And also, you could have bought the Buran project (for next to nothing - after the collapse of the USSR it could not be sustained anyway), and now have a Space Shuttle equivalent that can carry more and NEEDS NO CREW (at least for easy missions). How much safer than that can you go?
It was not just common knowledge that the earth was round, they even knew the diameter of the Earth (look up Eratosthenes), some went as far as proposing the heliocentric system and measuring the sizes and distances of the sun and the moon (look up Aristarchus). For various reasons (which I won't try to pin down - let's not start flame wars here) most scientific knowledge of the era was forgotten and progress was stalled for almost 2 millennia.
Sorry guys, but I personally don't have to see a photo in the far-octarine to tell that these are your average, semi-bored trolls. They will obviously just look like rocks to the untrained eye during daytime, but they are no puzzle to someone who's been around the disc...
Well, I don't have the magazines with me, but going through my emails for permission requests from 5 years ago, I found a couple of titles: "Download DX" and "PC Maxx", but I am not sure these are the ones I actually received (I even remember that every few months I would start receiving a new publication in place of the previous, but they were similar in format - just as I described). Also, they are only in Japanese, so you won't get the most out of the articles;)
Actually there is a solution and the Japanese know it. A few years ago a Japanese magazine emailed me requesting to add a freeware tool I had made to the CD they include with their publication and asked if I also wanted a free subscription. Sure I said, but I must say I was not prepared for what I would start to receive every month for the following 3-4 years... So, their magazine was all about games, and multimedia, and naked girls! There was no coherent order of things, on one page there was a game review with adult ads, on the next there was a nude model pictorial, further "decorated" with (regular - non-nudie) pc-software ads, then an article on p2p full of adult, game, software etc ads. There were "combination" articles, like nudie web site reviews, or adult PC game reviews and always in no "sensible" categorization/order in the magazine. The included CD was similar. Game demos, multimedia software, japanese porn videos, all nicely aggregated within the autoplay interface. After surviving the culture shock, I decided they probably knew their target audience too well and I should just appreciate the publishers ingenuity.
Re:3 million dollars per year is a pittance
on
Is SETI Worth It?
·
· Score: 1
While in the US we pay over $1000 per person per year (looking at the current figures) for the military... Well, ok I guess that is justified. I mean we do know for sure there are other humans around the world, so we can spend truckloads of money to be able to "remove" them at will.
The company I work for develops for Symbian, BREW, Win CE among other things (while actually being a Linux-only workplace, thanks to compilers runing on VMWare). What you say is mostly true about BREW, which started as expensive for developers and with recent increases in testing fees has become ridiculously expensive. Symbian is not as much of a cost problem, however that is the only good thing I can say about it. While I have not worked much on Symbian myself, the fact that we work for most available mobile OS platforms and all developers get to see the bug reports and development issues of all projects (we are rather small, so following the dev lists is not overwhelming - switching to another project to help is common too), has given me a unique perspective on things and made me laugh out loud when I read about the Symbian VC's announcement. It seems that our symbian developers spend most of their time trying to program around Symbian OS bugs and Symbian OS version differences. As I am writing this, there is talk in our dev list about whether we should change the planned behavior of our UI due to ridiculous Symbian OS bug. Bugs like this show bad implementation from Symbian's part. However, the compatibility problems between different OS versions is more troubling, since it also means bad planning. Now, this outfit calling google (or anyone else) inexperienced and Linux "the common cold", it makes me want to either rofl, or pull out my hair. Just because Nokia invested so much in that stupid OS, doesn't make Symbian OS devs "gods" of any sort - they might have just been at the right place the right time (we all remember MS-DOS). I guess Symbian fans might call me a Troll, and there might indeed exist some good aspects of the OS. However, after 2+ years working and monitoring other's work on all competing patforms I do thing I have a decently accurate insight to do a comparison.
I mean, if it was Windows that was destroying laptop hard drives, this would have been a legendary thread, with viciously bashing comments, insightfully (40%) funny (20%) attacks against MS, Vista drama etc. With Ubuntu as the culprit there is some sort of "respect" that kills the potential of the thread. Come on guys, it is not Linux, it is just Ubuntu. What are the SuSE/RH/etc fans waiting for?
Yeah, a Malaysian that reads the NY Post... There is no need to check the entire transport chain. It is enough to just check returns and maybe keep track of your warehouse personel. Anyway, the craziest part is that the manager TOOK THE DRIVE HE PURCHASED (the second time) from his hands! They didn't just give him a drive, they refunded him and he purchased a new drive. Hello police! If that is not stealing, I don't know what is!
I don't want to be a troll, but people who install Real Player are asking for trouble. Wow, I just had a scary thought I managed to block just in time before passing out: Real Player. On Vista.
There is something wrong on your side. It looks fine on both my systems (and tried looking at 66%, 75%, 100%, 116% etc). I really liked Calibri and Consolas BTW.
Not only after the end of your contract. After a couple of months from the start of my contract, I called T-Mobile, as other people told me, and just asked for my phone to be unlocked, so that I could use a European SIM when I travel. No problem. Why not go after the other guys (call me AT&T) that never unlock the phone you paid for.
Now, as for the termination fee, do people realize that the phones they get are heavily subsidised? Except for the iPhone, every other phone you buy you can get it either for free or at a very low price, just because you are entering a contract. If the termination fees are abolished, you will have to PAY UP FRONT for the cost of the device, which is certainly not what most users would like. You can't just terminate your contract and switch to prepaid like many people do in Europe (incoming calls are free there - prepaid makes sense to many), you will always pay for a monthly contract why not have it absorb some of the cost of your phone?
Unbelievable, I get fanboy replies even if I DON'T comment... So that you are not wondering, the $27 is from iSuppli's teardown analysis (google isuppli ps3). Again, I won't comment myself, but I can point out some glaring mistakes you made:
-You assume there will be 10mil (or more) 40GB PS3's sold next year. From past performance I would call it optimistic even if you were talking about ALL the PS3's units to be sold next year (including the 60GB PS/2 compatible ones). In any case I won't pursue this, ok, maybe they do sell 10m or 20m of the 40GB version, the fact is:
-Regardless of the above point, your $15 savings per console assume that the unit is sold at the same price. You forget that in reality, the removed items (smaller disk, card reader, PS2 compat...) do not make up for the price difference (50 GBP = $100 in the UK), so Sony will be losing MORE per console than before.
It is a much more complicated move than "saving from the console to create games".
The current US versions have the CPU and Graphics card of the PS2 in the box (reported to cost SONY $27 total a year ago), while the original EU models had only the Graphics in hardware and emulated the CPU. Now they are removing that too. I will not comment on these facts, as I will be called a troll again;)
...make sure you at least read Wikipedia's entry for Samuel Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan". There are art, science etc references throught, but knowing a specific detail on the writting of that poem will help you appreciate more the conclusion of the amazing book.
For a minute there I thought you guys posted something about me... Oh, well, I guess I'll have to continue the work for my Ig Nobel nomination to make it to the/. front page.
Whoa, first time I've been called a Troll. I knew I shouldn't get into fanboy territory, I guess my post is kind of a flamebait if biased people read it, even though it was accurate. No, I am not an MS fanboy, or Nintendo fanboy etc. As I said I don't even play games anymore. Anyway let's see. One year ago, according to isuppli, the 60GB disk cost $54 while the 40GB cost $43. Now, a year later the 60GB costs significantly less (for $54 you can actually buy 80GB RETAIL now), yet you are claiming that a 40GB will be "significantly less" armed with just biased speculation. Oh, and where did you get that the 60GB has one platter? I would assume it is a 2x30GB platter disk (won't vouch for that though, just a hunch). isupli then give us the price of the Emotion Engine and Graphics Synthesizer together at $27 (again November 2007 quote). No, it doesn't get more expensive as time passes, unless there is very little production. The PS3 production run is not what Sony expected, but it is certainly not small enough to increase the price of trivial components. You just answered because I called a console "crippled". Was that too harsh for your favorite console? Sorry, but it is an perfectly fine expression, used often and nobody should get emotional over it. Yes, if that makes you happy we can say the Xbox core is crippled compared to the other Xboxes too (if I remember correctly that one is lacking the HD altogether), but why do you want to use the expression for one side only? Who is the fanboy here?
You didn't really expect me to RTFA, did you? I mean, this is Slashdot! In any case, the title is still wrong. Upon RTFA, they are indeed cutting prices of existing consoles (still at a "good" premium over the US of course) and IN ADDITION they are releasing the crippled version. So there was a price cut AND a new lower priced model. The price cut part is great for consumers, but the 40GB version, like Chewbacca living on planet Endor, still does not make sens. The point is that a 40GB HD right now does not really save you over a 60GB HD, since manufacturing is shifting to larger sizes. I will have to remind you that the manufacturing cost between the 20GB version and the 60GB version was reported at less than $30, and I am sure the WiFi and flash readers that were missing from the 20GB version cost more than the 7 year old graphics chip that the 40GB version ommits. The minor difference in manufacturing costs was the main reason the 20GB version was discontinued, how can I not be baffled by this new release, that seems to have an even smaller manufacturing cost difference? And you might talk about "periphery features" but Blue-Ray and PS2 compatibility were the two unique features of the PS3. Of course I don't care about them (as I said, I was a gamer until the late 90's, not anymore), but I have read in fora how important they were claimed to be by Sony fanboys. I guess they'll have to "change their song" now...
Releasing a crippled device at a lower price is not a "price cut" in any dictionary. Also, it should be obvious to anyone familiar with the current market, that going down to a 40GB HD right now is not very cost effective. What is more, the compatibility was just a software emulator in the European consoles anyway! So, Europeans were already paying a premium for a worse (no hardware PS2) device. Now they get the extra option of lowering that premium for an even worse device (that doesn't actually cost much less to manufacture). At the same time their competitors, who have dominated the marketplace, just carry on selling at their original super low price by the truckload (Nintendo), or continue on releasing upgraded (instead of downgraded) versions - as it is usual with electronics & computers - while lowering the prices across the board (Microsoft). Anybody sees something wrong with this picture? I am not a gamer anymore myself (If you ask me I will tell you the best game is Day Of The Tentacle), so I cannot comment on how each console "plays", but from a marketing point of view, Sony continues to baffle me.
Slashdot Mirror
And also, you could have bought the Buran project (for next to nothing - after the collapse of the USSR it could not be sustained anyway), and now have a Space Shuttle equivalent that can carry more and NEEDS NO CREW (at least for easy missions). How much safer than that can you go?
It was not just common knowledge that the earth was round, they even knew the diameter of the Earth (look up Eratosthenes), some went as far as proposing the heliocentric system and measuring the sizes and distances of the sun and the moon (look up Aristarchus). For various reasons (which I won't try to pin down - let's not start flame wars here) most scientific knowledge of the era was forgotten and progress was stalled for almost 2 millennia.
RTFA It says $1m per counterfeit mark per type of item sold.
So, if they counterfeited 2 logos on each of 3 types of batteris, IBM is asking for $6M.
Are we certain he was not in a closed room with a fan?
Sorry guys, but I personally don't have to see a photo in the far-octarine to tell that these are your average, semi-bored trolls. They will obviously just look like rocks to the untrained eye during daytime, but they are no puzzle to someone who's been around the disc...
Additions give me garbage too, however multiplication and SQRT worked fine. Are we doing something wrong with addition?
Well, I don't have the magazines with me, but going through my emails for permission requests from 5 years ago, I found a couple of titles: "Download DX" and "PC Maxx", but I am not sure these are the ones I actually received (I even remember that every few months I would start receiving a new publication in place of the previous, but they were similar in format - just as I described). ;)
Also, they are only in Japanese, so you won't get the most out of the articles
Actually there is a solution and the Japanese know it. A few years ago a Japanese magazine emailed me requesting to add a freeware tool I had made to the CD they include with their publication and asked if I also wanted a free subscription. Sure I said, but I must say I was not prepared for what I would start to receive every month for the following 3-4 years...
So, their magazine was all about games, and multimedia, and naked girls! There was no coherent order of things, on one page there was a game review with adult ads, on the next there was a nude model pictorial, further "decorated" with (regular - non-nudie) pc-software ads, then an article on p2p full of adult, game, software etc ads. There were "combination" articles, like nudie web site reviews, or adult PC game reviews and always in no "sensible" categorization/order in the magazine. The included CD was similar. Game demos, multimedia software, japanese porn videos, all nicely aggregated within the autoplay interface.
After surviving the culture shock, I decided they probably knew their target audience too well and I should just appreciate the publishers ingenuity.
While in the US we pay over $1000 per person per year (looking at the current figures) for the military...
Well, ok I guess that is justified. I mean we do know for sure there are other humans around the world, so we can spend truckloads of money to be able to "remove" them at will.
The company I work for develops for Symbian, BREW, Win CE among other things (while actually being a Linux-only workplace, thanks to compilers runing on VMWare). What you say is mostly true about BREW, which started as expensive for developers and with recent increases in testing fees has become ridiculously expensive.
Symbian is not as much of a cost problem, however that is the only good thing I can say about it.
While I have not worked much on Symbian myself, the fact that we work for most available mobile OS platforms and all developers get to see the bug reports and development issues of all projects (we are rather small, so following the dev lists is not overwhelming - switching to another project to help is common too), has given me a unique perspective on things and made me laugh out loud when I read about the Symbian VC's announcement.
It seems that our symbian developers spend most of their time trying to program around Symbian OS bugs and Symbian OS version differences. As I am writing this, there is talk in our dev list about whether we should change the planned behavior of our UI due to ridiculous Symbian OS bug. Bugs like this show bad implementation from Symbian's part. However, the compatibility problems between different OS versions is more troubling, since it also means bad planning.
Now, this outfit calling google (or anyone else) inexperienced and Linux "the common cold", it makes me want to either rofl, or pull out my hair. Just because Nokia invested so much in that stupid OS, doesn't make Symbian OS devs "gods" of any sort - they might have just been at the right place the right time (we all remember MS-DOS).
I guess Symbian fans might call me a Troll, and there might indeed exist some good aspects of the OS. However, after 2+ years working and monitoring other's work on all competing patforms I do thing I have a decently accurate insight to do a comparison.
I mean, if it was Windows that was destroying laptop hard drives, this would have been a legendary thread, with viciously bashing comments, insightfully (40%) funny (20%) attacks against MS, Vista drama etc.
With Ubuntu as the culprit there is some sort of "respect" that kills the potential of the thread. Come on guys, it is not Linux, it is just Ubuntu. What are the SuSE/RH/etc fans waiting for?
Yeah, a Malaysian that reads the NY Post...
There is no need to check the entire transport chain. It is enough to just check returns and maybe keep track of your warehouse personel.
Anyway, the craziest part is that the manager TOOK THE DRIVE HE PURCHASED (the second time) from his hands! They didn't just give him a drive, they refunded him and he purchased a new drive. Hello police! If that is not stealing, I don't know what is!
I don't want to be a troll, but people who install Real Player are asking for trouble.
Wow, I just had a scary thought I managed to block just in time before passing out: Real Player. On Vista.
There is something wrong on your side. It looks fine on both my systems (and tried looking at 66%, 75%, 100%, 116% etc).
I really liked Calibri and Consolas BTW.
Not only after the end of your contract. After a couple of months from the start of my contract, I called T-Mobile, as other people told me, and just asked for my phone to be unlocked, so that I could use a European SIM when I travel. No problem.
Why not go after the other guys (call me AT&T) that never unlock the phone you paid for.
Now, as for the termination fee, do people realize that the phones they get are heavily subsidised? Except for the iPhone, every other phone you buy you can get it either for free or at a very low price, just because you are entering a contract. If the termination fees are abolished, you will have to PAY UP FRONT for the cost of the device, which is certainly not what most users would like. You can't just terminate your contract and switch to prepaid like many people do in Europe (incoming calls are free there - prepaid makes sense to many), you will always pay for a monthly contract why not have it absorb some of the cost of your phone?
What are you talking about? New coke was brilliant. The "Coke Classic" reintroduction turned out to be a historical moment.
Unbelievable, I get fanboy replies even if I DON'T comment...
So that you are not wondering, the $27 is from iSuppli's teardown analysis (google isuppli ps3).
Again, I won't comment myself, but I can point out some glaring mistakes you made:
-You assume there will be 10mil (or more) 40GB PS3's sold next year. From past performance I would call it optimistic even if you were talking about ALL the PS3's units to be sold next year (including the 60GB PS/2 compatible ones). In any case I won't pursue this, ok, maybe they do sell 10m or 20m of the 40GB version, the fact is:
-Regardless of the above point, your $15 savings per console assume that the unit is sold at the same price. You forget that in reality, the removed items (smaller disk, card reader, PS2 compat...) do not make up for the price difference (50 GBP = $100 in the UK), so Sony will be losing MORE per console than before.
It is a much more complicated move than "saving from the console to create games".
The current US versions have the CPU and Graphics card of the PS2 in the box (reported to cost SONY $27 total a year ago), while the original EU models had only the Graphics in hardware and emulated the CPU. Now they are removing that too. ;)
I will not comment on these facts, as I will be called a troll again
...make sure you at least read Wikipedia's entry for Samuel Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan". There are art, science etc references throught, but knowing a specific detail on the writting of that poem will help you appreciate more the conclusion of the amazing book.
For a minute there I thought you guys posted something about me... /. front page.
Oh, well, I guess I'll have to continue the work for my Ig Nobel nomination to make it to the
Whoa, first time I've been called a Troll.
I knew I shouldn't get into fanboy territory, I guess my post is kind of a flamebait if biased people read it, even though it was accurate.
No, I am not an MS fanboy, or Nintendo fanboy etc. As I said I don't even play games anymore.
Anyway let's see. One year ago, according to isuppli, the 60GB disk cost $54 while the 40GB cost $43. Now, a year later the 60GB costs significantly less (for $54 you can actually buy 80GB RETAIL now), yet you are claiming that a 40GB will be "significantly less" armed with just biased speculation. Oh, and where did you get that the 60GB has one platter? I would assume it is a 2x30GB platter disk (won't vouch for that though, just a hunch).
isupli then give us the price of the Emotion Engine and Graphics Synthesizer together at $27 (again November 2007 quote). No, it doesn't get more expensive as time passes, unless there is very little production. The PS3 production run is not what Sony expected, but it is certainly not small enough to increase the price of trivial components.
You just answered because I called a console "crippled". Was that too harsh for your favorite console? Sorry, but it is an perfectly fine expression, used often and nobody should get emotional over it. Yes, if that makes you happy we can say the Xbox core is crippled compared to the other Xboxes too (if I remember correctly that one is lacking the HD altogether), but why do you want to use the expression for one side only?
Who is the fanboy here?
You didn't really expect me to RTFA, did you? I mean, this is Slashdot!
In any case, the title is still wrong. Upon RTFA, they are indeed cutting prices of existing consoles (still at a "good" premium over the US of course) and IN ADDITION they are releasing the crippled version. So there was a price cut AND a new lower priced model. The price cut part is great for consumers, but the 40GB version, like Chewbacca living on planet Endor, still does not make sens.
The point is that a 40GB HD right now does not really save you over a 60GB HD, since manufacturing is shifting to larger sizes. I will have to remind you that the manufacturing cost between the 20GB version and the 60GB version was reported at less than $30, and I am sure the WiFi and flash readers that were missing from the 20GB version cost more than the 7 year old graphics chip that the 40GB version ommits. The minor difference in manufacturing costs was the main reason the 20GB version was discontinued, how can I not be baffled by this new release, that seems to have an even smaller manufacturing cost difference?
And you might talk about "periphery features" but Blue-Ray and PS2 compatibility were the two unique features of the PS3. Of course I don't care about them (as I said, I was a gamer until the late 90's, not anymore), but I have read in fora how important they were claimed to be by Sony fanboys. I guess they'll have to "change their song" now...
Releasing a crippled device at a lower price is not a "price cut" in any dictionary.
Also, it should be obvious to anyone familiar with the current market, that going down to a 40GB HD right now is not very cost effective. What is more, the compatibility was just a software emulator in the European consoles anyway!
So, Europeans were already paying a premium for a worse (no hardware PS2) device. Now they get the extra option of lowering that premium for an even worse device (that doesn't actually cost much less to manufacture). At the same time their competitors, who have dominated the marketplace, just carry on selling at their original super low price by the truckload (Nintendo), or continue on releasing upgraded (instead of downgraded) versions - as it is usual with electronics & computers - while lowering the prices across the board (Microsoft).
Anybody sees something wrong with this picture?
I am not a gamer anymore myself (If you ask me I will tell you the best game is Day Of The Tentacle), so I cannot comment on how each console "plays", but from a marketing point of view, Sony continues to baffle me.
I know of at least one Canadian that has no sense of humour... :)
Nope, I did not know RCMP, and I did not grow up in LI (did Grad School there though) or even the US...
If you have to look it up like i did, I'll save you the trouble: Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
I mean, they are still riding horses, did you really expect an elaborate financial analysis on the impact of piracy from them? Jeez...