I don't think most people realize that they also own facebook.ca.
Registering a Canadian domain, by definition (as per the registration requirements), means that you have Canadian presence. They aren't just making themselves accessible to Canadians, but are in fact saying that they are Canadian too.
One of the things that made Starcraft so great was that Blizzard put early dev versions of the game before reviewers, who ripped it to shreds and wrote it off as just "Warcraft in space." It's funny how Blizzard made sure no one would say that about the final version...
Blizzard actually listened to a lot of input from the outside before the final release of the game. It's all on Wikipedia, along with some pics of the early builds. I know the video game market isn't what it was in 1998, but I can only imagine (hope?) there's still a lot to be gained by developers trying to get as much feedback on their product as possible before release.
Maybe they're not exactly popular, but I would hardly say they're dead. Just from casual observations, I've gotten the impression they have at least a small institutional presence.
Most recently, I visited a SUNY (State University of New York) and they had a whole fleet of Segways there. As you walked around the campus, you'd see the police scurrying around on them giving out parking tickets. I couldn't help but chuckle every time I saw it, but it seemed like a complete waste of resources to me considering the sorry state of the campus.
So, if at least for the lazy ticket givers of the world, Toyota isn't entering a market completely devoid of consumer demand.
While it's true that the wealth gap is widening, the sentiment that the US has lost it's manufacturing base is a badly perpetuated myth.
By dollar value, the US still produces more goods than any other country in the world. It's true that as a percentage of GDP, manufacturing has shrunk and has taken a back seat to the services sector, but in no way does that mean we've lost our "manufacturing base." It may be easy to think that we've fallen behind since the percentage of people in the US employed in manufacturing is diminutive compared to our competitors, but we've more than made up for it with our productivity growth through the use of automation, for example.
If you're interested, see http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/economy-in-brief/page3.html and http://www.cato.org/research/articles/reynolds-030831.html
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I don't think most people realize that they also own facebook.ca. Registering a Canadian domain, by definition (as per the registration requirements), means that you have Canadian presence. They aren't just making themselves accessible to Canadians, but are in fact saying that they are Canadian too.
One of the things that made Starcraft so great was that Blizzard put early dev versions of the game before reviewers, who ripped it to shreds and wrote it off as just "Warcraft in space." It's funny how Blizzard made sure no one would say that about the final version...
Blizzard actually listened to a lot of input from the outside before the final release of the game. It's all on Wikipedia, along with some pics of the early builds. I know the video game market isn't what it was in 1998, but I can only imagine (hope?) there's still a lot to be gained by developers trying to get as much feedback on their product as possible before release.
Maybe they're not exactly popular, but I would hardly say they're dead. Just from casual observations, I've gotten the impression they have at least a small institutional presence.
Most recently, I visited a SUNY (State University of New York) and they had a whole fleet of Segways there. As you walked around the campus, you'd see the police scurrying around on them giving out parking tickets. I couldn't help but chuckle every time I saw it, but it seemed like a complete waste of resources to me considering the sorry state of the campus.
So, if at least for the lazy ticket givers of the world, Toyota isn't entering a market completely devoid of consumer demand.
While it's true that the wealth gap is widening, the sentiment that the US has lost it's manufacturing base is a badly perpetuated myth. By dollar value, the US still produces more goods than any other country in the world. It's true that as a percentage of GDP, manufacturing has shrunk and has taken a back seat to the services sector, but in no way does that mean we've lost our "manufacturing base." It may be easy to think that we've fallen behind since the percentage of people in the US employed in manufacturing is diminutive compared to our competitors, but we've more than made up for it with our productivity growth through the use of automation, for example. If you're interested, see http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/economy-in-brief/page3.html and http://www.cato.org/research/articles/reynolds-030831.html