democratic congressman call for special investigations into Cheney's role in doing what Bill Clinton started. I was simply pointing out the double standard Looking from afar I can assure you that it very much seems like double standards were right on par for both of your parties.
I don't even claim our politicians over here are much better. A little maybe, because we don't tend to have these clans and fraternities behind every other one, but they're just as corrupt and dirty.
It doesn't and never did. However, the uptime clock wraps around after 497 days. Took me two hours of finding out why the box rebooted (and then why there was no indication of the reboot in the logs) one day to research that. That same box has since looped the clock a second time. So I can say for sure it stays up for more than 50 days.:-)
If you are really serious about your weird pseudo-statistical theory, shouldn't you thank the VT shooter? After all, chances are that, it being a tech U and all, there were quite a few other gamers among his victims. Surely, if you are right, they would all sooner or later have gone on a killing spree. Right?
Okay, let's check Wikipedia. Pahlavi reign 1941-1979. You're quote, "In 1951, a nationalist politician, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh rose to prominence." How can you say Pahlavi was later? I apologize for shortening my reply too much. Pahlavi's overthrow was later (it was the islamic revolution). Since I had mentioned that in my first post I thought you were referring to it.
As for the whole soviet/communism angle - AFAIK that was alleged, but never proven. Of course, back then the world was very black and white for you guys and anything not copying the US must be communism. Heck, some of you still think that.
As for the election, the one I was referring to was very widely acknowledged and respected. As I said already, Mossadegh is part of the history books as being the first ever president democratically elected in the 3rd world.
You don't have to like it, but the world is a bit more difficult than "if you're not with us, you are against us". There are other ways to run a country besides US-style capitalism and soviet-style communism. Many countries are looking for their own ways, including Iran back then and most of south america right about now.
well, he is from your party [apparently]. Funny how ad hominem attacks on people you don't know tend to miss so widely. I'm not even from the US and for all I care both of your major parties are equally bought, corrupted and incompetent.
Pahlavi was later. Have you been brain-washed so much you can't even check Wikipedia?
In 1951, a nationalist politician, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh rose to prominence in Iran and was elected Prime Minister. As Prime Minister, Mossadegh became enormously popular in Iran by nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later British Petroleum, BP) which controlled the country's oil reserves. In response, Britain embargoed Iranian oil and began plotting to depose Mossadegh. Members of the British Intelligence Service invited the United States to join them, convincing U.S. President Eisenhower that Mossadegh was reliant on the Tudeh (Communist) Party to stay in power. In 1953, President Eisenhower authorized Operation Ajax, and the CIA took the lead in overthrowing Mossadegh and supporting a U.S.-friendly monarch; and for which the U.S. Government apologized in 2000. Source: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0004/19/i_i ns.00.html
HR 333 So he's only impeaching half of the beast. He's hoping for Cheney to save his neck by revealing evidence about Bush. Coincidences can be very interesting sometimes.
but the Senate would never find him guilty by a 2/3rd majority. You sure? The Bush gang has become a liability for the republicans, as many of them realize. There might be quite a bit of support for this, especially if you can sell your "yes" vote as patriotism.
First, given that you dudes (i.e. the US) planned, financed and partially executed the overthrow of the first ever(!) democratically elected president in the entire third world, and that that happened to be Iran, their hostility is more than understandeable, isn't it? The direct result of the forceful institution of the Sha regime was, of course, the islamic revolution. You made your bed, now lie in it.
Two, nuclear infrastructure is no threat to the USA. Even a working nuke isn't. You still need delivery vehicles. As for that, I think the ratio of USA to Iran is roughly 20,000:0
Finally, the position in the paper I read was "Cheney lied and betrayed the public while holding an office where he swore an oath to protect and serve that same public". Iraq/Iran is merely what he lied about.
Now that is an impeachment worth reading. The synopsis alone is a solid piece of attack.
Let's see if your congresscritters have enough spine left to do follow the facts. Though I fear we will soon find out how much money Haliburton is willing to throw around in order to keep their sock puppet in office.
A year from now, the only people who are going to care about Wii Sports are those who have never played it, Again, I don't agree at all. I've played a lot of Tennis and quite a bit of bowling. Playing against other humans doesn't get old as quickly as playing against a computer opponent.
Despite what Nintendo says, the bread and butter of their business is still the gamer who is going to buy their games... And that is not the hardcore gamer. Once Granddad has been sold on Tennis and Baseball, he will buy other games. Nintendo has opened up a whole new market segment. Nobody really knows how they will act and buy, but marketing studies realized 20 years ago just how much crap you can sell to older people, for example, if you just know how to do it.
And here I was thinking that the fact that a tiny bit of javascript can put anything you want into the status bar when you hover over a link were common knowledge, and has been for at least 10 years.
Then they made it cheap enough that it was an impulse buy. I've heard that before in this discussion. I still can't wrap my head around it. Do you guys really think 300-400 is in the "impulse buy" category? It's not an impulse buy, it's an "that's a good value, these other consoles are too damn expensive for a damn gaming system" buy.
Everything else is a party game. You say that as if is something negative. Newsflash: Party games are what the target market is looking for. I've owned a Wii since launch day. Do you want to know what the people coming over now and then for a game are requesting to play? Wii Sports (Tennis or Bowling, mostly) and Rayman. Putting down those party games means misunderstanding why the Wii is a success.
No, the traditional console market is not made up exclusively of hardcore gamers. A lot of people who don't own a PC or who find PC games too complicated, or who simply enjoy games in the living room more, are also in that market.
And yes, it is a large market. And yes, it is nothing compared to the market segment that Nintendo has just opened up. For every hardcore gamer that MS aims at, there are 2 parents, 4 grandparents and on average 1 sibling that weren't target audience - until now. Plus the 20 or so normal people for each geek.
Here's where the number is from. If you read further, you'll be enlightened:
the Wii the highest-selling next-gen console with 259,000 units - God Of War II dominates software charts.
Overall, the 5-week March period surveyed by the NPD saw U.S. game sales... I doubt they would quote figures for world-wide console sales and US game sales.
Then there is this source which quotes a numer of 67.070 Wiis sold in a single week in Japan. That makes a number of 259k world-wide for a month very, very unlikely. If you google just a little, you will find many more sources supporting this view. This site apparently has a fairly good breakdown of actual world-wide numbers. It quotes 6.6 mio. Wiis sold world-wide so far, which averages to over a million each month.
manufacturer that can't make more than 259,000 units a month For all I know, that number is the US sales only. I know it's a bit hard for you guys sometimes, so sit down and take it easy, might be a bit of a shock at first, but: There is a world on the other side of both the atlantic and pacific ocean. Breath easy for a while and let it sink in.:-)
The Wii competes because aside from a small part of the population that is fanatic about games, nobody buys two game consoles, no matter the price. Many of the people now sold on the Wii might have considered an Xbox if the PS3 had been the only other option. The Wii is eating a good part of the Xbox's potential customer base. Maybe not the core, the hardcore gamers, but the casual gamer segment.
Console sales are all very nice and all BUT what counts is the sale of software for that console. The real world isn't that simple.
One, Nintendo is making a profit on every console sold, not a loss like MS and Sony.
Two, what is the precondition for high game sales? A large installed base, of course. Nintendo is growing a large installed base as fast as its factories can produce.
The success of the Wii isn't some esoteric nonsense. It's very simple: Nintendo built something that people actually want. Instead of listening to the very small demographic of the hardcore gamers and hardcore developers whose world revolves around frames per second, polygon count, pixel shaders and rendering pipelines, they asked themselves (and probably lots of other people) what Joe and Jane want in a gaming console.
So what do Joe and Jane want? Fun, something to play together and with friends, something that's easy. Gameplay first, killer graphics second.
And the thing is: Most of what Joe and Jane want also appears to Harald Hardcore. A fun game simply is a fun game, and even if you could code better graphics yourself on your overclocked PC, it still is a fun game.
And that's the hard part: Coding is the easy part of game design. Making a good game is the hard part. Always has been. Maybe that's why so many PC and Xbox and PS3 titles try to sell on their graphics alone.
Talking while not taking your eyes off the road is fine. Is that an opinion or a fact?
It feels fine, but matter of fact is that you need a part of your brain to concentrate on a conversation. That part is no longer available to concentrate on the road. And the visual cortex isn't the only part you need, sudden motions aren't the only sign of danger.
At what point has/will the EU overstepped its bounds? How about we start discussion that right after microsoft has started to act within the bounds? Like following the law and all that inconvenient business-hostile things?
not having buttons, which would make it difficult to dial while driving Given how you are not supposed to do that, sounds more like a safety feature to me. You may think you can still concentrate on the road while talking or dialing on your mobile, but it simply isn't so. There've been a couple studies. Even the Mythbusters have made an episode on that.
it looks to me like they've finally found the exact market they've been looking for all along - right in the middle of everything, taking a tiny slice off the top. Highly unlikely. The original Xbox sold to developers (not customers!) mostly on the fact that it was similar to the PC, thus lowering development costs.
In other words: MS leveraged its desktop monopoly to gain entry into another market. Hm, wasn't that illegal and they guilty of... oh, nevermind.
is MS under non-trivial pressure to bring DirectX10 to XP? What are the chances of this happening? Slim. They need Vista to succeed, otherwise investors will ask ugly questions, like "what exactly is the estimated ROI on the $5bn you spent on Vista?".
Rarely (on XP) did I ever see a memory dump that actually pointed the finger at Windows. But that's just because of the point_finger_some_other_random_place() function that gets called during the memory dump routine.;-)
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I don't even claim our politicians over here are much better. A little maybe, because we don't tend to have these clans and fraternities behind every other one, but they're just as corrupt and dirty.
It doesn't and never did. However, the uptime clock wraps around after 497 days. Took me two hours of finding out why the box rebooted (and then why there was no indication of the reboot in the logs) one day to research that. That same box has since looped the clock a second time. So I can say for sure it stays up for more than 50 days. :-)
If you are really serious about your weird pseudo-statistical theory, shouldn't you thank the VT shooter? After all, chances are that, it being a tech U and all, there were quite a few other gamers among his victims. Surely, if you are right, they would all sooner or later have gone on a killing spree. Right?
As for the whole soviet/communism angle - AFAIK that was alleged, but never proven. Of course, back then the world was very black and white for you guys and anything not copying the US must be communism. Heck, some of you still think that.
As for the election, the one I was referring to was very widely acknowledged and respected. As I said already, Mossadegh is part of the history books as being the first ever president democratically elected in the 3rd world.
You don't have to like it, but the world is a bit more difficult than "if you're not with us, you are against us". There are other ways to run a country besides US-style capitalism and soviet-style communism. Many countries are looking for their own ways, including Iran back then and most of south america right about now.
First, given that you dudes (i.e. the US) planned, financed and partially executed the overthrow of the first ever(!) democratically elected president in the entire third world, and that that happened to be Iran, their hostility is more than understandeable, isn't it? The direct result of the forceful institution of the Sha regime was, of course, the islamic revolution. You made your bed, now lie in it.
Two, nuclear infrastructure is no threat to the USA. Even a working nuke isn't. You still need delivery vehicles. As for that, I think the ratio of USA to Iran is roughly 20,000:0
Finally, the position in the paper I read was "Cheney lied and betrayed the public while holding an office where he swore an oath to protect and serve that same public". Iraq/Iran is merely what he lied about.
Now that is an impeachment worth reading. The synopsis alone is a solid piece of attack.
Let's see if your congresscritters have enough spine left to do follow the facts. Though I fear we will soon find out how much money Haliburton is willing to throw around in order to keep their sock puppet in office.
And here I was thinking that the fact that a tiny bit of javascript can put anything you want into the status bar when you hover over a link were common knowledge, and has been for at least 10 years.
No, the traditional console market is not made up exclusively of hardcore gamers. A lot of people who don't own a PC or who find PC games too complicated, or who simply enjoy games in the living room more, are also in that market.
And yes, it is a large market. And yes, it is nothing compared to the market segment that Nintendo has just opened up. For every hardcore gamer that MS aims at, there are 2 parents, 4 grandparents and on average 1 sibling that weren't target audience - until now. Plus the 20 or so normal people for each geek.
Overall, the 5-week March period surveyed by the NPD saw U.S. game sales... I doubt they would quote figures for world-wide console sales and US game sales.
Then there is this source which quotes a numer of 67.070 Wiis sold in a single week in Japan. That makes a number of 259k world-wide for a month very, very unlikely. If you google just a little, you will find many more sources supporting this view. This site apparently has a fairly good breakdown of actual world-wide numbers. It quotes 6.6 mio. Wiis sold world-wide so far, which averages to over a million each month.
I couldn't disagree more.
The Wii competes because aside from a small part of the population that is fanatic about games, nobody buys two game consoles, no matter the price. Many of the people now sold on the Wii might have considered an Xbox if the PS3 had been the only other option. The Wii is eating a good part of the Xbox's potential customer base. Maybe not the core, the hardcore gamers, but the casual gamer segment.
One, Nintendo is making a profit on every console sold, not a loss like MS and Sony.
Two, what is the precondition for high game sales? A large installed base, of course. Nintendo is growing a large installed base as fast as its factories can produce.
The success of the Wii isn't some esoteric nonsense. It's very simple: Nintendo built something that people actually want. Instead of listening to the very small demographic of the hardcore gamers and hardcore developers whose world revolves around frames per second, polygon count, pixel shaders and rendering pipelines, they asked themselves (and probably lots of other people) what Joe and Jane want in a gaming console.
So what do Joe and Jane want? Fun, something to play together and with friends, something that's easy. Gameplay first, killer graphics second.
And the thing is: Most of what Joe and Jane want also appears to Harald Hardcore. A fun game simply is a fun game, and even if you could code better graphics yourself on your overclocked PC, it still is a fun game.
And that's the hard part: Coding is the easy part of game design. Making a good game is the hard part. Always has been. Maybe that's why so many PC and Xbox and PS3 titles try to sell on their graphics alone.
It feels fine, but matter of fact is that you need a part of your brain to concentrate on a conversation. That part is no longer available to concentrate on the road. And the visual cortex isn't the only part you need, sudden motions aren't the only sign of danger.
In other words: MS leveraged its desktop monopoly to gain entry into another market. Hm, wasn't that illegal and they guilty of... oh, nevermind.
I doubt the Xbox can or will succeed on its own.