Now, will people who exclusive use PS/Xbox switch? I don't think so easily.
Some of us may.
I am not a regular Windows user, and haven't been for over a decade. (I try to use it a little, to keep my familiarity up, but I just can't really get work done on it.) I also have zero interest in going back to building systems myself. For my general computing, I use a mix of portable devices and MacOS and Linux systems.
I also just do not like gaming with a keyboard and mouse. I know lots of people do, I know the arguments in favor of that scheme, but I personally have less fun when I'm gaming with a keyboard and mouse.
So, I've been on game consoles for a while now.
But the PS4 and XB1 have put me off. I'd embrace the Wii U if I thought there was a realistic chance publishers would, but evidence seems counter to that.
If I can get a cheap pre-built Steambox, that may take over for my own gaming. I would not be getting a bleeding-edge machine, and would probably not be able to play "current" titles, but that's okay. I'd never have the display set higher than 720p anyway, and there's enough of a back-catalog there to keep me busy for a few years at least.
If they can put together a steambox that meets that kind of need for, oh, let's say in the area of $350, then I'm most likely in.
(Otherwise, I'll probably just keep my current hardware going as long as I can, set up WINE and DOSbox on my other systems, and try to wait out this generation. Or maybe Android and iOS will hold my answer.)
What's wrong with just letting every user delete their data on request? Then you don't have to worry about anyone's age.
From whose point of view?
From the site provider's point of view, for sites like Facebook and Google+: there's a huge economic incentive to not delete the data ever, since there's potential to monetize it. So they won't stand for that, and will lobby against it. Most places, that "wins". Apparently, in California, "it's for the children!" can sometimes trump that.
(We've got to come up with a new business model for internet content.)
If you define the scope of the right to be forgotten to include only information that you put out there on sites with which you have a relationship (e.g. Facebook, Google+, Twitter, etc.), then it's not only possible, it's easy.
That depends on the architecture of the system in question.
Consider a blog-like system that lets people post information, but it's not stored in a database. It's thrown into flat files without metadata linking it back to the author. The data from multiple users is intermingled.
Those flat files are then distributed to other users via P2P networking (perhaps with content checksums stored centrally for validation purposes).
How would you comply, given such a system?
What we've got here is a law that will have the side-effect of enforcing particular software architectures (by penalizing some more than others).
So you are saying you WANT push but your previous message for some reason excluded them. But iOS7 allows apps to respond to push notifications without the user being alerted, so there's no reason not to implement it that way.
A reason not to implement it that way is, then the software isn't all running on the device. You need additional infrastructure to support sending the push notifications.
If you had "full multitasking", you wouldn't need that. Jabber and IMAP do not (usually) come with those "built in". So I can't get a generic Jabber client and have it talk to my employer's Jabber server and have it work in the background without giving any credentials to a third party or running other off-device software.
Maybe you were just going a round about way to saying there is no way of making sure that a background is serviced every X seconds. And for sure that is right. By design. Polling is not a good way to design network apps for battery powered devices.
I am in full agreement. That's why it's a bad idea to put "full multitasking" on a battery powered handheld device.
I'm not saying "what Apple is doing here is substandard or bad". I'm saying "what Apple is doing here still remains pretty far from 'full multitasking'". (Some people seem to have a hard time taking that as something other than a value judgment, but it's not one.)
They're actually being pretty darned clever. There's a few more things they need to do, and I suspect they'll eventually do them.
(The biggie that I still see missing: on-device triggers. A third party app that interacts with contact information ought to be able to execute code upon the addition of a new contact, whether it's entered into the "Contacts" app, or picked up by background sync from iCloud or Exchange or something. For example. For another example, "OmniFocus" ought to be able to get a timeslice when a "Reminder" is created or modified.)
And of course, he's such a classy guy that his "surrender" communication basically drew an equivalence between "people said bad things about me on the internet" and "rape". What a charming fellow he must be!
Currently, however, no one offers a consistent experience like Windows Phone does. It's on a level even Apple can't match, and from which they've strayed with iOS 7. Although, given Microsoft's track record they'll probably screw it up at some point.
Strangely, I'm in full agreement with you here.
On Windows Phone, Microsoft actually went and innovated in the UI space, and came up with something usable and consistent and novel.
It's really different from both iOS and Android. Now, I can't stand it, mind you. I cannot really make use of a Windows Phone myself. But, I can absolutely recognize that they did good work and that it's genuinely better for some people than either iOS or Android.
(Right now, both iOS and Android are better for me than Windows Phone... but Apple and Google are working on changing that!)
And... Microsoft has already screwed it up. They attempted to extend it to both the desktop (Windows 8) and the set-top (Xbox), but they did not do so consistently. Both of those UIs are now a mess as far as I can tell.
(I do not use Windows much, but because of that, I'm a console gamer, and IMHO the Xbox UI has definitely been ruined. The NXE was the beginning of the end, and the current "metro" version is even worse. Bring back the blades!)
The phone UI design itself isn't messed up yet (or, wasn't the last time I checked), but messing it up clearly seems to be the way they're headed.
The Jabber one doesn't work under iOS 7. (Or: show me the API that lets it, in the developer docs. I can't spot it.)
The mail one... for a third party mail app, if you check your mail at 8am every day, it can download at 7:50 for you. But if you *receive* mail at an unusual time, and it doesn't match a time when the system has "learned" that you're likely to open it, then it's not going to be able to pre-fetch it for you -- you can't know you got the mail until you open the app.
It's better for users than it's ever been. The changes are good.
I'll agree with you that I don't see a problem with the way it happens, but it's not just a semantic argument.
There are an awful lot of people here on slashdot who would assert that "full multitasking" means that every app has full access to its entire code path all the time, and can do anything in the background that it could do in the foreground, like desktop apps on a Linux system. That switching between foreground execution and background execution isn't even something an app has to notice.
The reality is basically that the app can only fully run in the foreground. In other situations it, in practice, can set up little scripts or daemons to handle specific enumerated things on its behalf when it's not in the foreground.
Some of that code fires off when a trigger condition comes up, and then have a limited time to do their business (eg. geofencing). Some keeps running in the background as long as its fulfilling a specific purpose (eg. background audio).
Has iOS got multitasking? Yes. Has it got multitasking that's more than enough for most normal users who aren't doing exotic things? Yes.
Has it got full multitasking? No, it really really doesn't. Just try running a Jabber client that lets you stay logged in all day long, or a mail client that downloads your mail before you open it without push notifications.
(Of course this isn't a bad thing, as long as the multitasking it's got is sufficient. True full multitasking would actually be a bad thing.)
The only reason skeumorphism is maligned is because it's become unfashionable, not because of any inherent flaw in the aesthetic.
I do not agree with you that it's just a matter of fashion.
So, anyone who uses enough cross-platform software on an OS that has UI guidelines should be familiar with a basic dichotomy: should various apps on a single system be "like" each other, or should a single app always be the "same" regardless of what system it's on.
(For example: should Firefox on MacOS look like a MacOS app, or look like Firefox for Windows or Linux?)
If you're in the "apps should always comply with the 'local' UI guidelines, even if that makes the same app look and behave dramatically different than it does in other environments" camp -- and there are non-fashion reasons to have that point of view -- then that's an argument against skeumorphism with an actual legitimate basis.
Now, not everyone is in that camp, sure. If that point of view makes no sense to you, then you may not understand this argument against skeumorphism. But that's because you're missing something, not because the argument isn't there (or because you disagree, not because the argument is fundamentally invalid).
I will observe that this argument is going to be a little alien to folks who normally use Linux, because in general there are no enforced UI guidelines and no consistency of user interface experience. Unless you deliberately engineer your setup otherwise and refuse to install any "outside" software, that is. I mean to the point of a GNOME user refusing to run any browser other than Epiphany, for example.
But, such UI consistency is somewhat better on Windows (before 8, anyhow), and is something a lot of MacOS users took for granted for years. That's part of where the somewhat widespread visceral negative reaction to Apple's embracing of skeumorphism came from, even if many of the ranting users couldn't articulate that.
(Myself: I got addicted to UI consistency back when I ran NeXTstep, and it's the primary reason I try not to run Firefox or Chrome on a daily basis. While I won't say I hated skeumorphism, it never sat quite right with me in most cases.)
There are some slight improvements to the multitasking (eg. if it notices you run an app at the same time every day, it'll give it a background slice just before then so the data is fresh when you look). But it remains far from "full multitasking".
They're trying to get to the point where most users won't notice the difference. They're not likely to ever get to the point where developers won't notice the difference.
The reasons cited are reasons why a competitive free market wouldn't directly lead to space.
They're not, it seems to me, reasons why funds earned in the market and used by private individuals wouldn't lead to space.
For an example, look at the Carnegie Museum and Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh. Andrew Carnegie got rich as hell, and then spent the money on stuff like that. Can other folks see stuff like that leading outward to space?
The whole 'execution' phase seems like the place where the ethical problems would reside.
It's very deeply related.
This news means China is going to give up some of the economic incentive for executing them. Over time, this should cause a reduction in executions as a side-effect.
(This should not be true of the justice system under discussion were completely free of corruption. So, you should absolutely take my assertions with a grain of salt at least proportional to the degree to which you consider China's justice system corruption-free.)
The best note-taking device I ever used for classes was the old Apple eMate.
For those who are not familiar: it's basically an Apple Newton in a subnotebook shell.
It had a note-taking app that worked either with the built-in keyboard or with the stylus.
Now, my first job out of high school back in the day was as a word-processing secretary, back when very few people used computers directly. As a result, my typing speed is very fast compared to many of my peers. When the note-taking is the sort that is easy to accommodate with typing, I can work pretty fast.
But not all note-taking is suitable for typing. Sometimes you've got a diagram. Sometimes you've got equations. Sometimes you've got accented characters or the phonetic alphabet.
On the eMate, I'd type away, and when a diagram came up, I'd just pick up the stylus and draw it, exactly as I would on paper. Then I'd go back to typing. Flowing back and forth was seamless. It was awesome.
(The battery would also last for days, sometimes even weeks, and the display was perfectly readable in lighting conditions from full sunlight to complete dark. Why? Because it was a monochrome LCD, which with sufficient lighting doesn't need the backlighting that color LCDs require.)
Another factor: there was absolutely no wireless connectivity at the time, and the device didn't multitask (from a user interface perspective, that is; it did have full background processing, but one app controlled the display at a time).
There was no temptation to multitask. There were no distractions.
Couple that with the rich tagging and indexing built in, and it was an extremely useful.
(Today, I use an iPad and bluetooth keyboard for note-taking, primarily because of the lack of multitasking (again, from a user interface point of view). And I'll often throw the device into airplane mode while doing this. I might still use that old eMate, if not for the blasted Y2K10 bug...)
* I do not want an always-on internet requirement. * Game loans or rentals must work without any "speedbumps". * I will not accept an always-on Kinect. * I demand a reasonable amount of backwards compatibility.
They've addressed three of my four. They've now gotten me to the point where if I were given one as a gift, I'd probably unbox it and plug it in rather than immediately ebaying it. That's no small change.
If they add backwards compatibility that's at least as good as what the 360 had, I'll preorder.
If they add backwards compatibility for at least the "Indie" games (which are built on top of XNA/CLR and should be trivial for them to support), I'll at least consider buying a unit after they're in peoples' hands and I've been able to read fair reviews.
(Backwards compatibility with Original Xbox titles, which ran on an x86 CPU and thus should be easier to support than 360 titles, may also get me to that point.)
I hooked up an HTPC last generation and I haven't looked back.
That's fine if that's what you want.
Myself, I hate gaming on a PC. I use 'em for work and other hobbyist uses, and have since around 1980; I want my gaming device to be an appliance (that displays on my TV set and uses a gamepad instead of keyboard/mouse). Mega bonus points if it's a platform supported by GameFly.
(YMMV, of course. But that's what I want.)
(I'm still not getting the XboxOne, mind, nor the PS4. I'm considering the WiiU, and have already purchased an Ouya.)
This plan to "save" them would result in the platform having no future. If the only way people will buy them is at a loss for Microsoft, then Microsoft won't be making any more.
"Sure, we lose money on every sale, but we'll make it up in volume!"
Look, no one will ever be as good at being Microsoft as Microsoft is. ReactOS may be eventually be 99 44/100 % Windows compatible. It may look like Windows, feel like Windows, and act like Windows almost all the time--but it won't be Windows.
I mostly agree, with two exceptions. Well, one exception that has an interesting corollary.
There are places where Windows isn't run in order to run Windows, but because there's some kind of "appliance computer" (dental records, machine control, whatever) that needs to run a very specific set of software and nothing else, and that software happens to run under Windows.
This could let vendors who sell those "appliances" stop paying a Microsoft tax, lowering their costs.
The specific case of this that could be of most interest to Slashdot readers: imagine a ReactOS Steambox. Imagine if the Steam client knew about ReactOS, and in cases where a game wasn't compatible, made that clear. (So, you'd get less games than you do via Steam under "real" Windows, but more than you currently get via Steam under MacOS or Linux.)
My first programming environment was Basic on the TRS-80, but I never got very good with that. I wrote some trivial programs, even a wee bit of hand-assmebled Z80 machine language poked directly into memory, but I couldn't write a program of any real size yet.
Then I got a disk-based C compiler and a copy of the old 1st edition of "Kernighan and Ritchie", and taught myself elementary C over a three-day weekend. That's when it really took off.
I got better by continuing to read programming articles in magazines.
Around 1984 or so I wrote my first really architected programs, with features logically separated into functions, code re-use, separation of code and data, different builds for different deployment environments/feature sets, and an event-driven user interaction model (in some builds).
(It was a set of programs to help me run 1st edition D&D games, set up so I could run it in different execution environments, eg. with/without graphics, with/without mouse. I named most of the different builds after different witch's familiars from Shakespeare. "Graymalkin" was of course the coolest version, with all the optional features turned on.)
..."sleep deprivation lowers all achievement in everyone"?
Who's surprised?
(Mind you, I'm all for conducting experiments to test things we all "know". I just don't usually expect to see those experiments classified as newsworthy.)
I'm guessing that any men who actually managed to give birth themselves would be able to successfully argue for more leave.
(The less tongue-in-cheek way to express the same thought is: if the parents are a married lesbian couple, what does their policy say about the amount of time permitted? If a female parent who didn't carry the baby is entitled to more leave than a man under the same circumstances, then yes, there's no argument by which the policy isn't discriminatory. But otherwise, there may be.)
Slashdot Mirror
Some of us may.
I am not a regular Windows user, and haven't been for over a decade. (I try to use it a little, to keep my familiarity up, but I just can't really get work done on it.) I also have zero interest in going back to building systems myself. For my general computing, I use a mix of portable devices and MacOS and Linux systems.
I also just do not like gaming with a keyboard and mouse. I know lots of people do, I know the arguments in favor of that scheme, but I personally have less fun when I'm gaming with a keyboard and mouse.
So, I've been on game consoles for a while now.
But the PS4 and XB1 have put me off. I'd embrace the Wii U if I thought there was a realistic chance publishers would, but evidence seems counter to that.
If I can get a cheap pre-built Steambox, that may take over for my own gaming. I would not be getting a bleeding-edge machine, and would probably not be able to play "current" titles, but that's okay. I'd never have the display set higher than 720p anyway, and there's enough of a back-catalog there to keep me busy for a few years at least.
If they can put together a steambox that meets that kind of need for, oh, let's say in the area of $350, then I'm most likely in.
(Otherwise, I'll probably just keep my current hardware going as long as I can, set up WINE and DOSbox on my other systems, and try to wait out this generation. Or maybe Android and iOS will hold my answer.)
From whose point of view?
From the site provider's point of view, for sites like Facebook and Google+: there's a huge economic incentive to not delete the data ever, since there's potential to monetize it. So they won't stand for that, and will lobby against it. Most places, that "wins". Apparently, in California, "it's for the children!" can sometimes trump that.
(We've got to come up with a new business model for internet content.)
IMHO, the only answer that will really work in the long term is to change the standards of judgment, not to change the mechanics of remembering.
(Working on it.)
That depends on the architecture of the system in question.
Consider a blog-like system that lets people post information, but it's not stored in a database. It's thrown into flat files without metadata linking it back to the author. The data from multiple users is intermingled.
Those flat files are then distributed to other users via P2P networking (perhaps with content checksums stored centrally for validation purposes).
How would you comply, given such a system?
What we've got here is a law that will have the side-effect of enforcing particular software architectures (by penalizing some more than others).
A reason not to implement it that way is, then the software isn't all running on the device. You need additional infrastructure to support sending the push notifications.
If you had "full multitasking", you wouldn't need that. Jabber and IMAP do not (usually) come with those "built in". So I can't get a generic Jabber client and have it talk to my employer's Jabber server and have it work in the background without giving any credentials to a third party or running other off-device software.
I am in full agreement. That's why it's a bad idea to put "full multitasking" on a battery powered handheld device.
I'm not saying "what Apple is doing here is substandard or bad". I'm saying "what Apple is doing here still remains pretty far from 'full multitasking'". (Some people seem to have a hard time taking that as something other than a value judgment, but it's not one.)
They're actually being pretty darned clever. There's a few more things they need to do, and I suspect they'll eventually do them.
(The biggie that I still see missing: on-device triggers. A third party app that interacts with contact information ought to be able to execute code upon the addition of a new contact, whether it's entered into the "Contacts" app, or picked up by background sync from iCloud or Exchange or something. For example. For another example, "OmniFocus" ought to be able to get a timeslice when a "Reminder" is created or modified.)
And of course, he's such a classy guy that his "surrender" communication basically drew an equivalence between "people said bad things about me on the internet" and "rape". What a charming fellow he must be!
Strangely, I'm in full agreement with you here.
On Windows Phone, Microsoft actually went and innovated in the UI space, and came up with something usable and consistent and novel.
It's really different from both iOS and Android. Now, I can't stand it, mind you. I cannot really make use of a Windows Phone myself. But, I can absolutely recognize that they did good work and that it's genuinely better for some people than either iOS or Android.
(Right now, both iOS and Android are better for me than Windows Phone... but Apple and Google are working on changing that!)
And... Microsoft has already screwed it up. They attempted to extend it to both the desktop (Windows 8) and the set-top (Xbox), but they did not do so consistently. Both of those UIs are now a mess as far as I can tell.
(I do not use Windows much, but because of that, I'm a console gamer, and IMHO the Xbox UI has definitely been ruined. The NXE was the beginning of the end, and the current "metro" version is even worse. Bring back the blades!)
The phone UI design itself isn't messed up yet (or, wasn't the last time I checked), but messing it up clearly seems to be the way they're headed.
The Jabber one doesn't work under iOS 7. (Or: show me the API that lets it, in the developer docs. I can't spot it.)
The mail one... for a third party mail app, if you check your mail at 8am every day, it can download at 7:50 for you. But if you *receive* mail at an unusual time, and it doesn't match a time when the system has "learned" that you're likely to open it, then it's not going to be able to pre-fetch it for you -- you can't know you got the mail until you open the app.
It's better for users than it's ever been. The changes are good.
I'll agree with you that I don't see a problem with the way it happens, but it's not just a semantic argument.
There are an awful lot of people here on slashdot who would assert that "full multitasking" means that every app has full access to its entire code path all the time, and can do anything in the background that it could do in the foreground, like desktop apps on a Linux system. That switching between foreground execution and background execution isn't even something an app has to notice.
The reality is basically that the app can only fully run in the foreground. In other situations it, in practice, can set up little scripts or daemons to handle specific enumerated things on its behalf when it's not in the foreground.
Some of that code fires off when a trigger condition comes up, and then have a limited time to do their business (eg. geofencing). Some keeps running in the background as long as its fulfilling a specific purpose (eg. background audio).
Has iOS got multitasking? Yes. Has it got multitasking that's more than enough for most normal users who aren't doing exotic things? Yes.
Has it got full multitasking? No, it really really doesn't. Just try running a Jabber client that lets you stay logged in all day long, or a mail client that downloads your mail before you open it without push notifications.
(Of course this isn't a bad thing, as long as the multitasking it's got is sufficient. True full multitasking would actually be a bad thing.)
I do not agree with you that it's just a matter of fashion.
So, anyone who uses enough cross-platform software on an OS that has UI guidelines should be familiar with a basic dichotomy: should various apps on a single system be "like" each other, or should a single app always be the "same" regardless of what system it's on.
(For example: should Firefox on MacOS look like a MacOS app, or look like Firefox for Windows or Linux?)
If you're in the "apps should always comply with the 'local' UI guidelines, even if that makes the same app look and behave dramatically different than it does in other environments" camp -- and there are non-fashion reasons to have that point of view -- then that's an argument against skeumorphism with an actual legitimate basis.
Now, not everyone is in that camp, sure. If that point of view makes no sense to you, then you may not understand this argument against skeumorphism. But that's because you're missing something, not because the argument isn't there (or because you disagree, not because the argument is fundamentally invalid).
I will observe that this argument is going to be a little alien to folks who normally use Linux, because in general there are no enforced UI guidelines and no consistency of user interface experience. Unless you deliberately engineer your setup otherwise and refuse to install any "outside" software, that is. I mean to the point of a GNOME user refusing to run any browser other than Epiphany, for example.
But, such UI consistency is somewhat better on Windows (before 8, anyhow), and is something a lot of MacOS users took for granted for years. That's part of where the somewhat widespread visceral negative reaction to Apple's embracing of skeumorphism came from, even if many of the ranting users couldn't articulate that.
(Myself: I got addicted to UI consistency back when I ran NeXTstep, and it's the primary reason I try not to run Firefox or Chrome on a daily basis. While I won't say I hated skeumorphism, it never sat quite right with me in most cases.)
It's non-intuitive, but try tapping the little magnifying glass, even when you're not interested in doing a search.
Go ahead, try it! I'll wait.
FYI: "full multitasking" is false.
There are some slight improvements to the multitasking (eg. if it notices you run an app at the same time every day, it'll give it a background slice just before then so the data is fresh when you look). But it remains far from "full multitasking".
They're trying to get to the point where most users won't notice the difference. They're not likely to ever get to the point where developers won't notice the difference.
The reasons cited are reasons why a competitive free market wouldn't directly lead to space.
They're not, it seems to me, reasons why funds earned in the market and used by private individuals wouldn't lead to space.
For an example, look at the Carnegie Museum and Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh. Andrew Carnegie got rich as hell, and then spent the money on stuff like that. Can other folks see stuff like that leading outward to space?
It's very deeply related.
This news means China is going to give up some of the economic incentive for executing them. Over time, this should cause a reduction in executions as a side-effect.
(This should not be true of the justice system under discussion were completely free of corruption. So, you should absolutely take my assertions with a grain of salt at least proportional to the degree to which you consider China's justice system corruption-free.)
The best note-taking device I ever used for classes was the old Apple eMate.
For those who are not familiar: it's basically an Apple Newton in a subnotebook shell.
It had a note-taking app that worked either with the built-in keyboard or with the stylus.
Now, my first job out of high school back in the day was as a word-processing secretary, back when very few people used computers directly. As a result, my typing speed is very fast compared to many of my peers. When the note-taking is the sort that is easy to accommodate with typing, I can work pretty fast.
But not all note-taking is suitable for typing. Sometimes you've got a diagram. Sometimes you've got equations. Sometimes you've got accented characters or the phonetic alphabet.
On the eMate, I'd type away, and when a diagram came up, I'd just pick up the stylus and draw it, exactly as I would on paper. Then I'd go back to typing. Flowing back and forth was seamless. It was awesome.
(The battery would also last for days, sometimes even weeks, and the display was perfectly readable in lighting conditions from full sunlight to complete dark. Why? Because it was a monochrome LCD, which with sufficient lighting doesn't need the backlighting that color LCDs require.)
Another factor: there was absolutely no wireless connectivity at the time, and the device didn't multitask (from a user interface perspective, that is; it did have full background processing, but one app controlled the display at a time).
There was no temptation to multitask. There were no distractions.
Couple that with the rich tagging and indexing built in, and it was an extremely useful.
(Today, I use an iPad and bluetooth keyboard for note-taking, primarily because of the lack of multitasking (again, from a user interface point of view). And I'll often throw the device into airplane mode while doing this. I might still use that old eMate, if not for the blasted Y2K10 bug...)
Mostly, I like it as a dirt cheap Android set-top box that I can hack on. I haven't really spent time with their game marketplace yet.
It wasn't my last concern. My concerns were:
* I do not want an always-on internet requirement.
* Game loans or rentals must work without any "speedbumps".
* I will not accept an always-on Kinect.
* I demand a reasonable amount of backwards compatibility.
They've addressed three of my four. They've now gotten me to the point where if I were given one as a gift, I'd probably unbox it and plug it in rather than immediately ebaying it. That's no small change.
If they add backwards compatibility that's at least as good as what the 360 had, I'll preorder.
If they add backwards compatibility for at least the "Indie" games (which are built on top of XNA/CLR and should be trivial for them to support), I'll at least consider buying a unit after they're in peoples' hands and I've been able to read fair reviews.
(Backwards compatibility with Original Xbox titles, which ran on an x86 CPU and thus should be easier to support than 360 titles, may also get me to that point.)
That's fine if that's what you want.
Myself, I hate gaming on a PC. I use 'em for work and other hobbyist uses, and have since around 1980; I want my gaming device to be an appliance (that displays on my TV set and uses a gamepad instead of keyboard/mouse). Mega bonus points if it's a platform supported by GameFly.
(YMMV, of course. But that's what I want.)
(I'm still not getting the XboxOne, mind, nor the PS4. I'm considering the WiiU, and have already purchased an Ouya.)
This plan to "save" them would result in the platform having no future. If the only way people will buy them is at a loss for Microsoft, then Microsoft won't be making any more.
"Sure, we lose money on every sale, but we'll make it up in volume!"
I mostly agree, with two exceptions. Well, one exception that has an interesting corollary.
There are places where Windows isn't run in order to run Windows, but because there's some kind of "appliance computer" (dental records, machine control, whatever) that needs to run a very specific set of software and nothing else, and that software happens to run under Windows.
This could let vendors who sell those "appliances" stop paying a Microsoft tax, lowering their costs.
The specific case of this that could be of most interest to Slashdot readers: imagine a ReactOS Steambox. Imagine if the Steam client knew about ReactOS, and in cases where a game wasn't compatible, made that clear. (So, you'd get less games than you do via Steam under "real" Windows, but more than you currently get via Steam under MacOS or Linux.)
My first programming environment was Basic on the TRS-80, but I never got very good with that. I wrote some trivial programs, even a wee bit of hand-assmebled Z80 machine language poked directly into memory, but I couldn't write a program of any real size yet.
Then I got a disk-based C compiler and a copy of the old 1st edition of "Kernighan and Ritchie", and taught myself elementary C over a three-day weekend. That's when it really took off.
I got better by continuing to read programming articles in magazines.
Around 1984 or so I wrote my first really architected programs, with features logically separated into functions, code re-use, separation of code and data, different builds for different deployment environments/feature sets, and an event-driven user interaction model (in some builds).
(It was a set of programs to help me run 1st edition D&D games, set up so I could run it in different execution environments, eg. with/without graphics, with/without mouse. I named most of the different builds after different witch's familiars from Shakespeare. "Graymalkin" was of course the coolest version, with all the optional features turned on.)
That is "surprisingly well" -- I expected it to be a waste for everything.
..."sleep deprivation lowers all achievement in everyone"?
Who's surprised?
(Mind you, I'm all for conducting experiments to test things we all "know". I just don't usually expect to see those experiments classified as newsworthy.)
I'm guessing that any men who actually managed to give birth themselves would be able to successfully argue for more leave.
(The less tongue-in-cheek way to express the same thought is: if the parents are a married lesbian couple, what does their policy say about the amount of time permitted? If a female parent who didn't carry the baby is entitled to more leave than a man under the same circumstances, then yes, there's no argument by which the policy isn't discriminatory. But otherwise, there may be.)
There's extensions for just about every browser. Good stuff.
http://www.ghostery.com/