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Funnily enough the first thing that went through my mind on seeing those images was "Hogland's going to have a field-day with these images".

It was speculated prior to launch. There doesn't seem to be any more RAM either. I'd have assumed that the onboard tegra is throttled down when it's on battery, though things like Zelda performing better when undocked suggest that that isn't even the case. In terms of what's on the board in the dock, the most sophisticated bit of kit appears to be a USB3 to HDMI converter chip. Other than that it's just a couple of chips to deal with the USB2 and USB3 ports and the ports themselves.

Is there a configuration in which the switch can be used in a manner similar to the Wii U? I've yet to see any reference to it. I've watched two teardowns on the switch. Neither have identified a second tegra in the dock, but again, I stand to be corrected.

It wasn't to imply that it was a common or expected fault in any of the consoles. Going back to my original point though, I'd hardly expect that Nintendo's first reaction to reports of the Wii scratching disks would ever have been "yeah that's normal." That seems to be where the small minority of customers with imperfect screens are.

I believe that's been an issue with other consoles as well, the PS2 and 360 being two that spring to mind. Anecdotally this seemed to be more common with consoles that were used in a vertical configuration, but I can't speak to the validity of that claim. Point taken though.

Even a pre-loaded 'nostalgia pack' of NES titles along the lines of the NES Classic Edition would have been a pretty compelling pack-in for a cost of relatively nothing to Nintendo's bottom-line. Later down the line if they were decide to bundle Ultra Street Fighter 2 - aping the SNES bundle of old - I couldn't guarantee they'd get a sale out of me, but that would be something that would hit my nostalgia as hard as possible. The March launch does seem a little odd, but then when you look at the number of games that have release dates this month, there's clearly some logic to it. Common consensus seems to be companies eyeing the end of their tax-year, and I'd tend to go along with that. It genuinely does seem like a decent launch for the Switch, but it's hard to tell if the availability of the console is down to Nintendo finally deciding to produce sane numbers of their hardware or selling less-than-expected. I'd like to think it's the former. The NES Classic was something I actually did want to buy as a functional ornament, but the hype period has more-or-less passed, and it's not like I or anyone else doesn't have a multitude of options for playing those games in one form or another. If I had waited in line to buy a Switch only to find it was unavailable, there's a better than zero chance I'd be thinking that after all that effort, I'm going home with something that plays games, even if it's not my first choice. Nintendo do have legions of loyal fans, but there's also a huge segment of the market who have a more passing interest in their stuff, who aren't necessarily going to be interested in pre-ordering, and if they can't get hold of the product when they want it are likely lost customers forever. The only other title I'm aware of is Bomberman R. But with coverage of the Switch being what it is, it's very easy to have the impression that Zelda was the only launch title. Most of the failures are covered by the warranty, but in terms of units with a few defective pixels, Nintendo seem to be sticking to their guns and maintaining that this is 'acceptable'. Now, when you talk about LCD monitors, it's entirely true that the industry does have a set standard for the number of bad pixels in a display to be considered 'defective', so I can somewhat see where they are coming from, but this is a situation I've never seen happen with any of Nintendo's handhelds before. Up till now it's seemed to me at least that Nintendo generally have a reputation for nigh-on rock-solid hardware design. It surprises me greatly that a few defective screens are the hill they are potentially prepared to let that reputation die on. The people I've seen putting strips of fabric into the dock seem like a half-decent workaround. You would think that they'd have engineered the dock in such a way as to not have this issue though. But then, you'd also think they'd have made the Joycon Grips more foolproof too.

You may be happy to allow people to suffer, but rightly or wrongly I strongly suspect you are in the minority. There have been other attempts in history to re-engineer society towards a golden-age of civilisation. Those also expected their populace to endure hardships in order to bring these things about, and almost without exception they are not well regarded by history. There are many problems we are facing. Focussing on one aspect will not solve every problem we have, and we need to make a decent effort at tackling all of them. Of course I only listed gold and platinum as examples. I don't know why you are so dismissive of them however, they have an awful lot of industrial uses. Consider also that the price for silver is currently skyrocketing as demand for it is vastly outstripping supply. When you have abundant supplies of something, its value goes down, there's really no getting around that fact. As to your point about placing a monopoly on asteroid resources to control the economy. What's to stop someone from just going and getting more, and bypassing your monopoly? Failing that, what's to stop them just taking what you have?

Quite the opposite in fact

From browsing around the site, the only one I saw that had positive reviews was the Fibonacci Sequence one. The code poetry dress was rather cringe-worthy when I took the time to look at the actual 'source code' they had used:

I'll have to take your word for it, I really didn't invest myself in the controversy when Pluto was demoted. Really all I care about is that however it is defined, it's something that can be applied rigorously. Believe me, my inner Discordian would love to see Eris promoted to planet status. Regardless though, I tend towards thinking that the whole story is pretty compelling any which way you decide to draw the borders.

I think if we were going to go down the route of classifying objects based on subjective feelings it's only proper to hold off until we can ask Pluto how it identifies itself.

I think you are being massively optimistic about how quickly this would happen. I couldn't see this happening in less than 50 years, I tend to think it's a scenario that would unfold over the next century or so more realistically, though I would love to be proven wrong. That's a long painful period in the interim if we just let everyone suffer in the meantime. A lot can happen in a year, let alone several decades. I also wonder how badly massive access to resources would tank the global economy. Things like gold and platinum have the prices they have in large part due to their scarcity and the cost of extracting them. In many ways once you get access to asteroid resources the price can only go down. The mining economy you envision may not be as profitable as you imagine. Finally I'm not convinced that the average person actually wants to live in space, jobs or not. I've been of the opinion for a while that it's going to require something on the order of forcing non-propery-owning people to migrate in a "we don't care where you go, but you can't stay here" scenario to make it happen. Maybe this changes when we have fully-featured orbital cities and the like, but that's a lot of infrastructure away from where we are at present. Don't get me wrong, I agree these things have to happen, but how it happens requires a lot of thought.

I agree we need to get off this planet. How we do it is very much up for debate. Respectfully, though you might not benefit right now from the taxes that go towards healthcare and the like, does not mean that you will never need these things. Furthermore, one of the primary drivers of conflict tends to be people lacking in basic human needs. Employment is one of the most basic of these needs. It's all well and good to say (I'm paraphrasing here) "let's let everyone suffer in order to have a better future", but what you may not be considering is that there may be no better future if things go too far down that path.

I could see someone liking it, but it's FAR too expensive for what it is (imo). EDIT: The full collection is worth a quick look - https://shenovafashion.com/collections/women-in-stem The Jupiter and Saturn dresses are fairly nice designs.

Repo The Genetic Opera was pretty good.

Been a while since I've seen this referenced. Cannot recommend it highly enough.

Oh I'm well aware of this. What surprises me is that they are advertising 1-2-Switch instead of BotW, or just about any other title that they have on the horizon. I was under the impression that Nintendo is meant to be re-focusing on the core gaming audience, but I'm now starting to believe they're preparing to go straight back to the casual audience - who in fairness did help them shift a whole heap of Wii's. Re-read my post, I said nothing about 1-2-Switch being a pack-in title. I was commenting on the message of the advert conveying 1) We have a new console, and 2) there's this game for it where you can milk a virtual cow and have a virtual quickdraw duel. That was the whole message of the advert I saw which was meant to result in me throwing money at the screen. Speaking personally, Nintendo could not have failed harder at getting me excited. Of course I am basing this off a single advert, I don't generally watch TV these days so I may not be getting the full picture, but if this was my first introduction to the Switch I wouldn't be that excited for it.

So I just saw my first TV advert for the Switch, and it seems they're going with "1-2-Switch" as the title to persuade people to buy it. Honestly I couldn't think of a less attractive reason to buy a new console. I mean, I know the launch line-up is rather lacking but that's the best they can come up with?

Agreed. Especially when you get into things like minor differences in capabilities of graphics cards using the same chipset from different manufacturers - some will overclock their cards slightly compared to others and so forth. The last attempt I remember at trying to formalise any sort of standard was the 'Windows Experience' rating Microsoft introduced with Vista, and that really didn't take off due to it really only providing the user with a number that has very little informational value. Things were much simpler decades ago when the hardware options were much smaller and thus the number of possible combinations were orders of magnitude smaller. The same issue occurs at the high end too, when you look at what gets stated as the 'recommended' specs - years ago you could all but assume this meant you could run the game with every bell and whistle enabled graphics-wise. These days I don't find that to be the case so much. Add to this the fact that things can change dramatically from one patch to the next, and a general sense amongst modern gamers that anything less than bleeding-edge hardware specs isn't enough in any case - not saying this is reality, just that it's the viewpoint that gets most loudly stated. At least PC as a platform generally gives you the ability to disable some of the most demanding graphical features to get games running to an acceptable degree - but again we come back to the question of what is acceptable, which can be a very subjective thing. The horror.... Probably one of the cheaper upgrades you can buy hardware-wise though.

TBH it wouldn't surprise me if he never took a holiday and actively believed the company would fall apart without his presence.

Out of interest, do you have to purchase them from the school, or could you buy one retail as long as it meets a certain specification? Having read some of the stories about hardware supplied by schools there's no way I'd let any child of mine near any of it without at least covering any camera on the device with masking tape.

ok And we're done. Thanks for playing.

k, give me a sec

done

I've some spare keys from the Humble Freedom Bundle that I've no use for. I've checked my steam friends list and no-one seems to have these games on their wishlist, so I've decided to offer them to the forums. I've a key for each of the following: AI War: Fleet Command System Shock Pack (System Shock 2 & System Shock Enhanced Edition) Waking Mars Just post which one you want. I'll send the key via pm. Some simple rules apply: First come first served. One per customer. Forum accounts with less than 10 posts do not qualify, sorry. No spamming, you get one chance to request a title. Second choices etc will be ignored. I'd like to point out that this bundle is still on offer for the next 2 days or so, and in addition to being exceptionally good value, it supports groups like the ACLU whose work seems to be more important than ever. https://www.humblebundle.com/freedom Ready? GO!