He should wear a beer hat.

I've heard this before, but in my experience there's actually very little to it. The people inclined to pull in front of you just because your lane is slightly faster than the other are also those who are inclined to pull out again the first chance they get. Or people who actually want to be in your lane frequently do so because they need to turn off anyway. In either case you're exactly where you were to being with.

Now if they don't do that, how worse off are you? Say 20 cars pull in front of you in your short trip, you're now 20 car lengths back from where you would have been. At 60km/h it means it'll take you an additional whopping 10 additional seconds to get to your destination.

People are a horrendous judge of risk vs reward, especially on the road.

How can you comment on the ethics of what Samsung is doing without actually having read the contract in full? For all we know the contract had a no competition clause which Microsoft may have violated by buying Nokia.

That's the life of contracts. I'm involved in the shutdown of a major industrial plant in my city. The way these things happen is that you look at the costs of running, and you look at the costs of the alternatives. The alternative costs include things such as legal wrangling over details of contracts you're trying to get out of.

It would be unethical to NOT try and get out of a contract which is costing you money for no good reason. This is just standard business practice and it's no different to arguing with your ISP who wants to charge you a full month even if your connection was unavailable for a week (been involved in this one as well and ended up getting a full month free).

I don't think you understand because you're still comparing hardware specs, hardware novelties, and comparing the Wii to the XBox / PS. They are not the same market. Think back a generation. People typically had a Xbox and Wii, or a PS and a Wii. Rarely you'd find someone with an XBox and a PS.

The 2 big consoles targeted serious gamers with triple A titles.
The Wii and Wii U targeted casual gamers, people who played short silly puzzle games, housewives who wanted to do yoga on a balance board, drunk kids who wanted to play some seriously stupid games at a party. Sidenote: We never pulled out the Xbox at a party, but typically every party devolved into Mariokart, Smash bros, or Mario Land, because who doesn't like giving drunk friends shit while they wank off their wii mote making a cocktail.

Part of what you said is right, people are not interested. But it's not console gamers that are being targeted. People not being interested has nothing to do with the XBox or PS who's high sales figures are not indicative of the platform but rather a need to be able to play new games (kind of like upgrading video cards). On the other hand the Wii U game catalogue has serious competition from the phone. That's it. No one compares Nintendoland to Titanfall, they compare it to Candy Crush, Flappybird and 2048, all of which provide the same hours of entertainment at no direct cost.

Your idea of integrating with Steam is interesting. Certainly not impossible, as they have shown they are quite capable of changing target markets. However even when Nintendo changed to target casual gamers they did not let go of their iron grip around the franchise. Developing for Xbox / PS involves a small fee. Developing for Nintendo involves a licencing ritual that would make an Apple Appstore approver blush. My guess is they are too.... arrogant? (not the word I'm after) to parter with the likes of Steam.

Also you should look into the economics of the console industry. Nintendo and Sony are no different in that regard. Neither company makes a loss in their console division as losses from equipment get recovered in sales of games. It was only the first gen Xbox which truly made a colossal loss propped up by Microsoft's other divisions.

Who cares about the architecture? You're talking as if people didn't port games between consoles on the XBox 360 and the PS3 the latter which was also a Power based architecture.

People program in high level languages and then compile for different systems. The only thing really left then is optimising, and that is still an incredibly complicated task because while the remainder of the systems are x86 based, they are actually very different hardware architectures. Arguably the most portable is the Xbox and the PC since programming for either can be done using DirectX, however even then there are some massive differences between optimising a game for a PC and the Xbox, which has lead to some horrendous experiences on both platforms due to poor porting.

All of this doesn't really matter for Nintendo, just look at the titles they have released. They have always played their console hand very close to the chest and the vast majority of hit titles on their console are actually their own titles.

Ignore my other post.

Just like to point out the update which created the quicklaunch only came out in March or April of this year so your original post is not surprising at all. The Wii U used to have a horrible loading system.

There's been software updates recently that change that quite dramatically. There's no more waiting for the disc and there's no requirement to pick up the Wii U controller.

With a single click on the controller the Wii you will power up and start the game. Just grab your controller of choice. If the game disc isn't in then it will ask you to insert it. I haven't seen the home screen of the Wii U for a long time.

No, with the Wii they realized they didn't need to keep up with the PS and Xbox. They created a new type of gaming market and made billions because of it. They are arguably competing against the mobile phone, not the Xbox or Playstation.

You missed my fundamental point. It's not the nature of the data, it's the value of the data. It's one thing to collect data without providing anything tangable in return, quite another in exchange for payment, products, or services.

As for your poor liberties I feel so sorry that you're being actively oppressed by your government.

Except you're not, and the only rebuttal you could come up with is name calling? Classic defence strategy, just not a very good debating strategy.

Anyway I assume I won't hear from you again because you're evil government will come and lock you up because they are collecting meta data on you and you're speaking out against your oppressive regime.

Was nice knowing you.

By the way you should actually experience oppression some day. It will instantly change your mine about your government.

Quite the opposite. Most "Geeks" I know bail out of their contract to get a new phone. The only person I know who doesn't have a phone on a plan is my mother. In every other case you get the latest phone for effectively free. That's how the brain works when you go from paying $40/month, contract expires, keep paying $40/month and a new phone arrives.

Maybe your non-geek friends are on different relationships with their telecom companies than my .... err whole country.

Are they? Some minor personal data such as web searches vs some real tangible improvement in my life? Comparing me to a drug addict makes me think that you're responding more out of emotion rather than giving your response rational thought, especially considering the level of "abuse" people put up with. Take my girlfriend for instance. She paid for Sims 4. She bought it, played it without issue, and enjoyed it despite "the world is ending" kind of comments about the game's DRM on slashdot. Something not fitting in with your philosophical point of view does not mean someone is being "abused".

Actually I'm beginning to think that you don't really understand the concept of trading something (money, personal data) for something else (services, products, enjoyment). The reality is the vast majority of the world is not at all affected by DRM, and that does not make them all addicts.

No I'm assuming that my information is not at all important. The government collects information you can not even fathom and the companies you list are actually some of the most up front about what is shared. But fortunately most of the western world is not actually afraid of their government. If I was living in the type of country where the government randomly makes citizens disappear or locks them up without due process then my opinion may be a bit different.

No they are not harming people by collecting data. They are only harming people by misusing data. Your argument sounds like those people who think cameras should be banned in public parks because someone may take a photo of a child and then go home and masturbate to it. The reality is if something does not have an effect on your life then you are not actually being wronged. Someone could be masturbating to a naked photo of me right now but I don't know about it so it isn't effecting me in any way. Your comparison to the NSA also fails to take into account my argument that you get something for something else. Google gives me something very useful for my data. The NSA only gives me "security" (man I can't keep a straight face saying that).

Did you read what I said there, because your reaction in this case is at odds with the rest of what you said, or did I just miss the sarcasm.

Irrelevant. The market place in general works on 2 year contracts. Just because you do something different doesn't magically mean a company should support you for it.

In my experience they acted perfectly fine. Compare say your Nexus which received 2 years worth of updates, to *any other Android phone* which never received any updates from the manufacturer.

As for the calibration, I wonder why you didn't return the phone under warranty? You had a problem? Well 200000 other people didn't. There was no major public outcry, and the phone was rated highly in its prime. So why did you sit there waiting for a software fix for a problem only a handful of people experienced?

I care. In fact I care a lot. The difference is that I weigh up the benefits and the costs to options. I don't just assume that default = bad.

Yes I read the warning when I first turned on my Android phone, the one about location sharing and opting in to Google location services and Google Play. I read them in detail and thought "fantastic!" I get services and benefits such as my phone automatically knowing where I intend to go based on a search I made on my PC right before I stepped in the car, and it helps me get there, without getting stuck in traffic. In return I don't need to pay someone to do this, just share some of my (slashdot would have you believe) highly sensitive personal information. An interesting side effect is that an advert that actually does slip through adblock is actually somewhat relevant to my interests.

Not everyone feels wronged when they are being tracked in exchange for goods or services.

Because the benefit and ease of use leaking my data brings far outweighs the consequences to me.

The consequence is some company knows some anonymised information about me. So far I have yet to be wronged by any of them.

The benefit on the other hand is that when I search for a company on google maps for instance and I head out to my car, my phone automatically brings up the time it will take to get there, the main route, and thanks to other people leaking their oh so sensitive data I also get a traffic congestion and time the trip will take me. Also in case GPS fails to connect for some reason which happened a lot on my previous phone, thanks to people leaking their oh so sensitive SSIDs and Google recording them I have a crude form of location services even when GPS isn't available such as when I'm indoors. That's just the indirect benefits I get and doesn't even begin to mention the primary benefit of having the option to trade my personal data in exchange for products and services which frees my money up for other endeavours.

I don't disable it for the same reason I didn't disable sharing tracking information on my phone despite it being an opt in option when I first turned it on.

That's all good and fine but just realise that you are in fact the minority. 2 years is not an accepted life span for many devices, but for many phones it most definitely is. You can thank contracts that last that long and come with a "free" phone.