Good luck on that because US companies won't sell you just SIM cards... All they will sell you is their phones for use with their services... People come here from other countries with less restrictive cell providers and the results are just funny... I happen to work near a verizon Wireless booth and I get to hear most of that stuff...
Then again most people don't want to pay $300+ for a cell phone... Hell I here constant complaints they don't carry enough sub-$100 phones to use with good features... Let alone paying $450 for a Treo 600 or some other PDA/cell combo (those are funny I can't see ever paying $40 a month for voice and then $40 a month for wireless internet, add in SMS messaging @ $10/month and I'm suprised people don't go screaming away from there...)
Anyways... Yes I wish it were different here, but this is the US land of the corporations... What did you really expect...?
Their are basically three things that keep them from being popular with most kids in the US...
1) No SMS, web, or other advanced features. The best one for advanced features that is nation-wide is Virgin Mobile, but the don't offer web and voice recognition options that are the cool things now (at least not that I've seen)...
2) You can't just buy cards for them anywhere, you have to find someone who has a deal with your provider... Like I can go to Circuit Cities and buy Verizon Wireless cards, Media Play for Virgin Mobile, or a Sprint Store (if I can still find oen locally) for Sprint cards... But I can't go to Media Play and get a Sprint card...
3) We didn't get any nifty 'E-Topup' capabilities... You can either assign a credit card to the phone so you can top-up anywhere via the assigned credit card, buy a virtual card online with a credit card, or go to a store that carries that type of card... Buying a card in a store means entering a pin number from the receipt for that card (the card itself is a worthless piece of paper).
My mom uses a pre-paid cell phone from Virgin Mobile and she can hardly remember which stores carry her type of cards for her phone and doesn't want her credit card in their system... So normally I have to go buy cards for her and since using a pin with the phone is a pain in the ass, after I buy them for her I use the online form to add the pin to her account as she probably can't remember how...
Is it any wonder most people don't want the hassle?
True, but most pre-paid phones don't have SMS at all (no send, no recieve)... Or any real features for that matter... The usual list for prepaid phone sin the US looks like this: Basic non-flip black and white display phone with no other features or flip-phone with color screen and no other features...
Only one 'major' (isn't completely local to one area) provider I can think of has it's complete line of phones available as pre-paids, but the trade off is they are small compared to the likes of Verizon, Sprint, etc... So they all have scattered calling ability...
In the US the Cell phone providers don't let you do prepaid with jsut any phone... In fact they normally only give that sort of option on their lower end phones. & unlike most of europe you can't just use any phone with any provider you want...
Actualy if you scroll down a bit more on the comments for this story, you'll hear about Sony making a 40 inch HDTV flat screen set... I'd forgotten that one... But anyways in my case, my is just a near flat because it is a bit 'old' ( aka two years) now, but I've seen plenty of modern HDTV tubes that are in excess of 34 inches...
Um... How do I have a 16x9 tube based HDTV that is 38 inches then, if they don't make them past 34 inches? & I could swear I've seen a Sony that was 39 inches...
Simple reason for the dumbing down really... It's for when they manage to fall into the hands of a more experienced user who could under normal circumstances enable that PC to become more useful via overclocking or other 'upgrade' type features (liek your issue), instead has to go back to a shop to buy another machien to do what they want or build their own...
I gotta say it's not just the "cheapskate kids whose moms and dads won't buy 'em DVDRW drives" that haven't taken to DVD-R/RW yet... I've very little need for DVD recordable media currently so I've yet to buy yet another optical drive. I have maybe 6 things that I'd like to backup that won't fit on CD and CD's are dirt cheap, so for now I still don't have one and I'm not a kid...
I was never a Leo fan, but I'd just adjusted to the first road of changes when they added the 'guy I can't remember the name of' to cohost with Kevin with Dan, Yoshi, and Sarah backing them up. Now it's Chi-Lan, that other guy from G4 who hardly seems to know what a PC is (edit: Kevin Pereira I guess, now that I looked it up) , Kevin and Sarah... Personally I think Diane Mizota has more personality than Chi-Lan or for that matter the girls that did G4tv.com (Tina Wood and Laura Foy). Any of those would have been better choices, but I'm taking a wild guess and saying they all turned down the chance to be on TSS...
I was never a big TechTV fan, but TSS was a fairly good view while eating lunch and safe viewing material for people like my parents who might not understand everything on the show, but got a fair education into subjects they wouldn't have before... Now I'm back to telling people to avoid the whole channel, it's rather sad...
I beg to differ. Now being a department lead for a stores software department gives me a vierw most opeople don't have... But the two questiosn I get asked the most are about software to copy music and software to copy movies...
In fact I get more pissed off people from having to say that it would be illegal to sell them software that could copy commercial DVD's than anything else bar none... With repsonses like "Why would I buy a DVD-burner except to copy DVD movies?" and "Your kidding right?" The average person doesn't give a rats ass about copyright and really misplace their anger about it... Rather than getting pissed at the MPAA or RIAA they get pissed at the computer manufacturers and salesmen for giving them a 'defective' PC... Really nice trick the MPAA and RIAA manage on that...
This is actually why I refuse to vote... their are no 'good' candidates and the general public refuses to do more than select one box or another on a balot... Hence this is all we will ever get... I'd prefer to say I witheld my vote than actually being able to say I voted for this crap...
Well while I don't live that far away (closer to Erie) it sounds better than the town I lived in during high school... We had no stores really, no places for kids, nothing much really except houses and bars... Want to guess the percent of kids that started into drugs/alcohol there before finishing high school?;)
The same thing would just alienate already frustrated people in the US... I run the software/games department of one of the local electonics stores where I live and it is part of a large multinational chain, so I have a fairly close view of the matter. We have a corporate policy stating that we can't sell 'M' (their are no real 'AO' rated titles available so they don't bother to mention that rating) games to anyone under 17. Failure to obey this job requirement is terms for being 'let go'. Now that being said, when we tell kids we can't sell them the games they go find a parent and the parent verbally bitch slaps us for having to be bothered to act as a legal guardian of a minor... It only gets worse when I explain that while I can sell it to the parent, but not the child when the parent doesn't want to be involved anyways. The parents invaribly complain to store management and I then get bitch slapped verbally by management for them having to have listened to the prattle of the parents over it...
All in all making it a requirement to card (aka check ID like we do for cigerettes or alcohol) everyone buying 'M' rated games would just get me harrassed more by customers who don't care about the law and who don't care about their kids... Not a big suprise when we have people leave their kids for 4+ hours (up to 9 hours once) in our game section (where the video game demo systems are) while the parents leave the store and do other things... So it's not really a suprise to me that parents don't want to be responsible for their kids...
Why don't they even mention the RCA Lyra HD and RCA Lyra A/V? The current RCA Lyra HD is as small as an ipod mini, but with a 20 GB HDD instead of the measly 4 GB of the Ipod and it's the same price! It also comes with every accessory your ever likely to need... I work at an electronics store and I sell as many of these as I do Ipods, probably more...
Yet as was the case the last several times this type of story has come out they are ignored... I'm betting no one will even read this since I didn't get to reply until I got back home today, but in case you do the Lyra is my bet for Ipod killer... If anyone ever realizes they make one that is...
Ok first let me say: If you don't think Xbox live is worth it than you obviously have problems... I've had it for two years and just don't look back. They keep adding improved features to it year after year. That ~$50 a year pays for all the in-game and out-of-game capabilities now in xbox live.
Second let me add how are you going to make a dedicated game server for a game on a console system? Ever thought about that?
Lastly they aren't the same games (at least not normally their are a few exceptions though). Unreal is UT, but instead Unreal Championship. Medal of Honor isn't the same game on both console or PC either. Each gets their own titles. Same for Halo. Some near future titles and one current title are based on their PC versions, but multiplayer is a huge overhaul for console regardless of how similiar the game itself is between console and PC.
Um it should be SCPH-700XX... Why you ask? Because current PS models include: SCPH-70011, SCPH-70013, SCPH-70014... Though I also remember 70009, 70008, 70004, & 70001...
I know this because I've sold them (I've been the head of a stores game/software department). This minor differences between models have been all important at times. I could also definately see a PStwo push for it marketing-wise as in fact they did offically rename the last generation from PS1 to PSone.
Oh also:
In the US it would have to have a dial-up modem. It's one of the few reasons why people opt for a PS2 rather than a Xbox for online gaming. Which is funny because only a handful of games can be played without broadband, but in places like were I live broadband just hasn't caught on or isn't available to most people. FOr istance I had no broadband available til early this year.
External devices (such as hard drives, and what should be the near infamous PS2 4 controller adpater) have poor sales at best and so their features are never really exploited and the company just writes them off as bad ideas. Heck I have problems gettign people to buy a damn memory card with their PS2 even though it's pretty much required. Then they bitch about having to buy a second control (which in their mind should eb free). I can go on, but they want to buy just the system and maybe a game at best, why they even bother to try things like external hard drives after all the failures just amazes me....
Strange I have my Xbox connected via 802.11G to my wireless router and I've never ever had an issue with signal strength or latency... Which makes it strange that a PS2, which should have reduced load on the connection, has those problems.
I opted for wireless because I didn't want wires all across my living room and I've never looked back.
I have a CIS degree as opposed to your CS degree, but I make just over half of what you do and I work hugely varied shifts... Not to mention I'm on call... So it's not all that different. I have to put up with people who act like children to, so I'd hardly say it's all that different...
Somehow I think I deserve a pay raise first when you get more than two months fo time off per year & I get PTO that covers both sick days and vacation which accumulates as the year goes on so I have to wait to use it after the fiscal year starts... I've known lots of teachers in my life because my dad used to work as the head of maintenance for a school, so I'm not just tlaking out my ass.
I'd leave my job, but that would require moving fairly far away and I'd have to have the money to move (which isn't possible living paycheck to paycheck)... Locally this is the best I can get in my field (networking). I'd love to have your job right about now...
Those 'absurdly low paid' teachers make twice what I do as a begining networking associate with a four year degree and certs... I don't think they need to bitch about money at all...
Though your teachers need to coem to my state average starting salary in PA is ~40/k and the average is mid 50/k range... Hardly poor at all...
My senior year was sort fo similiar, but the computers came from grants the state governement was giving the school to rebuild it's 40 year old building with... And they ended up being all Macs of course... But it was fairly similiar... Though we were actually considered a club btw...
Unfortunately in all of our cases it was all a waste because no one cares what we did in some dinky little town school in teh middle of nowhere. They just care about degrees, certifications, and contacts... It's sad really, we'd all hoped for an outcoem liek you describe, but not even one of our motely crew has been successful...
I have a simple reason why it becomes so important to "get them a job and some income as soon as possible". Is due to one thing: College Loans.
I have no idea how old you are, but those offering me my college loans want their money now. ASAP. Not tomorrow, but today. Pay up or we'll make your life hell!
I'm not sure how many kids realize that, but I knew going in I'd have to pay back large sums of money as soon as I got out (most started bothering me at 6 months out). To make this worse for me I never did graduate (for a variety fo reasons). I'm not really suprised that people want to make moeny immediately...
Not to mention the more accepted view that people want all the 'cool things' in life. Which all take money. "Nothing in life is free", is just so true it's not even funny...
"You learn a lot, grow a lot, and change a lot in those years but you are still under the light security blanket that the college envrionment creates."
Huh you must have gone to a vastly different college than I did... My college was horrible in the 'light security blanket' area, in fact they were involved in screwing me over more times than I want to think about...
If I'd gone farther away from home for college I would have eneded up a bum living on the street when the college tossed me out of my apartment over a clerical error on their part... I guess if we all had good colleges that woudl be ok, but...
See I believe in following through with my principals and that means letting go of bands that make bad choices. Not that I haven't tried to stop some of them from making those choices... But some guy they hardly know doesn't quite inspire them to change their minds on what is commonly percieved as 'the greatest thing ever' for a musician. It's not my fault I try to stop them, but I can almost guarentee any band I like will get butchered through the label 'purchase' of their souls and I won't like what they do anymore or they'll fade away if I still do, because they weren't 'hip' enough for the label... It never fails...
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My stores carried them since november as well... Kinda makes you wonder about the guy that sent this story in and how aware of things he is...
Good luck on that because US companies won't sell you just SIM cards... All they will sell you is their phones for use with their services... People come here from other countries with less restrictive cell providers and the results are just funny... I happen to work near a verizon Wireless booth and I get to hear most of that stuff...
Then again most people don't want to pay $300+ for a cell phone... Hell I here constant complaints they don't carry enough sub-$100 phones to use with good features... Let alone paying $450 for a Treo 600 or some other PDA/cell combo (those are funny I can't see ever paying $40 a month for voice and then $40 a month for wireless internet, add in SMS messaging @ $10/month and I'm suprised people don't go screaming away from there...)
Anyways... Yes I wish it were different here, but this is the US land of the corporations... What did you really expect...?
Their are basically three things that keep them from being popular with most kids in the US...
1) No SMS, web, or other advanced features. The best one for advanced features that is nation-wide is Virgin Mobile, but the don't offer web and voice recognition options that are the cool things now (at least not that I've seen)...
2) You can't just buy cards for them anywhere, you have to find someone who has a deal with your provider... Like I can go to Circuit Cities and buy Verizon Wireless cards, Media Play for Virgin Mobile, or a Sprint Store (if I can still find oen locally) for Sprint cards... But I can't go to Media Play and get a Sprint card...
3) We didn't get any nifty 'E-Topup' capabilities... You can either assign a credit card to the phone so you can top-up anywhere via the assigned credit card, buy a virtual card online with a credit card, or go to a store that carries that type of card... Buying a card in a store means entering a pin number from the receipt for that card (the card itself is a worthless piece of paper).
My mom uses a pre-paid cell phone from Virgin Mobile and she can hardly remember which stores carry her type of cards for her phone and doesn't want her credit card in their system... So normally I have to go buy cards for her and since using a pin with the phone is a pain in the ass, after I buy them for her I use the online form to add the pin to her account as she probably can't remember how...
Is it any wonder most people don't want the hassle?
True, but most pre-paid phones don't have SMS at all (no send, no recieve)... Or any real features for that matter... The usual list for prepaid phone sin the US looks like this: Basic non-flip black and white display phone with no other features or flip-phone with color screen and no other features...
Only one 'major' (isn't completely local to one area) provider I can think of has it's complete line of phones available as pre-paids, but the trade off is they are small compared to the likes of Verizon, Sprint, etc... So they all have scattered calling ability...
In the US the Cell phone providers don't let you do prepaid with jsut any phone... In fact they normally only give that sort of option on their lower end phones. & unlike most of europe you can't just use any phone with any provider you want...
Actualy if you scroll down a bit more on the comments for this story, you'll hear about Sony making a 40 inch HDTV flat screen set... I'd forgotten that one... But anyways in my case, my is just a near flat because it is a bit 'old' ( aka two years) now, but I've seen plenty of modern HDTV tubes that are in excess of 34 inches...
Um... How do I have a 16x9 tube based HDTV that is 38 inches then, if they don't make them past 34 inches? & I could swear I've seen a Sony that was 39 inches...
Simple reason for the dumbing down really... It's for when they manage to fall into the hands of a more experienced user who could under normal circumstances enable that PC to become more useful via overclocking or other 'upgrade' type features (liek your issue), instead has to go back to a shop to buy another machien to do what they want or build their own...
I gotta say it's not just the "cheapskate kids whose moms and dads won't buy 'em DVDRW drives" that haven't taken to DVD-R/RW yet... I've very little need for DVD recordable media currently so I've yet to buy yet another optical drive. I have maybe 6 things that I'd like to backup that won't fit on CD and CD's are dirt cheap, so for now I still don't have one and I'm not a kid...
I was never a Leo fan, but I'd just adjusted to the first road of changes when they added the 'guy I can't remember the name of' to cohost with Kevin with Dan, Yoshi, and Sarah backing them up. Now it's Chi-Lan, that other guy from G4 who hardly seems to know what a PC is (edit: Kevin Pereira I guess, now that I looked it up) , Kevin and Sarah... Personally I think Diane Mizota has more personality than Chi-Lan or for that matter the girls that did G4tv.com (Tina Wood and Laura Foy). Any of those would have been better choices, but I'm taking a wild guess and saying they all turned down the chance to be on TSS...
I was never a big TechTV fan, but TSS was a fairly good view while eating lunch and safe viewing material for people like my parents who might not understand everything on the show, but got a fair education into subjects they wouldn't have before... Now I'm back to telling people to avoid the whole channel, it's rather sad...
"The average computer user don't donwload music."
I beg to differ. Now being a department lead for a stores software department gives me a vierw most opeople don't have... But the two questiosn I get asked the most are about software to copy music and software to copy movies...
In fact I get more pissed off people from having to say that it would be illegal to sell them software that could copy commercial DVD's than anything else bar none... With repsonses like "Why would I buy a DVD-burner except to copy DVD movies?" and "Your kidding right?" The average person doesn't give a rats ass about copyright and really misplace their anger about it... Rather than getting pissed at the MPAA or RIAA they get pissed at the computer manufacturers and salesmen for giving them a 'defective' PC... Really nice trick the MPAA and RIAA manage on that...
This is actually why I refuse to vote... their are no 'good' candidates and the general public refuses to do more than select one box or another on a balot... Hence this is all we will ever get... I'd prefer to say I witheld my vote than actually being able to say I voted for this crap...
You forgot Tony Hawk's UnderGround (THUG) 2 which has graffiti as a central point...
Well while I don't live that far away (closer to Erie) it sounds better than the town I lived in during high school... We had no stores really, no places for kids, nothing much really except houses and bars... Want to guess the percent of kids that started into drugs/alcohol there before finishing high school? ;)
The same thing would just alienate already frustrated people in the US... I run the software/games department of one of the local electonics stores where I live and it is part of a large multinational chain, so I have a fairly close view of the matter. We have a corporate policy stating that we can't sell 'M' (their are no real 'AO' rated titles available so they don't bother to mention that rating) games to anyone under 17. Failure to obey this job requirement is terms for being 'let go'. Now that being said, when we tell kids we can't sell them the games they go find a parent and the parent verbally bitch slaps us for having to be bothered to act as a legal guardian of a minor... It only gets worse when I explain that while I can sell it to the parent, but not the child when the parent doesn't want to be involved anyways. The parents invaribly complain to store management and I then get bitch slapped verbally by management for them having to have listened to the prattle of the parents over it...
All in all making it a requirement to card (aka check ID like we do for cigerettes or alcohol) everyone buying 'M' rated games would just get me harrassed more by customers who don't care about the law and who don't care about their kids... Not a big suprise when we have people leave their kids for 4+ hours (up to 9 hours once) in our game section (where the video game demo systems are) while the parents leave the store and do other things... So it's not really a suprise to me that parents don't want to be responsible for their kids...
Why don't they even mention the RCA Lyra HD and RCA Lyra A/V? The current RCA Lyra HD is as small as an ipod mini, but with a 20 GB HDD instead of the measly 4 GB of the Ipod and it's the same price! It also comes with every accessory your ever likely to need... I work at an electronics store and I sell as many of these as I do Ipods, probably more...
Yet as was the case the last several times this type of story has come out they are ignored... I'm betting no one will even read this since I didn't get to reply until I got back home today, but in case you do the Lyra is my bet for Ipod killer... If anyone ever realizes they make one that is...
Ok first let me say: If you don't think Xbox live is worth it than you obviously have problems... I've had it for two years and just don't look back. They keep adding improved features to it year after year. That ~$50 a year pays for all the in-game and out-of-game capabilities now in xbox live.
Second let me add how are you going to make a dedicated game server for a game on a console system? Ever thought about that?
Lastly they aren't the same games (at least not normally their are a few exceptions though). Unreal is UT, but instead Unreal Championship. Medal of Honor isn't the same game on both console or PC either. Each gets their own titles. Same for Halo. Some near future titles and one current title are based on their PC versions, but multiplayer is a huge overhaul for console regardless of how similiar the game itself is between console and PC.
Um it should be SCPH-700XX... Why you ask? Because current PS models include: SCPH-70011, SCPH-70013, SCPH-70014... Though I also remember 70009, 70008, 70004, & 70001...
I know this because I've sold them (I've been the head of a stores game/software department). This minor differences between models have been all important at times. I could also definately see a PStwo push for it marketing-wise as in fact they did offically rename the last generation from PS1 to PSone.
Oh also:
In the US it would have to have a dial-up modem. It's one of the few reasons why people opt for a PS2 rather than a Xbox for online gaming. Which is funny because only a handful of games can be played without broadband, but in places like were I live broadband just hasn't caught on or isn't available to most people. FOr istance I had no broadband available til early this year.
External devices (such as hard drives, and what should be the near infamous PS2 4 controller adpater) have poor sales at best and so their features are never really exploited and the company just writes them off as bad ideas. Heck I have problems gettign people to buy a damn memory card with their PS2 even though it's pretty much required. Then they bitch about having to buy a second control (which in their mind should eb free). I can go on, but they want to buy just the system and maybe a game at best, why they even bother to try things like external hard drives after all the failures just amazes me....
Strange I have my Xbox connected via 802.11G to my wireless router and I've never ever had an issue with signal strength or latency... Which makes it strange that a PS2, which should have reduced load on the connection, has those problems.
I opted for wireless because I didn't want wires all across my living room and I've never looked back.
I have a CIS degree as opposed to your CS degree, but I make just over half of what you do and I work hugely varied shifts... Not to mention I'm on call... So it's not all that different. I have to put up with people who act like children to, so I'd hardly say it's all that different...
Somehow I think I deserve a pay raise first when you get more than two months fo time off per year & I get PTO that covers both sick days and vacation which accumulates as the year goes on so I have to wait to use it after the fiscal year starts... I've known lots of teachers in my life because my dad used to work as the head of maintenance for a school, so I'm not just tlaking out my ass.
I'd leave my job, but that would require moving fairly far away and I'd have to have the money to move (which isn't possible living paycheck to paycheck)... Locally this is the best I can get in my field (networking). I'd love to have your job right about now...
Those 'absurdly low paid' teachers make twice what I do as a begining networking associate with a four year degree and certs... I don't think they need to bitch about money at all...
Though your teachers need to coem to my state average starting salary in PA is ~40/k and the average is mid 50/k range... Hardly poor at all...
My senior year was sort fo similiar, but the computers came from grants the state governement was giving the school to rebuild it's 40 year old building with... And they ended up being all Macs of course... But it was fairly similiar... Though we were actually considered a club btw...
Unfortunately in all of our cases it was all a waste because no one cares what we did in some dinky little town school in teh middle of nowhere. They just care about degrees, certifications, and contacts... It's sad really, we'd all hoped for an outcoem liek you describe, but not even one of our motely crew has been successful...
I have a simple reason why it becomes so important to "get them a job and some income as soon as possible". Is due to one thing: College Loans.
I have no idea how old you are, but those offering me my college loans want their money now. ASAP. Not tomorrow, but today. Pay up or we'll make your life hell!
I'm not sure how many kids realize that, but I knew going in I'd have to pay back large sums of money as soon as I got out (most started bothering me at 6 months out). To make this worse for me I never did graduate (for a variety fo reasons). I'm not really suprised that people want to make moeny immediately...
Not to mention the more accepted view that people want all the 'cool things' in life. Which all take money. "Nothing in life is free", is just so true it's not even funny...
"You learn a lot, grow a lot, and change a lot in those years but you are still under the light security blanket that the college envrionment creates."
Huh you must have gone to a vastly different college than I did... My college was horrible in the 'light security blanket' area, in fact they were involved in screwing me over more times than I want to think about...
If I'd gone farther away from home for college I would have eneded up a bum living on the street when the college tossed me out of my apartment over a clerical error on their part... I guess if we all had good colleges that woudl be ok, but...
See I believe in following through with my principals and that means letting go of bands that make bad choices. Not that I haven't tried to stop some of them from making those choices... But some guy they hardly know doesn't quite inspire them to change their minds on what is commonly percieved as 'the greatest thing ever' for a musician. It's not my fault I try to stop them, but I can almost guarentee any band I like will get butchered through the label 'purchase' of their souls and I won't like what they do anymore or they'll fade away if I still do, because they weren't 'hip' enough for the label... It never fails...