Linux is actually just an OS kernel. A Linux distribution bundles a lot of stuff by default, however, you have the ability to change the default setting and not install some bundled application if you don't want it. Linux will keep on working without the bundled app you decided not to install.
Windows bundles IE and WMP, and it is quite impossible to install Windows without installing IE or WMP.
The 360 doesn't sell well in Japan so they've allocated less PS3s for less competition.
However, I would bet that Nintendo will be strong in Japan, very strong. This is the land of the Pokemon and Nintendog. If the big N manages to ship a lot of Wii's in Japan, they will take a huge lead over the PS3.
Basicly they have to compete with MS. MS has lost Billions in entering the console market and continue to lose tons of money at it. They can afford to do this because of the windows/office cash cows. MS still has no plans to make money at this (the game business) for a number of years.
What I've always wondered though is, aren't there some sort of anti-dumping laws anywhere in the world that should prevent selling stuff at a massive loss in order to undercut competition? Or does that only apply to companies that are subsidized by their local government?
Brand loyalty only goes so far, and i think with the 360 selling to more hardcore gamers and the Wii selling to previously non-gamers, nintendo fan boys (like me) and alot of other people who like the cheapness
Don't forget about the retro-gamers. One of the unofficial selling points of the Sony PSP is it's ability to hack a NES/SNES emulator on it. The Wii will be a NES/SNES (as well as N64 and TGFX16) emulator out of the box, no need for hacking. That will surely look attractive to some.
I always thought that the industry saw Europe as more important than the US as we tend to buy more of the Loco Rocos and Katamaris rather than the generic First Person Shooters. Guess I was wrong.
But it's the Americans who buy the shitload of Madden 2007, after having bought a shitload of Madden 2006, after having bought a shitload of Madden 2005.........
A company who makes a new-gen console which is the same old stuff but more powerful won't care about Katamaries and Loco Rocos, they only care about a nicer looking Madden.
If you can find a program that, while you're writing a sentence, automatically corrects or inserts the correct conjugation of the verb for you so you don't have to stretch your precious brain, saving it for finding entirely spurious evidence on the internet to support your arguments, then you'll have prior art.
For target language = French, see Antidote, first commercialized in 1996.
IANAL, thank God, but it seems to me that that would only be prior art if you had publicized it somehow. Prior art has to be public, for obvious reasons.
If you didn't publicize it, your prior invention only gives you the personal right to use your version of the technology without paying Microsoft. Until they sue you of course, then you'll either pay them or lawyers.
This piece of software has been for sale since 1996 (for French), and it does much more than what the patent covers (conjugate verbs), it's also a dictionnary with definitions (partly in the patent application for verbs), a thesaurus, a grammar, a spell and grammar checker (way better than what's embedded in MS-Word... it's a totally different league), and much much more. It's a must-have if you're even only remotely interrested in the French language.
A device, whose sole trick is balance achieved electromechanically, should be smart enough to sense when a foot and a hand are on it and thus throw itself into balance mode. Sure, you'd need a key to actually go anywhere, but no on-board logic to help prevent you from falling on your face without following a prescribed power on sequence?
The Segway balances itself by going forward faster when your center of mass goes forward, and going slower, or backwards, when your center of mass goes backward. Knowing that, how can it get into "balance mode" without going anywhere?
Bad design! My car has NEVER caused me to hurtle dangerously out of the driver's seat because I failed to turn a key.
Get on a motorcycle, remove the "parking leg" (or whatever it's called), and then get your feet off the ground without turning a key. Try not to hurtle dangerously.
Staying balanced on 4 wheels is easy. Staying balanced on 2 wheels is hard.
Cost of living is a constant, it's just a little more than you really can afford.
It's always a little more than what you can afford only because you always want to live beyond your means. You don't really need that car, but you want to have it because it saves you an hour of walking. You don't really need that high-speed internet connection, but you want to have it because it lets you download music and video (which you don't really need either).
Living is eating, sleeping and breathing. The cost of those are hardly more that what you can afford (unless your a homeless jobless bum, which I doubt since you're on/.). The cost of luxurious living keeps going up, but then, that's a choice you make.
That reminds me of a strip about The Sims where Gabe (could have been Tycho, but it doesn't really matter) is watching his Sim do something, and then Tycho shows up and starts watching Tycho watching his Sim
That's more like "Canadian prices converted to US according to current rate" rather than expected price. I think companies rarely base their price in different countries on the change rate. Just look at how they constantly screw the Brits...
Buy her a touch tone phone, and use it anyway. Phone companies long ago left pulse behind, touch tone works on every line even if you haven't paid the fee. Do you really think there's not a computer at the other end of the line to support these 'pulse' people?
Do you really think I haven't tried that? As I said, she has a touch-tone phone with a switch to do both (dial with pulse and browse throuh menus with tone). When you pick up the receiver, put the switch to tone, then dial, it doesn't work, the dial tone remains and nothing happens.
There's a phone company that still does that? Where? Last time I had an extra "touch tone" charge on my line was at least 10, probably more like 15, years ago.
The company is Bell Canada, and I think the charge is about $2.95 or per month (I don't have a phone bill handy...)
Perhaps you should go to the local dollar store and spend the 5 dollars or so to buy a touch tone phone. Or maybe a yard sale and find one for a dollar.
However, if you line is configured to only work with pulse, you not only need a touch tone phone, but a phone which supports both touch-tone and pulse, with the little switch to go from one to the other. Those aren't as available as touch-tone-only phones, and and $5 phones you get at the dollar store are cheap in quality and don't always have the pulse switch.
Now, why would one keep the pulse lines in the house? It's quite simple actually... my mom still has pulse (with touch tone phones that have a switch actually), but refuses to "upgrade" her line to touch tone despite every attempt of the phone company to convince her. The reason is simple, the phone company charges a monthly fee for using touch tone over pulse. That's pretty ridiculous if you ask me. With today's modern technology, I suppose it would cost less to the phone company to *only* support touch tone on their wires rather than having to support both, then they wouldn't need to charge extra for using what is more convenient (although we all know that if they do that, they'll still raise the prices for some strange reason).
There's also a difference in how one expects to be able to use the product. You wouldn't bring a toaster on a plane (at least, not in your handbag). You might however want to bring your laptop. If your laptop battery explodes while in the airplane, you'll be spending the rest of your life around Guantanamo, no matter how many times you say "It's Sony's fault".
A toaster burning down your house, you can recover. Being sent to Guantanamo... not so sure.
Medeco is a far better lock than Abloy but it's not as readily available to the consumer market.
Added to that, they have some insane reward if you come to their headquarters and pick a Medeco lock in front of them.
If I can't find one on the market, I can hardly take one to their headquarters and pick it in front of them. Is that some sort of security through obscurity? Don't make the locks available to the public, and then claim that you invited everyone from the public to try and pick them and nobody ever did. Although they might be more secure by design, saying that nobody ever proved them wrong is not a proof of anything, especially if its use is not as widespread as other types of locks. Strange, this kinda reminds me of Linux security...
Can you elaborate more on why electricity is checper at night? Arond here they read the kw/h meter once a month and do a simple calculation.
Some provinces/states use what they call a "smart meter" to charge for electricity. Those meters not only record how much electricity you used, but when you used it. They can then charge more for using power during peak hours (11am to 5pm) than for using the same amount of power during off-peak hours (10pm to 7am). That is an attempt to encourage people to use less power during peak hours (therefore reducing the peak and everything it involves on the power grid).
Ubuntu has a problem today, which basically renders machines inoperable that update their X software today.
Dang, and I thought it was some weird config that I had that locked me out. Gawd I'm happy (somewhat) to see I'm not the only one who suffered that... I'll head for the forums now. Thanks for letting me know it's a general problem.
I take it you've never fenced. A foil isn't much heavier than a wiimote, and the center of mass is very close to the guard.
Not all swords are designed as foils are, and a fun sword-fight game wouldn't use foils (unless it's a fencing game). Foils are a thrusting type of sword, meaning that you can only really hurt your opponent if the tip of the sword penetrates. Most combat swords are side-swords, meaning the edges and the tip are sharp, and you can both cut with the side of the sword or thrust with the tip of the sword. Those swords require a hard blade and are heavier than a foil.
The best you could do while random flailing with a foil is whip people around.
Zweihänder (German medieval two-handed sword) : 6 to 11 pounds
Shiavona (Italian Renaissance sword) : 2.5 pounds
Depending on one's definition of "many pounds", and on what is used in the game, swinging 3 to 5 pounds can feel like "many pounds" (And I don't even want to try an 11 pounds Zweihänder, although it's gotta be hurtin' when you're on the receiving part of the blow)
The Famicom has been on a single chip for a long time, to the point where PolyStation and other NES clones are more popular than PlayStation some parts of the world. I'm pretty sure that the Super Famicom (also called Super NES) can similarly be reduced to a single chip by now. Would it be so hard for Nintendo to make an adapter similar to Super Game Boy or Game Boy Player allowing use of classic systems' Game Paks?
Did you even read the article you pointed to? Quote : "However, NOACs tend to poorly recreate the NES system's circuitry, which causes inaccurate colors, inaccurate audio, missing sounds, additional glitches, and the inability to run certain NES and Famicom games." That's hardly the kind of quality one would expect from Nintendo, and I'd rather they not do it at all than they do something crappy. And even if they made an adapter, you would still have to buy it, therefore paying to play games you already own.
Amazon sells the GameBoy Player over $50 (I have no idea of the retail price). Say you have a couple of NES games, a couple of SNES games, a couple of N64 games and a couple of Gameboy games (probably more, but only a couple might be worth playing over and over and over again after all those years). You could either buy 4 adapters at about $30 each (number was pulled out of ass, but still seems about right) and only be able to play the games you already own (not always easy to find a cartridge of Kid Icarus), hoping that those cartridges are still in good shape (I didn't check, but I doubt the battery on my Legend of Zelda NES cartridge will keep my saved games reliably), or you could "rebuy" only the games you actually want to play on the new console for prices ranging from $1 to $5 (was an official price list announced?), and then try other games that you don't already own the original cartridge and which can't be found anymore. If there's only one or two games on the N64 that I'd like to play again (let's face it...), it would suck to have to buy a $30 adapter if I can rebuy the games $5 each.
The choice Nintendo made both costs less, gives you access to more games, and is probably less prone to hardware defects.
That kinda reminds me of people who say "He speaks so well" to refer to someone for whom they can't think of a substantive praise, forgetting that the same comment is used frequently to describe the progress of a mentally retarded individual in therapy.
rue, true. I especially noticed your objective analysis that when Nintendo charges for backwards compatability, it's only A couple dollars a pop. Big deal., but when Sony has [free / $500] backwards compatibility that has a history of working better than any other console company's, we should expect it to not work properly.
Last I checked, the Wii is supposed to let you put a GC disc right in and play. That's backward compatibility (if it works), and I don't see how it would cost me "only a couple dollars"... Put the disk in, play the game, all for free. If you're complaining about the lack of a slot to put your SNES cartridge, then it's another thing, and I don't think Nintendo mentionned that it would be possible to do so.
Slashdot Mirror
The way I see it, it just gives me more time to save money to buy it with extra remotes and a couple of games.
65 days and counting...
Me remembers playing Punch Out with the PowerGlove... not very intuitive... not sure how it would be better with the Wiimote.
Linux is actually just an OS kernel. A Linux distribution bundles a lot of stuff by default, however, you have the ability to change the default setting and not install some bundled application if you don't want it. Linux will keep on working without the bundled app you decided not to install.
Windows bundles IE and WMP, and it is quite impossible to install Windows without installing IE or WMP.
However, I would bet that Nintendo will be strong in Japan, very strong. This is the land of the Pokemon and Nintendog. If the big N manages to ship a lot of Wii's in Japan, they will take a huge lead over the PS3.
What I've always wondered though is, aren't there some sort of anti-dumping laws anywhere in the world that should prevent selling stuff at a massive loss in order to undercut competition? Or does that only apply to companies that are subsidized by their local government?
Don't forget about the retro-gamers. One of the unofficial selling points of the Sony PSP is it's ability to hack a NES/SNES emulator on it. The Wii will be a NES/SNES (as well as N64 and TGFX16) emulator out of the box, no need for hacking. That will surely look attractive to some.
But it's the Americans who buy the shitload of Madden 2007, after having bought a shitload of Madden 2006, after having bought a shitload of Madden 2005... ... ...
A company who makes a new-gen console which is the same old stuff but more powerful won't care about Katamaries and Loco Rocos, they only care about a nicer looking Madden.
For target language = French, see Antidote, first commercialized in 1996.
If you didn't publicize it, your prior invention only gives you the personal right to use your version of the technology without paying Microsoft. Until they sue you of course, then you'll either pay them or lawyers.
This piece of software has been for sale since 1996 (for French), and it does much more than what the patent covers (conjugate verbs), it's also a dictionnary with definitions (partly in the patent application for verbs), a thesaurus, a grammar, a spell and grammar checker (way better than what's embedded in MS-Word... it's a totally different league), and much much more. It's a must-have if you're even only remotely interrested in the French language.
The Segway balances itself by going forward faster when your center of mass goes forward, and going slower, or backwards, when your center of mass goes backward. Knowing that, how can it get into "balance mode" without going anywhere?
Bad design! My car has NEVER caused me to hurtle dangerously out of the driver's seat because I failed to turn a key.
Get on a motorcycle, remove the "parking leg" (or whatever it's called), and then get your feet off the ground without turning a key. Try not to hurtle dangerously.
Staying balanced on 4 wheels is easy. Staying balanced on 2 wheels is hard.
It's always a little more than what you can afford only because you always want to live beyond your means. You don't really need that car, but you want to have it because it saves you an hour of walking. You don't really need that high-speed internet connection, but you want to have it because it lets you download music and video (which you don't really need either).
Living is eating, sleeping and breathing. The cost of those are hardly more that what you can afford (unless your a homeless jobless bum, which I doubt since you're on /.). The cost of luxurious living keeps going up, but then, that's a choice you make.
It was one step beyond that... Gabe was watching Tycho watching his Sim watch TV.
That's more like "Canadian prices converted to US according to current rate" rather than expected price. I think companies rarely base their price in different countries on the change rate. Just look at how they constantly screw the Brits...
Yes there is.
Buy her a touch tone phone, and use it anyway. Phone companies long ago left pulse behind, touch tone works on every line even if you haven't paid the fee. Do you really think there's not a computer at the other end of the line to support these 'pulse' people?
Do you really think I haven't tried that? As I said, she has a touch-tone phone with a switch to do both (dial with pulse and browse throuh menus with tone). When you pick up the receiver, put the switch to tone, then dial, it doesn't work, the dial tone remains and nothing happens.
The company is Bell Canada, and I think the charge is about $2.95 or per month (I don't have a phone bill handy...)
However, if you line is configured to only work with pulse, you not only need a touch tone phone, but a phone which supports both touch-tone and pulse, with the little switch to go from one to the other. Those aren't as available as touch-tone-only phones, and and $5 phones you get at the dollar store are cheap in quality and don't always have the pulse switch.
Now, why would one keep the pulse lines in the house? It's quite simple actually... my mom still has pulse (with touch tone phones that have a switch actually), but refuses to "upgrade" her line to touch tone despite every attempt of the phone company to convince her. The reason is simple, the phone company charges a monthly fee for using touch tone over pulse. That's pretty ridiculous if you ask me. With today's modern technology, I suppose it would cost less to the phone company to *only* support touch tone on their wires rather than having to support both, then they wouldn't need to charge extra for using what is more convenient (although we all know that if they do that, they'll still raise the prices for some strange reason).
A toaster burning down your house, you can recover. Being sent to Guantanamo... not so sure.
Added to that, they have some insane reward if you come to their headquarters and pick a Medeco lock in front of them.
If I can't find one on the market, I can hardly take one to their headquarters and pick it in front of them. Is that some sort of security through obscurity? Don't make the locks available to the public, and then claim that you invited everyone from the public to try and pick them and nobody ever did. Although they might be more secure by design, saying that nobody ever proved them wrong is not a proof of anything, especially if its use is not as widespread as other types of locks. Strange, this kinda reminds me of Linux security...
Some provinces/states use what they call a "smart meter" to charge for electricity. Those meters not only record how much electricity you used, but when you used it. They can then charge more for using power during peak hours (11am to 5pm) than for using the same amount of power during off-peak hours (10pm to 7am). That is an attempt to encourage people to use less power during peak hours (therefore reducing the peak and everything it involves on the power grid).
Ref: See Toronto Hydro
Dang, and I thought it was some weird config that I had that locked me out. Gawd I'm happy (somewhat) to see I'm not the only one who suffered that... I'll head for the forums now. Thanks for letting me know it's a general problem.
Not all swords are designed as foils are, and a fun sword-fight game wouldn't use foils (unless it's a fencing game). Foils are a thrusting type of sword, meaning that you can only really hurt your opponent if the tip of the sword penetrates. Most combat swords are side-swords, meaning the edges and the tip are sharp, and you can both cut with the side of the sword or thrust with the tip of the sword. Those swords require a hard blade and are heavier than a foil.
The best you could do while random flailing with a foil is whip people around.
From several articles in Wikipedia
Depending on one's definition of "many pounds", and on what is used in the game, swinging 3 to 5 pounds can feel like "many pounds" (And I don't even want to try an 11 pounds Zweihänder, although it's gotta be hurtin' when you're on the receiving part of the blow)
Did you even read the article you pointed to? Quote : "However, NOACs tend to poorly recreate the NES system's circuitry, which causes inaccurate colors, inaccurate audio, missing sounds, additional glitches, and the inability to run certain NES and Famicom games." That's hardly the kind of quality one would expect from Nintendo, and I'd rather they not do it at all than they do something crappy. And even if they made an adapter, you would still have to buy it, therefore paying to play games you already own.
Amazon sells the GameBoy Player over $50 (I have no idea of the retail price). Say you have a couple of NES games, a couple of SNES games, a couple of N64 games and a couple of Gameboy games (probably more, but only a couple might be worth playing over and over and over again after all those years). You could either buy 4 adapters at about $30 each (number was pulled out of ass, but still seems about right) and only be able to play the games you already own (not always easy to find a cartridge of Kid Icarus), hoping that those cartridges are still in good shape (I didn't check, but I doubt the battery on my Legend of Zelda NES cartridge will keep my saved games reliably), or you could "rebuy" only the games you actually want to play on the new console for prices ranging from $1 to $5 (was an official price list announced?), and then try other games that you don't already own the original cartridge and which can't be found anymore. If there's only one or two games on the N64 that I'd like to play again (let's face it...), it would suck to have to buy a $30 adapter if I can rebuy the games $5 each.
The choice Nintendo made both costs less, gives you access to more games, and is probably less prone to hardware defects.
Or the classic "She has a nice personality..."
Last I checked, the Wii is supposed to let you put a GC disc right in and play. That's backward compatibility (if it works), and I don't see how it would cost me "only a couple dollars"... Put the disk in, play the game, all for free. If you're complaining about the lack of a slot to put your SNES cartridge, then it's another thing, and I don't think Nintendo mentionned that it would be possible to do so.