...[L]awyers from Jenner & Block in Washington, D.C. say they haven't received the money or an explanation for the delay, according to court documents. So they went back to the courtroom earlier this month to ask the judge to force the administration to comply.
Chalk up another horrible idea to good ol' Rod, (illegally importing drugs from Canada, buying $2.5 million of non-FDA approved flu shots). But all's well - we voted him in another 4 years too.
I agree; it's been interesting watching prices on transactions on eBay today.
The morning started with Wiis going at a certain range; $350-$450. Presentation matters, since apparently giant red text makes more people bite. Bigger bites if you managed to grab a component cable at the same store.
Reserves generally aren't being met at $380 sometimes. With a margin of $70-$170 (assuming you bought at $280 after taxes) and shrinking fairly quickly, it would be a good idea to just cash in and be rid of your Wii as soon as you can.
I highly doubt a Wii on eBay will be selling for less than retail anytime soon, but a lot of participants probably would equate a $20-$50 margin as a loss.
Yeah, I picked up Zelda and a remote at Target. (No nunchuk, though. You'd think that they would sell out of remotes AND nunchuks at the same time.) Alas, the GameCube is not forward compatible with the Wii.
That said, Wii Sports is one of the games my wife is looking forward to playing, so I'm glad Nintendo "gets it" and wants to expand gaming to a non-gaming audience. She wants a "simple" (read: side-scroller) next, because 3-D does add a level of complexity some people don't want.
I'm pretty much expecting to walk into the Bloomingdale, Illinois Meijer and walk out with a Wii, no problem. Everyone else seems to be addicted to the PS3.
If not, well, I'll try again in a couple weeks. Or head out to the Fox Valley, because that's where I picked up a Gamecube not one week after launch - they had 10 other ones, and the hype for the GC at the time then felt more like the hype for the Wii now.
In any event, I would've thought that the general public had gotten over waiting in days-long lines for an entertainment device.
"Core gamers know when we're coming out. They're prepared," [Nintendo of America President and COO Reggie Fils-Aime] said. "The advertising and marketing is for casual gamers. We want to get them excited when they can actually go out and get something, so we'll start next week."
So that's why I haven't seen any Wii ads yet; apparently, the casual gamer doesn't start thinking about a console until it's out.
I have difficulty agreeing with this rationale, but then again, I'm not a casual gamer.
Duck Hunt, Punch-Out (but will it have Mike Tyson?), PilotWings, Hogan's Alley, Kid Icarus, Kirby's Adventure, Pro Wrestling and Wild Gunman are all apparently slated for release, and an early 2007 appearance seems likely given what Nintendo's said about Virtual Console so far.
Queue questions about a gun attachment for Duck Hunt. This is good news indeed, although Clay Shot was much harder (and thus, the place where I spent more time) than shooting ducks. Except for those brown ones. Stupid brown ducks.
The 360's not even a year old... I'm assuming the Lights of Death aren't a widespread problem? I would have read more about that on/. by now if it was widespread. (No, I don't own one.)
The video isn't really worth watching, even if it is hosted on YouTube. Just another "cooking on electronics" example.
Not sure what your setup is, but I routinely used up to 500-600K of memory (as defined by Task Manager --> Processes --> Mem Usage) in Firefox 1.5. A few times I've cracked 800K, which slowed the box to a crawl.
First upgrade was to Firefox 2.0 RC 2, and I've never come close to 150K since; I've also dropped a couple of extensions because they were built in. I suspect statistically most users have had this experience.
Win2k SP4, 2.8 GHz P4, 784 MB RAM. Unfortunately, FF 2.0 RC 3 on OS X is still inferior to the latest build of Camino.
Please do an estimate on what your annual power production will be. Find a map like this Illinois map from this link and figure out if your $8-$11k is better spent elsewhere for energy conservation. I know if you're not living in one of those two little pink splotches in Illinois, odds are your wind turbine will never pay for itself, whereas insulting your air vents will pay for itself within a year or two at most.
Trees will kill your wind generation capability. I believe the rule of thumb is your turbine needs to be X distance away from the nearest tree. X is some sort of multiple (3x, 4x) times the height of the nearest tree. If your house is shaded by 50 foot deciduous trees like mine is, you have no chance. Put up solar panels, and only if those said trees don't block those, either. (Trees are good, by the way; they reduce your cooling costs in the summer, and in the winter when the leaves fall off, the sun can heat your house).
Also, I'll throw in the obligatory link to the Energy Star program here. Get (or perform) an energy audit on your home; it will give you some more ideas.
Not only does the (completely unbiased) poll report that 72% of the 1,075 respondents agree vibration feedback enhances their game experience, it goes on to note that 59% of those surveyed would prefer rumble on the PS3 controller, while only 8% care about motion / tilt sensing (sorry, Nintendo).
The article seems to be/.ed, but...
8% care about integrating motion/tilt sensing in a standard controller. The Wii requires you use its motion/tilt sensing technology in its controller. It's not a good idea to poll people about something they don't know. Ask again after the Wii comes out.
If you would've told me watching animated Lego-men pretend to be Luke and Leia would've saved the fortunes (or slowed the decline, depending on how you look at it) of one of the biggest toy companies in Denmark, I would've called you crazy.
It takes a little more thought than I'd like to put in to see how the thresholds are defined. 4 Full (score 5) / 51 Abbreviated (score 2) / 27 hidden (score -1) would be appreciated.
Being able to disable the abbreviated option altogether would be nice, actually. Then I could navigate threads at my leisure.
Also, a flexible threshold system would be good, but now we're going into divining magic. For example, if I click on a thread, I'm obviously interested in it; hide -1 scored comments, show comments scoring 0 or more.
Based off the movies on wii.com, this thing will probably set Japan aflame in numbers similar to the DS and DS Lite. Further comments below...
The interface looks relatively easy to navigate, though I wonder how long I can hold that controller out in front of me.
The Mii Channel is another step in the development of online personas. Yahoo! Avatars, anyone? Regardless of how similar it is, this will definitely draw in the chick clique. Being able to take "yourself" in a remote is a bonus. How Westerners pick it up depends on whether or not they'll respond like they did with The Sims...
Wii Weather really does look cool.
The News Channel is cool; I wonder if we'll have different sources to pick from.
The centerpiece of the Wii (or, at least, what's being displayed here and touted as a Big Reason to get one) resembles an AOL-TV like Internet portal, but it can play games. I'm not going to expect this thing to be my Firefox replacement or anything.
Launch lineup: Strong, good potential. Excite Truck. Ha ha ha... that's excellent. Hopefully I'll be able to make and store a crapton of courses. Wii Sports is more likely than not a bargain at the perceived price of $50, especially if there's more than one course available for Wii Golf. Tying in Miis' skill levels and performance is a good idea. Probably doesn't have advanced features of any of the five games (will Golden Tee for Wii, if it comes out, support the concept of topspin/backspin/natural fade/draw?) but is a good multiplayer title to have regardless.
If it's anything more than a glorifed version of the Weather Channel webpage (and closer to the real weather webpage, complete with otherdepartments), I'll be impressed and probably use it. Otherwise it's probably just a feature I won't use.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't really figure out where the new news is in this, seeing as we're already on the "Illinois ain't paying squat" part of this saga.
Blagojevich hasn't paid for video lawsuit as judge ordered (Chicago Tribune, reg. required, subscription-free Sun Times here.)
Chalk up another horrible idea to good ol' Rod, (illegally importing drugs from Canada, buying $2.5 million of non-FDA approved flu shots). But all's well - we voted him in another 4 years too.
I agree; it's been interesting watching prices on transactions on eBay today.
The morning started with Wiis going at a certain range; $350-$450. Presentation matters, since apparently giant red text makes more people bite. Bigger bites if you managed to grab a component cable at the same store.
Reserves generally aren't being met at $380 sometimes. With a margin of $70-$170 (assuming you bought at $280 after taxes) and shrinking fairly quickly, it would be a good idea to just cash in and be rid of your Wii as soon as you can.
I highly doubt a Wii on eBay will be selling for less than retail anytime soon, but a lot of participants probably would equate a $20-$50 margin as a loss.
I think I heard about this guy. He would've gotten away scot-free had he not kept yelling, "It's-a me! Mario!"
Yeah, I picked up Zelda and a remote at Target. (No nunchuk, though. You'd think that they would sell out of remotes AND nunchuks at the same time.) Alas, the GameCube is not forward compatible with the Wii.
That said, Wii Sports is one of the games my wife is looking forward to playing, so I'm glad Nintendo "gets it" and wants to expand gaming to a non-gaming audience. She wants a "simple" (read: side-scroller) next, because 3-D does add a level of complexity some people don't want.
I thought demand would be less than it was. Doh!
So I'll take some advice. What's the best plan for picking a Wii at retail now?
Checked this morning; the following retailers within three miles around me are expecting the following amount of Wiis:
For comparison, they had this many PS3s:
Part of me wonders how many casual shoppers (read: moms) are going to walk in looking for a PS3 and walk out with a Wii.
Dell, Novell and Apple have also received delisting notices at some point. Let me know if/when Activision actually gets pulled off the exchange.
I'm pretty much expecting to walk into the Bloomingdale, Illinois Meijer and walk out with a Wii, no problem. Everyone else seems to be addicted to the PS3.
If not, well, I'll try again in a couple weeks. Or head out to the Fox Valley, because that's where I picked up a Gamecube not one week after launch - they had 10 other ones, and the hype for the GC at the time then felt more like the hype for the Wii now.
In any event, I would've thought that the general public had gotten over waiting in days-long lines for an entertainment device.
Real DDR players step to white noise. Expert players don't even need their PS3 to output a freaking video signal.
So that's why I haven't seen any Wii ads yet; apparently, the casual gamer doesn't start thinking about a console until it's out.
I have difficulty agreeing with this rationale, but then again, I'm not a casual gamer.
Queue questions about a gun attachment for Duck Hunt. This is good news indeed, although Clay Shot was much harder (and thus, the place where I spent more time) than shooting ducks. Except for those brown ones. Stupid brown ducks.
Actually, more like a Nintendo fanboy fiscal-conservative social-liberal from Chicago. Thanks, though. :-p
The 360's not even a year old... I'm assuming the Lights of Death aren't a widespread problem? I would have read more about that on /. by now if it was widespread. (No, I don't own one.)
The video isn't really worth watching, even if it is hosted on YouTube. Just another "cooking on electronics" example.
No no no, they meant "bork waste". The Swedish chef translation of their search engine is just taking up too much space. Bork bork bork!
Meh. Make that 500-600M, 800M and 150M respectively and then you'll get the right numbers. The argument still stands. :-)
Not sure what your setup is, but I routinely used up to 500-600K of memory (as defined by Task Manager --> Processes --> Mem Usage) in Firefox 1.5. A few times I've cracked 800K, which slowed the box to a crawl.
First upgrade was to Firefox 2.0 RC 2, and I've never come close to 150K since; I've also dropped a couple of extensions because they were built in. I suspect statistically most users have had this experience.
Win2k SP4, 2.8 GHz P4, 784 MB RAM. Unfortunately, FF 2.0 RC 3 on OS X is still inferior to the latest build of Camino.
Strange. That one slipped past my typo filter. That's kind of rare...
Anyways, yeah. Up to 60% savings for insulating and sealing.
- Please do an estimate on what your annual power production will be. Find a map like this Illinois map from this link and figure out if your $8-$11k is better spent elsewhere for energy conservation. I know if you're not living in one of those two little pink splotches in Illinois, odds are your wind turbine will never pay for itself, whereas insulting your air vents will pay for itself within a year or two at most.
- Trees will kill your wind generation capability. I believe the rule of thumb is your turbine needs to be X distance away from the nearest tree. X is some sort of multiple (3x, 4x) times the height of the nearest tree. If your house is shaded by 50 foot deciduous trees like mine is, you have no chance. Put up solar panels, and only if those said trees don't block those, either. (Trees are good, by the way; they reduce your cooling costs in the summer, and in the winter when the leaves fall off, the sun can heat your house).
Also, I'll throw in the obligatory link to the Energy Star program here. Get (or perform) an energy audit on your home; it will give you some more ideas.This is about the only time this blog will be on-topic, so here goes:
No, she didn't like it.
The article seems to be /.ed, but...
8% care about integrating motion/tilt sensing in a standard controller. The Wii requires you use its motion/tilt sensing technology in its controller. It's not a good idea to poll people about something they don't know. Ask again after the Wii comes out.
Sheesh.
If you would've told me watching animated Lego-men pretend to be Luke and Leia would've saved the fortunes (or slowed the decline, depending on how you look at it) of one of the biggest toy companies in Denmark, I would've called you crazy.
Shows what I know.
Now, the only thing that would be more amazing is if he did it drunk. 23 credit hours and beer. Now we're getting to godlike status...
It takes a little more thought than I'd like to put in to see how the thresholds are defined. 4 Full (score 5) / 51 Abbreviated (score 2) / 27 hidden (score -1) would be appreciated.
Being able to disable the abbreviated option altogether would be nice, actually. Then I could navigate threads at my leisure.
Also, a flexible threshold system would be good, but now we're going into divining magic. For example, if I click on a thread, I'm obviously interested in it; hide -1 scored comments, show comments scoring 0 or more.
Based off the movies on wii.com, this thing will probably set Japan aflame in numbers similar to the DS and DS Lite. Further comments below...
The centerpiece of the Wii (or, at least, what's being displayed here and touted as a Big Reason to get one) resembles an AOL-TV like Internet portal, but it can play games. I'm not going to expect this thing to be my Firefox replacement or anything.
Launch lineup: Strong, good potential. Excite Truck. Ha ha ha... that's excellent. Hopefully I'll be able to make and store a crapton of courses. Wii Sports is more likely than not a bargain at the perceived price of $50, especially if there's more than one course available for Wii Golf. Tying in Miis' skill levels and performance is a good idea. Probably doesn't have advanced features of any of the five games (will Golden Tee for Wii, if it comes out, support the concept of topspin/backspin/natural fade/draw?) but is a good multiplayer title to have regardless.
Interesting feature. Al Roker would be proud.
If it's anything more than a glorifed version of the Weather Channel webpage (and closer to the real weather webpage, complete with other departments), I'll be impressed and probably use it. Otherwise it's probably just a feature I won't use.