$500-600 is a significant barrier to entry. If I'm looking for a gaming device am I going to choose 1) the device that is most expensive and with the worst gaming experience, but the crappy games are cheaper! and it can play Netflix and do a lot of other non-gaming things pretty well, or 2) a good, fun, gaming system that's much cheaper, so much so that you can by many of the more expensive games for less than the cost of the more expensive device? That was a run-on, but I'm going to choose #2.
It gets boring quickly. And it's descriptive of the iPhone gaming experience. You play it when it's convenient, but you don't ever particularly look forward to playing it. I don't think that's too elitist to want something that you can look forward to spending time on, rather than something that's just there when you are otherwise bored.
This was my initial impression as well, and this article felt like nothing other than scare tactics to me too. The markets are too dissimilar for Apple to be stealing a significant portion of Nintendo's market share. I play games on my iPhone and I play games on my DS Lite but the two are completely different experiences. The gaming experience on the iPhone is, frankly, terrible. Angry Birds is sort of the best there is for it. I tried more in depth things like Wesnoth and Fargoal on the iPhone but put them down because the interface just gets in the way. You can't play games for more than a few minutes on a time with a tiny touch interface screen that's also the screen you have to view things with. Anyone who uses a DS for the games that are popular on a DS are not going to enjoy playing those games on an iPhone. So it doesn't matter that iPhone games are only 1/10 the price of DS games.
I would guess that the 3DS is simply failing on its own merits. I think 3D is overrated and the 3DS never seemed like a compelling product to me. I love my DS Lite and I wish that Nintendo just kept producing games for that instead.
Note how I phrased my statements. This is all just my gut feeling based on my own experience. But a lot of market analysis is based on less.
Well, you can always cancel your service. You might even be able to get out of the cancellation fee since they broke the contract. But then again, that's exactly what they want you to do. They don't want anyone to keep the unlimited plan.
There's a bit of filtering going on here. There is a wide range of qualities of stereo equipment available. This is as true now as it was 30 years ago. But the reason "your dad's" stereo equipment sounds better is because, after 30 years, the cheap crap ended up in the dump. The only stuff that's worth over keeping and lovingly caring for over 30 years is the good stuff. The crap gets filtered out over time.
The difference between now and then is that now manufacturers try to cram more stuff in to your receiver. If you want good audio, get a straight stereo receiver, don't get an A/V receiver. A/V receivers try to do too much and the manufacturers are likely to neglect good quality sound components when they are trying to cram in support for 7.1 Dolby Surround and multiple video inputs/outputs, iPod integration, etc.
If you want a good sounding stereo you are just as likely to find a good old one for under $100 at a garage sale or on Craigslist as you are to find a new, moderately expensive one at the store - if you can find a store that sells stereo receivers that don't cram in A/V and everything else.
I don't understand. Why is there no legal opposition to this sort of behavior? When Microsoft did this sort of thing with IE, they got slapped with some really major anti-monopolistic lawsuits.
"QED says that the path light travels is a path of least action, one where the phasors of all the contributing paths consistently reinforce each other. Nothing in QED states that light must travel at the speed of light, it just does so because the paths where it travels at some other speed interfere with each other destructively. Over very short distance scales, light may propagate superluminally, at least, QED makes no statement that it is impossible. So this is a useful result."
Except that NATO didn't arrest anybody, the FBI did. However, NATO is engaged in an illegal and very prominent bombing campaign in Libya. That is the more likely motivation.
"How is 10Mbps plenty? 10Mbps internet connections are becoming more common, I currently pay for 15 but average about 30Mbps. That's only going to keep increasing."
He's saying that 10Mbps is plenty for many, not all. You can do a lot with 10Mbps, you can even stream video. Maybe not HD video, I don't know. My Internet is less than 5Mbps and I can stream Netflix to two TVs simultaneously, and run torrents and browse the web without lag. For me, 10Mbps would probably be plenty.
Don't believe the telecom marketing that tells you that 1.5Mbps isn't enough to watch YouTube.
Btw, what are you doing with your Internet connection that you average 30Mbps?
Democrats may (as a group) be more conservative than european progressives, but that doesn't change that democrats are the progressive influence in American politics.
Hardly.
Economic stimulus - that failed to do more than keep the economy from catastrophic collapse, and did nothing to actually improve the economy
Universal healthcare - that forced every citizen to become captives of the private insurance market
Financial reform(including consumer protection) - HAHAHAHAHA!!!!! (that means I think you're joking because that's so transparently wrong)
Unemployment insurance extensions - yeah, minor
US Auto industry bailout - and don't forget banking industry bailouts! Now how exactly is it progressive to bail out the biggest, most powerful companies and fail to bail out any one else, particularly the millions of victims of the massive fraud perpetuated by the banks?
Now we have a "progressive" party that's offering to gut Medicare and Social Security, two of the most critical and important parts of the social safety net - and fix a budget problem that's caused by securities fraud, while the fraudsters are lavishly enriching themselves even further with bailout money!
Sorry, but you're wrong. There may be a few progressives among the Democrats, but they have no power to enact any kind of progressive policy, and as Obama should have taught us, could simply be outright lying. Democrats stopped being progressive when they sold their souls to the corporatists. Now it's just two conservative parties battling for the attention of the big bucks and completely lying to the rest of us.
Citation please? Because there are many articles here on/. about how cable and mobile carriers are finding various ways to throttle or discriminate among data and in general act in a non-common-carrier-like fashion, and how they have challenged and opposed attempts at net neutrality rules.
"free market fundamentalists need to understand that you need government regulating society to counteract the force of gravity that is money. money attracts more money, and this is a force of injustice that NATURALLY develops. without government controls counteracting this, society inevitably stratifies into classes, with the rich having all the money, and the poor leading miserable lives they can't escape"
The free-market fundamentalists do understand this, but what makes them free market fundamentalists is the belief that whatever the free market does is - by definition - a good thing. And government interference is necessarily a bad thing because it distorts the infallible free market, which is always and necessarily good and cannot be questioned, much like God.
In effect, they worship Mammon.
If the free market destroys the meritocracy, then it should be destroyed. If you cannot climb out of poverty then it's because you're morally inferior to the rich who were born with silver spoons in their mouths. If all wealth accumulates in the hands of a few then it's because they worked hard for their wealth and deserve the fruits of their labor. If the middle class is destroyed and 99% of the population ends up in grinding poverty, it's because they are lazy and morally inferior, but to suggest that such a thing can happen is heresy.
Also, never mind that the free market is itself very flawed and not ever free, or that it's completely immoral - that's heresy as well.
If it were up to this court the government would be able to quarter troops in our homes. It's no question how it will rule when it comes to what protections the Fourth Amendment provides (none at all). That it is hearing this case is bad news by itself.
Slashdot Mirror
$500-600 is a significant barrier to entry. If I'm looking for a gaming device am I going to choose 1) the device that is most expensive and with the worst gaming experience, but the crappy games are cheaper! and it can play Netflix and do a lot of other non-gaming things pretty well, or 2) a good, fun, gaming system that's much cheaper, so much so that you can by many of the more expensive games for less than the cost of the more expensive device? That was a run-on, but I'm going to choose #2.
It gets boring quickly. And it's descriptive of the iPhone gaming experience. You play it when it's convenient, but you don't ever particularly look forward to playing it. I don't think that's too elitist to want something that you can look forward to spending time on, rather than something that's just there when you are otherwise bored.
This was my initial impression as well, and this article felt like nothing other than scare tactics to me too. The markets are too dissimilar for Apple to be stealing a significant portion of Nintendo's market share. I play games on my iPhone and I play games on my DS Lite but the two are completely different experiences. The gaming experience on the iPhone is, frankly, terrible. Angry Birds is sort of the best there is for it. I tried more in depth things like Wesnoth and Fargoal on the iPhone but put them down because the interface just gets in the way. You can't play games for more than a few minutes on a time with a tiny touch interface screen that's also the screen you have to view things with. Anyone who uses a DS for the games that are popular on a DS are not going to enjoy playing those games on an iPhone. So it doesn't matter that iPhone games are only 1/10 the price of DS games.
I would guess that the 3DS is simply failing on its own merits. I think 3D is overrated and the 3DS never seemed like a compelling product to me. I love my DS Lite and I wish that Nintendo just kept producing games for that instead.
Note how I phrased my statements. This is all just my gut feeling based on my own experience. But a lot of market analysis is based on less.
Well, you can always cancel your service. You might even be able to get out of the cancellation fee since they broke the contract. But then again, that's exactly what they want you to do. They don't want anyone to keep the unlimited plan.
There's a bit of filtering going on here. There is a wide range of qualities of stereo equipment available. This is as true now as it was 30 years ago. But the reason "your dad's" stereo equipment sounds better is because, after 30 years, the cheap crap ended up in the dump. The only stuff that's worth over keeping and lovingly caring for over 30 years is the good stuff. The crap gets filtered out over time.
The difference between now and then is that now manufacturers try to cram more stuff in to your receiver. If you want good audio, get a straight stereo receiver, don't get an A/V receiver. A/V receivers try to do too much and the manufacturers are likely to neglect good quality sound components when they are trying to cram in support for 7.1 Dolby Surround and multiple video inputs/outputs, iPod integration, etc.
If you want a good sounding stereo you are just as likely to find a good old one for under $100 at a garage sale or on Craigslist as you are to find a new, moderately expensive one at the store - if you can find a store that sells stereo receivers that don't cram in A/V and everything else.
I don't understand. Why is there no legal opposition to this sort of behavior? When Microsoft did this sort of thing with IE, they got slapped with some really major anti-monopolistic lawsuits.
Anon above to the rescue!
"QED says that the path light travels is a path of least action, one where the phasors of all the contributing paths consistently reinforce each other. Nothing in QED states that light must travel at the speed of light, it just does so because the paths where it travels at some other speed interfere with each other destructively. Over very short distance scales, light may propagate superluminally, at least, QED makes no statement that it is impossible. So this is a useful result."
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2348240&cid=36876110
Isn't this tautological, since photons *are* light? Is this an example of yet another poor summary?
No business is built on losing money AND no business grows as large and as quickly as Google has by running a slim profit margin.
"Liability insurance pays out when your sued or lose a lawsuit. Its specifically there for when you do something illegal or negligent."
That is a really dumb business model.
Don't get me started on Friday's mystery meat! Veal, my ass.
-former chef at the NATO cafeteria
I'll remember the term for this after I have my coffee
Social engineering? Manipulation?
Except that NATO didn't arrest anybody, the FBI did. However, NATO is engaged in an illegal and very prominent bombing campaign in Libya. That is the more likely motivation.
Combined with a passive acceptance of it, that is exactly the same thing.
x86 architecture is over 30 years old too. Tried and true.
"How is 10Mbps plenty? 10Mbps internet connections are becoming more common, I currently pay for 15 but average about 30Mbps. That's only going to keep increasing."
He's saying that 10Mbps is plenty for many, not all. You can do a lot with 10Mbps, you can even stream video. Maybe not HD video, I don't know. My Internet is less than 5Mbps and I can stream Netflix to two TVs simultaneously, and run torrents and browse the web without lag. For me, 10Mbps would probably be plenty.
Don't believe the telecom marketing that tells you that 1.5Mbps isn't enough to watch YouTube.
Btw, what are you doing with your Internet connection that you average 30Mbps?
Democrats may (as a group) be more conservative than european progressives, but that doesn't change that democrats are the progressive influence in American politics.
Hardly.
Economic stimulus - that failed to do more than keep the economy from catastrophic collapse, and did nothing to actually improve the economy
Universal healthcare - that forced every citizen to become captives of the private insurance market
Financial reform(including consumer protection) - HAHAHAHAHA!!!!! (that means I think you're joking because that's so transparently wrong)
Unemployment insurance extensions - yeah, minor
US Auto industry bailout - and don't forget banking industry bailouts! Now how exactly is it progressive to bail out the biggest, most powerful companies and fail to bail out any one else, particularly the millions of victims of the massive fraud perpetuated by the banks?
Now we have a "progressive" party that's offering to gut Medicare and Social Security, two of the most critical and important parts of the social safety net - and fix a budget problem that's caused by securities fraud, while the fraudsters are lavishly enriching themselves even further with bailout money!
Sorry, but you're wrong. There may be a few progressives among the Democrats, but they have no power to enact any kind of progressive policy, and as Obama should have taught us, could simply be outright lying. Democrats stopped being progressive when they sold their souls to the corporatists. Now it's just two conservative parties battling for the attention of the big bucks and completely lying to the rest of us.
What if your choice was taking a TSA lackey job or letting your children starve? Because the economy right now is that bad. What would you do then?
Think of the children! QED.
If that's what you think of it already, you might as well.
Citation please? Because there are many articles here on /. about how cable and mobile carriers are finding various ways to throttle or discriminate among data and in general act in a non-common-carrier-like fashion, and how they have challenged and opposed attempts at net neutrality rules.
"free market fundamentalists need to understand that you need government regulating society to counteract the force of gravity that is money. money attracts more money, and this is a force of injustice that NATURALLY develops. without government controls counteracting this, society inevitably stratifies into classes, with the rich having all the money, and the poor leading miserable lives they can't escape"
The free-market fundamentalists do understand this, but what makes them free market fundamentalists is the belief that whatever the free market does is - by definition - a good thing. And government interference is necessarily a bad thing because it distorts the infallible free market, which is always and necessarily good and cannot be questioned, much like God.
In effect, they worship Mammon.
If the free market destroys the meritocracy, then it should be destroyed. If you cannot climb out of poverty then it's because you're morally inferior to the rich who were born with silver spoons in their mouths. If all wealth accumulates in the hands of a few then it's because they worked hard for their wealth and deserve the fruits of their labor. If the middle class is destroyed and 99% of the population ends up in grinding poverty, it's because they are lazy and morally inferior, but to suggest that such a thing can happen is heresy.
Also, never mind that the free market is itself very flawed and not ever free, or that it's completely immoral - that's heresy as well.
"companies that want to pay people a decent wage for work they do"
HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!
(breathes in)
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!
If it were up to this court the government would be able to quarter troops in our homes. It's no question how it will rule when it comes to what protections the Fourth Amendment provides (none at all). That it is hearing this case is bad news by itself.
Twice as many what as you'd expect? Pies that are being served at the end? Don't make me read the article to understand the summary.
Walter, he peed on my rug!