The 1979 Channel F was after price cuts due to competition with the 1977 Atari 2600. The launch price of the Channel F was higher ($169.95 in 1976, per Wikipedia), and the other of the first three cartridge-based consoles (the Magnavox Odyssey) was laucnhed in 1972 but I don't see a launch price anywhere.
Other early consoles were also pricey at launch -- the 1980 $299 Intellivision for instance.
I remembered consoles being $100 when I was growing up in the 70's and 80's.
Sure, but those weren't launch prices.
I remembered consoles being $200 to $300 in the late 90's (which is the period I was thinking of in the parent post).
Yeah, but in the late 1990s, you are mostly talking about consoles that have been on the market for years, and were selling at or below their early 1990s launch prices (considering inflation, below in either case) like the PlayStation and N64.
Of course, since console games on even the PS2 can, if they are developed to use it, just use a mouse, rather than settling for the default controller, I'm not sure that having a default controller that's closer to a mouse is really going to be a big deal.
First, you'll have DVDs being sold along whatever new format for years to come.
Maybe, maybe not. One of the big things driving next-generation DVD is copy control -- a "feature" that appeals to studios more than end-users -- I can see them pushing a next-gen standard, hard, by releasing on it substantially before standard DVD release, which would create additional demand for next-generation players.
No, at $600 people with lots of money to blow entertaining themselves and/or their children who buy based on brand identity are the primary market (giving the increasing concentration of wealth and decreasing real income across most of the spectrum in the US, it arguably makes some sense to aim higher in price point with luxury products.)
The early consoles cost about 2 days minimum wage to buy (so about $60 bucks). The current consoles cost over 10 days of minimum wage. This sony comes in at almost 14 days of minimum wage work.
The Atari VCS (later "2600") was released in 1977 at a purchase price of $199; 1977 federal non-farm minimum wage was $2.30. Assuming an 8 hour standard workday, the price of the Atari console at launch was just over 86.5 hours, about 11 days (not 2), at minimum wage.
The Sony Playstation 3 will have a launch price of $600, 2006 federal [unified] minimum wage is $5.15 (after the longest period with no increase [since 1997] since the creation of the federal minimum wage). The PS3 launch price will be 116.5 hours of minimum wage work, or almost 15 days.
But minimum wage has not kept pace with inflation; the 2005 inflation-adjusted price of the Atari console would be $645 -- more than that of the Playstation 3.
Not that this really matters; historical console prices are mostly irrelevant. The question is really is the PS3 too expensive compared to present day alternatives, and the answer to that requires assumptions about how consumers will perceive the prospective advantage of Blu-ray, the launch library, other consoles, etc.
I can customize a low-end $300 fry's pc into 15 months ago state of the art for about $300 and 2 hours (silent fan ($12), upgrade ram to 1gig ($29), new video card ($219), new power-supply ($29), $160 gig hard drive($39) ) and have a blazing PC for $600-- and it's also a PC.
Sure, you can. And it still won't play blu-ray disks, or any console-exclusive games, etc.
Since it won't be a perfect substitute for a PS3 (or any other console), doing so wouldn't necessary remove the incentive to by a console. Which is, after all, an entertainment luxury item many of whose purchasers will already have one or more gaming PCs, one or more DVD players, etc.
Yeah, it would be cleaner in one sense, though that's outside the controller of the OS developer.
An OS that relies on everyone else doing things in the most helpful possible manner isn't going anywhere, unless it already has a monopoly and can thus dictate the behavior of other manufacturers. Or unless the OS vendor also controls enough hardware, etc., vendors to not only make an OS that demands "good behavior", but can also supply enough conforming hardware, etc., to make the OS viable without outside help and thus give other manufacturers a reason to jump on the bandwagon.
OS's need to be designed for the real world if they want to be more than interesting toys for a handful of dedicated hobbyists.
If Google made an OS and integrated Google search technology would everyone cry foul?
No, at least not with the justification they have when Microsoft does it, unless Google, instead of Microsft, had a desktop OS monopoly.
The legal objection is based on leveraging a monopoly in one market to negate effective competition in another market. If Google, say, put together their own Linux distribution tomorrow, they could integrate whatever they wanted with it before they established an OS monopoly. If they ever did, though, their ability to leverage it to gain traction in other markets would be constrained by law.
Probably not, the hypocritical zealots.
Its only hypocritical when you are ignoring the central (monopoly) element of the objection.
I still don't see why that's Google's responsibility at all. Sure, it would be a nice feature to have (though its probably also not hard to prevent Google's spider from knowing that, in the first place, so outside of sponsored links, where conceivably active ongoing review is possible, though expensive, I don't see it working as an automated system.)
Still, I think the Google Co-op approach is a far more comprehensive way of addressing this and a whole host of other content-information problems holistically, rather than addressing each kind of potentially bothersome content by its own top-down, one-source's-judgement initiative, by providing a common platform that interested third parties can use to deliver any kind of content labels they want, where users can subscribe to whatever content-tagging services they choose.
Google Safe Browsing does have features to identify phishing sites. But attempted downloads are, really, something your browser ought to defend you against; a browser that will download and install software without you giving specific permission (or actively disabling sensible behavior) first isn't the search engines fault, and Google shouldn't protect people from sites that present them the possibility of installing software. Nor should it be primarily Google's job to evaluate the software available for download.
Of course, Google Co-op provides a platform for anyone who wants to start an adware/etc. (or anything else) tagging system to deploy it in Google's search engine.
But just how fancy are we talking here? I don't think this analogy is valid, ESPECIALLY in today's world. 'Fancy' usually amounts to an Olive Garden or some other such chain restaurant, whose prices are reasonable.
Er, really? To me Olive Garden (or El Torito, whatever) is firmly the quotidien camp -- where you go when you want a decent meal, and don't have time, energy, or inclination to cook; Taco Bell, etc., are in the "need food right now, have either little time or little money" camp, and fancy pretty much rules out most chains, and usually means quite a bit more expensive than Olive Garden. Something like, e.g., Chez Panisse, for example.
In the modern world, people want what is cheap and gives them the most for their money.
The modern world is no different from the past on this point.
Sony's not doing well on this point: if we extend the analogy, our 'hunger' is for games, not for music or movies or dancing and singing.
Really? Seems to me plenty of people want more than just game machines. Whether the PS3 will be able to sell itself as the kind of master entertainment system that Sony has been saying it was looking to in the next system since the PS2 came out, and whether it will be able to deliver on those promises, are still up on in the air. But it is certainly not the case that the market doesn't "hunger" for all those functions.
Game machines are, inherently, a luxury item, and bells and whistles are selling points. The best criticism against Sony is that (for instance, compared to the Wii in the controller department) they aren't doing enough in the "fancy" department to justify the price, not that fancy doesn't matters. Gamers spend inordinate amounts of money for "fancy".
It should have read: That should be, "other than." Notice the placement of the comma and the period.
The use of period-inside-quotes rather than the more rational system where the quotes surround the quoted material and the period, which ends the sentence which includes the quotation not a sentence inside the quotation, is placed after the closing quotes is a particular stylistic feature of common U.S. style, not a general feature of English as used globally. The "British" or "logical" style is the dominant style throughout the English-speakign world outside of American formal writing, and is prescribed by some publication's house styles even in the US.
Wouldn't it seem odd to someone if drug dealers advertised their services in newspaper ads?
People providing, for example, "medical" marijuana in California in violation of federal law (i.e., "drug dealers") do advertise in newspapers, particularly the free urban weeklies -- which, being free for "users" (i.e., "readers") to access, are pretty much the best dead-tree newspaper equivalent of free public search engines, as far as advertising.
And let's not even get started on prostitution.
Why isn't it odd they are allowed to reach audience via controlled ads on the search engines?
You seem to equivocating with the use of "they" here; the article is not about drug dealers being able to reach users via paid search engine ads.
Drug dealers are not the same thing as people who sites may provide the download of "dangerous" content, which is often (even if unwelcome to many users) not illegal.
We also have Yahoo/Ask/Google's ability to filter and review their own ads and remove offensive ads.
Offensive is subjective. People are offended by different things. You'd probably be a lot less happy if everything anyone found "offensive" was swiftly and immediately removed from every search engine. Sure, the stuff you don't like would be gone, but I'd bet you'd find much of the stuff you do like would be gone too.
The most dangerous keywords include "free screensavers," "bearshare," "kazaa," "download music" and "free games."
Er, so the results on searches specifically for products that include spyware are particularly likely to include spyware. Well, duh.
Users can't count on search engines to protect them; to the contrary, we find that search result rankings often do not reflect site safety.
Again, duh. The purpose of search ranking (particularly outside of sponsored results) is rather overtly to reflect relevance. Since relevance is pretty much orthogonal to (in cases where the search is for "kazaa" or "bearshare", perhaps opposed to) safety, it should come as no surprise that search rankings don't have any particularly consistent relation to safety.
Expecting that it would is like expecting that you can use the price of a vehicle as a proxy for its gas mileage.
Point being that if you want to live in a country where the "government" won't stop you from saying anything you like, Somalia's the place for you. It's an extreme example, but construed a certain way, you enjoy much less freedom of speech in the U.S. or China than in Somalia.
Construed such that the freedom is only from direct repression by a group of people with the label "government", sure; then again, while I think that the government is an important place to focus on who freedom operates against, I think focussing excessively narrowly on the government is a mistake.
Now, of course, others in the West (libertarians, particularly) will often disagree, and find that focus exclusively on the government appropriate in evaluating freedom. I understand their viewpoint, and see value in the focus they have in recognizing the special and dangerous role that government has which deserves special attention, but I think that it is wrong for that to be exclusive.
That nobody "sane" (i.e. non-Somalian, essentially) wants to live there indicates that, hey, maybe there are things that said "sane" people value more than freedom of speech, no?
I never said no one sane wanted to live in Somalia, I said no one sane would find the lack of effective libel laws the major factor on the "con" side when writing out the pros and cons of life in Somalia.
And, yes, there are things more important than a narrow, anti-government, negatively construed freedom of speech. Particularly, the things which are important both as essential prerequisites to practical enjoyment of such freedom, things that are components of the broader freedom that the narrowly construed freedom of speech is important because it is a component of (which includes freedom from private infliction of unjustified harm in retaliation for speech, which is notably lacking in Somalia), among other things. So?
I'm speaking in terms comprehensible to both you and me.
"Comprehensible" only in the sense of being complete, self-negating gibberish.
And you are making the mistake of assuming that no one can understand what they disagree with in your implicit excuse that your self-contradiction is an attempt to frame your viewpoint in language that I would "understand".
All it really says to me is that you can think of no self-consistent way of expressing your ideas, because they are hopelessly confused. And, in any case, a handwaving expression of contempt ("How noble" used sarcastically) isn't even the beginning of a critique.
How else could one possibly construct a critique of absolutism?
One could lay out clear and unambiguous proposed standards of evaluation (perhaps, some kind of operationalization of utility), and then show how absolutism fell short of those standards, and then be prepared to argue (recognizing, that, ultimately, one would reach first principles and potential impasse and resort to non-rational appeal) for the appropriateness of those standards.
Most Western regimes censor people who spread state secrets or who knowingly and with intent to mislead spread lies about others, like "Wolf Blitzer is a dirty Republican." This is usually called libel law.
"Wolf Blitzer is a dirty Republican" is neither a lie nor a state secret, and it would be very hard (even if Blitzer weren't, in fact, a Republican) to pursue a libel action based on that claim in most Western countries, even those with harsher libel laws than those in the United States.
Would you like to live under a government that doesn't offer these protections? (Check out Somalia.)
I doubt "lack of effective libel laws" is high on any sane person's list of objections to living in Somalia, frankly.
This whole series of superior judgemental condemnations of people who don't share your affectation of moral neutrality (clearly, its only an affectation, since you have no problem condemning people that articulate a different -- i.e., overtly absolutist -- value system from the one you have affected) is amusingly hypocritical.
How, precisely, is a citizen of China freer than a citizen of the US when starting a small business or doing their taxes, since you claim to know this from personal experience?
Orientalism and cultural bias as I use the terms have nothing to do with "bigotry against those with thin eyes"; it's just this pervasive Western blindness to the validity of value systems contrary to one's own.
Your use of "blindness" suggests that this "validity" is an absolute, objective fact. I would suggest that this is inaccurate.
For example, I'm Japanese, and I can tell you that plenty of Japanese "Occidentalists" would criticize the West for its emphasis on permanence, to name one example, over acceptance of transience.
Plenty of Westerners do, too. The fact that people disagree does not imply that both sides are equally correct.
Many Orientalists, I'm sure, as well as modern Japanese citizens would criticize our kamikaze ancestors' tradition of loyalty to the Emperor over rationality and individualism.
Perhaps. So?
It's not something I'm immune to either, but I consider understanding the nature of cultural bias essential to understanding the nature of other cultures in the first place.
Its possible to understand that people believe different things, and understand what they believe, without believe that the values most common in their culture (or those in yours, either, for that matter) are equally "valid" with all other possible sets of values.
Description is not prescription, and no belief about the latter is necessary to develop and understanding of the former.
My point was: 1.1 billion people is a huge mass. Changes happen in countries smaller than that with much more lax policies.
Yeah. Lax policies actually make change more possible. That's fairly obvious. Small size also makes organizing and executing change more practical.
I was implying that even a big minority screaming out loud could be heard, despite government's attempts.
OTOH, its a lot easier for a big government to intimidate a minority, or even a majority, and stop it from screaming out loud, especially when it controls, rather enthusiastically, the ability of people to communicate with each other.
China is becoming a modern country with a lot of limitations over freedom, and that sounds so inconsistent to me that there must be a reason why that happens.
I'm not sure what definition of "modern" you are using; certainly, much of its technical progress is because the interests of the other big players in the world economy are for trade without regard to freedom.
And I wasn't clamining that censorship support being popular led to it being evil. But when we are talking about a social group, its internal laws get to define what is evil and what is not.
This is, of course, a controversial position. No doubt it is one you hold (and many other disagree with) a priori, and discussions of "evil" where there is not fundamental agreement on this point dissolve into equivocation, as while the same word is being used, its not being used to mean the same thing. Beliefs of a society define what is popular. Laws define what is legal.
"Evil" though, to be a useful term is, I would say, either absolute, or it is subjective in the sense that, say, "tasty" or other aesthetic descriptors are, that is, it is in the eye of the speaker.
For example: Is killing a person evil?
"Killing a person" does not, IMO, adequately define a category about which categorical moral statements can be made; this is not a rejection of absolutism, though, its simply a statement that there is inadequate information to determine the moral status from that high-level a description.
If it is, why is that so many people in the US think it isn't when the government does it (death penalty)?
Because many people believe that killing people deliberately and without adequate cause (about which they have more specific beliefs) is evil. There is nothing particularly relativist or subjective about this -- its absolute morality, its just more complex than the kind of cartoon strawmen of absolutism that those embracing relativism like to set up to oppose.
No, he's presenting his viewpoint in a morally prescriptive language, which does not automatically render it invalid.
That's both true and false. Its true that "X is presented in morally prescriptive language" does not imply "X is invalid". OTOH, its false to claim that the particular prescriptive stance against prescriptivism that was articulated is not invalid, or that its invalidity is not directly related to the contradiction between its prescriptivism and its stand against prescriptivism.
(There is an additional problem in that it also conflates complexity -- that circumstances matter -- with subjectivism/relativism, when such complexity is perfectly consistent with prescriptivism/absolutism.)
It's simply a framework for communicating so that others, who do subscribe to such prescription, may derive understanding.
If that's its intent, it is fundamentally flawed for taking such a stupid approach. If you want to give someone with a different set of fundamental working principles understanding, you need to articulate your working principles in the clearest way possible without the inherent confusion added by framing it in terms of incompatible principles.
The self-inconsistency you perceive only applies within this framework, which itself constrains the range of possible meaning.
If the "self-inconsistency" only "applies within this framework", that underlines a pretty clear reason why it is obligatory to explain the alternative framework if you want someone who disagrees to "derive understanding", rather than adopting and communicating a self-inconsistent stance.
Of course, your implicit argument that the post was not itself an absolutist condemnation is itself laughable.
The usefulness of his viewpoint comes directly from its descriptive applicability, which even in this limiting external framework would appear to be far greater than the traditional Western moral absolutism that values freedom of speech, freedom of movement, etc. above all else.
The "viewpoint" has no special "descriptive applicability". The descriptive aspects can be dealt with just fine without adopting the viewpoint, and using language which is unambiguously descriptive rather than adopting traditional prescriptive moral language and engaging in utterly baffling equivocation by asserting that it is prescriptively wrong to use it in any but an unspecified descriptive sense.
OTOH, their government employees' real work all too often involves finding people who promote views different from the governments and prosecuting (and sometimes executing) them, so its something of a mixed blessing.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, since console games on even the PS2 can, if they are developed to use it, just use a mouse, rather than settling for the default controller, I'm not sure that having a default controller that's closer to a mouse is really going to be a big deal.
Well, same here, but for certain points in my childhood, $600 now is about equivalent to $200 then, anyhow.
Inflation, you know.
No, at $600 people with lots of money to blow entertaining themselves and/or their children who buy based on brand identity are the primary market (giving the increasing concentration of wealth and decreasing real income across most of the spectrum in the US, it arguably makes some sense to aim higher in price point with luxury products.)
The Atari VCS (later "2600") was released in 1977 at a purchase price of $199; 1977 federal non-farm minimum wage was $2.30. Assuming an 8 hour standard workday, the price of the Atari console at launch was just over 86.5 hours, about 11 days (not 2), at minimum wage.
The Sony Playstation 3 will have a launch price of $600, 2006 federal [unified] minimum wage is $5.15 (after the longest period with no increase [since 1997] since the creation of the federal minimum wage). The PS3 launch price will be 116.5 hours of minimum wage work, or almost 15 days.
But minimum wage has not kept pace with inflation; the 2005 inflation-adjusted price of the Atari console would be $645 -- more than that of the Playstation 3.
Not that this really matters; historical console prices are mostly irrelevant. The question is really is the PS3 too expensive compared to present day alternatives, and the answer to that requires assumptions about how consumers will perceive the prospective advantage of Blu-ray, the launch library, other consoles, etc.
Sure, you can. And it still won't play blu-ray disks, or any console-exclusive games, etc.
Since it won't be a perfect substitute for a PS3 (or any other console), doing so wouldn't necessary remove the incentive to by a console. Which is, after all, an entertainment luxury item many of whose purchasers will already have one or more gaming PCs, one or more DVD players, etc.
Yeah, it would be cleaner in one sense, though that's outside the controller of the OS developer. An OS that relies on everyone else doing things in the most helpful possible manner isn't going anywhere, unless it already has a monopoly and can thus dictate the behavior of other manufacturers. Or unless the OS vendor also controls enough hardware, etc., vendors to not only make an OS that demands "good behavior", but can also supply enough conforming hardware, etc., to make the OS viable without outside help and thus give other manufacturers a reason to jump on the bandwagon. OS's need to be designed for the real world if they want to be more than interesting toys for a handful of dedicated hobbyists.
I still don't see why that's Google's responsibility at all. Sure, it would be a nice feature to have (though its probably also not hard to prevent Google's spider from knowing that, in the first place, so outside of sponsored links, where conceivably active ongoing review is possible, though expensive, I don't see it working as an automated system.)
Still, I think the Google Co-op approach is a far more comprehensive way of addressing this and a whole host of other content-information problems holistically, rather than addressing each kind of potentially bothersome content by its own top-down, one-source's-judgement initiative, by providing a common platform that interested third parties can use to deliver any kind of content labels they want, where users can subscribe to whatever content-tagging services they choose.
Google Safe Browsing does have features to identify phishing sites. But attempted downloads are, really, something your browser ought to defend you against; a browser that will download and install software without you giving specific permission (or actively disabling sensible behavior) first isn't the search engines fault, and Google shouldn't protect people from sites that present them the possibility of installing software. Nor should it be primarily Google's job to evaluate the software available for download.
Of course, Google Co-op provides a platform for anyone who wants to start an adware/etc. (or anything else) tagging system to deploy it in Google's search engine.
Er, really? To me Olive Garden (or El Torito, whatever) is firmly the quotidien camp -- where you go when you want a decent meal, and don't have time, energy, or inclination to cook; Taco Bell, etc., are in the "need food right now, have either little time or little money" camp, and fancy pretty much rules out most chains, and usually means quite a bit more expensive than Olive Garden. Something like, e.g., Chez Panisse, for example.
The modern world is no different from the past on this point.
Really? Seems to me plenty of people want more than just game machines. Whether the PS3 will be able to sell itself as the kind of master entertainment system that Sony has been saying it was looking to in the next system since the PS2 came out, and whether it will be able to deliver on those promises, are still up on in the air. But it is certainly not the case that the market doesn't "hunger" for all those functions.
Game machines are, inherently, a luxury item, and bells and whistles are selling points. The best criticism against Sony is that (for instance, compared to the Wii in the controller department) they aren't doing enough in the "fancy" department to justify the price, not that fancy doesn't matters. Gamers spend inordinate amounts of money for "fancy".
If not, atr.ocio.us certainly is.
This whole series of superior judgemental condemnations of people who don't share your affectation of moral neutrality (clearly, its only an affectation, since you have no problem condemning people that articulate a different -- i.e., overtly absolutist -- value system from the one you have affected) is amusingly hypocritical.
How, precisely, is a citizen of China freer than a citizen of the US when starting a small business or doing their taxes, since you claim to know this from personal experience?
OTOH, their government employees' real work all too often involves finding people who promote views different from the governments and prosecuting (and sometimes executing) them, so its something of a mixed blessing.