Related to that, if God is perfect, how come Satan appeared? Woudln't that be because God isn't perfect after all?
How does Satan have any bearing on the perfection of God?
"TV violence = real violence" is complete crap
on
Cable TV Ruins Bhutan
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Counterpoint: Japan.
ACLU quote: "Japanese TV and movies are famous for their extreme, graphic violence, but Japan has a very low crime rate -- much lower than many societies in which television watching is relatively rare."
The case of Bhutan almost certainly involves much deeper and more important social issues than cable TV.
TV is like herion for the masses. It passifies us, and it is programming is tightly controlled and contents deliberatlychose for the producers' selfish ends.
I will counterpoint one thing slightly, though, about Nintendo doing less than great with their GameCube despite having the cheaper price. You're right, of course, but I think there's a very notable distinction between Nintendo as a home console manufacturer and Nintendo as a portable manufacturer. The former has not been very successful since the Super NES. The latter has been successful since, well, their first product. Consumers clearly make a distinction between the two.
The PSP may very well have a hard time getting itself down to $99 due to the cost of hardware. I didn't say that the higher price would be unjustified from a manufacturing standpoint. The problem is, consumers make no such distinction.
The PSP will have a tough time if Nintendo's product is cheaper. Unlike in home consoles, Nintendo is the King in this market. People even re-buy products they already own in order to get a few upgrades (note: GB Pocket, and GBA SP). That's amazing market power. Sony will have its hands full from the word "go".
$129 wouldn't be bad. I've mainly said the problem would be "substantially higher" than $100. I don't consider $30 to be incredibly substantial. But could it launch at $129? If the thing launches at $179, and Nintendo's launches for $100 or $120, I think Sony's offering is in trouble (again, save for a flawed product from Nintendo).
Very good points, though. I agree, no matter how great the PSP can be, it's still a tiny screen experience. It's just not going to be worth an incredibly high cost.
I'm intrigued as to how you might envision them achieving Dolby Surround in a portable, though.;)
Is anyone willing to pay $150+ for a portable game player? I don't know. If I told you 2 years ago that a million people will pay $300-500 for a portable MP3 player, you'll probably think I'm smoking crack.
Then came the iPod.
You have a bit of a point. Yet, I could justify the money for a portable MP3 player far more so than a portable game system. I take my Archos everywhere - I can use it pretty much constantly. The Game Boy requires my focused attention to use, thus making it a bit less useful.
I don't know that the two devices necessarily hold up to direct comparison. Granted, you're just trying to make a point by example. But let's also point out that the iPod was really a first generation product of its kind (CDR and removable media MP3 players are known to be inferior even to the general mindless public). In contrast, the portable gaming market is a long-existant and stabilized one. Many devices have come and gone, and pretty much succeeded and failed around that $100 price point. I think any product that comes into the market and tries to overshoot that price by a healthy margin is going to struggle.
You're right, it is just an initial price point. But the thing is, Nintendo isn't going to take the competition lying down. They price their portables at the established price points in the market ($99 and below). Doing so has met every new iteration of their hardware with instant success. Amazingly, even a more expensive re-design of an existing product (the GBA SP) was met with overwhelmingly high sales.
You're also right about the "too early, we gotta see the hardware" stuff. I make no claims as to how good of a product the PSP will be. All I'm saying is that even a superior product will struggle to gain market share if their price exceeds $100 by very much. They can always cut it down later, sure. But 5 gets you 10 that Nintendo enters the market with their new device at a lower price than the PSP, and enjoys much more early success (barring, of course, a flawed product).
Sony will find that too few people are willing to spend that kind of money for a portable system.
I've whipped out $99 for my Game Boy Advance SP, yes. But that's about as high as I'll go for something that I only really play when I'm in line at the post office, or stuck on campus between classes, etc.
When I'm at home, I'm playing a regular console on my TV with my surround sound system. I won't sit and play a portable system.
Sony has been riding high from the PSX and PS2, but this is the point where it SEEMS like they can do no wrong, and badly overestimate what's coming. At that price point, the PSP will badly undersell. Hopefully, Sony will adjust on the fly. They'll still do a hell of a lot better than that N-Gage nonsense.
Re:Nothing came of the decreased bandwidth proposa
on
802.11g... It's Official
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· Score: 2, Informative
The "reducing" was nothing more than listing bandwidth as the more realistic figure instead of a pie-in-the-sky 54Mbps.
Did you read the article? It says exactly the opposite of what you said. Console sales are slowing, and software sales are up.
Yes, I did. Apparently you didn't. PER TITLE sales are way down. Overall software sales are up sheerly on the basis of a larger installed base, but the average sales per game has dropped.
You get a cookie if you can understand how that works.
If Ortiz were a Republican, we'd be hearing the whole "damn Republicans - the source of all our ills!" screams.
This idea is clearly bad. The money, even if 100% of it goes to what it is supposed to (not likely, but hey) would still be unlikely to actually accomplish anything.
There is a finite amount of consumer cash out there, and the PS2 is nearing the end of its life cycle. It should not surprise anyone that a high rate of PS2 game sales growth isn't being sustained.
Consoles continue to sell units up until the end of their product cycles, but the large majority of existing installed base is not buying games at the same rate that they were in the past. For the current PS2 owner, the number of worthwhile NEW titles is waning.
Typical cookie-cutter answer. To compare a Linux rollout with updating MS Office exhibits a bad lack of perspective.
Sure, Windows is expensive. It may indeed be hard to administer and unreliable. But get this: they're managing to use it! A certain degree of fault tolerance exists within any system, and clearly Windows does not fail often enough to make a change necessary. Perhaps one might be desirable due to potential benefits, but it is not necessary because the work *is* getting done.
after spending a few months getting to know Linux and planning for a migration, an IT manager should have enough information to determine what the risks and benefits are. If not, he is in the wrong job.
Of course. There's no way the government is *choosing* Windows - it's only the lack of investigation of Linux that's to blame.
Britian, France, Japan, Peru, China and Germany are all moving to Linux and open source. Hell, some are even writing up legislation that gives incentives to businesses that do so as well. Why aren't we (the United States)?
I think people greatly underestimate the amount of effort, blood, sweat, and tears it would take to "switch" (so to speak) a government agency (let alone a whole government) to Linux.
The old adage applies: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. While some would no doubt argue that Windows-based systems are "broke", the fact is that government agencies somehow manage to make their computers crunch numbers and store data on Windows machines.
In general, taking down a running, working system in order to replace it with something else is always a risky move. It is never something to be taken lightly.
Hopefully, Linux can work its way into US government agencies, because it has a lot to offer. But acceptance will be necessarily slow, and we should not expect otherwise.
We can praise the nations that throw caution to the wind and roll out Linux rapidly. But we should not be so negative to those that take a more cautious stance. Linux is NOT a perfect beast, and it should surprise no rational person that it is, at this time, treated as "the devil you don't know".
I'd like to use Linux (right now I use Windows XP) but there is too much metaphore... in fact politics shroud the community like a flow of white light. [...] These guys are trying to make money in American corporation, with poor economic downturn, etc... like I said guys, cut out the metaphore and write great systeme....
Here's the thing: you can use Linux without buying into any of the politics.
I use Linux (in addition to other OS's). I do not buy into much of the OSS rhetoric. I definitely do not buy into any of the Stallman rhetoric. But I still use Linux and GNU software. Why? Because you can use this stuff without necessarily feeling that OSS is *the* be-all, end-all.
I think it's great that people are willing to spend time and energy on free, open-source software. When my programming skills are a little sharper, I think I will contribute to a project or two that I find useful. But in the end, I plan on being a professional programmer as soon as I graduate college.
Don't buy into the hype - just ignore it and try the software. Linux is great for many people. And even some open-source software that is usually associated with Linux is available for Windows (my trifecta: Mozilla, OpenOffice, GIMP).
Re:This SCO story just makes me sick to my stomach
on
Latest SCO News
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· Score: 2, Insightful
It brings computing services to people across the world who otherwise couldn't afford it or who otherwise would be sending money to multi-billionaire Bill Gates instead of buying food. Thanks to Linux, these people can spend their money on real things that they need, while still participating in the global exchange of ideas and perhaps getting a toe-hold in the "modern" western world that.
Yeah, y'know, because there are lots of starving Ethiopians with networked clusters lying around. "Operating systems" are usually listed right after "wheat" on their want lists...
Seriously, though, this is some of the worst hyperbole I've read at this site. The last thing those struggling to eat are worrying about is kernel recompiles.
Slashdot Mirror
In a saturated market, the guys without college degrees are the first ones crossed off the list.
How does Satan have any bearing on the perfection of God?
ACLU quote: "Japanese TV and movies are famous for their extreme, graphic violence, but Japan has a very low crime rate -- much lower than many societies in which television watching is relatively rare."
The case of Bhutan almost certainly involves much deeper and more important social issues than cable TV.
Obviously, you've watched too much TV yourself.
I will counterpoint one thing slightly, though, about Nintendo doing less than great with their GameCube despite having the cheaper price. You're right, of course, but I think there's a very notable distinction between Nintendo as a home console manufacturer and Nintendo as a portable manufacturer. The former has not been very successful since the Super NES. The latter has been successful since, well, their first product. Consumers clearly make a distinction between the two.
The PSP may very well have a hard time getting itself down to $99 due to the cost of hardware. I didn't say that the higher price would be unjustified from a manufacturing standpoint. The problem is, consumers make no such distinction.
The PSP will have a tough time if Nintendo's product is cheaper. Unlike in home consoles, Nintendo is the King in this market. People even re-buy products they already own in order to get a few upgrades (note: GB Pocket, and GBA SP). That's amazing market power. Sony will have its hands full from the word "go".
$129 wouldn't be bad. I've mainly said the problem would be "substantially higher" than $100. I don't consider $30 to be incredibly substantial. But could it launch at $129? If the thing launches at $179, and Nintendo's launches for $100 or $120, I think Sony's offering is in trouble (again, save for a flawed product from Nintendo).
Very good points, though. I agree, no matter how great the PSP can be, it's still a tiny screen experience. It's just not going to be worth an incredibly high cost.
I'm intrigued as to how you might envision them achieving Dolby Surround in a portable, though. ;)
You have a bit of a point. Yet, I could justify the money for a portable MP3 player far more so than a portable game system. I take my Archos everywhere - I can use it pretty much constantly. The Game Boy requires my focused attention to use, thus making it a bit less useful.
I don't know that the two devices necessarily hold up to direct comparison. Granted, you're just trying to make a point by example. But let's also point out that the iPod was really a first generation product of its kind (CDR and removable media MP3 players are known to be inferior even to the general mindless public). In contrast, the portable gaming market is a long-existant and stabilized one. Many devices have come and gone, and pretty much succeeded and failed around that $100 price point. I think any product that comes into the market and tries to overshoot that price by a healthy margin is going to struggle.
You're right, it is just an initial price point. But the thing is, Nintendo isn't going to take the competition lying down. They price their portables at the established price points in the market ($99 and below). Doing so has met every new iteration of their hardware with instant success. Amazingly, even a more expensive re-design of an existing product (the GBA SP) was met with overwhelmingly high sales.
You're also right about the "too early, we gotta see the hardware" stuff. I make no claims as to how good of a product the PSP will be. All I'm saying is that even a superior product will struggle to gain market share if their price exceeds $100 by very much. They can always cut it down later, sure. But 5 gets you 10 that Nintendo enters the market with their new device at a lower price than the PSP, and enjoys much more early success (barring, of course, a flawed product).
Them, obviously!
You're right. And so we here at Slashdot have elected you as our first "number-thinning" sacrifice.
I've whipped out $99 for my Game Boy Advance SP, yes. But that's about as high as I'll go for something that I only really play when I'm in line at the post office, or stuck on campus between classes, etc.
When I'm at home, I'm playing a regular console on my TV with my surround sound system. I won't sit and play a portable system.
Sony has been riding high from the PSX and PS2, but this is the point where it SEEMS like they can do no wrong, and badly overestimate what's coming. At that price point, the PSP will badly undersell. Hopefully, Sony will adjust on the fly. They'll still do a hell of a lot better than that N-Gage nonsense.
Yes, I did. Apparently you didn't. PER TITLE sales are way down. Overall software sales are up sheerly on the basis of a larger installed base, but the average sales per game has dropped.
You get a cookie if you can understand how that works.
A: One (1) - Falcon 4.0. And even that had a number of bugs that had to be worked out post-release. But at least the GAME delivered.
This idea is clearly bad. The money, even if 100% of it goes to what it is supposed to (not likely, but hey) would still be unlikely to actually accomplish anything.
Pointless taxing is not the answer. Ever.
Consoles continue to sell units up until the end of their product cycles, but the large majority of existing installed base is not buying games at the same rate that they were in the past. For the current PS2 owner, the number of worthwhile NEW titles is waning.
Kali has been revived, too. I don't know how worthwhile it is, but check out http://www.kali.net to find out.
Interesting vehicle for natural selection. After a few generations, only the strong Mortal Kombat player genes will be left!
I apologize if you were unable to understand the facetious nature of the comment. I will be certain to dumb things down next time.
Sure, Windows is expensive. It may indeed be hard to administer and unreliable. But get this: they're managing to use it! A certain degree of fault tolerance exists within any system, and clearly Windows does not fail often enough to make a change necessary. Perhaps one might be desirable due to potential benefits, but it is not necessary because the work *is* getting done.
Of course. There's no way the government is *choosing* Windows - it's only the lack of investigation of Linux that's to blame.
I think people greatly underestimate the amount of effort, blood, sweat, and tears it would take to "switch" (so to speak) a government agency (let alone a whole government) to Linux.
The old adage applies: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. While some would no doubt argue that Windows-based systems are "broke", the fact is that government agencies somehow manage to make their computers crunch numbers and store data on Windows machines.
In general, taking down a running, working system in order to replace it with something else is always a risky move. It is never something to be taken lightly.
Hopefully, Linux can work its way into US government agencies, because it has a lot to offer. But acceptance will be necessarily slow, and we should not expect otherwise.
We can praise the nations that throw caution to the wind and roll out Linux rapidly. But we should not be so negative to those that take a more cautious stance. Linux is NOT a perfect beast, and it should surprise no rational person that it is, at this time, treated as "the devil you don't know".
Here's the thing: you can use Linux without buying into any of the politics.
I use Linux (in addition to other OS's). I do not buy into much of the OSS rhetoric. I definitely do not buy into any of the Stallman rhetoric. But I still use Linux and GNU software. Why? Because you can use this stuff without necessarily feeling that OSS is *the* be-all, end-all.
I think it's great that people are willing to spend time and energy on free, open-source software. When my programming skills are a little sharper, I think I will contribute to a project or two that I find useful. But in the end, I plan on being a professional programmer as soon as I graduate college.
Don't buy into the hype - just ignore it and try the software. Linux is great for many people. And even some open-source software that is usually associated with Linux is available for Windows (my trifecta: Mozilla, OpenOffice, GIMP).
Yeah, y'know, because there are lots of starving Ethiopians with networked clusters lying around. "Operating systems" are usually listed right after "wheat" on their want lists...
Seriously, though, this is some of the worst hyperbole I've read at this site. The last thing those struggling to eat are worrying about is kernel recompiles.