The PS3 sold 76K units in Japan in December, while the PS2 only sold 46K units. So, unlike in the US, where the PS2 was still the top-selling console, the torch appears to have been passed in Japan.
And both of them are crushing the XBox 360, at 17K units sold.
Jon Acheson
Re:The 360 is console done right, Wii is console .
on
Two Weeks with the Wii
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· Score: 2, Informative
Dude, he said "Don't ask me why!":)
Seriously, though, Achievements are a feature of XBox Live that allows you to compete for high scores and other feats in a game. They are tracked online, and you can see how you're keeping up with the Joneses.
I want to buy one of these just so that I can have a disposable laptop for tabletop roleplaying. My gaming club meets in a space with folding tables that sometimes collapse, and I'd hate for a real lappy to fall and break, but this thing is rugged enough to take a fall, and cheap enough to be disposable if it breaks. And all it has to do is display PDFs.
So, what I want is to just BUY ONE, say off of Amazon or TigerDirect.
I didn't bother with this petition because I'm not interested in a potential laptop, I want to know that an actual laptop will soon be in my hands.
Does anyone know if there is a place where you can do this, or if such a thing is planned?
Talking about Asimov's laws, as the article even states, is crap. No robots work like that. Just making a robot recognize an object as a human is a major achievement, and forget about making it think like a human so that it can follow the laws. The Three Laws are anachronisms, like the Jungles of Venus, or headgear with radiator fins.
What the Japanese generally do is fence off the robot's work area so that people can't just walk into its path. It's a simple solution that works. If a worker climbs over the safety fence and gets squished, as happened here, it's really their own fault.
For one thing, pay rate varies. In my county, it's very good, median is significantly higher than average, and starting salaries are adequate. Of course, the teacher's union lied for years that "they couldn't earn a living teaching" - until the local paper ran an expose on what the salary ranges actually were. That article should have won the Pulitzer.
The flip side of that is that it is much harder to get a job in districts with good pay. I know several great people who just couldn't get their foot in the door.
Also, while you get your summers off, that doesn't happen for at least five years, because you have to take classes in the summer to get your Master's in Education. Every teacher who isn't an idiot does this, because it gets them an automatic pay raise. After that, your summers are yours, though. Many teachers work extra jobs simply because they have the time to do so. My math teachers ran the local swimming pool in the summer.
As for free time, there is a fair amount of work load outside of class, particularly when you are getting started and have to develop your lesson plans. Once the plans are in place, updating them doesn't take nearly as much time. You will also have periodic grading crunches, too. If you want to become involved in extracurricular activities, that also takes up time, but I object to lumping this in with actual teaching as "work" time. People volunteer for extracurriculars because they want to do it.
The above mainly apply to public school teachers. The private school teachers I know generally get paid less, but the compensation is that they like their jobs a lot more. Not every private school is great, though, there are some which have serious problems.
Lastly, I know a lot of people who thought they wanted to be teachers, then discovered after they did their student teaching that they didn't actually enjoy teaching. So, it's best to have a backup plan, like a minor in business, in case you wind up not using your Education degree.
In my previous job, I set up a knowledge base for our Product Support team using Swiki.
It replaced their previous knowledge base, which was done as a WinHelp file using RoboHELP, and as a result was never updated, because it was a PITA to do, and only a couple people knew RoboHELP.
Swiki was a lot easier to teach and use, could be set up to run as an automatically-started service on our Windows server, and has all the basic functionality we needed. It can also maintain multiple different Wikis, and can export the contents of the wiki to very nice clean HTML.
It could address the perception that the 360 is too noisy, runs too hot, and basically is annoying to own. It would do this by introducing an upgraded system that runs cooler and quieter, with a more reasonably sized power supply.
However, I think that is unlikely to actually happen. The relaunch will probably just add more features. Because this is Microsoft we're talking about.
To think there was a point at which I thought they might win this round...
I've never heard that. In fact, most people that I know of would tag 8 as the worst, or maybe I or II.
9 seems to be viewed as a nostalgia-fest, but most people liked it. I know I did.
Jon Acheson
I had been looking forward to the B5 game.
on
Cut Down In Their Prime
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· Score: 2, Interesting
In fact, I had been planning to upgrade my PC so that I'd be able to play it.
I know they shot the live footage needed for the game. I'd still love to see it get released, especially since some of the cast members are no longer with us.
It would still be a great game, though they could probably bump up the textures and polygons by a lot now. They could probably use the models from the show more or less unchanged now.
There was also another Sam and Max game for the XBox that was cancelled, that they fail to mention.
I'm guessing that's what we're seeing: the startup costs for the Xbox 360 and its launch publicity. So even though revenues were up, the increased operations costs turned it into a net loss, for now at least.
I would expect the 360 to be profitable for them in the long run, though.
The thing is, they really coudn't wait, because they were losing money on every original XBox they shipped, with no end in sight.
They're probably still losing money on the 360 at launch, but they should be able to break even and get into the black in the long run. The PS3 is not likely to be able to undercut them on price like the PS2 could, because it is coming out a year after the 360, and because it has more expensive components like the blue-ray drive in it.
The Revolution is going to be cheaper, but it may not really compete with the 360, because it's so non-traditional in its design. It seems more likely to go its own way and complement the other two consoles.
if you can find ANY new film cameras, ANY, offered in one year, it will be a major surprise. I suspect canon and nikon will offer one more digital back for their F lines, and that will be it. the major players in one-use supermarket cameras will be offering digital one-shots by next christmas, probably on the order of grill gas bottles... pay $50 up front, swap the camera for $10 when this one is full.
I doubt the film market will disappear, but it will probably wind up being a boutique industry. You'll be able to find camera places in major cities, and there will be companies that specialize in manufacturing replacement parts for discontinued major brands. That's getting cheaper to do all the time with computer aided manufacturing.
But yeah, they'll probably stop selling film cameras in the discount stores fairly soon.
What are you talking about? The orbiter Discovery has 25 flights on the airframe? How much more reusability are you looking for? Kliper will still be lauched by a conventional throwaway booster. I assume a Soyuz, but the Russians haven't been clear.
I think the original poster is referring to the amount of refitting and overall work needed to turn the spacecraft around and relaunch it. The shuttle requires so much work to be done between flights (inspecting and fixing tiles, completely rebuilding the engines) that some have called the process "rebuilding" instead of "reuse." It also takes months to turn one around for relaunch.
The goal for a truly reusable spacecraft would be one that could have its expendible items topped off, and be relaunched after a very short checklist. Ideally, within days.
... was choosing their locked-in proprietary disc format.
If they had gone with a standard DVD-ROM disc, they would have gotten much more third party support. Third parties don't like having to go through Nintendo for the production of their games, plus the reduced storage of the Nintendo disc makes it harder to do simultaneous releases on all three systems. As a result, the Gmaecube hasn't gotten any GTA3 games, which use all the space on the DVD-ROM.
After googling, I am also reading suggestions that you take at least one spare power supply with you, as well as a spare battery. These tend to go bad in the field, and once they do, you're out of business unless you have a spare.
Take everything with you that you think you might need, it's much harder to get things once you're in Iraq.
If all he wants to do is email, the Dana might be a good choice. It's a Palm device, it has no moving parts, it's tough, it can run off AA batteries or rechargeables, and it is available with WiFi. And it's relatively cheap at around $300.
If you want something to play games on or run normal software, of course, this isn't going to work.
For what I use Excel for, which is mainly fiddling around with formulas for RPGs, I found OO Calc to be a little nicer than Excel. It did everything I needed it to do, and was nicer in some areas.
For instance, when lines of text don't fit, you see part of the text instead of hash marks.
The OO word processor still needs work. Though, since Word has gotten progressively worse with each version since Word 95, (first numbering broke, then cross-references...) they should be on equal footing soon.
No, if they really wanted to advance the UMB format, they should have made it FRICKING WRITEABLE.
I mean, if you're going to introduce a new data storage format, and you prevent people from being able to store their data on it, it's kind of a barrier to adoption, isn't it?
Supporting it in the PS3 would also have been nice.
Given that Paul Allen spends 30 million a year just on maintenance of his yachts, I think there's an excellent chance that billionaires will spend tens of thousands of dollars on suborbitals flights, and orbital flights as well.
The important thing about suborbital flights are that they provide Scaled Composites with the revenue stream they need to fund their orbital craft development.
I have no doubts that the GTA3 game will do well with PSP owners.
That said, Nintendo released both Advance Wars: Dual Strike and thee flavors of Nintendogs yesterday, and I bought myself a DS and both games. Stores are selling out of both games and the DS itself.
I have no plans to buy a PSP ever. Hopefully the GTA3 game will get emulated.
Slashdot Mirror
If you look at the total picture:
http://www.the-magicbox.com/topten.htm
The PS3 sold 76K units in Japan in December, while the PS2 only sold 46K units. So, unlike in the US, where the PS2 was still the top-selling console, the torch appears to have been passed in Japan.
And both of them are crushing the XBox 360, at 17K units sold.
Jon Acheson
Dude, he said "Don't ask me why!" :)
Seriously, though, Achievements are a feature of XBox Live that allows you to compete for high scores and other feats in a game. They are tracked online, and you can see how you're keeping up with the Joneses.
Jon Acheson
PDF brochure is here.
On the one hand, not as inexpensive as the OLPC, and it seems to lack some of the features like the mesh networking.
On the other hand, you might actually be able to buy one, and it should be able to play StarCraft.
Intel FTW!
I want to buy one of these just so that I can have a disposable laptop for tabletop roleplaying. My gaming club meets in a space with folding tables that sometimes collapse, and I'd hate for a real lappy to fall and break, but this thing is rugged enough to take a fall, and cheap enough to be disposable if it breaks. And all it has to do is display PDFs.
So, what I want is to just BUY ONE, say off of Amazon or TigerDirect.
I didn't bother with this petition because I'm not interested in a potential laptop, I want to know that an actual laptop will soon be in my hands.
Does anyone know if there is a place where you can do this, or if such a thing is planned?
Talking about Asimov's laws, as the article even states, is crap. No robots work like that. Just making a robot recognize an object as a human is a major achievement, and forget about making it think like a human so that it can follow the laws. The Three Laws are anachronisms, like the Jungles of Venus, or headgear with radiator fins.
What the Japanese generally do is fence off the robot's work area so that people can't just walk into its path. It's a simple solution that works. If a worker climbs over the safety fence and gets squished, as happened here, it's really their own fault.
Jon Acheson
It's more complicated than that.
For one thing, pay rate varies. In my county, it's very good, median is significantly higher than average, and starting salaries are adequate. Of course, the teacher's union lied for years that "they couldn't earn a living teaching" - until the local paper ran an expose on what the salary ranges actually were. That article should have won the Pulitzer.
The flip side of that is that it is much harder to get a job in districts with good pay. I know several great people who just couldn't get their foot in the door.
Also, while you get your summers off, that doesn't happen for at least five years, because you have to take classes in the summer to get your Master's in Education. Every teacher who isn't an idiot does this, because it gets them an automatic pay raise. After that, your summers are yours, though. Many teachers work extra jobs simply because they have the time to do so. My math teachers ran the local swimming pool in the summer.
As for free time, there is a fair amount of work load outside of class, particularly when you are getting started and have to develop your lesson plans. Once the plans are in place, updating them doesn't take nearly as much time. You will also have periodic grading crunches, too. If you want to become involved in extracurricular activities, that also takes up time, but I object to lumping this in with actual teaching as "work" time. People volunteer for extracurriculars because they want to do it.
The above mainly apply to public school teachers. The private school teachers I know generally get paid less, but the compensation is that they like their jobs a lot more. Not every private school is great, though, there are some which have serious problems.
Lastly, I know a lot of people who thought they wanted to be teachers, then discovered after they did their student teaching that they didn't actually enjoy teaching. So, it's best to have a backup plan, like a minor in business, in case you wind up not using your Education degree.
Jon Acheson
Blizzard makes games that are just a constant delight to interact with.
Compare Warcraft 1 & 2 with Age of Empires. On a feature by feature basis, the games are roughly on equal footing. Until you play with them.
Click on a unit in AoE, and you get a fairly bland response in the language of the unit.
Click on a unit in Warcraft, and you get a short, punchy bit of entertaining dialog. Much more fun.
Likewise, Warcraft has clever and attractive design work, that makes the various units sing.
So, playing the game is not just rewarding when you win, it's rewarding in its own right. I'd rather play Starcraft and lose than play Age of Empires!
Jon Acheson
In my previous job, I set up a knowledge base for our Product Support team using Swiki.
It replaced their previous knowledge base, which was done as a WinHelp file using RoboHELP, and as a result was never updated, because it was a PITA to do, and only a couple people knew RoboHELP.
Swiki was a lot easier to teach and use, could be set up to run as an automatically-started service on our Windows server, and has all the basic functionality we needed. It can also maintain multiple different Wikis, and can export the contents of the wiki to very nice clean HTML.
http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/swikiSwiki wiki is here.
It could address the perception that the 360 is too noisy, runs too hot, and basically is annoying to own. It would do this by introducing an upgraded system that runs cooler and quieter, with a more reasonably sized power supply.
However, I think that is unlikely to actually happen. The relaunch will probably just add more features. Because this is Microsoft we're talking about.
To think there was a point at which I thought they might win this round...
I know it's the cynic in me, but I'm only half kidding.
Another possibility is that competitors have worked out the best methodology for succeeding on these tests.
Jon Acheson
Really?
I've never heard that. In fact, most people that I know of would tag 8 as the worst, or maybe I or II.
9 seems to be viewed as a nostalgia-fest, but most people liked it. I know I did.
Jon Acheson
In fact, I had been planning to upgrade my PC so that I'd be able to play it.
I know they shot the live footage needed for the game. I'd still love to see it get released, especially since some of the cast members are no longer with us.
It would still be a great game, though they could probably bump up the textures and polygons by a lot now. They could probably use the models from the show more or less unchanged now.
There was also another Sam and Max game for the XBox that was cancelled, that they fail to mention.
I'm guessing that's what we're seeing: the startup costs for the Xbox 360 and its launch publicity. So even though revenues were up, the increased operations costs turned it into a net loss, for now at least.
I would expect the 360 to be profitable for them in the long run, though.
Jon Acheson
The thing is, they really coudn't wait, because they were losing money on every original XBox they shipped, with no end in sight.
They're probably still losing money on the 360 at launch, but they should be able to break even and get into the black in the long run. The PS3 is not likely to be able to undercut them on price like the PS2 could, because it is coming out a year after the 360, and because it has more expensive components like the blue-ray drive in it.
The Revolution is going to be cheaper, but it may not really compete with the 360, because it's so non-traditional in its design. It seems more likely to go its own way and complement the other two consoles.
Jon Acheson
I doubt the film market will disappear, but it will probably wind up being a boutique industry. You'll be able to find camera places in major cities, and there will be companies that specialize in manufacturing replacement parts for discontinued major brands. That's getting cheaper to do all the time with computer aided manufacturing.
But yeah, they'll probably stop selling film cameras in the discount stores fairly soon.
Jon Acheson
I could quibble about a couple choices, but all in all, it's a pretty solid list.
I'm sure everyone will find one or two games they think don't deserve to be there, but that's the nature of the beast.
I have to check over lunch to see if I still own a copy of Bushido Blade...
Jon Acheson
I think the original poster is referring to the amount of refitting and overall work needed to turn the spacecraft around and relaunch it. The shuttle requires so much work to be done between flights (inspecting and fixing tiles, completely rebuilding the engines) that some have called the process "rebuilding" instead of "reuse." It also takes months to turn one around for relaunch.
The goal for a truly reusable spacecraft would be one that could have its expendible items topped off, and be relaunched after a very short checklist. Ideally, within days.
Jon Acheson
... was choosing their locked-in proprietary disc format.
If they had gone with a standard DVD-ROM disc, they would have gotten much more third party support. Third parties don't like having to go through Nintendo for the production of their games, plus the reduced storage of the Nintendo disc makes it harder to do simultaneous releases on all three systems. As a result, the Gmaecube hasn't gotten any GTA3 games, which use all the space on the DVD-ROM.
After googling, I am also reading suggestions that you take at least one spare power supply with you, as well as a spare battery. These tend to go bad in the field, and once they do, you're out of business unless you have a spare.
Take everything with you that you think you might need, it's much harder to get things once you're in Iraq.
And thank you for your service to our country.
Jon Acheson
If all he wants to do is email, the Dana might be a good choice. It's a Palm device, it has no moving parts, it's tough, it can run off AA batteries or rechargeables, and it is available with WiFi. And it's relatively cheap at around $300.
If you want something to play games on or run normal software, of course, this isn't going to work.
Jon Acheson
For what I use Excel for, which is mainly fiddling around with formulas for RPGs, I found OO Calc to be a little nicer than Excel. It did everything I needed it to do, and was nicer in some areas.
For instance, when lines of text don't fit, you see part of the text instead of hash marks.
The OO word processor still needs work. Though, since Word has gotten progressively worse with each version since Word 95, (first numbering broke, then cross-references...) they should be on equal footing soon.
Jon Acheson
Except floating in zero-gee, looking down on the Earth from orbit (heck of a view, they say), and maybe visiting the moon.
And by that point, you have the enabling technologies for so many other possible revenue streams that it's hard to count them all.
Jon Acheson
No, if they really wanted to advance the UMB format, they should have made it FRICKING WRITEABLE.
I mean, if you're going to introduce a new data storage format, and you prevent people from being able to store their data on it, it's kind of a barrier to adoption, isn't it?
Supporting it in the PS3 would also have been nice.
Jon Acheson
Given that Paul Allen spends 30 million a year just on maintenance of his yachts, I think there's an excellent chance that billionaires will spend tens of thousands of dollars on suborbitals flights, and orbital flights as well.
The important thing about suborbital flights are that they provide Scaled Composites with the revenue stream they need to fund their orbital craft development.
Jon Acheson
I have no doubts that the GTA3 game will do well with PSP owners.
That said, Nintendo released both Advance Wars: Dual Strike and thee flavors of Nintendogs yesterday, and I bought myself a DS and both games. Stores are selling out of both games and the DS itself.
I have no plans to buy a PSP ever. Hopefully the GTA3 game will get emulated.
Jon Acheson