I've read through both series (the trick to finishing the last 3 books in the WoT-series is to skip ahead when there is a chapter with just a subplot, 99% of the story-line with the Aesedai, then it becomes a riveting read). But I must say that it was obvious that Stephen King too got tired of the series and just hobbled together the ending. The Dark Tower climax is a gigantamondic inti-climax of ginormous proportions. I won't spoil what the ending is. Only that it suuuuux.
I had high hopes for the WoT-series though since I felt that he was picking up speed toward the end of book 11. There was something there, some big ending, a tie-together of all the story-lines into something satisfying. I doubt that anyone can finish the work now, not even with the help of his notes and knowledge of the original ending. Who can keep all those literally hundreds of different characters apart like he could? With different ways of speaking, dressing, behaving aso. There were no paper-thin characters in his books and you had to admire his dedication to fleshing out every character (at times completely halting the forward motion of the story, unfortunately).
This is sad news to me and a bright star in a sky full of fictional authors has gone out. Let's remember the good parts and blissfully forget the bad ones, for they were infinitely fewer and less significant.
Atheism is the belief that there is/are no god/gods (see wikipedia). Belief in absence of proof means it's a religion. I'm an atheist and I believe that god has no place in our universe, but it is only a belief, I have no proof. If I had proof then this would be science and not religion and I would have been killed by religious fanatics a long time ago.
I translate all my witnesses with the aid of google. It works large! I do not see that what the problem is. Nobody can dreaming that I am using a translator less that says they.
Wow! That would be a killer app! I can't remember the last time people remembered to erase the whiteboard after a meeting. Having the contents of the whiteboard erasing itself when the lights are turned off would be great. The lights could be on a timer (which would also be a good signal to end the meeting when the lights go out and the whiteboard erases itself).
Bad example. The insurance company would pay for the damage. Your insurance company in this case.
What I'm trying to say is that being part of a company where you have a job, the company should (and does, I think, IANAL) shield it's employees from the repercussions if their mistakes. Unlike driving a car, being an employee in a company I have others making decisions that control my actions.
Let's ask ourselves some questions about this particular case: What if the person who wrote the code that exposed peoples personal data was forced to work continually on overtime under very bad working conditions and with to short deadlines. Is it his fault that his work does not cut the mustard or is it the fault of his object/project-leader who forced him to work under these conditions. Or is it *his* boss fault, for demanding that the project leader finish the project immediately, regardless of code quality? Or the sales-person who promised a delivery date that was impossible to make? Or the testers who tested the site and found no faults with it. Or the boss of these testers who signed off on their findings?
The inner workings of a company like this is large and can be extremely complex. Finding someone at fault would probably be impossible in any practical sense. People would blame eachother for the reasons for the errors all the way from the bottom to the top and back down again.
This is some of the reasons why I find that desperately trying to find someone to sue, when a company is at fault, seems more like an act of revenge rather than an act of justice. Even if there is a boss somewhere where the "buck stops" who has made a billion dollars on the company, there is no reason to expect him to be at fault. Maybe the error was snuck in maliciously by an employee to hurt the company because he/she felt slighted. Is this the bosses fault? Maybe the plan of the employee was to hurt the boss, because he knew the company would shut down and that a civil suit would follow, targeting the bosses.
This is all hypothetical, of course, but I hope you see that there are problems with trying to sue someone for a faulty product from a company. Sue the company and let them handle the investigation into whose fault it all was. If the company is no more, then maybe there needs to be new legislation that limits the time a company can take to shut down to a minimum of 3 months or something for stuff like this to surface.
Well, I do believe basic economics are required learning. The fact that I didn't mention it is merely becuase I forgot to mention it specifically (the list was not meant to be exhaustive, merely a short list of examples).
Don't be so quick to judge. Basic psychology should have taught you that what you might perceive as a willful exclusion might be a mistake.
I stand corrected. Though I still feel that even at that age (15-18) you're better off not deciding what you want to do exactly, although I understand that a lot of people don't want to continue studying after the age of 18. I hade a vague idea what I wanted to do but am still glad I chose "majors" in such a way that I got a broad, non-specific education. That way, when I finished at the university I was able to choose a job I wanted then, and not one I wanted when I started the equivalent of High School.
I mean, how many kids want to be firemen/astronauts/cops/movie stars and so on at age 14 compared to age 24?
What you describe is of course an undesirable (to say the least) turn of events. However, I find it unlikely that there is no failsafe for this. How do you "fold" a company and what is involved? Can you dissolve a company if you know a lawsuit is coming? At what point are you unable to dissolve a company so that you lose no money?
Otherwise this seems like the perfect failsafe for any corporation when a large lawsuit is pending. Dissolve the company, reconstruct it in a new name and continue business as usual. I would think that there must be some legal problems with this approach or it would be standard operating procedure.
We can debate the merits of piercing the corporate veil for civil liability, but talking about "punishment" in this context is a red herring.
I disagree. Suing individuals for a mistake like this would be revenge and would serve no other purpose than giving some people a misplaced sense of "justice". My question (largely rhetorical in nature) was more regarding the intent of suing someone rather than the purpose of any legal system. The governmental branches mostly have very lofty purposes which just as often are corrupted by the public/politicians/coroporations.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Are you saying that High School in the US is like "Lord of the Flies"?
I'm Swedish so all I know about the US educational system is from the Daily Show and movies, so I'm not counting on my knowledge being very well balanced or accurate.:)
Who would take a job where you could be held personally liable for any mistake your subordinates may do? You have a company where the size is small enough that you can check everything, I guess, or you wouldn't be taking that responsibility, but would you really want to be personally liable if you had 1500 employees? Would you be able to check all their work for flaws?
In my opinion, this company has already been punished for their mistake. They exist no more. The employees who made the mistake have already lost their jobs. What would be the purpose of suing? Revenge?
Personal accountability is great but in a company, that accountability is handled internally. If an external party has been harmed by the mistake, they sue the corporation and the corporation pays. Internally, the company may fire anyone and everyone they find responsible but they cannot and should not be able to take the money they lost from those people. The whole point of starting a corporation, for goodness sakes, is to create an entity that is separate from the employees and even the owners so that the employees and owners are NOT personally responsible.
Sorry if I'm not crying when there is no one left to sue.
As I understand it, High School is part of what we in Sweden call "grundskolan", which is required here. It is illegal not to attend school up to this point. After that, everything is elective. To specialize so early reeks of desperation. Up until this point, kids are kids. They need to be told what to do and when to do it. Of course they need free time, but at this age school is for two things: learning basic "booksmart" skills to make it in life (math, reading, writing, how the government works) and human interaction. The human interaction part is recess and after school, during class they need to be told what to do and everyone needs the same stuff.
After you've attained the minimum level (lvl 1, 10,000xp) where you're able to function in society, you can choose where you want to go in life: directly to work (McDonalds, cleaning, aso) or you can get a higher education in some area of your interest.
Specializing earlier and earlier has become common these days. This appears when schools start competing for students. Generally I think this is a bad thing. Mostly because this means that you have to decide what you want to be/do when you really have no idea and really shouldn't be making life-altering decisions like this.
Anyone who has chosen College (or University) programs based on "what will be in demand" when you're finished will have chosen wrong. The world changes so fast that choosing what you are going to work with in 5-10 years based on what is in demand now will almost invariably mean that things have changed and you will find yourself in tough competition. It is generally better just to choose what to do based on what you want to do and hope for the best. At least then you'll be competing with others in a field you love.
This probably only took some money. Most likely a whole bunch of guards and pencil pushers collaborated. They probably used all the equipment that is already on site, sold the meteorite (either in parts or as a whole) to some outsider and split the cash between them. Sad that the meteorite disappeared, but it's still not as disturbing as a whole magazine of explosives disappearing in Iraq.
Using a terminal, the data would still have to go from the server to the client to be displayed. For an MRI or somesuch device, this would be a huge amount of data, requiring the terminal to be quite powerful in itself (needing hard-drive and everything). Using this system, that is not necessary. I think any sysadmin will tell you that the fewer computers he/she has to admin, the better.
The application for this device is not crystal clear, a lot of the time a terminal would be an equally good (and probably cheaper) choice.
In my opinion, they will have a killer app if they can externalize the PCIE interface this way completely, allowing me to put any graphics card in the box and thereby create a mini-game-system with a maxi-server elsewhere where it can make all the hard-drive and DVD-drive noises it likes.
Then again, isn't it the graphics card that makes the most noise these days? Maybe it's not as killer as I would like to think.:)
I think this happens to everybody. But I wonder what part of the brain is still processing the words, going:
"Are you paying attention? You're not listening to me anymore are you. Danm, this always happens when there's no sex or fantastic science-fictiony things. I'm left here moving the eyes, turning the page. The rest of him is wondering how many breasts you could fit on a human torso. *sigh* The most annoying part is when I have to go back and read the same part over again. I mean, I've read all that before! Just because he wasn't paying attention."
"It's when I have to go back the third time I really get annoyed."
I expect there is some expensive hardware in there to extend PCIE over optic fibre.
I don't expect they'll sell too many of them, meaning that the price has to be high to make up for development cost.
Depending on who they're aiming for with the device, price can actually be important. A corporate customer might not want to buy a "too cheap" system. I know, it's rediculous, but we're talking about people who think that the best car is the most expensive car they can afford, they're not rational.
Let's hope there are more versions coming. I for one don't want to have 4 screens, but 3 (or 2) might be enough. Firewire would be nice, then I could put my computer in the closet and replace it with this little box. But as you say, $2000 is a bit much, but I'm prepared to pay about as much as I would for an excellent graphics card + cabling, so $300 maybe?
A system administrator could however, limit the devices that can use the USB ports, or simply disable write access, so that no data can be removed from the host. If a company is really paranoid about its staff though (and if it is, you have to wonder why it hired them in the first place), you could simply put the Extio in a locking cage that prevents access to any of the ports. A bit excessive one might say, but if you're data really is that sensitive, perhaps quite prudent.
As per parents parent, this device is more like $2000 but the point is that if the ebove advice is followed, the data is safe. This seems like a worthwhile device for medical companies or other IP-heavy industries where the data is worth millions.
It is also much smaller and neater than buying a lot of computers to do the same job. And with several computers driving a display each or something like that, you'd be hard pressed to make them behave as one desktop.
"Yeah. Mmmm. I'm going to have to have you do this job for me; it's digitizing this 165 tons of astronomical photographs on glass plates. Mmm. It would be good if you're done before the summer is over. That's great. Mmmm. Thanks."
Seriously, I don't think that Microsoft writes these API's to be difficult. It is just impossible to produce good code with too many programmers. Once the size of a development team rises above 10, you stop having productive meetings and you have to divide the development into teams. Without one brilliant architect with the ability to hold the whole system in his head, there will never be one coherent vision in the software and the software will suck.
That's why guys like Torvalds and whatshisname who made Delphi and now the C# object libraries make the big bucks. They're able to hold the whole system in their heads and can therefore drive their design home. Of course, this is only possible if the management recognize the need to pay for the rewriting of all those headstrong coders own visions of what the software should be.
Software development can never be a democracy, it's a dictatorship and the trick is finding a good dictator.:) Of course, a good dictator has some trusted advisors, but ultimately he makes the decisions.
P.S. I'm not a software dictator, but as a developer I've seen so many projects go down the toilet because of the lack of effective management by a headstrong software architect. Also, of course neither the two guys mentioned have every aspect of the system in their head, but they have the shape of it clear. They are also technologically knowledgable enough to see faults and how to fix them. Believe me, the software industry software giants all have this problem: too many developers and not enough software architects with the mandate to drive home their ideas. If there are any proper architects they're hogtied by demands for prompt software deliveries (without quality) and/or rediculous feature sets.
It's a 6000 page specification. The 325 pages concerned are only the specifications for the formulas.
As per usual though, Microsoft has proven that greasing enough palms will get even an international standard approved without much review. Something the medical industry has known for years.
To quote someone (Denis Leary?): "They drove a dump truck of money up to my house, man. I'm not made of stone!"
They can and are. It's just more expensive. The hardware is expensive (and has limited availability) and the software is tightly controlled. But there are phone hackers out there. I just think it's likely to be a bigger problem with an open phone like this. But I may be wrong. Let's hope I am.
True, but as a bona fide gadget whore I would have to get the PS3. I live by the "Upgrade or die" credo.:)
I don't always have to buy everything, but if I am buying, then I have to buy the latest version. It's a weakness, I know. I'm playing straight into the hands of big business. Well, luckily I have a need to be odd, which means that I tend to dismiss all really popular items off hand without even trying them. Like the iPod back when it was new (still don't have one) and the iPhone now.
Though in this case, counting the popularity of the PS2 over the PS3, my need to be odd also means I have to buy a PS3.
Closed source or not, once a device is in the hands of malevolent hackers they can attempt to crack it. There are cracks for DVD's that allow them to read all regions, that software is closed source. There are hacks for Windows Genuine Advantage, which is closed source. Mention an electronic device that costs money to use and I bet there's a hack for it, closed source or not.
Even if the software is in protected firmware (which I bet it is) there is the potential for "patching" the firmware or abusing the open source API with some clever hacking.
Hopefully this phone won't be a target because the company behind it are trying to do something special. But if you expect people to play 'nice' then you'll generally be disappointed.
If you mean Dragon Quest, then that won't be released in Europe before next year some time (a date has not been announced yet) and on the description it sounds more like an action game with RPG aspects rather than a turn based RPG as the one I'm looknig for.
Well, guess I'll have to shell out the dough for a PS3 and purchase PS2 games to play...
Slashdot Mirror
No ending, or a bad ending?
I've read through both series (the trick to finishing the last 3 books in the WoT-series is to skip ahead when there is a chapter with just a subplot, 99% of the story-line with the Aesedai, then it becomes a riveting read). But I must say that it was obvious that Stephen King too got tired of the series and just hobbled together the ending. The Dark Tower climax is a gigantamondic inti-climax of ginormous proportions. I won't spoil what the ending is. Only that it suuuuux.
I had high hopes for the WoT-series though since I felt that he was picking up speed toward the end of book 11. There was something there, some big ending, a tie-together of all the story-lines into something satisfying. I doubt that anyone can finish the work now, not even with the help of his notes and knowledge of the original ending. Who can keep all those literally hundreds of different characters apart like he could? With different ways of speaking, dressing, behaving aso. There were no paper-thin characters in his books and you had to admire his dedication to fleshing out every character (at times completely halting the forward motion of the story, unfortunately).
This is sad news to me and a bright star in a sky full of fictional authors has gone out. Let's remember the good parts and blissfully forget the bad ones, for they were infinitely fewer and less significant.
(Offtopic)As regards to your sig.
Atheism is the belief that there is/are no god/gods (see wikipedia). Belief in absence of proof means it's a religion. I'm an atheist and I believe that god has no place in our universe, but it is only a belief, I have no proof. If I had proof then this would be science and not religion and I would have been killed by religious fanatics a long time ago.
I translate all my witnesses with the aid of google. It works large! I do not see that what the problem is. Nobody can dreaming that I am using a translator less that says they.
Wow! That would be a killer app! I can't remember the last time people remembered to erase the whiteboard after a meeting. Having the contents of the whiteboard erasing itself when the lights are turned off would be great. The lights could be on a timer (which would also be a good signal to end the meeting when the lights go out and the whiteboard erases itself).
This is a quote from the SIS.SE home page:
Translation in english: "It's not money that makes the world go around. Do you want to know what it is?"
Apparently the answer is: money
Bad example. The insurance company would pay for the damage. Your insurance company in this case.
What I'm trying to say is that being part of a company where you have a job, the company should (and does, I think, IANAL) shield it's employees from the repercussions if their mistakes. Unlike driving a car, being an employee in a company I have others making decisions that control my actions.
Let's ask ourselves some questions about this particular case: What if the person who wrote the code that exposed peoples personal data was forced to work continually on overtime under very bad working conditions and with to short deadlines. Is it his fault that his work does not cut the mustard or is it the fault of his object/project-leader who forced him to work under these conditions. Or is it *his* boss fault, for demanding that the project leader finish the project immediately, regardless of code quality? Or the sales-person who promised a delivery date that was impossible to make? Or the testers who tested the site and found no faults with it. Or the boss of these testers who signed off on their findings?
The inner workings of a company like this is large and can be extremely complex. Finding someone at fault would probably be impossible in any practical sense. People would blame eachother for the reasons for the errors all the way from the bottom to the top and back down again.
This is some of the reasons why I find that desperately trying to find someone to sue, when a company is at fault, seems more like an act of revenge rather than an act of justice. Even if there is a boss somewhere where the "buck stops" who has made a billion dollars on the company, there is no reason to expect him to be at fault. Maybe the error was snuck in maliciously by an employee to hurt the company because he/she felt slighted. Is this the bosses fault? Maybe the plan of the employee was to hurt the boss, because he knew the company would shut down and that a civil suit would follow, targeting the bosses.
This is all hypothetical, of course, but I hope you see that there are problems with trying to sue someone for a faulty product from a company. Sue the company and let them handle the investigation into whose fault it all was. If the company is no more, then maybe there needs to be new legislation that limits the time a company can take to shut down to a minimum of 3 months or something for stuff like this to surface.
Well, I do believe basic economics are required learning. The fact that I didn't mention it is merely becuase I forgot to mention it specifically (the list was not meant to be exhaustive, merely a short list of examples).
Don't be so quick to judge. Basic psychology should have taught you that what you might perceive as a willful exclusion might be a mistake.
I stand corrected. Though I still feel that even at that age (15-18) you're better off not deciding what you want to do exactly, although I understand that a lot of people don't want to continue studying after the age of 18. I hade a vague idea what I wanted to do but am still glad I chose "majors" in such a way that I got a broad, non-specific education. That way, when I finished at the university I was able to choose a job I wanted then, and not one I wanted when I started the equivalent of High School.
I mean, how many kids want to be firemen/astronauts/cops/movie stars and so on at age 14 compared to age 24?
What you describe is of course an undesirable (to say the least) turn of events. However, I find it unlikely that there is no failsafe for this. How do you "fold" a company and what is involved? Can you dissolve a company if you know a lawsuit is coming? At what point are you unable to dissolve a company so that you lose no money?
Otherwise this seems like the perfect failsafe for any corporation when a large lawsuit is pending. Dissolve the company, reconstruct it in a new name and continue business as usual. I would think that there must be some legal problems with this approach or it would be standard operating procedure.
I disagree. Suing individuals for a mistake like this would be revenge and would serve no other purpose than giving some people a misplaced sense of "justice". My question (largely rhetorical in nature) was more regarding the intent of suing someone rather than the purpose of any legal system. The governmental branches mostly have very lofty purposes which just as often are corrupted by the public/politicians/coroporations.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Are you saying that High School in the US is like "Lord of the Flies"?
I'm Swedish so all I know about the US educational system is from the Daily Show and movies, so I'm not counting on my knowledge being very well balanced or accurate. :)
Who would take a job where you could be held personally liable for any mistake your subordinates may do? You have a company where the size is small enough that you can check everything, I guess, or you wouldn't be taking that responsibility, but would you really want to be personally liable if you had 1500 employees? Would you be able to check all their work for flaws?
In my opinion, this company has already been punished for their mistake. They exist no more. The employees who made the mistake have already lost their jobs. What would be the purpose of suing? Revenge?
Personal accountability is great but in a company, that accountability is handled internally. If an external party has been harmed by the mistake, they sue the corporation and the corporation pays. Internally, the company may fire anyone and everyone they find responsible but they cannot and should not be able to take the money they lost from those people. The whole point of starting a corporation, for goodness sakes, is to create an entity that is separate from the employees and even the owners so that the employees and owners are NOT personally responsible.
Sorry if I'm not crying when there is no one left to sue.
As I understand it, High School is part of what we in Sweden call "grundskolan", which is required here. It is illegal not to attend school up to this point. After that, everything is elective. To specialize so early reeks of desperation. Up until this point, kids are kids. They need to be told what to do and when to do it. Of course they need free time, but at this age school is for two things: learning basic "booksmart" skills to make it in life (math, reading, writing, how the government works) and human interaction. The human interaction part is recess and after school, during class they need to be told what to do and everyone needs the same stuff.
After you've attained the minimum level (lvl 1, 10,000xp) where you're able to function in society, you can choose where you want to go in life: directly to work (McDonalds, cleaning, aso) or you can get a higher education in some area of your interest.
Specializing earlier and earlier has become common these days. This appears when schools start competing for students. Generally I think this is a bad thing. Mostly because this means that you have to decide what you want to be/do when you really have no idea and really shouldn't be making life-altering decisions like this.
Anyone who has chosen College (or University) programs based on "what will be in demand" when you're finished will have chosen wrong. The world changes so fast that choosing what you are going to work with in 5-10 years based on what is in demand now will almost invariably mean that things have changed and you will find yourself in tough competition. It is generally better just to choose what to do based on what you want to do and hope for the best. At least then you'll be competing with others in a field you love.
This probably only took some money. Most likely a whole bunch of guards and pencil pushers collaborated. They probably used all the equipment that is already on site, sold the meteorite (either in parts or as a whole) to some outsider and split the cash between them. Sad that the meteorite disappeared, but it's still not as disturbing as a whole magazine of explosives disappearing in Iraq.
Using a terminal, the data would still have to go from the server to the client to be displayed. For an MRI or somesuch device, this would be a huge amount of data, requiring the terminal to be quite powerful in itself (needing hard-drive and everything). Using this system, that is not necessary. I think any sysadmin will tell you that the fewer computers he/she has to admin, the better.
The application for this device is not crystal clear, a lot of the time a terminal would be an equally good (and probably cheaper) choice.
In my opinion, they will have a killer app if they can externalize the PCIE interface this way completely, allowing me to put any graphics card in the box and thereby create a mini-game-system with a maxi-server elsewhere where it can make all the hard-drive and DVD-drive noises it likes.
Then again, isn't it the graphics card that makes the most noise these days? Maybe it's not as killer as I would like to think. :)
I think this happens to everybody. But I wonder what part of the brain is still processing the words, going:
"Are you paying attention? You're not listening to me anymore are you. Danm, this always happens when there's no sex or fantastic science-fictiony things. I'm left here moving the eyes, turning the page. The rest of him is wondering how many breasts you could fit on a human torso. *sigh* The most annoying part is when I have to go back and read the same part over again. I mean, I've read all that before! Just because he wasn't paying attention."
"It's when I have to go back the third time I really get annoyed."
Is this how schizophrenia begins?
Well:
Let's hope there are more versions coming. I for one don't want to have 4 screens, but 3 (or 2) might be enough. Firewire would be nice, then I could put my computer in the closet and replace it with this little box. But as you say, $2000 is a bit much, but I'm prepared to pay about as much as I would for an excellent graphics card + cabling, so $300 maybe?
As per parents parent, this device is more like $2000 but the point is that if the ebove advice is followed, the data is safe. This seems like a worthwhile device for medical companies or other IP-heavy industries where the data is worth millions.
It is also much smaller and neater than buying a lot of computers to do the same job. And with several computers driving a display each or something like that, you'd be hard pressed to make them behave as one desktop.
What a lousy internship that'll be.
"Yeah. Mmmm. I'm going to have to have you do this job for me; it's digitizing this 165 tons of astronomical photographs on glass plates. Mmm. It would be good if you're done before the summer is over. That's great. Mmmm. Thanks."
Seriously, I don't think that Microsoft writes these API's to be difficult. It is just impossible to produce good code with too many programmers. Once the size of a development team rises above 10, you stop having productive meetings and you have to divide the development into teams. Without one brilliant architect with the ability to hold the whole system in his head, there will never be one coherent vision in the software and the software will suck.
That's why guys like Torvalds and whatshisname who made Delphi and now the C# object libraries make the big bucks. They're able to hold the whole system in their heads and can therefore drive their design home. Of course, this is only possible if the management recognize the need to pay for the rewriting of all those headstrong coders own visions of what the software should be.
Software development can never be a democracy, it's a dictatorship and the trick is finding a good dictator. :) Of course, a good dictator has some trusted advisors, but ultimately he makes the decisions.
P.S. I'm not a software dictator, but as a developer I've seen so many projects go down the toilet because of the lack of effective management by a headstrong software architect. Also, of course neither the two guys mentioned have every aspect of the system in their head, but they have the shape of it clear. They are also technologically knowledgable enough to see faults and how to fix them. Believe me, the software industry software giants all have this problem: too many developers and not enough software architects with the mandate to drive home their ideas. If there are any proper architects they're hogtied by demands for prompt software deliveries (without quality) and/or rediculous feature sets.
It's a 6000 page specification. The 325 pages concerned are only the specifications for the formulas.
As per usual though, Microsoft has proven that greasing enough palms will get even an international standard approved without much review. Something the medical industry has known for years.
To quote someone (Denis Leary?): "They drove a dump truck of money up to my house, man. I'm not made of stone!"
They can and are. It's just more expensive. The hardware is expensive (and has limited availability) and the software is tightly controlled. But there are phone hackers out there. I just think it's likely to be a bigger problem with an open phone like this. But I may be wrong. Let's hope I am.
True, but as a bona fide gadget whore I would have to get the PS3. I live by the "Upgrade or die" credo. :)
I don't always have to buy everything, but if I am buying, then I have to buy the latest version. It's a weakness, I know. I'm playing straight into the hands of big business. Well, luckily I have a need to be odd, which means that I tend to dismiss all really popular items off hand without even trying them. Like the iPod back when it was new (still don't have one) and the iPhone now.
Though in this case, counting the popularity of the PS2 over the PS3, my need to be odd also means I have to buy a PS3.
Closed source or not, once a device is in the hands of malevolent hackers they can attempt to crack it. There are cracks for DVD's that allow them to read all regions, that software is closed source. There are hacks for Windows Genuine Advantage, which is closed source. Mention an electronic device that costs money to use and I bet there's a hack for it, closed source or not.
Even if the software is in protected firmware (which I bet it is) there is the potential for "patching" the firmware or abusing the open source API with some clever hacking.
Hopefully this phone won't be a target because the company behind it are trying to do something special. But if you expect people to play 'nice' then you'll generally be disappointed.
If you mean Dragon Quest, then that won't be released in Europe before next year some time (a date has not been announced yet) and on the description it sounds more like an action game with RPG aspects rather than a turn based RPG as the one I'm looknig for.
Well, guess I'll have to shell out the dough for a PS3 and purchase PS2 games to play...