General > RANT
Product designers should be dragged out and whipped in public!
Testlund:
--- Quote ---HP make good printers (and crappy computers) in my experience.
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Really? I've always thought that HP is a good hardware business all over, but I haven't own an HP product myself though. It's an old company and I remember seeing HP computers at my first job I had back in the 80's where they were working with military related technology.
--- Quote ---The kick backs from all that included junk software are where their margins are (the kickback is like >$50 per PC on average). The Xbox is the same way. Last I checked, it took an attach rate of over 9 games per console before Microsoft breaks even.
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Sorry for my limited understanding of english... You're saying they lose $50 per PC they sell and earn it back with software? ..and XBox has to sell 9 games per console to be able to compete with Microsoft?
--- Quote ---Companies make cheap, wasteful, disposable junk because that is what people want as evidenced by their buying habits.
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Yeah, the consumer has the power to affect the world with what they chose to pay for, but when most businesses go for the same strategy it's getting harder to find a product that stands out from the junk.
I saw a TV program once about the problem to reach the customers with commersials in the ever increasing commersial jungle, because people have started to get tired of it and learned to filter out and ignore. Companies use more and more weird ways to draw attention to their products. I find often when I watch a commersial on TV that it appears to be totally unrelated to the product. Just being something silly to draw attention.I find it very strange that they don't understand WHY they don't get through. Instead of inventing more sophisticated lies about their products that is supposed to improve your life and make you happy they should start making good quality products instead so they can JUST TELL THE TRUTH about them! Good products sell themselves!
--- Quote ---There's actually a therory that bascially says the reason SETI hasn't found anything is because inteligent species tend to destroy themselves...
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I expect that most scientists and people interested about biology and evolution don't agree with the popular opinion that humans are the ultimate end goal for evolution. In fact most species that just shows up tend to get extinct rather quickly through some catastrophy or missadopting and evolution starts over with some key species, and I think self awareness and intelligence is bad for a species. The only way for a species to survive is if everyone think alike and do alike and live in perfect balance with nature.
I would go so far as to say that Homo Sapiens is just a temporary catastrophy that has shown up, like the meteor that killed the dinosaurs. The key species for mammals after the dinosaurs was a small rat. I guess the Rattus Norvegicus will be the next one.
Peter:
--- Quote from: Testlund ---
--- Quote --- The kick backs from all that included junk software are where their margins are (the kickback is like >$50 per PC on average). The Xbox is the same way. Last I checked, it took an attach rate of over 9 games per console before Microsoft breaks even.
--- End quote ---
Sorry for my limited understanding of english... You're saying they lose $50 per PC they sell and earn it back with software? ..and XBox has to sell 9 games per console to be able to compete with Microsoft?
--- End quote ---
Microsoft owns the Xbox-console, microsoft is losing money for every Xbox where they haven't sold 9 Xbox games for.
I understand that if you didn't knew that Xbox was part of microsoft you didn't understand this.
But is it serious that there are 9games needed to break even, I thought it was just one or two games. I have a feeling they are losing money on the Xbox if this is true. Atleast they don't make a lot of profit of it.
EricL:
--- Quote from: Testlund ---You're saying they lose $50 per PC they sell and earn it back with software? ..and XBox has to sell 9 games per console to be able to compete with Microsoft?
--- End quote ---
Correct on the first. If Dell had to sell PCs without any pre-installed software, they would have to rasie prices just to break even. (They have tried this actually - their current "small business" offerrings make a big deal out of coming without any "trialware". Of course, those units cost more for the same hardware with the trial stuff.) The kick they get not just from shipping units with the software but when someone actually clikcs through and converts that 60-day trial anti-virus stuff to the real deal is very significant. Dell isn't really a PC business at least at the low end. They sell sockets for subscription software conduit and ink cartridges.
As Peter says, Microsft makes the Xbox and yes, they have to sell a large number of games (not just any games, but games made by Microsoft's game studios, which includes Bungee - it was like 8.6 games per console 3 years ago prior to the 360) just to break even. The larger xbox/games studio business unit has yet to break even. It's a multi-billion dollar company taken alone, but it's not profitable, not yet. You may have heard Bungee is spinning off after the success of Halo 3. This is because the folks there don't want their success to be shackled to the losing business of selling consoles. They want their compensation and stock options to reflect them as a stand alone business. Can you blame them? Local optomization.
--- Quote ---Instead of inventing more sophisticated lies about their products that is supposed to improve your life and make you happy they should start making good quality products instead so they can JUST TELL THE TRUTH about them! Good products sell themselves!
--- End quote ---
This is true in some cases and of course not at all true in other cases. It takes an educated consumer with the resorces to pay more in the short run for longevity and quality for this to be true. So, this is works for high-end products targeted at high end consumers - Porsches and Mercedes and perhaps IPhones and such. But the rise of cheap crap from China is testimony to the fact that the Wal-mart shopper generally prefers to save $5 in the near term even if they have to buy it twice in the longer term. Local optomization.
--- Quote ---I expect that most scientists and people interested about biology and evolution don't agree with the popular opinion that humans are the ultimate end goal for evolution.
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I certainly am not implying that. I was mearly pointing out a therory to support my point about evolution necessitating local optomization. THe point is that once a species gains power to change their own environment through climate change, making other species extict, nuclear bombs or whatever, local optomization make lead to it's destruction. Its a theory without evidence. I netiher agree nor dispute it.
--- Quote ---In fact most species that just shows up tend to get extinct rather quickly through some catastrophy or missadopting and evolution starts over with some key species,
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There are many examples of species which last a very long time with little change. Evolution favors change where change is favorred and favors stasis where stasis is favorred. It may be that environmental flexability and tool-using intelligence represents incredibly usefull and novel adaptations which change the game. Certainly extensive tool-using is a relativly recent adaptation in evolutionary terms.
--- Quote ---and I think self awareness and intelligence is bad for a species. ,
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I disagree with the first. I challenge you to show that my dog is not self aware. I challenge you to show that a single celled bacteria is not self aware. Forst you must define self aware, which is hard to do. Certainly anything with even a primitve nervous system is self aware in some respect in that it is "aware" of where it ends and everything else begins.
The jury is still out on the second point. Certainly one can make a case either way but you first have to define "good" and "bad". If "good" means population numbers, surely intelligence has done well for humans to date....
--- Quote ---The only way for a species to survive is if everyone think alike and do alike and live in perfect balance with nature.,
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Now your just spouting human-centric tree-hugging mystical nonsense. No species delibertly tries to live "in balance with nature". Every organism - every gene - makes localy optimal choices which serve to maximize their own fitness. Period. If the sum of these choices appear to result in some sort of balance when viewed from an external frame of reference - our frame of reference - that may be a necessary side effect of all that locally optimal behaviour, but it certainly is not intentional on the part of speceis or organisms or genes.
--- Quote ---I would go so far as to say that Homo Sapiens is just a temporary catastrophy that has shown up, like the meteor that killed the dinosaurs. The key species for mammals after the dinosaurs was a small rat. I guess the Rattus Norvegicus will be the next one.
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You may be right. The jury is still out. Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times....
Peter:
--- Quote from: EricL ---The jury is still out on the second point. Certainly one can make a case either way but you first have to define "good" and "bad". If "good" means population numbers, surely intelligence has done well for humans to date....
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We live so my idea is that intelligence is a good point(it is in our case). But what is good in evolution, we humans live now but will the specie survive, that can only be told far far in the future. There was a mammel that survived the dinosaurs. Well mammals are overall in animal species smart. And most species that survive nowadays are warmbloaded smart or coldbloaded energiesaving, I thought, could be wrong. So smart survives that's good isn't it.
Doesn't intellingence in evolution meanly mean.
More intelligence ----> more energy usage/quicker adoption to changing enviroment.
What means if enviroment changes fast inteligence is good.
If enviroment stays desame, intelligence is bad.
Testlund:
--- Quote ---No species delibertly tries to live "in balance with nature".
--- End quote ---
No, but they don't try to separate themselves from nature either. What I mean is that humans must agree to live in balance with nature, while other species just do it instinctively. Humans is a species that just suddenly appeared and went crazy on the planet, while other species makes slow progress and changes just a little so nature can keep up, and other species can keep up.
--- Quote ---I disagree with the first. I challenge you to show that my dog is not self aware. I challenge you to show that a single celled bacteria is not self aware. Forst you must define self aware, which is hard to do. Certainly anything with even a primitve nervous system is self aware in some respect in that it is "aware" of where it ends and everything else begins.
--- End quote ---
How I define self awareness is to understand yourself and what you are. I doubt a dog think about itself, or even knowing it's a different species. It just sees itself as a flock member.
If your dog became self aware it would probably demand to sit at the table and eat with you, because it would compare itself with you, wondering why you get a bunch or extra priviliges while he/she don't.
Bacterias and critters are little more than biological machines imo. Saying those are self aware is like saying your computer is self aware, or your car.
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