Wow! Offtopic I can get into (although how can a reply to a comment adressing that comment really be offtopic?)...but flamebait? 'Cause it's the truth; Vista will require new monitors which close the analog hole; I repeat: Vista requires new monitors which comply to the MS DRM standard. So flamebait my post cannot be.
You have a concentration camp filled with people who are bereft of habeus corpus, and will not be tried by a propper jury. You have a camp filled with people (including american citizens!) for who the law does not apply.
How the fuck dare you say "I just haven't heard of anyone's rights being limited"? With free speech zones where protesters are herded to fields miles away from where the action is, how the fuck can you still say "I still see people speaking freely about whatever political views they have."? With religious thought being pushed into science classes, how the fuck can you say "I still see religious and areligious views being upheld in courts of law"?
With all that going on, how can you say that the US is free-er than ever? Are you really that good at deluding yourself?
And remember, if you reply: 'But [blahterroristsblah]'; that is not a counterargument. That is rationalisation.
"no grasp of facts (like the difference between federal and state govt response to katrina) "
Fact: response to Katrina was horrible down the line. To us across the pond, it looks like a decent case could be made that it was criminally negligent. Those are the facts. Scarier is that most of his post was true (or do you deny the no-bid contracts going out, in direct contravention to what the law says should happen, the fact that the reason for war in Iraq was a LIE (not a blowjob lie, but a lie which has killed tens of thousands), the fact that your last presidential election was massivly fraudulent (and documented-ly so! Diebold is an amazing case) the fact that your presidents base are the richest people in the US, and that they got massive taxcuts, the gerrymandering, the fact that 51% of the vote somehow gives someone a universal mandate(?WTF?)).
Those are all facts. Something is most definitely rotten, even if saying so makes one sound like a conspiracy theorist.
Oh, and I can't believe I forgot to mention the so called 'free speech zones'! You can protest, so long as it's in field way out of view of the press or the object/person you're protesting against??? WTF??? That is the thin line which has crossed the slippery slope, that is.
"Most Americans also have a car, two TV's, a video game system, a cell phone, a job , and could probably obtain illegal substances without fear of being caught."
Uhm, no?
Hasn't Katrina taught you anything? Do you stil think the US is 'the richest nation on earth'? Look at unemployment, illiteracy, innumeracy, infant mortality (43rd, after Cuba!) and poverty figures for the last decades. Compare to any other country and then do the same for the added figures for the whole EU. Be shocked.
"They can also protest openly (within reason) against the government without fear of being arrested."
Yeah...Sheehan found that out today.
"We're basically too busy entertaining ourselves and stuffing food in our faces to realize we are being slowly robbed of our freedoms."
No...to many of you believe FOX and your president.
Duh! Decouple texture space and movement space. I shoulda understood that from the getgo. Still makes it harder to texture, though...squares still make for a more coherent workplace (texturers, artists and programmers have one single 'map', which overlays the same)...I dunno.
No, come to think of it; hexagons are still wargamer material (I was one)...mainstream people (who these games are targetted towards) just won't want to bother with hexes. Plkus of course there's the movement...how are you gonna map 6 directions to the 8-way numpad? Mouse only?
Thanks for the geek out! I was kinda onto the last two parts, but couldn't be bothered to get out the old notes to determine the correct declentions...I was going for something like 'surrounded by the birthplace of angels' at first:)
Not really. It's still the case that different search engines excel in different areas. For real scientific papers/issues dealing not just with electronics, teoma.com is better than google. Althoug googles scientific paper search engine is now very helpfull aswell. But for hard to find things, a metacrawler is still better than just google.
It's a myth perpetuated by the ignorant that google has 'crushed' all other search engines. And as soon as google only gives adsense'd websites on a search, or useless marketing pages, all users will flock to the next search engine. So I'm not too sure what your point was, but it is not tue:)
Cool feature! I want it! Let's install Vista! Hey, why is my screen black? Oh, a monochrome message popped up: 'You need a New DRM supported monitor to use Vista.'...
Shit...and that's after spending $500 on Vista alone....
"and the force of whatever mass in the weapon isn't converted to energy, obviously."
???
Uh...not so obviously, really. Never heard of the equation e=m x gamma(u) x c^2? Even with a surface detonation, you'll have a hemisphere of energy hitting the surface. And depending on the composition of the asteroid, you might create a huge release of (sub)surface gasses (like the one NASA hit recently), which would only add to the change in momentum/velocity.
Texturing is always done on a square 'canvas' (usually with sides of a lenght of powers of two [128x128, 1024x512]). It's never done on triangles, although 3d models do get their uv-triangles mapped to that square texture. So the point still tsands; it's much easier and much more efficient to use squares so you can map the square texture onto it without any unused texture space than to use hexagons and lose triangles (ie not use that texture space). It's a memory efficiency thing.
Yes, but my point is this: which of those points has been adressed in this 'experiment'? Exactly what new knowledge has been generated which was an unknown before?
The qanswer is pretty much: nothing new or unexpected was learned, because the engineering challenge for this so called 'test' was pretty much zero. Climbing robots are pretty much a trivial problem.
I agree with you in a way; there/are/ many problems which need to be solved and adressed. The problem is that this test adressed none of them.
Ergo, it was a waste of money for publicity purposes.
Testing the production of a lenght of nanotubes longer than a couple of centimeters however would be something which was newsworthy and an engineering challenge. The space elevator pretty much has ONE unsolved problem, which is the production of a lenght of material of the propper lenght and strenght. A lot of the questions you posit (all of them, really) are already answered or trivial (in the sense that building an ocean liner is trivial), except for 'how the hell do we produce cord of that lenght?'.
Appart from what the other poster said (which is interesting, but doesn't do anything for my points:)), I'll add this; small is relative. Compared to research in nuclear weapons, B and C research is small. Less people involved, less money. Especially post 9/11, when lots of research into B and C got underfunded (oddly enough, and very underreported). Plus, many of the people you mentioned are involved in the/weaponisation/ of B and C.
As for the amounts quoted, I passed them to a few chemical engineering students (4th year, so no/real/ data) and they confirmed what I thought. Why such large amounts of a single strain? And the amounts are large, also for testing purposes.
"And anyway, anthrax production equipment [...] almost any microorganism"
Beside the point. These vessels are for dedicated Anthrax production, of a single strain. That/is/ suspicious, in light of the fact that testing doesn't require such amounts.
Apparently I know a lot more about this than you do: all the anti-agent has to be produced from the same agent. Antidote against anthrax has to be made from the same strain of anthrax (just like the antidote to snakevenom has to be made from the venom of that same snake, thus the importance of taking along the [dead] snake which bit you to the ER). The article leads me to believe only one strain of anthrax is going to be produced. So what does the government know that we don't? If they're producing antitoxins, they're being awfully specific...they must be expecting an attack from that one single strain.
"Research, in and of itself, doesn't make antitoxins."
No, but it does tell you which strain you need to have antitoxin for.
"Anthrax and mutated poxes will wipe you out within a handful of days and they spread very, very quickly."
Go read some actual research papers on this. Start at the CDC, have a look at what the CBCW in the Hague is doing. Google for some papers on infection vectors and how well they (for example aerosolised) work (or don't). Don't let Hollywood spook you, and go read up on why SARS was different from Anthrax (but not so much from the pox).
Nice, only of course this 'test' misses the one crucial, difficult part; the material to make the wire from. The space elevator will be built (either in tether form or in straight up crawl-up-the-nanotube form)...as soon as we can create the lenght of the material needed. That is the only technology needed to be tested; the rest (ie what they tested here) is a relative no-brainer on which funds needn't really have been spent. Proof of that; I doubt they learned anything crucial (or even really relevant) which can be applied to the real, fuill scale thing.
"As for the gaming side of things, imagine a console that came with a full-size keyboard, HDTV outputs and USB ports for novel controllers"
You're describing a PC here. And look at the xbox360...HD and non-HD flavours. Next generation you'll be able to choose your gfx chip (in two flavours...standard and extra-suped-up) and the console will have changed from one standard hardware set to the configuration-problematic PC....after which people will realise why PC's and consoles are different, and consoles will return to the single set of hardware on which one can just insert and play the game without having to think about hardware/software setups.
Only on an LCD would 50hz be considered acceptable. On a CRT (you know, those things with better colour representation?) 60 hz is the bare minimum and 80-100 hz prefered (and yes, that few hz difference is immediately noticable).
Furthermore, especially if you want to do it realtime, compression takes...computing power! The more you compress, the more computing-intensive it is to (de)compress. Plus, images (textures, video) are not compression friendly.
So there goes your thin-client, with a massive CPU for compression anyway (you could say 'use dedicated (de)compression hardware...but if you do that, why not replace that cost with a cpu?).
"and I'd argue that games are niche application. When your parents, your sister and you grand parents play FPSers"
For one, games aren't niche by any definition of the word. Games are now mainstream...which is why you see ads for computer games on tv and on billboards. And which is why it's a multibillion dollar industry.
As for the second part; no, they might not play FPS', but they do play MMORPG's, RPG's and mahjong/solitaire/chess/checkers/poker on their pc. And that market account for HUGE revenue streams, equal if not beyond graphics intensive FPS' and the like.
"The evenual market for "fully-powered" desktop PCs may only be gamers - and they'll be called "games consoles"."
Sure...leaving out the 3d modelers, video editors, home-CAD-ers and engineers of any description (electrical, mechanical, chemical), home architects, anyobne who needs to simulate anything. You have no idea how much you limit the market when you say 'only gamers need powerfull machines'.
As for consoles...I dunno if you've noticed, but they're turning into PC's. Next generation (after the PS3/xbox360) the differentiation between different packages (basic, nonbasic, HD or non) will be so complete that it won't make sense anymore to differentiate between console and pc...just between different brands of open/closed hardware. After which cosoles will back down again and be just one machine with a single hardware configuration, because thats what consoles where; a machine on which the game just always works (due to a single hardware configuration across the line).
Anthrax for peacefull purposes. Innoculation. Sure.
Remmeber that post 9/11 anthrax scare, which turned out to be of the Ames strain (ie american)?
Considering the small amount of people involved with peacefull research of anthrax, and the legitemate amount of the agent needed for same, the purchase and deployment of these amounts is rather suspicious.
Hehe...'zing!' Ok, you do have a point there:P But that new input device will have a profound effect and create new genres of games (as well as enhancing old games...if it works like it should). As for xbox vs Gamecube type things...I still do my buying based on expectation of content. 's Why the world has VHS and dumbed the technically better Betamax.
Plus, if one where to only compare using whats available, it seems to me that you should get a PS2, which (along with the gamecube) has a much larger share of interesting, innovative games. The xbox is technically better, but content wise it loses to the gamecube and the PS2. Which is kinda alos a function of the fact that it sold worst of all three consoles worldwide, but is also a function of the fact that Nintendo and Sony are more willing to take risks with respect to 'new' games.
"By analogy, it makes sense that there could be room for an appreciation of the sciences without being a scientist"
That's called a science reporter. Or maybe a pop-sci book author. A PR-rep.
Anyway, nice way of reframing the argument. The topic/was/ (all of your posts are framed that way, although you have some nice deniability going on there...could be just my myopic perspective though) about ways of training scientists. If it where 'we need meta-scientists/science appreciation education/science-for-nonmscientists', you'd have a point.
"Having people that understand different areas more generally and who can relate them and make them relevant in new and interesting ways - or even just support them - are valuable people."
Duh; trite and trivial statement to make, deflecting the reframing by making an obviously correct and undeniable statement, compounded by an attacking statement:
"Not understanding this simple fact is why scientists are frequently viewed as myopic and irrelevant by people that do not work in the sciences. To some degree, it is true."
And where did I claim the opposite? Oh, I didn't. Because it wasn't what we were talking about. Nice made up point to attack.
See, because of my broad interests, I know something about rhetoric and argumentation too. And it really pisses me off when someone resorts to it when they got something wrong. 'oh, I was making this different point!' and 'he said this and is therefore a bastard! (about a non-existant claim)' is not debate, and Aristotle warns directly against it.
I agree; N will win this one yet again. 'Cause (and this is a point many people have missed), in terms of profit, actual money they get to put in the bank after costs have been deducted, they've won every console war bar the N64.
The Gamecube might have sold just slightly more than the xbox (21 milion vs 18.5), but MS has been losing money with every one they sell, whilst N has actualy NOT been selling under cost...every sell they made was money in the bank.
Plus they expand the market. Which is good for gamers and every other game related company out there. The DS, the d-pad, the shoulder button, the analog stick...all Nintendo innovations. Talk about a UI trackrecord.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow! Offtopic I can get into (although how can a reply to a comment adressing that comment really be offtopic?)...but flamebait? 'Cause it's the truth; Vista will require new monitors which close the analog hole; I repeat: Vista requires new monitors which comply to the MS DRM standard. So flamebait my post cannot be.
You have a concentration camp filled with people who are bereft of habeus corpus, and will not be tried by a propper jury. You have a camp filled with people (including american citizens!) for who the law does not apply.
How the fuck dare you say "I just haven't heard of anyone's rights being limited"? With free speech zones where protesters are herded to fields miles away from where the action is, how the fuck can you still say "I still see people speaking freely about whatever political views they have."? With religious thought being pushed into science classes, how the fuck can you say "I still see religious and areligious views being upheld in courts of law"?
With all that going on, how can you say that the US is free-er than ever? Are you really that good at deluding yourself?
And remember, if you reply: 'But [blahterroristsblah]'; that is not a counterargument. That is rationalisation.
"no grasp of facts (like the difference between federal and state govt response to katrina) "
Fact: response to Katrina was horrible down the line. To us across the pond, it looks like a decent case could be made that it was criminally negligent. Those are the facts. Scarier is that most of his post was true (or do you deny the no-bid contracts going out, in direct contravention to what the law says should happen, the fact that the reason for war in Iraq was a LIE (not a blowjob lie, but a lie which has killed tens of thousands), the fact that your last presidential election was massivly fraudulent (and documented-ly so! Diebold is an amazing case) the fact that your presidents base are the richest people in the US, and that they got massive taxcuts, the gerrymandering, the fact that 51% of the vote somehow gives someone a universal mandate(?WTF?)).
Those are all facts. Something is most definitely rotten, even if saying so makes one sound like a conspiracy theorist.
Never heard of scirus.com...thanks for the info! I'll give it a try when next I need to :)
Oh, and I can't believe I forgot to mention the so called 'free speech zones'! You can protest, so long as it's in field way out of view of the press or the object/person you're protesting against??? WTF??? That is the thin line which has crossed the slippery slope, that is.
"Most Americans also have a car, two TV's, a video game system, a cell phone, a job , and could probably obtain illegal substances without fear of being caught."
Uhm, no?
Hasn't Katrina taught you anything? Do you stil think the US is 'the richest nation on earth'? Look at unemployment, illiteracy, innumeracy, infant mortality (43rd, after Cuba!) and poverty figures for the last decades. Compare to any other country and then do the same for the added figures for the whole EU. Be shocked.
"They can also protest openly (within reason) against the government without fear of being arrested."
Yeah...Sheehan found that out today.
"We're basically too busy entertaining ourselves and stuffing food in our faces to realize we are being slowly robbed of our freedoms."
No...to many of you believe FOX and your president.
Duh! Decouple texture space and movement space. I shoulda understood that from the getgo. Still makes it harder to texture, though...squares still make for a more coherent workplace (texturers, artists and programmers have one single 'map', which overlays the same)...I dunno.
No, come to think of it; hexagons are still wargamer material (I was one)...mainstream people (who these games are targetted towards) just won't want to bother with hexes. Plkus of course there's the movement...how are you gonna map 6 directions to the 8-way numpad? Mouse only?
Thanks for the geek out! I was kinda onto the last two parts, but couldn't be bothered to get out the old notes to determine the correct declentions...I was going for something like 'surrounded by the birthplace of angels' at first :)
Not really. It's still the case that different search engines excel in different areas. For real scientific papers/issues dealing not just with electronics, teoma.com is better than google. Althoug googles scientific paper search engine is now very helpfull aswell. But for hard to find things, a metacrawler is still better than just google.
:)
It's a myth perpetuated by the ignorant that google has 'crushed' all other search engines. And as soon as google only gives adsense'd websites on a search, or useless marketing pages, all users will flock to the next search engine. So I'm not too sure what your point was, but it is not tue
Cool feature! I want it! Let's install Vista! Hey, why is my screen black? Oh, a monochrome message popped up: 'You need a New DRM supported monitor to use Vista.'...
Shit...and that's after spending $500 on Vista alone....
"and the force of whatever mass in the weapon isn't converted to energy, obviously."
???
Uh...not so obviously, really. Never heard of the equation e=m x gamma(u) x c^2? Even with a surface detonation, you'll have a hemisphere of energy hitting the surface. And depending on the composition of the asteroid, you might create a huge release of (sub)surface gasses (like the one NASA hit recently), which would only add to the change in momentum/velocity.
Texturing is always done on a square 'canvas' (usually with sides of a lenght of powers of two [128x128, 1024x512]). It's never done on triangles, although 3d models do get their uv-triangles mapped to that square texture. So the point still tsands; it's much easier and much more efficient to use squares so you can map the square texture onto it without any unused texture space than to use hexagons and lose triangles (ie not use that texture space). It's a memory efficiency thing.
Have you never played Civilisation? The edge (top and bottom) /is/ jagged :)
Still doesn't help with the texturing :)
Yes, but my point is this: which of those points has been adressed in this 'experiment'? Exactly what new knowledge has been generated which was an unknown before?
/are/ many problems which need to be solved and adressed. The problem is that this test adressed none of them.
The qanswer is pretty much: nothing new or unexpected was learned, because the engineering challenge for this so called 'test' was pretty much zero. Climbing robots are pretty much a trivial problem.
I agree with you in a way; there
Ergo, it was a waste of money for publicity purposes.
Testing the production of a lenght of nanotubes longer than a couple of centimeters however would be something which was newsworthy and an engineering challenge. The space elevator pretty much has ONE unsolved problem, which is the production of a lenght of material of the propper lenght and strenght. A lot of the questions you posit (all of them, really) are already answered or trivial (in the sense that building an ocean liner is trivial), except for 'how the hell do we produce cord of that lenght?'.
Appart from what the other poster said (which is interesting, but doesn't do anything for my points :)), I'll add this; small is relative. Compared to research in nuclear weapons, B and C research is small. Less people involved, less money. Especially post 9/11, when lots of research into B and C got underfunded (oddly enough, and very underreported). Plus, many of the people you mentioned are involved in the /weaponisation/ of B and C.
/real/ data) and they confirmed what I thought. Why such large amounts of a single strain? And the amounts are large, also for testing purposes.
/is/ suspicious, in light of the fact that testing doesn't require such amounts.
As for the amounts quoted, I passed them to a few chemical engineering students (4th year, so no
"And anyway, anthrax production equipment [...] almost any microorganism"
Beside the point. These vessels are for dedicated Anthrax production, of a single strain. That
Apparently I know a lot more about this than you do: all the anti-agent has to be produced from the same agent. Antidote against anthrax has to be made from the same strain of anthrax (just like the antidote to snakevenom has to be made from the venom of that same snake, thus the importance of taking along the [dead] snake which bit you to the ER). The article leads me to believe only one strain of anthrax is going to be produced. So what does the government know that we don't? If they're producing antitoxins, they're being awfully specific...they must be expecting an attack from that one single strain.
"Research, in and of itself, doesn't make antitoxins."
No, but it does tell you which strain you need to have antitoxin for.
"Anthrax and mutated poxes will wipe you out within a handful of days and they spread very, very quickly."
Go read some actual research papers on this. Start at the CDC, have a look at what the CBCW in the Hague is doing. Google for some papers on infection vectors and how well they (for example aerosolised) work (or don't). Don't let Hollywood spook you, and go read up on why SARS was different from Anthrax (but not so much from the pox).
Nice, only of course this 'test' misses the one crucial, difficult part; the material to make the wire from. The space elevator will be built (either in tether form or in straight up crawl-up-the-nanotube form)...as soon as we can create the lenght of the material needed. That is the only technology needed to be tested; the rest (ie what they tested here) is a relative no-brainer on which funds needn't really have been spent. Proof of that; I doubt they learned anything crucial (or even really relevant) which can be applied to the real, fuill scale thing.
"As for the gaming side of things, imagine a console that came with a full-size keyboard, HDTV outputs and USB ports for novel controllers"
You're describing a PC here. And look at the xbox360...HD and non-HD flavours. Next generation you'll be able to choose your gfx chip (in two flavours...standard and extra-suped-up) and the console will have changed from one standard hardware set to the configuration-problematic PC....after which people will realise why PC's and consoles are different, and consoles will return to the single set of hardware on which one can just insert and play the game without having to think about hardware/software setups.
Only on an LCD would 50hz be considered acceptable. On a CRT (you know, those things with better colour representation?) 60 hz is the bare minimum and 80-100 hz prefered (and yes, that few hz difference is immediately noticable).
Furthermore, especially if you want to do it realtime, compression takes...computing power! The more you compress, the more computing-intensive it is to (de)compress. Plus, images (textures, video) are not compression friendly.
So there goes your thin-client, with a massive CPU for compression anyway (you could say 'use dedicated (de)compression hardware...but if you do that, why not replace that cost with a cpu?).
"and I'd argue that games are niche application. When your parents, your sister and you grand parents play FPSers"
For one, games aren't niche by any definition of the word. Games are now mainstream...which is why you see ads for computer games on tv and on billboards. And which is why it's a multibillion dollar industry.
As for the second part; no, they might not play FPS', but they do play MMORPG's, RPG's and mahjong/solitaire/chess/checkers/poker on their pc. And that market account for HUGE revenue streams, equal if not beyond graphics intensive FPS' and the like.
"The evenual market for "fully-powered" desktop PCs may only be gamers - and they'll be called "games consoles"."
Sure...leaving out the 3d modelers, video editors, home-CAD-ers and engineers of any description (electrical, mechanical, chemical), home architects, anyobne who needs to simulate anything. You have no idea how much you limit the market when you say 'only gamers need powerfull machines'.
As for consoles...I dunno if you've noticed, but they're turning into PC's. Next generation (after the PS3/xbox360) the differentiation between different packages (basic, nonbasic, HD or non) will be so complete that it won't make sense anymore to differentiate between console and pc...just between different brands of open/closed hardware. After which cosoles will back down again and be just one machine with a single hardware configuration, because thats what consoles where; a machine on which the game just always works (due to a single hardware configuration across the line).
Anthrax for peacefull purposes. Innoculation. Sure.
Remmeber that post 9/11 anthrax scare, which turned out to be of the Ames strain (ie american)?
Considering the small amount of people involved with peacefull research of anthrax, and the legitemate amount of the agent needed for same, the purchase and deployment of these amounts is rather suspicious.
's like fsckiung for virginity, really.
Hehe...'zing!' Ok, you do have a point there :P
But that new input device will have a profound effect and create new genres of games (as well as enhancing old games...if it works like it should). As for xbox vs Gamecube type things...I still do my buying based on expectation of content. 's Why the world has VHS and dumbed the technically better Betamax.
Plus, if one where to only compare using whats available, it seems to me that you should get a PS2, which (along with the gamecube) has a much larger share of interesting, innovative games. The xbox is technically better, but content wise it loses to the gamecube and the PS2. Which is kinda alos a function of the fact that it sold worst of all three consoles worldwide, but is also a function of the fact that Nintendo and Sony are more willing to take risks with respect to 'new' games.
Sigh...go read my other posts on this topic.
/was/ (all of your posts are framed that way, although you have some nice deniability going on there...could be just my myopic perspective though) about ways of training scientists. If it where 'we need meta-scientists/science appreciation education/science-for-nonmscientists', you'd have a point.
"By analogy, it makes sense that there could be room for an appreciation of the sciences without being a scientist"
That's called a science reporter. Or maybe a pop-sci book author. A PR-rep.
Anyway, nice way of reframing the argument. The topic
"Having people that understand different areas more generally and who can relate them and make them relevant in new and interesting ways - or even just support them - are valuable people."
Duh; trite and trivial statement to make, deflecting the reframing by making an obviously correct and undeniable statement, compounded by an attacking statement:
"Not understanding this simple fact is why scientists are frequently viewed as myopic and irrelevant by people that do not work in the sciences. To some degree, it is true."
And where did I claim the opposite? Oh, I didn't. Because it wasn't what we were talking about. Nice made up point to attack.
See, because of my broad interests, I know something about rhetoric and argumentation too. And it really pisses me off when someone resorts to it when they got something wrong. 'oh, I was making this different point!' and 'he said this and is therefore a bastard! (about a non-existant claim)' is not debate, and Aristotle warns directly against it.
I agree; N will win this one yet again. 'Cause (and this is a point many people have missed), in terms of profit, actual money they get to put in the bank after costs have been deducted, they've won every console war bar the N64.
The Gamecube might have sold just slightly more than the xbox (21 milion vs 18.5), but MS has been losing money with every one they sell, whilst N has actualy NOT been selling under cost...every sell they made was money in the bank.
Plus they expand the market. Which is good for gamers and every other game related company out there. The DS, the d-pad, the shoulder button, the analog stick...all Nintendo innovations. Talk about a UI trackrecord.