Ron Paul accepts donations and fundraiser efforts from neo-nazi organizations. Stormfront.com, the leading white supremacist organization online, gave him a bunch of money. When Ron Paul was asked about returning this money, Ron Paul refused.
No other candidate is willing to accept the support of white supremacists.
Also, Ron Pail is a white supremacist. He wrote dozens of newsletters claiming that jews are evil and blacks are inferior criminals. When this was brought up in the early 90s, Ron claimed he had no idea. When this was brought up a few months ago, Ron claimed that someone else wrote all of this stuff, but Ron Paul, the person who paid for the publication and ostensibly the author, had no idea who the white supremacist who signed his name Ron Paul was. When hundreds of these articles were found in Kansas and it became clear that the nazi author referred to Ron Paul's wife specifically as his wife, spoke about Ron Paul's congressional district as his constituents, and made dozens of other specific comments proving the nazi author was Ron, Ron Paul refused to make any comment at all.
Ron Paul's internet forums were full of people expressing disbelief that Ron actually did write these articles, and their repeated claims that this was a debunked smear were wrong. But they agreed to keep calling this a debunked smear, instead of the truth, asserting that if you repeat something over and over, it is almost as good as the truth.
Ron Paul is a monster. His followers often care more about pot legalization than the equality of mankind. They are so personally invested that they cannot accept that George W Bush, Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Jimmy Carter are all moral giants compared with Ron Paul.
I actually had someone tell me that Ron Paul's hatespeech is relatively ok because Dubya's grandfather supported nazis. Insane.
I hate Scientology, but they use the persecution accusation, and if Ron Paul is linked to his effort, they will have no trouble doing so again.
If you are a Ron Paul supporter, keep it to yourself when dealing with Scientology.
This is generally true, but we've seen lack of tactile replaced fairly effectively by clicking noises inthe ipod, and I see no reason why we can't do something similar here.
Or you could have a string that retracts when you manipulate something, simulating a force against the finger. That would be pretty sweet. Though I kinda find the whole project annoying. I like a cursor, mouse, and keyboard. I don't know how much time I want to sift through my pics, and keyboard shortcuts are way more efficient than actually gesturing like a monkey that I want this file, this file, and that file in that folder or whatever.
When I see MS Surface videos, I wonder why I would want to do any of that stuff. This is at least better in that I don't need a freaking empty table in my home. We'll see what comes of this. Maybe there's something useful to be seen.
Second, the tolls do not pay for the road. They pay for the road and then pay for a bunch of other crap.
third, they are extremely regressive in nautre
fourth, they are extremely inneffecient. a toll station costs about 1 million $ to construct (at least the major one a mile from me did) and you have to employ people. It's a lot more effecient to just roll the cost into the normal tax system.
Fifth, this is a basic building block of society and freedom. It's unfair to charge voters more than nonvoters for polling stations, it's unfair to charge people with lots of kids more for public schools, it's unfair to charge NY residents more for DoD expenses. Because even if I do not have kids, I benefit from semi-uniformly educated people around me, even if I never go to Manhattan, it's survival is important to many aspects of my life, even if I don't vote, having equal democracy is good for me, and even if I do not drive to the center of my state's government, the fact that others do, and that my state's roads are fully accessible to the poor and all else, that's good for me in many convoluted ways.
Did you know that this toll legislation also permits reducing the speed limit on free roads to increase congestion and raise toll revenue? Or that the non toll roads in the area are noticably more covered in trash and potholes? The government is not treating its people equally. If you can pay the toll, which is about $1000 a year if you use it to and from work each day for the 20 mile run from my home to the airport, you get a better treatment from the government for a core function of government.
It's inefficient, it's greedy, it's unfair.
Texas Universities have a third of a trillion dollars in endowments, growing at double digit rates. Why are these schools hoarding money they apparently don't need to spend right now and receiving enormous funds from the state, when the dude who works at mcdonalds has to pay a lot more money just to use the road behind his house? Why is Texas funding cancer research when it cannot afford roads?
If this was a state that was unable to build roads that would satisfy demand, tolls would be adequate to curb congestion and encourage mass transit. But where the tolls are, at least largely, there isn't any mass transit to speak of. There can be legit interests in discouraging road use by tolling it. There aren't really any such here.
I think we all should have great roads all throughout texas, that politicians should be honest about how much each program costs, and prioritize the most important ones first and recognize that we all should pay for them. Some of this is spending less, some is taxing more.
My primary point is this: Texas, right now, is probably the most successful state in the union. The energy capital of the world, the fastest growing population in the US, on and on. We need more infrastructure, and we need it everywhere, and paying for other crap might have to wait.
It amazes me that California, a state with the greatest weather, richest agriculture, finest mineral resources, in the world, with an enormous tourism industry and such natural beauty, taxes much more heavily than most other states and lives in a constant bankruptcy crisis. It should be impossible to manage a state that badly. Texas is headed in that direction because politicians will take shortcuts. No one would pay a toll for the programs we don't need but lobbyists demand, so those get paid for by tax. The things we need are pushed to an additional regressive burden, and the state builds infrastructure much more slowly, and hesitates to even use what it's built. There are state programs than we don't need in some areas, and more important areas are overlooked.
My opinion, and I vote with it as much as I can. Too bad for me I'm not the Texan dictator.
Health care is something I can get myself. Some people need it a lot more than others. It's very personal. It's also much more expensive than roads. As a young male, I need very, very, very little healthcare unless an anomaly occurs. Women, old people, etc, need it differently than me and it's not necessarily fair to charge all the same to provide different benefits. Further, the vast majority of mortality concerns are preventable through lifestyle choices. Cardiac problems and cancer are highly dependent on where you live and how you live. I should be able to eat like a pig if I want, but I should also be responsible for the full expense of that decision.
So you're talking about a benefit that is individual in nature. Roads are not indivudal in nature. We must have roads, and I can't just make my share of the road on my own.
Do you think the government should provide food to every single person? It's much more necessary than health care. It's too bad that some people just don't get it. Perhaps the government should provide health care. Almost certainly it would suck in this country (after all, we would certainly treat this program worse than we treat Veteran's health care, for obvious political reasons). Anyway, whether we should or not, it's obviously more legitimate to provide the schools, the defense, the roads, etc, that individuals have no ability to build on their own.
You don't share your healthcare with others except under the most convoluted of accounts. You share your roads with everyone.
I feel like I'm explaining the difference between red and blue. If you don't see it, you're lacking something fundamental to the discussion.
Well, it's something we all need. It's something an individual can't really come up with on his own.
Unlike food, health care, shelter, etc, we kinda need to join together to defend our nation from invaders, provide basic education, and basic infrastructure. Roads permit economy, which is essential. This is all very basic, obvious stuff.
Out of curiosity, what is your theory of what determines what government ought to provide?
Xbox's silver benefits are advertised. That's an expressed warranty that if you get a 360, this service is part of the product.
Just because Silver subscribers do not pay additional fees does not mean they don't deserve to use what they already paid for.
And of course, we all know what the xbots would say if the PS3 network, you know, the free one that works, was this unreliable. Or if the PS3 itself was this unreliable. Or if PS3 owners were gouged, for example with $100 wifi adaptors that certainly cost less than ten $ to produce, etc etc.
the 360 has amazing games. And really, that's a the most important issue. But it's not all that matters. MS really should have won this war, and it's kinda becoming clear they the PS3 is going to win. Because all of Sony's arrogance and blunders are simply less problematic than Microsoft's.
Anyway, I know you aren't really defending MS here, but the Silver subscribers did indeed suffer a loss. Silver isn't free. You pay for it when you buy the games and console that fund MS. Gold just costs a lot more.
Austin, one of IBM's big towns, has got tolls running all over the place now. Why in the hell, in Texas, rich oil state with lots of land, do we need tolls? Highways are critical to Texas. We have this bizarre guy, Rick Perry, who refuses to have the government pay for the most legitimate thing government can pay for! Roads! Why? Because he can get us to pay tolls. Why do we pay tolls? Because we need these roads very badly. Which is actually proof that the government ought to fund them.
Instead, the state is paying for all sorts of crap. What a load of crap.
anyway, I wish tolls were a Yankee phenom, but us hicks seem to be following their example.
You're dead wrong about one thing: Bill Gates has generously donated billions to great causes in ways that do not benefit Microsoft products. We can all say that this is no big deal for a billionaire, but the man's done some good no matter how you slice it.
Yes, I know it's lame that MS "helps" schools by giving them money for Windows. That's just marketing in disguise and probably hurts schools. After all, if you can use Ubuntu competently, you are probably not going to have any problems with Windows. The real educational software is generally open source, since you can, ya know, see it working.
Hi, I'm Mr. Timeline! by using time, you can contradict yourself through the concept of CHANGE!:):)
Step One: Microsoft sky.net passport 3.0 takes over the world
Step Two: sucks to be me, you, etc
Step Three: Red Ring of Death in the eye of the terminator, John Conner gets away, Kirk can use silly "I always lie" tactics. Turn up your thermostat and big brother can't watch you.
You are out of your mind if you think the Red Ring problem hasn't kept people from buying an XBOX 360. That's what GM execs thought in the 70s and 80s.
I would estimate it's cut the userbase by a huge number. Sony totally dropped the ball with PS3, but generally few PS2 homes moved to 360. It's almost all XBOX 1.0 folks moving to 360.
But the 360 has, for sure, the killer library for PS2 owners. The wii doesn't, the PS3 doesn't (yet). I guarantee that many who would want a 360 have instead got one of the other systems because they wont' spend hundreds on a console and monthly fees when they knew they fear system failure. This is a lot of money for PS2 owners. Reliability is a big deal. The PS2 failure rate (which is probably less than 1% of the 360's) was an outrage.
I did the math and realized that the console itself is a small investment compared to the game library (even a small 30 game library). So I don't mind getting a PS3 and a 360 (and my kids have a wii). When my 360 had to be sent in, I played Warhawk and Uncharted. Kinda sucked to lost my great 360 games, but I lived. This is not the solution most folks will take. Some will think the console is an enormous investment and will go for the wii or PS3.
My MS mouse does not say logitech on it, but I am very amused that it has one of those holographic genuine-Microsoft stickers on the underside.
Just in case I downloaded my trackball or something. How silly.
Even if MS doesn't outsource its interface hardware, a mouse is much easier to make than a console. What Sony and MS are doing with game consoles is much more like what Apple does than what Logitech does.
no kidding, no kidding. What could the dude at home know that the dude in the plant doesn't? This remote control is just the next level in dumb micromanagment.
but if they had this website control the plant remotely, I guess a phonecall is less responsible... a bit
frankly, the way the world tends to work, some employees will definitely take these orders from some bosses. There are some real fools and real clowns running around out there, taking and giving orders for no reason at all.
No really, I was a little boy, in Galveston, and I saw some boats. Boat with a bunch of cars on each. I asked my dad "what's with all those big boats?" My dad said "the ferries". And this other dude walking bye said "hey, I knew we were organized, but we've even got a navy!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!"
And then he turned into the cloverfield monster and gave me a strawberry.
Of course you've nailed it on the head. It so some moron engineer manager can check the status on his laptop at home and then tweak something he doesn't need to tweak remotely. I bet it looks cool, too.
Why not let the status report over the internet but have some kind of private connection standard to tweak in emergency? I guess it just wouldn't do to have to call the plant operators. But come on, man. This could be a 2400 baud completely original modem that you can dial from your cell phone, but only works with its own archaic system. Even that's risky.
common law girlfriend? Is that from Blackstone? What common law tradition legally defined whether you were going steady or not?
Maybe I'm missing some sarcasm.
Anyway. You're right, society has changed. It's ok to play for 25 hours a week. the past generation spends twice that watching TV, and their parents (or grandparents enjoyed the radio a lot more than I do. We had audio learned, then visual learners, and now we're having people who learn through interaction (and learn more).
I think this is very positive. Playing a game, even Halo, is much better for your brain than watching TV and drooling motionless. Games are a much better artform than Film or TV. More interactive, more compelling, more personal.
Those crazy Russians! But TP is serious matter, my friend.
Americans are still a lucky bunch, but the economy in the states is declining and will decline a lot more for the next few years before having a huge post-war boom. It's happened several times before. They will adapt to paying for a very expensive war (and I'm not trying to argue for or against the war), and then the war will end and they will leap up like they did in 1992.
While America is still a very important market, it's much more important to invest in Europe and Asia, which will increase relative to the US for the next few years. Especially considering that the dollar itself isn't worth as much as it was last year, and this trend will continue as long as oil grows more scarce and the US consumes so much oil (relative to other currencies anyway). Every Dollar MS got in 2006-mid 2007 is worth about a third less than every dollar-equiv amount they got in many European and Asian markets.
So, if MS made X dollars in the US, and Sony made X dollars in Europe, MS is at aa disadvantage.
Sony is playing some daring games for the long-term. Everyone thinks MS has the master inevitable plan to dominateyet another market, but they have screwed up several (internet search, ISP, Music Player). I think Sony has teh better long term strategy to stay diverse with the PS2 and have an ubersystem tied to a new format for movies. They stay afloat long enough to win the format war, and poor folks still buy their PS2s.
Dude, if you were wanting a bargain product, Apple simply isn't making anything for you.
If you want a really nice product, particularly aesthetically nice, then Apple makes all kinds of shit you might like. But you have to give them MONEY for it.
That software was not advertised as included in the ipod touch. So you didn't get screwed. If you want this version of the software, pay 20$. Of course, a lot of people get it through a different avenue.
If you want a cheap PDA that has a lot of this functionality, you can get one pretty cheap. If $20 is a big deal for you.
Apple is going to always do this. They've found a niche that is profitable, has decent clientele, is fun to manage. I think Apple isn't going to change. They will charge you more for everything, but make good stuff.
NPD is wildly inaccurate. But it's better than the other wildly inaccurate sources.
Still, a great indicator of what's selling is to look at major areas that sell games. Go to Best Buy and see how much store space is devoted to Nintendo or Microsoft or Sony. You'll get the idea that each is doing very well, but Sony is fractured among a diverse group of systems (this is a good thing or a bad thing depending on your expectation of the economy).
NPD is not a target for attack. They are only inaccurate insofar as many retailers refuse to give information to them.
Only a handful of 360 ports remain, and have PS3 ports int he works too. I mean, what are teh big 2008 XBOX exclusives? GT5 and MGS4 and FF13 are all major Halo rivalling titles. I see nothing like that for XBOX.
And the PS3 is actually more profitable to Sony as a blu-ray payer than it is a sa game player, plus Sony plans to sell shows and online movies. The failure of HD-DVD has game developers realizing that the PS3 will probably doing fine.
The real problem is the XBOX fanboys. The first XBOX was so badly stomped on by Sony that XBOX fans are conditioned to expect extreme victories and failure. The PS3 is going OK. Just like the 360. Neither is really doing super well, and neither is doing super badly. Both will have a lot of great support and large fanbases. XBOX fanboys just don't get it. The PS3 had an awful year, yet came out quite well from it, looking at a 2008 that ought to really sell some systems and software.
The XBOX is really doing quite badly in the profitable markets, and succeeding only in the relatively unprofitable and soft US market. Sony is wise to focus elsewhere. I expect the Japanese and European consoles to simply make more money than North American ones, and developers will probably see the same things.
Games are not selling well o the PS3 because there are so few great games on it yet. The system was not only released soon to defeat HD DVD, but also games have been delayed a lot. But that period is ending, and the too-early strategy was obviously a wise one.
PS2 users don't mind very much. They are slow adopters who will buy $350 PS3s after some games start hitting the $20 rack and the great games like FF 13 are released, while scoring a great blu-ray player. We see that very few non-xbox 1.0 movers have purchased a 360, and it just has this aura of ugliness and failure around it. Sure, it's selling great because XBOX fans have nthing else to buy, but Sony fans still see a lot of life in the PS2. They are more likely to be relatively poor and wait a while to move to this generation.
nintendo saw that, and came out with a cheap, PS2 quality, interesting system, and several PS2 fans have moved that way. XBOX tried to totally mirror the PS2 with a mid-range cheap system, but they are bleeding cash and looking to the next gen already. The console war will really occer 3-4 years after the systems and blu-ray were introduced. That's where most of the 130 million PS2 owners are on the timeline. By then, HD TV will be a bigger deal, Blu-ray will be a bigger deal, the PS3 will be cheaper and have the best library (from a PS2 owner's perspective), the eye and sixaxis will present an argument that PS3 is a bargain compared to the wii (a good argument).
The wii still wins, and the PS3 may not defeat the 360 (on the strength of MS's brutal willingness to give millions for favors from publishers to get its wonderful game library), but the PS3 will do pretty well. Well enough to where the Gamecube and XBOX failures simply aren't repeated.
I think a lot of Japanese companies are realizing that MS is a threat to their success. Nintendo isn't very friendly to most companies, but Sony is extremely friendly. I think the XBOX is going to sink earlier than anyone is expecting.
Your accusation that the PS3 is dead shows such a lack of perspective and awareness of the world that you are obviously a severe fanboy. Americans have less to spend than the Japanese and Europeans. Compare the Japanese store to the US one on the PS network. Japan has 200 games. The US has a couple of dozen. Sony took some bold steps getting bluray to win, and they are taking even bigger steps with their focus on profitable markets. Look at Nintendo. They are trying to sell more wiis in europe when any wii brought to the US sells instantly. Why? They don't want US customers as badly as they want Japanese and European ones. MS doesn't have the ability to do that. they are paralyzed into fighting for the US.
You and I will enjoy our 360s, but I bet we'd be wise to realize it's not going to "win" and console wars.
Oh, I agree totally. I never said Sony won a lot of format wars. I just said the did ok with a lot of them. If you want your memory card to work with a lot of devices, and that's obviously the most important factor for most people, then SD is the right product.
But Sony has good stuff and it does fairly well. With a lot of their products, there is a better quality than the more universal product. Of course, it's almost never worth the added cost, but that's a personal decision. I have no choice but to use mem sticks, since I have a Sony Phone, PS3, PSP, and they all use a lot of the same media. I know I kinda got screwed into paying a lot for memory, but I do admit the product is pretty good.
because setting it down is slicker or something. just slightly easier.
Not to be rude, but this is fucking obvious. This device almost certainly could work at a much greater range than 3cm if Sony had wanted, but they do not because this is just a much easier way to "plug it in".
It doesn't turn on until it's in the tiny range (set down).
this isn't something I would recommend you buy, obviously, if you are able to move files yourself, etc, without a dummy-dock. I'm just telling you what this device is.
Of course it's better than flash. But flash is the common language.
Microsoft will use one monopoly to build another or build a weapon to maintain another. It sucks, because I wish there were more successful American corporations in technology. But I do not like to see Microsoft innovate, because I know it is designed to destroy some competitor. As soon as MS has won the battle, the prices become high and the features become lame. looking at the 360, we see that Microsoft can make awesome fun products. But looking at Vista, early XP, Windows ME, we know what kind of effort MS puts into products it can force on people.
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Ron Paul accepts donations and fundraiser efforts from neo-nazi organizations. Stormfront.com, the leading white supremacist organization online, gave him a bunch of money. When Ron Paul was asked about returning this money, Ron Paul refused.
No other candidate is willing to accept the support of white supremacists.
Also, Ron Pail is a white supremacist. He wrote dozens of newsletters claiming that jews are evil and blacks are inferior criminals. When this was brought up in the early 90s, Ron claimed he had no idea. When this was brought up a few months ago, Ron claimed that someone else wrote all of this stuff, but Ron Paul, the person who paid for the publication and ostensibly the author, had no idea who the white supremacist who signed his name Ron Paul was. When hundreds of these articles were found in Kansas and it became clear that the nazi author referred to Ron Paul's wife specifically as his wife, spoke about Ron Paul's congressional district as his constituents, and made dozens of other specific comments proving the nazi author was Ron, Ron Paul refused to make any comment at all.
Ron Paul's internet forums were full of people expressing disbelief that Ron actually did write these articles, and their repeated claims that this was a debunked smear were wrong. But they agreed to keep calling this a debunked smear, instead of the truth, asserting that if you repeat something over and over, it is almost as good as the truth.
Ron Paul is a monster. His followers often care more about pot legalization than the equality of mankind. They are so personally invested that they cannot accept that George W Bush, Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Jimmy Carter are all moral giants compared with Ron Paul.
I actually had someone tell me that Ron Paul's hatespeech is relatively ok because Dubya's grandfather supported nazis. Insane.
I hate Scientology, but they use the persecution accusation, and if Ron Paul is linked to his effort, they will have no trouble doing so again.
If you are a Ron Paul supporter, keep it to yourself when dealing with Scientology.
Actually, I never had the ipod itself click, though I realize that's an option. I had the click in my headphones, and it still works.
I didn't say it was totally convincing. It's enough to be satisfied that your finger is creating an effect.
This is generally true, but we've seen lack of tactile replaced fairly effectively by clicking noises inthe ipod, and I see no reason why we can't do something similar here.
Or you could have a string that retracts when you manipulate something, simulating a force against the finger. That would be pretty sweet. Though I kinda find the whole project annoying. I like a cursor, mouse, and keyboard. I don't know how much time I want to sift through my pics, and keyboard shortcuts are way more efficient than actually gesturing like a monkey that I want this file, this file, and that file in that folder or whatever.
When I see MS Surface videos, I wonder why I would want to do any of that stuff. This is at least better in that I don't need a freaking empty table in my home. We'll see what comes of this. Maybe there's something useful to be seen.
first, tolls reduce usage and trade.
Second, the tolls do not pay for the road. They pay for the road and then pay for a bunch of other crap.
third, they are extremely regressive in nautre
fourth, they are extremely inneffecient. a toll station costs about 1 million $ to construct (at least the major one a mile from me did) and you have to employ people. It's a lot more effecient to just roll the cost into the normal tax system.
Fifth, this is a basic building block of society and freedom. It's unfair to charge voters more than nonvoters for polling stations, it's unfair to charge people with lots of kids more for public schools, it's unfair to charge NY residents more for DoD expenses. Because even if I do not have kids, I benefit from semi-uniformly educated people around me, even if I never go to Manhattan, it's survival is important to many aspects of my life, even if I don't vote, having equal democracy is good for me, and even if I do not drive to the center of my state's government, the fact that others do, and that my state's roads are fully accessible to the poor and all else, that's good for me in many convoluted ways.
Did you know that this toll legislation also permits reducing the speed limit on free roads to increase congestion and raise toll revenue? Or that the non toll roads in the area are noticably more covered in trash and potholes? The government is not treating its people equally. If you can pay the toll, which is about $1000 a year if you use it to and from work each day for the 20 mile run from my home to the airport, you get a better treatment from the government for a core function of government.
It's inefficient, it's greedy, it's unfair.
Texas Universities have a third of a trillion dollars in endowments, growing at double digit rates. Why are these schools hoarding money they apparently don't need to spend right now and receiving enormous funds from the state, when the dude who works at mcdonalds has to pay a lot more money just to use the road behind his house? Why is Texas funding cancer research when it cannot afford roads?
If this was a state that was unable to build roads that would satisfy demand, tolls would be adequate to curb congestion and encourage mass transit. But where the tolls are, at least largely, there isn't any mass transit to speak of. There can be legit interests in discouraging road use by tolling it. There aren't really any such here.
I think we all should have great roads all throughout texas, that politicians should be honest about how much each program costs, and prioritize the most important ones first and recognize that we all should pay for them. Some of this is spending less, some is taxing more.
My primary point is this: Texas, right now, is probably the most successful state in the union. The energy capital of the world, the fastest growing population in the US, on and on. We need more infrastructure, and we need it everywhere, and paying for other crap might have to wait.
It amazes me that California, a state with the greatest weather, richest agriculture, finest mineral resources, in the world, with an enormous tourism industry and such natural beauty, taxes much more heavily than most other states and lives in a constant bankruptcy crisis. It should be impossible to manage a state that badly. Texas is headed in that direction because politicians will take shortcuts. No one would pay a toll for the programs we don't need but lobbyists demand, so those get paid for by tax. The things we need are pushed to an additional regressive burden, and the state builds infrastructure much more slowly, and hesitates to even use what it's built. There are state programs than we don't need in some areas, and more important areas are overlooked.
My opinion, and I vote with it as much as I can. Too bad for me I'm not the Texan dictator.
You don't get it.
Health care is something I can get myself. Some people need it a lot more than others. It's very personal. It's also much more expensive than roads. As a young male, I need very, very, very little healthcare unless an anomaly occurs. Women, old people, etc, need it differently than me and it's not necessarily fair to charge all the same to provide different benefits. Further, the vast majority of mortality concerns are preventable through lifestyle choices. Cardiac problems and cancer are highly dependent on where you live and how you live. I should be able to eat like a pig if I want, but I should also be responsible for the full expense of that decision.
So you're talking about a benefit that is individual in nature. Roads are not indivudal in nature. We must have roads, and I can't just make my share of the road on my own.
Do you think the government should provide food to every single person? It's much more necessary than health care. It's too bad that some people just don't get it. Perhaps the government should provide health care. Almost certainly it would suck in this country (after all, we would certainly treat this program worse than we treat Veteran's health care, for obvious political reasons). Anyway, whether we should or not, it's obviously more legitimate to provide the schools, the defense, the roads, etc, that individuals have no ability to build on their own.
You don't share your healthcare with others except under the most convoluted of accounts. You share your roads with everyone.
I feel like I'm explaining the difference between red and blue. If you don't see it, you're lacking something fundamental to the discussion.
Well, it's something we all need. It's something an individual can't really come up with on his own.
Unlike food, health care, shelter, etc, we kinda need to join together to defend our nation from invaders, provide basic education, and basic infrastructure. Roads permit economy, which is essential. This is all very basic, obvious stuff.
Out of curiosity, what is your theory of what determines what government ought to provide?
Xbox's silver benefits are advertised. That's an expressed warranty that if you get a 360, this service is part of the product.
Just because Silver subscribers do not pay additional fees does not mean they don't deserve to use what they already paid for.
And of course, we all know what the xbots would say if the PS3 network, you know, the free one that works, was this unreliable. Or if the PS3 itself was this unreliable. Or if PS3 owners were gouged, for example with $100 wifi adaptors that certainly cost less than ten $ to produce, etc etc.
the 360 has amazing games. And really, that's a the most important issue. But it's not all that matters. MS really should have won this war, and it's kinda becoming clear they the PS3 is going to win. Because all of Sony's arrogance and blunders are simply less problematic than Microsoft's.
Anyway, I know you aren't really defending MS here, but the Silver subscribers did indeed suffer a loss. Silver isn't free. You pay for it when you buy the games and console that fund MS. Gold just costs a lot more.
Dude, I wish.
Austin, one of IBM's big towns, has got tolls running all over the place now. Why in the hell, in Texas, rich oil state with lots of land, do we need tolls? Highways are critical to Texas. We have this bizarre guy, Rick Perry, who refuses to have the government pay for the most legitimate thing government can pay for! Roads! Why? Because he can get us to pay tolls. Why do we pay tolls? Because we need these roads very badly. Which is actually proof that the government ought to fund them.
Instead, the state is paying for all sorts of crap. What a load of crap.
anyway, I wish tolls were a Yankee phenom, but us hicks seem to be following their example.
You're dead wrong about one thing: Bill Gates has generously donated billions to great causes in ways that do not benefit Microsoft products. We can all say that this is no big deal for a billionaire, but the man's done some good no matter how you slice it.
Yes, I know it's lame that MS "helps" schools by giving them money for Windows. That's just marketing in disguise and probably hurts schools. After all, if you can use Ubuntu competently, you are probably not going to have any problems with Windows. The real educational software is generally open source, since you can, ya know, see it working.
Hi, I'm Mr. Timeline! by using time, you can contradict yourself through the concept of CHANGE! :) :)
Step One: Microsoft sky.net passport 3.0 takes over the world
Step Two: sucks to be me, you, etc
Step Three: Red Ring of Death in the eye of the terminator, John Conner gets away, Kirk can use silly "I always lie" tactics. Turn up your thermostat and big brother can't watch you.
You are out of your mind if you think the Red Ring problem hasn't kept people from buying an XBOX 360. That's what GM execs thought in the 70s and 80s.
I would estimate it's cut the userbase by a huge number. Sony totally dropped the ball with PS3, but generally few PS2 homes moved to 360. It's almost all XBOX 1.0 folks moving to 360.
But the 360 has, for sure, the killer library for PS2 owners. The wii doesn't, the PS3 doesn't (yet). I guarantee that many who would want a 360 have instead got one of the other systems because they wont' spend hundreds on a console and monthly fees when they knew they fear system failure. This is a lot of money for PS2 owners. Reliability is a big deal. The PS2 failure rate (which is probably less than 1% of the 360's) was an outrage.
I did the math and realized that the console itself is a small investment compared to the game library (even a small 30 game library). So I don't mind getting a PS3 and a 360 (and my kids have a wii). When my 360 had to be sent in, I played Warhawk and Uncharted. Kinda sucked to lost my great 360 games, but I lived. This is not the solution most folks will take. Some will think the console is an enormous investment and will go for the wii or PS3.
My MS mouse does not say logitech on it, but I am very amused that it has one of those holographic genuine-Microsoft stickers on the underside.
Just in case I downloaded my trackball or something. How silly.
Even if MS doesn't outsource its interface hardware, a mouse is much easier to make than a console. What Sony and MS are doing with game consoles is much more like what Apple does than what Logitech does.
no kidding, no kidding. What could the dude at home know that the dude in the plant doesn't? This remote control is just the next level in dumb micromanagment.
but if they had this website control the plant remotely, I guess a phonecall is less responsible... a bit
frankly, the way the world tends to work, some employees will definitely take these orders from some bosses. There are some real fools and real clowns running around out there, taking and giving orders for no reason at all.
Oh ho ho ho
oh hahaha
oh har har har
No really, I was a little boy, in Galveston, and I saw some boats. Boat with a bunch of cars on each. I asked my dad "what's with all those big boats?" My dad said "the ferries". And this other dude walking bye said "hey, I knew we were organized, but we've even got a navy!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!"
And then he turned into the cloverfield monster and gave me a strawberry.
Of course you've nailed it on the head. It so some moron engineer manager can check the status on his laptop at home and then tweak something he doesn't need to tweak remotely. I bet it looks cool, too.
Why not let the status report over the internet but have some kind of private connection standard to tweak in emergency? I guess it just wouldn't do to have to call the plant operators. But come on, man. This could be a 2400 baud completely original modem that you can dial from your cell phone, but only works with its own archaic system. Even that's risky.
common law girlfriend? Is that from Blackstone? What common law tradition legally defined whether you were going steady or not?
Maybe I'm missing some sarcasm.
Anyway. You're right, society has changed. It's ok to play for 25 hours a week. the past generation spends twice that watching TV, and their parents (or grandparents enjoyed the radio a lot more than I do. We had audio learned, then visual learners, and now we're having people who learn through interaction (and learn more).
I think this is very positive. Playing a game, even Halo, is much better for your brain than watching TV and drooling motionless. Games are a much better artform than Film or TV. More interactive, more compelling, more personal.
Those crazy Russians! But TP is serious matter, my friend.
Americans are still a lucky bunch, but the economy in the states is declining and will decline a lot more for the next few years before having a huge post-war boom. It's happened several times before. They will adapt to paying for a very expensive war (and I'm not trying to argue for or against the war), and then the war will end and they will leap up like they did in 1992.
While America is still a very important market, it's much more important to invest in Europe and Asia, which will increase relative to the US for the next few years. Especially considering that the dollar itself isn't worth as much as it was last year, and this trend will continue as long as oil grows more scarce and the US consumes so much oil (relative to other currencies anyway). Every Dollar MS got in 2006-mid 2007 is worth about a third less than every dollar-equiv amount they got in many European and Asian markets.
So, if MS made X dollars in the US, and Sony made X dollars in Europe, MS is at aa disadvantage.
Sony is playing some daring games for the long-term. Everyone thinks MS has the master inevitable plan to dominateyet another market, but they have screwed up several (internet search, ISP, Music Player). I think Sony has teh better long term strategy to stay diverse with the PS2 and have an ubersystem tied to a new format for movies. They stay afloat long enough to win the format war, and poor folks still buy their PS2s.
Dude, if you were wanting a bargain product, Apple simply isn't making anything for you.
If you want a really nice product, particularly aesthetically nice, then Apple makes all kinds of shit you might like. But you have to give them MONEY for it.
That software was not advertised as included in the ipod touch. So you didn't get screwed. If you want this version of the software, pay 20$. Of course, a lot of people get it through a different avenue.
If you want a cheap PDA that has a lot of this functionality, you can get one pretty cheap. If $20 is a big deal for you.
Apple is going to always do this. They've found a niche that is profitable, has decent clientele, is fun to manage. I think Apple isn't going to change. They will charge you more for everything, but make good stuff.
NPD is wildly inaccurate. But it's better than the other wildly inaccurate sources.
Still, a great indicator of what's selling is to look at major areas that sell games. Go to Best Buy and see how much store space is devoted to Nintendo or Microsoft or Sony. You'll get the idea that each is doing very well, but Sony is fractured among a diverse group of systems (this is a good thing or a bad thing depending on your expectation of the economy).
NPD is not a target for attack. They are only inaccurate insofar as many retailers refuse to give information to them.
Only a handful of 360 ports remain, and have PS3 ports int he works too. I mean, what are teh big 2008 XBOX exclusives? GT5 and MGS4 and FF13 are all major Halo rivalling titles. I see nothing like that for XBOX.
And the PS3 is actually more profitable to Sony as a blu-ray payer than it is a sa game player, plus Sony plans to sell shows and online movies. The failure of HD-DVD has game developers realizing that the PS3 will probably doing fine.
The real problem is the XBOX fanboys. The first XBOX was so badly stomped on by Sony that XBOX fans are conditioned to expect extreme victories and failure. The PS3 is going OK. Just like the 360. Neither is really doing super well, and neither is doing super badly. Both will have a lot of great support and large fanbases. XBOX fanboys just don't get it. The PS3 had an awful year, yet came out quite well from it, looking at a 2008 that ought to really sell some systems and software.
The XBOX is really doing quite badly in the profitable markets, and succeeding only in the relatively unprofitable and soft US market. Sony is wise to focus elsewhere. I expect the Japanese and European consoles to simply make more money than North American ones, and developers will probably see the same things.
Games are not selling well o the PS3 because there are so few great games on it yet. The system was not only released soon to defeat HD DVD, but also games have been delayed a lot. But that period is ending, and the too-early strategy was obviously a wise one.
PS2 users don't mind very much. They are slow adopters who will buy $350 PS3s after some games start hitting the $20 rack and the great games like FF 13 are released, while scoring a great blu-ray player. We see that very few non-xbox 1.0 movers have purchased a 360, and it just has this aura of ugliness and failure around it. Sure, it's selling great because XBOX fans have nthing else to buy, but Sony fans still see a lot of life in the PS2. They are more likely to be relatively poor and wait a while to move to this generation.
nintendo saw that, and came out with a cheap, PS2 quality, interesting system, and several PS2 fans have moved that way. XBOX tried to totally mirror the PS2 with a mid-range cheap system, but they are bleeding cash and looking to the next gen already. The console war will really occer 3-4 years after the systems and blu-ray were introduced. That's where most of the 130 million PS2 owners are on the timeline. By then, HD TV will be a bigger deal, Blu-ray will be a bigger deal, the PS3 will be cheaper and have the best library (from a PS2 owner's perspective), the eye and sixaxis will present an argument that PS3 is a bargain compared to the wii (a good argument).
The wii still wins, and the PS3 may not defeat the 360 (on the strength of MS's brutal willingness to give millions for favors from publishers to get its wonderful game library), but the PS3 will do pretty well. Well enough to where the Gamecube and XBOX failures simply aren't repeated.
I think a lot of Japanese companies are realizing that MS is a threat to their success. Nintendo isn't very friendly to most companies, but Sony is extremely friendly. I think the XBOX is going to sink earlier than anyone is expecting.
Your accusation that the PS3 is dead shows such a lack of perspective and awareness of the world that you are obviously a severe fanboy. Americans have less to spend than the Japanese and Europeans. Compare the Japanese store to the US one on the PS network. Japan has 200 games. The US has a couple of dozen. Sony took some bold steps getting bluray to win, and they are taking even bigger steps with their focus on profitable markets. Look at Nintendo. They are trying to sell more wiis in europe when any wii brought to the US sells instantly. Why? They don't want US customers as badly as they want Japanese and European ones. MS doesn't have the ability to do that. they are paralyzed into fighting for the US.
You and I will enjoy our 360s, but I bet we'd be wise to realize it's not going to "win" and console wars.
Well, overclocking can lead to instability sometimes. I'm sure the crashing was just the price of going fast.
So what's to stop me from paying 5$, downloading everything, and then just not paying anymore?
Oh, I agree totally. I never said Sony won a lot of format wars. I just said the did ok with a lot of them. If you want your memory card to work with a lot of devices, and that's obviously the most important factor for most people, then SD is the right product.
But Sony has good stuff and it does fairly well. With a lot of their products, there is a better quality than the more universal product. Of course, it's almost never worth the added cost, but that's a personal decision. I have no choice but to use mem sticks, since I have a Sony Phone, PS3, PSP, and they all use a lot of the same media. I know I kinda got screwed into paying a lot for memory, but I do admit the product is pretty good.
because setting it down is slicker or something. just slightly easier.
Not to be rude, but this is fucking obvious. This device almost certainly could work at a much greater range than 3cm if Sony had wanted, but they do not because this is just a much easier way to "plug it in".
It doesn't turn on until it's in the tiny range (set down).
this isn't something I would recommend you buy, obviously, if you are able to move files yourself, etc, without a dummy-dock. I'm just telling you what this device is.
exactly.
Of course it's better than flash. But flash is the common language.
Microsoft will use one monopoly to build another or build a weapon to maintain another. It sucks, because I wish there were more successful American corporations in technology. But I do not like to see Microsoft innovate, because I know it is designed to destroy some competitor. As soon as MS has won the battle, the prices become high and the features become lame. looking at the 360, we see that Microsoft can make awesome fun products. But looking at Vista, early XP, Windows ME, we know what kind of effort MS puts into products it can force on people.