Under what conditions do they update your hardware?
I have basic non-digital cable without a box that I can plug straight into my Toshiba DVR/DVD Recorder. I got the DVR refurbished for about half price off eBay, and except for the TV Guide feature not working which forces me to check Zap2It and manually programming it to record, it works perfectly. For the most part, I can edit and record the programs I want to DVD for archiving. An in the future, I can even move my recordings back to the recorder when I don't want my kids handling the disks.
My only concern is how this will work with the digital to analog converter box I'll have to buy in two years, but maybe at that point, I might decide to stop watching TV if they won't let me watch it in a way that I enjoy.
Well, I'm just saying what Microsoft's plan is. If it doesn't work, or they fail in the execution, well maybe that's something Microsoft will have to deal with in a few years. But that doesn't mean it's a bad move. We as customers, and advertisers spend tens of billions per year to for us to consume content at home or in theaters. Microsoft is losing money now to guarantee having millions of pieces of hardware in place to capitalize on internet content distribution, if it should take off. Sure, they could try to compete to be profitable now, but all that is important to Microsoft is if they have the machine in your house.
Is a 10 billion dollar loss good if it has a possibility of returning 100 billion in profit in the next 50 years? Getting that kind of an increase in revenue or profit is easy for a small company. For a company the size of Microsoft, it's darn hard. I admire Microsoft for having the foresight to do this 5 years ago instead of waiting and trying to buy in after TiVo or the Apple TV already owns the market. Not that I want them to win, but at least they are trying, which will push the market forward toward the electronic utopia we were all promised decades ago, even if they don't come out on top.
How did the Enron execs break the law? They produced false financial statements, to get people excited and bidding up the price for just long enough for the insiders to sell their shares for a nice tidy profit, instead of building a solid business and turning a profit. If Microsoft can use this to gain control of electronic content distribution, they'd have a chance at becoming the video download system hooked up to your TV. Sure, Microsoft is losing money now, but if they win and have their hardware in 30-50 million homes, you might start to see independent films and new shows be released exclusively on the 360 bankrolled by fans or for a low cost. Simultaneous movie releases between the theater and your 360. People dumping their cable provider and paying Microsoft to provide only the programs they're interested in if they can get it at a better price than cable.
Microsoft can't guarantee this is going to happen, but they think it is too big of a risk not to bet billions of dollars to make sure they're the ones to win. If the potential is to rake in billions in profit a year 20 years from now, how can we really say Microsoft is doing the wrong thing.
Sure, Microsoft is losing money. But it's been pretty much accepted by everyone (except Nintendo) that when you launch new hardware, you're going to lose money earlier on and make some back later when you have a larger install base to milk for cash. But I think video games are chump change to Microsoft.
But Microsoft and Sony aren't in this battle as just a video game system. Microsoft and Sony want to take out Netflix, Blockbuster, Cable company by turning their machine into THE TV/Home Theater and of the future, and rake in $30-$100 a month in entertainment subscriptions. These companies have time to wait, and they want to make sure they control the distribution channel that everyone will be using for entertainment content in 10 years. If this takes of, Microsoft would probably use a Media PC for folks that don't want a 360.
Of course, Apple and Google, TiVo, and the cable companies are also preparing to compete for this as well. Again, a good thing as long as their are low barriers to switching, and most of the content is available through most systems.
Anytime you're breaking into a new market, especially one that has as many lock-in features as the video game market, you're going to lose money.
Additionally, reporting like this just promotes the same short sighted point of view of earnings and stock performance that we deride Enron execs for. I don't know how Gates and and Co. view the current performance of the 360, but I'm sure they are pleased that they've held their own against the PS3 so far, primarily because Nintendo is eating Sony's lunch.
I'm no big MS proponent, but I don't have a problem with this as long as they don't successfully buy themselves a monopoly in the console/home entertainment industry, I'm glad to see another company willing to compete, which forces the companies I do buy from to try harder to earn my money. Thanks for that, if little else, Microsoft.
Well, AO games can still be distributed for the PC although it would have to be by download since Walmart and the gaming stores wouldn't carry it.
As you said, the console makers have made these decisions. But if they decide that the effort to police the sale of a game and the risk of bad press (see Hot Coffee Mod) is too high, they aren't going to make a decision to make something available, then there must be market forces that indicate there is something detrimental to making the game available. If that's the case, you should accuse the parents of gamers who make decisions about what to buy based on what games are available for the system even if they don't plan on allowing it in their home.
Games that gamers would like to play don't get released all the time for all kinds of business reasons, and all of them boil down to money. Maybe another game has more financial promise (WOW over Starcraft: Ghost), maybe the market is saturated (WOW over other MMOPGs), maybe the cost of making the game is too high or can't be made up to good enough standards to sell, or maybe the console makers want to guarantee certain standards of what will be required of a game, in quality or content, to protect the reputation of the console to prevent an Atari like collapse of their system.
If there were a huge market of gamers that would give preference to an AO friendly console, any console maker would love to have a corner on that huge market of hard core AO gamers. But parents will take that into consideration when they buy for their kids, and so will limit the company in other ways. So far no company has been willing to strike out and go that route, which must say something about the market research for AO games, or the risk averseness of the gamers. If you think there is a huge market for an AO friendly console, maybe you should convince a bunch of gamers to petition Sony to open the console open for AO games. Right now, Sony is the only one of the three desperate enough for sales to go AO friendly against the risk of losing some of the mainstream market. This would play along with Sony's hardcore market stance with this round of consoles, and might give them the edge they'd need to edge Microsoft this round.
As for the argument about the TV and DVD players not restricting things based on content, they can, but that's a voluntary decision made by the owner of the system deciding to activate controls on something they've brought home. There are too many TV and DVD makers and around for a company to start implementing filtering by default. Also the TV and DVD markets are much more open and competitive markets than the consoles, because every TV can basically be perfectly replaced by a competitors product, and nobody buys a TV based on the content that will be available on it because all content can play on all TVs. But each of the consoles are a closed system exclusively sold by one maker, and if you lose the sale of a console to a competitor, you lose out on all of the licensing revenue that goes with it, and Microsoft and Sony are playing to destroy the competition, which makes them very risk adverse.
But if you look at how content has changed on TV and Video games, both have gotten more lenient over time since kids that have grown up with the medium have wanted more mature content on their console, and given another 10-20 years, AO content might be readily available to video gamers on their platform of choice, and in a decade or two, you will probably see what you want come to pass.
Revenue is not profit or loss, and I couldn't find expense numbers to figure out if they are or are not making money. Also, 2005 numbers are a bit dated.
Sony delivers the most expensive console, but they chose to cut costs by not licensing a highly desirable technology for their controller over the strong protests of their gamers long before launch. Now many of their best customers gamers are going to be severely disappointed at having to buy new hardware unless Sony included the hardware at launch and can activate it with a firmware upgrade, although it sounds like they didn't.
Will they upgrade already released games to include support through a patch?
The GP did say Sony, and I know I've read many comments, many previous to launch, where people were planning on not buying because of the PC root kit fiasco. They've also been severely trashed for not having rumble in the controller. I hear their isn't much to their library, and nothing you couldn't get on the 360 so why spend the extra cash.
I suppose all of the other PS3 issues relate in some way to the price of the console. When Sony first announced the price of the console, the executives acted very aloof like they were giving customers the privilege of being able to buy a PS3 at $600 (Apple has managed to do the same thing with a phone that also requires a $40 service plan and get adored for it), made statements about how the next generation didn't start until they launched, and generally acted like they didn't care what the customers thought and people should be lining up to give them money just because they're Sony. That's not a very customer friendly attitude to have, and has made everybody that felt condescended by Sony look at their product and decide that there isn't enough of a difference between the PS3 and the 360 to warrant the higher price, so they'll get the 360 since most games will be ported anyway.
Sony also has not paid attention to the history of consoles, and how no $500 console has ever done well. Further, all of the tens of millions of people that bought the last system are now about 2-6 years older than when they bought a PS2. For the twenty and thirty somethings in that group, many are now married, have kids, and the $700 or $800 (because you want games with that console right?) commitment is not as feasible that the $400 or $500 of the PS2, and many have also decided "been there, done that" for most of the games, and decided not to ante up for the newer model when they older one does just fine, or they've moved to the 360 for a better online experience, or to the Wii to try something new.
The last round, the Xbox was the hard core system, the PS2 was mainstream system with the GameCube. It's like Sony decided they wanted to switch roles with Microsoft, and go after the higher end market. HELLOO!!! You guys kicked the crap out of the Xbox last time because they were the high end system, and you were more affordable, and you decided to go after their part of the market, and left the core open for Microsoft and Nintendo to swoop in and take it away from you.
Also, with the PS and PS2, Sony used misinformation and hype to bury their competition because everybody waited to see what Sony had to offer which made the Atari Jaguar, 3DO, Sega Saturn and Dreamcast suffer, and Sony managed to do well enough to beat those offerings plus the N64, GameCube, and Xbox. This time, they're competing with a 360 that is comparable to the PS3 on value basis and a Wii that wants to take away the casual gamers that Sony had last generation.
The biggest thing of all has been the word of mouth. Sure, Sony kicked Nintendo's tail on launch week. But it didn't take long until word of mouth got around and demand for the Wii was through the roof. My wife reads lots of parenting magazines, and every one of them has had articles recommending a Wii for family friendly fun so that the family can spend time together while playing instead of junior hanging out in a corner of the basement alone, and they have the option of providing junior with active games so he'll be in a little better shape than he would be with any PlayStation game other than DDR or Guitar Hero. They also option of playing games that they played 10-25 years ago, and wouldn't mind playing again, with their kids.
But surely Microsoft's lawyers had been following the development of the GPL composition, and advising the executives and marketing departments of what was going on when they signed the agreement with Novell. They had to know that the companies they were signing contracts with do not have exclusive rights over the license of all software they distribute, and those companies are bound by the decisions of the software writers, and that the pending licence release would probably become the default license of most of the software that their contract would cover. Surely somebody at Novell or Microsoft thought of all of this and it is in someway covered under the contract, such that Microsoft has an out or a buyout to void the contract should the software licenses change. If they had such an out, and didn't disclose it to the customers that they were dealing with, they might have earned a lot of ill-will even if they are in the clear legally.
Hmm, I haven't had a console since the NES, but when I bought my Wii with Sports and Trauma Center, I basically got a Gamecube, and a limited NES, SNES, TG16 and I have my Wii now. A friend loaned me Prince of Persia, Metriod Prime, and two Zelda disks, and I got a whole lot of gaming for under $400. I'm big on budget gaming, but there is a whole lot of value in having a Nintendo right now. I'll probably continue to focus on Gamecube gaming for a while and add some VC games before I pick up new Wii games next year.
I don't know, if a show, song or game is interesting enough, kids will pick up stuff. You might not remember learning stuff, but if children are doing something fun, they'll learn without realizing they were learning. Sesame Street is geared toward 3 and 4 years olds, so I don't know that you'd remember watching it at that age, and whether you learned anything from it. I know I don't remember watching it at that age, and I couldn't read when I started 1st grade, but I found picking up how to read when they started teaching it very easy because I was familiar with the letters I from watching Sesame Street.
I've recently heard that any advantage children have at age 5 is usually gone by age 8, but then if they're in the same class, they're pretty much going to learn the same stuff. I think parental interest is the key to children choosing between success and apathy in intellectual endeavors.
I'm sure lots of local stores and nearly unknown electronic stores would love to have the shot at this, although, I suppose iTunes would eat up most of the market, which is maybe what RIAA is really afraid of. Surely it would by DRM free since there is no cost. Could you imagine putting DRM on a free file? I'm not a Prince fan although he's got some good music, but I hope he makes out like a bandit giving his music away free and other artists take notice. Of course, I think Prince is one of the top 20 concert drawers in the world, so the income from the CD is chump change to him. This will garner him great goodwill with fans, which makes him more money, and the corporate suits less. The dominoes are starting to fall.
For electronic distribution, he can probably go to any retailer on the web, and they can absorb the bandwidth costs in exchange for the free publicity. RIAA shouldn't really be allowed to retaliate against stores that carry this for the same reason MS can't charge different amounts to different OEMs for carrying Linux, so I think most retail stores will make this available as an almost free loss leader to get people in the door (they'll still have to pay to get their copies and make some space available in the rack).
Many reasons really. Venus is so close to the sun that it would be near impossible to get the temperature down to a reasonable level until we have the power to move the planet or at least adjust the rotation to something more reasonable, which will be thousands of years from now, if ever. By the time the technology to handle the positioning and rotational issue will come along, we will long have figured out how to adjust the atmosphere to suit us.
Also, Venus' atmosphere is 95% CO2. Earth's atmosphere is about 20% oxygen and CO2, and the other 80% is nitrogen and trace elements. Even if you can reuse some of the CO2 to create a balanced CO2 and O2, you'll have to replace the rest of the atmosphere with with a non-trivial amount of nitrogen (or other benign gas) and store away the remaining CO2, which seems like as big of a task as building a nearly new atmosphere. Clearly, too much carbon dioxide would kill you outright in minutes, and if you were to convert the carbon dioxide to O2, it would be so explosively flammable that it would combust at it's current distance from the sun.
For now, Mars provides a much better option for setting up colonies. In a few hundred years, that may change, but I would still bet on it being more like thousands of years.
I would speculate that when the parents have just the oldest child, he gets all of the attention that they are willing to give to their children. With the next one, that attention has to be divided between teaching the youngest, and teaching the older one, keeping him out of trouble, dealing with him acting out because he no longer gets all the attention, etc. Basically, it could be that this study affirms that, intellectually, only children and first children have the advantage of the largest share of the parent's undivided attention of their parents during the first 3 years of life, compared to younger siblings. I've been thinking about this as the father of an 18 month old with a second one on the way.
Children in multi-child families have an advantage of forced socialization, which means they probably have more experience and better response to interacting with others. Exceptions to this would probably occur when parents don't discipline children, or don't do so equitably.
Yeah, but what is the cost, both economically and ecologically, of regularly transporting the food from the farm to the city, and the cost of preparing the food to travel and sit on the shelf for a week? That's a recurring cost where the cost of the land is a one time cost. The reduced exposure to pesticides and preservatives will hopefully lead to healthier living and reduce health care expenses. Even if the cost is currently higher, if the cost difference is small enough, the additional cost could be written off as being worth the secondary savings. Time magazine recently did a piece that some people are more willing to pay more to buy local to reduce emissions, preservatives and pesticides in food production, so there is probably at least niche demand for such projects, and considering the amount of money in cities like New York, I'm sure people will make this work.
As a side note, its been very interesting to me lately to watch the price of land here in Kansas go up with the price of corn, which has driven up the price of other crops that are also used to feed cattle. Basically, once the farmers think they'll be able to keep the price of crops high, they bid up the price of land to as much as they think they can afford, which in the future if increased production or reduced demand for biofuel becomes to pass, will reduce the prices of crops, and might lead to a run of bank foreclosures. This is why farmers have a difficult time making ends meet, because they always bid their price of land to make them very little money while they are paying the bank for the land. Heck, once they own the land, its income goes to pay for purchases of new land, keeping margins very thin.
I think Google is wanting to host content near the user, so the ISP won't have to pay to connect to other networks, which will make this nearly free for them. I think Apple's TV is going to do something similar by P2P with other TVs on the ISPs network, and share with a minimum amount amount of transfer across other networks, making this nearly free to support to the ISP since they've own their own network. This would mean that 2-5 copies of a program could be downloaded to a particular network, then all of the devices on the network in the torrent (If that's the tech Apple uses) will automagically grab the programs and become seeders to to spread the shows faster to the users that want them. I have to give credit to this idea to Robert Cringeley.
The only problem with this plan will be when cable ISPs or Phone ISPs with TV offerings start to lose cable subscribers to this, and start to clamp down on subscribers or increase rates to compensate for the loss of income to internet TV.
There would be too much risk and not enough reward in trying to run a scam on a big stock. The reason scams are run on really small stocks is because the scam moves the stock price in a controlled manner, by artificially creating demand where there wasn't any before. Since almost nobody owns the stock, almost nobody is selling it, and the scammer knows that he'll be the one selling at the inflated price at a 30-1000% profit. On the big stocks, there are hundreds of sellers for each stock or option at every moment which basically caps how fast and high the stock can go up, and likewise, hundreds of buyers with bids out in case the price starts to drop, so the price just won't change enough or give the scammer a big enough price move to make scamming worth it. They'd be just another trader trading on the market if they were playing in large stocks.
The good works are not sufficient to get a person to heaven. Getting to heaven, in the Christian mindset, requires a recognition and acceptance of God's forgiveness of offenses against God and neighbor, and responding with a selfless desire to please God and look out for our fellow humans. I suppose someone MIGHT do these things for a reward, but a growing and maturing Christian will grow beyond that in time. God also can read our minds and hearts, and when we die, he won't be using a checklist to see who gets in and who doesn't. If our hearts are in the correct state, as developed through a life's worth of experiences, then he will let that person into heaven.
By the standard you're using, can any act ever be altruistic? Someone always receives a reward in doing good for someone else either by having pride in being a person who can choose doing something for someone else over doing nothing, or that by doing something to improve humanity in general everybody is better off including the one doing the act.
I really wish they'd reduce the amount of micro-management and clicking it takes to build an army. It would be nice if you could set a non-stop auto-build order for a building, with an optional cap (stop building when active units = 50, etc.), set ratios for different units built in the same buildings so that it could build 2 of one unit, one of another, and alternate until they hit their caps.
I'd also like to see combat be more deadly, where one or two shots would kill a basic unit, but many shots don't hit. Units should have a setting to play risky or safe (chase a fleeing enemy, take cover under fire). More advanced units could come from being promoted from units that have succeeded as weaker units, similar to RPG leveling up (Kill 5 enemies or 1 tank, and he's qualified to become a machine gunner, special forces or a sniper, aim and rate of fire improves, etc).
Some of these could be optional settings that people could pick and choose when setting up multiplayer games.
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Under what conditions do they update your hardware? I have basic non-digital cable without a box that I can plug straight into my Toshiba DVR/DVD Recorder. I got the DVR refurbished for about half price off eBay, and except for the TV Guide feature not working which forces me to check Zap2It and manually programming it to record, it works perfectly. For the most part, I can edit and record the programs I want to DVD for archiving. An in the future, I can even move my recordings back to the recorder when I don't want my kids handling the disks. My only concern is how this will work with the digital to analog converter box I'll have to buy in two years, but maybe at that point, I might decide to stop watching TV if they won't let me watch it in a way that I enjoy.
Well, I'm just saying what Microsoft's plan is. If it doesn't work, or they fail in the execution, well maybe that's something Microsoft will have to deal with in a few years. But that doesn't mean it's a bad move. We as customers, and advertisers spend tens of billions per year to for us to consume content at home or in theaters. Microsoft is losing money now to guarantee having millions of pieces of hardware in place to capitalize on internet content distribution, if it should take off. Sure, they could try to compete to be profitable now, but all that is important to Microsoft is if they have the machine in your house. Is a 10 billion dollar loss good if it has a possibility of returning 100 billion in profit in the next 50 years? Getting that kind of an increase in revenue or profit is easy for a small company. For a company the size of Microsoft, it's darn hard. I admire Microsoft for having the foresight to do this 5 years ago instead of waiting and trying to buy in after TiVo or the Apple TV already owns the market. Not that I want them to win, but at least they are trying, which will push the market forward toward the electronic utopia we were all promised decades ago, even if they don't come out on top.
How did the Enron execs break the law? They produced false financial statements, to get people excited and bidding up the price for just long enough for the insiders to sell their shares for a nice tidy profit, instead of building a solid business and turning a profit. If Microsoft can use this to gain control of electronic content distribution, they'd have a chance at becoming the video download system hooked up to your TV. Sure, Microsoft is losing money now, but if they win and have their hardware in 30-50 million homes, you might start to see independent films and new shows be released exclusively on the 360 bankrolled by fans or for a low cost. Simultaneous movie releases between the theater and your 360. People dumping their cable provider and paying Microsoft to provide only the programs they're interested in if they can get it at a better price than cable.
Microsoft can't guarantee this is going to happen, but they think it is too big of a risk not to bet billions of dollars to make sure they're the ones to win. If the potential is to rake in billions in profit a year 20 years from now, how can we really say Microsoft is doing the wrong thing.
Sure, Microsoft is losing money. But it's been pretty much accepted by everyone (except Nintendo) that when you launch new hardware, you're going to lose money earlier on and make some back later when you have a larger install base to milk for cash. But I think video games are chump change to Microsoft. But Microsoft and Sony aren't in this battle as just a video game system. Microsoft and Sony want to take out Netflix, Blockbuster, Cable company by turning their machine into THE TV/Home Theater and of the future, and rake in $30-$100 a month in entertainment subscriptions. These companies have time to wait, and they want to make sure they control the distribution channel that everyone will be using for entertainment content in 10 years. If this takes of, Microsoft would probably use a Media PC for folks that don't want a 360. Of course, Apple and Google, TiVo, and the cable companies are also preparing to compete for this as well. Again, a good thing as long as their are low barriers to switching, and most of the content is available through most systems.
Anytime you're breaking into a new market, especially one that has as many lock-in features as the video game market, you're going to lose money.
Additionally, reporting like this just promotes the same short sighted point of view of earnings and stock performance that we deride Enron execs for. I don't know how Gates and and Co. view the current performance of the 360, but I'm sure they are pleased that they've held their own against the PS3 so far, primarily because Nintendo is eating Sony's lunch.
I'm no big MS proponent, but I don't have a problem with this as long as they don't successfully buy themselves a monopoly in the console/home entertainment industry, I'm glad to see another company willing to compete, which forces the companies I do buy from to try harder to earn my money. Thanks for that, if little else, Microsoft.
I bet a 'compression is a series of trash compactors' analogy is forthcoming soon.
Well, AO games can still be distributed for the PC although it would have to be by download since Walmart and the gaming stores wouldn't carry it.
As you said, the console makers have made these decisions. But if they decide that the effort to police the sale of a game and the risk of bad press (see Hot Coffee Mod) is too high, they aren't going to make a decision to make something available, then there must be market forces that indicate there is something detrimental to making the game available. If that's the case, you should accuse the parents of gamers who make decisions about what to buy based on what games are available for the system even if they don't plan on allowing it in their home.
Games that gamers would like to play don't get released all the time for all kinds of business reasons, and all of them boil down to money. Maybe another game has more financial promise (WOW over Starcraft: Ghost), maybe the market is saturated (WOW over other MMOPGs), maybe the cost of making the game is too high or can't be made up to good enough standards to sell, or maybe the console makers want to guarantee certain standards of what will be required of a game, in quality or content, to protect the reputation of the console to prevent an Atari like collapse of their system.
If there were a huge market of gamers that would give preference to an AO friendly console, any console maker would love to have a corner on that huge market of hard core AO gamers. But parents will take that into consideration when they buy for their kids, and so will limit the company in other ways. So far no company has been willing to strike out and go that route, which must say something about the market research for AO games, or the risk averseness of the gamers. If you think there is a huge market for an AO friendly console, maybe you should convince a bunch of gamers to petition Sony to open the console open for AO games. Right now, Sony is the only one of the three desperate enough for sales to go AO friendly against the risk of losing some of the mainstream market. This would play along with Sony's hardcore market stance with this round of consoles, and might give them the edge they'd need to edge Microsoft this round.
As for the argument about the TV and DVD players not restricting things based on content, they can, but that's a voluntary decision made by the owner of the system deciding to activate controls on something they've brought home. There are too many TV and DVD makers and around for a company to start implementing filtering by default. Also the TV and DVD markets are much more open and competitive markets than the consoles, because every TV can basically be perfectly replaced by a competitors product, and nobody buys a TV based on the content that will be available on it because all content can play on all TVs. But each of the consoles are a closed system exclusively sold by one maker, and if you lose the sale of a console to a competitor, you lose out on all of the licensing revenue that goes with it, and Microsoft and Sony are playing to destroy the competition, which makes them very risk adverse.
But if you look at how content has changed on TV and Video games, both have gotten more lenient over time since kids that have grown up with the medium have wanted more mature content on their console, and given another 10-20 years, AO content might be readily available to video gamers on their platform of choice, and in a decade or two, you will probably see what you want come to pass.
Revenue is not profit or loss, and I couldn't find expense numbers to figure out if they are or are not making money. Also, 2005 numbers are a bit dated.
Sony delivers the most expensive console, but they chose to cut costs by not licensing a highly desirable technology for their controller over the strong protests of their gamers long before launch. Now many of their best customers gamers are going to be severely disappointed at having to buy new hardware unless Sony included the hardware at launch and can activate it with a firmware upgrade, although it sounds like they didn't.
Will they upgrade already released games to include support through a patch?
Not that it affects me, I'm a Wii owner myself.
The GP did say Sony, and I know I've read many comments, many previous to launch, where people were planning on not buying because of the PC root kit fiasco. They've also been severely trashed for not having rumble in the controller. I hear their isn't much to their library, and nothing you couldn't get on the 360 so why spend the extra cash.
I suppose all of the other PS3 issues relate in some way to the price of the console. When Sony first announced the price of the console, the executives acted very aloof like they were giving customers the privilege of being able to buy a PS3 at $600 (Apple has managed to do the same thing with a phone that also requires a $40 service plan and get adored for it), made statements about how the next generation didn't start until they launched, and generally acted like they didn't care what the customers thought and people should be lining up to give them money just because they're Sony. That's not a very customer friendly attitude to have, and has made everybody that felt condescended by Sony look at their product and decide that there isn't enough of a difference between the PS3 and the 360 to warrant the higher price, so they'll get the 360 since most games will be ported anyway.
Sony also has not paid attention to the history of consoles, and how no $500 console has ever done well. Further, all of the tens of millions of people that bought the last system are now about 2-6 years older than when they bought a PS2. For the twenty and thirty somethings in that group, many are now married, have kids, and the $700 or $800 (because you want games with that console right?) commitment is not as feasible that the $400 or $500 of the PS2, and many have also decided "been there, done that" for most of the games, and decided not to ante up for the newer model when they older one does just fine, or they've moved to the 360 for a better online experience, or to the Wii to try something new.
The last round, the Xbox was the hard core system, the PS2 was mainstream system with the GameCube. It's like Sony decided they wanted to switch roles with Microsoft, and go after the higher end market. HELLOO!!! You guys kicked the crap out of the Xbox last time because they were the high end system, and you were more affordable, and you decided to go after their part of the market, and left the core open for Microsoft and Nintendo to swoop in and take it away from you.
Also, with the PS and PS2, Sony used misinformation and hype to bury their competition because everybody waited to see what Sony had to offer which made the Atari Jaguar, 3DO, Sega Saturn and Dreamcast suffer, and Sony managed to do well enough to beat those offerings plus the N64, GameCube, and Xbox. This time, they're competing with a 360 that is comparable to the PS3 on value basis and a Wii that wants to take away the casual gamers that Sony had last generation.
The biggest thing of all has been the word of mouth. Sure, Sony kicked Nintendo's tail on launch week. But it didn't take long until word of mouth got around and demand for the Wii was through the roof. My wife reads lots of parenting magazines, and every one of them has had articles recommending a Wii for family friendly fun so that the family can spend time together while playing instead of junior hanging out in a corner of the basement alone, and they have the option of providing junior with active games so he'll be in a little better shape than he would be with any PlayStation game other than DDR or Guitar Hero. They also option of playing games that they played 10-25 years ago, and wouldn't mind playing again, with their kids.
But surely Microsoft's lawyers had been following the development of the GPL composition, and advising the executives and marketing departments of what was going on when they signed the agreement with Novell. They had to know that the companies they were signing contracts with do not have exclusive rights over the license of all software they distribute, and those companies are bound by the decisions of the software writers, and that the pending licence release would probably become the default license of most of the software that their contract would cover. Surely somebody at Novell or Microsoft thought of all of this and it is in someway covered under the contract, such that Microsoft has an out or a buyout to void the contract should the software licenses change. If they had such an out, and didn't disclose it to the customers that they were dealing with, they might have earned a lot of ill-will even if they are in the clear legally.
Hmm, I haven't had a console since the NES, but when I bought my Wii with Sports and Trauma Center, I basically got a Gamecube, and a limited NES, SNES, TG16 and I have my Wii now. A friend loaned me Prince of Persia, Metriod Prime, and two Zelda disks, and I got a whole lot of gaming for under $400. I'm big on budget gaming, but there is a whole lot of value in having a Nintendo right now. I'll probably continue to focus on Gamecube gaming for a while and add some VC games before I pick up new Wii games next year.
I don't know, if a show, song or game is interesting enough, kids will pick up stuff. You might not remember learning stuff, but if children are doing something fun, they'll learn without realizing they were learning. Sesame Street is geared toward 3 and 4 years olds, so I don't know that you'd remember watching it at that age, and whether you learned anything from it. I know I don't remember watching it at that age, and I couldn't read when I started 1st grade, but I found picking up how to read when they started teaching it very easy because I was familiar with the letters I from watching Sesame Street. I've recently heard that any advantage children have at age 5 is usually gone by age 8, but then if they're in the same class, they're pretty much going to learn the same stuff. I think parental interest is the key to children choosing between success and apathy in intellectual endeavors.
I'm sure lots of local stores and nearly unknown electronic stores would love to have the shot at this, although, I suppose iTunes would eat up most of the market, which is maybe what RIAA is really afraid of. Surely it would by DRM free since there is no cost. Could you imagine putting DRM on a free file? I'm not a Prince fan although he's got some good music, but I hope he makes out like a bandit giving his music away free and other artists take notice. Of course, I think Prince is one of the top 20 concert drawers in the world, so the income from the CD is chump change to him. This will garner him great goodwill with fans, which makes him more money, and the corporate suits less. The dominoes are starting to fall.
For electronic distribution, he can probably go to any retailer on the web, and they can absorb the bandwidth costs in exchange for the free publicity. RIAA shouldn't really be allowed to retaliate against stores that carry this for the same reason MS can't charge different amounts to different OEMs for carrying Linux, so I think most retail stores will make this available as an almost free loss leader to get people in the door (they'll still have to pay to get their copies and make some space available in the rack).
It was only last week that we heard about Voice Chat killing the mood, right? Perfect time to launch a Slashdot Podcast.
The Smithsonian had a great article on this late last year. (Hit cancel on the single page print dialog.)
Many reasons really. Venus is so close to the sun that it would be near impossible to get the temperature down to a reasonable level until we have the power to move the planet or at least adjust the rotation to something more reasonable, which will be thousands of years from now, if ever. By the time the technology to handle the positioning and rotational issue will come along, we will long have figured out how to adjust the atmosphere to suit us.
Also, Venus' atmosphere is 95% CO2. Earth's atmosphere is about 20% oxygen and CO2, and the other 80% is nitrogen and trace elements. Even if you can reuse some of the CO2 to create a balanced CO2 and O2, you'll have to replace the rest of the atmosphere with with a non-trivial amount of nitrogen (or other benign gas) and store away the remaining CO2, which seems like as big of a task as building a nearly new atmosphere. Clearly, too much carbon dioxide would kill you outright in minutes, and if you were to convert the carbon dioxide to O2, it would be so explosively flammable that it would combust at it's current distance from the sun.
For now, Mars provides a much better option for setting up colonies. In a few hundred years, that may change, but I would still bet on it being more like thousands of years.
The new way to get someone killed. Have a bumper sticker that says "Don't veer LEFT."
Children in multi-child families have an advantage of forced socialization, which means they probably have more experience and better response to interacting with others. Exceptions to this would probably occur when parents don't discipline children, or don't do so equitably.
Yeah, but what is the cost, both economically and ecologically, of regularly transporting the food from the farm to the city, and the cost of preparing the food to travel and sit on the shelf for a week? That's a recurring cost where the cost of the land is a one time cost. The reduced exposure to pesticides and preservatives will hopefully lead to healthier living and reduce health care expenses. Even if the cost is currently higher, if the cost difference is small enough, the additional cost could be written off as being worth the secondary savings. Time magazine recently did a piece that some people are more willing to pay more to buy local to reduce emissions, preservatives and pesticides in food production, so there is probably at least niche demand for such projects, and considering the amount of money in cities like New York, I'm sure people will make this work. As a side note, its been very interesting to me lately to watch the price of land here in Kansas go up with the price of corn, which has driven up the price of other crops that are also used to feed cattle. Basically, once the farmers think they'll be able to keep the price of crops high, they bid up the price of land to as much as they think they can afford, which in the future if increased production or reduced demand for biofuel becomes to pass, will reduce the prices of crops, and might lead to a run of bank foreclosures. This is why farmers have a difficult time making ends meet, because they always bid their price of land to make them very little money while they are paying the bank for the land. Heck, once they own the land, its income goes to pay for purchases of new land, keeping margins very thin.
I think Google is wanting to host content near the user, so the ISP won't have to pay to connect to other networks, which will make this nearly free for them. I think Apple's TV is going to do something similar by P2P with other TVs on the ISPs network, and share with a minimum amount amount of transfer across other networks, making this nearly free to support to the ISP since they've own their own network. This would mean that 2-5 copies of a program could be downloaded to a particular network, then all of the devices on the network in the torrent (If that's the tech Apple uses) will automagically grab the programs and become seeders to to spread the shows faster to the users that want them. I have to give credit to this idea to Robert Cringeley.
The only problem with this plan will be when cable ISPs or Phone ISPs with TV offerings start to lose cable subscribers to this, and start to clamp down on subscribers or increase rates to compensate for the loss of income to internet TV.
There would be too much risk and not enough reward in trying to run a scam on a big stock. The reason scams are run on really small stocks is because the scam moves the stock price in a controlled manner, by artificially creating demand where there wasn't any before. Since almost nobody owns the stock, almost nobody is selling it, and the scammer knows that he'll be the one selling at the inflated price at a 30-1000% profit. On the big stocks, there are hundreds of sellers for each stock or option at every moment which basically caps how fast and high the stock can go up, and likewise, hundreds of buyers with bids out in case the price starts to drop, so the price just won't change enough or give the scammer a big enough price move to make scamming worth it. They'd be just another trader trading on the market if they were playing in large stocks.
By the standard you're using, can any act ever be altruistic? Someone always receives a reward in doing good for someone else either by having pride in being a person who can choose doing something for someone else over doing nothing, or that by doing something to improve humanity in general everybody is better off including the one doing the act.
I'd also like to see combat be more deadly, where one or two shots would kill a basic unit, but many shots don't hit. Units should have a setting to play risky or safe (chase a fleeing enemy, take cover under fire). More advanced units could come from being promoted from units that have succeeded as weaker units, similar to RPG leveling up (Kill 5 enemies or 1 tank, and he's qualified to become a machine gunner, special forces or a sniper, aim and rate of fire improves, etc).
Some of these could be optional settings that people could pick and choose when setting up multiplayer games.
You're forgetting to use the synergistic multiplier to figure out the value added benefits of having turbo charged the money flux capacitor.