I care about what gets said about me online because it can directly impact my ability to earn a living and limit, in some cases, the opportunities I have for social and professional interactions.
Employers, clients, peers in various organizations all now routinely Google people they come into contact with. How would you feel if your boss came up to you on Monday and said "Oh, sorry, Brune - we have to let you go. See, a client of ours googled you and someone put a page up about you being a pedophile. I know it's not true, but the client insists..." If you're your own boss, how would you feel when a client tells you they no longer feel comfortable doing business with you because of certain rumors that are going around?
In my case, I'm finishing up my internship prior to becoming a therapist. My practice will be geared towards teens and young adults. Do you have any idea how paranoid people are nowadays about any adult their kids come in contact with? I do - I currently see clients now under the auspices of my supervisor, and I have had parents tell me that they have done background checks on me and mention some things about my past to prove it. It would be incredibly easy to sabotage someone's career by poisoning the well on-line.
So, no - ignoring it won't work for everyone. If we lived in a rational world with rational people where everyone took the time to consider the source, maybe. But we don't live in that world, not even remotely.
Actually, using free oxygen in the atmosphere as an indicator of life is a good idea - if I remember correctly, unless there is some source replenishing it, doesn't free oxygen tend to bond with other stuff?
Sure it wouldn't be a slam dunk, but it'd be something that ought to be worth looking into.
Er, no - it *might* have life. Unless I've missed the biggest news story in the history of all mankind, we haven't yet discovered life off of the Earth.
I learnt on the Apple II. Applesoft BASIC, then I found some 6502 assembler references, and from there it was off to the races. The C64 was a sweet machine, though.
That's a pretty interesting take - I hadn't, really, thought much about that aspect. It does make a good deal of sense: get the R&D done now and release "next-next-gen" hardware and let the software catch up.
I don't know if I buy it, in that from what I understand, despite specs, in reality the PS3 isn't THAT much more powerful than the 360. Also, it kind of would require that Sony is more on the ball than they've been acting. But it is a very neat thought, and if it were to work, then that would be fantastic for Sony.
About the Wii, I think it is inexpensive enough that, 5ish years from now it wouldn't be a hardship to replace it. In fact, heck, 5-6 years from now I would love to see a console that combines the sheer fun of the Wii with the raw power of an XBox 360(+180, since no doubt 1.5 "360's" would be pretty easy to do technologically) or PS3+1.5. "Good enough" hardware that makes them a profit AND still retails cheaply enough to get the casual crowd going, innovative/fun gameplay that anyone can learn without getting frustrated by the controls AND stellar graphics... Yes, please!
I'm not partisan in this thing, but I'll just say this:
It's been a couple of months now and I still cannot find a Wii anywhere in Chicago. With the 360, it was about 3-4 months, if I remember right, before I saw them in any kind of abundance. With the PS3, it was 3-4 days.
To me, this launch profile says a few things:
1) There just isn't a strong enough "Sony right or wrong" base out there - the fanboys just aren't clamouring for this, or if they are, there aren't sufficient numbers of them to buy up all the PS3s.
2) Despite the "most successful launch" in UK history, there are still consoles on the shelves. Anyone who wants to can walk into a store and grab one. Where's the pent-up demand? Where is the "gotta have the new thing" lust? Aparrently it isn't present.
3) For the Wii, which is still in short supply, there is still a certain scarcity driving that market. But for the 360 and PS3 markets, now that supply issues have been ironed out... Well, it seems logical to think that the people who get excited over the theoretical capabilities of a system are going to be the ones most willing to buy it on a launch day when there's no seriously compelling library of games. But now? It's all down to games and the play experience. The 360 has had over a year now to not just get a bunch of games out onto market - and many of the games coming down the pipeline are going to have the advantage of experience with the 360 behind them. The PS3 is now playing catch-up on getting must-have titles out there and also on developer experience. The PS3 is over a year behind - that's about 15-20% of the console's entire lifetime.
For the record, once I can find one, I intend to get a Wii. I entertain a lot, and the Wii is an excellent system for party-type games. I've no real interest in the 360 or PS3 at this point - I have a PS2 that I got pretty much entirely because of Katamari Damacy and Guitar Hero - but from what I've seen so far, I think the Wii will be the one delivering the quirky kind of games I am most interested in playing on a console. For the stuff that the 360 and PS3 do, I will stick to a PC. (Why would anyone play an FPS with a d-pad instead of a keyboard and mouse, anyway?) Though, Call of Duty with the Wii's point and shoot interface looks mighty interesting.
Actually, successive versions of their OS actually run *faster* on older hardware because they spend time optimizing.
The first version of OSX I had choked a G3 PowerBook I had. Second version was a bit better, and the latest version I've installed is quite snappy. No, I can't run quartz and the other eye-candy, but that's okay - for what I use that particular machine for, it works brilliantly.
Considering that one of those is supposedly the latest and greatest console and has quite a bit of marketing dollars behind it while the other one is a last-generation handheld that has zero marketing going on with it right now, I'd say that their choice of adjectives is not too bad.
I hit the exerbike for an hour a day (or run, weather permitting). When I'm on the bike, that's when I catch up on television shows I watch - TIVO and other time-shifting techniques are great. I can't really read, as I'm really faux-hauling ass while I exerbike. When I run, I pop in a book-on-tape for some subject I'm interested in (never fiction) or listen to news/podcast stuff.
When I play console games, I stand and hop around.
Also, when I have opportunities to walk or take stairs, I do so. I also usually skip condiments like ketchup/mustard/mayo on food (they add a LOT of calories).
So, the upshot is that all my time "exercising" is really spent doing other stuff that I really enjoy while I happen to be moving around. Being fit is *much* easier if you just get into good habits rather than turning it into an "event."
Uh, no - I never mentioned the PATRIOT Act. Nor did I offer any opinion on why we haven't been attacked here again. You brought up both things. Maybe instead of making shit up to respond to, you could try responding to what was actually said?
I suspect that the reason we haven't had attacks here is not the laughable DHS preparations or the PATRIOT Act provisions, but more because there really *weren't* that many people who were willing, interested and able to get over here to fuck with us and the ones who are blowing up themselves, our troops and Iraqis weren't pissed off enough to do it until we invaded.
The PATRIOT Act and DHS are, in my opinion, worse than useless. It lets people think we're doing something to protect ourselves (when we're no safer than we were before and may be less so), curbs our liberties, and generally has been a clusterfuck in every possible way.
Let me say it again:
We haven't been attacked on our soil again since 9/11 for the same reason we didn't get attacked much on our soil before 9/11: Nobody was trying all that hard and there just weren't enough people with the will and means.
(1)They don't have to strike on our home territory to hurt us- in fact, they can hurt us a lot more easily, and more effectively, by attacking us abroad. If I were a fanatical Saudi Arabian suicide bomber, I could bomb a Starbucks in Topeka, but it would cost a lot of money and take a lot of time to plan, and it would have a low probability of succeeding. On the other hand, I could just head to Iraq. It's a lot easier to get across the unsecured Iraqi border than through American customs, and once I'm there I look like everyone else and speak the local language, so it's much easier to operate and blend in. And the Americans have done me the favor of shipping to my front door- at the cost of billions of dollars- their young men and women. Praise Allah!
I have to disagree.
Do you know what would be worse than 1000 suicide bombers going after US troops in Iraq or abroad?
5 suicide bombers in the US going after daycare centers.
Anything overseas is overseas. But look at what happened post 9-11. Fear crippled the nation. Now imagine if every couple of days or weeks some random low-value target got blown to smithereens. The entire country would be paralyzed and for *quite* some time.
The whole "invade Iraq" thing only works if we assume our enemies are stupid.
There are 2 Aspies in my family. One is my brother, one is my nephew. My brother is absolutely clueless that he doesn't fit in because he absolutely cannot recognize the subtle signs that people show to indicate that he's not being recieved well. While many Aspie people are shy because social situations bewilder them, my brother is not - he will force himself upon all and sundry and he thinks people love him because he's not able to process facial expressions etc. He's starting to get clued in now because he realises he's 40 years old and hasn't ever had a real relationship (never got past a second date) and has come to accept that maybe it *isn't* that everyone else is defective with relationships, but that he's got issues.
My nephew is actually quite charming in a very shy sort of way. My sister told him at a very young age, when she realized that he wasn't "getting" social stuff that she would help him learn how to recognize when people were put off by him. For him, every social encounter is an excercise in observation and processing the results and making guesses - he has done it out loud before, and it is just amazing the stuff he says. "Oh, she is smiling, but her knuckles are white and her tendons are standing out on her hand and she is hunching her shoulders and she hasn't said anything except to nod and look around so I think she is nervous and wants to get away." He's 22 now, and getting better all the time - more subtle about the thinking that goes on - but he's told me that the only reason he thinks he's different from other people is because people tell him that. It just wouldn't occur to him otherwise.
The difference between those two people and those who want to claim to have it is stark. Just being able to have the personal insight to even begin to make the attempt at self-diagnosis is something that can be a differential.
Note: Not saying all aspies are just like my brother or nephew, all comments should be taken as qualified by "in my opinion" or "in my experience" etc. and so on.
It relates to detailed plans that make certain relatively precise predictions about what the enemy might do. I agree with the concept in general - no plan survives unscathed - but a good plan will have flexibility built in. "What if..." should be an essential part of strategy.
"What if... Our competition releases early?" "What if... Our competition has been sandbagging on the hardware and has something REALLY impressive that we can't hope to match right off?" "What if... Our competition has been in negotiations with developers we've been exclusive with and is basically going to buy their loyalty from us?" "What if... Our competition has some kind of novelty factor?" "What if... Our competition has much deeper pockets than ours and will spend billions to win the market by putting out consoles at a huge loss?" "What if... Our fabrication efforts run into a horrible snag and we can only put out 10% of the units we think we can while the competition lucks out and has no real hurdles?" "What if... Our focus groups on pricing were wrong?" "What if... Our behavior towards our customers turns out to have caused a major consumer backlash?"
Etc and so on. Coming up with contingencies for those negative possibilities should be a basic part of any plan. Some of those are easy to plan for, some of them not so much. But the fact of the matter is, virtually all of those very general scenarios (and many, many more) should have been considered and worked up. Granted, there are some things that simply cannot be planned for (or would be completely absurd: "What if... our competition has magical console making fairies and gives everyone a free pony and ice cream for life?"
Any shallow plan that fails to do much solid contingency work will not survive contact with the enemy is a much better way of phrasing Murphy.
You speak about MS abandoning the XBox as if it were unreasonable, but the fact is it wasn't doing very well. Why wouldn't they abandon the (relatively) unsuccessful platform if they believed getting out the door early could give them a jump on the next generation? It isn't like releasing the 360 suddenly makes all those old XBoxes non-functional or somehow breaks all the old games for them. While it isn't necessarily the most obvious way for MS to go, it's certainly plausible and something that could have been explored.
I never said anything about predicting the controller for the Wii. I spoke specifically to predicting the early release by their competition. Though, if I were to speak to realistic predictions about Nintendo, I would say "plan for something unexpected that isn't related to processing power and plays to Nintendo's key strength: quirky, fun, party games for all ages."
That's actually a pretty interesting take - hadn't thought along those lines.
A good plan, though, would take into account reasonable contingencies, I think. If the scenario you posit is true, it demonstrates how weak their back-up planning is. Add to that the post-launch follies, and things look even worse there.
To be honest, I was hoping that all 3 makers would come out with compelling offerings. Nintendo with the quirky fun party system, MS with the stellar Live!, and Sony with a spectacularly powerful system that could lead to games based around concepts that were previously too power intensive to work. This would be the best of all worlds for gaming - real competition, maybe with real innovation even.
As it stands, it looks like Nintendo and MS have given me what I want, and for Sony it seems to be a wait and see. Or, most probably a wait and say "meh, not all that different."
I dunno - it would never occur to me that a company might have, like, some sort of strategic plan or anything! Seems kind of far-fetched to me.
Not sure about where you work, but at every business I've ever heard of, we never had any kind of overall goal. Everyone just did something at random, changing tasks only when management yelled at them.
Okay, now that my sarcasm is out of the way (and I didn't mean it meanly) - of course they have a plan. Any business that is run well has a plan. Any business that isn't run well has a plan, though it might be a vague one like "get more customers." Nintendo is just doing something that many businesses fail to do. Well, two things, actually - one, they seem to have a GOOD plan, and two, they are executing it well.
For an example of a bad plan and execution, look at Sony.
Anyway, I don't know that there'll be a "checkmate" move made - that doesn't seem to be Nintendo's style, really. My guess is that they will just continue to release spiffy new things for the Wii and DS, things that rely on a large userbase in order to work. I could easily see some non-game social networking/barter apps coming along with the DS. Probably not in the US, but definitely in Japan.
By the very fact that you claim blacks need black rolemodels you are a racist yourselve. You are saying a rolemodel should be chosen based on their race and that is the essence of racism, to judge a person by their race in ANYWAY.
That's a pretty dumb argument. You're missing a big point that many minority people face every day: They don't see anyone like them succeeding.
I'm female. When I was little I would be told that girls don't do math, girls don't do science, wouldn't I rather stay home and learn to bake instead of going out and playing ball with my friends? When my brother would ask questions about how things worked, he was encouraged. When I did I was patted on the head and told "it's complicated" or that things I was interested in weren't really for girls.
So yeah, you bet your ass it made a huge difference for me when I saw women doing well in science. When I first learned of Marie Curie it was a revelation. Clearly women COULD do well, COULD handle these things, and whenever someone would say shit like "It's too complicated" I could come back at them with "No, it's not - you just don't know any better."
Black people get it the same way. I've a very good friend who works for a trading firm and when he said he wanted to go to business school and thought he could make it on Wall Street his parents - his fucking PARENTS - said "Son, look at the pictures in the Wall Street Journal. You see any black faces in there?"
So yeah, it's important. Some of us don't have the luxury of growing up with the assumption that we can do any goddamn thing we feel like because some of us grow up hearing all the time how because of whether we sit or stand to pee, whether we can get a tan, we won't ever make it.
Say whatever you like, but I don't think white male children ever grow up in this country hearing "Oh, no, that's too difficult for boys" or "Son, do you see any white faces in that photo of that corporate board?"
/ love the MagSafe adapter more than I expected.. it just works
No shit! When the new MacBooks first came out and people were raving about it, I was like "... Ohhhhhkay...." I mean, I'm a macgirl, but jesus, that seemed to be carrying fanboyism a weeee far.
Then I got mine. First 10 minutes out of the box and my dog goes tearing ass across the room and runs right into the cord. I yelp, can't look... But no, just popped right out.
I think that there should be punitive damages in addition to legal fees when companies go after individuals in this way.
How about the reverse? What if an individual goes after a corporation and loses? Should they then have to foot the bill for the corporation's expenses AND get punitive damages assessed?
I don't think I like the ramifications of that. "Hey, Joe Sixpack - you can sue us for crippling your wife, but you know what? We've got hundreds of lawyers on our side and deep pockets. Odds are you're fucked. And if you lose, guess what? You're gonna have to pay for each and every hour our guys put into this and probably a smidgeon more. Your attorney might be working on a contingent fee, but ours sure as hell aren't. So why don't you sit the fuck down like a good little prole?"
Slashdot Mirror
I care about what gets said about me online because it can directly impact my ability to earn a living and limit, in some cases, the opportunities I have for social and professional interactions.
Employers, clients, peers in various organizations all now routinely Google people they come into contact with. How would you feel if your boss came up to you on Monday and said "Oh, sorry, Brune - we have to let you go. See, a client of ours googled you and someone put a page up about you being a pedophile. I know it's not true, but the client insists..." If you're your own boss, how would you feel when a client tells you they no longer feel comfortable doing business with you because of certain rumors that are going around?
In my case, I'm finishing up my internship prior to becoming a therapist. My practice will be geared towards teens and young adults. Do you have any idea how paranoid people are nowadays about any adult their kids come in contact with? I do - I currently see clients now under the auspices of my supervisor, and I have had parents tell me that they have done background checks on me and mention some things about my past to prove it. It would be incredibly easy to sabotage someone's career by poisoning the well on-line.
So, no - ignoring it won't work for everyone. If we lived in a rational world with rational people where everyone took the time to consider the source, maybe. But we don't live in that world, not even remotely.
Actually, using free oxygen in the atmosphere as an indicator of life is a good idea - if I remember correctly, unless there is some source replenishing it, doesn't free oxygen tend to bond with other stuff?
Sure it wouldn't be a slam dunk, but it'd be something that ought to be worth looking into.
Er, no - it *might* have life. Unless I've missed the biggest news story in the history of all mankind, we haven't yet discovered life off of the Earth.
I learnt on the Apple II. Applesoft BASIC, then I found some 6502 assembler references, and from there it was off to the races. The C64 was a sweet machine, though.
That's a pretty interesting take - I hadn't, really, thought much about that aspect. It does make a good deal of sense: get the R&D done now and release "next-next-gen" hardware and let the software catch up.
I don't know if I buy it, in that from what I understand, despite specs, in reality the PS3 isn't THAT much more powerful than the 360. Also, it kind of would require that Sony is more on the ball than they've been acting. But it is a very neat thought, and if it were to work, then that would be fantastic for Sony.
About the Wii, I think it is inexpensive enough that, 5ish years from now it wouldn't be a hardship to replace it. In fact, heck, 5-6 years from now I would love to see a console that combines the sheer fun of the Wii with the raw power of an XBox 360(+180, since no doubt 1.5 "360's" would be pretty easy to do technologically) or PS3+1.5. "Good enough" hardware that makes them a profit AND still retails cheaply enough to get the casual crowd going, innovative/fun gameplay that anyone can learn without getting frustrated by the controls AND stellar graphics... Yes, please!
I'm not partisan in this thing, but I'll just say this:
It's been a couple of months now and I still cannot find a Wii anywhere in Chicago. With the 360, it was about 3-4 months, if I remember right, before I saw them in any kind of abundance. With the PS3, it was 3-4 days.
To me, this launch profile says a few things:
1) There just isn't a strong enough "Sony right or wrong" base out there - the fanboys just aren't clamouring for this, or if they are, there aren't sufficient numbers of them to buy up all the PS3s.
2) Despite the "most successful launch" in UK history, there are still consoles on the shelves. Anyone who wants to can walk into a store and grab one. Where's the pent-up demand? Where is the "gotta have the new thing" lust? Aparrently it isn't present.
3) For the Wii, which is still in short supply, there is still a certain scarcity driving that market. But for the 360 and PS3 markets, now that supply issues have been ironed out... Well, it seems logical to think that the people who get excited over the theoretical capabilities of a system are going to be the ones most willing to buy it on a launch day when there's no seriously compelling library of games. But now? It's all down to games and the play experience. The 360 has had over a year now to not just get a bunch of games out onto market - and many of the games coming down the pipeline are going to have the advantage of experience with the 360 behind them. The PS3 is now playing catch-up on getting must-have titles out there and also on developer experience. The PS3 is over a year behind - that's about 15-20% of the console's entire lifetime.
For the record, once I can find one, I intend to get a Wii. I entertain a lot, and the Wii is an excellent system for party-type games. I've no real interest in the 360 or PS3 at this point - I have a PS2 that I got pretty much entirely because of Katamari Damacy and Guitar Hero - but from what I've seen so far, I think the Wii will be the one delivering the quirky kind of games I am most interested in playing on a console. For the stuff that the 360 and PS3 do, I will stick to a PC. (Why would anyone play an FPS with a d-pad instead of a keyboard and mouse, anyway?) Though, Call of Duty with the Wii's point and shoot interface looks mighty interesting.
Actually, successive versions of their OS actually run *faster* on older hardware because they spend time optimizing.
The first version of OSX I had choked a G3 PowerBook I had. Second version was a bit better, and the latest version I've installed is quite snappy. No, I can't run quartz and the other eye-candy, but that's okay - for what I use that particular machine for, it works brilliantly.
weer in ur skools takin ur fellowshipz
Gosh, you participated in a science fair in school? ME TOO!!! I thought I was the only one on slashdot!!!
Say, do you like computers? I know I sure do!
Sorry, just don't often get a chance to poke fun at a 4-digit poster.
Considering that one of those is supposedly the latest and greatest console and has quite a bit of marketing dollars behind it while the other one is a last-generation handheld that has zero marketing going on with it right now, I'd say that their choice of adjectives is not too bad.
I hit the exerbike for an hour a day (or run, weather permitting). When I'm on the bike, that's when I catch up on television shows I watch - TIVO and other time-shifting techniques are great. I can't really read, as I'm really faux-hauling ass while I exerbike. When I run, I pop in a book-on-tape for some subject I'm interested in (never fiction) or listen to news/podcast stuff.
When I play console games, I stand and hop around.
Also, when I have opportunities to walk or take stairs, I do so. I also usually skip condiments like ketchup/mustard/mayo on food (they add a LOT of calories).
So, the upshot is that all my time "exercising" is really spent doing other stuff that I really enjoy while I happen to be moving around. Being fit is *much* easier if you just get into good habits rather than turning it into an "event."
Actually, this is *exactly* correct.
You think the reaction to 9/11 was bad? Imagine the police state we'd live in if it had been specifically children that were targeted.
Yes, we would, as someone else said, make WAR, but the cost would be unimaginably higher than we're paying now.
It happens - sorry for saying you were making shit up :)
Uh, no - I never mentioned the PATRIOT Act. Nor did I offer any opinion on why we haven't been attacked here again. You brought up both things. Maybe instead of making shit up to respond to, you could try responding to what was actually said?
I suspect that the reason we haven't had attacks here is not the laughable DHS preparations or the PATRIOT Act provisions, but more because there really *weren't* that many people who were willing, interested and able to get over here to fuck with us and the ones who are blowing up themselves, our troops and Iraqis weren't pissed off enough to do it until we invaded.
The PATRIOT Act and DHS are, in my opinion, worse than useless. It lets people think we're doing something to protect ourselves (when we're no safer than we were before and may be less so), curbs our liberties, and generally has been a clusterfuck in every possible way.
Let me say it again:
We haven't been attacked on our soil again since 9/11 for the same reason we didn't get attacked much on our soil before 9/11: Nobody was trying all that hard and there just weren't enough people with the will and means.
(1)They don't have to strike on our home territory to hurt us- in fact, they can hurt us a lot more easily, and more effectively, by attacking us abroad. If I were a fanatical Saudi Arabian suicide bomber, I could bomb a Starbucks in Topeka, but it would cost a lot of money and take a lot of time to plan, and it would have a low probability of succeeding. On the other hand, I could just head to Iraq. It's a lot easier to get across the unsecured Iraqi border than through American customs, and once I'm there I look like everyone else and speak the local language, so it's much easier to operate and blend in. And the Americans have done me the favor of shipping to my front door- at the cost of billions of dollars- their young men and women. Praise Allah!
I have to disagree.
Do you know what would be worse than 1000 suicide bombers going after US troops in Iraq or abroad?
5 suicide bombers in the US going after daycare centers.
Anything overseas is overseas. But look at what happened post 9-11. Fear crippled the nation. Now imagine if every couple of days or weeks some random low-value target got blown to smithereens. The entire country would be paralyzed and for *quite* some time.
The whole "invade Iraq" thing only works if we assume our enemies are stupid.
Bing-fucking-O!
There are 2 Aspies in my family. One is my brother, one is my nephew. My brother is absolutely clueless that he doesn't fit in because he absolutely cannot recognize the subtle signs that people show to indicate that he's not being recieved well. While many Aspie people are shy because social situations bewilder them, my brother is not - he will force himself upon all and sundry and he thinks people love him because he's not able to process facial expressions etc. He's starting to get clued in now because he realises he's 40 years old and hasn't ever had a real relationship (never got past a second date) and has come to accept that maybe it *isn't* that everyone else is defective with relationships, but that he's got issues.
My nephew is actually quite charming in a very shy sort of way. My sister told him at a very young age, when she realized that he wasn't "getting" social stuff that she would help him learn how to recognize when people were put off by him. For him, every social encounter is an excercise in observation and processing the results and making guesses - he has done it out loud before, and it is just amazing the stuff he says. "Oh, she is smiling, but her knuckles are white and her tendons are standing out on her hand and she is hunching her shoulders and she hasn't said anything except to nod and look around so I think she is nervous and wants to get away." He's 22 now, and getting better all the time - more subtle about the thinking that goes on - but he's told me that the only reason he thinks he's different from other people is because people tell him that. It just wouldn't occur to him otherwise.
The difference between those two people and those who want to claim to have it is stark. Just being able to have the personal insight to even begin to make the attempt at self-diagnosis is something that can be a differential.
Note: Not saying all aspies are just like my brother or nephew, all comments should be taken as qualified by "in my opinion" or "in my experience" etc. and so on.
And I neglected to comment on the Murphy thing.
It relates to detailed plans that make certain relatively precise predictions about what the enemy might do. I agree with the concept in general - no plan survives unscathed - but a good plan will have flexibility built in. "What if..." should be an essential part of strategy.
"What if... Our competition releases early?"
"What if... Our competition has been sandbagging on the hardware and has something REALLY impressive that we can't hope to match right off?"
"What if... Our competition has been in negotiations with developers we've been exclusive with and is basically going to buy their loyalty from us?"
"What if... Our competition has some kind of novelty factor?"
"What if... Our competition has much deeper pockets than ours and will spend billions to win the market by putting out consoles at a huge loss?"
"What if... Our fabrication efforts run into a horrible snag and we can only put out 10% of the units we think we can while the competition lucks out and has no real hurdles?"
"What if... Our focus groups on pricing were wrong?"
"What if... Our behavior towards our customers turns out to have caused a major consumer backlash?"
Etc and so on. Coming up with contingencies for those negative possibilities should be a basic part of any plan. Some of those are easy to plan for, some of them not so much. But the fact of the matter is, virtually all of those very general scenarios (and many, many more) should have been considered and worked up. Granted, there are some things that simply cannot be planned for (or would be completely absurd: "What if... our competition has magical console making fairies and gives everyone a free pony and ice cream for life?"
Any shallow plan that fails to do much solid contingency work will not survive contact with the enemy is a much better way of phrasing Murphy.
You speak about MS abandoning the XBox as if it were unreasonable, but the fact is it wasn't doing very well. Why wouldn't they abandon the (relatively) unsuccessful platform if they believed getting out the door early could give them a jump on the next generation? It isn't like releasing the 360 suddenly makes all those old XBoxes non-functional or somehow breaks all the old games for them. While it isn't necessarily the most obvious way for MS to go, it's certainly plausible and something that could have been explored.
I never said anything about predicting the controller for the Wii. I spoke specifically to predicting the early release by their competition. Though, if I were to speak to realistic predictions about Nintendo, I would say "plan for something unexpected that isn't related to processing power and plays to Nintendo's key strength: quirky, fun, party games for all ages."
That's actually a pretty interesting take - hadn't thought along those lines.
A good plan, though, would take into account reasonable contingencies, I think. If the scenario you posit is true, it demonstrates how weak their back-up planning is. Add to that the post-launch follies, and things look even worse there.
To be honest, I was hoping that all 3 makers would come out with compelling offerings. Nintendo with the quirky fun party system, MS with the stellar Live!, and Sony with a spectacularly powerful system that could lead to games based around concepts that were previously too power intensive to work. This would be the best of all worlds for gaming - real competition, maybe with real innovation even.
As it stands, it looks like Nintendo and MS have given me what I want, and for Sony it seems to be a wait and see. Or, most probably a wait and say "meh, not all that different."
Gosh, you think?
I dunno - it would never occur to me that a company might have, like, some sort of strategic plan or anything! Seems kind of far-fetched to me.
Not sure about where you work, but at every business I've ever heard of, we never had any kind of overall goal. Everyone just did something at random, changing tasks only when management yelled at them.
Okay, now that my sarcasm is out of the way (and I didn't mean it meanly) - of course they have a plan. Any business that is run well has a plan. Any business that isn't run well has a plan, though it might be a vague one like "get more customers." Nintendo is just doing something that many businesses fail to do. Well, two things, actually - one, they seem to have a GOOD plan, and two, they are executing it well.
For an example of a bad plan and execution, look at Sony.
Anyway, I don't know that there'll be a "checkmate" move made - that doesn't seem to be Nintendo's style, really. My guess is that they will just continue to release spiffy new things for the Wii and DS, things that rely on a large userbase in order to work. I could easily see some non-game social networking/barter apps coming along with the DS. Probably not in the US, but definitely in Japan.
By the very fact that you claim blacks need black rolemodels you are a racist yourselve. You are saying a rolemodel should be chosen based on their race and that is the essence of racism, to judge a person by their race in ANYWAY.
That's a pretty dumb argument. You're missing a big point that many minority people face every day: They don't see anyone like them succeeding.
I'm female. When I was little I would be told that girls don't do math, girls don't do science, wouldn't I rather stay home and learn to bake instead of going out and playing ball with my friends? When my brother would ask questions about how things worked, he was encouraged. When I did I was patted on the head and told "it's complicated" or that things I was interested in weren't really for girls.
So yeah, you bet your ass it made a huge difference for me when I saw women doing well in science. When I first learned of Marie Curie it was a revelation. Clearly women COULD do well, COULD handle these things, and whenever someone would say shit like "It's too complicated" I could come back at them with "No, it's not - you just don't know any better."
Black people get it the same way. I've a very good friend who works for a trading firm and when he said he wanted to go to business school and thought he could make it on Wall Street his parents - his fucking PARENTS - said "Son, look at the pictures in the Wall Street Journal. You see any black faces in there?"
So yeah, it's important. Some of us don't have the luxury of growing up with the assumption that we can do any goddamn thing we feel like because some of us grow up hearing all the time how because of whether we sit or stand to pee, whether we can get a tan, we won't ever make it.
Say whatever you like, but I don't think white male children ever grow up in this country hearing "Oh, no, that's too difficult for boys" or "Son, do you see any white faces in that photo of that corporate board?"
So, in other words, you lied.
BSOD isn't normal - it's a malfunction. You might smirk and say that's normal, but it's not, and it's a bullshit comment.
Linux has enough good stuff going for it that you don't need to lie in order to get people into it.
/ love the MagSafe adapter more than I expected.. it just works
No shit! When the new MacBooks first came out and people were raving about it, I was like "... Ohhhhhkay...." I mean, I'm a macgirl, but jesus, that seemed to be carrying fanboyism a weeee far.
Then I got mine. First 10 minutes out of the box and my dog goes tearing ass across the room and runs right into the cord. I yelp, can't look... But no, just popped right out.
I think that there should be punitive damages in addition to legal fees when companies go after individuals in this way.
How about the reverse? What if an individual goes after a corporation and loses? Should they then have to foot the bill for the corporation's expenses AND get punitive damages assessed?
I don't think I like the ramifications of that. "Hey, Joe Sixpack - you can sue us for crippling your wife, but you know what? We've got hundreds of lawyers on our side and deep pockets. Odds are you're fucked. And if you lose, guess what? You're gonna have to pay for each and every hour our guys put into this and probably a smidgeon more. Your attorney might be working on a contingent fee, but ours sure as hell aren't. So why don't you sit the fuck down like a good little prole?"
"Mooooooom! THAAD's poking meeeeeee!"