Sony definitely lost their way ever since they went into the content business. Eventually the content executives took over and started calling the shots. No longer was technology the main driver of the business. Now technology only exists as a way to deliver their content. This is why Howard Stringer is the CEO. He's a media guy who worked in the media business for over 30 years before he worked at Sony. This is why Sony failed to capture the MP3 player market, or the cellphone market. They were more capable than Apple in creating an iPod or an iPhone, but their content division crippled them.
Buying or selling a house should be like buying or selling a car. You can do it yourself, but you probably will need a mechanic, get it certified, and so on.
Likewise, buying or selling a house should be the same. If you need to fix up the house before selling it, employ a home repair person. Need advice about neighbourhoods or values, search it online yourself, or hire a specialist.
The problem is that with a home, your choices are limited. You are paying 3% regardless of the job your real estate broker is doing, even if you don't need one. To those who say a real estate agent does this and that, or how valuable their agent was, wouldn't that be the same if you employed a specialist and paid them hourly? Let's see $5000 / $50/hour is 100 hours... that should be enough time for you to employ any specialist to fix up your house, drive you around, do some research for you.
One way to break this monopoly is to first create a national database of homes sold along with contact number of the person selling. Make it required by law. After everyone is enrolled in this database, make it available to the public.
Not only that, but white male protagonists abound in almost all games. Blacks are significantly under-represented even though they play a significant percentage. There are many Asian people that play and program as well, and they are significantly under-represented in videogames.
Are white people more racist that they can't play anything else other than a white man?
Well going online only affirms the assumption that white people are more racist - not genetically of course, but we live in a society that accepts white people as the center of the world. Nothing in the world happens without a white man.
(You can see this in movies and TV shows too - how many blacks/asians did you see in NYC in Seinfeld or Sex in the City?)
Big bonuses all around for root-kitting, format-pushing, technology-bundling Sony.
Spoken like a true frothing-from-the-mouth Microsoft fanboy.
Sony has only "pushed" Blu-ray onto the PS3. Some may argue it was needed for the betterment of next-gen games.
Sony has allowed the PS3 users to incorporate standard hard drives, headsets, USB keyboards, Linux onto their system. No root-kitting involved whatsoever.
Were you talking about another product? If so, then it's off-topic, because as we know, Microsoft has done way more harm in forcing proprietary formats and software onto Windows.
Not only that, but they've set some harmful precedents that you fanboys seem to blindingly accept:
- multiple concurrent versions of consoles - paying for online play - an unacceptable rate of failure - tying the console to the Windows platform...as well as proprietary peripherals all across the board, from keyboards, headsets, wireless, hard drives.
If you really "hate it when the bad guys go long and win big", then you should not be rooting for Microsoft.
It's a great thing that it's free. Not sure why people would want to pay for online and add another $250 to their total cost of gaming over the life of their console.
Honestly, the games section of Slashdot sounds more like a Microsoft propaganda machine. Anything from bashing Sony, to only talking about the release of XBox 360 exclusives, to allowing Microsoft to defend it's points system, to giving out statistics of it's sales success. Not only that, but most of the articles are submitted by the editor himself, Zonk.
Anyone else think Zonk is a paid shill, or a overzealous fanboy?
I don't think Microsoft should leave the browser business, as competition is healthy.
Competition is healthy? Sure, but I fail to see how IE aids in competition. They have an OS monopoly and they leverage that to force customers to use their browser. Firefox was created because of the lack of competition, and I doubt what drives them is money or market share, but rather the desire to improve a product. If anything Microsoft cripples competition because everyone is not on a level playing field.
Many other sites have probably been compromised or "influenced" by their advertisers. Consider Slashdot for example - notice the Games section of Slashdot - all of the stories are chosen by Zonk, and none of them are from contributors. Since Microsoft advertises quite a bit on the site, and the fact that Zonk is a XBox fanboy, it's no surprise to see most news on the Xbox 360 to be positive. People might point out to the other negative stories about Microsoft - well Microsoft might not care as much about it's OS or Office business, because they have a monopoly.
There are other gaming sites that have heavy advertising from Microsoft - you'll see that many of these sites describe Sony in a snarky tone, while giving a much gentler hand to Microsoft. This is no different when PC Magazine had many, many ads from Microsoft, and you wouldn't be surprised to see Word, Excel, and it's other Office products rate consistently above WordPerfect, QuattroPro, and so on - based on dubious factors as "ease-of-use".
If you take a look at Halo 3 - look at the huge advertising campaign, full of schwag - people focused on the schwag, but the real dollars exchanged comes from advertising. It's not surprising that Halo 3 got perfect 10s, even though they criticized how short and repetitive the single player campaign was, and how the graphics were nothing special compared to other games. Mmny sites even claimed that Bioshock or COD4 were better.
Bottom line is, many sites are bought out by advertising, or behind-the-scenes bribes/schwag. Weblogs, Inc (Joystiq, Engadget), Gawker Media (Kotaku, Gizmodo), CNET (Gamespot, CNET) all have shown a correlation between the advertising dollars and reviews.
Rogers currently has a virtual monopoly on GSM networks. If all the entrants are CDMA, then Rogers will still have an exploitable advantage - ever since they bought out the only company that was lowering prices, Fido.
Fido used to have a plan called "City Fido" where you get unlimited plans local calling for $40 flat. Now, those plans, while not being offered any more, can be still be transferred from person to person, with the person receiving the plan usually paying over $400.
You don't know that Sony wouldn't have innovated if Microsoft hadn't been around. Sony has always been good about creating innovative products - the problem is the proprietary nature of it, and how it's movie business has corrupted it's electronics business.
The problem here is that if Microsoft ever gets an edge in the gaming industry, it will dominate due to it's anti-competitive practices and aggressive marketing tactics. Anything from forcing Immersion to require Sony to settle for an amount far greater than what Microsoft settled for. Or bribing blog sites with laptops, shwag, and a lot of advertising dollars. To spreading FUD through marketing pieces sent to bloggers disguised as news.
I'll agree that Microsoft has forced Sony to drop it's price though... now hopefully the PS3 picks up steam so that XBox Live becomes free, the 360 becomes more reliable, and it gets a price drop.
...it's paid for by consumers who buy Windows. The cost of development is included in the price of Windows. You have the option of uninstalling it, but you don't have the option of not paying for it.
Why should anyone have to pay a monthly fee for online gaming? It should be on a per-game basis. If I play a FPS for several months, get bored, and buy a single-player only game - why should I have to pay for online access even if I don't use it?
It appears that the Chinese snake oil made from Chinese water snakes is very high in EPA. This substance is known to be a pain reliever, as EPAs are absorbed through the skin and are the parent of the series 3 prostaglandins which inhibit the production of pro-inflammatory series 2 prostaglandins, and the Chinese snake oil products may contain up to 4% of it. Snake oil does not have the dubious reputation in China that it has in the US and elsewhere in the Western world, and it is used widely in traditional Chinese medicine. However, it is not seen as a panacea in China either; there it is used only as relief for arthritis and joint pain.
From a purely pharmacochemical perspective, it is likely that the genuine Chinese snake oil is not fraudulent, at least for its intended purpose, since EPA indeed is an effective anti-inflammatory agent. On the other hand, American products made from rattlesnake fats, which have at most 1/3 of the EPA concentration of Enhydris chinensis fat, are likely to have been inferior or even useless for similar purposes because of their lower or even nonexistent anti-inflammatory contents - aforementioned Stanley's snake oil containe no EPA at all! 19th century snake oil peddlers and apothecarians seldom had any serious knowledge of chemistry or pharmacology. It is likely that they did not understand the action mechanism of the Chinese product, or even know its functional ingredient.[citation needed] Instead of analyzing and reverse engineering the authentic remedy, they tried to imitate it with unimpressive results. Such inferior or even fraudulent products gave snake oil the reputation it has today.
This is why I won't spend a dime on the XBox 360. I'd rather Sony to be in control than Microsoft. Sony doesn't have a monopoly nor does it stop innovating. Microsoft, on the other hand, is a marketing company that uses it's monopoly and it's aggressive marketing tactics to convince people to buy a inferior product.
Not to mention that XBox 360s are notoriously unreliable, expecting costumers to pay to play online, and proprietary peripherals among other things.
How about boycotting HD-DVD for Microsoft's transgressions? Following your example of 5 years for Sony, I assume you'll hold a grudge against Microsoft for 25 years.
A CEO must be cautious with his words, and in saying that both formats are in a "stalemate", he's ignoring the fact that blu-ray movies are outselling HD-DVD movies 2 to 1.
I feel he's been in discussions with Toshiba on how to resolve the "stalemate", and he's trying to give Toshiba a way to "save face".
By that time, Microsoft will have improved their XBOX, and you will have built up a large game library and will be forced to buy another XBox 360 to play your games again.
Slashdot Mirror
Government spies on citizens.
A citizen leaks out that government is spying on citizens.
Government charges citizen for spying.
Sony definitely lost their way ever since they went into the content business. Eventually the content executives took over and started calling the shots. No longer was technology the main driver of the business. Now technology only exists as a way to deliver their content. This is why Howard Stringer is the CEO. He's a media guy who worked in the media business for over 30 years before he worked at Sony. This is why Sony failed to capture the MP3 player market, or the cellphone market. They were more capable than Apple in creating an iPod or an iPhone, but their content division crippled them.
Buying or selling a house should be like buying or selling a car. You can do it yourself, but you probably will need a mechanic, get it certified, and so on.
Likewise, buying or selling a house should be the same. If you need to fix up the house before selling it, employ a home repair person. Need advice about neighbourhoods or values, search it online yourself, or hire a specialist.
The problem is that with a home, your choices are limited. You are paying 3% regardless of the job your real estate broker is doing, even if you don't need one. To those who say a real estate agent does this and that, or how valuable their agent was, wouldn't that be the same if you employed a specialist and paid them hourly? Let's see $5000 / $50/hour is 100 hours... that should be enough time for you to employ any specialist to fix up your house, drive you around, do some research for you.
One way to break this monopoly is to first create a national database of homes sold along with contact number of the person selling. Make it required by law. After everyone is enrolled in this database, make it available to the public.
Problem solved.
Not only that, but white male protagonists abound in almost all games. Blacks are significantly under-represented even though they play a significant percentage. There are many Asian people that play and program as well, and they are significantly under-represented in videogames.
Are white people more racist that they can't play anything else other than a white man?
Well going online only affirms the assumption that white people are more racist - not genetically of course, but we live in a society that accepts white people as the center of the world. Nothing in the world happens without a white man.
(You can see this in movies and TV shows too - how many blacks/asians did you see in NYC in Seinfeld or Sex in the City?)
... crying sour grapes and how the war didn't matter anyways.
At least they can focus all their energy on promoting the XBox 360 rather than promoting HD-DVD and the XBox 360.
So c'mon fanboys, let's hear how Sony is evil and blah blah blah while ignoring everything Microsoft has ever done.
Not the same result. Blu-ray as a medium, has a lower cost per GB than HD-DVD, as well as being more durable, due to a protective coating.
Retail stores prefer Blu-ray because of it's longevity.
Spoken like a true frothing-from-the-mouth Microsoft fanboy.
Sony has only "pushed" Blu-ray onto the PS3. Some may argue it was needed for the betterment of next-gen games.
Sony has allowed the PS3 users to incorporate standard hard drives, headsets, USB keyboards, Linux onto their system. No root-kitting involved whatsoever.
Were you talking about another product? If so, then it's off-topic, because as we know, Microsoft has done way more harm in forcing proprietary formats and software onto Windows.
Not only that, but they've set some harmful precedents that you fanboys seem to blindingly accept:
- multiple concurrent versions of consoles
- paying for online play
- an unacceptable rate of failure
- tying the console to the Windows platform
If you really "hate it when the bad guys go long and win big", then you should not be rooting for Microsoft.
It's a great thing that it's free. Not sure why people would want to pay for online and add another $250 to their total cost of gaming over the life of their console.
Honestly, the games section of Slashdot sounds more like a Microsoft propaganda machine. Anything from bashing Sony, to only talking about the release of XBox 360 exclusives, to allowing Microsoft to defend it's points system, to giving out statistics of it's sales success. Not only that, but most of the articles are submitted by the editor himself, Zonk.
Anyone else think Zonk is a paid shill, or a overzealous fanboy?
No doubt that many special-interest groups will want to disrupt the games to showcase their political agenda.
Competition is healthy? Sure, but I fail to see how IE aids in competition. They have an OS monopoly and they leverage that to force customers to use their browser. Firefox was created because of the lack of competition, and I doubt what drives them is money or market share, but rather the desire to improve a product. If anything Microsoft cripples competition because everyone is not on a level playing field.
Many other sites have probably been compromised or "influenced" by their advertisers. Consider Slashdot for example - notice the Games section of Slashdot - all of the stories are chosen by Zonk, and none of them are from contributors. Since Microsoft advertises quite a bit on the site, and the fact that Zonk is a XBox fanboy, it's no surprise to see most news on the Xbox 360 to be positive. People might point out to the other negative stories about Microsoft - well Microsoft might not care as much about it's OS or Office business, because they have a monopoly.
There are other gaming sites that have heavy advertising from Microsoft - you'll see that many of these sites describe Sony in a snarky tone, while giving a much gentler hand to Microsoft. This is no different when PC Magazine had many, many ads from Microsoft, and you wouldn't be surprised to see Word, Excel, and it's other Office products rate consistently above WordPerfect, QuattroPro, and so on - based on dubious factors as "ease-of-use".
If you take a look at Halo 3 - look at the huge advertising campaign, full of schwag - people focused on the schwag, but the real dollars exchanged comes from advertising. It's not surprising that Halo 3 got perfect 10s, even though they criticized how short and repetitive the single player campaign was, and how the graphics were nothing special compared to other games. Mmny sites even claimed that Bioshock or COD4 were better.
Bottom line is, many sites are bought out by advertising, or behind-the-scenes bribes/schwag. Weblogs, Inc (Joystiq, Engadget), Gawker Media (Kotaku, Gizmodo), CNET (Gamespot, CNET) all have shown a correlation between the advertising dollars and reviews.
Rogers currently has a virtual monopoly on GSM networks. If all the entrants are CDMA, then Rogers will still have an exploitable advantage - ever since they bought out the only company that was lowering prices, Fido.
Fido used to have a plan called "City Fido" where you get unlimited plans local calling for $40 flat. Now, those plans, while not being offered any more, can be still be transferred from person to person, with the person receiving the plan usually paying over $400.
Microsoft DOES make a PC - it's called the XBox 360. Believe me, Dell and other computer manufacturers are worried.
You don't know that Sony wouldn't have innovated if Microsoft hadn't been around. Sony has always been good about creating innovative products - the problem is the proprietary nature of it, and how it's movie business has corrupted it's electronics business.
The problem here is that if Microsoft ever gets an edge in the gaming industry, it will dominate due to it's anti-competitive practices and aggressive marketing tactics. Anything from forcing Immersion to require Sony to settle for an amount far greater than what Microsoft settled for. Or bribing blog sites with laptops, shwag, and a lot of advertising dollars. To spreading FUD through marketing pieces sent to bloggers disguised as news.
I'll agree that Microsoft has forced Sony to drop it's price though... now hopefully the PS3 picks up steam so that XBox Live becomes free, the 360 becomes more reliable, and it gets a price drop.
You can cheer for every punch the underdog lands even though you know they aren't going to win the fight.
...it's paid for by consumers who buy Windows. The cost of development is included in the price of Windows. You have the option of uninstalling it, but you don't have the option of not paying for it.
Why should anyone have to pay a monthly fee for online gaming? It should be on a per-game basis. If I play a FPS for several months, get bored, and buy a single-player only game - why should I have to pay for online access even if I don't use it?
Males can get breast cancer too:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/malebreastcancer.html
It's not surprising that most or all of these products deal with alleviating a health problem.
People will go through much trouble trying to find a remedy to cure their ills no matter how dubious the claims of the product are.
This is why I won't spend a dime on the XBox 360. I'd rather Sony to be in control than Microsoft. Sony doesn't have a monopoly nor does it stop innovating. Microsoft, on the other hand, is a marketing company that uses it's monopoly and it's aggressive marketing tactics to convince people to buy a inferior product.
Not to mention that XBox 360s are notoriously unreliable, expecting costumers to pay to play online, and proprietary peripherals among other things.
How about boycotting HD-DVD for Microsoft's transgressions? Following your example of 5 years for Sony, I assume you'll hold a grudge against Microsoft for 25 years.
A CEO must be cautious with his words, and in saying that both formats are in a "stalemate", he's ignoring the fact that blu-ray movies are outselling HD-DVD movies 2 to 1.
I feel he's been in discussions with Toshiba on how to resolve the "stalemate", and he's trying to give Toshiba a way to "save face".
Either that, or Howard Stringer is a moron.
By that time, Microsoft will have improved their XBOX, and you will have built up a large game library and will be forced to buy another XBox 360 to play your games again.