I've seen hundreds of commercials for antacids but this is the first time i've ever heard of an actual _cure_ for ulcers. As a doctor you may know about more effective treatments or even cures for any particular problem, but i don't think that in itself negates the grand-parent's argument that whenever possible treatments are what is pushed by pharma marketing departments, not cures, and if possible they'd rather sell a more expensive patented treatment than a cheaper generic one.
And YES, I am just a normal guy with no medical training whatsoever.
My personal pick for the year is Dragon Quest: Rocket Slime. It's got simple Zelda like gameplay but it's really addictive for some reason, especially if you're one of those people (like me) who are into 100% completion. The tanks battles are odd but figuring out the strategies and then kicking ass at it is lots of fun. And you get to control a slime! How cool is that? My one disapointment is that so far as i can tell having gotten gold statues of every single monster in the game doesn't seem to have unlocked anything cool:(
Actually i was just looking into this for another comment on this article, and if you check GAFs hardware sales numbers the 360 is at 142k so far this year as of the last week's reported sales, and according to the last hardware sales article from last year they sold 70k in 2005. So about 210k consoles total.
Personally, I'm amazed there are enough 360s in Japan for the game to sell that well, going from Microsoft's abysmal track record there thus far.
According to this Microsoft has sold just over 142k units of the 360 so far this year. And according to this they sold 70k units last year, so about 210k units total. Blue Dragon sold 80k units, i believe 30k as the bundle with the console and 50k as just the game. So of the 180k people who had the console before this week 28% of them bought Blue Dragon. So assuming a steady percentage of people buying the console just to get the game they could theoretically keep up that sale rate for three more weeks before reaching a 100% attach rate.
The practices that made the owners, employees, and customers like the company were exactly the practices that a large company or a company driven by short-term profits would not do. In short, they could have sold out at any time, and become not better than their competition for the sake of short-term gains, but chose not to because they wanted to do a good job.
I just finished re-reading "The Door Into Summer" by Robert Heinlein and i'm reminded of the part where the main character's business partners are trying to force him out of so they can sell the company to a big corporation. He says something along the lines of "You can't use more than one swimming pool or more than one yacht at a time, and you'll have both in another year with the way we're doing business now so why should we sell out to another company and put them in charge?" But his partners are intent on having more money and power than they can actually use, just for the sake of money and power.
It seems like all the old desires to build empires out of countries has changed with the times and been applied to the business world. I wonder if society as a whole will ever look back at the present and think "why did they ever waste so much time and happiness in pursuit of something like that?"
I'm also curious if you have a response to claims that historical records do show a link between global temperature averages and atmosphiric carbon, but that historically the temperature increased first and _then_ the carbon levels increased. I originally encountered the claim in James P. Hogan's "Kicking the Sacred Cow," but i don't have the book with me so i can't site whatever sources he used.
I think you should look into the case of Immanuel Velikovsky. He proposed some radical ideas about planetology and other subjects that were vehemently rejected by the scientists of his day. However instead of openly debating him they frequently resorted to character attacks, misrepresentations of his claims, and of course stonewalling any submissions he made to peer reviewed publications. However because he was persistent and had written a couple popular books his ideas still became known. Furthermore some of the predictions were proven correct, and although his more extreme ideas are still rejected a lot of the underlying ideas the he first helped popularize have been accepted since then.
I don't think his more extreme predictions were necessarily correct, but i do think that the issue was handled by the scientific majority in entirely the wrong manner. And given the difficulties he faced, imagine the difficulties facing someone who doesn't have the publicity or fortitude to wade through the opposition that Velikovsky did.
I'm sure they'll have something, and it'll probably be a PlayStation brand, but they'll likely come up with another way to name it. Maybe PSNext or something to that effect.
Well you're half right. They _are_ a little superstitious about the number 4 in japan because of the similarity in sound. I've heard that this is why you'll frequently see teams of three or five in anime but rarely of four. And frequently if the number four is invoked at all it's because of some outside cultural reference such as the traditional western four elements or the four chinese celestial guardians. And i believe that sometimes japanese hotels will skip the 4th floor the way american hotels will sometimes skip the 13th floor.
However it's not like they don't have ways of dealing with the issue when necessary. In japan there's an alternate pronunciation, "yon." And the superstition didn't stop there from being a Final Fantasy 4 or a Dragon Quest 4, although they used the "american" pronunciation "foa" rahter than "shi." So i wouldn't be at all surprised if the next sony console is the "Purei Suteshon Foa" in japan.
*sigh* Please note the "[/sarcasm]" bit. I actually thought this article was actually pro Sony. Greater than 100% increases in sales for both the PS2 and PSP? Sounds pretty good for Sony to me.
The office i was working at about five years ago decided to "upgrade" everyone to Aeron chairs. In my opinion they sucked. Maybe if you want to sit with "perfect posture" all day they work fine, but i tend to shift around all day and sometimes cross my legs, and whenver i did that the hard frame would start digging into me and be incredibly uncomfortable. On the plus side since they were getting new chairs for everyone they had no use for the old ones and told us we could take them home and keep them if we wanted, so i now have a very comfortable office chair at home that has far outlasted my employment at that particular company.
So why didn't this article get tagged for the games section? I can see that it's got enough technical detail to warrant being on the front page, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be part of the games section as well.
It missed _both_ Marie Curie and Hypatia? That's pretty pathetic. Hypatia was the first person who came to mind upon reading the blurb. (The article itself still seems to be slashdotted however.)
Well you could just click on the link to RTFA and find that it happened on the 2nd of this month. (This month is November if you're _really_ not paying attention.) Or you could put "mars" into the search bar for Slashdot and find this article from about a week and a half ago.
Epic was apparently expecting that; GameDaily spoke with Microsoft Corporate VP of Global Marketing Jeff Bell, who as much as says that Gears is the first chapter in a trilogy.
Not to be cynical, but after seeing the response and sales it's gotten they're certainly going to say it's the begining of a trilogy _now_, regardless of what they originally expected or had planed.
Same here. I don't know if it went away because i switched my router channel from 6 to 3 or becuse when i did that and tried again it was about 36 hours after the launch and the rush had died down. It was still a little slow with the download but it seems to be working fine now.
From what I've heard, the classic controller can only be used for VC games, and the GC controller can only be used for GC games.
That's not true at all. Although the chart doesn't say anything about whether the classic controller can be used for gamecube games. Given that you can use both the gamecube and classic controller for most of the same VC games i'd be surprised if the classic controller didn't work for gamecube games. In fact, hold on....
Ok, i stand corrected, i can't get the classic controller to work with Star Wars Lego 2. In fact the remote doesn't work at _all_, meaning there's no way to get back to the Wii menu once you've started a gamecube game without manually reseting the system as far as i can tell. Hopefully both of those issues will be fixed by a patch at some point.
I don't know specific numbers, but it's interesting that in the weeks, days, and even hours leading up to the PS3 release they seemed to be constantly downgrading the number of units that would be available.
With the Revolution however i checked the list of shipments for Target stores that got posted online and it said my local Target would get 60. When i went to the store the day before and asked they said they were going to have 65. I got in line at midnight and ended up being #44 in line. When they started handing out line tickets at 7am, one per console they had in the store, there were 69 of them. They had enough for everyone in line but just barely. We had a guy at the front unoficially keeping track of who in line was there to buy a console, so it's possible that some people who'd kept track of the expected figures decided to go find another line when they found out they were going to be #66 at a store expecting 60 or 65. There was a lot of coming and going in the line behind me that i did't really keep track of.
So who all has actually managed to set up their Revolution to use the internet? Mine found my access point just fine, i gave it the password and the connection test went fine. But after saying that the internet is working it says there's an update it needs to download. It spins its wheel for a minute or three while the progress bar doesn't move at all and then fails out with a 32002 or 32004 error. According to support.nintendo.com this means "The Wii console was unable to receive an update from Nintendo, due to a technical issue with our servers."
So has _anyone_ managed to get theirs working? Is it only the rush of hudreds of thousands of people trying to update at once that's fubared their server or is it just not working at all?
Slashdot Mirror
And YES, I am just a normal guy with no medical training whatsoever.
My personal pick for the year is Dragon Quest: Rocket Slime. It's got simple Zelda like gameplay but it's really addictive for some reason, especially if you're one of those people (like me) who are into 100% completion. The tanks battles are odd but figuring out the strategies and then kicking ass at it is lots of fun. And you get to control a slime! How cool is that? My one disapointment is that so far as i can tell having gotten gold statues of every single monster in the game doesn't seem to have unlocked anything cool :(
Actually i was just looking into this for another comment on this article, and if you check GAFs hardware sales numbers the 360 is at 142k so far this year as of the last week's reported sales, and according to the last hardware sales article from last year they sold 70k in 2005. So about 210k consoles total.
According to this Microsoft has sold just over 142k units of the 360 so far this year. And according to this they sold 70k units last year, so about 210k units total. Blue Dragon sold 80k units, i believe 30k as the bundle with the console and 50k as just the game. So of the 180k people who had the console before this week 28% of them bought Blue Dragon. So assuming a steady percentage of people buying the console just to get the game they could theoretically keep up that sale rate for three more weeks before reaching a 100% attach rate.
I just finished re-reading "The Door Into Summer" by Robert Heinlein and i'm reminded of the part where the main character's business partners are trying to force him out of so they can sell the company to a big corporation. He says something along the lines of "You can't use more than one swimming pool or more than one yacht at a time, and you'll have both in another year with the way we're doing business now so why should we sell out to another company and put them in charge?" But his partners are intent on having more money and power than they can actually use, just for the sake of money and power.
It seems like all the old desires to build empires out of countries has changed with the times and been applied to the business world. I wonder if society as a whole will ever look back at the present and think "why did they ever waste so much time and happiness in pursuit of something like that?"
There's another article at GamesAreFun which includes links to some gameplay footage and other tidbits.
I could have sworn when i first saw the title that it said "Wii, DS, not Cannabis"
So what about this increase in sunspot activity over the past 250 years since the Maunder Minimum?
I'm also curious if you have a response to claims that historical records do show a link between global temperature averages and atmosphiric carbon, but that historically the temperature increased first and _then_ the carbon levels increased. I originally encountered the claim in James P. Hogan's "Kicking the Sacred Cow," but i don't have the book with me so i can't site whatever sources he used.
I don't think his more extreme predictions were necessarily correct, but i do think that the issue was handled by the scientific majority in entirely the wrong manner. And given the difficulties he faced, imagine the difficulties facing someone who doesn't have the publicity or fortitude to wade through the opposition that Velikovsky did.
Well you're half right. They _are_ a little superstitious about the number 4 in japan because of the similarity in sound. I've heard that this is why you'll frequently see teams of three or five in anime but rarely of four. And frequently if the number four is invoked at all it's because of some outside cultural reference such as the traditional western four elements or the four chinese celestial guardians. And i believe that sometimes japanese hotels will skip the 4th floor the way american hotels will sometimes skip the 13th floor.
However it's not like they don't have ways of dealing with the issue when necessary. In japan there's an alternate pronunciation, "yon." And the superstition didn't stop there from being a Final Fantasy 4 or a Dragon Quest 4, although they used the "american" pronunciation "foa" rahter than "shi." So i wouldn't be at all surprised if the next sony console is the "Purei Suteshon Foa" in japan.
Personally i still hate the name and wish they'd kept "Revolution." But as usual society seems to be outvoting me =P
As an individual solution that's great. But note that if _everyone_ took that route then _every_ new console would fail.
*sigh* Please note the "[/sarcasm]" bit. I actually thought this article was actually pro Sony. Greater than 100% increases in sales for both the PS2 and PSP? Sounds pretty good for Sony to me.
Sorry, the anti-zonk contingent seemed mysteriously quiet, so i thought i out to step in and field this one for them.
What exactly is the semantic difference between "Sony Console the Worst Launch Ever" and "Sony Console Launch the Worst Ever"?
The office i was working at about five years ago decided to "upgrade" everyone to Aeron chairs. In my opinion they sucked. Maybe if you want to sit with "perfect posture" all day they work fine, but i tend to shift around all day and sometimes cross my legs, and whenver i did that the hard frame would start digging into me and be incredibly uncomfortable. On the plus side since they were getting new chairs for everyone they had no use for the old ones and told us we could take them home and keep them if we wanted, so i now have a very comfortable office chair at home that has far outlasted my employment at that particular company.
So why didn't this article get tagged for the games section? I can see that it's got enough technical detail to warrant being on the front page, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be part of the games section as well.
As compared to Paris Hilton? I don't even have any idea who you are but at least you post to slashdot so it sounds reasonable to me!
It missed _both_ Marie Curie and Hypatia? That's pretty pathetic. Hypatia was the first person who came to mind upon reading the blurb. (The article itself still seems to be slashdotted however.)
Well you could just click on the link to RTFA and find that it happened on the 2nd of this month. (This month is November if you're _really_ not paying attention.) Or you could put "mars" into the search bar for Slashdot and find this article from about a week and a half ago.
Not to be cynical, but after seeing the response and sales it's gotten they're certainly going to say it's the begining of a trilogy _now_, regardless of what they originally expected or had planed.
Same here. I don't know if it went away because i switched my router channel from 6 to 3 or becuse when i did that and tried again it was about 36 hours after the launch and the rush had died down. It was still a little slow with the download but it seems to be working fine now.
That's not true at all. Although the chart doesn't say anything about whether the classic controller can be used for gamecube games. Given that you can use both the gamecube and classic controller for most of the same VC games i'd be surprised if the classic controller didn't work for gamecube games. In fact, hold on....
Ok, i stand corrected, i can't get the classic controller to work with Star Wars Lego 2. In fact the remote doesn't work at _all_, meaning there's no way to get back to the Wii menu once you've started a gamecube game without manually reseting the system as far as i can tell. Hopefully both of those issues will be fixed by a patch at some point.
With the Revolution however i checked the list of shipments for Target stores that got posted online and it said my local Target would get 60. When i went to the store the day before and asked they said they were going to have 65. I got in line at midnight and ended up being #44 in line. When they started handing out line tickets at 7am, one per console they had in the store, there were 69 of them. They had enough for everyone in line but just barely. We had a guy at the front unoficially keeping track of who in line was there to buy a console, so it's possible that some people who'd kept track of the expected figures decided to go find another line when they found out they were going to be #66 at a store expecting 60 or 65. There was a lot of coming and going in the line behind me that i did't really keep track of.
So has _anyone_ managed to get theirs working? Is it only the rush of hudreds of thousands of people trying to update at once that's fubared their server or is it just not working at all?