That is very, very true. I've played Bionic Commando, Zelda 2, Life Force, Solstice, Turtles and many more games on the NES for weeks without ever beating them. Those games weren't particularly difficult (compared to impossible games like Ghosts 'n Goblins), I knew better players than me who had beaten them. I never was an expert gamer. But nowadays, games like Halo are considered difficult which I managed to complete in less than two days. It is funny you mention Ninja Gaiden, because that is exactly my experience too, it is one of the few recent games that is challenging.
I also own a Nintendo DS, bought mostly because of all the praise it got here on Slashdot. It is a great device, but for a gamer, the games for it is a joke. Nintendo has definitely abandoned the gamer in favor of the casual player. I once asked an EB games clerk for advice on challenging DS games. He directly pointed me to New Super Mario Bros which, in his opinion, was unbeatable and he had been at it for weeks. Which I bought and beat in less than 10 hours of playing.
Well I would like to see your evidence of that! Having worked on the the original C standard extensively and done a fair bit of work on the C++ standard, I find it rather annoying that an unsubstantiated statement like this is trotted out.
If you have been involved in drafting the C standard then you should be aware of the list of defect reports. You should know that it is almost impossible to precisely specify every single detail that a normal working human would naturally assume.
The standard is far from complete in the sense that a literal and mechanical interpretation of it won't produce a working C compiler. You still need a human to fill in the gaps and to guess the trivially sane assumptions. Also remember that C standard is a much simpler thing to specify than the file format for an office suite. And yet it takes, as you say, 50 people in a room reading every single word.
And for the record, I work with implementing and testing JSR:s. They also contain goatse-sized holes, which is why the JCP requires reference implementations because specs never specify everything they need to specify.
Sorry, but this is FUD of the worst kind and it is very unfortunate that it comes from IBM and the free software community. Every standard has omissions, most even glaring faults. You could find similar problems in virtually all specs. I'm to lazy to provide examples, but you can dig up lots of problems with even a venerable and industry proven spec like C89/90 too. So the spec doesn't specify whether trigonometry functions accept radians or degrees? That is what is called a "bug." Most likely, the OOXML spec will be revised to include those details. What makes or breaks the spec is whether it will be updated to fix its problems. In the meantime, you do what every other spec implementor since the time of dawn has done, rely on the reference implementation. Does MS Excel use radians or degrees? There is the answer.
A buggy spec is better than no spec at all, and ODF has no information whatsoever about its formula functions. Harping down on OOXML when ODF completely omits so much information is pretty laughable. If you want to push for ODF then please don't use fallacious arguments.
I'm sure that it won't be administered via a cigarette because the delivery system is important too. In the case of cigarettes, the delivery mechanism causes more harm than the nicotine helps. After all, antibiotics are good medicine but you wouldn't administer them by putting them on the tip of a knitting needle and jamming it into your eyeball.
That's just it, they don't "have to" charge anything. Some of the utilities that people sell are downright trivial when you really get down to it. Like they took some example out of a "how to program" book and slapped a pretty interface on it.
You are grossly underestimating the cost of packaging and retailing software. You don't "slap a pretty interface on it," you have to spend lots of time making the interface decent, work correctly in multiple OS:es and also pay translators to translate your program. You need to write a manual too. Add to that the costs of marketing and retailing. People who write slashvertisements don't work for free you know.:) And ofcourse you need a website, demo software, ordering system, shipping system and accounting.
Those are the real costs in selling software, which are much bigger than what most people think. For example, the biggest cost for broadband carriers are sending bills and registering payments. You're basically paying money to pay money. Free software doesn't need any of that which makes it much, much cheaper to produce than commerical software. Which is why you get it for free.
They don't buy it because it is superior technology. They pay for the customers. Aquiring thousands of customers to which you can sell a product you didn't even have to develop yourself is worth a lot. They are probably also trying to cultivate those customer relationships. Maybe some of those that wants a Google Postini might also want a Google Search or a Google Office?
Shorter lines makes the text more readable. That is a fact that has been known forever in the printing industry and is why newspapers use multiple justified columns per page. In printing, you generally strive to make each line the same length. That effect is much eaiser to accomplish if you use short lines when coding. Otherwise you end up with lines that are 130+ characters long and others 5 characters, resuling in poor readability.
The other argument for short lines is that it becomes easier to view code side-by-side. I have a 24" LCD and can view three different source files side by side in a large enough font. That feature is very important when analyzing diffs for example. So please stick to 80 characters when coding. If you feel that you need more it is very likely that you are doing something wrong. For example, a long Java-esque method chaining that doesn't fit like this: "foobar.getBla().getMoo()...getBar()" probably should be splitted into many lines instead. If you run out of space because of to much indentation caused by deep nesting, it is likely that you should split out that section into its on function. Etc.
But I suspect the OP's experience (2 of 4 phones activating perfectly, one almost perfectly, and the fourth within 24 hours) is par for the course. And, frankly, considering what a mess AT&T's systems are, I think that's an impressive achievement for Apple.
That's quite apologist and on par for the rest of the "iPhone has problems" articles comments. If another vendor, say Microsoft, had the same problems activating Vista licenses would you have cut them the same amount of slack? Or if another carrier failed to active their customers new subscription plans? Ofcourse you wouldn't, you'd be real pissed. Fact is that Apple and AT&T's performance so far has been real amateurish. Granted, this is the first version of Apple's first mobile phone and their inexperience shows. But still, crap is crap even if it is new crap.
It is not normal. But it what society has become. Products, products, products! Buy more, buy faster! Buying makes you happy. etc. Nerds are no different from anyone else. Teenage girls buy makeup and clothes to make them happy. Nerds buy shiny new iPhones. People aren't rational, smart companies acknowledge that.
The odds are just way to low for all those broken Xboxes being manufacturing faults. Even if 10% of all Xboxes Microsoft ships are faulty (which they aren't) the odds of getting eleven in a row is 0.1^11 = some really extremely super-duper small number. You are much more likely to win the lotterly many times in a row than that happening. The reason why he gets all the bad Xboxes must lie somewhere else. The delivery company might handle them badly. Poor Justin might live in an extremely dusty house with lots of cats and dogs. The power network in his area might have severe problems with power spikes. All more plausible explanations than eleven factory errors in a row.
Re:Don't believe the hype
on
All Things iPhone
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Anyone who had watched the apple tour video can tell you the UI is lightyears ahead of Blackberry, Treo, etc. Even the commercials make this apparent. And as I said, I'm willing to put some faith in certain reviewers (Pogue, etc), and they have all said positive things about the majority of the phone's features.
That is called "advertising." Anyone who have watched the trailers for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End can tell you that that is an awesome movie. Suckers queued in line for that product too.
Don't believe the hype
on
All Things iPhone
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
In your post, you have only mentioned negatives about the iPhone; high cost, shitty price plan, no GPS, no 3G. The one positive thing you listed is the UI and "non-crashyness." How anyone could be sure that the iPhone doesn't crash as "often" as existing smart phones on the market is beyond me or how anyone except for the select few reviewers that have actually used an iPhone can know that the UI is better. And still, you're planning to buy the phone on launch day.
How can you know that the iPhone is worth the money or even decent? You can't. It is all hype and 900 million dollar pre-launch marketing, probably more than the total development cost for the device.
Media always like to portray themselves as "neutral observers." Merely reporting about stuff that is interesting and newsworthy. There is no hype about the iPhone, except for the one created by the trade press. The price plan for a mobile phone locked to one carrier and only available in the US, is not Slashdot first page stuff. Except for the stupid media-created snowballing hype which makes every detail a major event and everyone who disagrees is a troll. The Wii enjoyed a similar, albeit lesser, hype. And yes, it was and is a decent gaming system but it's not close to as earth-shatteringly awesome as the hype would have you believe.
At this point it doesn't matter if the iPhone is utter garbage or not. It will sell and it will sell good, all thanks to the hype. Just read all those testimonies in the comments that say they will buy the phone, without even having seen the device in real life! And that is from slashdotters, supposedly nerds, supposedly knowledgable about technology. If "we" can't see through it, then the general public definitely cannot either. Hype is what makes or breaks a new product, and Slashdot has done a great job of providing it. Jobs must be grateful.
The amount of iPhone articles are rediculous. I don't really care much for a new phone that has weaker specs than existing phones that has been on the market for months. So the iPhone has a touchscreen instead of buttons, whoopiedoo! That should not earn it seven articles per week. Every week. The real story is not the iPhone, it is how Apple has managed to buy every tech related media outlet out there to run articles about the iPhone for them.
They're slow, inefficient, and thirsty. Manufacturing the batteries and disposing of them when they wear out after five years or so is an ecological nightmare.
You have to draw the line somewhere. There isn't much controversy over the ban of KZ Manager, and Manhunt beats that game squarely in the gore department. There is also not much controversy over the ban of violent porn. Yes, no studies have shown that there is a link between seeing woman being beaten unconcious and then raped, but apparently some censors speculated that it might affect a certain small percentage of the population negatively, and few have protested that ban. Hey! Maybe that's an idea for the next great videogame...
A long time ago, cuba was very friendly with the usa. Then cuba had a (communist) revolution, and seized a lot of property belonging to americans. So the usa wasn't very happy,
They had an, at most, Socialist revolution. Major factories were confiscated and farmland redistributed to the poor. Fairly typical stuff. Compensation were offered to the American companies who previously owned most anything, but the offer was denied. It was because of that, that the US decided to embargo Cuba. Eisenhower imposed a limited embargo on Cuba in 1960 which Kennedy extended to all trade with Cuba in February 1962, eight months before the Cuban Missile crisis. An embargo that the US forced upon all other Latin American states. The Cubans had no choice but to unwillingly ally with the Soviet Union and become "Communist."
The slashdot summary and TFA kind of misses the nerdy features. W910i and phones from the same generation are equipped with a hardware accelerated 3d engine. Built in bilinear texture filtering and mipmapping in 60+ fps is nothing to scoff at. W910i has more power than a Nintendo DS and you will be able to create some really amazing games for it. And contrary to a certain other phone, there exists a mature and freely available Java SDK allowing you to create your own homebrew apps and games. Sony Ericssons developer site has all the gory technical details.
Because that strategy worked so well during the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin? No, instead the Chinese regime will relax its restrictions just enough for the duration of the games to get media to focus on other things than Chinas human rights violations. Thanks to the wests appeasement policy we are quelching all possibility of change to the better in China.
Then why are you yourself to scared to mention your company by its name? You see, there is quite a few of us in the world that believes that standing up for what is right even if it means great risk to you personally is an honorable thing to do. We wouldn't want to work at your company where doing the right thing is considered illoyal. But without knowing what company you are talking about there is no possibility for us to avoid working for you.
I wouldn't be surprised if legalizing illegal drugs and treating them like alcohol or tobacco would cause some harm to some individuals, but it would also help a great many lives and should be a net win. If the drugs are truly as harmful as people say, then they will stop using them of their own free will as they see and hear of the harmful effects on other people.
Yep, and that is why all the heroinists in the world quit yesterday. They heard about the harmful effects.
Personally, I wouldn't trust any bank whose security system relies on user supplied credentials. Any bank that does not supply its customers with an electronic hardware-based security token is not trustworthy enough to handle my savings.
I do it because I want to see a Socialist world. By developing collaborately and productively for free, and by showing the world that that way of organizing the labor is wastly superior to the current Capitalist order, I believe the world will move closer to Socialism. So in a way, you are all part of this great Socialist scheme started by RMS whether you know it or not.:) I'm in the minority, but only similar to how most Capitalists didn't understand how their actions would bring about the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. Free Software is the best verification of Marx' Historical Materialism there has ever been.
Slashdot Mirror
That is very, very true. I've played Bionic Commando, Zelda 2, Life Force, Solstice, Turtles and many more games on the NES for weeks without ever beating them. Those games weren't particularly difficult (compared to impossible games like Ghosts 'n Goblins), I knew better players than me who had beaten them. I never was an expert gamer. But nowadays, games like Halo are considered difficult which I managed to complete in less than two days. It is funny you mention Ninja Gaiden, because that is exactly my experience too, it is one of the few recent games that is challenging.
I also own a Nintendo DS, bought mostly because of all the praise it got here on Slashdot. It is a great device, but for a gamer, the games for it is a joke. Nintendo has definitely abandoned the gamer in favor of the casual player. I once asked an EB games clerk for advice on challenging DS games. He directly pointed me to New Super Mario Bros which, in his opinion, was unbeatable and he had been at it for weeks. Which I bought and beat in less than 10 hours of playing.
Well I would like to see your evidence of that! Having worked on the the original C standard extensively and done a fair bit of work on the C++ standard, I find it rather annoying that an unsubstantiated statement like this is trotted out.
If you have been involved in drafting the C standard then you should be aware of the list of defect reports. You should know that it is almost impossible to precisely specify every single detail that a normal working human would naturally assume.
The standard is far from complete in the sense that a literal and mechanical interpretation of it won't produce a working C compiler. You still need a human to fill in the gaps and to guess the trivially sane assumptions. Also remember that C standard is a much simpler thing to specify than the file format for an office suite. And yet it takes, as you say, 50 people in a room reading every single word.
And for the record, I work with implementing and testing JSR:s. They also contain goatse-sized holes, which is why the JCP requires reference implementations because specs never specify everything they need to specify.
Sorry, but this is FUD of the worst kind and it is very unfortunate that it comes from IBM and the free software community. Every standard has omissions, most even glaring faults. You could find similar problems in virtually all specs. I'm to lazy to provide examples, but you can dig up lots of problems with even a venerable and industry proven spec like C89/90 too. So the spec doesn't specify whether trigonometry functions accept radians or degrees? That is what is called a "bug." Most likely, the OOXML spec will be revised to include those details. What makes or breaks the spec is whether it will be updated to fix its problems. In the meantime, you do what every other spec implementor since the time of dawn has done, rely on the reference implementation. Does MS Excel use radians or degrees? There is the answer.
A buggy spec is better than no spec at all, and ODF has no information whatsoever about its formula functions. Harping down on OOXML when ODF completely omits so much information is pretty laughable. If you want to push for ODF then please don't use fallacious arguments.
I'm sure that it won't be administered via a cigarette because the delivery system is important too. In the case of cigarettes, the delivery mechanism causes more harm than the nicotine helps. After all, antibiotics are good medicine but you wouldn't administer them by putting them on the tip of a knitting needle and jamming it into your eyeball.
That is quite simply the best analogy ever.
That's just it, they don't "have to" charge anything. Some of the utilities that people sell are downright trivial when you really get down to it. Like they took some example out of a "how to program" book and slapped a pretty interface on it.
:) And ofcourse you need a website, demo software, ordering system, shipping system and accounting.
You are grossly underestimating the cost of packaging and retailing software. You don't "slap a pretty interface on it," you have to spend lots of time making the interface decent, work correctly in multiple OS:es and also pay translators to translate your program. You need to write a manual too. Add to that the costs of marketing and retailing. People who write slashvertisements don't work for free you know.
Those are the real costs in selling software, which are much bigger than what most people think. For example, the biggest cost for broadband carriers are sending bills and registering payments. You're basically paying money to pay money. Free software doesn't need any of that which makes it much, much cheaper to produce than commerical software. Which is why you get it for free.
They don't buy it because it is superior technology. They pay for the customers. Aquiring thousands of customers to which you can sell a product you didn't even have to develop yourself is worth a lot. They are probably also trying to cultivate those customer relationships. Maybe some of those that wants a Google Postini might also want a Google Search or a Google Office?
Shorter lines makes the text more readable. That is a fact that has been known forever in the printing industry and is why newspapers use multiple justified columns per page. In printing, you generally strive to make each line the same length. That effect is much eaiser to accomplish if you use short lines when coding. Otherwise you end up with lines that are 130+ characters long and others 5 characters, resuling in poor readability.
The other argument for short lines is that it becomes easier to view code side-by-side. I have a 24" LCD and can view three different source files side by side in a large enough font. That feature is very important when analyzing diffs for example. So please stick to 80 characters when coding. If you feel that you need more it is very likely that you are doing something wrong. For example, a long Java-esque method chaining that doesn't fit like this: "foobar.getBla().getMoo()...getBar()" probably should be splitted into many lines instead. If you run out of space because of to much indentation caused by deep nesting, it is likely that you should split out that section into its on function. Etc.
And they do think it is a good thing. Unfortunately, you won't be able to find out without reading TFA. :)
But I suspect the OP's experience (2 of 4 phones activating perfectly, one almost perfectly, and the fourth within 24 hours) is par for the course. And, frankly, considering what a mess AT&T's systems are, I think that's an impressive achievement for Apple.
That's quite apologist and on par for the rest of the "iPhone has problems" articles comments. If another vendor, say Microsoft, had the same problems activating Vista licenses would you have cut them the same amount of slack? Or if another carrier failed to active their customers new subscription plans? Ofcourse you wouldn't, you'd be real pissed. Fact is that Apple and AT&T's performance so far has been real amateurish. Granted, this is the first version of Apple's first mobile phone and their inexperience shows. But still, crap is crap even if it is new crap.
It is not normal. But it what society has become. Products, products, products! Buy more, buy faster! Buying makes you happy. etc. Nerds are no different from anyone else. Teenage girls buy makeup and clothes to make them happy. Nerds buy shiny new iPhones. People aren't rational, smart companies acknowledge that.
The odds are just way to low for all those broken Xboxes being manufacturing faults. Even if 10% of all Xboxes Microsoft ships are faulty (which they aren't) the odds of getting eleven in a row is 0.1^11 = some really extremely super-duper small number. You are much more likely to win the lotterly many times in a row than that happening. The reason why he gets all the bad Xboxes must lie somewhere else. The delivery company might handle them badly. Poor Justin might live in an extremely dusty house with lots of cats and dogs. The power network in his area might have severe problems with power spikes. All more plausible explanations than eleven factory errors in a row.
Anyone who had watched the apple tour video can tell you the UI is lightyears ahead of Blackberry, Treo, etc. Even the commercials make this apparent. And as I said, I'm willing to put some faith in certain reviewers (Pogue, etc), and they have all said positive things about the majority of the phone's features.
That is called "advertising." Anyone who have watched the trailers for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End can tell you that that is an awesome movie. Suckers queued in line for that product too.
In your post, you have only mentioned negatives about the iPhone; high cost, shitty price plan, no GPS, no 3G. The one positive thing you listed is the UI and "non-crashyness." How anyone could be sure that the iPhone doesn't crash as "often" as existing smart phones on the market is beyond me or how anyone except for the select few reviewers that have actually used an iPhone can know that the UI is better. And still, you're planning to buy the phone on launch day.
How can you know that the iPhone is worth the money or even decent? You can't. It is all hype and 900 million dollar pre-launch marketing, probably more than the total development cost for the device.
Media always like to portray themselves as "neutral observers." Merely reporting about stuff that is interesting and newsworthy. There is no hype about the iPhone, except for the one created by the trade press. The price plan for a mobile phone locked to one carrier and only available in the US, is not Slashdot first page stuff. Except for the stupid media-created snowballing hype which makes every detail a major event and everyone who disagrees is a troll. The Wii enjoyed a similar, albeit lesser, hype. And yes, it was and is a decent gaming system but it's not close to as earth-shatteringly awesome as the hype would have you believe.
At this point it doesn't matter if the iPhone is utter garbage or not. It will sell and it will sell good, all thanks to the hype. Just read all those testimonies in the comments that say they will buy the phone, without even having seen the device in real life! And that is from slashdotters, supposedly nerds, supposedly knowledgable about technology. If "we" can't see through it, then the general public definitely cannot either. Hype is what makes or breaks a new product, and Slashdot has done a great job of providing it. Jobs must be grateful.
The amount of iPhone articles are rediculous. I don't really care much for a new phone that has weaker specs than existing phones that has been on the market for months. So the iPhone has a touchscreen instead of buttons, whoopiedoo! That should not earn it seven articles per week. Every week. The real story is not the iPhone, it is how Apple has managed to buy every tech related media outlet out there to run articles about the iPhone for them.
They're slow, inefficient, and thirsty. Manufacturing the batteries and disposing of them when they wear out after five years or so is an ecological nightmare.
Batteries can be r-e-c-y-c-l-e-d.
You have to draw the line somewhere. There isn't much controversy over the ban of KZ Manager, and Manhunt beats that game squarely in the gore department. There is also not much controversy over the ban of violent porn. Yes, no studies have shown that there is a link between seeing woman being beaten unconcious and then raped, but apparently some censors speculated that it might affect a certain small percentage of the population negatively, and few have protested that ban. Hey! Maybe that's an idea for the next great videogame...
Here is the short version.
Short but also wrong.
A long time ago, cuba was very friendly with the usa. Then cuba had a (communist) revolution, and seized a lot of property belonging to americans. So the usa wasn't very happy,
They had an, at most, Socialist revolution. Major factories were confiscated and farmland redistributed to the poor. Fairly typical stuff. Compensation were offered to the American companies who previously owned most anything, but the offer was denied. It was because of that, that the US decided to embargo Cuba. Eisenhower imposed a limited embargo on Cuba in 1960 which Kennedy extended to all trade with Cuba in February 1962, eight months before the Cuban Missile crisis. An embargo that the US forced upon all other Latin American states. The Cubans had no choice but to unwillingly ally with the Soviet Union and become "Communist."
And one commenter compared him to Satan? More than one "hate his guts". I would be interested to know why exactly.
He once said that it was right for a starving man to steal bread. That is all it takes to be hated by the "civilized" world.
The slashdot summary and TFA kind of misses the nerdy features. W910i and phones from the same generation are equipped with a hardware accelerated 3d engine. Built in bilinear texture filtering and mipmapping in 60+ fps is nothing to scoff at. W910i has more power than a Nintendo DS and you will be able to create some really amazing games for it. And contrary to a certain other phone, there exists a mature and freely available Java SDK allowing you to create your own homebrew apps and games. Sony Ericssons developer site has all the gory technical details.
Because that strategy worked so well during the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin? No, instead the Chinese regime will relax its restrictions just enough for the duration of the games to get media to focus on other things than Chinas human rights violations. Thanks to the wests appeasement policy we are quelching all possibility of change to the better in China.
Then why are you yourself to scared to mention your company by its name? You see, there is quite a few of us in the world that believes that standing up for what is right even if it means great risk to you personally is an honorable thing to do. We wouldn't want to work at your company where doing the right thing is considered illoyal. But without knowing what company you are talking about there is no possibility for us to avoid working for you.
I wouldn't be surprised if legalizing illegal drugs and treating them like alcohol or tobacco would cause some harm to some individuals, but it would also help a great many lives and should be a net win. If the drugs are truly as harmful as people say, then they will stop using them of their own free will as they see and hear of the harmful effects on other people.
Yep, and that is why all the heroinists in the world quit yesterday. They heard about the harmful effects.
Personally, I wouldn't trust any bank whose security system relies on user supplied credentials. Any bank that does not supply its customers with an electronic hardware-based security token is not trustworthy enough to handle my savings.
I do it because I want to see a Socialist world. By developing collaborately and productively for free, and by showing the world that that way of organizing the labor is wastly superior to the current Capitalist order, I believe the world will move closer to Socialism. So in a way, you are all part of this great Socialist scheme started by RMS whether you know it or not. :) I'm in the minority, but only similar to how most Capitalists didn't understand how their actions would bring about the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. Free Software is the best verification of Marx' Historical Materialism there has ever been.