Gamasutra points out that while Nintendo is suffering from reduced profits, neither Sony nor Microsoft's Xbox division are currently making any profit.
That's not really the point.
Sony has multiple divisions, just because the company as a whole isn't making a profit doesn't mean the PS division isn't. In previous years, the PS division of Sony made more profit than all of their other divisions combined.
As for the Xbox, the intent was never to make a profit, so it's really an unfair comparison. Entering the game console industry is extremely difficult and expensive. Xbox 2 will most likely turn a profit, and the losses on Xbox 1 were really just necessary to break the barriers to entry in the market.
However, the game console market can be very profitable with 2 major players, but with three major players, profits will fall. Nintendo's lackluster earnings can mostly be blamed on the Xbox and PSP, for bringing new competition to Nintendo's old turfs.
The idea that the only stakeholders in a company are the shareholders is a common slashdot myth.
Actually, a company has many stakeholders, including customers, suppliers, employees, the environment, the government, and shareholders.
While shareholders do own the company, not all decisions are made in the best interests of the shareholders. There are plenty of companies that will install more expensive, but more environmentally friendly devices, because the employees at that company care. And it's not just about marketing or building a brand - sometimes people just care.
In the end, a company is comprised of people - people who make decisions. Sometimes those decisions are at the expense of the shareholders and in favor of other stakeholders. That being said, I'm not advocating keeping employees whose jobs are no longer necessary, and I don't know the situation at IBM well enough to comment on whether or not this is the case.
Re:There are many other reasons to switch from del
on
Dell Still Intel Only
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· Score: 3, Funny
I was agreeing with you until I saw I do like dell workstations and home PCs and laptops
Dell laptops are the worst brand of laptops you can buy. They break constantly. I go to school with 200 people who own a Dell laptop. Without fail, everyone I know with a Dell laptop has had very big problems.
1. Guy and girl meet in online chat room and develop a relationship over the course of 2 years. They decide to meet and have sex when she turns 17 in order to setup a huge lawsuit. 2. The girl sues AOL for millions of dollars, thanks to the guy's behavior. 3. They run away together to a tropical island with millions in the bank.
It's like the movie Wild Things, only without that pool scene.
Mod parent up - knowing quite a bit about trademark/patent/copyright laws, he is absolutely correct. eScrabble is clearly a derivative work, and therefore belongs to Hasbro.
I don't know whether it's true or not, but critics claim that the drug companies spend 10x as much on advertising as they do on research.
Comparing advertising spend to research spend is a completely illogical thing to do. It doesn't matter that drug companies spend more money on advertising than they do on research. Advertising is a LOT less risky than research and has a much higher expected gain. Therefore, it makes sense to spend more money on advertising.
Another way of thinking about this is that once research has shown to be successful, advertising INCREASES the profits from the new drug. This makes research itself more valuable, and therefore, advertising actually increases the availability of new drugs.
Advertising is not a sinkhole nor a waste of money. The drug companies have to let the public know about their new drug in some way, and they know the most effective way to do that.
"Getting GPG to work on windows requires Cygwin, which is a pain in the ass. If it doesn't work *transparently* on Windows, there'll never be a critical mass of people using it."
This is patently untrue. I downloaded the windows binaries from gnupg.org and followed the directions on enigmail.mozdev.org and had my dad encrypting email in about 15 mins. No cygwin required.
Just because it was easy for you and your father does not mean there will be mass adoption.
Has there ever been a program that required cygwin that gained mass adoption?
Except that if they ignore patents completely they will be unable to export their wares into any of the large markets (US, Europe, Japan, etc).
Re:Hardware resources and software design
on
Where's My 10 Ghz PC?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
There is no substitute for knowing how to write your own sort routines, specialized linked lists, and binary trees.
What about knowing how to use the libraries that have these functions built in, such as the stl? You might not be 100% as efficient with the libraries, but you can be sure that those libraries are tested and optimized, and if you write these functions yourself, they might be buggy and will most likely be slower than the what comes with the compiler.
Maybe someone should point out that Microsoft is battling dozens of patent-infringement lawsuits itself, and any user of Microsoft software (including governments) could also be sued?
Basically, if Windows was violating a patent held by IBM and IBM decided to sue MS customers then Microsoft has agreed to fight the case and pay damages on its customers' behalf.
He didn't say that brands were irrelevant, but rather that they were insufficient to generate profits. It taks a strong brand, high quality product, and continuous marketing efforts to consistantly outsell your competition.
A good brand certainly helps. That's why Coke outsells store-brand soda and Lays outsell store-brand chips (in blind taste tests, consumers actually prefer most store-brand items). However, unless the quality of branded items improve, they could soon see their dominance come to an end.
Re:What do you guys think?
on
Halo 2 Reviews
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· Score: 1
There are a lot of amazing games for Xbox. My favorites are Ninja Gaiden, Knights of the Old Republic, and Prince of Persia.
What they are patenting is the method they used to determine the recommendations based on previous purchases.
Example, Recommendations = f(Previous_Purchases) They're not patenting the idea of providing recommendations based on previous purchases. They are patenting the function f, which Amazon may or many not be infringing.
You can't just point to a system where people recommend products and claim prior art - they have to be using the same process!
I would be very surprised if IBM didn't create a Linux version of this encryption software themselves . They are very Linux friendly and are always making strides to port their software for their hardware to Linux.
Before we jump to conclusions about how this will ruin our computing lives, let's think about this for a second.
Some companies, such as IBM will provide systems with these chips in them. Some customers will buy them, specifically, customers who want to have only authorized programs running on their systems - customers worried about security. That there is a market for these systems is not a question.
However, there is also a market for systems WITHOUT these "trust" chips. And manufacturers will continue to provide systems without trust chips. If you don't want to buy a "trust" computer, don't. There will continue to be plenty of computers without this feature.
Can someone please explain to me how the parent is only modded at +3 while the grandparent is at +5?
The parent is absolutely correct (speaking as someone who has taken multiple accounting classes). In the conservative rules of GAAP in the US, you can only put something on the balance sheet if you can appropriately value it. However, in Europe Good Will and Brand are valued on the balance sheets and income statements based on accurate estimates.
That being said, building up a brand often leads to increased profits down the road.
Well, how about CUSTOMS TARIFFS designed to bring the price of low wages countries products more in line with those in the high wages coutries??? If a country pays jack shit to it's workers, the tarrifs go back in the importing country's government's pockets who can then use it to help increase that country's competitivity. But if it pays it's workers better, in turn, THEY BECOME MORE COMPETITIVE, because the receiving countries' tarrifs drop, and the extra price they are able to get for their products stays in the exporting country as profits, instead of tariffs in the importing country!!!
Clearly you have no understanding of international business. You can't just impose tariffs, especially if you are within a free-trade zone (such as Mexico/US). If you impose tariffs on them they can impose tariffs on you (not necessarily for the same goods). All tariffs do is reduce the trade between countries (or groups of countries)
When countries are able to offer lower wages they do so generally because the standards of living are lower. When products can be produced for less, that country has a competitive advantage in producing those products. While sometimes, lax environmental laws or other legal matters make it unfair for some countries generally the cheaper production costs should be utilized. In situations where there is unfair competition tariffs can be imposed in that case, according to a NAFTA or WTO agreement.
But nowadays, bourgeois have no more foresight, and the swarms of MBAs they fatly pay have no more common-sense than a brain-dead sponge (with or without square pants), so they keep doing everything in the name of ultra-myopic short-sight. Free-trade only benefits the company owners, for the rest of the population, it means a steady decrease in the standard of living!
I'd rather not mention your disrespect of MBAs at this point, as I'm getting one (after working as a software engineer for a while) and there are plenty of MBAs without the greed you suggest. Also, many of them are extremely intelligent, and you would be best off not underestimating them just because you lack the capacity to understand what they do. As for the idea that free-trade only benefits the company owners, you are wrong there too. Free trade benefits:
Yes, company owners
The economy in general, as more money is available for investment
The global economy as there is more money available for innovation
Consumers, who get cheaper products
Most importantly, it helps the new workers who would otherwise be unemployed
What's more selfish? Moving your employment offshore to get your investors money, or trying to justify your high paying job when someone living in poverty could do just as good a job (situational) for much less money?
Slashdot Mirror
Just release another Smash Bros for the GC
Gamasutra points out that while Nintendo is suffering from reduced profits, neither Sony nor Microsoft's Xbox division are currently making any profit.
That's not really the point.
Sony has multiple divisions, just because the company as a whole isn't making a profit doesn't mean the PS division isn't. In previous years, the PS division of Sony made more profit than all of their other divisions combined.
As for the Xbox, the intent was never to make a profit, so it's really an unfair comparison. Entering the game console industry is extremely difficult and expensive. Xbox 2 will most likely turn a profit, and the losses on Xbox 1 were really just necessary to break the barriers to entry in the market.
However, the game console market can be very profitable with 2 major players, but with three major players, profits will fall. Nintendo's lackluster earnings can mostly be blamed on the Xbox and PSP, for bringing new competition to Nintendo's old turfs.
This is my favorite ad:
And why should they charge you less just because it doesn't have those apps which you could download for free?
Do you think they charge by the MB? Do you think it costs them less for you to buy the OS without those apps?
If so, you are sadly mistaken.
The idea that the only stakeholders in a company are the shareholders is a common slashdot myth.
Actually, a company has many stakeholders, including customers, suppliers, employees, the environment, the government, and shareholders.
While shareholders do own the company, not all decisions are made in the best interests of the shareholders. There are plenty of companies that will install more expensive, but more environmentally friendly devices, because the employees at that company care. And it's not just about marketing or building a brand - sometimes people just care.
In the end, a company is comprised of people - people who make decisions. Sometimes those decisions are at the expense of the shareholders and in favor of other stakeholders. That being said, I'm not advocating keeping employees whose jobs are no longer necessary, and I don't know the situation at IBM well enough to comment on whether or not this is the case.
I was agreeing with you until I saw I do like dell workstations and home PCs and laptops
Dell laptops are the worst brand of laptops you can buy. They break constantly. I go to school with 200 people who own a Dell laptop. Without fail, everyone I know with a Dell laptop has had very big problems.
If you're not buying a Mac, you're much better off with an IBM or Panasonic or a lesser-known brand
1. Guy and girl meet in online chat room and develop a relationship over the course of 2 years. They decide to meet and have sex when she turns 17 in order to setup a huge lawsuit.
2. The girl sues AOL for millions of dollars, thanks to the guy's behavior.
3. They run away together to a tropical island with millions in the bank.
It's like the movie Wild Things, only without that pool scene.
Mod parent up - knowing quite a bit about trademark/patent/copyright laws, he is absolutely correct. eScrabble is clearly a derivative work, and therefore belongs to Hasbro.
I don't know whether it's true or not, but critics claim that the drug companies spend 10x as much on advertising as they do on research.
Comparing advertising spend to research spend is a completely illogical thing to do. It doesn't matter that drug companies spend more money on advertising than they do on research. Advertising is a LOT less risky than research and has a much higher expected gain. Therefore, it makes sense to spend more money on advertising.
Another way of thinking about this is that once research has shown to be successful, advertising INCREASES the profits from the new drug. This makes research itself more valuable, and therefore, advertising actually increases the availability of new drugs.
Advertising is not a sinkhole nor a waste of money. The drug companies have to let the public know about their new drug in some way, and they know the most effective way to do that.
Why do you insist on using population as the comparison factor?
It's not like the households in the US are using all that energy. It's companies producing things like cars, computers, etc.
Look at GDP from the country. The US contributes approximately 1/3 of the world's GDP, and therefore their energy use is pretty much on target.
"Getting GPG to work on windows requires Cygwin, which is a pain in the ass. If it doesn't work *transparently* on Windows, there'll never be a critical mass of people using it."
This is patently untrue. I downloaded the windows binaries from gnupg.org and followed the directions on enigmail.mozdev.org and had my dad encrypting email in about 15 mins. No cygwin required.
Just because it was easy for you and your father does not mean there will be mass adoption.
Has there ever been a program that required cygwin that gained mass adoption?
Except that if they ignore patents completely they will be unable to export their wares into any of the large markets (US, Europe, Japan, etc).
There is no substitute for knowing how to write your own sort routines, specialized linked lists, and binary trees.
What about knowing how to use the libraries that have these functions built in, such as the stl? You might not be 100% as efficient with the libraries, but you can be sure that those libraries are tested and optimized, and if you write these functions yourself, they might be buggy and will most likely be slower than the what comes with the compiler.
Go here, watch the videos and the emails, and come back to slashdot
Flash does have its uses...
Maybe someone should point out that Microsoft is battling dozens of patent-infringement lawsuits itself, and any user of Microsoft software (including governments) could also be sued?
Microsoft has already indemnified customers against IP threats.
Basically, if Windows was violating a patent held by IBM and IBM decided to sue MS customers then Microsoft has agreed to fight the case and pay damages on its customers' behalf.
A volcano causes harm, destruction, and misfortune yet it is not particularly evil.
How do you spend your free time outside of gaming?
And on that note, what do you and your spouses do for fun (outside of the apartment)?
He didn't say that brands were irrelevant, but rather that they were insufficient to generate profits. It taks a strong brand, high quality product, and continuous marketing efforts to consistantly outsell your competition.
A good brand certainly helps. That's why Coke outsells store-brand soda and Lays outsell store-brand chips (in blind taste tests, consumers actually prefer most store-brand items). However, unless the quality of branded items improve, they could soon see their dominance come to an end.
There are a lot of amazing games for Xbox. My favorites are Ninja Gaiden, Knights of the Old Republic, and Prince of Persia.
For a list of great games, check out Ign games with a 9+ rating
What they are patenting is the method they used to determine the recommendations based on previous purchases.
Example, Recommendations = f(Previous_Purchases)
They're not patenting the idea of providing recommendations based on previous purchases. They are patenting the function f, which Amazon may or many not be infringing.
You can't just point to a system where people recommend products and claim prior art - they have to be using the same process!
Not all your files. I have access to my Trillian logs (c:\program files\trillian) and those are not indexed.
I would be very surprised if IBM didn't create a Linux version of this encryption software themselves . They are very Linux friendly and are always making strides to port their software for their hardware to Linux.
Before we jump to conclusions about how this will ruin our computing lives, let's think about this for a second.
Some companies, such as IBM will provide systems with these chips in them. Some customers will buy them, specifically, customers who want to have only authorized programs running on their systems - customers worried about security. That there is a market for these systems is not a question.
However, there is also a market for systems WITHOUT these "trust" chips. And manufacturers will continue to provide systems without trust chips. If you don't want to buy a "trust" computer, don't. There will continue to be plenty of computers without this feature.
Can someone please explain to me how the parent is only modded at +3 while the grandparent is at +5?
The parent is absolutely correct (speaking as someone who has taken multiple accounting classes). In the conservative rules of GAAP in the US, you can only put something on the balance sheet if you can appropriately value it. However, in Europe Good Will and Brand are valued on the balance sheets and income statements based on accurate estimates.
That being said, building up a brand often leads to increased profits down the road.
Clearly you have no understanding of international business. You can't just impose tariffs, especially if you are within a free-trade zone (such as Mexico/US). If you impose tariffs on them they can impose tariffs on you (not necessarily for the same goods). All tariffs do is reduce the trade between countries (or groups of countries)
When countries are able to offer lower wages they do so generally because the standards of living are lower. When products can be produced for less, that country has a competitive advantage in producing those products. While sometimes, lax environmental laws or other legal matters make it unfair for some countries generally the cheaper production costs should be utilized. In situations where there is unfair competition tariffs can be imposed in that case, according to a NAFTA or WTO agreement.
But nowadays, bourgeois have no more foresight, and the swarms of MBAs they fatly pay have no more common-sense than a brain-dead sponge (with or without square pants), so they keep doing everything in the name of ultra-myopic short-sight. Free-trade only benefits the company owners, for the rest of the population, it means a steady decrease in the standard of living!
I'd rather not mention your disrespect of MBAs at this point, as I'm getting one (after working as a software engineer for a while) and there are plenty of MBAs without the greed you suggest. Also, many of them are extremely intelligent, and you would be best off not underestimating them just because you lack the capacity to understand what they do. As for the idea that free-trade only benefits the company owners, you are wrong there too. Free trade benefits:
What's more selfish? Moving your employment offshore to get your investors money, or trying to justify your high paying job when someone living in poverty could do just as good a job (situational) for much less money?