Isn't this what a passport is for? Is the U.S. government actively trying to stop tourism? How is this supposed to be any safer than... oh, I don't know.. highly porous borders to the north and south, not to mention two really large oceans on either side?
The idiocy of a government trying to look as though it's protecting its citizens shows itself once again.
Oh, you mean on the Comcast lines that were partially funded by U.S. taxpayer dollars that were given to Comcast (and others) to get the Internet infrastructure to reach as many people as possible? And now those lines that were funded by the public are to become new profit centers under the guise of "network management"? And you don't have a problem with that?
How about instead Comcast actually do what they were supposed to do and build capable infrastructure that has enough bandwidth for everyone to do anything?
Personally, I would love for the General Accounting Office to take a nice, close look at Comcast's finances to find out exactly where that taxpayer money went to. Looks more like it went into Comcast's advertising budget so that they could oversell their capacity instead of putting it into the hardware that could have prevented all of this in the first place.
Verizon has millions of miles of dark fibre and have said numerous times that they have plenty of bandwidth as it is. What's Comcast's excuse?
No, it doesn't. I asked about this when I used to work for the income tax department of a particular state many years ago. It has nothing to do with protecting credit card companies.
The fee that businesses pay to use credit as opposed to cash is a business expense. In other words, if you want to offer convenience for your customers and there's a fee involved, that's the price that you as a company pay in order to entice customers to do business with you.
That being the case, forwarding the fee that the business has to pay onto the customer was deemed to be anti-consumer, because the card is the expense of the business, not the customer. A business is more than welcome to stop using credit cards if he doesn't like the fee, but then that business can expect people to take their business elsewhere if they wish to use credit.
I'm not saying that the end result is different than what you state. I'm merely saying that the premise for why the law is there is not as you state. However, there is nothing illegal about offering discounts for cash, which some companies do, particularly gas stations. You're more than welcome to frequent those places instead.
Apparently you've never heard of OS/2 (what ARE you doing on Slashdot, then?), which was a phenomenal operating system and blew Windows away technologically.
OS/2 was most definitely a viable, alternative to Windows; however, it died because of bad decisions by Lou Gerstner who decided to keep OS/2 as a business platform and totally kicked the home user in the teeth.
Your first paragraph is 100% wrong. I don't know what time period you're talking about, but it's clearly NOT when Microsoft gained their dominance back in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Windows 3.1 and WFW 3.11 came on something like 11-13 floppy disks and there was NO copy protection of any kind. NONE. People were used to DOS but could now have this fancy GUI-driven "operating system" for the cost of a box of 3.5" floppies. NO ONE that I knew in the PC world ever had to buy a copy of Windows 3.1 because they always had either a friend or someone at work who had the floppies.
The availability of Windows 3.1 through piracy "sneakernet" made it the de facto standard on all PCs once it was clear that the world was leaving DOS and going to Windows. That laid down almost the entire user base for Windows 95, who then moved to 98, etc.
The dominance of most of the major software out there ESPECIALLY Windows is due to piracy, and the software companies know it.
That is one of the most absurd responses I've ever heard. "We're taxing you to make sure that you treat others fairly"??? What the hell kind of response is that?
Even more so, what does that say about the person making the accusation? "You're rich, and I don't trust that you got there out of hard work and discipline. So, I want you to pay more to prove that yo got there honestly!" That is one of the most absurd lines of reasoning I've ever heard.
I'm not saying that all who are rich are honest, but the amount of taxes put on them is not and cannot possibly considered to be a valid method of keeping them in line.
There is one -- and ONLY one -- purpose for taxes: to increase government coffers. Period. It has absolutely nothing to do with fairness or merit. And to equate taxes with fairness is nothing more than class warfare of the worst kind.
I don't know what more terrifying: the fact that you intentionally want to punish success, thereby reducing the desire for people to become successful, or that you were rated Insightful for it.
I am by no means rich; however, the thought that I should be punished above and beyond the taxes that I would already pay just because of what is in effect class warfare is ridiculous.
Slight problem with the first few paragraphs of your argument.
Comcast, Verizon, and the lot were given billions of TAXPAYER DOLALRS to build that infrastructure so that things like throttling and bandwidth caps never happened. They clearly did not live up to their end of the bargain, and now are playing the "victim" card and expecting us to understand. I would love to gee the GAO do a full audit on these companies to find out exactly where those billions of dollars went.
But I fully agree with the rest of your statements.
And we're to trust an Anonymous Coward who says that malware (regardless of whether it's a hijack or an executable) from another Anonymous Coward is safe?! I don't fu*king think so!
So what? I'm so fed up with people complaining about this. We're so damned spoiled with this "instant gratification" society.
If you're about to sit and watch a two-hour movie, then WTF is the big deal about having to wait a whole, additional minute for the unit to get ready? Turn it on, go and get a beer out of the refrigerator, then come back. If you're so worried about having to wait 1 minute to watch a 120 minute movie, then I would have to argue that the problem lies not with the player but with the impatience of the watcher.
So far it's been working for me. In fact, I've had buyers admit that they intentionally paid more for my auction than other auctions of exact or similar items specifically because of the amount of detail that I put into my item descriptions.
And what about non-power sellers who get burned by lying buyers? My rating is less than 300, but it's 100% and I put a lot of effort into my listings to try to keep it that way. For the most part I sell old PC and Sun hardware that I no longer use thanks to upgrading. My auctions go into an enormous amount of detail with respect to an item's condition, how I tested it to make sure that it works, and I list anything that's wrong that I cannot fix, like scratches, dents, missing 5-1/4" bay covers, etc.
I once sold an old PC that had been in my family's possession for years. Some jackass decided to be an asshole buyer and came back with "this is missing, that's not working", apparently assuming that I was some kind of clearing house who moves too much stock to know the details about a particular item. I responded by describing exactly that PCs condition as shipped as well as the statement that my family had owned that PC for years, so I knew every detail about it. I never heard back from the guy once he realized that I called his bluff and that I could have easily slammed him with a negative about trying to scam me.
But now I no longer have that protection, thanks to this f**king moronic decision on eBay's part. So what's to protect me from asshole buyers like the idiot who tried to scam me? Ban him from future auctions? Oh, golly gee, that will certainly stop other fraudulent buyers, oh boy oh boy. And if you think that eBay will seriously consider removing genuinely incorrect feedback, you need to stop smoking whatever it is you're smoking.
This new policy of theirs is going to do one thing: make eBay a haven for scamming buyers who now know that they have nothing to fear when lying about sellers.
I noticed this the other day, and IIRC they also had Yahoo adverts in there with the Yahoo search links, seeing as how they're partnered with Yahoo. If that's what starts to become the norm, then I've got a problem with it. It's bad enough that people have to pay the fees that they do, but to then have the ISP shove advertisements -- or have an excellent outlet with which to shove advertisements -- to customers who are already paying (or in some cases, like Comcast, overpaying) for their Internet connectivity bothers me immensely.
I know, I know, if I'd type the domain in properly I won't see the bad domain interception. Still, it's the principle, just like seeing advertising in full-priced games. Either don't give me advertising or lower my rates.
Then again, it's possible that I didn't see any advertising at all and I'm delusional due to... well, being in my natural state.:)
Absolutely. Just about everything that Epyx, EA, Activision, and Muse did for the C64 was instant gold. (Definitely agree with Winter Games.) Someone above made the joke that the Atari 2600 should be the winner because that's what Slashdot uses for the Gaming icon. They obviously don't know that the C64 used the exact, same joysticks.:)
If the whole premise of this is the best "game machine" of all time, I have to argue that the Commodore 64 was the best game console of all time.
Yes, yes, I know. It's not a dedicated gaming system like a true "console" is, but you will be hard-pressed to find people who used it for more than a gaming system. Even when the NES came out, the C64 was the king of the gaming machines with a ton of top-notch games out for it. When C64 users got together, very few cared about GEOS or MultiCALC. It was all about the games, from Mail Order Monsters to Space Taxi to the original Castle Wolfenstein to the Ultima series to The Last Ninja. Gaming was what made the C64 as popular as it was.
So, you can debate about the best "console" of all time, but as far as I'm concerned the best gaming platform was the C64.
I completely agree. I think it's ridiculous that those of us outside of the UK can't just pay the license fee that British residents pay and get all of the BBC channels over the Internet.
Unfortunately, it comes down to bullsh*t licensing and protectionism. The TV stations and national networks don't want to lose the revenue that would be gained from pushing local/national commercials onto you. After all, if you spend all of your time watching the BBC, you're not watching commercials of local/national interest. The networks want to justify the costs of those commercials, so they write their international agreements to lock out viewing by people outside of that country. In my case, I'm sure that the Discovery Channel, which owns BBC America, would have a fit if the BBC allowed the US populace to pay for direct BBC access over the Internet because that would likely take away from the BBC America viewership.
It's the same kind of bullsh*t reasoning as to why people outside of the US can't buy MP3s from Amazon or iTunes even though there is technologically (and logically) no reason to prevent such sales. It all comes down to the money trail, and unfortunately we're not allowed to cross that trail to see what's happening on the other side. I'd love to pay the license fee to get the BBC over the Internet. Good luck on it happening.
The Wii's internal system memory is not designed for the "release-now-and-patch-later" approach that too many game companies are doing today. I don't see how it could be done later without somehow encoding it within the upcoming discs; otherwise, they'd likely have to send out new discs again in order to enable DLC. My guess is that DLC functionality will be available on the fix disc but that the actual content will be made available later.
I do agree, however, that the whole "You'll be without your game for who-knows-how-long while we get a replacement to you" method is bullsh*t. Why the hell don't they just do what EA did for that abomination, "Ultima: Ascension"? Registered users get the replacement sent to them for free. That's it. It's not like the game has any 3rd party guitars out there! If you want the game, you have to have a genuine, Wii guitar for the game, which means you must have bought it! There is no incentive for someone falsely ordering the replacement disc unless they bought the game.
Apparently, downloadable content is to be available with the Dolby-Pro-Logic-corrected version of GH3 for the Wii. From Joystiq:
The new, stereo-enabled discs will be free of charge through Activision, though they haven't announced exactly when they'd be available, or how they would be shipped out. Also, we're not exactly certain how DLC will work on the system (our Wii's system memory is already bogged down by VC gems like Donkey Kong Jr. Math and Urban Champion), but RedOctane is reportedly working feverishly with Nintendo to figure out a method of getting new songs on the Wii. Apparently, trying to wish them onto the system hasn't been working out very well.
I'm guessing that they're going to require the use of an SD card to store downloadable content, which is fine with me, considering the low prices of SD cards.
512 MB is nowhere near sufficient for patches, hence why I mentioned possibly using Smart Cards for external storage but Nintendo doesn't seem to want to use it for that -- yet. (The Guitar Hero III fix/update is supposed to have downloadable content for the Wii, so I would guess that it will be requiring an SD card for that.) Besides, utilizing any kind of memory for patches on the Wii will only encourage such sloppy "ship it now, patch it later" programming whereas right now the developers can't get away with that.
Quite frankly, I would MUCH prefer that they get it right by delaying a few more months than rush it out early and possibly screw it it up. Keep in mind, the major short-coming of the Wii is that it does not have a hard drive to allow for patching or upgrading. With the Wii, if a disc-based game is faulty, a new disc needs to be sent out unless Nintendo starts to take advantage of SD cards. (See Activision's Guitar Hero III-in-monaural debacle.)
The gaming community is rife with examples of games that had a ton of potential but sucked beyond description because the games were rushed to market in order to meet a deadline. Doesn't anyone remember Ultima: Ascension?
Nintendo has a lot riding on this game and a lot of built-up hype, so I don't blame them for wanting to make sure that it's as flawless as possible. Meanwhile, I'll keep playing Guitar Hero III (even though it's currently monaural) and Zack & Wiki, which I highly recommend for those who remember the golden days of the point-and-click adventure. If Nintendo needs some time to perfect SSBB, then so be it.
ARGH! Yes, you're right. Although, it could also be said that anyone who purchases such a keyboard and continues to use it under the excuse of "It just gives Windows that much-needed reboot more frequently than before" is definitely a masochist. I couldn't pop off those three keys quickly enough. The keyboard still works great, though. I had to use it last week to get an older PC running. Well engineered, pathetic design.
A while ago I bought a keyboard with the same layout in a mad dash for one with the old AT-style plug. After shutting down my system for the 4th or 5th time just by reaching for (and missing) the Enter key, I popped off all three of those ridiculous keys and didn't have a problem afterwards.
Whoever designed that keyboard must have had the same streak of masochism as those who get enjoyment out of putting pinholes in condoms.
I appreciate the sentiment, but stop feeling sorry for us. Do you feel sorry for those people who still own and enjoy their laserdisc or Betamax players? No? Then there is no reason to feel sorry for us HD DVD owners either.
For $99, I bought a good upconverter and I'll still be able to watch all of the HD DVDs that I have as long as the hardware keeps running. Considering some of the other consumer electronics that I have, that could be five years or more, which will give me PLENTY of time to re-purchase the movies on BD for whenever I get my PS3.
I paid for the hardware and - damn it - I'm going to get my use out of it as long as I can, which is as it should be. I have no remorse for my purchases nor should I. In fact, if HD DVD does die, I look forward to the clearance sales where I can get a "backup" player and lots of cheap media.
I feel more pity for the people who hopped onto eBay to dump perfectly functional HD DVD hardware and software rather than keep using the thing until it stops working. THAT was a waste of money!
You beat me to it. I've had no less than five opportunities to buy Wiis this year. (I own two now.) Each time that I was able to buy them was either early in the morning on Sunday (Target) or during the week while I was out looking around at lunch (both Target and Best Buy). I told this to a co-worker and he managed to get a Wii at a Gamestop on a Friday. Just a few weeks ago I was at a local Target at around 10:30 AM and they have over a dozen available.
Also, I had five Wiimotes and two nunchucks back when people were bitching and complaining about not being able to find Wiimotes or nunchucks in the early part of the year. Why? Because I went to look for them during the week, not on weekends, although I will admit that I did get a nunchuck during the weekend because I asked a store employee if they had any in the back room.
The short of it is stop waiting until after work on or weekends to look for a Wii!! That is when everyone else will be looking for it as well. And don't assume that no products on the floor means no products in the store! Go to the local stores, find out when their supply trucks come in, then get in there that evening or the following morning. It's worked beautifully for me and others to whom I suggested this.
Awww... I got an "Overrated". Did I offend a moderation troll who enjoys abusing his mod point privileges and is too afraid in his convictions that his mod might have been metamoderated as "Unfair" if he used something other than "Overrated"? Oh, you poor little baby. Go back to mommy now.
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Isn't this what a passport is for? Is the U.S. government actively trying to stop tourism? How is this supposed to be any safer than ... oh, I don't know .. highly porous borders to the north and south, not to mention two really large oceans on either side?
The idiocy of a government trying to look as though it's protecting its citizens shows itself once again.
Oh, you mean on the Comcast lines that were partially funded by U.S. taxpayer dollars that were given to Comcast (and others) to get the Internet infrastructure to reach as many people as possible? And now those lines that were funded by the public are to become new profit centers under the guise of "network management"? And you don't have a problem with that?
How about instead Comcast actually do what they were supposed to do and build capable infrastructure that has enough bandwidth for everyone to do anything?
Personally, I would love for the General Accounting Office to take a nice, close look at Comcast's finances to find out exactly where that taxpayer money went to. Looks more like it went into Comcast's advertising budget so that they could oversell their capacity instead of putting it into the hardware that could have prevented all of this in the first place.
Verizon has millions of miles of dark fibre and have said numerous times that they have plenty of bandwidth as it is. What's Comcast's excuse?
No, it doesn't. I asked about this when I used to work for the income tax department of a particular state many years ago. It has nothing to do with protecting credit card companies.
The fee that businesses pay to use credit as opposed to cash is a business expense. In other words, if you want to offer convenience for your customers and there's a fee involved, that's the price that you as a company pay in order to entice customers to do business with you.
That being the case, forwarding the fee that the business has to pay onto the customer was deemed to be anti-consumer, because the card is the expense of the business, not the customer. A business is more than welcome to stop using credit cards if he doesn't like the fee, but then that business can expect people to take their business elsewhere if they wish to use credit.
I'm not saying that the end result is different than what you state. I'm merely saying that the premise for why the law is there is not as you state. However, there is nothing illegal about offering discounts for cash, which some companies do, particularly gas stations. You're more than welcome to frequent those places instead.
Apparently you've never heard of OS/2 (what ARE you doing on Slashdot, then?), which was a phenomenal operating system and blew Windows away technologically.
OS/2 was most definitely a viable, alternative to Windows; however, it died because of bad decisions by Lou Gerstner who decided to keep OS/2 as a business platform and totally kicked the home user in the teeth.
Your first paragraph is 100% wrong. I don't know what time period you're talking about, but it's clearly NOT when Microsoft gained their dominance back in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Windows 3.1 and WFW 3.11 came on something like 11-13 floppy disks and there was NO copy protection of any kind. NONE. People were used to DOS but could now have this fancy GUI-driven "operating system" for the cost of a box of 3.5" floppies. NO ONE that I knew in the PC world ever had to buy a copy of Windows 3.1 because they always had either a friend or someone at work who had the floppies.
The availability of Windows 3.1 through piracy "sneakernet" made it the de facto standard on all PCs once it was clear that the world was leaving DOS and going to Windows. That laid down almost the entire user base for Windows 95, who then moved to 98, etc.
The dominance of most of the major software out there ESPECIALLY Windows is due to piracy, and the software companies know it.
That is one of the most absurd responses I've ever heard. "We're taxing you to make sure that you treat others fairly"??? What the hell kind of response is that?
Even more so, what does that say about the person making the accusation? "You're rich, and I don't trust that you got there out of hard work and discipline. So, I want you to pay more to prove that yo got there honestly!" That is one of the most absurd lines of reasoning I've ever heard.
I'm not saying that all who are rich are honest, but the amount of taxes put on them is not and cannot possibly considered to be a valid method of keeping them in line.
There is one -- and ONLY one -- purpose for taxes: to increase government coffers. Period. It has absolutely nothing to do with fairness or merit. And to equate taxes with fairness is nothing more than class warfare of the worst kind.
I don't know what more terrifying: the fact that you intentionally want to punish success, thereby reducing the desire for people to become successful, or that you were rated Insightful for it.
I am by no means rich; however, the thought that I should be punished above and beyond the taxes that I would already pay just because of what is in effect class warfare is ridiculous.
Slight problem with the first few paragraphs of your argument. Comcast, Verizon, and the lot were given billions of TAXPAYER DOLALRS to build that infrastructure so that things like throttling and bandwidth caps never happened. They clearly did not live up to their end of the bargain, and now are playing the "victim" card and expecting us to understand. I would love to gee the GAO do a full audit on these companies to find out exactly where those billions of dollars went. But I fully agree with the rest of your statements.
And we're to trust an Anonymous Coward who says that malware (regardless of whether it's a hijack or an executable) from another Anonymous Coward is safe?! I don't fu*king think so!
So what? I'm so fed up with people complaining about this. We're so damned spoiled with this "instant gratification" society.
If you're about to sit and watch a two-hour movie, then WTF is the big deal about having to wait a whole, additional minute for the unit to get ready? Turn it on, go and get a beer out of the refrigerator, then come back. If you're so worried about having to wait 1 minute to watch a 120 minute movie, then I would have to argue that the problem lies not with the player but with the impatience of the watcher.
So far it's been working for me. In fact, I've had buyers admit that they intentionally paid more for my auction than other auctions of exact or similar items specifically because of the amount of detail that I put into my item descriptions.
Maybe I've just been fortunate to this point.
And what about non-power sellers who get burned by lying buyers? My rating is less than 300, but it's 100% and I put a lot of effort into my listings to try to keep it that way. For the most part I sell old PC and Sun hardware that I no longer use thanks to upgrading. My auctions go into an enormous amount of detail with respect to an item's condition, how I tested it to make sure that it works, and I list anything that's wrong that I cannot fix, like scratches, dents, missing 5-1/4" bay covers, etc.
I once sold an old PC that had been in my family's possession for years. Some jackass decided to be an asshole buyer and came back with "this is missing, that's not working", apparently assuming that I was some kind of clearing house who moves too much stock to know the details about a particular item. I responded by describing exactly that PCs condition as shipped as well as the statement that my family had owned that PC for years, so I knew every detail about it. I never heard back from the guy once he realized that I called his bluff and that I could have easily slammed him with a negative about trying to scam me.
But now I no longer have that protection, thanks to this f**king moronic decision on eBay's part. So what's to protect me from asshole buyers like the idiot who tried to scam me? Ban him from future auctions? Oh, golly gee, that will certainly stop other fraudulent buyers, oh boy oh boy. And if you think that eBay will seriously consider removing genuinely incorrect feedback, you need to stop smoking whatever it is you're smoking.
This new policy of theirs is going to do one thing: make eBay a haven for scamming buyers who now know that they have nothing to fear when lying about sellers.
I noticed this the other day, and IIRC they also had Yahoo adverts in there with the Yahoo search links, seeing as how they're partnered with Yahoo. If that's what starts to become the norm, then I've got a problem with it. It's bad enough that people have to pay the fees that they do, but to then have the ISP shove advertisements -- or have an excellent outlet with which to shove advertisements -- to customers who are already paying (or in some cases, like Comcast, overpaying) for their Internet connectivity bothers me immensely.
... well, being in my natural state. :)
I know, I know, if I'd type the domain in properly I won't see the bad domain interception. Still, it's the principle, just like seeing advertising in full-priced games. Either don't give me advertising or lower my rates.
Then again, it's possible that I didn't see any advertising at all and I'm delusional due to
Absolutely. Just about everything that Epyx, EA, Activision, and Muse did for the C64 was instant gold. (Definitely agree with Winter Games.) Someone above made the joke that the Atari 2600 should be the winner because that's what Slashdot uses for the Gaming icon. They obviously don't know that the C64 used the exact, same joysticks. :)
If the whole premise of this is the best "game machine" of all time, I have to argue that the Commodore 64 was the best game console of all time.
Yes, yes, I know. It's not a dedicated gaming system like a true "console" is, but you will be hard-pressed to find people who used it for more than a gaming system. Even when the NES came out, the C64 was the king of the gaming machines with a ton of top-notch games out for it. When C64 users got together, very few cared about GEOS or MultiCALC. It was all about the games, from Mail Order Monsters to Space Taxi to the original Castle Wolfenstein to the Ultima series to The Last Ninja. Gaming was what made the C64 as popular as it was.
So, you can debate about the best "console" of all time, but as far as I'm concerned the best gaming platform was the C64.
I completely agree. I think it's ridiculous that those of us outside of the UK can't just pay the license fee that British residents pay and get all of the BBC channels over the Internet.
Unfortunately, it comes down to bullsh*t licensing and protectionism. The TV stations and national networks don't want to lose the revenue that would be gained from pushing local/national commercials onto you. After all, if you spend all of your time watching the BBC, you're not watching commercials of local/national interest. The networks want to justify the costs of those commercials, so they write their international agreements to lock out viewing by people outside of that country. In my case, I'm sure that the Discovery Channel, which owns BBC America, would have a fit if the BBC allowed the US populace to pay for direct BBC access over the Internet because that would likely take away from the BBC America viewership.
It's the same kind of bullsh*t reasoning as to why people outside of the US can't buy MP3s from Amazon or iTunes even though there is technologically (and logically) no reason to prevent such sales. It all comes down to the money trail, and unfortunately we're not allowed to cross that trail to see what's happening on the other side. I'd love to pay the license fee to get the BBC over the Internet. Good luck on it happening.
The Wii's internal system memory is not designed for the "release-now-and-patch-later" approach that too many game companies are doing today. I don't see how it could be done later without somehow encoding it within the upcoming discs; otherwise, they'd likely have to send out new discs again in order to enable DLC. My guess is that DLC functionality will be available on the fix disc but that the actual content will be made available later.
I do agree, however, that the whole "You'll be without your game for who-knows-how-long while we get a replacement to you" method is bullsh*t. Why the hell don't they just do what EA did for that abomination, "Ultima: Ascension"? Registered users get the replacement sent to them for free. That's it. It's not like the game has any 3rd party guitars out there! If you want the game, you have to have a genuine, Wii guitar for the game, which means you must have bought it! There is no incentive for someone falsely ordering the replacement disc unless they bought the game.
512 MB is nowhere near sufficient for patches, hence why I mentioned possibly using Smart Cards for external storage but Nintendo doesn't seem to want to use it for that -- yet. (The Guitar Hero III fix/update is supposed to have downloadable content for the Wii, so I would guess that it will be requiring an SD card for that.) Besides, utilizing any kind of memory for patches on the Wii will only encourage such sloppy "ship it now, patch it later" programming whereas right now the developers can't get away with that.
Quite frankly, I would MUCH prefer that they get it right by delaying a few more months than rush it out early and possibly screw it it up. Keep in mind, the major short-coming of the Wii is that it does not have a hard drive to allow for patching or upgrading. With the Wii, if a disc-based game is faulty, a new disc needs to be sent out unless Nintendo starts to take advantage of SD cards. (See Activision's Guitar Hero III-in-monaural debacle.)
The gaming community is rife with examples of games that had a ton of potential but sucked beyond description because the games were rushed to market in order to meet a deadline. Doesn't anyone remember Ultima: Ascension?
Nintendo has a lot riding on this game and a lot of built-up hype, so I don't blame them for wanting to make sure that it's as flawless as possible. Meanwhile, I'll keep playing Guitar Hero III (even though it's currently monaural) and Zack & Wiki, which I highly recommend for those who remember the golden days of the point-and-click adventure. If Nintendo needs some time to perfect SSBB, then so be it.
ARGH! Yes, you're right. Although, it could also be said that anyone who purchases such a keyboard and continues to use it under the excuse of "It just gives Windows that much-needed reboot more frequently than before" is definitely a masochist. I couldn't pop off those three keys quickly enough. The keyboard still works great, though. I had to use it last week to get an older PC running. Well engineered, pathetic design.
A while ago I bought a keyboard with the same layout in a mad dash for one with the old AT-style plug. After shutting down my system for the 4th or 5th time just by reaching for (and missing) the Enter key, I popped off all three of those ridiculous keys and didn't have a problem afterwards.
Whoever designed that keyboard must have had the same streak of masochism as those who get enjoyment out of putting pinholes in condoms.
I sort of feel sorry for HD-DVD supports.
I appreciate the sentiment, but stop feeling sorry for us. Do you feel sorry for those people who still own and enjoy their laserdisc or Betamax players? No? Then there is no reason to feel sorry for us HD DVD owners either.
For $99, I bought a good upconverter and I'll still be able to watch all of the HD DVDs that I have as long as the hardware keeps running. Considering some of the other consumer electronics that I have, that could be five years or more, which will give me PLENTY of time to re-purchase the movies on BD for whenever I get my PS3.
I paid for the hardware and - damn it - I'm going to get my use out of it as long as I can, which is as it should be. I have no remorse for my purchases nor should I. In fact, if HD DVD does die, I look forward to the clearance sales where I can get a "backup" player and lots of cheap media.
I feel more pity for the people who hopped onto eBay to dump perfectly functional HD DVD hardware and software rather than keep using the thing until it stops working. THAT was a waste of money!
You beat me to it. I've had no less than five opportunities to buy Wiis this year. (I own two now.) Each time that I was able to buy them was either early in the morning on Sunday (Target) or during the week while I was out looking around at lunch (both Target and Best Buy). I told this to a co-worker and he managed to get a Wii at a Gamestop on a Friday. Just a few weeks ago I was at a local Target at around 10:30 AM and they have over a dozen available.
Also, I had five Wiimotes and two nunchucks back when people were bitching and complaining about not being able to find Wiimotes or nunchucks in the early part of the year. Why? Because I went to look for them during the week, not on weekends, although I will admit that I did get a nunchuck during the weekend because I asked a store employee if they had any in the back room.
The short of it is stop waiting until after work on or weekends to look for a Wii!! That is when everyone else will be looking for it as well. And don't assume that no products on the floor means no products in the store! Go to the local stores, find out when their supply trucks come in, then get in there that evening or the following morning. It's worked beautifully for me and others to whom I suggested this.
Awww... I got an "Overrated". Did I offend a moderation troll who enjoys abusing his mod point privileges and is too afraid in his convictions that his mod might have been metamoderated as "Unfair" if he used something other than "Overrated"? Oh, you poor little baby. Go back to mommy now.