Re:still supprised at the $250 price tag.
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The Wii Takes NYC
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I will have a much harder time justifying $250 to the wife since I will have to pick up another wiimote for her ($60) and I really would have liked Zelda:TP ($50). $360 simply is not reasonable. If the bundle included a second wiimote (sans nunchuck), I would probably pick it up. As it stands, I will mostly likely be forced to wait for the first price drop.
The wiimote itself is only $40, and you may not need the nunchuck for most multiplayer games. I agree though that another controller, even if just the wiimote, would make the bundle fantastic instead of kinda "meh".
Where did they say this? Was this before or after annoucing that it was bundled with a game? It could be that they decided they didn't want to sell at a loss, so they built at least one game sale into every console sale, of a game that wouldn't be purchased with every console otherwise, and end up making a profit.
Re:Months Of Wii Hype Go Up In Flames
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The Wii Takes NYC
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Almost everyone was expecting a price in the 150 to 200 dollar range
Um, no, anybody with the slightest bit of a clue was expecting between 200-250. $250 was the upper range, because that's what they said the upper range was, and $200 was the lower range because that's what every other Nintendo console in the past has been released for. The only question was can they keep the price that low despite inflation and their more-than-your-average controller. $150 was never even on the table, except in some idiot fanboi's fantasy, or in some other console fanboi's attempt at revisionist history.
Notice how the Japanese release is not bundled with a game, and costs 25000 yen, the same as every other Nintendo console ever.
The American release is bundled with a game, unlike previous console releases, and costs $250. This may not be as good a deal as we wanted -- how could anyone say "no" to a $200 Wii + game? -- since Wii Sports probably isn't worth $50, but it isn't unreasonable. The previous predictions of 200-250 did not take into account bundling with a game.
Especially if you consider the PS3 to be the only other contender. The new Wii price is still half the PS3 base model. The only console that comes close in price is the base 360 model, but you said that isn't relevent. Okay, in that case this is anything but a pricing blunder. If you ignore Microsoft, then this is actually a smart move, because $200 would be way underpriced when the competition is $500. N makes more money, and can still say "half the price of the competition".
The only people who are "backlashing" or who consider this a "pricing blunder" are people who had unrealistic expectations.
Yeah, that sounds more like N's thinking -- get rid of the need for mod chips for imports, hopefully get rid of the potential for piracy from import-chip-modded Wiis.
Though I thought they did a pretty good job of eliminating piracy on the GC just by having a funky size of DVD (and the Wii disks are funky sized too, in between the GC disks and a normal DVD if i'm not mistaken).
I don't know if N ever thought region coding stopped piracy. I think most companies are smart enough to know the real reason for it -- price differentiation between regions -- but I am also betting there are still ones dumb enough to think it stops piracy... somehow.
There may be some connection in N's mind between piracy and the console hardware mod market, which is primarily fueled by people modding their consoles to play imports. Maybe they think that if they cut out that revenue source then a Wii mod market won't form. I don't know, this is a half-baked idea of mine.
Sure, it only makes any sense at all to bother with region encoding if you're actually planning on releasing in multiple regions.
But I'll bet my faith in humanity that there will be some company that does a single-region release, with no intention of releasing anywhere else, and sets the region restriction bit. I'll bet that in the board room where this decision is made, the word "piracy" will be uttered in an urgent tone, followed by a series of serious "harumphs" from around the table and the sage nodding of heads.
Re:still supprised at the $250 price tag.
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The Wii Takes NYC
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Heh. Okay, that's "technically" true but practically retarded. The "truly thrifty" gamer is going to splurge on the $400 XBOX? No, the truly thrifty gamer, assuming they're dead-set on a console to begin with, is going to buy an older console and a stack of games off Ebay, not pay out the nose for a next-gen console then not actually get any next-gen games for it.
In a world with imperfect laws, enforcing the laws perfectly is immoral, unjust, and IMHO, just insane.
Oh, don't worry, they know. This is just the first step. The next step is to have the laws written by computer programs, and then both the law and its enforcement will be perfect.
It will be a beautiful utopia...
Oh, hold on, there's an Enforce-o-bot at my door, come to execute me. Seems I'm guilty of excessive sarcasm. Which is true. See, the system works!
Re:What should it be compared to?
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The Wii Takes NYC
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the game cube launched for $200, 5 years ago (to yesterday)
Without a game.
No, I don't really think Wii Sports is worth $50, but the point is that this is not the same launch package as previous $200 Big-N consoles.
Re:power consumption? power consumption?
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The Wii Takes NYC
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I don't know, but the big question it raises for me is: Does it have a fan?
I have a NES, a SNES, and a GC. Guess which one was the first to take a dive? You can probably tell from context, it was the GC. Why? The fan died, and now after about five minutes of playing it overheats and needs a good twenty minute break. My NES takes five minutes to get a game working, but after that is as stable as the day I got it.
This is a minor issue, all things considered, but not having a fan means less noise, less dust being drawn through the internals of the system, and overall more reliability.
Re:still supprised at the $250 price tag.
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The Wii Takes NYC
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"well... I could drop an extra $50 and buy a xbox 360 core system"
Except then you'd still need to buy a game.
The thing is, we all had our expectations for a $200 Wii set by previous Nintendo console launches, which have always been $200 in the States. However this was the price without a game. Game bundles were either more expensive or came well after launch. So I can't say I'm surprised at all with the price. $250 is what I would have guessed if you'd asked me what the Wii launch price would be if it came with a game.
I would like to see a second controller in the bundle. That is a bit of a dissapointment, since it seems like the perfect thing to bundle in with Wii Sports. Has that been confirmed?
Now I don't speak Japanese, but my understanding of the problem is that Japanese has neither "r" nor "l" sounds, but has rather a single sound that is halfway in between (I think the tongue is like an "r" and the lips are like "l"). The result is that whichever letter it was supposed to be in English, it sounds wrong.
I can't imagine why a Japanese person would add an "r" or "l" to "Fuck", though.
Yeah, if they're going to bundle Zelda, it will be after the console has been out for a year so everyone who was frothing at the mouth to buy the console and new Zelda (i.e. me and people like me) have already spent their money, and then they can try to draw sales from the more reluctant crowd by bundling the console with a flagship game.
Though I don't recall them ever bundling Zelda before (possibly with the game boy line; I don't keep track of that much), which means they probably consider Zelda to still be worth another purchase above and beyond the console. Still I'd expect the bundle to change to some title from launch or early in the life of the console that has proven draw power. Just maybe not Zelda.
Re:Ok but pretending all races are the same is stu
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Hacking the Governator
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The irony of this is, of course, that the Governator made this observation jokingly apparently because one of his close aides or cabinet members is Puerto Rican and likes to joke about it.
Seems like the key thing here is that he knew her, so she would know how he meant it and he would know how she would take it.
If he had just walked up to some random Puerto Rican and made the same comments, that could be considered offensive. In the context of friends or coworkers, though, this isn't abnormal at all. The problem is everyone hearing about it isn't cognizant of that context, so they get offended by proxy.
Turns out she had mentioned to a patient that her husband is a "white guy", and the guy told her it wasn't nice to call me that.
Another perfect example. If your wife walked around calling every stranger that walked past "white guy", the patient could probably say that isn't nice. He simply wasn't aware of the context of your relationship where you are both comfortable with your different races.
It was sort of the same way for me -- when I first heard this story, I thought Arnold had been an insensitive jerk. When I discovered that the lady in question had said that it was cool, I changed my mind. The question of what is or is not offensive is always a shady one, and I can't think of any more relevent answer than the one given by the person the allegedly offensive comment was targeted at.
The company has pledged publicly that they won't actually assert their patent rights... and since these are patents we're talking about, it means that noone else can either.
Unless this pledge is legally binding, I personally don't find it very reassuring. IBM's pledge I take to be worth something because of IBM's massive investment in open source.
Maybe it's just the sort of protection that the open source movement needs so that we *can* innovate without having to jump through a bunch of hoops or worry about facing legal action?
But we will, so long as software patents exist. Microsoft and IBM have large portfolios, but they aren't the sole holder of software patents. It's like clearing two fields of mines in Afghanistan. Those two may be safe, but you still need to cross dozens of others to get where you are going.
I have a suspicion that the real purpose of these pledges is to stave off patent reform. In as much that it actually helps free software developers, that's fine, but it avoids the real issue.
My mother tried to ban me from playing D&D because it was the "work of Satan" and when that didn't work I would catch her praying over my RPG materials. Well, I didn't grow up to be a serial killer so I guess she figures her prayers must have worked.
Heh. Thank goodness my father was never that bad. What is funny is that he was always dissaproving of my D&D habit, not outright condemning it, but vaguely uncertain whether or not it was in fact the work of Satan. The funny part being that he was a musician in a rock band, and when he was a kid it was rock n roll that was the Devil's Work, and attitude he thought was bullshit (in his own words). I think that is why he was never willing to come right out and forbid me from playing or spending my own money on the books, since he was probably worried that he was being just like the ones that condemned rock music.
Still, it wasn't something I could share with him, and if I wanted to play I'd take my books to a friend's house.
Still, I was lucky, all things (and your story) considered.
Paper does not ensure that the counters will count accurately. Paper does not ensure that the counters are not subject to a poltical bias or bribes. Only a well-defined process with proper auditing, traceability, etc. regardless of the actual method used to poll the constituents, is the method that will be accurate.
A paper ballot is necessary but not sufficient for a reliable fraud-free election.
I agree with you entirely, so long as you are not concluding that paper is not sufficient, therefore not necessary.
Remember that at this stage of the election debate in the U.S., the issue on the table is paper vs. no paper. The former is absolutely superior, and the lack of sufficiency of paper alone doesn't change that.
Electronic voting lets you do a lot of parts of voting better.
Yes, but not by replacing the paper vote. The proper role of an electronic voting machine is as a ballot verifier, not counter. You either mark the ballot and insert it in the machine which checks it for validity, or you use the machine to make your selections and it marks/prints the ballot.
They key to any electronic system is redundancy - you don't have fewer than 2 of any critical component, and you have a non-electrical backup.
Redundancy of the electrical systems doesn't do anything to solve the real problems with electronic voting.
For electronic voting, that means you have enough provisional ballots to do the entire election if needed. It means you have a physical (paper or other non-alterable type) record.
However stated in that way (physical record -- yes paper, it must be human readable or you're just trusting another computer), then this kind of "redundancy" is important. In fact, having the paper record is the most important and really it isn't "redundancy", it's "primacy". The machine is the non-mandatory part, the convenience factor that makes verifying votes easier. The machine must notbe the vote.
I noticed the same thing when I played it on Mame, but I seem to recall that the Genesis version (which was my first exposure to the game and what I played the most of) was much longer, like roughly twice as long. I'm too lazy to try to verify this right now, though. If I'm correct, they hopefully be releasing the Genesis version.
Well, obviously the name "pretexting" is a lie itself, designed to cover up the uglier truth of "lying". It's all part of marketing corporate-speak, in which negative aspects of what you do are covered up through language trickery, in this case making up a word that nobody knows the meaning of.
I'm rather pleased that they have failed to pull the wool over anyone's eyes, but the fact that the word keeps getting repeated is bothersome. The news outlets should only be using that word in the context of explaining Dunn's lame attempt to cover up for fraud.
First of all, you are the one with a positive proposition, hence you are the one required to substantiate your argument.
I'm not required to do anything for you. I'm not about to give a free education to someone who so clearly doesn't actually want the information. If you wanted it, you'd seek it out.
Actually as far as the flow of information has gone in this argument, it has gone from me to you.
Yes, you've communicated clearly that you think not reading any information on a subject means that information doesn't exist. You've communicated clearly that making up some random explanation that you know has no basis in fact (because you just made it up) has equal weight as a peer-reviewed research paper's conclusion that you don't know whether or not it has any basis in fact (because you avoid reading it at all costs). You've given me solid information regarding your stubborn ignorance.
Now I would like to point out an equally valid (perhaps even more valid) non-sun based global warming based theory. It is called The Flying Spaghetti Monster theory
Just because you've read as much about real climate research as you have about the Flying Spaghetti Monster does not mean they both have the same amount of validity.
Sorry, but I refuse to argue with the deliberately stupid. I'll show you a slew of papers, and you'll read enough of the first one to find some statement that you take issue with and not a sentence farther, and I'll have to explain why your misinterpreted the statement, and that explanation would have been the next sentence. Then to the next issue, one paragraph later, where you'll somehow have forgotten what I just pointed out, always refraining from reading enough to understand, never showing actual curiosity. Just stubborn ignorance.
1. It's cheaper. Don't let a PC gamer delude you into thinking that console gaming is more expensive--it's just not true. Console manufacturers take a loss on every machine sold and make up the difference in software sales. When you buy a console, you're getting the machine for cheaper than it costs them to make it.
Hehe. It really cracked me up last generation when Sony and Nintendo revealed that this commonly held wisdom was in fact false and that they both were making a decent profit on sales of the console itself, thank you very much. Nintendo had been making a profit from the get-go, while I think Sony was selling for a loss at first but was able to reduce the cost, as planned, so that they were profitable. Meanwhile Microsoft, who had bought into the old logic of 'make a loss on hardware, make it up with software' big time, was still losing something like $100 on each XBOX even after it had been out for two years. Oops! I bet the first XBOX division meeting they had after Sony/Nintendo let the cat out of the bag had to have been a fun one. Heh.
It's a silly point, anyway. It contains its own refutation: "make up the difference in software sales". To really find out which is cheaper you have to consider the number of games purchased, and any hardware in the computer that wasn't bought solely for games. For the record, I play both PC and console games, and buy a new video card about as often as I buy a new console, so they end costs are fairly similar for me.
I know science is to hard for you religous types, but just try a little harder to grasp science requires those maeking propositions to prove thier points and not accept thier assertions on blind faith. If everything you saying were true, you would have been able to :...
Now that would be undeniable science if you could do that. right now there is nothing to debate because there is no tangilbe scienctific evidence to support these claims.
That's funny saying global warming needs to be taken on faith.
The only reason you have to take anything on faith, for or against global warming, is because you are deliberately ignorant.
You place it on me to give you all the information you want, but let's be honest, you wouldn't believe me if I showed you, and you don't really want any of that information either or you would have looked for it yourself. You wouldn't have had to say "it's 99.99999% the sun" or whatever you made up.
But you don't want to know. That's why you don't know anything, that's why you don't even comprehend the basic idea of how retaining heat increases temperature, because that would be like a fact that you would have to learn, and it's much more comfortable for you assume these facts don't exist. As long as you don't know anything at all, then the pro- and con- sides are equally faith based for you, and it's like picking between Christianity and Islam, a matter of preference.
You prefer to think global warming is not a problem -- and, ha ha, if it exists it's a good thing -- and that if we tried to reverse the trend it would destroy our standard of living. You take this on faith, because this faith is preferable to faith in global warming, and since you refuse to educate yourself to make a non-faith-based decision, you can pick whatever you want. You challenge me to prove it all for you, but you aren't interested, or you'd do your own damn research. You like it to be faith-based.
That's convenient for you, but not everyone works that way.
P.S. It's people like you who will destroy our way of life, and you'll realize this once insulated inside your air conditioned home and deliberate ignorance even you cannot deny the facts that everyone else has known about for years. As much fun as it would be to see the day your faith fails you, it's just not worth it.
I sure hope this isn't a reference to the temperature of Venus, after I so thoroughly pwned your sorry butt on the subject.
Everything else you said is just repetition of your fundamental argument, which is: "I am terribly ignorant on the subject of climate research -- witness my belief that global warming would make northeast winters more bearable -- and my stubborn ignorance disproves global warming."
That's fine for you, but it really does make you to climatology what the ID proponent is to biological diversity: Someone with faith in ignorance.
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I will have a much harder time justifying $250 to the wife since I will have to pick up another wiimote for her ($60) and I really would have liked Zelda:TP ($50). $360 simply is not reasonable. If the bundle included a second wiimote (sans nunchuck), I would probably pick it up. As it stands, I will mostly likely be forced to wait for the first price drop.
The wiimote itself is only $40, and you may not need the nunchuck for most multiplayer games. I agree though that another controller, even if just the wiimote, would make the bundle fantastic instead of kinda "meh".
Where did they say this? Was this before or after annoucing that it was bundled with a game? It could be that they decided they didn't want to sell at a loss, so they built at least one game sale into every console sale, of a game that wouldn't be purchased with every console otherwise, and end up making a profit.
Almost everyone was expecting a price in the 150 to 200 dollar range
Um, no, anybody with the slightest bit of a clue was expecting between 200-250. $250 was the upper range, because that's what they said the upper range was, and $200 was the lower range because that's what every other Nintendo console in the past has been released for. The only question was can they keep the price that low despite inflation and their more-than-your-average controller. $150 was never even on the table, except in some idiot fanboi's fantasy, or in some other console fanboi's attempt at revisionist history.
Notice how the Japanese release is not bundled with a game, and costs 25000 yen, the same as every other Nintendo console ever.
The American release is bundled with a game, unlike previous console releases, and costs $250. This may not be as good a deal as we wanted -- how could anyone say "no" to a $200 Wii + game? -- since Wii Sports probably isn't worth $50, but it isn't unreasonable. The previous predictions of 200-250 did not take into account bundling with a game.
Especially if you consider the PS3 to be the only other contender. The new Wii price is still half the PS3 base model. The only console that comes close in price is the base 360 model, but you said that isn't relevent. Okay, in that case this is anything but a pricing blunder. If you ignore Microsoft, then this is actually a smart move, because $200 would be way underpriced when the competition is $500. N makes more money, and can still say "half the price of the competition".
The only people who are "backlashing" or who consider this a "pricing blunder" are people who had unrealistic expectations.
Yeah, that sounds more like N's thinking -- get rid of the need for mod chips for imports, hopefully get rid of the potential for piracy from import-chip-modded Wiis.
Though I thought they did a pretty good job of eliminating piracy on the GC just by having a funky size of DVD (and the Wii disks are funky sized too, in between the GC disks and a normal DVD if i'm not mistaken).
I don't know if N ever thought region coding stopped piracy. I think most companies are smart enough to know the real reason for it -- price differentiation between regions -- but I am also betting there are still ones dumb enough to think it stops piracy... somehow.
There may be some connection in N's mind between piracy and the console hardware mod market, which is primarily fueled by people modding their consoles to play imports. Maybe they think that if they cut out that revenue source then a Wii mod market won't form. I don't know, this is a half-baked idea of mine.
Sure, it only makes any sense at all to bother with region encoding if you're actually planning on releasing in multiple regions.
But I'll bet my faith in humanity that there will be some company that does a single-region release, with no intention of releasing anywhere else, and sets the region restriction bit. I'll bet that in the board room where this decision is made, the word "piracy" will be uttered in an urgent tone, followed by a series of serious "harumphs" from around the table and the sage nodding of heads.
Heh. Okay, that's "technically" true but practically retarded. The "truly thrifty" gamer is going to splurge on the $400 XBOX? No, the truly thrifty gamer, assuming they're dead-set on a console to begin with, is going to buy an older console and a stack of games off Ebay, not pay out the nose for a next-gen console then not actually get any next-gen games for it.
In a world with imperfect laws, enforcing the laws perfectly is immoral, unjust, and IMHO, just insane.
Oh, don't worry, they know. This is just the first step. The next step is to have the laws written by computer programs, and then both the law and its enforcement will be perfect.
It will be a beautiful utopia...
Oh, hold on, there's an Enforce-o-bot at my door, come to execute me. Seems I'm guilty of excessive sarcasm. Which is true. See, the system works!
the game cube launched for $200, 5 years ago (to yesterday)
Without a game.
No, I don't really think Wii Sports is worth $50, but the point is that this is not the same launch package as previous $200 Big-N consoles.
I don't know, but the big question it raises for me is: Does it have a fan?
I have a NES, a SNES, and a GC. Guess which one was the first to take a dive? You can probably tell from context, it was the GC. Why? The fan died, and now after about five minutes of playing it overheats and needs a good twenty minute break. My NES takes five minutes to get a game working, but after that is as stable as the day I got it.
This is a minor issue, all things considered, but not having a fan means less noise, less dust being drawn through the internals of the system, and overall more reliability.
"well... I could drop an extra $50 and buy a xbox 360 core system"
Except then you'd still need to buy a game.
The thing is, we all had our expectations for a $200 Wii set by previous Nintendo console launches, which have always been $200 in the States. However this was the price without a game. Game bundles were either more expensive or came well after launch. So I can't say I'm surprised at all with the price. $250 is what I would have guessed if you'd asked me what the Wii launch price would be if it came with a game.
I would like to see a second controller in the bundle. That is a bit of a dissapointment, since it seems like the perfect thing to bundle in with Wii Sports. Has that been confirmed?
Now I don't speak Japanese, but my understanding of the problem is that Japanese has neither "r" nor "l" sounds, but has rather a single sound that is halfway in between (I think the tongue is like an "r" and the lips are like "l"). The result is that whichever letter it was supposed to be in English, it sounds wrong.
I can't imagine why a Japanese person would add an "r" or "l" to "Fuck", though.
P.S. the GP was hilarious.
Yeah, if they're going to bundle Zelda, it will be after the console has been out for a year so everyone who was frothing at the mouth to buy the console and new Zelda (i.e. me and people like me) have already spent their money, and then they can try to draw sales from the more reluctant crowd by bundling the console with a flagship game.
Though I don't recall them ever bundling Zelda before (possibly with the game boy line; I don't keep track of that much), which means they probably consider Zelda to still be worth another purchase above and beyond the console. Still I'd expect the bundle to change to some title from launch or early in the life of the console that has proven draw power. Just maybe not Zelda.
The irony of this is, of course, that the Governator made this observation jokingly apparently because one of his close aides or cabinet members is Puerto Rican and likes to joke about it.
Seems like the key thing here is that he knew her, so she would know how he meant it and he would know how she would take it.
If he had just walked up to some random Puerto Rican and made the same comments, that could be considered offensive. In the context of friends or coworkers, though, this isn't abnormal at all. The problem is everyone hearing about it isn't cognizant of that context, so they get offended by proxy.
Turns out she had mentioned to a patient that her husband is a "white guy", and the guy told her it wasn't nice to call me that.
Another perfect example. If your wife walked around calling every stranger that walked past "white guy", the patient could probably say that isn't nice. He simply wasn't aware of the context of your relationship where you are both comfortable with your different races.
It was sort of the same way for me -- when I first heard this story, I thought Arnold had been an insensitive jerk. When I discovered that the lady in question had said that it was cool, I changed my mind. The question of what is or is not offensive is always a shady one, and I can't think of any more relevent answer than the one given by the person the allegedly offensive comment was targeted at.
Especially if he automatically spits out answers that reveal he's a robot from the future who hates people sent here to destroy us?
I'd say that someone who hates people sent here to destroy us would be a good ally against those people, especially if he's a robot from the future.
What?
The company has pledged publicly that they won't actually assert their patent rights... and since these are patents we're talking about, it means that noone else can either.
Unless this pledge is legally binding, I personally don't find it very reassuring. IBM's pledge I take to be worth something because of IBM's massive investment in open source.
Maybe it's just the sort of protection that the open source movement needs so that we *can* innovate without having to jump through a bunch of hoops or worry about facing legal action?
But we will, so long as software patents exist. Microsoft and IBM have large portfolios, but they aren't the sole holder of software patents. It's like clearing two fields of mines in Afghanistan. Those two may be safe, but you still need to cross dozens of others to get where you are going.
I have a suspicion that the real purpose of these pledges is to stave off patent reform. In as much that it actually helps free software developers, that's fine, but it avoids the real issue.
My mother tried to ban me from playing D&D because it was the "work of Satan" and when that didn't work I would catch her praying over my RPG materials. Well, I didn't grow up to be a serial killer so I guess she figures her prayers must have worked.
Heh. Thank goodness my father was never that bad. What is funny is that he was always dissaproving of my D&D habit, not outright condemning it, but vaguely uncertain whether or not it was in fact the work of Satan. The funny part being that he was a musician in a rock band, and when he was a kid it was rock n roll that was the Devil's Work, and attitude he thought was bullshit (in his own words). I think that is why he was never willing to come right out and forbid me from playing or spending my own money on the books, since he was probably worried that he was being just like the ones that condemned rock music.
Still, it wasn't something I could share with him, and if I wanted to play I'd take my books to a friend's house.
Still, I was lucky, all things (and your story) considered.
Paper does not ensure that the counters will count accurately. Paper does not ensure that the counters are not subject to a poltical bias or bribes. Only a well-defined process with proper auditing, traceability, etc. regardless of the actual method used to poll the constituents, is the method that will be accurate.
A paper ballot is necessary but not sufficient for a reliable fraud-free election.
I agree with you entirely, so long as you are not concluding that paper is not sufficient, therefore not necessary.
Remember that at this stage of the election debate in the U.S., the issue on the table is paper vs. no paper. The former is absolutely superior, and the lack of sufficiency of paper alone doesn't change that.
Electronic voting lets you do a lot of parts of voting better.
Yes, but not by replacing the paper vote. The proper role of an electronic voting machine is as a ballot verifier, not counter. You either mark the ballot and insert it in the machine which checks it for validity, or you use the machine to make your selections and it marks/prints the ballot.
They key to any electronic system is redundancy - you don't have fewer than 2 of any critical component, and you have a non-electrical backup.
Redundancy of the electrical systems doesn't do anything to solve the real problems with electronic voting.
For electronic voting, that means you have enough provisional ballots to do the entire election if needed. It means you have a physical (paper or other non-alterable type) record.
However stated in that way (physical record -- yes paper, it must be human readable or you're just trusting another computer), then this kind of "redundancy" is important. In fact, having the paper record is the most important and really it isn't "redundancy", it's "primacy". The machine is the non-mandatory part, the convenience factor that makes verifying votes easier. The machine must not be the vote.
I noticed the same thing when I played it on Mame, but I seem to recall that the Genesis version (which was my first exposure to the game and what I played the most of) was much longer, like roughly twice as long. I'm too lazy to try to verify this right now, though. If I'm correct, they hopefully be releasing the Genesis version.
Well, obviously the name "pretexting" is a lie itself, designed to cover up the uglier truth of "lying". It's all part of marketing corporate-speak, in which negative aspects of what you do are covered up through language trickery, in this case making up a word that nobody knows the meaning of.
I'm rather pleased that they have failed to pull the wool over anyone's eyes, but the fact that the word keeps getting repeated is bothersome. The news outlets should only be using that word in the context of explaining Dunn's lame attempt to cover up for fraud.
First of all, you are the one with a positive proposition, hence you are the one required to substantiate your argument.
I'm not required to do anything for you. I'm not about to give a free education to someone who so clearly doesn't actually want the information. If you wanted it, you'd seek it out.
Actually as far as the flow of information has gone in this argument, it has gone from me to you.
Yes, you've communicated clearly that you think not reading any information on a subject means that information doesn't exist. You've communicated clearly that making up some random explanation that you know has no basis in fact (because you just made it up) has equal weight as a peer-reviewed research paper's conclusion that you don't know whether or not it has any basis in fact (because you avoid reading it at all costs). You've given me solid information regarding your stubborn ignorance.
Now I would like to point out an equally valid (perhaps even more valid) non-sun based global warming based theory. It is called The Flying Spaghetti Monster theory
Just because you've read as much about real climate research as you have about the Flying Spaghetti Monster does not mean they both have the same amount of validity.
Sorry, but I refuse to argue with the deliberately stupid. I'll show you a slew of papers, and you'll read enough of the first one to find some statement that you take issue with and not a sentence farther, and I'll have to explain why your misinterpreted the statement, and that explanation would have been the next sentence. Then to the next issue, one paragraph later, where you'll somehow have forgotten what I just pointed out, always refraining from reading enough to understand, never showing actual curiosity. Just stubborn ignorance.
So. Not. Worth. It.
1. It's cheaper. Don't let a PC gamer delude you into thinking that console gaming is more expensive--it's just not true. Console manufacturers take a loss on every machine sold and make up the difference in software sales. When you buy a console, you're getting the machine for cheaper than it costs them to make it.
Hehe. It really cracked me up last generation when Sony and Nintendo revealed that this commonly held wisdom was in fact false and that they both were making a decent profit on sales of the console itself, thank you very much. Nintendo had been making a profit from the get-go, while I think Sony was selling for a loss at first but was able to reduce the cost, as planned, so that they were profitable. Meanwhile Microsoft, who had bought into the old logic of 'make a loss on hardware, make it up with software' big time, was still losing something like $100 on each XBOX even after it had been out for two years. Oops! I bet the first XBOX division meeting they had after Sony/Nintendo let the cat out of the bag had to have been a fun one. Heh.
It's a silly point, anyway. It contains its own refutation: "make up the difference in software sales". To really find out which is cheaper you have to consider the number of games purchased, and any hardware in the computer that wasn't bought solely for games. For the record, I play both PC and console games, and buy a new video card about as often as I buy a new console, so they end costs are fairly similar for me.
I know science is to hard for you religous types, but just try a little harder to grasp science requires those maeking propositions to prove thier points and not accept thier assertions on blind faith. If everything you saying were true, you would have been able to : ...
Now that would be undeniable science if you could do that. right now there is nothing to debate because there is no tangilbe scienctific evidence to support these claims.
That's funny saying global warming needs to be taken on faith.
The only reason you have to take anything on faith, for or against global warming, is because you are deliberately ignorant.
You place it on me to give you all the information you want, but let's be honest, you wouldn't believe me if I showed you, and you don't really want any of that information either or you would have looked for it yourself. You wouldn't have had to say "it's 99.99999% the sun" or whatever you made up.
But you don't want to know. That's why you don't know anything, that's why you don't even comprehend the basic idea of how retaining heat increases temperature, because that would be like a fact that you would have to learn, and it's much more comfortable for you assume these facts don't exist. As long as you don't know anything at all, then the pro- and con- sides are equally faith based for you, and it's like picking between Christianity and Islam, a matter of preference.
You prefer to think global warming is not a problem -- and, ha ha, if it exists it's a good thing -- and that if we tried to reverse the trend it would destroy our standard of living. You take this on faith, because this faith is preferable to faith in global warming, and since you refuse to educate yourself to make a non-faith-based decision, you can pick whatever you want. You challenge me to prove it all for you, but you aren't interested, or you'd do your own damn research. You like it to be faith-based.
That's convenient for you, but not everyone works that way.
P.S. It's people like you who will destroy our way of life, and you'll realize this once insulated inside your air conditioned home and deliberate ignorance even you cannot deny the facts that everyone else has known about for years. As much fun as it would be to see the day your faith fails you, it's just not worth it.
oh no wait, you can't even subtract properly.
I sure hope this isn't a reference to the temperature of Venus, after I so thoroughly pwned your sorry butt on the subject.
Everything else you said is just repetition of your fundamental argument, which is: "I am terribly ignorant on the subject of climate research -- witness my belief that global warming would make northeast winters more bearable -- and my stubborn ignorance disproves global warming."
That's fine for you, but it really does make you to climatology what the ID proponent is to biological diversity: Someone with faith in ignorance.