I didn't read your title before the post, and my thought was 'wow, that sounds like fun.' lol I don't usually even -like- those kinds of games. I think it's the 'sustained and cumulative casual sadism' bit... Very intriguing.
Exactly how do you think Google innovates? They do it by giving 'John Doe in software development a raise and stock options', as well as other benefits, and encourage him to try new things. Because he's happy and they'll let him, he'll FEEL like trying new things. If John Doe makes an average salary and isn't encouraged to innovate, he's going to keep his head down so he won't lose his job for screwing up the new idea he had.
If you really think Yahoo can just say 'We need something new.' and a suit is going to come up with it, you're sadly mistaken.
I think you have it backwards. The corporate structure was holding back The Sims, not the other games. They did an experiment and found The Sims sold a lot more games if let run more free. They don't see any -harm- in changing the structure for the rest to match, but there's no indication they intend to treat the other games like The Sims. In fact, they indicate the opposite by their choice of groups. If The Sims was lumped with anything else, we could assume that other thing was like The Sims to them.
I'm not a real big EA fan, but The Sims -is- a good series, and I like some of the other games that will be in the 'EA Games' line. I can't help but think that removing the sports games (which I hate) from the decision process for the games I like would be anything but bad. At worst, they continue as they have. At best, they comes up with innovative game ideas and distribution concepts. Episodic content has not yet taken off, despite the fact that many people -like- the idea, and merely hate the implementation. Telltale Games (Sam & Max) recently proved that episodic -could- be done well. Their difference seems to be that they didn't treat it like a whole game, then split it, and they didn't treat it like episodes could be released as expansions, every 6 months.
Maybe this will help EA produce more top-notch games, or at least more innovative games, as the corporate ladder isn't as tall. Of course, it could be that they just put out a lot MORE games, and some turn out to be good... Time will tell.
I pay $120/mo for cable TV (HD, DVR) and Internet (6mpbs). I don't find it hard to believe that a decent movie or sports package on top of that would run another ~$46.
My package is the 'standard' one with HD being another $10/mo, I think. It includes all the channels you expect like Comedy Central, Discovery and Scifi Channel, but none of the premium channels like HBO and Showtime.
So, yeah, for people who are into both TV and Internet heavily, $2k a year is pretty standard.
That's true, assuming the person was actually responsible for the bill in the first place.
When I left California, I called and got my power shut off. I confirmed my identity, and everything was good. Until 3 days later, my landlord pretended to be me and managed to get them to turn it back on without a lick of proof. He didn't pay it when it came due in a month, and it got stuck on me. A few months later, a collection agency calls. So-Cal Edison didn't even -try- to contact me, despite the fact that I left a phone number and physical address. I told them to stuff it and contacted the correct people to put it in dispute and why. (The asshole landlord is now in jail for child-molestation. He was a real, genuine asshole.)
Not everyone who is harassed by these companies deserves it.
Just the other day, someone started a no-middlemen gold trading service website. I forget the name, and don't even want to know it, and certainly don't want to advertise it.
But it's interesting that 1) has already been done on your list.
As for 'kids play free', the Koreans have been doing this for a while. The game is free for everyone, but if you want the better armors and stuff, you'll -never- earn enough gold to get them. You basically have to buy them with real money.
"How do you know it has a heating problem until you buy it? Even reports from other consumers are inconsistent"
Oh, maybe by listening to the absolutely tidal wave of people talking about how hot the 360 gets. It doesn't matter how much the company denies it, there's way too many people talking about it. They even talked about it before launch!
I knew the cooler system was inadequate when I bought it. I purchased one of those shitty fans for the back, and it nearly destroyed my box. (I was warned, I ignored it... My fault. Never buy from that company again.)
Oddly enough, I found my Wii gets extremely hot while it's off as well. Why? Because it uses the exact same amount of power on or off, and the fans don't blow when it's off.
So I got creative. I bought a fan that would blow a think slice of air and mounted it to the side of a bookcase, and put the units up on thin rails. Now a slow, cool airflow blows underneath both units and neither of them are ever noticeably hot.
Should I have had to go to the extra work? Probably not. But I've protected my electronics for their lifetime, and the lifetime of the next consoles I buy, for under $10, instead of relying on the good will of a corporation. Corporations aren't out to spread good will. They're out to make money, and they're going to do that without remorse.
Protect yourself. Don't expect them to protect you.
"And finally, in game currency can be used to gain advantage in PvP (buying gear, potions, consumables). PvP is competitive, maybe you don't care because it's a "game" but some people care because they want a leveled playing field. You know, having a game that's fair and fun..."
This argument is invalid.
Even if the money input into a game is the same, the amount of time a person plays is not. The college kid who can spend 70 hours a week playing WoW is -not- equal to the guy with 3 kids and a wife, and 2 jobs. Oddly enough, the very same process that you say makes the game unfair would make the game more fair for him.
There are plenty of other people out there with no time other than this hypothetical guy, as well. Why should they be on the unfair side of things?
You can cry 'no fair' all you want, but the current situation is just as unfair.
It's interesting to note that the current fad in Korea is to make 'free' games that you buy gold or items with real money if you like, and that's how the server is supported. Since they pretty much run the trendy side of MMOs, I expect we'll see some quality English MMOs doing that pretty soon.
The others have it basically correct. There are companies that a business can hire that have someone come in and do certain things in the store, depending on the store's needs. In our store, they were to check out the tech department and note how long it took to be greeted, ask a few questions, and then basically do that in 2 other departments. Sometimes they buy something so they can check out at the register as well. They are almost always reimbursed for whatever they buy, and it wasn't a candy bar for us, because it would be too obvious.
Companies that do it well, you cannot tell who the mystery shopper is. In the year and a half I worked there, we never once figured out who a mystery shopper was for sure, though we suspected 1 person that we never saw again. One of the managers, when he was at a previous store, DID figure out who the mystery shopper was for that store. I forget how, but it involved a bit of deceit.
#6 in the kiosks section is my favorite: "Don't be surprised if the salesman asks really base/borderline-insulting questions if you act interested. They think you're a secret shopper."
Nothing like pissing off legit customers so you can score a little higher on a phony performance score. A store I worked at dropped the mystery shopper crap while I worked there, but never explained the reason. I strongly suspect it was because the test isn't grounded in reality, but in the random chance of a single shopper once a month. They replaced it with a survey system, which is probably almost as bad... Surveys only get the best and the worst answer... Why would someone take the time to fill out a 'I got pretty normal service' answer? They don't, even if you offer $$$ prizes randomly.
KIO Slaves are one of things that keeps me using Kubuntu as my main OS. Unfortunately, they don't work with non-KDE programs without some serious kludges, like a special FUSE app. (I'm not sure 'app' is the right word, but 'driver' isn't, and 'plugin' isn't... 'File system' seems awful redundant.)
The ability to quickly access files on other computers without mounting or any preparation whatsoever is a great timesaver for me. Topped off with the fact that I love Quanta (after trying many other editors) and K3B, the only thing left is complete compatibility with games... Wine just isn't good enough for this yet. Major games like WoW play well, but still with nowhere NEAR the speed and special effects that Windows has natively. It's getting there, but it's not enough yet.
Konqueror though... Well, it even renders Slashdot funny, when Safari doesn't. It cuts off the ends of posts constantly, and things like the reply links don't appear quite often. No other browser has this problem. It's got a long way to go to even catch up with Safari, which is kind of sad.
Damn, this sounds SO much like flamebait. If only it weren't true. My father even bitches about the little public transportation we DO have. "Why do we have to pay for their transportation?" and shit like that.
I, personally, prefer to walk everywhere I possibly can. When I lived in California, I didn't bring my car out for the first 6 months, because I simply walked or bicycled everywhere. Nothing was more than 5 miles from me, so it was okay. The first time I rode my bike 5 miles to someone's house, I thought their eyes were going to pop out. They couldn't believe it.
Americans, in general, don't -want- public transportation and we are still very much a majority-rule country. Until it becomes attractive or necessary for the general populace, we'll continue driving our gas-guzzling SUVs.
Recently, T-Mobile changed their data settings and basically made it worthless. I'm thinking that this was why. They didn't want VOIP going out over their wireless, and they killed the entire wireless data network to do it. I had only recently signed up for it, so I don't miss it much, but it's got my thinking about another provider if they are going to treat their customers like criminals.
Of course, maybe unlimited data connection for $5/mo was too cheap. If they can't actually support that, they should charge more instead of destroying their service.
As I noted in the past, if you've only advertised through 1 venue, it's pretty easy to tell if it's working or not. But if you're doing other advertising, or you've done advertising in the past, the waters muddy a bit. If you have have a dozen ways you are advertising or have advertised, it's very very hard to tell how effective each one is.
1) Absolutely. There are many products I would never have bought, or tried anything like, if I hadn't seen a commercial.
2) Yup. I disagree about the 'forgetting', though. I've often seen a commercial and thought 'Wow, it's been a while since I had one of those. Time for one.' The tons of ads -do- serve the purpose they appear to, as well as others that are less clear.
3) Not sure that I agree. If I see an ugly women drinking Coke in a commercial, I always think 'WTF. They couldn't do better than that?' If I see a pretty woman, I think it's just the norm for advertising, and possibly remember the commercial because of the awesome babe. (This goes double for underwear commercials, despite the fact that I don't wear women's underwear.) There's been a HUGE upsurge in commercials that use 'ordinary' people... And every time I see one, I think 'man, dorks use that product.' Some even go out of their way to prove how monumentally stupid the person is before plugging the product. Does that really WORK? It just turns me away instantly.
That's great, if you're only advertising through the web and only with AdWords.
What if you're using 6 other web-based advertising companies as well as TV, radio, and newspaper? How do you know the person didn't forget your URL and search Google for you, then click on one of the paid ads instead of a search result? Or search result that was related to what you do, and see your ad there? Google didn't actually provide the initial consumer demand, they were just a means to find you afterwards.
The thing is, you don't -know- what happened, any more than we ever did. Educated guesses are great, but they're still just guesses and not facts.
The sibling post makes a good point about return visits as well, but I don't know how they're tracking the visit. Cookies could be cleared or on a public computer, IP addresses often change, I doubt they managed to get the person to sign up for an account the first time, but it's possible... Too many variables. His complex reporting system has managed to further refine the data, but not make it perfectly clear.
This is probably the most profound and sensible thing said so far. (It's probably a quote, but just roll with me here.)
Advertising is amazingly hard to quantify. How do you -know- if someone bought that item because of advertising, or because they just saw it in the store. Did your advertisement in Magazine X bring in any sales? Was it the TV commercials? Was it the fact that you advertised in 6 different ways? Could you have eliminated one of them with the exact same results, or even better results? Could you have added another?
It would be easy to spend more money trying to determine how successful your ads were than the actual ads cost.
The only thing that could make pulling Google ads worthwhile would be to make a big stink about it on 'moral' grounds and get the news media to advertise for you for a while. Getting Google to cancel their event was a great bonus.
I would be more interested in EBay results on Google's search if they actually HAD those results. Any time I've ever been looking to buy something, and saw an EBay ad on Google, it got no results when I clicked, despite the fact that the item WAS on EBay.
Admittedly, I never search for simple things like 'bowling ball', but rather the exact item I want, but still... The ads were always pointless when I would want them, and useless when I didn't.
you are wrong Mr. . The article says "Auction website eBay has pulled its US advertising from search engine giant and adversary Google." and not the other way around.
So basically you're saying there's a lot of media spin, then. No one who cares about the spheres would call them 'perfect' when they aren't and can't be, unless they had ulterior motives, like garnering support of those who wouldn't know it's impossible.
You're also saying that they're spending a lot of time and effort to redefine a kilogram in scientific terms without actually -changing- anything. If the world has a major catastrophe and the 'metal lump' was destroyed, this would enable us to continue to verify the weight of a kilogram... As if a billion devices around the world couldn't do the same thing.
It's a neat scientific feat, and really nice to have, but in no way 'necessary'. They're probably also going to get a lot of opposition to changing the 'definition'. In the end, it may end up as just another fact, instead of the definition they hope for: A kilogram is made of x silicon atoms.
Scientific respect of the community is -not- the same as support for their project.
Because it's 'scientific' that way. This is apparently someone's pet project and they are acting like the world has asked them to do it.
I'm not against the project, and I think it'll be nice to have a more scientific definition, but it doesn't change -anything-. A kg is still a kg. There is no scientific theory being used to create the 'perfect weight system' or anything like that. They are merely measuring what already exists and using it.
No, it's impossible. What they -really- mean is that it'll be perfect as far as we are able to measure it. And it has absolutely nothing to do with what is really important here: They are counting the atoms of silicon in a kilogram and will use that measurement as the basis for the kilogram, instead of some lump of metal in a vault.
The kilogram will not change, only a proposed scientific definition of it.
The sphere doesn't mean -anything- except that it'll weight exactly a kilogram and be amazingly round.
There's either a lot of media spin, or someone's attempt to get his work recognized and used. From what I can see, there's not a single soul that has dedicated to USING this new scientific definition, other than those directly involved with the project.
How does that replace the currently banned system? It doesn't. It adds another avenue of turn gold into money and does absolutely nothing to stop the black market that already exists.
In fact, it hurts it, because now it's even harder to track the blackmarket transfers.
The only way to kill the black market would be to sell gold for real money officially, and have only Blizzard and a single player involved in the transaction.
Thanks for the review. How long did you use the iPhone before you... What? You haven't used it at all?
It doesn't have a typical touch screen. It's specially made and even has a patent on the tech used, so I'm sure you haven't used one like it before. We won't -know- how bad or good the screen is until someone gets to review it that isn't paid by Apple.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't read your title before the post, and my thought was 'wow, that sounds like fun.' lol I don't usually even -like- those kinds of games. I think it's the 'sustained and cumulative casual sadism' bit... Very intriguing.
"Bald-faced lie"? I think that translates to 'standard operating procedure' in Washingtonese.
Exactly how do you think Google innovates? They do it by giving 'John Doe in software development a raise and stock options', as well as other benefits, and encourage him to try new things. Because he's happy and they'll let him, he'll FEEL like trying new things. If John Doe makes an average salary and isn't encouraged to innovate, he's going to keep his head down so he won't lose his job for screwing up the new idea he had.
If you really think Yahoo can just say 'We need something new.' and a suit is going to come up with it, you're sadly mistaken.
I think you have it backwards. The corporate structure was holding back The Sims, not the other games. They did an experiment and found The Sims sold a lot more games if let run more free. They don't see any -harm- in changing the structure for the rest to match, but there's no indication they intend to treat the other games like The Sims. In fact, they indicate the opposite by their choice of groups. If The Sims was lumped with anything else, we could assume that other thing was like The Sims to them.
I'm not a real big EA fan, but The Sims -is- a good series, and I like some of the other games that will be in the 'EA Games' line. I can't help but think that removing the sports games (which I hate) from the decision process for the games I like would be anything but bad. At worst, they continue as they have. At best, they comes up with innovative game ideas and distribution concepts. Episodic content has not yet taken off, despite the fact that many people -like- the idea, and merely hate the implementation. Telltale Games (Sam & Max) recently proved that episodic -could- be done well. Their difference seems to be that they didn't treat it like a whole game, then split it, and they didn't treat it like episodes could be released as expansions, every 6 months.
Maybe this will help EA produce more top-notch games, or at least more innovative games, as the corporate ladder isn't as tall. Of course, it could be that they just put out a lot MORE games, and some turn out to be good... Time will tell.
I pay $120/mo for cable TV (HD, DVR) and Internet (6mpbs). I don't find it hard to believe that a decent movie or sports package on top of that would run another ~$46.
My package is the 'standard' one with HD being another $10/mo, I think. It includes all the channels you expect like Comedy Central, Discovery and Scifi Channel, but none of the premium channels like HBO and Showtime.
So, yeah, for people who are into both TV and Internet heavily, $2k a year is pretty standard.
That's true, assuming the person was actually responsible for the bill in the first place.
When I left California, I called and got my power shut off. I confirmed my identity, and everything was good. Until 3 days later, my landlord pretended to be me and managed to get them to turn it back on without a lick of proof. He didn't pay it when it came due in a month, and it got stuck on me. A few months later, a collection agency calls. So-Cal Edison didn't even -try- to contact me, despite the fact that I left a phone number and physical address. I told them to stuff it and contacted the correct people to put it in dispute and why. (The asshole landlord is now in jail for child-molestation. He was a real, genuine asshole.)
Not everyone who is harassed by these companies deserves it.
Just the other day, someone started a no-middlemen gold trading service website. I forget the name, and don't even want to know it, and certainly don't want to advertise it.
But it's interesting that 1) has already been done on your list.
As for 'kids play free', the Koreans have been doing this for a while. The game is free for everyone, but if you want the better armors and stuff, you'll -never- earn enough gold to get them. You basically have to buy them with real money.
"How do you know it has a heating problem until you buy it? Even reports from other consumers are inconsistent"
Oh, maybe by listening to the absolutely tidal wave of people talking about how hot the 360 gets. It doesn't matter how much the company denies it, there's way too many people talking about it. They even talked about it before launch!
I knew the cooler system was inadequate when I bought it. I purchased one of those shitty fans for the back, and it nearly destroyed my box. (I was warned, I ignored it... My fault. Never buy from that company again.)
Oddly enough, I found my Wii gets extremely hot while it's off as well. Why? Because it uses the exact same amount of power on or off, and the fans don't blow when it's off.
So I got creative. I bought a fan that would blow a think slice of air and mounted it to the side of a bookcase, and put the units up on thin rails. Now a slow, cool airflow blows underneath both units and neither of them are ever noticeably hot.
Should I have had to go to the extra work? Probably not. But I've protected my electronics for their lifetime, and the lifetime of the next consoles I buy, for under $10, instead of relying on the good will of a corporation. Corporations aren't out to spread good will. They're out to make money, and they're going to do that without remorse.
Protect yourself. Don't expect them to protect you.
"And finally, in game currency can be used to gain advantage in PvP (buying gear, potions, consumables). PvP is competitive, maybe you don't care because it's a "game" but some people care because they want a leveled playing field. You know, having a game that's fair and fun ..."
This argument is invalid.
Even if the money input into a game is the same, the amount of time a person plays is not. The college kid who can spend 70 hours a week playing WoW is -not- equal to the guy with 3 kids and a wife, and 2 jobs. Oddly enough, the very same process that you say makes the game unfair would make the game more fair for him.
There are plenty of other people out there with no time other than this hypothetical guy, as well. Why should they be on the unfair side of things?
You can cry 'no fair' all you want, but the current situation is just as unfair.
It's interesting to note that the current fad in Korea is to make 'free' games that you buy gold or items with real money if you like, and that's how the server is supported. Since they pretty much run the trendy side of MMOs, I expect we'll see some quality English MMOs doing that pretty soon.
The others have it basically correct. There are companies that a business can hire that have someone come in and do certain things in the store, depending on the store's needs. In our store, they were to check out the tech department and note how long it took to be greeted, ask a few questions, and then basically do that in 2 other departments. Sometimes they buy something so they can check out at the register as well. They are almost always reimbursed for whatever they buy, and it wasn't a candy bar for us, because it would be too obvious.
Companies that do it well, you cannot tell who the mystery shopper is. In the year and a half I worked there, we never once figured out who a mystery shopper was for sure, though we suspected 1 person that we never saw again. One of the managers, when he was at a previous store, DID figure out who the mystery shopper was for that store. I forget how, but it involved a bit of deceit.
#6 in the kiosks section is my favorite: "Don't be surprised if the salesman asks really base/borderline-insulting questions if you act interested. They think you're a secret shopper."
Nothing like pissing off legit customers so you can score a little higher on a phony performance score. A store I worked at dropped the mystery shopper crap while I worked there, but never explained the reason. I strongly suspect it was because the test isn't grounded in reality, but in the random chance of a single shopper once a month. They replaced it with a survey system, which is probably almost as bad... Surveys only get the best and the worst answer... Why would someone take the time to fill out a 'I got pretty normal service' answer? They don't, even if you offer $$$ prizes randomly.
He was -guessing-. :D -whoosh-
KIO Slaves are one of things that keeps me using Kubuntu as my main OS. Unfortunately, they don't work with non-KDE programs without some serious kludges, like a special FUSE app. (I'm not sure 'app' is the right word, but 'driver' isn't, and 'plugin' isn't... 'File system' seems awful redundant.)
The ability to quickly access files on other computers without mounting or any preparation whatsoever is a great timesaver for me. Topped off with the fact that I love Quanta (after trying many other editors) and K3B, the only thing left is complete compatibility with games... Wine just isn't good enough for this yet. Major games like WoW play well, but still with nowhere NEAR the speed and special effects that Windows has natively. It's getting there, but it's not enough yet.
Konqueror though... Well, it even renders Slashdot funny, when Safari doesn't. It cuts off the ends of posts constantly, and things like the reply links don't appear quite often. No other browser has this problem. It's got a long way to go to even catch up with Safari, which is kind of sad.
Damn, this sounds SO much like flamebait. If only it weren't true. My father even bitches about the little public transportation we DO have. "Why do we have to pay for their transportation?" and shit like that.
I, personally, prefer to walk everywhere I possibly can. When I lived in California, I didn't bring my car out for the first 6 months, because I simply walked or bicycled everywhere. Nothing was more than 5 miles from me, so it was okay. The first time I rode my bike 5 miles to someone's house, I thought their eyes were going to pop out. They couldn't believe it.
Americans, in general, don't -want- public transportation and we are still very much a majority-rule country. Until it becomes attractive or necessary for the general populace, we'll continue driving our gas-guzzling SUVs.
Recently, T-Mobile changed their data settings and basically made it worthless. I'm thinking that this was why. They didn't want VOIP going out over their wireless, and they killed the entire wireless data network to do it. I had only recently signed up for it, so I don't miss it much, but it's got my thinking about another provider if they are going to treat their customers like criminals.
Of course, maybe unlimited data connection for $5/mo was too cheap. If they can't actually support that, they should charge more instead of destroying their service.
As I noted in the past, if you've only advertised through 1 venue, it's pretty easy to tell if it's working or not. But if you're doing other advertising, or you've done advertising in the past, the waters muddy a bit. If you have have a dozen ways you are advertising or have advertised, it's very very hard to tell how effective each one is.
1) Absolutely. There are many products I would never have bought, or tried anything like, if I hadn't seen a commercial.
2) Yup. I disagree about the 'forgetting', though. I've often seen a commercial and thought 'Wow, it's been a while since I had one of those. Time for one.' The tons of ads -do- serve the purpose they appear to, as well as others that are less clear.
3) Not sure that I agree. If I see an ugly women drinking Coke in a commercial, I always think 'WTF. They couldn't do better than that?' If I see a pretty woman, I think it's just the norm for advertising, and possibly remember the commercial because of the awesome babe. (This goes double for underwear commercials, despite the fact that I don't wear women's underwear.) There's been a HUGE upsurge in commercials that use 'ordinary' people... And every time I see one, I think 'man, dorks use that product.' Some even go out of their way to prove how monumentally stupid the person is before plugging the product. Does that really WORK? It just turns me away instantly.
That's great, if you're only advertising through the web and only with AdWords.
What if you're using 6 other web-based advertising companies as well as TV, radio, and newspaper? How do you know the person didn't forget your URL and search Google for you, then click on one of the paid ads instead of a search result? Or search result that was related to what you do, and see your ad there? Google didn't actually provide the initial consumer demand, they were just a means to find you afterwards.
The thing is, you don't -know- what happened, any more than we ever did. Educated guesses are great, but they're still just guesses and not facts.
The sibling post makes a good point about return visits as well, but I don't know how they're tracking the visit. Cookies could be cleared or on a public computer, IP addresses often change, I doubt they managed to get the person to sign up for an account the first time, but it's possible... Too many variables. His complex reporting system has managed to further refine the data, but not make it perfectly clear.
This is probably the most profound and sensible thing said so far. (It's probably a quote, but just roll with me here.)
Advertising is amazingly hard to quantify. How do you -know- if someone bought that item because of advertising, or because they just saw it in the store. Did your advertisement in Magazine X bring in any sales? Was it the TV commercials? Was it the fact that you advertised in 6 different ways? Could you have eliminated one of them with the exact same results, or even better results? Could you have added another?
It would be easy to spend more money trying to determine how successful your ads were than the actual ads cost.
The only thing that could make pulling Google ads worthwhile would be to make a big stink about it on 'moral' grounds and get the news media to advertise for you for a while. Getting Google to cancel their event was a great bonus.
I would be more interested in EBay results on Google's search if they actually HAD those results. Any time I've ever been looking to buy something, and saw an EBay ad on Google, it got no results when I clicked, despite the fact that the item WAS on EBay.
Admittedly, I never search for simple things like 'bowling ball', but rather the exact item I want, but still... The ads were always pointless when I would want them, and useless when I didn't.
you are wrong Mr. . The article says "Auction website eBay has pulled its US advertising from search engine giant and adversary Google." and not the other way around.
So basically you're saying there's a lot of media spin, then. No one who cares about the spheres would call them 'perfect' when they aren't and can't be, unless they had ulterior motives, like garnering support of those who wouldn't know it's impossible.
You're also saying that they're spending a lot of time and effort to redefine a kilogram in scientific terms without actually -changing- anything. If the world has a major catastrophe and the 'metal lump' was destroyed, this would enable us to continue to verify the weight of a kilogram... As if a billion devices around the world couldn't do the same thing.
It's a neat scientific feat, and really nice to have, but in no way 'necessary'. They're probably also going to get a lot of opposition to changing the 'definition'. In the end, it may end up as just another fact, instead of the definition they hope for: A kilogram is made of x silicon atoms.
Scientific respect of the community is -not- the same as support for their project.
Because it's 'scientific' that way. This is apparently someone's pet project and they are acting like the world has asked them to do it.
I'm not against the project, and I think it'll be nice to have a more scientific definition, but it doesn't change -anything-. A kg is still a kg. There is no scientific theory being used to create the 'perfect weight system' or anything like that. They are merely measuring what already exists and using it.
No, it's impossible. What they -really- mean is that it'll be perfect as far as we are able to measure it. And it has absolutely nothing to do with what is really important here: They are counting the atoms of silicon in a kilogram and will use that measurement as the basis for the kilogram, instead of some lump of metal in a vault.
The kilogram will not change, only a proposed scientific definition of it.
The sphere doesn't mean -anything- except that it'll weight exactly a kilogram and be amazingly round.
There's either a lot of media spin, or someone's attempt to get his work recognized and used. From what I can see, there's not a single soul that has dedicated to USING this new scientific definition, other than those directly involved with the project.
How does that replace the currently banned system? It doesn't. It adds another avenue of turn gold into money and does absolutely nothing to stop the black market that already exists.
In fact, it hurts it, because now it's even harder to track the blackmarket transfers.
The only way to kill the black market would be to sell gold for real money officially, and have only Blizzard and a single player involved in the transaction.
Thanks for the review. How long did you use the iPhone before you ... What? You haven't used it at all?
It doesn't have a typical touch screen. It's specially made and even has a patent on the tech used, so I'm sure you haven't used one like it before. We won't -know- how bad or good the screen is until someone gets to review it that isn't paid by Apple.