"You're right! Your anecdotal evidence totally trumps that other guy's anecdotal evidence!"
Pftbtb. Okay, my anecdotal rebuttal: I haven't found the several million Wii's on eBay that'd be there if the 'shortage' was strictly being caused by employees cashing in on the demand.
"All they're doing is having friends and family come in to make the purchases, on the day they know the shipments are being put on the shelves."
I have no doubt that that happens. But wouldn't eBay have a million Wii's a month for sale if this was really the cause of the high demand for the Wii?
"This is a self-fulfilling scenario where inducing an artificial shortage (by not making enough) creates a huge demand because every kid has to show his/her friends he's managed to get a Wii and every parent is made to feel like a terrible parent because he/she's not managed to get one for the kids."
They're producing 1.8 million units a month. That is not inducing an artifical shortage. (Not to mention, there's absolutely no way they could sustain the hype for over a year. People do get tired of waiting.)
"Me? I'll wait a couple of months after Xmas and buy a Wii when they're cheaper... "
No you won't. The price won't drop until demand slows. Fat chance.
"How is this news? It's advertising, a reminder that you should buy a Wii and buy it now, since it's still readily available and presumably won't be in a couple of weeks."
Uh, no. It's sold out right now. They actually sold 1 million units Thanksgiving week. They're 'advertising' something you cannot realistically go buy right now.
"The employees in the stores get first dibs on the consoles when they come in, so they buy up most of them and sell them on eBay for big profit."
That's possible, but not necessarily true. The retailer I worked at would have forbidden that. If high demand items were in low supply, we weren't allowed to buy them. I know the same was also true for the EB that was down the street. Those stores didn't want that reputation.
"Broken ribs and spine? Ok, this man was found in his workplace (a quarry.) Isn't reasonable to assume something else broke those ribs and spine and whatever did that also damaged the phone and battery?"
He probably fell after it exploded. Unfortunately, the article's not too clear on that.
"He sustained an injury that is similar to a burn in the left chest and his ribs and spine were broken," Yonhap news agency quoted Kim as saying.
"It is presumed that pressure caused by the explosion damaged his heart and lungs, leading to his death," it quoted him as saying. I'll grant you that where they slipped it in is confusing, but the doctor doesn't mention the ribs or spine.
"And here all this tyme I though 1 gigabyte was 1 gigabyte (1024 bytes) just like 1 byte was 1 byte no matter where it was, where it was going, or how it got there."
Heh. The byte itself, sure. The expense at it getting there, no. Most connections are a lot faster at downloading than uploading. Then there's another problem of how many connections it takes to actually retrieve that data, and the fact that the number can only be finite. So, yes, how it got there is important, no matter how many times a byte at one end of the connection ends up to be identical to the byte at the other end when the computer recieves that. If you upload a megabyte to recieve 100 megabytes and it takes 200 connections to other peers to get it, that's not the same as uploading a kilobyte to recieve 100 megabytes using only one connection. ISPs are serving multiple customers at a time. Because of the nature of the internet, their customers can abuse that line no matter what type of infastructure they have in place.
So, no, it's not as simple as you're saying. Sorry.
"Except that you can't buy a book, download it to a PC, and then transfer it over USB to the Kindle. You have to have a wireless connection to the store in order to buy a book."
No, you don't. It uses an SD slot AND a USB connection. You are not required to use Sprint's service, and frankly, it's silly that you assume it.
"You got to love DRM."
Even if what you said were true, this has nothing to do with DRM.
"And that is why Princess Peach is only willing to bake a cake."
Oh.. that's not true. She'll mail you 5 1-ups from time to time. If you decline, they go to the orphanage. You gotta admit, the Mushroom Kingdom treats their orphans better than any other country in the world.
- Cheaper - Lighter - Smaller - Doesn't overheat. (Sadly, TabletPCs aren't that friendly in that regard.) - More battery friendly - Easier on the eyes - EV-DO syncing. (Wikipedia in places your Tablet PC would find challenging.)
It's a specialized device. It's not necessarily for you. I wouldn't say it's a total waste, either. If not for the early adopter price, I'd have one right now.
"I think it is because of the n00b's perception that bigger=more powerful, like how Walmart's Green PC is in a full-sized case when it doesn't need to be."
I think it's because many people use their laptop as a desktop replacement, not needing it to be mobile that often. Considering most of our desks look at home on a Borg ship, I'm really surprised this isn't well understood, here.
* It would tell you that you need to sign for.mak to use it (duh)
* It would have only one button (which would do ant function, receive, send, attach)
* It would be that "kool and pretty"(TM) that instead on a mail site you,d though that you are in teletubby land with silver colors
* It would have iPhone compatibility but forget about the other players
* It would save "It just works" even when you have no ineternet connection
* When some problems arise, they would , of course , blame MS.
* Everybody on/. would praise it even if they limited it to 1 MB/month amd send the letters DRMed:-) One man's Troll is another man's Funny. Lighten up, yeesh.
"It doesn't or shouldn't matter how the bandwidth is used, 1 gigabyte is 1 gigabyte whether it's html, ftp, gopher, or P2P."
A gigabyte going up is not the same as a gigabyte going down. It's also worth noting that there's a lot more individual connections going on with P2P traffic than with standard downloads via HTTP or FTP.
"I can already tell we'll see the double standard from people commenting on this story: people who download music and other copyright material every day without paying but will somehow be outraged by this terrible display of disregard for copyright. How dare they!!"
You're right. Now I feel bad that everybody thinks I wrote White and Nerdy.:(
I apologize, I screwed up the quote tag and it ate half my post. I was too stupid to hit 'preview'.
Reposted here:
ps 1-3 are dull because they tell the backstory. We already know how it ends, we already know pretty much what happens. So there's no tension and no surprise. They stretch out what made an interesting few paragraphs in the original trilogy to 3 films. That's a failing in the writing, not an automatic result of being a prequel. For example: George could have taken the old saying "History is written by the victors" and given us something interesting to watch. He just had no such inspiration for the prequels.
ps 1-3 are dull because they tell the backstory. We already know how it ends, we already know pretty much what happens. So there's no tension and no surprise. They stretch out what made an interesting few paragraphs in the original trilogy to 3 films. "History is written by the victors" and given us something interesting to watch. He just had no such inspiration for the prequels.
"Plus, it would have helped if we saw more of Darth Vader than than pathetic and brief scene we get of him in the end. I'm not one for ragging on artists when they don't deliver exactly what the fanboys want, but the "birth" of Darth Vader scene was very weak sauce."
We shouldn't have seen Vader at all. We're not supposed to know he's Annakin until ESB. George forgot he was writing prequels, here. The last trilogy would have fared better if he had used those prequels to give us a different understanding of what happened. Suppose the Jedi, who were said to be heroes in the original trilogy, turned out to have been not-so-nice? At least then, 1,2, and 3 would have value no matter if you watched them first, or the original trilogy.
Star Wars explores no scientific principles in a fictional context. Rather, it's space opera - dramatic story with whizzing space ships, bleeping robots, and fuzzy aliens set to a dramatic musical score. We're talking about a movie, not literature, here. As long as it has robots and space ships, it's gonna be called sci-fi. That rating's only there to give the audience an idea of what they're going to see, not to give it some classification based on the real meat of the movie. It's superficial, but it's the way it's always worked.
Slashdot Mirror
"You're right! Your anecdotal evidence totally trumps that other guy's anecdotal evidence!"
Pftbtb. Okay, my anecdotal rebuttal: I haven't found the several million Wii's on eBay that'd be there if the 'shortage' was strictly being caused by employees cashing in on the demand.
"Allright. I checked just four web shops right before posting the comment. Half of them had Wiis, half of them would get them Monday or Tuesday."
I checked several places and couldn't find it. If you can tell me where to get one, I'll happily take it. I'm trying to get one for my sis for Xmas.
"All they're doing is having friends and family come in to make the purchases, on the day they know the shipments are being put on the shelves."
I have no doubt that that happens. But wouldn't eBay have a million Wii's a month for sale if this was really the cause of the high demand for the Wii?
"This is a self-fulfilling scenario where inducing an artificial shortage (by not making enough) creates a huge demand because every kid has to show his/her friends he's managed to get a Wii and every parent is made to feel like a terrible parent because he/she's not managed to get one for the kids."
They're producing 1.8 million units a month. That is not inducing an artifical shortage. (Not to mention, there's absolutely no way they could sustain the hype for over a year. People do get tired of waiting.)
"Me? I'll wait a couple of months after Xmas and buy a Wii when they're cheaper... "
No you won't. The price won't drop until demand slows. Fat chance.
"How is this news? It's advertising, a reminder that you should buy a Wii and buy it now, since it's still readily available and presumably won't be in a couple of weeks."
Uh, no. It's sold out right now. They actually sold 1 million units Thanksgiving week. They're 'advertising' something you cannot realistically go buy right now.
"The employees in the stores get first dibs on the consoles when they come in, so they buy up most of them and sell them on eBay for big profit."
That's possible, but not necessarily true. The retailer I worked at would have forbidden that. If high demand items were in low supply, we weren't allowed to buy them. I know the same was also true for the EB that was down the street. Those stores didn't want that reputation.
Ah, I get what you're saying now. I think this was a case of me thinking really small while you're thinking big picture. Sorry if I was confusing.
He probably fell after it exploded. Unfortunately, the article's not too clear on that. "He sustained an injury that is similar to a burn in the left chest and his ribs and spine were broken," Yonhap news agency quoted Kim as saying.
"It is presumed that pressure caused by the explosion damaged his heart and lungs, leading to his death," it quoted him as saying. I'll grant you that where they slipped it in is confusing, but the doctor doesn't mention the ribs or spine.
"And here all this tyme I though 1 gigabyte was 1 gigabyte (1024 bytes) just like 1 byte was 1 byte no matter where it was, where it was going, or how it got there."
Heh. The byte itself, sure. The expense at it getting there, no. Most connections are a lot faster at downloading than uploading. Then there's another problem of how many connections it takes to actually retrieve that data, and the fact that the number can only be finite. So, yes, how it got there is important, no matter how many times a byte at one end of the connection ends up to be identical to the byte at the other end when the computer recieves that. If you upload a megabyte to recieve 100 megabytes and it takes 200 connections to other peers to get it, that's not the same as uploading a kilobyte to recieve 100 megabytes using only one connection. ISPs are serving multiple customers at a time. Because of the nature of the internet, their customers can abuse that line no matter what type of infastructure they have in place.
So, no, it's not as simple as you're saying. Sorry.
"Except that you can't buy a book, download it to a PC, and then transfer it over USB to the Kindle. You have to have a wireless connection to the store in order to buy a book."
No, you don't. It uses an SD slot AND a USB connection. You are not required to use Sprint's service, and frankly, it's silly that you assume it.
"You got to love DRM."
Even if what you said were true, this has nothing to do with DRM.
"And that is why Princess Peach is only willing to bake a cake."
Oh.. that's not true. She'll mail you 5 1-ups from time to time. If you decline, they go to the orphanage. You gotta admit, the Mushroom Kingdom treats their orphans better than any other country in the world.
"This device, however, appears to be large, clumsy and hideous."
It has a bigger screen to read from. Longer battery life. Etc.
"Why do you need a keyboard on your book? Only to order them, in this case. It's in the way 99% of the time."
Wikipedia access.
"It should have had some sort of on-screen keyboard"
That would require touch sensitivity. Not impossible, but we haven't been seeing touch-sensitive e-paper displays.
WiFi has its charms -- one of them is that it's not regionally locked.
Niether is the USB port in the device.
"what does this do that a tablet couldn't do?"
- Cheaper
- Lighter
- Smaller
- Doesn't overheat. (Sadly, TabletPCs aren't that friendly in that regard.)
- More battery friendly
- Easier on the eyes
- EV-DO syncing. (Wikipedia in places your Tablet PC would find challenging.)
It's a specialized device. It's not necessarily for you. I wouldn't say it's a total waste, either. If not for the early adopter price, I'd have one right now.
"I think it is because of the n00b's perception that bigger=more powerful, like how Walmart's Green PC is in a full-sized case when it doesn't need to be."
I think it's because many people use their laptop as a desktop replacement, not needing it to be mobile that often. Considering most of our desks look at home on a Borg ship, I'm really surprised this isn't well understood, here.
"Ick. Comedy Central is famous for getting shows like this and then killing them off quick. MST3K anyone?"
Oh yeah, five years is real quick. BTW, that's longer than they had under Fox's reign.
* It will be named iMail (duh)
* It would tell you that you need to sign for
* It would have only one button (which would do ant function, receive, send, attach)
* It would be that "kool and pretty"(TM) that instead on a mail site you,d though that you are in teletubby land with silver colors
* It would have iPhone compatibility but forget about the other players
* It would save "It just works" even when you have no ineternet connection
* When some problems arise, they would , of course , blame MS.
* Everybody on
"It doesn't or shouldn't matter how the bandwidth is used, 1 gigabyte is 1 gigabyte whether it's html, ftp, gopher, or P2P."
A gigabyte going up is not the same as a gigabyte going down. It's also worth noting that there's a lot more individual connections going on with P2P traffic than with standard downloads via HTTP or FTP.
"Sort of like if Microsoft designed the iPod box?"
Not really. The iPod box one was funny.
"I can already tell we'll see the double standard from people commenting on this story: people who download music and other copyright material every day without paying but will somehow be outraged by this terrible display of disregard for copyright. How dare they!!"
:(
You're right. Now I feel bad that everybody thinks I wrote White and Nerdy.
Reposted here: ps 1-3 are dull because they tell the backstory. We already know how it ends, we already know pretty much what happens. So there's no tension and no surprise. They stretch out what made an interesting few paragraphs in the original trilogy to 3 films. That's a failing in the writing, not an automatic result of being a prequel. For example: George could have taken the old saying "History is written by the victors" and given us something interesting to watch. He just had no such inspiration for the prequels.
"Plus, it would have helped if we saw more of Darth Vader than than pathetic and brief scene we get of him in the end. I'm not one for ragging on artists when they don't deliver exactly what the fanboys want, but the "birth" of Darth Vader scene was very weak sauce."
We shouldn't have seen Vader at all. We're not supposed to know he's Annakin until ESB. George forgot he was writing prequels, here. The last trilogy would have fared better if he had used those prequels to give us a different understanding of what happened. Suppose the Jedi, who were said to be heroes in the original trilogy, turned out to have been not-so-nice? At least then, 1,2, and 3 would have value no matter if you watched them first, or the original trilogy.
"Despite being a better film than its predecessor, "The Empire Strikes Back" was really no better or worse than "Attack of the Clones"."
Only if you fast forwarded through the 'talking' bits. Pity you really discredited yourself, there.