I choose to focus on the rare cases instead of getting hung up on the crappy whole. I've been entirely aware of sequelitis ever since I was first exposed to it (Beethoven's 2nd). I'm also aware that for every example of a sequel that's almost as good/as good/better than it's predecessor, there's about 5 or 6 more that are steaming piles of dung meant to cash in on a popular film. I just choose to ignore those.:)
Actually, the sequel to Deus Ex on the PC (Invisible War or something) was pretty darned good storywise. The engine wasn't very good (they probably would have been better off using the source engine), but I liked the freeform storyline. While it wasn't QUITE as good as the first, it certainly is worthy of speaking about.
The mockup looked pretty good, but it was obvious that it was a plastic picture and not a screen (kinda like the ones they slip onto the phones at the stores to make it LOOK nicer than the TFT LCD screen actually is). If you pause it while the hand is turning it around, it's clear that it can't be a typical cellphone LCD/OLED screen.
I actually kinda enjoy all this rumormongering, even if the products aren't actually announced. It's fun to see everyone get worked up into such a frenzy a couple of times each year over what Apple's introducing.:)
As a young (twentysomething) investor myself, I think that (as far as the market goes right now), the best things to invest in equitywise (i.e. the stock market) are commodity ETFs (I.E. USO, the oil ETF, and GLD, the Gold ETF), commodity trusts (like BPT, which are tied to the price of oil and give out a healthy royalty dividend based on their output), and a select few stocks that have a low PEG ratio (which you can find by going to someplace like Yahoo! Finance). I'd be wary of anything with a PEG over 1.25 or so, unless the earnings are accelerating.
I'd also take a look at the international ETFs (EWZ, EWJ, etcetera, which mirror international market prices in their respective countries), but I'm not knowledgeable enough about the relative pricing of the international markets to make a specific recommendation.
I'd stay out of the consumer cyclical stocks (i.e. non-essential product companies which sell to consumers) and stick with the bread and butter consumer stocks like Procter & Gamble, Pepsi (which owns Frito-Lay), and Johnson & Johnson. The reason for this is that even in a slowdown (which looks likely in the next couple of years), people won't stop buying toothpaste and soft drinks and stuff you need in the medicine cabinet.
You could also stick your money in a bond or a CD. I think that given the market, that might be the wisest and least risky choice of all.
Okay, perhaps Robot Wars predated BattleBots. I still don't like it. I'm all about the one-on-one battles that BattleBots provided, plus I thought the interviews and correspondents were funnier. I think BattleBots is currently in limbo, though, so I haven't seen it in quite a while.
Mr. Charles may have been funny in another show, but he just seems corny on Robot Wars. Who knows, maybe TechTV keeps it on because lots of people watch it. Maybe its cheap. Maybe both. I still won't watch.
WHY THE @#*^ is robot wars being kept on? Does the smarmy brit host bother everyone else as much as he bothers me? Does the whole ripping-off-the-concept-from-Battlebots (which was/is superior, IMHO) bother anyone?
That being said, I hope they keep Morgan Webb on X-Play. She almost makes up for the extremely annoying Adam Sesler (ALMOST). MMM.... Morgan Webb....:: Homeresque drooling::
I personally am somewhat happy that there's so much interest in them, but I have a fairly significant personal interest in having these things get shipped as quickly as possible. Here's hoping that Apple can churn the damn things out fast enough to meet demand.
Dont know if this has been mentioned, but I hear the bottleneck is the 4GB drives (rumored to be supplied by Hitachi), Apple says they've totally exhausted the supply sold to them. I hope Hitachi (or whoever it is making those drives) kicks up manufacturing a bit to meet demand.
Ech: There's a possibliity of making money of the referals, yes, but I'm not banking on it. The iPods are actually sold out anyways, I think they're becoming hard to find now.
RA: I know its a shitty webpage, yes, but its a boilerplate geocities site, so I'm suprised that you expected any better.
It's mainly there as a placeholder until I can get a more decent site up and running.
Quoth the semimetallic deity: "best i can remember is that apple's barely making any money at all off the actual music sales, let alone all the companies following" (sic)
Apple is barely making money off it DIRECTLY, true, but Steve himself has said that the store itself is just a trojan horse so he can sell more iPods.
I'm sure that companies looking for branding opportunities and/or a loss leader can "make money" off a music store concept. A cell phone company, for example, could use a site to promote a youth-branded cell phone service. I think Sony has proven (with the PS2) that an item can make you money while being a loss leader in and of itself. Plenty of stuff is marketed this way (razors and blades model), so perhaps the bubble will not burst at all. Just my $0.02.
I though I'd take issue with your sig. Yes, yes, mod me offtopic if you must, but the adage "fight fire with fire" CAN be used for non-metaphorical fires, namely wildfires. Don't some firefighters do controlled burns (i.e. they burn another section of the forest) to prevent an existing fire from spreading?
Wouldn't this be fighting non-metaphorical fire with fire?
Financial reports are not optional, true, but that does not mean that Google would still have to give future earnings guidance (i.e. what they think they will make a year from now) to the street. Coca-Cola has chose to refrain from doing this. I'll see if I can find the relevant article.
Also, I'm not an ignorant right-winger. I was deconstructing the previous person's name because I find it amusing to do so, not making judgements on his political views.
Your deconstructed name, for example, would be Bay Area caffinated beverage.
My political affiliation is left-leaning independent, and I'm quite astute, thank you very much.
Quoth the Leftist Analysis: "By becoming public, google loses the ability to continue with constant steady growth and innovative R&D. These things will invariably lead to short sighted planning by the management to "make the numbers" for the next quarter, 6 months, or year. "Growth" will be expected year after year - the innovative ideas that have made google so successful will give way."
I think that Google could still do this as a public company. There are a handful of companies now that do NOT issue quarterly guidance, focusing instead on the long-term (like they should, IMHO). These aren't small companies either -- I know Coca-cola does it. Google doesn't necesarily have to issue quarterly guidance if it doesnt want to. I think it has a commanding enough position (and certainly would have a top spot on the exchange if they went public) to not have to kowtow to the Street. I for one would LOVE a Google IPO -- the interest it would create would be tremendously beneficial to my portfolio. I don't think would signals the end of the Google we all know and love -- selling shares to the public is not the same as selling your soul. As long as Google has smart, talented people working for them, and as long as they gaze over their shoulder to see Yahoo and M$ breathing down their throat, I think they'll stay the same, IPO or not.
As somone on the other side of those ads (LEGAL ones, I assure you), I DO recall a solution to this problem. If the term Kazaa is trademarked (I'm not sure if it is or not), KaZaa can cite a trademark violation and Google will take the ads down.
Of course, Google gets payed everytime a searcher clicks on that Kazaa Lite ad, so they probably won't PROACTIVELY take them down. Would YOU shut down a revenue source like that??
Quoth the Yomiko:
"Once upon a time, there was a portable PC. It was called a laptop. The laptop became more and more powerful, got a larger screen, a more functional, almost desktop like keyboard, and the price began competeing with the desktop. People started to say that it could replace the desktop."
Uhh.... if my memory serves me correctly, it HAS already happened. I believe I heard a news report citing Gartner G2 (or another comparable industry metric service) saying that laptop sales have outpaced desktop sales for the first time.
Granted, this doesn't mean that laptops have outsold desktops OVERALL (they haven't), but it seems to suggest (IMHO) that people wanting to buy a second/third computer are deciding to make it a laptop with increasing frequency.
I think that for most (read: non-gaming) applications, a laptop CAN replace a desktop. It's certainly easier to lug around (though the Shuttle-sized desktops and LCDs are changing the wide portability gab), plus the screens are getting as big as/bigger than many desktop screens. As long as people aren't fragging enemies in UT2003/Doom 3 at 1600x1200 (or something comparably straining for a video card), laptops should be fine.
I expect (hope?) that text-to-speech will start sounding natural in 10 years. I'm sick and tired of the bland TTS that still sounds like it did in the '70s.
Here's hoping.:)
Interestingly enough, I BELIEVE that the third city mentioned in the original GTA literature was San Andreas, which is likely either Las Vegas or Los Angeles. The other two were (interestinlgy enough) Vice City and Liberty City.
This MAY turn out to be true, at least to some extent. I can't really base it on anything other than the literature (which is just hearsay from IGN), but it's definitely worth considering.
I also found it interesting that there weren't any "see you in:: Next GTA Game City Goes Here::" in Vice City like we saw in GTA 3. Maybe it's because of the timeline... who knows.
It would be cool to own casinos and (LEGAL!) whorehouses. The new minigame possibilities are endless, too - safecracker, high-stakes poker player, etc.
My guess is we'll see the new GTA (in whatever form) 6 to 8 months from now.
Like attractive Pete, I too worked at Best Buy, though for a longer period.
I was NOT payed a commission for selling these service plans, but it was kind of an unspoken rule that we needed to try to "attatch" (sell) them with qualifying products (mainly videogame systems).
I no longer work for them, so I feel I can offer a fair assessment as to their value.
I think, in general, service plans and their ilk are worth the price if they are no more than 10% the price of the item they cover. I'd bump this number up to no more than 15% for certain technology-intense items (HDTVs, LCD Monitors, possibly computers), or items that break a lot (videogame systems, computers). Anything more than this is a ripoff, IMHO.
As somone stated, these things ARE essentially pure profit for retail stores, which is why they want to cram them down your throat so much. Most of the time, they aren't worth the extra cost.
If you DO experience a problem, though, it can be a blessing, and it can sometimes pay for itself. It's a tradeoff either way.
Slashdot Mirror
Wrap it in hideous, crippling DRM?
I choose to focus on the rare cases instead of getting hung up on the crappy whole. I've been entirely aware of sequelitis ever since I was first exposed to it (Beethoven's 2nd). I'm also aware that for every example of a sequel that's almost as good/as good/better than it's predecessor, there's about 5 or 6 more that are steaming piles of dung meant to cash in on a popular film. I just choose to ignore those. :)
Actually, the sequel to Deus Ex on the PC (Invisible War or something) was pretty darned good storywise. The engine wasn't very good (they probably would have been better off using the source engine), but I liked the freeform storyline. While it wasn't QUITE as good as the first, it certainly is worthy of speaking about.
The YouTube video has been confirmed as a fake. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYF3BpbFI9c)
:)
The mockup looked pretty good, but it was obvious that it was a plastic picture and not a screen (kinda like the ones they slip onto the phones at the stores to make it LOOK nicer than the TFT LCD screen actually is). If you pause it while the hand is turning it around, it's clear that it can't be a typical cellphone LCD/OLED screen.
I actually kinda enjoy all this rumormongering, even if the products aren't actually announced. It's fun to see everyone get worked up into such a frenzy a couple of times each year over what Apple's introducing.
Umm... Bride of Frankenstein The Empire Strikes Back Toy Story 2 Godfather Part II? Did those all suck?
As a young (twentysomething) investor myself, I think that (as far as the market goes right now), the best things to invest in equitywise (i.e. the stock market) are commodity ETFs (I.E. USO, the oil ETF, and GLD, the Gold ETF), commodity trusts (like BPT, which are tied to the price of oil and give out a healthy royalty dividend based on their output), and a select few stocks that have a low PEG ratio (which you can find by going to someplace like Yahoo! Finance). I'd be wary of anything with a PEG over 1.25 or so, unless the earnings are accelerating. I'd also take a look at the international ETFs (EWZ, EWJ, etcetera, which mirror international market prices in their respective countries), but I'm not knowledgeable enough about the relative pricing of the international markets to make a specific recommendation. I'd stay out of the consumer cyclical stocks (i.e. non-essential product companies which sell to consumers) and stick with the bread and butter consumer stocks like Procter & Gamble, Pepsi (which owns Frito-Lay), and Johnson & Johnson. The reason for this is that even in a slowdown (which looks likely in the next couple of years), people won't stop buying toothpaste and soft drinks and stuff you need in the medicine cabinet. You could also stick your money in a bond or a CD. I think that given the market, that might be the wisest and least risky choice of all.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of.... Oh.... nevermind. :-(
Hallow:
Okay, perhaps Robot Wars predated BattleBots. I still don't like it. I'm all about the one-on-one battles that BattleBots provided, plus I thought the interviews and correspondents were funnier. I think BattleBots is currently in limbo, though, so I haven't seen it in quite a while.
Mr. Charles may have been funny in another show, but he just seems corny on Robot Wars. Who knows, maybe TechTV keeps it on because lots of people watch it. Maybe its cheap. Maybe both. I still won't watch.
I do hope Leo stays. But....
:: Homeresque drooling ::
WHY THE @#*^ is robot wars being kept on? Does the smarmy brit host bother everyone else as much as he bothers me? Does the whole ripping-off-the-concept-from-Battlebots (which was/is superior, IMHO) bother anyone?
That being said, I hope they keep Morgan Webb on X-Play. She almost makes up for the extremely annoying Adam Sesler (ALMOST). MMM.... Morgan Webb....
To quote Homer Simpson: "WOOHOO!" :)
I personally am somewhat happy that there's so much interest in them, but I have a fairly significant personal interest in having these things get shipped as quickly as possible. Here's hoping that Apple can churn the damn things out fast enough to meet demand.
Dont know if this has been mentioned, but I hear the bottleneck is the 4GB drives (rumored to be supplied by Hitachi), Apple says they've totally exhausted the supply sold to them. I hope Hitachi (or whoever it is making those drives) kicks up manufacturing a bit to meet demand.
Ech:
There's a possibliity of making money of the referals, yes, but I'm not banking on it. The iPods are actually sold out anyways, I think they're becoming hard to find now.
RA:
I know its a shitty webpage, yes, but its a boilerplate geocities site, so I'm suprised that you expected any better.
It's mainly there as a placeholder until I can get a more decent site up and running.
Quoth the semimetallic deity:
"best i can remember is that apple's barely making any money at all off the actual music sales, let alone all the companies following" (sic)
Apple is barely making money off it DIRECTLY, true, but Steve himself has said that the store itself is just a trojan horse so he can sell more iPods.
I'm sure that companies looking for branding opportunities and/or a loss leader can "make money" off a music store concept. A cell phone company, for example, could use a site to promote a youth-branded cell phone service. I think Sony has proven (with the PS2) that an item can make you money while being a loss leader in and of itself. Plenty of stuff is marketed this way (razors and blades model), so perhaps the bubble will not burst at all. Just my $0.02.
Actually, Amazon.com has 10GB iPods and 40GB iPods on sale at the time of this writing.
Chris:
I though I'd take issue with your sig. Yes, yes, mod me offtopic if you must, but the adage "fight fire with fire" CAN be used for non-metaphorical fires, namely wildfires. Don't some firefighters do controlled burns (i.e. they burn another section of the forest) to prevent an existing fire from spreading?
Wouldn't this be fighting non-metaphorical fire with fire?
Financial reports are not optional, true, but that does not mean that Google would still have to give future earnings guidance (i.e. what they think they will make a year from now) to the street. Coca-Cola has chose to refrain from doing this. I'll see if I can find the relevant article.
Also, I'm not an ignorant right-winger. I was deconstructing the previous person's name because I find it amusing to do so, not making judgements on his political views.
Your deconstructed name, for example, would be Bay Area caffinated beverage.
My political affiliation is left-leaning independent, and I'm quite astute, thank you very much.
Quoth the Leftist Analysis:
"By becoming public, google loses the ability to continue with constant steady growth and innovative R&D. These things will invariably lead to short sighted planning by the management to "make the numbers" for the next quarter, 6 months, or year. "Growth" will be expected year after year - the innovative ideas that have made google so successful will give way."
I think that Google could still do this as a public company. There are a handful of companies now that do NOT issue quarterly guidance, focusing instead on the long-term (like they should, IMHO). These aren't small companies either -- I know Coca-cola does it. Google doesn't necesarily have to issue quarterly guidance if it doesnt want to. I think it has a commanding enough position (and certainly would have a top spot on the exchange if they went public) to not have to kowtow to the Street. I for one would LOVE a Google IPO -- the interest it would create would be tremendously beneficial to my portfolio. I don't think would signals the end of the Google we all know and love -- selling shares to the public is not the same as selling your soul. As long as Google has smart, talented people working for them, and as long as they gaze over their shoulder to see Yahoo and M$ breathing down their throat, I think they'll stay the same, IPO or not.
I think what X10 needs now is...
:D
Refinancing! Lower your monthly payments and get out of debt by clicking here!
As somone on the other side of those ads (LEGAL ones, I assure you), I DO recall a solution to this problem. If the term Kazaa is trademarked (I'm not sure if it is or not), KaZaa can cite a trademark violation and Google will take the ads down.
Of course, Google gets payed everytime a searcher clicks on that Kazaa Lite ad, so they probably won't PROACTIVELY take them down. Would YOU shut down a revenue source like that??
Quoth the Yomiko: "Once upon a time, there was a portable PC. It was called a laptop. The laptop became more and more powerful, got a larger screen, a more functional, almost desktop like keyboard, and the price began competeing with the desktop. People started to say that it could replace the desktop." Uhh.... if my memory serves me correctly, it HAS already happened. I believe I heard a news report citing Gartner G2 (or another comparable industry metric service) saying that laptop sales have outpaced desktop sales for the first time. Granted, this doesn't mean that laptops have outsold desktops OVERALL (they haven't), but it seems to suggest (IMHO) that people wanting to buy a second/third computer are deciding to make it a laptop with increasing frequency. I think that for most (read: non-gaming) applications, a laptop CAN replace a desktop. It's certainly easier to lug around (though the Shuttle-sized desktops and LCDs are changing the wide portability gab), plus the screens are getting as big as/bigger than many desktop screens. As long as people aren't fragging enemies in UT2003/Doom 3 at 1600x1200 (or something comparably straining for a video card), laptops should be fine.
People in the US actually TEXT MESSAGE in the first place?
Color me suprised.
I expect (hope?) that text-to-speech will start sounding natural in 10 years. I'm sick and tired of the bland TTS that still sounds like it did in the '70s. Here's hoping. :)
If I get a refrigerated microwave, the first thing I'll make is Jumbo Shrimp. :)
NYUK NYUK NYUK NYUK!
Interestingly enough, I BELIEVE that the third city mentioned in the original GTA literature was San Andreas, which is likely either Las Vegas or Los Angeles. The other two were (interestinlgy enough) Vice City and Liberty City.
:: Next GTA Game City Goes Here ::" in Vice City like we saw in GTA 3. Maybe it's because of the timeline... who knows.
This MAY turn out to be true, at least to some extent. I can't really base it on anything other than the literature (which is just hearsay from IGN), but it's definitely worth considering.
I also found it interesting that there weren't any "see you in
It would be cool to own casinos and (LEGAL!) whorehouses. The new minigame possibilities are endless, too - safecracker, high-stakes poker player, etc.
My guess is we'll see the new GTA (in whatever form) 6 to 8 months from now.
Like attractive Pete, I too worked at Best Buy, though for a longer period. I was NOT payed a commission for selling these service plans, but it was kind of an unspoken rule that we needed to try to "attatch" (sell) them with qualifying products (mainly videogame systems). I no longer work for them, so I feel I can offer a fair assessment as to their value. I think, in general, service plans and their ilk are worth the price if they are no more than 10% the price of the item they cover. I'd bump this number up to no more than 15% for certain technology-intense items (HDTVs, LCD Monitors, possibly computers), or items that break a lot (videogame systems, computers). Anything more than this is a ripoff, IMHO. As somone stated, these things ARE essentially pure profit for retail stores, which is why they want to cram them down your throat so much. Most of the time, they aren't worth the extra cost. If you DO experience a problem, though, it can be a blessing, and it can sometimes pay for itself. It's a tradeoff either way.