They know how many units they have to sell to reduce costs by more than they're cutting their price. The hard part will be getting enough decent games on the shelves to get people to buy a system and multiple games to make each sell a smaller loss.
I don't know if Sony has any back inventory PS3s sitting in a warehouse somewhere, but if the number of units available is any indication, Sony has a lot of units to move. People might think that cutting costs will make them lose more money. Sure, lose more compared to selling every unit at it's current price, but if they aren't selling fast enough, you're better off taking a bigger loss now to accelerate getting your economies of scale (where your R&D and fixed costs matter less). Of course, if they don't sell, you'll end up paying for a bunch of product you can't sell.
Good luck to them, I won't be buying one at any price.
I was researching this earlier this week. The Hybrio also looks good. I'd like to try the Eneloops with the C and D size adapters, so I can recharge those as well.
As I was reading reviews, I found that several reviewers recommended getting a nice charger. The recommended one to get is the Maha Powerex MH-C401FS. Each of the slots charges independently so you can charge any number instead of 2 or 4 at a time only, supports AA and AAA, or NiMH, it can charge in fast mode (100 minutes) or slow (5-8 hours), gives the best charge, and seems to be the gentlest on the batteries while giving the best charge, which makes it a great investment for battery purchases. It costs $40, but it looks like a great investment if it will save me that much money on disposable batteries the first year I own it.
What was MS thinking, waiting until Supreme Court made the ruling that made invalidating these patents easier? Is this a feint to get IBM into court to invalidate IBM's patent portfolio?
Agreed. I've been a Firefox user since version.6, and the only thing I've ever disliked was the interface freezing when I load a group of bookmarks together. Last week, I upgraded from a Athlon 64 2400+ with Debian i386 to a Athlon X2 3800+ on Debian AMD64, and I can switch tabs within 2 seconds of clicking on the folder, as opposed to the 10 or more seconds I would wait before. Previously, it would take me minutes to get all of my links loading, now I can be done in about 10 seconds (3 or 4 folders of links).
It looks like Apple TV and Google (with all of it's leased fiber and new data centers) might be moving the source of the files locally, so your ISP won't have to pay fees to the Tier II for sharing content, thus lowering your ISP's cost to allow you to download the content. The only real obstacle to this is cable companies which are some of the biggest ISP's will be losing high paying Digital subscribers to lower cost Internet only packages.
For system administrators, it allows them to only have to address patching Windows machines once a month. If they can do all of the testing, and roll all of the patches out in one go, then it makes using Windows less of a burden by reducing duplicated effort.
On the other hand, if you're a Microsoft hater, you might think Microsoft is using this to hide how many vulnerabilities Windows has. If users had to reboot 7 times for this week's patches over the course of a month instead of just once a month, they might decide that maybe Windows isn't secure enough and look at alternatives. If you only have to reboot occasionally, it's routine maintenance, but frequent reboots might raise flags in the minds of home users.
They need to get rid of the party ballot for primaries. Put all of the interested candidates on one ballot, and get rid of the winner take all aspect by using one of the many alternative types of voting. Only problem is, the parties will never do something like this that will take their power away.
If all the Yahoo! to be purchased by Microsoft rumors of the last week came true, you might soon see Yahoo! mail from Hotmail by MSN. Then they could roll all of the Yahoo! users into this new interface while they're moving all of the Hotmail users as well. (This might be Google's wet dream.)
What's the OEM price difference between Vista and XP. If Vista OEM is 50% or more expensive that XP when buying a new computer, then, sure they're getting more money, but they aren't moving any more copies than they were before. This was the whole point of the new OS, to milk more money from the same number of customers.
And this doesn't include the time to get the data from the drive to the network (burning the disks), or get them in the transport medium (load the car), and then unload and put each disk in the drive and remove the data at the other end. Each of those data transfers alone would be slower than this rate of copy. You'd have to seriously parallel copy the data, and get a much faster transport, like a jet to compete with physical transport over this distance. Of course, nothing but data center hardware would be able to keep up with this sort of transfer at either end.
We need to get rid of party based primaries where Democrats get one ballot, and Republicans get another. You end up with 3 or 4 candidates trying to be the best member of their party instead of having all of the candidates trying to appeal to the entire electorate from the start. If you had this, you might have several small parties, that would align themselves behind one candidate since they might have different interests (say an economic party, a labor party, and social issues party) and one candidate might be able to appeal to the interests of each party. Politics would be much more fluid, and instead of having 50 senators that all want the same thing even if not every member of their party agrees on that issue, you would hopefully get a majority of candidates that would more accurately reflect the interests of their constituents.
For instance, 60% of people might like higher minimum wages (left issue), lower health insurance premiums (left issue), unlegalized abortion (right issue), and lower taxes (right issue), but you'll never get that sort of representation in our party system, but you're more likely to get it with non-partisan primaries.
I'd like to see primaries be up or down for every candidate, or vote for up to your top 10, and no party ballots, and all states vote the same day. Then instead of getting candidates fighting for the extremist positions within their parties' fringe to cobble together enough votes to win the primary, several or most of the candidates will be trying to go to the middle and trying to pick and choose issues from both sides of the political spectrum to pick up support from more than half of the voting public. Any candidate that can get a vote from half of the population gets on the ballot, then you have the election, and vote by ranking the candidates, which guarantees you'll get the candidate that would have beat each of the others head to head. If only one candidate gets 50% approval in the primary, then they win the election by being the only candidate that half of the people wanted.
Can't see much point in going BR or HD-DVD, since I can't imagine more than a few machines even have drives yet and fewer people with no or low speed connection that this is geared toward. Heck, very few games and other stuff even come out on DVD yet for fear of people not buying due to no DVD drive (a shame, I've had one since 2000 during a laser shortage).
I wonder what percentage of those sales are to PS3 owners looking for any new game to play on their PS3. Assuming they had this game made to work or the PS3 out of the box.
If you don't like it, take your business elsewhere. Every business evolves to improve or maintain profitability and competitiveness. If you don't like Google's business practices, go to MSN, Yahoo, Ask, another competitor, or build your own.
As they say, the only constant in business is change. And when you have a market as cut throat as internet advertising, companies are going to do everything they think of to get an edge. Google is a business, and they aren't the government, so I don't have any problem with them having information on me as long as the advertising doesn't get more invasive, like in Minority Report.
I really think the Wii needs to open up to boardgame development. I know that the primary way the system is to be used is to have the player up and moving. But the Wii-mote is the most mouse-like interface a console has ever seen, and would be great for rolling dice by shaking the controller, adding on a small hand held screen in place of the Nun-chuck for hidden information that other players shouldn't know, like cards for poker or Risk, etc. I plan on getting a system, and I'd love to have some board game type games that the family could play in the living room.
The Big Ploy, Read as: "In 6 months, what you'll be able to buy will be inferior to what you can buy today. Run out and buy one now if you are considering getting one in the future, because you won't want to be stuck with one of our downgraded models."
It sounds like Sony is getting more and more desperate to get units out the door, that now they're threatening to stick their customers with inferior hardware if they don't buy soon. That's practically blackmail.
Haven't standardized tests gotten harder over the years? Doesn't that mean that people that are taking the tests are getting smarter at test taking, which is supposed to be a sign of more intelligence?
While I as a Linux user would like to agree, it's probably significantly cheaper for us to get our OpenGL cards as an DirectX card that also supports OpenGL. Since nVidia cards sell 10-50 times as many as OpenGL only cards would sell (currently, if Linux and OSX had 50% of the market, the cards might sell evenly), OpenGL users get the benefits of getting our cards at the price of a DirectX card. An OpenGL only card would probably need to cost 3-10 times as much as the same DirectX/OpenGL combo card to cover the additional expense of developing a niche card that would have a significantly smaller market. Until a significant market for OpenGL only cards comes along, we'll continue to be stuck with combo cards. But thats OK with me, we've got millions of Windows games paying more than their share to have our OpenGL tech tacked on their cards, which keeps our cost low.
Although I've been a historically Windows user who has switched to Linux, I would say that if the value of the Mac machine has more value than the DRM infested Vista, I would say that the Mac is not overpriced, since the Mac is more powerful than Vista, since it will use the DRM cycles to do something else and will do what you want. In fact, if Vista has less value for you, I would say that it is the one that is over priced.
I know Vista will run on 32-bit OSs, but anybody that's going to pay for a non-OEM license to run it should go ahead and pony up some money for new hardware anyway. And most of that old hardware will never be Vista ready, because most hardware build pre-2004 will never have drivers for Vista.
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I don't know if Sony has any back inventory PS3s sitting in a warehouse somewhere, but if the number of units available is any indication, Sony has a lot of units to move. People might think that cutting costs will make them lose more money. Sure, lose more compared to selling every unit at it's current price, but if they aren't selling fast enough, you're better off taking a bigger loss now to accelerate getting your economies of scale (where your R&D and fixed costs matter less). Of course, if they don't sell, you'll end up paying for a bunch of product you can't sell.
Good luck to them, I won't be buying one at any price.
As I was reading reviews, I found that several reviewers recommended getting a nice charger. The recommended one to get is the Maha Powerex MH-C401FS. Each of the slots charges independently so you can charge any number instead of 2 or 4 at a time only, supports AA and AAA, or NiMH, it can charge in fast mode (100 minutes) or slow (5-8 hours), gives the best charge, and seems to be the gentlest on the batteries while giving the best charge, which makes it a great investment for battery purchases. It costs $40, but it looks like a great investment if it will save me that much money on disposable batteries the first year I own it.
What was MS thinking, waiting until Supreme Court made the ruling that made invalidating these patents easier? Is this a feint to get IBM into court to invalidate IBM's patent portfolio?
The analysis to do this could be run by the client, as it observes your usage, then uploaded. Sounds like spyware or crapware if they do it.
Didn't completely die out. My grandmother still had a party line in the mid-eighties in rural Kansas. The other party was a relative.
Agreed. I've been a Firefox user since version .6, and the only thing I've ever disliked was the interface freezing when I load a group of bookmarks together. Last week, I upgraded from a Athlon 64 2400+ with Debian i386 to a Athlon X2 3800+ on Debian AMD64, and I can switch tabs within 2 seconds of clicking on the folder, as opposed to the 10 or more seconds I would wait before. Previously, it would take me minutes to get all of my links loading, now I can be done in about 10 seconds (3 or 4 folders of links).
It looks like Apple TV and Google (with all of it's leased fiber and new data centers) might be moving the source of the files locally, so your ISP won't have to pay fees to the Tier II for sharing content, thus lowering your ISP's cost to allow you to download the content. The only real obstacle to this is cable companies which are some of the biggest ISP's will be losing high paying Digital subscribers to lower cost Internet only packages.
For system administrators, it allows them to only have to address patching Windows machines once a month. If they can do all of the testing, and roll all of the patches out in one go, then it makes using Windows less of a burden by reducing duplicated effort.
On the other hand, if you're a Microsoft hater, you might think Microsoft is using this to hide how many vulnerabilities Windows has. If users had to reboot 7 times for this week's patches over the course of a month instead of just once a month, they might decide that maybe Windows isn't secure enough and look at alternatives. If you only have to reboot occasionally, it's routine maintenance, but frequent reboots might raise flags in the minds of home users.
They need to get rid of the party ballot for primaries. Put all of the interested candidates on one ballot, and get rid of the winner take all aspect by using one of the many alternative types of voting. Only problem is, the parties will never do something like this that will take their power away.
If all the Yahoo! to be purchased by Microsoft rumors of the last week came true, you might soon see Yahoo! mail from Hotmail by MSN. Then they could roll all of the Yahoo! users into this new interface while they're moving all of the Hotmail users as well. (This might be Google's wet dream.)
Meanwhile, Nintendo has announced an desire to increase production to get the installed base up.
What's the OEM price difference between Vista and XP. If Vista OEM is 50% or more expensive that XP when buying a new computer, then, sure they're getting more money, but they aren't moving any more copies than they were before. This was the whole point of the new OS, to milk more money from the same number of customers.
And this doesn't include the time to get the data from the drive to the network (burning the disks), or get them in the transport medium (load the car), and then unload and put each disk in the drive and remove the data at the other end. Each of those data transfers alone would be slower than this rate of copy. You'd have to seriously parallel copy the data, and get a much faster transport, like a jet to compete with physical transport over this distance. Of course, nothing but data center hardware would be able to keep up with this sort of transfer at either end.
Glickman was a Congressman from Kansas, who probably got the job for helping pass some DRM-friendly legislation through Congress.
For instance, 60% of people might like higher minimum wages (left issue), lower health insurance premiums (left issue), unlegalized abortion (right issue), and lower taxes (right issue), but you'll never get that sort of representation in our party system, but you're more likely to get it with non-partisan primaries.
I'd like to see primaries be up or down for every candidate, or vote for up to your top 10, and no party ballots, and all states vote the same day. Then instead of getting candidates fighting for the extremist positions within their parties' fringe to cobble together enough votes to win the primary, several or most of the candidates will be trying to go to the middle and trying to pick and choose issues from both sides of the political spectrum to pick up support from more than half of the voting public. Any candidate that can get a vote from half of the population gets on the ballot, then you have the election, and vote by ranking the candidates, which guarantees you'll get the candidate that would have beat each of the others head to head. If only one candidate gets 50% approval in the primary, then they win the election by being the only candidate that half of the people wanted.
Can't see much point in going BR or HD-DVD, since I can't imagine more than a few machines even have drives yet and fewer people with no or low speed connection that this is geared toward. Heck, very few games and other stuff even come out on DVD yet for fear of people not buying due to no DVD drive (a shame, I've had one since 2000 during a laser shortage).
I wonder what percentage of those sales are to PS3 owners looking for any new game to play on their PS3. Assuming they had this game made to work or the PS3 out of the box.
As they say, the only constant in business is change. And when you have a market as cut throat as internet advertising, companies are going to do everything they think of to get an edge. Google is a business, and they aren't the government, so I don't have any problem with them having information on me as long as the advertising doesn't get more invasive, like in Minority Report.
I really think the Wii needs to open up to boardgame development. I know that the primary way the system is to be used is to have the player up and moving. But the Wii-mote is the most mouse-like interface a console has ever seen, and would be great for rolling dice by shaking the controller, adding on a small hand held screen in place of the Nun-chuck for hidden information that other players shouldn't know, like cards for poker or Risk, etc. I plan on getting a system, and I'd love to have some board game type games that the family could play in the living room.
It sounds like Sony is getting more and more desperate to get units out the door, that now they're threatening to stick their customers with inferior hardware if they don't buy soon. That's practically blackmail.
Haven't standardized tests gotten harder over the years? Doesn't that mean that people that are taking the tests are getting smarter at test taking, which is supposed to be a sign of more intelligence?
While I as a Linux user would like to agree, it's probably significantly cheaper for us to get our OpenGL cards as an DirectX card that also supports OpenGL. Since nVidia cards sell 10-50 times as many as OpenGL only cards would sell (currently, if Linux and OSX had 50% of the market, the cards might sell evenly), OpenGL users get the benefits of getting our cards at the price of a DirectX card. An OpenGL only card would probably need to cost 3-10 times as much as the same DirectX/OpenGL combo card to cover the additional expense of developing a niche card that would have a significantly smaller market. Until a significant market for OpenGL only cards comes along, we'll continue to be stuck with combo cards. But thats OK with me, we've got millions of Windows games paying more than their share to have our OpenGL tech tacked on their cards, which keeps our cost low.
Although I've been a historically Windows user who has switched to Linux, I would say that if the value of the Mac machine has more value than the DRM infested Vista, I would say that the Mac is not overpriced, since the Mac is more powerful than Vista, since it will use the DRM cycles to do something else and will do what you want. In fact, if Vista has less value for you, I would say that it is the one that is over priced.
I know Vista will run on 32-bit OSs, but anybody that's going to pay for a non-OEM license to run it should go ahead and pony up some money for new hardware anyway. And most of that old hardware will never be Vista ready, because most hardware build pre-2004 will never have drivers for Vista.