1) Simple probability-if there is a simple 5% failure rate (too high in my book anyway) the probability that any one person will get a defective unit is 1/20 or one in twenty. However the probability that one person will get 5 defective units is (1/20)^5 or (1/3200000) one in three million, two hundred thousand. If the failure rate was so low, only 2 people in the world would share Crecente's fate. The story at 1up about the man with 11 failures would happen once for every 204,800,000,000,000 consoles sold.
To make the second example realistic (make the probability at least one in 10 million, the number of consoles sold) the failure rate would have to be at least 23.1% assuming every box he got had the same probability for failure.
2) They gave him BETA machines. They knew.
3) I'm not going to respond to that. It is ridiculous.
I usually don't put a lot of stock in anecdotal failures either, but when Crecente of Kotaku said he was on his sixth, I took notice. If Microsoft cannot get a unit that is not defective to an influential news outlet in 5 tries, something is seriously, seriously wrong.
That is what I look it, because the media is their meat and potatoes. They should be doing whatever they can to get working units to those who comment on and review games for their systems.
Major gaming sites have been reporting that their own 360s have been breaking. This should not happen, and Microsoft is either extremely lucky that these sites do not take their hardware experience into account or they are paying the sites to ignore it.
Actually the "sensitivity setting" in the Wii menu refers of the sensitivity of the IR camera in the Wiimote not the motion of the cursor across the screen. It is meant to allow you to filter out dimmer IR sources that may confuse the Wii.
The Venusian day approx 120 of our days. The "runaway greenhouse effect" is likely a function of that. Even if we could clean up the atmosphere and drop an ocean in there, it would boil away under 60 straight days of sunlight. Then you are back where you started.
What does that mean? Mars doesn't have enough gravity to hold enough gas at its current temperature. If we warm it up, that problem increases. You can't just wish that problem away. Mars doesn't need heat or oxygen to be Earth-like. Mars needs mass.
I'm not going to say that other countries' systems are perfect. They aren't. But here in America we suffer from far more than the consequences of great health care. I've seen a Pfizer rep buy a $22 gallon of OJ as part of an effort to sway doctors to use their drugs. Corruption and kickbacks run rampant. I've had doctors who would only prescribe drugs that they had advertised on their examination room walls.
When I had health insurance, one doctor prescribed me a name brand antibiotic and made me refill it twice. It was considered "not approved" by my insurance company leaving me a $35 copay on each fill. He could have given me enough pills on the first fill to treat the illness so I would only have one $35 copay... or he could have prescribed me an equally effective generic that would have cost me $15 without insurance.
I could go on and on.
There needs to be more government regulation. Also, it has never made sense to me why we deny aid to younger uninsured adults when aid for the elderly is so much more expensive. There needs to be a basic level of service for everyone. More people will live longer, healthier lives in this country if we do.
I feel that a healthy scientific community should always have scientists that thoughtfully oppose the general consensus. I often hear scientists who oppose the global warming consensus compared to Holocaust deniers. Scientific consensus in itself is not bad, but treating dissenters like evil morons is.
Today for instance, I was tasked with developing a risk score for death for ischemic heart failure patients. What kind of biases am I bringing to my model? Can you think of any?
There is the possibility that the data will be used to deny insurance coverage. I'm not saying that your study has bias, but the possibility is always there.
HTML is not so complex of a language that we shouldn't have a WSYIWYG to make the job less frustrating. I see nothing wrong with users who want to build websites as they would build a document or an image.
Yes, it is elitist. It is a bizzaro nerd kind of elitist that manifests itself around these parts. There are gamers that have little to no interest in the Halos, GTAs, Final Fantasies, and Maddens of the world. I am one of them. About the only thing I would find myself playing on a 360 is Catan and that is not worth spending $400 dollars on a console legendary for poor craftsmanship.
Now I follow video games, and I mean hardcore, so I may be an anomaly, but I submit to you that my mother is a hardcore Zuma player. She doesn't know a Kojima from a enemy crab or a frag from a frame rate, but she would pwn your n00b ass in Zuma. Whether you are shooting spheres or spartans, it's really the same shit in the end.
It is exactly this elitist attitude that is hurting Sony so badly. Gamers define themselves. They play games. They spend money on games. Those people weren't non-gamers. They were just the gamers other companies chose to ignore.
My 360 is the console I expect to be playing far into the future, while the Wii will be relegated to being the console that non-gamers have fun with at parties.
1) Until you get the ring of death.
2) You and many other geeks have a very elitist view of the word "gamer."
While you won't get video conferencing or even true IM, the Wii can send and receive messages to and from standard email accounts. Put her family's emails in it with cute Mii versions marking them, and it should be really simple to understand.
That may not be enough, especially for emergencies (don't they have something like Life Alert in Japan for that?), but it may be a simple work around for non-phone communication.
I don't particularly like NASA's recent successes. The ISS, for instance, is a gigantic waste of money. Their future plans also lack any sort of foresight. A moon base without reasonable space infrastructure would be nothing more than expensive, likely tragic, showmanship.
While I would see some benefit to finding a planet and sending a probe to monitor the alien climate and whatnot, I disagree that simply knowing that a rock is floating around a star is that interesting. When we have the means to get there, I will be much more excited about it. Right now, I want a real probe to go to Titan. We can visit that.
Don't get me wrong, people can research whatever they want, and I am all for it. I just expect scientists to be above "I see a strange sand dune on Mars. This could be evidence of life!" "I found a planet. It could have life!" mentality that NASA is blatantly encouraging, many times rushing out statements of possible water/life before any real research is performed only to retract them later on. If you add that to our absolutely pointless manned space program, I think NASA is doing more bad than good.
You can get NiMH batteries cheaply these days. If that were the case in 1989, it might have met with a different fate. Their complaints were that it was big and chewed up batteries. Atari forgot to make their portable system portable.
The only load times I have seen are on Animal Crossing, and I am fairly sure that is because it has to take the current time into account and build the world around it before you start.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm suggesting it is Microsoft's fault, and that their failure rate is completely unacceptable.
1) Simple probability-if there is a simple 5% failure rate (too high in my book anyway) the probability that any one person will get a defective unit is 1/20 or one in twenty. However the probability that one person will get 5 defective units is (1/20)^5 or (1/3200000) one in three million, two hundred thousand. If the failure rate was so low, only 2 people in the world would share Crecente's fate. The story at 1up about the man with 11 failures would happen once for every 204,800,000,000,000 consoles sold.
To make the second example realistic (make the probability at least one in 10 million, the number of consoles sold) the failure rate would have to be at least 23.1% assuming every box he got had the same probability for failure.
2) They gave him BETA machines. They knew.
3) I'm not going to respond to that. It is ridiculous.
I usually don't put a lot of stock in anecdotal failures either, but when Crecente of Kotaku said he was on his sixth, I took notice. If Microsoft cannot get a unit that is not defective to an influential news outlet in 5 tries, something is seriously, seriously wrong.
That is what I look it, because the media is their meat and potatoes. They should be doing whatever they can to get working units to those who comment on and review games for their systems.
Major gaming sites have been reporting that their own 360s have been breaking. This should not happen, and Microsoft is either extremely lucky that these sites do not take their hardware experience into account or they are paying the sites to ignore it.
Actually the "sensitivity setting" in the Wii menu refers of the sensitivity of the IR camera in the Wiimote not the motion of the cursor across the screen. It is meant to allow you to filter out dimmer IR sources that may confuse the Wii.
Hardware good? Are you fucking kidding me?
Even if you forget the fact that the 360 has abhorrent reliability, this is a company that can't make a decent fucking mouse.
In fact, I'd venture to say that software is the only reason anyone would ever buy a 360.
The Venusian day approx 120 of our days. The "runaway greenhouse effect" is likely a function of that. Even if we could clean up the atmosphere and drop an ocean in there, it would boil away under 60 straight days of sunlight. Then you are back where you started.
"The specifics are out there"
What does that mean? Mars doesn't have enough gravity to hold enough gas at its current temperature. If we warm it up, that problem increases. You can't just wish that problem away. Mars doesn't need heat or oxygen to be Earth-like. Mars needs mass.
Bullshit.
I'm not going to say that other countries' systems are perfect. They aren't. But here in America we suffer from far more than the consequences of great health care. I've seen a Pfizer rep buy a $22 gallon of OJ as part of an effort to sway doctors to use their drugs. Corruption and kickbacks run rampant. I've had doctors who would only prescribe drugs that they had advertised on their examination room walls.
When I had health insurance, one doctor prescribed me a name brand antibiotic and made me refill it twice. It was considered "not approved" by my insurance company leaving me a $35 copay on each fill. He could have given me enough pills on the first fill to treat the illness so I would only have one $35 copay... or he could have prescribed me an equally effective generic that would have cost me $15 without insurance.
I could go on and on.
There needs to be more government regulation. Also, it has never made sense to me why we deny aid to younger uninsured adults when aid for the elderly is so much more expensive. There needs to be a basic level of service for everyone. More people will live longer, healthier lives in this country if we do.
I feel that a healthy scientific community should always have scientists that thoughtfully oppose the general consensus. I often hear scientists who oppose the global warming consensus compared to Holocaust deniers. Scientific consensus in itself is not bad, but treating dissenters like evil morons is.
Today for instance, I was tasked with developing a risk score for death for ischemic heart failure patients. What kind of biases am I bringing to my model? Can you think of any?
There is the possibility that the data will be used to deny insurance coverage. I'm not saying that your study has bias, but the possibility is always there.
I made one.
You said notepad twice.
HTML is not so complex of a language that we shouldn't have a WSYIWYG to make the job less frustrating. I see nothing wrong with users who want to build websites as they would build a document or an image.
And I'm telling you that those non-gamers are GAMERS.
Yes, it is elitist. It is a bizzaro nerd kind of elitist that manifests itself around these parts. There are gamers that have little to no interest in the Halos, GTAs, Final Fantasies, and Maddens of the world. I am one of them. About the only thing I would find myself playing on a 360 is Catan and that is not worth spending $400 dollars on a console legendary for poor craftsmanship.
Now I follow video games, and I mean hardcore, so I may be an anomaly, but I submit to you that my mother is a hardcore Zuma player. She doesn't know a Kojima from a enemy crab or a frag from a frame rate, but she would pwn your n00b ass in Zuma. Whether you are shooting spheres or spartans, it's really the same shit in the end.
It is exactly this elitist attitude that is hurting Sony so badly. Gamers define themselves. They play games. They spend money on games. Those people weren't non-gamers. They were just the gamers other companies chose to ignore.
My 360 is the console I expect to be playing far into the future, while the Wii will be relegated to being the console that non-gamers have fun with at parties.
1) Until you get the ring of death.
2) You and many other geeks have a very elitist view of the word "gamer."
Yes, but where is the money in sensibility? Think, McFly!
I know! I have a friend that can't be in the same room with them. They're the devils testicles, they are!
While you won't get video conferencing or even true IM, the Wii can send and receive messages to and from standard email accounts. Put her family's emails in it with cute Mii versions marking them, and it should be really simple to understand.
That may not be enough, especially for emergencies (don't they have something like Life Alert in Japan for that?), but it may be a simple work around for non-phone communication.
You get to determine "the line," do you?
I think you know where you can take your armchair censorship.
2. Before Halo there wasn't a single decent FPS on a console, just a whole bunch of shitty ports of PC FPS games.
Except, of course, for Goldeneye.
I don't particularly like NASA's recent successes. The ISS, for instance, is a gigantic waste of money. Their future plans also lack any sort of foresight. A moon base without reasonable space infrastructure would be nothing more than expensive, likely tragic, showmanship.
While I would see some benefit to finding a planet and sending a probe to monitor the alien climate and whatnot, I disagree that simply knowing that a rock is floating around a star is that interesting. When we have the means to get there, I will be much more excited about it. Right now, I want a real probe to go to Titan. We can visit that.
Don't get me wrong, people can research whatever they want, and I am all for it. I just expect scientists to be above "I see a strange sand dune on Mars. This could be evidence of life!" "I found a planet. It could have life!" mentality that NASA is blatantly encouraging, many times rushing out statements of possible water/life before any real research is performed only to retract them later on. If you add that to our absolutely pointless manned space program, I think NASA is doing more bad than good.
Or is more and more of our science funds going to PR stunts. It is sad to say, but I believe that NASA has outlived its usefulness.
Let spend some effort cleaning up Venus....it's the perfect test bed. That will give us clues as to how to do it for Earth.
.3 AU closer to the sun. Oceans will boil away no matter what.
The Venusian day is 243 Earth days. It is roughly
You can get NiMH batteries cheaply these days. If that were the case in 1989, it might have met with a different fate. Their complaints were that it was big and chewed up batteries. Atari forgot to make their portable system portable.
The only load times I have seen are on Animal Crossing, and I am fairly sure that is because it has to take the current time into account and build the world around it before you start.
Have you noticed any other games with load times?