the external HD-DVD add-on to play HD-DVD movies, but it would still be considered "one device" in terms of connections to your TV/Receiver.
That said, I can easily see having a hybrid player for DVD, Blu-Ray, and HD-DVD, as well as a 360, PS3, and a HD cable or satellite receiver/DVR - that's potentially 4 devices that can use HDMI, not to mention some older devices connected via component or s-video cables.
That doesn't cover future devices, like a video camera, or a HD-DVD/Blu-Ray recorder.
My TV may have 2 HDMI ports, but only 1 of them does video+sound - the other is video only. Neither of them are HDMI v1.3, not that that matters to me really. However, it bothers me that this so-called "standard" is still evolving.
What? You want an easy to use system for non-technical people? Now that's just crazy talk!
Oh this is ridiculous. It's illegal to *translate* something? Selling that translation - like the unauthorized Harry Potter book mentioned - should be adequately dealt with by other areas of copyright.
But just the act of taking something from one languge to another would mean that even viewing a foreign language (non-Polish in this case) website using a website translator like Babelfish or Google's translation service would be *ILLEGAL*.
Also, what about learning a foreign language? Even if you're not producing a formal translation on paper, you're still doing the same operations IN YOUR HEAD. Yay! Being multi-lingual is now a thoughtcrime in Poland.
Don't talk about the "wrong" choices first. Think about it - if you were CEO, you don't want to hear what's NOT going to solve the problem. You just want to know a problem has been identified, and what the solution is - not what the solution isn't.
Between your introduction and high-level description of the "right" choice, you shouldn't use more than a few paragraphs. Seriously, most folks won't bother to read more than a page - maybe two.
And KEEP IT SIMPLE. Don't write something like "The ambient temperature in the enterprise equipment room has risen beyond reccomended levels. To address this, we are requesting additional infrastrctures for waste heat management". Instead write "The server room is too hot. We should buy a second air conditioner." After that, you can explain things like why this is a problem, what other choices could be, and why they're wrong. Even go into mathematical analysis that would make your thermodynamics prof. proud - just don't do it on the first page.
I wouldn't have thought that a writing class would have been among the most useful classes I took in college until one of my reports ended up being presented at a board meeting, where it was used as the basis for making a rather large-scale decision affecting the entire company. Eep...
Based on what I've seen of "Home", I'm not interested.
Does Sony honestly expect people to spend time (and money?!?) decorating their virtual "apartment" and arranging their gaming trophies so they can invite other virtual friends over to look at them?
I'm sorry, but that's insane.
Furthermore, does Sony honestly expect me to log into Home, walk my virtual person out the door, and down the street to the virtual store so I can see what new games or demos are for sale? Again, that's insane. I don't want the hassle of having to play with Home just to do what should be rather straight-forward, non-multiplayer-activities.
Now I have heard some other good stuff about Home - such as better coordination between players when setting up a game - but this just shows that Sony should have had Home ready to go a long, long time ago, instead of launching the PS3 with a sort of hacked-together mess of an online service that doesn't even support every game.
Huh?
There are already plenty of PS3s "in the wild". If you want one, just go to your local store and get one. No waiting. It's not like Sony is hoarding PS3s or anything, nor are stores facing a shortage (real or artifical) as they are with the Wii. I see plenty of PS3s (and 360s for that matter) in stores, but I've yet to actually see a Wiii on a shelf.
The problem is, they just aren't selling. It's overpriced, it doesn't have enough exclusive games, and its multiplatform titles don't look any better than its cheaper competitor, the Xbox360. As for Blu-Ray, no one really cares about that either. The total of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD COMBINED have yet to account for even 1 percent of what DVD sells in a month. Even Blu-Ray's target market - the high-end videophile - isn't interested because no one likes a format war. Furthermore, there's strong evidence that we'll see a hybrid player later this year that'll play DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-Ray. At that point, the PS3-as-a-Blu-Ray-player will be obsolete, just like every other single HD format device out there.
Putting more PS3s on shelves isn't going to help Sony sell more games. Getting people to buy PS3s will help Sony sell more games - but at what cost? Yes, yes, selling consoles at a loss and making that money back with the sales of game and accessories is the common business practice here.
Right now, the PS3 is too expensive (based on its performance compared to the 360) and doesn't have a large enough and compelling enough library of games - especially exclusive games.
Sony's math doesn't make sense.
Sony has built 6 million consoles. Let's say each console costs Sony about $800 to make (probably a low figure). That's an immediate cost of $4.8 billion. Regardless of what they actually sell each console for, they had to spend $4.8 billion first.
3 million consoles so far have been purchased by consumers for $600 each, so Sony made $1.8 billion, and is now only $3 billion in the hole. (heh..."only -$3bil...")
If Sony drops the price to $500, and sells the remaining 3 million consoles, they'll only make an additional $1.5 billion, leaving them with -$1.5 billion.
Even assuming Sony incurs no more expenses for their fiscal year (additional consoles, marketing, salaries, rent, utilities, etc etc etc.) to eliminate 80% of their debt, as they stated, they'll have to make approximately $1.2 billion from sales of games and accessories. If we assume an average of $20 in profit to Sony for each game or accessory sold, that's still means every one of those 6 million PS3 owners will have to buy - at a minimum - 10 accessories or games.
Granted, Sony has been able to improve their manufacturing processes for some of their more expensive components, and will undoubtely also save a little money on each console that doesn't ship with PS2 hardware inside for backwards compatibility, so newer PS3s won't cost Sony as much to build. Even so, Sony will still have to depend on each and every PS3 owner out there to buy a solid dozen games or accessories within the next 12 months.
I hate blue LEDs.
At a company I used to work at, our lab was stocked with machines that the vendor had decided to use a freakishly bright blue LED for the power button. You could not look at the rack without feeling the back of your eyeball begining to sizzle from these things. We eventually did the tape trick to avoid the unwanted eyeball surgery every time we went into the lab.
I remember my university purchased a couple of massively parallel computing systems from IBM which essentially looked like large black monolinths with a bank of LEDs running around the center.
The LEDs didn't serve any particular purpose. Customers requested a bank of LEDs so they had "something" to show their bosses/finance department what they'd just spend one million dollars on. The LEDs were programmable, and you could hook into the API in whatever script or program you were running. Several demo scripts were included, to make the lights do various patterns - even turn them into one of those scrolling message boards.
Is there any point to watching these shows on TV anymore?
They get released onto DVD almost as soon as the season ends, and personally, I really don't like having to wait a week, much less months on end, just to get the next episode in a season.
I haven't watched anything on Sci-Fi since they cancelled Farscape, and even then, I had already started collecting the DVDs. Why watch the Sci-Fi channel when my cable system makes it look Comcastically horrible?
Anything even halfway decent they DO show ends up on DVD, and therefore, on my Netflix queue. Anything I find worth watching again goes onto my shopping list.
Personally, I'd rather just have a subscription type service. If I decide I like a show, I'd be willing to pre-buy the DVD sets. Here's my cash, do the show, make it look good, put it in a box, and ship it to me. I suspect many others would be willing to do the same thing.
"Oh gods no!" indeed.
But better that, than a time-travelling Viper and do-gooder Colonial pilot trying to right the wrongs throughout history...or whatever that drek was.
One word: Layoffs.
At one place, I was doing well, and had just gotten a good raise. Then we found out the company missed its sales numbers for the second quarter in a row and 2 weeks later, my boss is telling me I've been laid off.
Well, I've worked at a lot of startups and small companies.
I thought I had done well on one interview, and even the recruiter thought I would be getting a job offer soon. Then he called back and said that one of my references didn't say good things about me. Later, it turned out that they didn't even use my references, but called my previous employer even though I had explicitly said not to.
The company refused to disclose what had been said, or even who they had talked to - claiming privacy issues (wtf?!?) The recruiter was pretty upset with the company as well, but without any actual evidence the only thing we could do was to just continue my job search.
The thing I don't understand about this whole thing is that it's always the HR department that wants professional references - preferably your former coworkers or managers. However, as pointed out, most companies have a strict "no references" policies. These HR departments know that - they probably have a similar policy at their own company. Yet they have no problems asking OTHERS to break their company's policy. Very hypocritical.
I simply meant that Microsoft is selling the 360 for slightly more than what it costs them to make. While not a ton of money, at least they aren't bleeding money each time they build a 360 - unlike Sony who is losing an estimated $200-300 for each PS3 they sell to a retailer.
This also means that even if Sony comes up with a way to drop the PS3's price $100 or even $200, Microsoft could still comfortably lower their price, even if it meant losing a little money on each console again.
I doubt Microsoft will initiate a price drop, however. They have no reason to do so since the PS3 is still more expensive, still isn't selling as well as the 360, and the 360 continues to sell well.
Didn't the late Jack Valenti say anyone who fast-forwards, or otherwise doesn't watch commercials is a thief?