Hopefully this will discourage other states from trying the same thing.
Yes, hopefully THIS finally does, because the fact that these laws have already been shot down as unconstitutional in several other states hasn't been enough to stop other states from trying.
They tried to pass one here in Michigan (and as I recall, if my memory isn't too fuzzy, it WAS passed but then shot down by a judge). In the process, it was pointed out to our governor and state senate that these laws have been passed in many other states, and in every instance they have been shot down as unconstitutional and the same would happen here, and that it was just going to be a waste of time and money to do it. The voice of reason was completely brushed aside. Later, off the record, one of the aides told us that they were all aware of the likely outcome, but that it was a measure to make it look like they are trying to to something about the "problem". They were passing a law they KNEW wouldn't stick just for the image. It would make them look good and have no real negative effect on them.
Now, if they have to consider the effect that a 1/2 million dollar fine could have on their image....well, I won't go so far as to say they will act any more sane, but maybe their personal interests will coincide with sanity a little more.
Dang it...I hate coming up with info late into a thread. I hope somebody ends up seeing this.
If you want prior art, please pre-date 1995.
OK, here you go. Patent 5724106 (issued to Gateway 2000). This may not be as early of an example as the all the other things people post, but so far I have to believe it is the most relevant, because
1) It has a patent with an original filing date that predates the one in question (continuation of a patent filed Jul. 17, 1995)
2) It is literally a remote control with a trigger
I'm always wary of solutions that use things for purposes they weren't designed for.
I think the slashdot title is probably a bit misleading. It says "Regular DVD", but from reading the article, all I got out of it was that they can put this much data on something the SIZE of a regular DVD. If it mentioned anything about using a DVD+/-R that you can buy from the store today, then I completely missed it.
I've never used it, but as I recall, I believe there is a way to configure MythTV to go to sleep and then wake 5 minutes before the next program is supposed to record. It might require bios support for it. I know my P3-450 BIOS has a setting to wake at a specified time, but I don't know if that has a API to set it via software.
Of course, it has it's downside. You can't remotely log in and schedule programs while it's sleeping, and you can get screwed in the times where the schedule changes suddenly.
Today, however, with the advent of voip, cell phones, etc. it seems like the promise of always-availble telephones is bound to disappear eventually. VOIP surely won't work if your cable modem or DSL router (or your ASUS motherboard) doesn't have any power.
Well, I don't know how long the cable company will provide power (and I don't know a good way to test it without going to jail, nor a good way to get a reliable answer from the cable company), but my cable modem and VOIP adapter are on a battery backup, so at least I'm covered on my end. Still waiting for a power outage to hit so I can see what will actually happen.
How will you recharge your cell phone during a power failure once you've drained its battery?
Well, if it's anything more than a few hours long, I'd stay off the phone as much as possible. When the power gets low...that's what my car charger is for. Now I just need to worry about the cell towers and downstream equipment staying online. And if I recall correctly, during the major power outage a few years ago, that didn't work out so well (I tried making a call right away and had no service).
In summary, there certainly are options for the end user...its just that troublesome aspect of getting the utility providers to stay online. In the short term, I definitely agree that this is a problem. Over the long term, I think this will work itself out as it becomes a bigger issue. The 911 issue is already being addressed in many places, and I suspect that this problem, like that one, will slowly buy surely be worked out.
Well, that's if you want to track someone with their Nike shoes. But what prevents you from taking the transmitter, slipping it into someone's backpack, and then track them?
This is the problem I always have with these fear mongering stories. They start with some unfounded fear. Then, in an attempt to defend the fear mongering, someone make an illogical leap and then bases their defense from that unfounded position.
Someone slipping a transmitter into someone's backpack and tracking them? Well, that could be a serious problem. However...you know what? That technology has been around a lot longer than lojack, and I never heard anyone raising a fuss about the dangers of this stuff back then. In terms of this "slipping it into the backpack" angle, this Nike device has added nothing to that at all.
If we knew it would play the older XBox games we want to get into, like KOTOR, we'd get it, but backward compatability is spotty and I don't want to pull up a list of compatible games every time I go in to rent something.
Where do you rent your games from? Do you have a Family Video in your area? At my local Family Video (and I'm assuming this is done chainwide) they have a sign saying to look for a specific sticker on xbox games to indicate they are compatible with the xbox 360. In addition, Family Video has some of the best rental prices around.
$600 (or more on eBay) for a console is a lot easier to justify if you plan on buying a lot of games for it.
I wouldn't be so quick to credit any rational justification process to anyone willing to spend a huge premium on ebay just to get it a few months earlier.
If nintendo really does have a manufactoring problem to extent that you could recieve a broken replacement product. They should really halt their production and fix the issue. Not that i'm saying they do, most companies have a 1% to 3% defected product ratio and i bet nintendo falls in between those numbers.
Ok, so now do the math. 600K units shipped, with a 1% failure rate (just for kicks)...that is 6000 failures. Now, of those 6000 users, 1% get failed replacement units. That would be 60 people just in this first week alone that received 2 failed units in a row. That's a lot of extremely pissed off customers.
I still maintain that if they can handle doing it, ensuring the replacements are good is the right thing to do.
They weren't required to pre-update the firmware on the replacement system -- just send me the replacement. What I should of received was a new system without the firmware update
In my opinion, that would have been poor customer service on their part. Suppose they ship you a new, non-upgraded console. What happens if, by some fluke, you get another unit that bricks on the update? Now you are really ticked off. When a manufacturer replaces a DOA product (which, for all practical purposes, was the case for you), I believe they owe it to their customer to ensure that the replacement product at least makes it beyond that stage.
just word that the company has sold all the [PS3] units it shipped
Really? Wow, thanks for clearing that up for me, Sony. And here I was thinking that half of them had been lost somewhere in stockrooms across the country, and another quarter of them were sitting on store shelves while disinterested gamers walked by. I'm certainly glad we got that cleared up.
More importantly, I didn't take it to mean that it was filled with poured concrete (so that 100% of the volume was occupied). Instead, I figured it meant that it was filled with broken up sections of concrete slab (which is a common use for those 40ft dumpsters). Irregularly shaped chunks randomly dropped into the dumpster will leave a lot of airspace in between.
I don't disagree with your conclusion, but I do disagree a bit with how you got there. Doesn't alexa base their statistics on people who have their toolbar installed? I believe that people who frequent slashdot are probably a bit more finicky about what toolbars they install in their browser than are amazon's typical visitors.
He was involved in Unreal Tournament and was one of the more vocal web presences for the company(Epic). He did a lot of "blogging" (before it was called blogging) about the early versions of UT as they were being developed and did quite a bit of online interaction with the mod community.
Well, there's the biggest part of your problem right there. Humor requires familiarity with the source material,
Well, I'll agree with you that sometimes thats the case. There have certainly been times that I didn't think SP was funny, and then after figuring out what they were talking about it was actually pretty good. On the other hand, there have also been plenty of episodes that were hilarious even though I didn't have a clue quite what was being talked about.
However, what I should have followed up my post with was...after I eventually found out what the entire man-bear-pig episode was all about, I watched it again and didn't find it one bit funnier than the first time.
Isn't it incredibly amusing how a show like SouthPark is the most hilarious show until it touches our sacred cow.
No, I don't think it has anything to do with that. The episode was just BAD!
I'll plead ignorance about pretty much anything that Gore has done or tried to do other than run for president and "invent" the internet. When I saw the man-bear-pig episode, I knew that South Park usually mocks some sort of current event, but I couldn't figure out what exactly was being mocked. Obviously something that Al Gore had done, but I didn't know what. So it's safe to say I had no prejudice on the topic (since I didn't even know what the topic was).
When it was all said and done, the ONLY thing I found humorous about the episode was Cartman crapping treasure.
Re:Look at the "revolutionary" technology
on
The Wii Disassembled
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Yes. To be more accurate...the article has it backwards. It says the bars on the TV are IR detectors and the Wiimote has an IR output. In reality, the bars on the TV are nothing more than IR emitters, and the detector is in the Wiimote (like you said...a ccd)
After I read "Even after Microsoft took the lead in the video-game wars a year ago with its innovative and powerful Xbox 360 [..]" I knew the article is just hype.
I didn't see him say MS took the sales lead. They certainly did take the performance lead, and as the first ones to launch in this generations of consoles, that also makes them a leader of that pack. How you choose to interpret his words doesn't make him a fanboy.
Second, while XBox360 may be very powerful, it sure isn't innovative. The only things that changed between XBox1 and XBox360 are a faster CPU (pretty much to be expected), wireless controllers (not innovative because the technology has been available in stores for many years) and an improved online service (which arguably may be innovative but in fact is just a little more than a glorified ICQ which is nothing really new either).
Well, hey. Welcome to consoles. They can't all be "innovative". SNES was just a faster processor and a few more controller buttons compared to the NES. You might say that the SNES used the faster processor to do some innovative things, but the same may end up being true for the 360.
I think the PS3....sure is innovative:...Blu Ray a completely new storage medium.
Hmmm....new storage medium that differs from the previous medium only in capacity and speed. I thought you just said that being faster wasn't innovative. Is the capacity the deal-maker for innovation? Back in the cartridge days, was adding more ROM to a cartridge an innovation?
Selling them separately may or may not have been a bad idea, I don't know.
I'd say it was a good idea.
First, not all games require the nunchuck, right? If you have a 4 player game that doesn't require it, you can buy a couple of controllers without it and save some money. If you later find a 4 player game that requires it, you can buy a couple more then.
Second, with the main controller being exposed to so much movement, there might be issues with how well the cord attaching the nunchuck holds out. They might tend to develop shorts in the wiring (especially for people who play with overagressive movements...sometimes even aggressive enough to break the safety strap AND the TV screen). If that happens, it sure would be nice to just buy another $20 nunchuck rather that a $60 controller set.
Slashdot Mirror
Hopefully this will discourage other states from trying the same thing.
Yes, hopefully THIS finally does, because the fact that these laws have already been shot down as unconstitutional in several other states hasn't been enough to stop other states from trying.
They tried to pass one here in Michigan (and as I recall, if my memory isn't too fuzzy, it WAS passed but then shot down by a judge). In the process, it was pointed out to our governor and state senate that these laws have been passed in many other states, and in every instance they have been shot down as unconstitutional and the same would happen here, and that it was just going to be a waste of time and money to do it. The voice of reason was completely brushed aside. Later, off the record, one of the aides told us that they were all aware of the likely outcome, but that it was a measure to make it look like they are trying to to something about the "problem". They were passing a law they KNEW wouldn't stick just for the image. It would make them look good and have no real negative effect on them.
Now, if they have to consider the effect that a 1/2 million dollar fine could have on their image....well, I won't go so far as to say they will act any more sane, but maybe their personal interests will coincide with sanity a little more.
Dang it...I hate coming up with info late into a thread. I hope somebody ends up seeing this.
If you want prior art, please pre-date 1995.
OK, here you go. Patent 5724106 (issued to Gateway 2000). This may not be as early of an example as the all the other things people post, but so far I have to believe it is the most relevant, because
1) It has a patent with an original filing date that predates the one in question (continuation of a patent filed Jul. 17, 1995)
2) It is literally a remote control with a trigger
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5724106.html
Also, check out the images on the
USPTO website (or get them off that site...you can log in with bug-me-not or create a free account)
According to wikipedia, the N64 was first publicly demonstrated November 24, 1995.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_64
I'm always wary of solutions that use things for purposes they weren't designed for.
I think the slashdot title is probably a bit misleading. It says "Regular DVD", but from reading the article, all I got out of it was that they can put this much data on something the SIZE of a regular DVD. If it mentioned anything about using a DVD+/-R that you can buy from the store today, then I completely missed it.
I've never used it, but as I recall, I believe there is a way to configure MythTV to go to sleep and then wake 5 minutes before the next program is supposed to record. It might require bios support for it. I know my P3-450 BIOS has a setting to wake at a specified time, but I don't know if that has a API to set it via software.
Of course, it has it's downside. You can't remotely log in and schedule programs while it's sleeping, and you can get screwed in the times where the schedule changes suddenly.
Today, however, with the advent of voip, cell phones, etc. it seems like the promise of always-availble telephones is bound to disappear eventually. VOIP surely won't work if your cable modem or DSL router (or your ASUS motherboard) doesn't have any power.
Well, I don't know how long the cable company will provide power (and I don't know a good way to test it without going to jail, nor a good way to get a reliable answer from the cable company), but my cable modem and VOIP adapter are on a battery backup, so at least I'm covered on my end. Still waiting for a power outage to hit so I can see what will actually happen.
How will you recharge your cell phone during a power failure once you've drained its battery?
Well, if it's anything more than a few hours long, I'd stay off the phone as much as possible. When the power gets low...that's what my car charger is for. Now I just need to worry about the cell towers and downstream equipment staying online. And if I recall correctly, during the major power outage a few years ago, that didn't work out so well (I tried making a call right away and had no service).
In summary, there certainly are options for the end user...its just that troublesome aspect of getting the utility providers to stay online. In the short term, I definitely agree that this is a problem. Over the long term, I think this will work itself out as it becomes a bigger issue. The 911 issue is already being addressed in many places, and I suspect that this problem, like that one, will slowly buy surely be worked out.
The advertising potential I'm dreading is when we see Jack Bauer using these to track the terrorists next season on 24.
Well, that's if you want to track someone with their Nike shoes. But what prevents you from taking the transmitter, slipping it into someone's backpack, and then track them?
This is the problem I always have with these fear mongering stories. They start with some unfounded fear. Then, in an attempt to defend the fear mongering, someone make an illogical leap and then bases their defense from that unfounded position.
Someone slipping a transmitter into someone's backpack and tracking them? Well, that could be a serious problem. However...you know what? That technology has been around a lot longer than lojack, and I never heard anyone raising a fuss about the dangers of this stuff back then. In terms of this "slipping it into the backpack" angle, this Nike device has added nothing to that at all.
If we knew it would play the older XBox games we want to get into, like KOTOR, we'd get it, but backward compatability is spotty and I don't want to pull up a list of compatible games every time I go in to rent something.
Where do you rent your games from? Do you have a Family Video in your area? At my local Family Video (and I'm assuming this is done chainwide) they have a sign saying to look for a specific sticker on xbox games to indicate they are compatible with the xbox 360. In addition, Family Video has some of the best rental prices around.
$600 (or more on eBay) for a console is a lot easier to justify if you plan on buying a lot of games for it.
I wouldn't be so quick to credit any rational justification process to anyone willing to spend a huge premium on ebay just to get it a few months earlier.
If nintendo really does have a manufactoring problem to extent that you could recieve a broken replacement product. They should really halt their production and fix the issue. Not that i'm saying they do, most companies have a 1% to 3% defected product ratio and i bet nintendo falls in between those numbers.
Ok, so now do the math. 600K units shipped, with a 1% failure rate (just for kicks)...that is 6000 failures. Now, of those 6000 users, 1% get failed replacement units. That would be 60 people just in this first week alone that received 2 failed units in a row. That's a lot of extremely pissed off customers.
I still maintain that if they can handle doing it, ensuring the replacements are good is the right thing to do.
They weren't required to pre-update the firmware on the replacement system -- just send me the replacement. What I should of received was a new system without the firmware update
In my opinion, that would have been poor customer service on their part. Suppose they ship you a new, non-upgraded console. What happens if, by some fluke, you get another unit that bricks on the update? Now you are really ticked off. When a manufacturer replaces a DOA product (which, for all practical purposes, was the case for you), I believe they owe it to their customer to ensure that the replacement product at least makes it beyond that stage.
Really? Wow, thanks for clearing that up for me, Sony. And here I was thinking that half of them had been lost somewhere in stockrooms across the country, and another quarter of them were sitting on store shelves while disinterested gamers walked by. I'm certainly glad we got that cleared up.
More importantly, I didn't take it to mean that it was filled with poured concrete (so that 100% of the volume was occupied). Instead, I figured it meant that it was filled with broken up sections of concrete slab (which is a common use for those 40ft dumpsters). Irregularly shaped chunks randomly dropped into the dumpster will leave a lot of airspace in between.
too late
I don't disagree with your conclusion, but I do disagree a bit with how you got there. Doesn't alexa base their statistics on people who have their toolbar installed? I believe that people who frequent slashdot are probably a bit more finicky about what toolbars they install in their browser than are amazon's typical visitors.
most late fee are per day late the restocking fee is the same if you are 1 day late or 20 days late
Yeah, well that's certainly not a restocking fee. It's a flat rate late fee.
He was involved in Unreal Tournament and was one of the more vocal web presences for the company(Epic). He did a lot of "blogging" (before it was called blogging) about the early versions of UT as they were being developed and did quite a bit of online interaction with the mod community.
Try the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle.
Well, there's the biggest part of your problem right there. Humor requires familiarity with the source material,
Well, I'll agree with you that sometimes thats the case. There have certainly been times that I didn't think SP was funny, and then after figuring out what they were talking about it was actually pretty good. On the other hand, there have also been plenty of episodes that were hilarious even though I didn't have a clue quite what was being talked about.
However, what I should have followed up my post with was...after I eventually found out what the entire man-bear-pig episode was all about, I watched it again and didn't find it one bit funnier than the first time.
Isn't it incredibly amusing how a show like SouthPark is the most hilarious show until it touches our sacred cow.
No, I don't think it has anything to do with that. The episode was just BAD!
I'll plead ignorance about pretty much anything that Gore has done or tried to do other than run for president and "invent" the internet. When I saw the man-bear-pig episode, I knew that South Park usually mocks some sort of current event, but I couldn't figure out what exactly was being mocked. Obviously something that Al Gore had done, but I didn't know what. So it's safe to say I had no prejudice on the topic (since I didn't even know what the topic was).
When it was all said and done, the ONLY thing I found humorous about the episode was Cartman crapping treasure.
Yes. To be more accurate...the article has it backwards. It says the bars on the TV are IR detectors and the Wiimote has an IR output. In reality, the bars on the TV are nothing more than IR emitters, and the detector is in the Wiimote (like you said...a ccd)
Now with 5 cores ! (and a seperate core for those tricky areas)
Well, if my experience with the free Gillette Fusion I got in the mail has taught me anything, it's that the separate core will be a 386SX.
After I read "Even after Microsoft took the lead in the video-game wars a year ago with its innovative and powerful Xbox 360 [..]" I knew the article is just hype.
...Blu Ray a completely new storage medium.
I didn't see him say MS took the sales lead. They certainly did take the performance lead, and as the first ones to launch in this generations of consoles, that also makes them a leader of that pack. How you choose to interpret his words doesn't make him a fanboy.
Second, while XBox360 may be very powerful, it sure isn't innovative. The only things that changed between XBox1 and XBox360 are a faster CPU (pretty much to be expected), wireless controllers (not innovative because the technology has been available in stores for many years) and an improved online service (which arguably may be innovative but in fact is just a little more than a glorified ICQ which is nothing really new either).
Well, hey. Welcome to consoles. They can't all be "innovative". SNES was just a faster processor and a few more controller buttons compared to the NES. You might say that the SNES used the faster processor to do some innovative things, but the same may end up being true for the 360.
I think the PS3....sure is innovative:
Hmmm....new storage medium that differs from the previous medium only in capacity and speed. I thought you just said that being faster wasn't innovative. Is the capacity the deal-maker for innovation? Back in the cartridge days, was adding more ROM to a cartridge an innovation?
Selling them separately may or may not have been a bad idea, I don't know.
I'd say it was a good idea.
First, not all games require the nunchuck, right? If you have a 4 player game that doesn't require it, you can buy a couple of controllers without it and save some money. If you later find a 4 player game that requires it, you can buy a couple more then.
Second, with the main controller being exposed to so much movement, there might be issues with how well the cord attaching the nunchuck holds out. They might tend to develop shorts in the wiring (especially for people who play with overagressive movements...sometimes even aggressive enough to break the safety strap AND the TV screen). If that happens, it sure would be nice to just buy another $20 nunchuck rather that a $60 controller set.