I presume you mean storage on the optical drive. I'm not totally sure where you get the 2-22 times from, as if Blu Ray can hold 50GB (I have no idea what the capacity is), then it holds 6 times more. This means more game resource space, yes. However, as the 360 has a maximum capacity of ~8.5GB, and that most games are third party multiplatform, games will not take advantage of the full capacity of Blu Ray. The BD-ROM drive will be used for HD movies, that is the real scope of it.
Now, I think the playing PS2 games thing is a bit unfair. You could say the PS3 is inferior because it can't play Xbox games and the 360 can. Apples to oranges, but what did you really expect?
The HDMI issue is clearly a big bonus to you thanks to the rest of your devices having poor support, but I disagree with the HDCP technology and DRM out of principle. Again, I don't really consider HDMI to be a deal breaker.
I'm not sure quite where you get the idea that the PS3 will do homebrew. Now, we reckon it might just be running Linux, but Sony aren't exactly going to let you recompile the kernel or anything are they? What makes you think they'll support homebrew, what's your source? I doubt, with the fiasco surrounding the PSP homebrew scene (Sony keep trying to thwart homebrew with firmware updates), that they'll suddenly support it on PS3.
Something you also seem to completely miss, is that the PS3 is 6 months away. Anything could change with the PS3 or the 360 at this stage. Details on the PS3 are scarce, and nobody knows for sure what it will and won't be able to do. Also, nobody can predict what Microsoft will do with the Xbox 360 platform in response to Sony's launch.
I hate to burst the bubble slightly, but £70,000 salary is pretty damn huge. I would try around £40,000 - £50,000 as an above average, normal salary.
It also has to be said that if you are lucky enough to earn £70,000 per year, you only ever see £46,440. Yes, almost £26,000 goes to the fucking taxman.
Based on my ballpark figures (£40k and £50k), the actual in-your-pocket salary is £29,000 - £35,000.
Say the Joe Punter salary is £45,000. The take home salary per year is £31,600; or £2,600 per month. The cost of PS3 (£425) is 1.3% of your total year's salary, and 16% of a month's wages.
Remember also, that if you get a bonus of any sort that you might buy yourself, say, a PS3 with; and you earn more than £30,000... then 40% goes to the taxman. You don't even see it.
We'll never know what Sony's numbers are, but I certainly don't think the report is looking at "retail... or anywhere near retail" costing. That's just not realistic, and analysts aren't *that* stupid.
What's so arrogant about pricing thier console so they can actually make cash back on what they sell? Isn't that the point of business?
This is all very well when you have a monopoly, or the accepted 'normal' price for your category of product is around the price you're selling for (at profit). Sony are not in this position. The accepted 'normal' price is around $300 for games consoles (based on current price of Xbox 360, which is the PS3's competitor).
Sony are releasing a console with a retail price of almost double the accepted 'normal'. Despite what Sony will say (you know, "PS3 is capable of 5 petaflops compared to the 360's measly teraflop!!!!!11"), the performance and capability of the two consoles is not $300 different. Especially when multiplatform games tend to be written for the lowest common denominator. The actual visual difference will *NOT* be mindblowing (if you think it will be, you're in for a disappointment).
I am asserting, that charging $300 *more* than your closest competitor, when the performance and capabilities are near the same, is arrogant. Sony is expecting people to pay *double* for the PS3 brand... that's arrogance.
I like the joke, if I had points today you'd hve been a +1 Funny.
But, the article says that "Symantec is seeking to stop "further development, sale or distribution of he 'Vista' and 'Longhorn' versions of the Windows client and server operating systems," among other injunctions." (emphasis added).
This Symantec suit could *really* screw Microsoft if the courts grant an injunction. Then MS are facing the inevitable delays that they're going to make excuses for, PLUS the delays caused by Symantec.
No doubt you'll tell me the report is wrong and that Sony are doing it much cheaper. If they were able to make the units at a cost price of $450, then why (when Microsoft is making a loss selling at $300) would they not choose to sell the units for $300? Ok, they'll lose $150 on each system, but they'll probably sell far more... and we've already establised that big money isn't in hardware.
If you are right, and Sony are making a $150 profit on every console, then that would be another example of arrogance: inflating the price because they believe people will pay more for Sony.
I presume from your three options that you believe Sony are making a profit on each unit.
Allow me to disabuse you of that idea. Sony are looking at making a loss of over $200 on each unit at launch.
The high pricetag is not so that Sony can make a profit. In the games industry, the money is recouped on peripheral and software sales. Manufacturers are keen to sell their console at a loss, if it will encourage more people to buy. The more people that buy, the more people (potentially) locked into buying games and peripherals for a 5 year period.
I also presume that you believe Nintendo and Microsoft are undercutting the competition by releasing consoles with a lower pricetag. I'll leave out the Wii for this, because it is a very different kind of console. If you believe Microsoft are being arrogant by undercutting competition with the lower priced 360, you are mistaken. I'm usually the first to call Microsoft arrogant, but not this time. In this case, Microsoft cannot be accused of undercutting Sony as Microsoft were first to market.
If you look at the graph adjusted for inflation, you still find that the PS3 is overpriced in comparison to today's competitors.
I don't for a second believe that the PS3 will get a significant price cut after 2 or 3 months either. With most of the analyst reports saying that manufacturing costs are upwards of $900, Sony can't afford to charge any less.
As you can probably tell from my posts, I think it would be poetic justice if the PS3 failed miserably and dragged Sony down into the dirt. After so many total fuck ups (think rootkit, ATRAC3, etc), they don't deserve to win this round IMO.
Firstly, my bad for putting 'PS2' instead of 'PlayStation'. Easy mistake to make from that chart.
Second: I believe that the pricepoint and competition from Microsoft and Nintendo will kill the PS3. For starters, the nearest competitor (the Xbox360) is $200 cheaper!! And, by the time PS3 is released, the 360 will have a larger game catalogue and a much more established online service.
As for that "great Must Own Xbox360 game", who truly knows what games either console will have upon the release of the PS3? We're just going on what Sony and Microsoft are saying, which may not be accurate. The 'killer' PS3 titles like MGS and GT may be released a year after launch... like Halo 3 for 360; we just don't know.
My personal opinion? Sony's assertion that the PS3 will be vastly superior to everything else is pure arrogance. The six-hundred dollar pricetag is pure arrogance. Kutaragi's confidence that the PS3 will crush the competition is also pure arrogance. That is what I think'll kill the PS3 - pure arrogance.
What is most interesting about those charts that you linked to is that fact the the 3 most expensive consoles (Neo Geo, 3DO and Saturn) flopped, while their cheaper competitors (such as PS2 and SNES) were highly successful.
Sony should clearly see that releasing the PS3 at $600 is suicide born out of arrogance.
Well, I don't know about the US market, but here in the UK the primary buyers of video games and consoles are teenagers and young (20s) males.
There is little chance that the parents of those 13-18 year olds are going to shell out £500 for a games console. Once you add games at £50 (yes, that's the selling price of a 360 game here)... an extra controller at £30... an online gaming subscription at £40... etc, this becomes a very expensive toy. And, no matter how fantastic the technology is, it's still a games console.
I don't think your gaming rig comparison works, as the perceived "normal" price of a computer is in the region of £800-1000. Parents would also see a computer as more useful than a games console, they may also see themselves getting some use out of it. AND... if you buy 3 games in the first year (a conservative estimate), an extra controller and an online gaming sub, your cost is £720. Very close to the cost of a computer, for a fraction of the functionality.
Now, as someone has already said, Sony are heavily subsidising the PS3... by up to $300. Historically, the only company that has ever made a profit on their consoles from day one is Nintendo. The technology in the 360 and the PS3 is similar when applied to games, to the point where many people do not consider there to be a noticeably big difference in graphic quality.
I have no idea where the 'IE' of games consoles come from, but with the three companies in similar positions (each have proprietary formats for games, proprietary controllers, proprietary connectors, proprietary everything), this could conceivably occur with all three of them. Hardware and software lock-in occurs with any games console, as only Xbox peripherals and games will work with Xbox.. ditto Sony and Nintendo. The only manufacturer that 'could' lock their console to one brand of TV is Sony (as they are the only that manufactures TVs), but even they aren't that stupid.
I hate to say it, but if I had the cash to throw around to afford an "ad-hoc network of the PS3s in your house to play Gran Turismo 5 multiplayer" [yes, PS3s... plural], I'd be laughing.
Ahh well. I took the advice of WoTG and dropped Google a note outlining my concerns and asking for some clarification on what 'click fraud' actually meant for me.
Whether it was my note that did it, or simply the fact that it was the end of the month, I don't know. I do know that my account was disabled about 2 hours ago.
I am going to email them, and I hope that my note of concern will stand me in good stead if it was just end of month checks. My account only had $43, so I wouldn't have seen anything this month anyway. I'd be much happier losing the $43 and starting a fresh slate with the advice you and others have given, than being banned from Adsense totally.
I'm not sure what is more daunting, the thought of finding another way to pay for hosting, or the task of stripping out all the Google ad code from the entire site!
Quite clever. But, for "Holmes Wilson" to get his hundred bucks, the person who clicks must sign up to Adsense (for the first time) and earn $100 themselves within 180 days.
Within that time, their account must stay valid and active. So this guy might make thousands from his clever trick.. or he might make absolutely nothing. Whatever the outcome, it will be a while before he sees any remuneration.
So anyone who was able to use the client has no problems running closed-source code.
I would disagree with that. For one, I use Windows on my laptop for two reasons: there is limited Linux driver support for the touchpad, wireless card, media reader, and graphics card (drivers, but 3D is poor); I rely on several Windows-only programs like Flash and Dreamweaver. This doesn't stop me from running Linux on my servers at home, or preferring open source software.
Now, I said myself that Azureus is bloated. I wish they would quit using Java, but the client is open source, full featured and suits me.
muTorrent's features aside, the fact that the client is closed source and that the author has been connected to an anti-P2P firm is enough to make paranoid me stick with Azureus. Call it FUD if you like, you could say that there is FUD lurking around every single closed source program... as you're never really sure what it's up to. It's my opinion, YMMV.
As for the RAM thing, I was just pointing out that with memory so cheap these days you can afford to shell out for the performance gains. And yes, being a hardware geek I have already got 2GB in my laptop... and Azureus doesn't really make that much of a dent. Again, YMMV.
Our only problem was users clicking too many Google ads in their attempts to support the site.
Out of interest, how did you combat this?
I'm currently in a similar position. I'm getting (Adsense) click through rates of 40% and around 200 page views per day. I'm 90% certain that this is just friends and others clicking to support me, and I'm worried that Google will pull my account because of it. I just find it highly suspicious, considering my site (blockavoid.co.uk) isn't even complete!
Ludvig Strigeus is associated with anti-P2P firm, PeerFactor. Whatever he says on his website about any agreements with them, the fact that muTorrent is closed-source speaks volumes in my book. I'm not saying there's anti-P2P stuff in there... I'm just saying we don't know. That doubt is enough to make paranoid me stick with something else.
Azureus, while it really does suck up memory and CPU cycles, it's full featured and open source. Considering that a 512MB SODIMM stick is $69, and that it will provide such a boost to other programs, I'd rather buy one than switch to muTorrent.
Too much hype before launch == a product that doesn't meet expectations. Simple as that.
Seriously, I never expected Viiv to be a huge success, but I at least expected that there would be some benefit that would make it worthwhile. If many high end HTPCs are better then Viiv computers (which the article suggests), but available at a lower pricepoint, then Viiv will fail. Anyone could have figured that out.
Personally, I don't have any problems with Exchange. It works alright and problems are few and far between. The biggest negative is that we have to pay MS for it.
I just have a problem with people who say things like: "Yes, you are incompetent. Use something other than Exchange, and something other than whatever you're running exchange on and you won't have that problem.":)
Use something other than Exchange, and something other than whatever you're running exchange on and you won't have that problem.
9 times out of 10, replacing the mail servers and Exchange with *something else* is not an option. You just have to deal with what you've got. If Exchange shits itself every other day and replacing it is out of the question, does that make you incompetent? No.
The whole thing is dumb. Surely it isn't all that difficult to use subdomains, like tel.foo.com or tel.foo.net?
If everyone adopted the format: tel.{company}.{tld} for their contact page, rather than bitching about new TLDs, then the number of collisions will be fewer (like foo.com, foo.net) and the world would be just as happy.
Slashdot Mirror
I presume you mean storage on the optical drive. I'm not totally sure where you get the 2-22 times from, as if Blu Ray can hold 50GB (I have no idea what the capacity is), then it holds 6 times more. This means more game resource space, yes. However, as the 360 has a maximum capacity of ~8.5GB, and that most games are third party multiplatform, games will not take advantage of the full capacity of Blu Ray. The BD-ROM drive will be used for HD movies, that is the real scope of it.
Now, I think the playing PS2 games thing is a bit unfair. You could say the PS3 is inferior because it can't play Xbox games and the 360 can. Apples to oranges, but what did you really expect?
The HDMI issue is clearly a big bonus to you thanks to the rest of your devices having poor support, but I disagree with the HDCP technology and DRM out of principle. Again, I don't really consider HDMI to be a deal breaker.
I'm not sure quite where you get the idea that the PS3 will do homebrew. Now, we reckon it might just be running Linux, but Sony aren't exactly going to let you recompile the kernel or anything are they? What makes you think they'll support homebrew, what's your source? I doubt, with the fiasco surrounding the PSP homebrew scene (Sony keep trying to thwart homebrew with firmware updates), that they'll suddenly support it on PS3.
Something you also seem to completely miss, is that the PS3 is 6 months away. Anything could change with the PS3 or the 360 at this stage. Details on the PS3 are scarce, and nobody knows for sure what it will and won't be able to do. Also, nobody can predict what Microsoft will do with the Xbox 360 platform in response to Sony's launch.
I hate to burst the bubble slightly, but £70,000 salary is pretty damn huge. I would try around £40,000 - £50,000 as an above average, normal salary.
It also has to be said that if you are lucky enough to earn £70,000 per year, you only ever see £46,440. Yes, almost £26,000 goes to the fucking taxman.
Based on my ballpark figures (£40k and £50k), the actual in-your-pocket salary is £29,000 - £35,000.
Say the Joe Punter salary is £45,000. The take home salary per year is £31,600; or £2,600 per month. The cost of PS3 (£425) is 1.3% of your total year's salary, and 16% of a month's wages.
Remember also, that if you get a bonus of any sort that you might buy yourself, say, a PS3 with; and you earn more than £30,000... then 40% goes to the taxman. You don't even see it.
This is all very well when you have a monopoly, or the accepted 'normal' price for your category of product is around the price you're selling for (at profit). Sony are not in this position. The accepted 'normal' price is around $300 for games consoles (based on current price of Xbox 360, which is the PS3's competitor).
Sony are releasing a console with a retail price of almost double the accepted 'normal'. Despite what Sony will say (you know, "PS3 is capable of 5 petaflops compared to the 360's measly teraflop!!!!!11"), the performance and capability of the two consoles is not $300 different. Especially when multiplatform games tend to be written for the lowest common denominator. The actual visual difference will *NOT* be mindblowing (if you think it will be, you're in for a disappointment).
I am asserting, that charging $300 *more* than your closest competitor, when the performance and capabilities are near the same, is arrogant. Sony is expecting people to pay *double* for the PS3 brand... that's arrogance.
I like the joke, if I had points today you'd hve been a +1 Funny.
But, the article says that "Symantec is seeking to stop "further development, sale or distribution of he 'Vista' and 'Longhorn' versions of the Windows client and server operating systems," among other injunctions." (emphasis added).
This Symantec suit could *really* screw Microsoft if the courts grant an injunction. Then MS are facing the inevitable delays that they're going to make excuses for, PLUS the delays caused by Symantec.
My source is the well known Merrill Lynch report that puts the cost price at launch at $800.
Here's a link to the original PDF: http://rsch1.ml.com/9093/24013/ds/276873_0.PDF
No doubt you'll tell me the report is wrong and that Sony are doing it much cheaper. If they were able to make the units at a cost price of $450, then why (when Microsoft is making a loss selling at $300) would they not choose to sell the units for $300? Ok, they'll lose $150 on each system, but they'll probably sell far more... and we've already establised that big money isn't in hardware.
If you are right, and Sony are making a $150 profit on every console, then that would be another example of arrogance: inflating the price because they believe people will pay more for Sony.
I presume from your three options that you believe Sony are making a profit on each unit.
Allow me to disabuse you of that idea. Sony are looking at making a loss of over $200 on each unit at launch.
The high pricetag is not so that Sony can make a profit. In the games industry, the money is recouped on peripheral and software sales. Manufacturers are keen to sell their console at a loss, if it will encourage more people to buy. The more people that buy, the more people (potentially) locked into buying games and peripherals for a 5 year period.
I also presume that you believe Nintendo and Microsoft are undercutting the competition by releasing consoles with a lower pricetag. I'll leave out the Wii for this, because it is a very different kind of console. If you believe Microsoft are being arrogant by undercutting competition with the lower priced 360, you are mistaken. I'm usually the first to call Microsoft arrogant, but not this time. In this case, Microsoft cannot be accused of undercutting Sony as Microsoft were first to market.
If you look at the graph adjusted for inflation, you still find that the PS3 is overpriced in comparison to today's competitors.
I don't for a second believe that the PS3 will get a significant price cut after 2 or 3 months either. With most of the analyst reports saying that manufacturing costs are upwards of $900, Sony can't afford to charge any less.
As you can probably tell from my posts, I think it would be poetic justice if the PS3 failed miserably and dragged Sony down into the dirt. After so many total fuck ups (think rootkit, ATRAC3, etc), they don't deserve to win this round IMO.
Firstly, my bad for putting 'PS2' instead of 'PlayStation'. Easy mistake to make from that chart.
Second: I believe that the pricepoint and competition from Microsoft and Nintendo will kill the PS3. For starters, the nearest competitor (the Xbox360) is $200 cheaper!! And, by the time PS3 is released, the 360 will have a larger game catalogue and a much more established online service.
As for that "great Must Own Xbox360 game", who truly knows what games either console will have upon the release of the PS3? We're just going on what Sony and Microsoft are saying, which may not be accurate. The 'killer' PS3 titles like MGS and GT may be released a year after launch... like Halo 3 for 360; we just don't know.
My personal opinion? Sony's assertion that the PS3 will be vastly superior to everything else is pure arrogance. The six-hundred dollar pricetag is pure arrogance. Kutaragi's confidence that the PS3 will crush the competition is also pure arrogance. That is what I think'll kill the PS3 - pure arrogance.
What is most interesting about those charts that you linked to is that fact the the 3 most expensive consoles (Neo Geo, 3DO and Saturn) flopped, while their cheaper competitors (such as PS2 and SNES) were highly successful.
Sony should clearly see that releasing the PS3 at $600 is suicide born out of arrogance.
Well, I don't know about the US market, but here in the UK the primary buyers of video games and consoles are teenagers and young (20s) males.
There is little chance that the parents of those 13-18 year olds are going to shell out £500 for a games console. Once you add games at £50 (yes, that's the selling price of a 360 game here)... an extra controller at £30... an online gaming subscription at £40... etc, this becomes a very expensive toy. And, no matter how fantastic the technology is, it's still a games console.
I don't think your gaming rig comparison works, as the perceived "normal" price of a computer is in the region of £800-1000. Parents would also see a computer as more useful than a games console, they may also see themselves getting some use out of it. AND... if you buy 3 games in the first year (a conservative estimate), an extra controller and an online gaming sub, your cost is £720. Very close to the cost of a computer, for a fraction of the functionality.
Now, as someone has already said, Sony are heavily subsidising the PS3... by up to $300. Historically, the only company that has ever made a profit on their consoles from day one is Nintendo. The technology in the 360 and the PS3 is similar when applied to games, to the point where many people do not consider there to be a noticeably big difference in graphic quality.
I have no idea where the 'IE' of games consoles come from, but with the three companies in similar positions (each have proprietary formats for games, proprietary controllers, proprietary connectors, proprietary everything), this could conceivably occur with all three of them. Hardware and software lock-in occurs with any games console, as only Xbox peripherals and games will work with Xbox.. ditto Sony and Nintendo. The only manufacturer that 'could' lock their console to one brand of TV is Sony (as they are the only that manufactures TVs), but even they aren't that stupid.
I hate to say it, but if I had the cash to throw around to afford an "ad-hoc network of the PS3s in your house to play Gran Turismo 5 multiplayer" [yes, PS3s... plural], I'd be laughing.
Ahh well. I took the advice of WoTG and dropped Google a note outlining my concerns and asking for some clarification on what 'click fraud' actually meant for me.
Whether it was my note that did it, or simply the fact that it was the end of the month, I don't know. I do know that my account was disabled about 2 hours ago.
I am going to email them, and I hope that my note of concern will stand me in good stead if it was just end of month checks. My account only had $43, so I wouldn't have seen anything this month anyway. I'd be much happier losing the $43 and starting a fresh slate with the advice you and others have given, than being banned from Adsense totally.
I'm not sure what is more daunting, the thought of finding another way to pay for hosting, or the task of stripping out all the Google ad code from the entire site!
Ho hum, life goes on.
Ok, ok:
How do you get a Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician (MCDST) off your doorstep?
Pay him for the fscking pizza, of course!
Quite clever. But, for "Holmes Wilson" to get his hundred bucks, the person who clicks must sign up to Adsense (for the first time) and earn $100 themselves within 180 days.
Within that time, their account must stay valid and active. So this guy might make thousands from his clever trick.. or he might make absolutely nothing. Whatever the outcome, it will be a while before he sees any remuneration.
Since when does an AIBO dog count as a gadget for the lazy?
Gadget for the stinking rich more like.
I would disagree with that. For one, I use Windows on my laptop for two reasons: there is limited Linux driver support for the touchpad, wireless card, media reader, and graphics card (drivers, but 3D is poor); I rely on several Windows-only programs like Flash and Dreamweaver. This doesn't stop me from running Linux on my servers at home, or preferring open source software.
Now, I said myself that Azureus is bloated. I wish they would quit using Java, but the client is open source, full featured and suits me.
muTorrent's features aside, the fact that the client is closed source and that the author has been connected to an anti-P2P firm is enough to make paranoid me stick with Azureus. Call it FUD if you like, you could say that there is FUD lurking around every single closed source program... as you're never really sure what it's up to. It's my opinion, YMMV.
As for the RAM thing, I was just pointing out that with memory so cheap these days you can afford to shell out for the performance gains. And yes, being a hardware geek I have already got 2GB in my laptop... and Azureus doesn't really make that much of a dent. Again, YMMV.
Out of interest, how did you combat this?
I'm currently in a similar position. I'm getting (Adsense) click through rates of 40% and around 200 page views per day. I'm 90% certain that this is just friends and others clicking to support me, and I'm worried that Google will pull my account because of it. I just find it highly suspicious, considering my site (blockavoid.co.uk) isn't even complete!
Any suggestions?
Yes, because if he has *just* killed his wife then he still has a murder weapon and is still on the loose. I'd call that a danger!
Too much hype before launch == a product that doesn't meet expectations. Simple as that.
Seriously, I never expected Viiv to be a huge success, but I at least expected that there would be some benefit that would make it worthwhile. If many high end HTPCs are better then Viiv computers (which the article suggests), but available at a lower pricepoint, then Viiv will fail. Anyone could have figured that out.
The drive does have a capacity of 6GB. The 0.4GB discrepancy is due to two factors:
So saying the mini holds 6GB is not incorrect at all.
Personally, I don't have any problems with Exchange. It works alright and problems are few and far between. The biggest negative is that we have to pay MS for it.
:)
I just have a problem with people who say things like: "Yes, you are incompetent. Use something other than Exchange, and something other than whatever you're running exchange on and you won't have that problem."
9 times out of 10, replacing the mail servers and Exchange with *something else* is not an option. You just have to deal with what you've got. If Exchange shits itself every other day and replacing it is out of the question, does that make you incompetent? No.
The whole thing is dumb. Surely it isn't all that difficult to use subdomains, like tel.foo.com or tel.foo.net?
If everyone adopted the format: tel.{company}.{tld} for their contact page, rather than bitching about new TLDs, then the number of collisions will be fewer (like foo.com, foo.net) and the world would be just as happy.
Disclaimer: I haven't read (nor will I read) TFA.
I thought that was what
From http://www.apple.com/dotmac/features.html:
"Access contacts, calendars, bookmarks, and email on the Web via any Internet-connected Mac, Windows-PC or even hotel TV"
Although, I don't use a Mac myself, so Google's calendar is pretty damn good IMO.