Doubt it - the "ts" in the filename means telesync, which means someone set up a camera in the theater and hooked the sound up to the theater sound (usually with a hearing aid thing provided by them). They're generally pretty shitty quality.
Look at it like Slashdot karma, I'd not be too bothered if mine all vanished. I write as I enjoy posting, not to obtain some mythical level of superiority.
Nor would I. I don't claim to understand it, but some people really do care incredibly much about their standings in games like these. As a MMORPG company, you don't want to alienate those users.
Xbox game sales have been unusually strong, however, with Microsoft tallying more than 20 million Xbox titles sold worldwide, an average of almost five games per console. Typical "attach rates" in the game industry are about three games per console in a system's first year.
If you read the numbers they expected to be shipped and the sale they expected, they were way off.
False - all the interviews I've seen say that Gates was quoted a $3+ billion loss if Sony cut prices aggressively (which they have). They certainly didn't expect to make a profit right off the bat.
Everything else is making money while the XBox division is going belly up
False again. Xbox is currently the largest money loser, however there are other divisions also losing money - MSN and the mobile devices divisions, to name two.
the entire XBox division is the single most damaging aspect to Microsoft shares
Uh, nope... the most damaging thing for MS's shares is likely the poor economy and/or the poor state of the technology sector.
They have a huge war chest, but they wont have anything after all of this.
Given that MS makes 10 billion profit per year, it'd be rather hard to get rid of their cash by losing a billion per year on the Xbox.
Come on... if you're going to predict the demise of a company, at least do some fact checking first. Oh wait, this is Slashdot...
First of all you have no way of knowing what their expectations are.
Other than them stating their expectations in articles linked to by Slashdot?
I doubt very much that the biggest, richest most powerful computing company headed by the worlds richect man, with 40 billion dollars in the bank and a worlwide monopoly in the desktop market set 20% as their market penetration goal.
For a first entry into the market, that's a fairly ambitious goal against two very well entrenched competitors. Microsoft may be vicious in the business world, but that by no means makes them idiots - MS knows that they're not going to beat PS2 with the Xbox - it's PS3 vs. Xbox2 where the real battle will be fought.
If MS had expected to make a profit on the Xbox, then yes, it could be considered a disaster. MS expected to lose billions - that's the only way for them to muscle in on an established market.
Same thing Amazon.com does - lose a lot of money establishing a store, then use the eventual profits for that store to branch out into new products. No one's calling Amazon.com "utterly beaten" despite their cash losses (well, except for those who predicted Amazon's demise in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, and will continue to do so).
I'm sure Nintendo is perfectly happy to be beaten, given that they're actually making money, whereas Microsoft has been bleeding money and still, despite superior hardware, can't seem to get an upper hand on Sony.
MS fully expected to lose money on the Xbox to get a foothold - when Gates approved the Xbox, he was told that MS might lose up to $3.3 billion in the first couple years. Given that they make $10 billion profit a year and have $40 billion cash on hand, they can easily absorb the losses.
Costs are coming down - the average loss on an Xbox console is somewhere between $50 and $100, way down from the $150 loss on launch. Xbox has the highest number of games purchased per console out of the three consoles.
Basically, Xbox is doing better than MS expected. It's not going away anytime soon.
Nintendo's gotten along just fine selling to small portion of the market. Apple's another fine example of a niche market.
Not only that, but 20% is a pretty good amount for a new product introduced in competition with a very popular system with a large install base. Xbox has exceeded MS's hopes for the first iteration of the system.
they have been utterly beaten on the console [platform]
I'm curious as to how you consider going from 0% market share to 20% market share, beating out the formerly #2 player (Nintendo) to be "utterly beaten" in the console market?
Pity he doesn't publicise that on his Google-Watch site, eh?:-p
Re:Big Brother Google
on
Gator Examined
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Google-Watch's allegations have already been debunked many times on Slashdot.
Google was the first search engine to use a cookie that expires in 2038
And Alta-Vista was the first search engine to use a cookie that expires in 2013. So what? I doubt anyone's still going to be using their same computer on either date, and you can delete cookies if you feel like it.
For all searches they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your search terms, and your browser configuration.
They're called server logs, and just about every webserver keeps 'em. Apache and IIS do it by default.
Google won't say why they need this data:
Market research? Improving searches? etc.?
Google hires spooks
Heaven forbid anyone who used to work at CIA/NSA from making a living after they leave!!! Anyways, it's not like a security clearance would be useful for, say, running the intranet search engine at the Pentagon?
Google's toolbar is spyware
Before you install the toolbar Google VERY clearly states that info will be sent to them if you enable the advanced features - it even has "PLEASE READ THIS CAREFULLY, IT'S NOT THE USUAL YADA YADA" in red letters up the top. I'd say there isn't any better way to disclose what they're doing to users.
Many webmasters have deleted questionable material from their sites, only to discover later that the problem pages live merrily on in Google's cache. The cache copy should be "opt-in" for webmasters, not "opt-out."
There's a clear opt-out process. If it was opt-in, the cache would be essentially useless. As for it being illegal - I'll quote Microdoc News. There have also been complaints that the "Google cache" feature violates copyright, however the consensus seems to be that caching is a normal part of the functionality of the web, and that HTTP provides adequate mechanisms for requesting that caching be disabled (which Google presumably respects; Google also honors the robots.txt file.)
If he tries to take advantage of some of the known weaknesses in Google's semi-secret algorithms, he may find himself penalized by Google, and his traffic disappears.
Translation: If they use a weakness in Google's algorithm and Google fixes the algorithm later, they whine about their rankings going down - which were inflated above other, more relevant ones by using a bug!
Talk about sour grapes... IIRC Google-Watch was started when its webmaster lost ranking for another of his sites due to the Google algorithms being changed.
Google is completely unaccountable.
They're a privately held company. They don't have to be accountable, as long as they stay within the law.
Slashdot Mirror
FYI, links 2 and 4 appear to be the same thing (#2 just has an extra concluding paragraph)... good links, though.
Did he say everyone was trying to break free of poverty? No, he said many. Hell, many people in the US are trying to break free of poverty, too.
Doubt it - the "ts" in the filename means telesync, which means someone set up a camera in the theater and hooked the sound up to the theater sound (usually with a hearing aid thing provided by them). They're generally pretty shitty quality.
Hehe... I don't necessarily agree with it, just found it highly amusing. :-p
Difficult to read as in the "oh God when will it end?" reaction that some people have (ex. my roommate).
:-)
Enjoy the Ender series
Personally, I liked Children of the Mind... I certainly wouldn't have wanted to stop reading at Xenocide, everything would be all unresolved!
I don't really see why you have to be into religion to read it - I'm an athiest and I enjoyed it just fine.
Heh...
Anyone else remember the comments about how shitty IE was for having a bug like this?
Zealotry will come and bite ya in the ass. Hehehe...
What's next? demanding a seperate phone circuit for every person in a country/city/area?
Nope, but we do demand a separate phone number for every person.
Look at it like Slashdot karma, I'd not be too bothered if mine all vanished. I write as I enjoy posting, not to obtain some mythical level of superiority.
Nor would I. I don't claim to understand it, but some people really do care incredibly much about their standings in games like these. As a MMORPG company, you don't want to alienate those users.
They're not paid, however, to watch those characters be destroyed by hackers.
In your car wreck example, the guy was paid to drive the car - not to get in a wreck.
And what was with the "even on Playstation 2" remark? Is it harder to believe that it would have the feature on the PS2 than the xbox or GC?
Apparently not, since Xbox and Gamecube were mentioned in the next two words... "even on Playstation 2/Xbox/Gamecube."
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-945834.html
Xbox game sales have been unusually strong, however, with Microsoft tallying more than 20 million Xbox titles sold worldwide, an average of almost five games per console. Typical "attach rates" in the game industry are about three games per console in a system's first year.
If you read the numbers they expected to be shipped and the sale they expected, they were way off.
False - all the interviews I've seen say that Gates was quoted a $3+ billion loss if Sony cut prices aggressively (which they have). They certainly didn't expect to make a profit right off the bat.
Everything else is making money while the XBox division is going belly up
False again. Xbox is currently the largest money loser, however there are other divisions also losing money - MSN and the mobile devices divisions, to name two.
the entire XBox division is the single most damaging aspect to Microsoft shares
Uh, nope... the most damaging thing for MS's shares is likely the poor economy and/or the poor state of the technology sector.
They have a huge war chest, but they wont have anything after all of this.
Given that MS makes 10 billion profit per year, it'd be rather hard to get rid of their cash by losing a billion per year on the Xbox.
Come on... if you're going to predict the demise of a company, at least do some fact checking first. Oh wait, this is Slashdot...
First of all you have no way of knowing what their expectations are.
Other than them stating their expectations in articles linked to by Slashdot?
I doubt very much that the biggest, richest most powerful computing company headed by the worlds richect man, with 40 billion dollars in the bank and a worlwide monopoly in the desktop market set 20% as their market penetration goal.
For a first entry into the market, that's a fairly ambitious goal against two very well entrenched competitors. Microsoft may be vicious in the business world, but that by no means makes them idiots - MS knows that they're not going to beat PS2 with the Xbox - it's PS3 vs. Xbox2 where the real battle will be fought.
If MS had expected to make a profit on the Xbox, then yes, it could be considered a disaster. MS expected to lose billions - that's the only way for them to muscle in on an established market.
Same thing Amazon.com does - lose a lot of money establishing a store, then use the eventual profits for that store to branch out into new products. No one's calling Amazon.com "utterly beaten" despite their cash losses (well, except for those who predicted Amazon's demise in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, and will continue to do so).
I'm sure Nintendo is perfectly happy to be beaten, given that they're actually making money, whereas Microsoft has been bleeding money and still, despite superior hardware, can't seem to get an upper hand on Sony.
MS fully expected to lose money on the Xbox to get a foothold - when Gates approved the Xbox, he was told that MS might lose up to $3.3 billion in the first couple years. Given that they make $10 billion profit a year and have $40 billion cash on hand, they can easily absorb the losses.
Costs are coming down - the average loss on an Xbox console is somewhere between $50 and $100, way down from the $150 loss on launch. Xbox has the highest number of games purchased per console out of the three consoles.
Basically, Xbox is doing better than MS expected. It's not going away anytime soon.
Nintendo's gotten along just fine selling to small portion of the market. Apple's another fine example of a niche market.
Not only that, but 20% is a pretty good amount for a new product introduced in competition with a very popular system with a large install base. Xbox has exceeded MS's hopes for the first iteration of the system.
they have been utterly beaten on the console [platform]
I'm curious as to how you consider going from 0% market share to 20% market share, beating out the formerly #2 player (Nintendo) to be "utterly beaten" in the console market?
How would you like it if someone shot you because they were merely threatened by you being near them?! This is really what this is equivilant to
It's nothing of the sort. A far more accurate analogy would be showing a potential threat your holster and telling them to back off.
Ah, that's right - thank you.
:-p
Pity he doesn't publicise that on his Google-Watch site, eh?
Google-Watch's allegations have already been debunked many times on Slashdot.
Google was the first search engine to use a cookie that expires in 2038
And Alta-Vista was the first search engine to use a cookie that expires in 2013. So what? I doubt anyone's still going to be using their same computer on either date, and you can delete cookies if you feel like it.
For all searches they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your search terms, and your browser configuration.
They're called server logs, and just about every webserver keeps 'em. Apache and IIS do it by default.
Google won't say why they need this data:
Market research? Improving searches? etc.?
Google hires spooks
Heaven forbid anyone who used to work at CIA/NSA from making a living after they leave!!! Anyways, it's not like a security clearance would be useful for, say, running the intranet search engine at the Pentagon?
Google's toolbar is spyware
Before you install the toolbar Google VERY clearly states that info will be sent to them if you enable the advanced features - it even has "PLEASE READ THIS CAREFULLY, IT'S NOT THE USUAL YADA YADA" in red letters up the top. I'd say there isn't any better way to disclose what they're doing to users.
Many webmasters have deleted questionable material from their sites, only to discover later that the problem pages live merrily on in Google's cache. The cache copy should be "opt-in" for webmasters, not "opt-out."
There's a clear opt-out process. If it was opt-in, the cache would be essentially useless. As for it being illegal - I'll quote Microdoc News. There have also been complaints that the "Google cache" feature violates copyright, however the consensus seems to be that caching is a normal part of the functionality of the web, and that HTTP provides adequate mechanisms for requesting that caching be disabled (which Google presumably respects; Google also honors the robots.txt file.)
If he tries to take advantage of some of the known weaknesses in Google's semi-secret algorithms, he may find himself penalized by Google, and his traffic disappears.
Translation: If they use a weakness in Google's algorithm and Google fixes the algorithm later, they whine about their rankings going down - which were inflated above other, more relevant ones by using a bug!
Talk about sour grapes... IIRC Google-Watch was started when its webmaster lost ranking for another of his sites due to the Google algorithms being changed.
Google is completely unaccountable.
They're a privately held company. They don't have to be accountable, as long as they stay within the law.
Your "asses and horses" analogy is flawed as well. They CAN mate, and they do mate.
Er... that proves his point. They can interbreed, yet they're still separate species.
Personally, I much prefer the Xbox controller to the Gamecube one (I have both). It fits my hands better, and I have no problems reaching the buttons.
Maybe you've just got small hands, or I've got big hands?
It's possible that Geocities is working with the Fizzer team on this - they could have disabled the quota.
If someone's unconcious and bleeding from their head, is it ethical to patch up their head wound without their permission? I'd hope so.
:-)
Exactly... nice analogy.