I think we're talking about two different things. You're arguing about unfair contracts. What the article is talking about (I believe) is out-and-out fraud regarding how much money is earned for a given movie.
Not quite. This is essentially fraud on a moral level, but legally it's nothing more than an unfair contract. Look up Hollywood Accounting.
There's a good reason for that. According to the article, 52% of people have clicked on or responded to spam. The summary is not just inaccurate, it's a blatant lie. Excellent work as always, editors.
In actual fact, the 12% figure is the proportion of people out of that 52% who were responding because they actually wanted to buy the product being punted by the spammer. The remaining people have weird excuses like "I did it by accident", "I don't know why I did it, I just did" and even "I wanted to see what would happen".
I have one of these. You have to import it. (try Dynamism).
Actually I'm in the UK, but even over here it was incredibly hard to track one down. I found one company that listed it, but it never seemed to be in stock. Besides, I'm used to shopping around for the best price - when only one company stocks an item it makes me nervous.:)
The other down side is a poor power management design.
Yeah, I did read that too - it's the other thing that put me off tracking one down. I went for an Acer Aspire One as my general purpose netbook in the end, but I still crave a touch screen machine.
Tablets are a special market space
Tell me about it - my particular need for one stems from a desire to use it for triggering samples while playing live electronic music. I guess that's a pretty niche requirement!
Anyhow, it's nice to know you're happy with your M912 - I guess I'll see how this new Asus machine pans out, and decide between the two.
Gigabyte did this a year ago, with their M912. It looked like a stunning little machine, but sadly they priced it at more than double the price of the average netbook, and nowhere seemed to get any in stock.
I'm not sure why they've included a trackpad either. Those things are horrendous to use at the best of times, now there's a touch screen there to replace it. The space could be used to include a decent sized keyboard instead.
This is the case in my office, where IE6 is the approved standard, and no one is allowed to use FireFox or Opera or Chrome unless they can submit a written justification to the IT standards committee and obtain their approval. That is rare.
Might I suggest that this will become considerably less rare when the web simply doesn't work properly in IE6 any more? If they really can't fix their internal apps so you can upgrade to IE8, they'll eventually have to accept that having Firefox as a second browser is a necessity.
However, that list consists primarily of names which don't quite seem to fit. I can't imagine the next version of OS X being named "Kodkod", for instance. Another entry on the list that seems unlikely to me is "Domestic Cat".
What I do think is unfortunate is that because handset subsidy is so common, there isn't nearly as much choice between contracts if you want a SIM-only contract.
Spot on - you've put this much better than I could. My post came across more like I was moaning about people on expensive contracts, but of course they can do what they like, it's no concern of mine.:)
What really bothers me is that I spend very little on actual calls or texts, but my phone is still very important to me for all of its other features. I'd love to have a new smartphone, but SIM-only contracts offer very limited choice, and if you try to buy one SIM-free the prices are truly ridiculous.
That's very nice Mr. Cowardon, but you're not the demographic I'm talking about. I'm referring to the people who sign up to £30 or £40 contracts without even thinking about it, so they can have the very shiniest new handsets. Perhaps the minority require a thousand SMS and several GB of data a month, but I expect they're in the minority.
That makes a lot more sense, though not in the context of the article. They shelled out another $200ish on extra batteries, MobileMe subscription etc. I can't imagine all that's refundable too, and neither is it a great deal of use without an iPhone.
What does a iPhone cost without the data plan? (Say the phone broke and you need a new one, not to mention you just signed up for 2 years)
From reading the article (I know, sorry!) it seems they believed there was a clause in the AT&T contract which allowed them to cancel within 30 days and keep the iPhone.
I think they might have been mistaken about that, since AT&T are unlikely to make much money giving away iPhones for free. To use everyone's favourite analogy, it's like renting a car for a week, but if you cancel within 24 hours you get to keep the car.
I'm on prepaid myself, but most people over here in the UK also get a phone on contract. They pay out hugely inflated monthly fees to get far more minutes and texts than they need, so they can kid themselves they're getting a brand new handset every year or two for "free". Perfectly good handsets get thrown away - it's a huge waste of resources both economically and environmentally.
cursing is notoriously decried in the public debate
Kindest sirs,
I am concerned, due to the nature of the language which you have utilised upon this occasion, that you may in fact be referring to an article from around the turn of the century.
Your faithful and humble servant,
YourExperiment, esq.
Why does this scare you? Is it not only natural that this is exactly what users should want?
The developer's job is two-fold: -
to work out ways of getting as close to that ideal as possible
to work out the trade-offs between these different feature requests, explain them to the users, and work out the optimum feature set that is actually achievable
There have been masses of funny games since the days of text adventures. Duke Nukem, Max Payne, Grand Theft Auto, Fallout, Portal, Team Fortress. If the article is right, and creating humour in modern games really is harder than it was in the old days, then the designers must be doing a damn good job.
Oh, and I couldn't let an article about humour in games go by without mentioning Rom Check Fail. No-one who loves MAME or old arcade classics could fail to find it amusing!
Interesting that the "demonstrations" in the video are not only faked, but really unconvincingly faked. The only part which looks like it might be a genuine live demo is when they demonstrate that holding a hand over the webcam causes the software to activate, albeit with considerable lag. Pretty impressive technology!
Just to clarify, are you talking about the MS implementation of C#, or the Mono implementation? Or are they equivalent in terms of this stuff.
I'm referring to the Microsoft implementation. I've not investigated the Mono side of things before now, due to the whole patent issue, so I can't comment as to the equivalence of the two implementations.
I'm wondering to what extent.NET would give inherently nicer development features and to what extent MS have just made better development tools for their language than the other language folks have managed to make for theirs.
Some of each - Visual Studio is (in my opinion) a really nice polished IDE, and that certainly adds to the whole experience, but it's the language itself that really impressed me. I'm happy enough coding in a text editor when necessary.
Also, if they believe it gives them a more favourable playing field to compete on, it'll just make good business sense to support Free implementations...
Absolutely, but the problems only start when we suddenly realise that Microsoft owns all the best playing fields, and their promise to allow us to play on them free of charge suddenly doesn't look as watertight as it did when they first made it.:)
C# sounds quite nice. But what I'm wondering is: is the noise and push over Mono as a popular platform a result of it being particularly strong, or a result of a few particularly desirable apps depending on it?
Interesting question. I don't think it's to do with the existence of a few desirable apps. I've had plenty of experience with C# /.NET through work, and it's really very nice to work with. The language, the libraries, the platform and even the development environment all add up to a whole which (to my disappointment) I find much easier to work with than any free alternative I have yet discovered.
I still try to stay away from proprietary technologies in my personal projects, but I can see why people are excited by the prospect of a truly free version of this toolset. I'd switch to it in an instant if it happened. I don't think this announcement means we're there yet, however. Neither do I hold out much hope, with Microsoft being the way they are, that we will ever truly get there.
Slashdot Mirror
No, but you did say you loved it, which doesn't imply motherfuckertude to me. :)
Ah, yes. Also known as "Cole's Law".
That bill should have been shredded.
Ah, but then you'd only get one post modded up to +5.
I think we're talking about two different things. You're arguing about unfair contracts. What the article is talking about (I believe) is out-and-out fraud regarding how much money is earned for a given movie.
Not quite. This is essentially fraud on a moral level, but legally it's nothing more than an unfair contract. Look up Hollywood Accounting.
That's what I though too, 12% seems a bit low.
There's a good reason for that. According to the article, 52% of people have clicked on or responded to spam. The summary is not just inaccurate, it's a blatant lie. Excellent work as always, editors.
In actual fact, the 12% figure is the proportion of people out of that 52% who were responding because they actually wanted to buy the product being punted by the spammer. The remaining people have weird excuses like "I did it by accident", "I don't know why I did it, I just did" and even "I wanted to see what would happen".
I have one of these. You have to import it. (try Dynamism).
Actually I'm in the UK, but even over here it was incredibly hard to track one down. I found one company that listed it, but it never seemed to be in stock. Besides, I'm used to shopping around for the best price - when only one company stocks an item it makes me nervous. :)
The other down side is a poor power management design.
Yeah, I did read that too - it's the other thing that put me off tracking one down. I went for an Acer Aspire One as my general purpose netbook in the end, but I still crave a touch screen machine.
Tablets are a special market space
Tell me about it - my particular need for one stems from a desire to use it for triggering samples while playing live electronic music. I guess that's a pretty niche requirement!
Anyhow, it's nice to know you're happy with your M912 - I guess I'll see how this new Asus machine pans out, and decide between the two.
Gigabyte did this a year ago, with their M912. It looked like a stunning little machine, but sadly they priced it at more than double the price of the average netbook, and nowhere seemed to get any in stock.
I'm not sure why they've included a trackpad either. Those things are horrendous to use at the best of times, now there's a touch screen there to replace it. The space could be used to include a decent sized keyboard instead.
This is the case in my office, where IE6 is the approved standard, and no one is allowed to use FireFox or Opera or Chrome unless they can submit a written justification to the IT standards committee and obtain their approval. That is rare.
Might I suggest that this will become considerably less rare when the web simply doesn't work properly in IE6 any more? If they really can't fix their internal apps so you can upgrade to IE8, they'll eventually have to accept that having Firefox as a second browser is a necessity.
However, that list consists primarily of names which don't quite seem to fit. I can't imagine the next version of OS X being named "Kodkod", for instance. Another entry on the list that seems unlikely to me is "Domestic Cat".
What I do think is unfortunate is that because handset subsidy is so common, there isn't nearly as much choice between contracts if you want a SIM-only contract.
Spot on - you've put this much better than I could. My post came across more like I was moaning about people on expensive contracts, but of course they can do what they like, it's no concern of mine. :)
What really bothers me is that I spend very little on actual calls or texts, but my phone is still very important to me for all of its other features. I'd love to have a new smartphone, but SIM-only contracts offer very limited choice, and if you try to buy one SIM-free the prices are truly ridiculous.
Perhaps the directors commentary will finally reveal why Neil Armstrong fluffed his lines.
(Just joking BTW, obviously the guy's a hero.)
That's very nice Mr. Cowardon, but you're not the demographic I'm talking about. I'm referring to the people who sign up to £30 or £40 contracts without even thinking about it, so they can have the very shiniest new handsets. Perhaps the minority require a thousand SMS and several GB of data a month, but I expect they're in the minority.
That makes a lot more sense, though not in the context of the article. They shelled out another $200ish on extra batteries, MobileMe subscription etc. I can't imagine all that's refundable too, and neither is it a great deal of use without an iPhone.
What does a iPhone cost without the data plan? (Say the phone broke and you need a new one, not to mention you just signed up for 2 years)
From reading the article (I know, sorry!) it seems they believed there was a clause in the AT&T contract which allowed them to cancel within 30 days and keep the iPhone.
I think they might have been mistaken about that, since AT&T are unlikely to make much money giving away iPhones for free. To use everyone's favourite analogy, it's like renting a car for a week, but if you cancel within 24 hours you get to keep the car.
I'm on prepaid myself, but most people over here in the UK also get a phone on contract. They pay out hugely inflated monthly fees to get far more minutes and texts than they need, so they can kid themselves they're getting a brand new handset every year or two for "free". Perfectly good handsets get thrown away - it's a huge waste of resources both economically and environmentally.
cursing is notoriously decried in the public debate
Kindest sirs,
I am concerned, due to the nature of the language which you have utilised upon this occasion, that you may in fact be referring to an article from around the turn of the century.
Your faithful and humble servant,
YourExperiment, esq.
Why does this scare you? Is it not only natural that this is exactly what users should want?
The developer's job is two-fold: -
Some of Microsoft's technologies... need to be broken.
Hey - you're in luck!
It creeps the Queen out when she has to pin something onto a corpse.
That's why Philip has to put his own medals on in the morning.
There have been masses of funny games since the days of text adventures. Duke Nukem, Max Payne, Grand Theft Auto, Fallout, Portal, Team Fortress. If the article is right, and creating humour in modern games really is harder than it was in the old days, then the designers must be doing a damn good job.
Oh, and I couldn't let an article about humour in games go by without mentioning Rom Check Fail. No-one who loves MAME or old arcade classics could fail to find it amusing!
Okay. I am heavier than a duck, by a considerable margin.
Interesting that the "demonstrations" in the video are not only faked, but really unconvincingly faked. The only part which looks like it might be a genuine live demo is when they demonstrate that holding a hand over the webcam causes the software to activate, albeit with considerable lag. Pretty impressive technology!
I bought shares in Google, and sold shares in Microsoft.
Just to clarify, are you talking about the MS implementation of C#, or the Mono implementation? Or are they equivalent in terms of this stuff.
I'm referring to the Microsoft implementation. I've not investigated the Mono side of things before now, due to the whole patent issue, so I can't comment as to the equivalence of the two implementations.
I'm wondering to what extent .NET would give inherently nicer development features and to what extent MS have just made better development tools for their language than the other language folks have managed to make for theirs.
Some of each - Visual Studio is (in my opinion) a really nice polished IDE, and that certainly adds to the whole experience, but it's the language itself that really impressed me. I'm happy enough coding in a text editor when necessary.
Also, if they believe it gives them a more favourable playing field to compete on, it'll just make good business sense to support Free implementations...
Absolutely, but the problems only start when we suddenly realise that Microsoft owns all the best playing fields, and their promise to allow us to play on them free of charge suddenly doesn't look as watertight as it did when they first made it. :)
C# sounds quite nice. But what I'm wondering is: is the noise and push over Mono as a popular platform a result of it being particularly strong, or a result of a few particularly desirable apps depending on it?
Interesting question. I don't think it's to do with the existence of a few desirable apps. I've had plenty of experience with C# / .NET through work, and it's really very nice to work with. The language, the libraries, the platform and even the development environment all add up to a whole which (to my disappointment) I find much easier to work with than any free alternative I have yet discovered.
I still try to stay away from proprietary technologies in my personal projects, but I can see why people are excited by the prospect of a truly free version of this toolset. I'd switch to it in an instant if it happened. I don't think this announcement means we're there yet, however. Neither do I hold out much hope, with Microsoft being the way they are, that we will ever truly get there.