a wee bit of power. I mean, even if it's 2 watts, that's one-50th the energy usage of a standard incandescent lightbulb, and still four to eight times as much as a compact flourescent lightbulb.
What, I should sit in the dark while playing games?
Heck, the TV set you view it on uses a lot more than a lightbulb...
Just powering the giant non-LCD screens on your old boxen.
Heck, if you want to count watts, just look at your light bulbs - average US household uses more than 2000 watts with standard bulbs - if you swapped those for compact flourescents you'd be using 200-300 watts, saving more than 1700 watts, which is a much higher amount than 2 watts, or even 20 watts.
Let's put things in perspective here, people. Your air conditioning for the current global-warming-induced heat waves uses many times the power consumption of your game consoles.
Now, if we just bough LED lights, we'd use even less power.
we used to print out on a plotter and use the LED readerboard to "scan" for ships, running on punchcards. I modded the game to give the Romulans cloaking ability (changing them from the K for Klingon to R for Romulan) and let photon torpedos light them up when they hit, with a trace afterimage.
That was on a Hewlett Packard. Way before I bought my Apple and started my own game business.
Mm, not really. From a market perspective the low number of Gamecube titles this winter makes no difference-- The end of Gamecube support basically came a year or so ago. Nintendo released almost nothing for the Gamecube last Christmas season (mostly just some second party titles), and the releases since then have been even more paltry. In a worst case scenario the Wii could do poorly and thus result in slow growth compared to say Christmas 04, but it couldn't possibly be any worse than Nintendo's disastrous last console year.
I agree, GC growth has probably started the decline, but with a Wii selling at $300, that's not really a problem. And since the Nintendo portables all work with the Wii, it's even less of an issue.
Personally, I'm looking forward to the Wii version of Super Mario Galaxy, as it looks even more fun on a Wii than it would have been on a GameCube.
Fair enough. But remember that you also have to think about all the people who are buying off-brand CRT televisions for $129 at the discount stores, as well as all the people who are still looking at the same TV they bought in 1991.
Actually, the WSJ had an article today about how the HDTVs that used to cost $3000 will be selling for $299 by next year. The future isn't that far off. I personally plan to get a flat-screen HDTV in about 2-3 years, for about $300. I'm in no hurry.
And, I plan on spending $5000 a year for the next four years buying a Platinum Lifetime membership to Cinema Seattle, to see the Seattle International Film festival. I could afford a $3000 TV, but I can't see the point.
As the father of two boys, I can support your theory. My older boy really wanted the XBox 360. However, as the details and pricing of the Nintendo Wii have been released, he's come 'round to my thinking. The motion controllers are what really started to sway him. Now he'd rather we buy the Wii and use the difference in price to buy a few games right off the bat. Which suits me just fine.
I agree. At first, I was thinking I would probably buy a PS3 when it came out. But when I saw the Nintendo Wii demos and the gameslist for them, and the PS3 details, plus the major price difference, I decided for him. The xBox 360 was already not in our scopes, as we had bought an xBox, and still only have two fun games for that which aren't cross-platform. And when I saw the gameslist for the 360, filled with FPS and sports game, it was "not gonna happen".
Now, if he wants to, he can go out and buy a PS3. With his own money. Not with my money. I'm perfectly willing to buy a Wii, cause it has tons of games I'm into, and the whole moving the controller thing sounds way more fun. And I'll probably buy the games I think are good, and maybe get some he wants that I don't if he has a birthday or Xmas. The rest he'll have to buy himself with his own money.
has an article on Sony that flows onto another page, which points out the stock is way too high in terms of PFS, and says that many industry analysts believe that Nintendo's Wii is likely to gain much more market share than Sony's PS3 will. They point out that the pricing point of more than $500 for the retail PS3 will cause consumers to avoid purchasing the PS3 for the Blu-Ray aspects, and that standard economic models show that next-generation DVD successors (such as Sony's Blu-Ray and the competing HD-DVD - the latter will play existing DVDs, which means consumers could watch their existing DVD libraries, which is not the case with Blu-Ray) will drop in price rapidly.
They also point out that the game software cost for the PS3 is regarded by industry analysts as high enough that it may negatively impact adoption of the PS3.
1. It's not just tech - the overpayment of CEOs has no correlation (or negative if any) with performance at most US firms.
2. The major problem is that shareowners - that is to say, the capitalists - are even less able to correct excesses of tech firms, as more shares of such firms have been looted - um, pardon me, given as stock options - to the senior execs and CEO/CFO/COO and thus have even fewer checks on such overpaid employees.
3. Many people fail to understand that most US firms do not permit shareowners to:.a. vote not to overpay senior execs (the only vote is whether or not the amount in cash for strict salary over $1 million is TAX DEDUCTIBLE for the firm, the shareowners don't get to vote down the paypacket, under our form of red capitalism in the USA);.b. vote out board members - most board members need only receive one (1) vote to be reelected - and most have a few thousand shares they were given free or at reduced rate as options and thus there is no check on them;.c. identify the votes of board members on compensation committees so that the shareowners can vote out the actual compensation committee members who rewarded incompetence with even larger pay packets - in most cases the committee decision is reported as if it were unanimous, even if it isn't. additionally, the CEO usually picks the members of the committee and the board in the first place - shareowners don't get to do that.
Because Nirvana liked to destroy their musical instruments at the end of a live set, so maybe the lithium ion battery decided "time to die like Kurt Cobain" and exploded on stage...
Exactly! The only real reason to upgrade these days is if you are a gamer...and unless you are into the high paced first person shooter games (not MMORPG) you will not upgrade at every new game release.
That reminds me of my son's reaction when we brought home his new Mac mini with LCD flatscreen - the last computer I got him was an iMac, 8 years ago. We plug it in, connect it, and go on the Net.
His first reaction to the better graphics, faster CPU is "the Internet's not faster".
Duh... we still were using the same Comcast high speed cable modem - it's not like it would suddenly "speed up".
Hence, why bother upgrading? The Net won't go any faster. Sure, maybe you'll get cooler graphics, or better resolution, but in the end if you spend 90 percent of your time online, you won't see much difference.
So a "slump" in growth (aka growth that in the 70s would have been "fantastic") is just the fact that we as a nation haven't moved to Gigapop Internet like most of the real industrialized nations have.
The problem with the current crop of economists is they all grew up (academically) in the boom-boom 90s. They have no perspective.
There is nothing wrong with a growth rate of 1 or 2 percent. 4.6 percent is more than the population growth, for example. It no more represents a "slump" than does the fact that my vastly overvalued house has only grown in value from $400,000 to $425,000 this year, when last year it grew from $375,000 to $400,000. Technically, that's a lower percentage rate increase, but since I bought the thing for $265,000 in 1999 after selling a prior house I bought for $115,000 in 1992 (thanks, Microsoft!), it's still vastly ridiculous.
There are entire cities in my state where my two-bedroom three-floor condo would be worth maybe $80,000 - today.
So, just because prices aren't drastically increasing means very little.
Also, why should a laptop cost $3000? I bought mine for $500, it's got more power than I need, a nice AMD 2600 CPU, works fine, 11b/g wireless. Most electronics that started selling in the multi-thousands eventually settle down in the $300-$500 range after they become consumer electronics, why should computers be different? It's like HDTV - it may cost $4900 right now, but in three years a better model will be selling for probably $300 retail.
And the Apple prices have more to do with the move to Intel chips, and the subsequent lack of interest, since people can just go out and buy a Linux box for a lot less.
Right now we only have two non-Linux machines, including my WinXP box, and the only reason we have that is MSFT Access. If a push to Vista breaks that, given that we've already migrated most of our SAS databases to MySQL on a Linux database server, it might mean we decide no more MSFT OS at all.
They might call it planned product obscelescene - we call it killing off your reason to exist.
yes, they don't need to list it, but they probably broadcast it. All a trained terrorist needs to do is walk among the people near a US embassy and record all the RFIDs, then take the recordings back to crack in his home base, using his Linux/BSD cracking machines.
another thing they can do is record the signals, take a spycam pic, then make fake passports with RFID to get thru when they do an ultra-high value target, thus obviating security (diplomatic passports usually don't get scrutinized as closely, especially if embassy people).
assuming they're not smart doesn't work people - they are smart, trained, and know exactly what they're doing.
All US embassy personnel carry passports on them that beam out "I'm an American, my name is John Smith, I am 5'11", with brown hair and green eyes and was born in Auckland, TX".
I'm sure nobody will think to use this against us... right...
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a wee bit of power. I mean, even if it's 2 watts, that's one-50th the energy usage of a standard incandescent lightbulb, and still four to eight times as much as a compact flourescent lightbulb.
...
What, I should sit in the dark while playing games?
Heck, the TV set you view it on uses a lot more than a lightbulb
Just powering the giant non-LCD screens on your old boxen.
Heck, if you want to count watts, just look at your light bulbs - average US household uses more than 2000 watts with standard bulbs - if you swapped those for compact flourescents you'd be using 200-300 watts, saving more than 1700 watts, which is a much higher amount than 2 watts, or even 20 watts.
Let's put things in perspective here, people. Your air conditioning for the current global-warming-induced heat waves uses many times the power consumption of your game consoles.
Now, if we just bough LED lights, we'd use even less power.
we used to print out on a plotter and use the LED readerboard to "scan" for ships, running on punchcards. I modded the game to give the Romulans cloaking ability (changing them from the K for Klingon to R for Romulan) and let photon torpedos light them up when they hit, with a trace afterimage.
That was on a Hewlett Packard. Way before I bought my Apple and started my own game business.
Mm, not really. From a market perspective the low number of Gamecube titles this winter makes no difference-- The end of Gamecube support basically came a year or so ago. Nintendo released almost nothing for the Gamecube last Christmas season (mostly just some second party titles), and the releases since then have been even more paltry. In a worst case scenario the Wii could do poorly and thus result in slow growth compared to say Christmas 04, but it couldn't possibly be any worse than Nintendo's disastrous last console year.
I agree, GC growth has probably started the decline, but with a Wii selling at $300, that's not really a problem. And since the Nintendo portables all work with the Wii, it's even less of an issue.
Personally, I'm looking forward to the Wii version of Super Mario Galaxy, as it looks even more fun on a Wii than it would have been on a GameCube.
Fair enough. But remember that you also have to think about all the people who are buying off-brand CRT televisions for $129 at the discount stores, as well as all the people who are still looking at the same TV they bought in 1991.
Actually, the WSJ had an article today about how the HDTVs that used to cost $3000 will be selling for $299 by next year. The future isn't that far off. I personally plan to get a flat-screen HDTV in about 2-3 years, for about $300. I'm in no hurry.
And, I plan on spending $5000 a year for the next four years buying a Platinum Lifetime membership to Cinema Seattle, to see the Seattle International Film festival. I could afford a $3000 TV, but I can't see the point.
As the father of two boys, I can support your theory. My older boy really wanted the XBox 360. However, as the details and pricing of the Nintendo Wii have been released, he's come 'round to my thinking. The motion controllers are what really started to sway him. Now he'd rather we buy the Wii and use the difference in price to buy a few games right off the bat. Which suits me just fine.
I agree. At first, I was thinking I would probably buy a PS3 when it came out. But when I saw the Nintendo Wii demos and the gameslist for them, and the PS3 details, plus the major price difference, I decided for him. The xBox 360 was already not in our scopes, as we had bought an xBox, and still only have two fun games for that which aren't cross-platform. And when I saw the gameslist for the 360, filled with FPS and sports game, it was "not gonna happen".
Now, if he wants to, he can go out and buy a PS3. With his own money. Not with my money. I'm perfectly willing to buy a Wii, cause it has tons of games I'm into, and the whole moving the controller thing sounds way more fun. And I'll probably buy the games I think are good, and maybe get some he wants that I don't if he has a birthday or Xmas. The rest he'll have to buy himself with his own money.
has an article on Sony that flows onto another page, which points out the stock is way too high in terms of PFS, and says that many industry analysts believe that Nintendo's Wii is likely to gain much more market share than Sony's PS3 will. They point out that the pricing point of more than $500 for the retail PS3 will cause consumers to avoid purchasing the PS3 for the Blu-Ray aspects, and that standard economic models show that next-generation DVD successors (such as Sony's Blu-Ray and the competing HD-DVD - the latter will play existing DVDs, which means consumers could watch their existing DVD libraries, which is not the case with Blu-Ray) will drop in price rapidly.
They also point out that the game software cost for the PS3 is regarded by industry analysts as high enough that it may negatively impact adoption of the PS3.
Cool, so that means it will work on the Wii but not Gamecube then?
1. It's not just tech - the overpayment of CEOs has no correlation (or negative if any) with performance at most US firms.
.a. vote not to overpay senior execs (the only vote is whether or not the amount in cash for strict salary over $1 million is TAX DEDUCTIBLE for the firm, the shareowners don't get to vote down the paypacket, under our form of red capitalism in the USA); .b. vote out board members - most board members need only receive one (1) vote to be reelected - and most have a few thousand shares they were given free or at reduced rate as options and thus there is no check on them; .c. identify the votes of board members on compensation committees so that the shareowners can vote out the actual compensation committee members who rewarded incompetence with even larger pay packets - in most cases the committee decision is reported as if it were unanimous, even if it isn't. additionally, the CEO usually picks the members of the committee and the board in the first place - shareowners don't get to do that.
2. The major problem is that shareowners - that is to say, the capitalists - are even less able to correct excesses of tech firms, as more shares of such firms have been looted - um, pardon me, given as stock options - to the senior execs and CEO/CFO/COO and thus have even fewer checks on such overpaid employees.
3. Many people fail to understand that most US firms do not permit shareowners to:
But if I just go out and hire some mind farmers to play for me, like say Neo, I can totally rule!
There is no spoon.
No, really.
It's a fork.
What kind of iMac? What kind of mini?
an iMac crammed with 96MB RAM. a Mac Mini (highest one I could get in July, intel chipset).
Your results and perceptions may vary. I passed on a comment by a user who doesn't care why. He just said it wasn't faster, even though it is.
both machines are crammed with RAM, so it's not that perceptible, except in terms of graphics rendering and multi-window handling.
Because Nirvana liked to destroy their musical instruments at the end of a live set, so maybe the lithium ion battery decided "time to die like Kurt Cobain" and exploded on stage ...
The difference between the two systems when surfing the web is like night and day
Again, my son had an iMac. Built in firewire and full Net. plugged directly into the cable modem out port.
Switching to the Mac mini - same basic firewire, same cable modem.
No perceptible difference.
It's not a PC. PCs care about that stuff. Macs just work.
I think when entire nations have already gone Gigapop Internet, as well as most universities, that it "is" normal people.
But again, it's the killer app thing. No reason to upgrade.
The people complaining about governmental budget cuts are still receiving MORE than they did last year, but at a lower rate of increase.
Wrong. They cut NIH funding to one-quarter what it used to be. Basic science was slashed, even while the WH was saying they were going to increase it.
Wake up and smell reality.
Exactly! The only real reason to upgrade these days is if you are a gamer...and unless you are into the high paced first person shooter games (not MMORPG) you will not upgrade at every new game release.
... we still were using the same Comcast high speed cable modem - it's not like it would suddenly "speed up".
That reminds me of my son's reaction when we brought home his new Mac mini with LCD flatscreen - the last computer I got him was an iMac, 8 years ago. We plug it in, connect it, and go on the Net.
His first reaction to the better graphics, faster CPU is "the Internet's not faster".
Duh
Hence, why bother upgrading? The Net won't go any faster. Sure, maybe you'll get cooler graphics, or better resolution, but in the end if you spend 90 percent of your time online, you won't see much difference.
So a "slump" in growth (aka growth that in the 70s would have been "fantastic") is just the fact that we as a nation haven't moved to Gigapop Internet like most of the real industrialized nations have.
The problem with the current crop of economists is they all grew up (academically) in the boom-boom 90s. They have no perspective.
There is nothing wrong with a growth rate of 1 or 2 percent. 4.6 percent is more than the population growth, for example. It no more represents a "slump" than does the fact that my vastly overvalued house has only grown in value from $400,000 to $425,000 this year, when last year it grew from $375,000 to $400,000. Technically, that's a lower percentage rate increase, but since I bought the thing for $265,000 in 1999 after selling a prior house I bought for $115,000 in 1992 (thanks, Microsoft!), it's still vastly ridiculous.
There are entire cities in my state where my two-bedroom three-floor condo would be worth maybe $80,000 - today.
So, just because prices aren't drastically increasing means very little.
Also, why should a laptop cost $3000? I bought mine for $500, it's got more power than I need, a nice AMD 2600 CPU, works fine, 11b/g wireless. Most electronics that started selling in the multi-thousands eventually settle down in the $300-$500 range after they become consumer electronics, why should computers be different? It's like HDTV - it may cost $4900 right now, but in three years a better model will be selling for probably $300 retail.
And the Apple prices have more to do with the move to Intel chips, and the subsequent lack of interest, since people can just go out and buy a Linux box for a lot less.
most gamers still waiting until they can buy the Wii this fall, when suddenly game sales will skyrocket.
Right now we only have two non-Linux machines, including my WinXP box, and the only reason we have that is MSFT Access. If a push to Vista breaks that, given that we've already migrated most of our SAS databases to MySQL on a Linux database server, it might mean we decide no more MSFT OS at all.
They might call it planned product obscelescene - we call it killing off your reason to exist.
yes, they don't need to list it, but they probably broadcast it. All a trained terrorist needs to do is walk among the people near a US embassy and record all the RFIDs, then take the recordings back to crack in his home base, using his Linux/BSD cracking machines.
another thing they can do is record the signals, take a spycam pic, then make fake passports with RFID to get thru when they do an ultra-high value target, thus obviating security (diplomatic passports usually don't get scrutinized as closely, especially if embassy people).
assuming they're not smart doesn't work people - they are smart, trained, and know exactly what they're doing.
All US embassy personnel carry passports on them that beam out "I'm an American, my name is John Smith, I am 5'11", with brown hair and green eyes and was born in Auckland, TX".
... right ...
I'm sure nobody will think to use this against us
I tried making a DNA sequence using Forbes help, but for some reason it has problems with my use of B, D, I, J, Q, and Z in my base-pair sequences ...
Yeah, obviously they just should've hired an army of cartoonists to draw "Apollo 11: Flip book Edition" :-)
Well, what do you think animated shows are?
I think they should hire the animator Bill Plimpton to "redraw" the moon landings.
in our genetics studies.
It's easy to copy, you can write on it, it's not power dependent, and in a pinch you can use it to start a fire.
Plus, if you drink coffee, the rings make pretty pictures.
At least they didn't use BetaMax for the moon landings.
But check Cheney's basement, he probably removed it "for official viewing" and has decided we don't get to see them.