Here is an interesting counter-perspective on "it's the casual games selling Wiis".
http://malstrom.50webs.com/birdman.html
Premise: the Wii is a disruptive technology. The goal is not simply to target casual gamers. Rather, it is to redefine the way gamers enter and evolve in the marketplace.
You should always bid for the win, using the absolute maximum you're willing to pay for the item.
This assumes that:
1. your only goal is to obtain the item as soon as possible, or
2. the item is unique and there are no other auctions for it.
If those assumptions don't hold, then it is perfectly logical to *not* bid your maximum on any particular auction. If the current auction happens to have bidders with high values, then you are likely to be better off trying a different auction.
While I do think the PS3 is overpriced compared to the Xbox 360, the 60GB version is actually a pretty good deal compared to the 20GB version since you get wireless networking, flash capability and the HDMI output in addition to the extra 40GB of HD space.
"Pretty good deal" is a very generous way of looking at this:) I think a lot of people will see this as the 20GB version is even more crippled than the Xbox Core was. No HDMI really chops the value of the system as a Blu-Ray drive, and the loss of memory slots is also troubling.
If a games system allows cheating, this means that there is a problem with the design of the games system, end of story. **NOTHING** that runs on a person's own machine should make any difference whatsoever, even if the client itself is modified, because the point of control should be at the network interface on the server end.
After all, coding something that is impervious to hackers is *so* easy, right? Of course every program could be designed to be completely secure, if only the programmers weren't so incompetent. Apparently all technical folks should know this.
Sigh.
It's back on the floor now, and will hopefully be fixed in the next year or two. Up until 2003, you couldn't even deduct 100% of health insurance against income tax. Of course Congress couldn't just fix it correctly the first time, so it has to wind its way through the process yet again. Fortunately, this falls into a "help the little man" situation for politicians, so fixing this looks good to the local constituents. That should provide enough momentum to make it happen.
Um, you realize that you're paying the exact same taxes you were paying before, right?
This is not true. For any corporation, medical insurance is a considered an ordinary and necessary business expense, and is deductible against income and payroll (FICA) taxes. For a self-employed person, however, medical insurance is only deductible against income tax, not self-employment tax (FICA). Thus, if a self-employed person and a corporation have exactly the same revenues and expenses, the self-employed person will bear a higher tax burden.
If a company fires its entire staff and has no money for future projects, I'd say the rumors of its death are pretty accurate. A financial windfall down the road does not make the initial rumors exaggerated.
Consider how earlier this year entertainment journalists rattled on for months about a slump in the American box office--"Box Office Slump In Its 19th Week"--as if it were a sporting event in which the Hollywood studios couldn't get winning hits. The story would have been different if they had seen the data on Page 16 in the 2005 Three Month Revenue Report. Instead of a box-office decline, the studios actually took in more from the U.S. box office in the first quarter of 2005 ($870.2 million) than they did in the similar period of 2004 ($797.1 million). So even though the total audience at movie theaters declined during this period, this came mainly at the expense of independent, foreign, and documentary movies. For the Hollywood studios (and their subsidiaries), in fact, there was no slump at all.
And of course Sony certainly couldn't possibly benefit from any patents in the US, right?
Oh, wait a minute. Sony has >13,000 US patents. Yeah, clearly Sony wants to trash the US patent system.
How does the existence of a new movie in any way affect the quality of the older movies? If you don't like it, don't watch it. It's not like the older movies are hard to find.
You do realize that other people wrote and directed Empire and ROTJ, right? Would you say that is making something equivalent? And yet, I don't see Irvin Kershner, Richard Marquand, or Lawrence Kasdan saying "this is what I always had in mind".
Oh for christ's sake. Audited financial statements *are* evidence. They are the most accurate financial information that is publicly available. If you don't understand what an annual report is I cannot help you.
So you agree that you have no evidence that the USPS is not profitable? Glad that's resolved.
I fully understand how flat rates work. However, once again you have failed to provide any evidence to support the claim that a *private company* could provide the same service at a lower rate than the USPS.
Numbers can and are manipulated - so I would have to see the numbers.
So look it up. The USPS annual reports (audited by Ernst & Young) are available from a number of sources, including www.usps.com. All of my numbers were directly from the annual report Statement of Operations.
Is your argument really that "the USPS is doing fine, so it must be cooking its books"? Remember, your original comment that I responded to was about how a private company could run the USPS so much better than the current management. Your statement "a flat charge works because it's a flat charge" is not particularly informative, and offers zero explanation for why a private company would be able to do it better.
Things can be done better - managed better. As a friend of mine (Medical DR/lawyer) once said "If anyone but the gov't ran the US Postal service, it would turn a profit and consumers would pay less."
The USPS posted a net income of $3,868 million in 2003. The USPS also posted a positive net income in 2002, 2001, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, and 1995 (earliest financial report I could find in a quick search). In every year since 1995, operating revenues have exceeded operating expenses.
Unless your friend made this statement in 1994 or earlier, he or she might want to look into a business degree before sharing views on financial performance. How fortunate for that person that they have the MD and JD degree to fall back on, because they don't have a clue about business.
Do you really believe that a private corporation could deliver a letter from Pumpkintown, West Virginia to Anchorage, Alaska for less than 37 cents?
Not as simple as you make it sound though. Nissan didn't go after this site until he started using a lot of auto-related advertising.
From http://www.linksandlaw.com/decisions-116.htm/
"Starting in August 1999, the defendant's nissan.com website primarily promoted automobile-related products and services, through third-party advertisements and web links, rather than the defendant's own computer products. More than 90% of the defendant's website advertising revenue is automobile-related. (Schindler Decl. re: Prelim. Inj. Ex. G.) Whether or not a visitor to the defendant's website ultimately makes an automobile purchase from an advertiser, the defendant profits from the visitor's initial interest confusion. By posting automobile-related links and advertisements, the defendant derives advertising revenue due to the diversion of a consumer's initial interest in Nissan vehicles. As in Brookfield, the defendant is improperly appropriating the plaintiffs' goodwill. Thus, in regards to its Internet-related activity, the defendant's "product" is the exploitation of customer confusion. Accordingly, this factor weighs in favor of the plaintiffs."
Babbster is correct, and the grandparent is misinformed. DLP does not suffer from burn-in.
http://www.dlp.com/about_dlp/about_dlp_FAQs_home_e nt.asp?bhcp=1/>
Re:Changed the view of the US?
on
Bobby Fischer Found
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
That's not the way it works. He starts over at $0 every day. It's true that by Final Jeopardy he generally has locked in the game (more than double the nearest competitor), but that's due to his superior performance, not an inherent financial advantage.
Since the bug generally only occurred when Relm sketched an invisible creature, it was pretty rare. A lot of people didn't even use Relm's sketching ability in the first place, much less go around sketching everything in sight. Compare that to a game that has a bug that has a 100% chance of occurring when one saves his game; just about everyone uses the save feature.
What's more significant--the likelihood of a bug or it's severity? Is it better to have a common bug that doesn't break the game (Thief), or a relatively rare bug that can crash the game completely and corrupt your save file (FF3).
From the article:
1. "For the past business year, the video game maker said group net profit totaled 33.2 billion yen versus a profit of 67.3 billion yen in 2002/03."
2. "Nintendo also suffered a one-time currency loss of 68 billion yen after reassessing the value of its dollar-denominated assets."
Looks like the currency loss is driving the reduced profits.
Slashdot Mirror
Here is an interesting counter-perspective on "it's the casual games selling Wiis". http://malstrom.50webs.com/birdman.html Premise: the Wii is a disruptive technology. The goal is not simply to target casual gamers. Rather, it is to redefine the way gamers enter and evolve in the marketplace.
I like that. Eh? You suggested Terry Gilliam yourself. "Or that guy who did Time Bandits."
It's back on the floor now, and will hopefully be fixed in the next year or two. Up until 2003, you couldn't even deduct 100% of health insurance against income tax. Of course Congress couldn't just fix it correctly the first time, so it has to wind its way through the process yet again. Fortunately, this falls into a "help the little man" situation for politicians, so fixing this looks good to the local constituents. That should provide enough momentum to make it happen.
If a company fires its entire staff and has no money for future projects, I'd say the rumors of its death are pretty accurate. A financial windfall down the road does not make the initial rumors exaggerated.
And of course Sony certainly couldn't possibly benefit from any patents in the US, right? Oh, wait a minute. Sony has >13,000 US patents. Yeah, clearly Sony wants to trash the US patent system.
What a bizarre analogy. If you are concerned about the new movie, just don't watch it. Amazingly simple solution, no?
How does the existence of a new movie in any way affect the quality of the older movies? If you don't like it, don't watch it. It's not like the older movies are hard to find.
You do realize that other people wrote and directed Empire and ROTJ, right? Would you say that is making something equivalent? And yet, I don't see Irvin Kershner, Richard Marquand, or Lawrence Kasdan saying "this is what I always had in mind".
Oh for christ's sake. Audited financial statements *are* evidence. They are the most accurate financial information that is publicly available. If you don't understand what an annual report is I cannot help you.
You can view all of the available financial info for the USPS here: http://www.usps.com/financials/welcome.htm/
So you agree that you have no evidence that the USPS is not profitable? Glad that's resolved.
I fully understand how flat rates work. However, once again you have failed to provide any evidence to support the claim that a *private company* could provide the same service at a lower rate than the USPS.
Not as simple as you make it sound though. Nissan didn't go after this site until he started using a lot of auto-related advertising.
From http://www.linksandlaw.com/decisions-116.htm/
"Starting in August 1999, the defendant's nissan.com website primarily promoted automobile-related products and services, through third-party advertisements and web links, rather than the defendant's own computer products. More than 90% of the defendant's website advertising revenue is automobile-related. (Schindler Decl. re: Prelim. Inj. Ex. G.) Whether or not a visitor to the defendant's website ultimately makes an automobile purchase from an advertiser, the defendant profits from the visitor's initial interest confusion. By posting automobile-related links and advertisements, the defendant derives advertising revenue due to the diversion of a consumer's initial interest in Nissan vehicles. As in Brookfield, the defendant is improperly appropriating the plaintiffs' goodwill. Thus, in regards to its Internet-related activity, the defendant's "product" is the exploitation of customer confusion. Accordingly, this factor weighs in favor of the plaintiffs."
Babbster is correct, and the grandparent is misinformed. DLP does not suffer from burn-in. http://www.dlp.com/about_dlp/about_dlp_FAQs_home_e nt.asp?bhcp=1/>
That's not the way it works. He starts over at $0 every day. It's true that by Final Jeopardy he generally has locked in the game (more than double the nearest competitor), but that's due to his superior performance, not an inherent financial advantage.
From the article:
1. "For the past business year, the video game maker said group net profit totaled 33.2 billion yen versus a profit of 67.3 billion yen in 2002/03."
2. "Nintendo also suffered a one-time currency loss of 68 billion yen after reassessing the value of its dollar-denominated assets."
Looks like the currency loss is driving the reduced profits.