This is the Internet, your search results are probably already getting a mix of useful stuff and mindless twits;) This probably will worsen the "twit-to-usefulness" ratio, though.
On the plus side, if people abbreviate things a lot to fit in the 140 character limit then maybe Google search won't accidentally pick them up!
Why do everybody live happily without being paranoiac about your grocer stealing your credit card number
Because they can see who they are and know that they are a person with an actual investment in something who can legally and easily be tracked down.
or selling your nourishment profile to your insurance company that would really love to know if you eat healthy.
It depends whether it gets them bonus points. They don't generally tie transactions to cards/people in a way that they use, but people will quite happily get a "loyalty card" that is mainly used for data mining so that they can get a few discounts.
You trust your ISP not to repport law enforcement if you go online and download warez.
(Ignoring the fact I don't do it) I don't trust them on a "they have an interest in my privacy", I just know that they don't want to become liable for all of the other illegal activity that occurs that they don't catch.
You trust your mechanics for not telling your car insurance company you've been driving with bad break for 10000 miles.
Probably mainly because they don't have a clue, plus what difference does it make to the mechanic anyway?
You You trust your MD not to tell everyone you've got STD.
Only as professional ethics, and there are certain conditions where even that doesn't hold.
Are cloud computing service provider less secure than ordinary webhoster that would offer you a virtual private server? Why don't they deserve the same trust?
It depends on what you're trusting them with. Cloud is a nice idea for some people, but there is still a certain sub-set of organisations that wouldn't even trust a VPS or any other system that involves their proprietary and very valuable information going outside their network. In that way 'Cloud' isn't much different to other services.
Off-topic (as it is rated) for rendering on the cloud, but potentially on-topic for cloud in general. At the moment people want some degree of privacy of data, but "cloud" wants us to throw it to teh interwebz and process it there. Anyone care to guess how much easier it may become to get the data the OP wanted?;)
Parents or brother, probably, as they're the most technical one who might manage buying a game online. That's in a "25 year old planning Christmas presents rather than spending the mortgage/bills/looking-after-his-son money" way rather than the "some dumb teen living at home and getting stuff paid for him" way that your tone implied.
As for "pay what you want", your point falls down if I'm getting someone else to buy it for me. Some people have apparently paid $50 for it, according to their stats, but if I ask someone to get it for me as a present during their "pay what you want" period then I can't know how much the developers actually got for it. I can suggest to the family member that I think it is still worth the $20 and that it would encourage the Indie developer and lack of DRM, but it's still only a suggestion.
Either I'm reading things wrong or people are doing it because they feel they should support the developer. Their World of Goo page says:
This will get you the Windows and Mac and Linux versions downloadable right away
In a way it is good and bad that you get it for all platforms. I want it for Linux, so it'd have been nice to specifically say "look, I'm supporting your port to Linux", but at the same time it is good to get it on whatever platforms you want without having to pay multiple times.
Now, I had this on my Christmas list. Do I tell my family so that they can get it cheap and do the developers out of some money when a lack of DRM and an innovative game should be welcomed, or do I just let the "pay what you want" period go by and give them the money they deserve?
I want a phone that does phone calls and texts, but these days your options are limited if you don't want to pay for the camera:D
Things like Android and the Palm Pre look interesting, but a) I don't miss most of the features and wouldn't use them much after the first month and b) I don't have the money to spare (£10 of top-up credit lasts me 3-6 months! Land-lines and company phones are much cheaper;) )
I don't think all of the EU FP7 stuff is "end-usable releases" - I'm working on a project that works with end-users but isn't planning (AFAIK) to be usable as-is at the end of it. At least I hope it isn't - we've got lots of fixing to do if it is:D
If anyone cares, there's actually a public EU FP7 site with more on the various projects and the proposals they put out.
[Marketing-exec]No, I'm sure you're just confused. Yes, you're familiar with keyboards. Yes, the tactile feedback can be exceedingly useful. Yes, it means you're not hiding what you're about to click on. Yes, it means your screen doesn't get greasy. But what you really want is a touch-screen. It's what we're designing our phones with, because "customers" want it, and you're a customer so you must want it.[/Marketing-exec]
As ideas go it's really in the same tradition as various others than have been created over the years, including OHP, as someone else mentioned.
Apart from the "touch to interact" and "can be made aware of physical objects" bit. They didn't make particularly good use of it in the demo (they did the touch gestures and they used an object at the start for player selection) but it could be much better. According to a MS rep I talked to, the US DoD has had a look at some units for the "battlefield planning" situations instead of the classic "map on table with blocks of wood and big sticks".
The tokens I saw were very much "black and white", so while pips are "already a system" they're not necessarily one it'll be able to read. It'd also only work with most D6s, since all of my D4s/8s/10s/20s had numbers on, which will probably be more difficult to read and interpret from any direction.
Besides, if all it can see is the number "1" then how does it know what type of dice you have to calculate what is on the upper-side? Most dice (except D6, I think) have triangular sides, so you couldn't tell from just the bottom face whether you've rolled a D8 or a D20.
Strangely (having looked at the video and full-screened it) it looks like their character selection does actually use a dice, or at least a dice-like object, so it can interact with them to some degree. I can imagine that rolling the dice off the table would cause problems, but that's just an obvious case for a re-roll (or pick it up and put it down however it landed).
It should be possible in theory, you just need special dice. The Surface can already read objects that are placed on it using special tags (I think they were a bit like 3D barcodes on some things - the demo I saw used brochures and poker chip sized counters). As long as your barcode shows the opposite side to the one it is on (e.g. the "1" side of a D6 shows the barcode for 6) then it might work:)
openSUSE had a buggy Pulse Audio implementation when I first installed it (caused by buggy Soundblaster drivers, apparently, and something no so great in earlier versions of Pulse Audio). I didn't need the Soundblaster, but I had it so I thought I'd use it. A couple of tweaks later and it worked without stutter. A little while later and a patch came out in openSUSE and it was all fixed for me. It did seem like a bad config that was later resolved.
OSS is outdated and has its limitations. ALSA worked, but per-app config can have it uses and I'm sure that there'll be more and more uses for the other features (like moving output, automatic volume adjustment, etc). Maybe PA is a bit buggy, but if people don't test it then it isn't going to get any better.
Either that or 1) they're old and haven't been updated in ages, 2) use ugly table layouts that work okay in IE6 or 3) use properitary tags that only work in IE (also known as "old ASP/ASP.Net code" or "Frontpage Code", which were ugly as hell).
Online chat may expose may be exposed to all kinds of thoughts,
I like the way you phrased that. My first thought was of right-wing nutjobs complaining that Command and Conquer (random game choice with "Reds" in it) should have a much higher rating because their kid has been playing it and had all of these "dirty", "immoral" and "disgusting" thoughts put into their heads about socialism, freedom, a world without religion and other such "bad" topics:D
I tried to RTFA (well, not the first one, but the response from Fast Co) and failed. I got as far as:
Twitter's on every tech-fan's lips
(the first five words) and gave up. I'm a tech fan, but Twitter just doesn't interest me as it is. Making communication that short and easy just leads to drivel (or people using Twitter as an RSS feed for their site - I'll watch the site and its real RSS feed, thank you). Threading is hopeless in things like Twitter and while it might be semi-useful for faster conversations, it won't be as good as a proper IM client for a group chat.
For example, make a NPC standing behind a cow and moving in a certain way, making it look like he is fornicating with said cow.
And what's even worse with the idea of rating the online content is that a) it could be entirely perspective (i.e. from another angle there's nothing wrong with a cow over there and a man 'dancing' nearby) and b) everyone has their own little dirty imagination that can corrupt some fairly simple things.
$deity help them if they ever did English Literature - from what my wife said then everything (like swords) seems to get drawn back to some phallic symbology, which completely messes up low ratings on fantasy games.
That, and the fact that the free ones you can get (e.g. startssl.com, who I use) aren't automatically accepted. Not a problem for my webmail and admin sections, which are only used by me and my family, but far more annoying if I had a wider range of users hitting "WE CAN'T VERIFY THE CERTIFICATE CHAIN!!!!!" messages when all I want to do is put HTTPS on my site.
Even better was the Computing magazine (I think - or possibly one of their letters) response to that lost money on business software piracy: If so much is lost when 50% of the software is pirated, just think how much is being poured down the drain and could be saved if they all moved to FOSS!
A company is selling an "unlimited" plan and can't handle unlimited usage? How dare you suggest such a thing. That is blasphemy against Capitalism at its highest. No company would ever stoop to such lengths as offering more than they can handle in the hope that people won't use it. That just wouldn't be proper, even if it did increase profit in the short-term.
Next thing I know you'll be telling me that all of those "unlimited" broadband connections aren't unlimited, and that my $2 per month "unlimited" hosting account won't really let me host unlimited files with unlimited bandwidth!
Games in the past could benefit, but it would have to be retro "real" adverts. F1 games might benefit a bit as it would be even closer to real, but I've always been quite happy with the spoofs. After all, if you're in an F1 car doing a couple of hundred Mph then you're not focusing on the boards!
Slashdot Mirror
Great. I'm sure that with Twitter messages in the search results they'll just become so packed with information. After all, 140chars can hol<eof>
This is the Internet, your search results are probably already getting a mix of useful stuff and mindless twits ;) This probably will worsen the "twit-to-usefulness" ratio, though.
On the plus side, if people abbreviate things a lot to fit in the 140 character limit then maybe Google search won't accidentally pick them up!
Because they can see who they are and know that they are a person with an actual investment in something who can legally and easily be tracked down.
It depends whether it gets them bonus points. They don't generally tie transactions to cards/people in a way that they use, but people will quite happily get a "loyalty card" that is mainly used for data mining so that they can get a few discounts.
(Ignoring the fact I don't do it) I don't trust them on a "they have an interest in my privacy", I just know that they don't want to become liable for all of the other illegal activity that occurs that they don't catch.
Probably mainly because they don't have a clue, plus what difference does it make to the mechanic anyway?
Only as professional ethics, and there are certain conditions where even that doesn't hold.
It depends on what you're trusting them with. Cloud is a nice idea for some people, but there is still a certain sub-set of organisations that wouldn't even trust a VPS or any other system that involves their proprietary and very valuable information going outside their network. In that way 'Cloud' isn't much different to other services.
Off-topic (as it is rated) for rendering on the cloud, but potentially on-topic for cloud in general. At the moment people want some degree of privacy of data, but "cloud" wants us to throw it to teh interwebz and process it there. Anyone care to guess how much easier it may become to get the data the OP wanted? ;)
Parents or brother, probably, as they're the most technical one who might manage buying a game online. That's in a "25 year old planning Christmas presents rather than spending the mortgage/bills/looking-after-his-son money" way rather than the "some dumb teen living at home and getting stuff paid for him" way that your tone implied.
As for "pay what you want", your point falls down if I'm getting someone else to buy it for me. Some people have apparently paid $50 for it, according to their stats, but if I ask someone to get it for me as a present during their "pay what you want" period then I can't know how much the developers actually got for it. I can suggest to the family member that I think it is still worth the $20 and that it would encourage the Indie developer and lack of DRM, but it's still only a suggestion.
Good point - its only fair to say "I like your game and I think it is worth the money you're charging for it" :)
Either I'm reading things wrong or people are doing it because they feel they should support the developer. Their World of Goo page says:
In a way it is good and bad that you get it for all platforms. I want it for Linux, so it'd have been nice to specifically say "look, I'm supporting your port to Linux", but at the same time it is good to get it on whatever platforms you want without having to pay multiple times.
Now, I had this on my Christmas list. Do I tell my family so that they can get it cheap and do the developers out of some money when a lack of DRM and an innovative game should be welcomed, or do I just let the "pay what you want" period go by and give them the money they deserve?
I want a phone that does phone calls and texts, but these days your options are limited if you don't want to pay for the camera :D
Things like Android and the Palm Pre look interesting, but a) I don't miss most of the features and wouldn't use them much after the first month and b) I don't have the money to spare (£10 of top-up credit lasts me 3-6 months! Land-lines and company phones are much cheaper ;) )
I don't think all of the EU FP7 stuff is "end-usable releases" - I'm working on a project that works with end-users but isn't planning (AFAIK) to be usable as-is at the end of it. At least I hope it isn't - we've got lots of fixing to do if it is :D
If anyone cares, there's actually a public EU FP7 site with more on the various projects and the proposals they put out.
[Marketing-exec]No, I'm sure you're just confused. Yes, you're familiar with keyboards. Yes, the tactile feedback can be exceedingly useful. Yes, it means you're not hiding what you're about to click on. Yes, it means your screen doesn't get greasy. But what you really want is a touch-screen. It's what we're designing our phones with, because "customers" want it, and you're a customer so you must want it.[/Marketing-exec]
It wouldn't work for D4s and the "upper-side", that was just a phrase from further up the comments and how to handle D6s.
Apart from the "touch to interact" and "can be made aware of physical objects" bit. They didn't make particularly good use of it in the demo (they did the touch gestures and they used an object at the start for player selection) but it could be much better. According to a MS rep I talked to, the US DoD has had a look at some units for the "battlefield planning" situations instead of the classic "map on table with blocks of wood and big sticks".
The tokens I saw were very much "black and white", so while pips are "already a system" they're not necessarily one it'll be able to read. It'd also only work with most D6s, since all of my D4s/8s/10s/20s had numbers on, which will probably be more difficult to read and interpret from any direction.
Besides, if all it can see is the number "1" then how does it know what type of dice you have to calculate what is on the upper-side? Most dice (except D6, I think) have triangular sides, so you couldn't tell from just the bottom face whether you've rolled a D8 or a D20.
Strangely (having looked at the video and full-screened it) it looks like their character selection does actually use a dice, or at least a dice-like object, so it can interact with them to some degree. I can imagine that rolling the dice off the table would cause problems, but that's just an obvious case for a re-roll (or pick it up and put it down however it landed).
It should be possible in theory, you just need special dice. The Surface can already read objects that are placed on it using special tags (I think they were a bit like 3D barcodes on some things - the demo I saw used brochures and poker chip sized counters). As long as your barcode shows the opposite side to the one it is on (e.g. the "1" side of a D6 shows the barcode for 6) then it might work :)
openSUSE had a buggy Pulse Audio implementation when I first installed it (caused by buggy Soundblaster drivers, apparently, and something no so great in earlier versions of Pulse Audio). I didn't need the Soundblaster, but I had it so I thought I'd use it. A couple of tweaks later and it worked without stutter. A little while later and a patch came out in openSUSE and it was all fixed for me. It did seem like a bad config that was later resolved.
OSS is outdated and has its limitations. ALSA worked, but per-app config can have it uses and I'm sure that there'll be more and more uses for the other features (like moving output, automatic volume adjustment, etc). Maybe PA is a bit buggy, but if people don't test it then it isn't going to get any better.
Either that or 1) they're old and haven't been updated in ages, 2) use ugly table layouts that work okay in IE6 or 3) use properitary tags that only work in IE (also known as "old ASP/ASP.Net code" or "Frontpage Code", which were ugly as hell).
I like the way you phrased that. My first thought was of right-wing nutjobs complaining that Command and Conquer (random game choice with "Reds" in it) should have a much higher rating because their kid has been playing it and had all of these "dirty", "immoral" and "disgusting" thoughts put into their heads about socialism, freedom, a world without religion and other such "bad" topics :D
I tried to RTFA (well, not the first one, but the response from Fast Co) and failed. I got as far as:
(the first five words) and gave up. I'm a tech fan, but Twitter just doesn't interest me as it is. Making communication that short and easy just leads to drivel (or people using Twitter as an RSS feed for their site - I'll watch the site and its real RSS feed, thank you). Threading is hopeless in things like Twitter and while it might be semi-useful for faster conversations, it won't be as good as a proper IM client for a group chat.
And what's even worse with the idea of rating the online content is that a) it could be entirely perspective (i.e. from another angle there's nothing wrong with a cow over there and a man 'dancing' nearby) and b) everyone has their own little dirty imagination that can corrupt some fairly simple things.
$deity help them if they ever did English Literature - from what my wife said then everything (like swords) seems to get drawn back to some phallic symbology, which completely messes up low ratings on fantasy games.
That, and the fact that the free ones you can get (e.g. startssl.com, who I use) aren't automatically accepted. Not a problem for my webmail and admin sections, which are only used by me and my family, but far more annoying if I had a wider range of users hitting "WE CAN'T VERIFY THE CERTIFICATE CHAIN!!!!!" messages when all I want to do is put HTTPS on my site.
Or, if you're only using half of Photoshop, you could just try something like The GIMP and not have to have illegal copies of anything ;)
Even better was the Computing magazine (I think - or possibly one of their letters) response to that lost money on business software piracy: If so much is lost when 50% of the software is pirated, just think how much is being poured down the drain and could be saved if they all moved to FOSS!
A company is selling an "unlimited" plan and can't handle unlimited usage? How dare you suggest such a thing. That is blasphemy against Capitalism at its highest. No company would ever stoop to such lengths as offering more than they can handle in the hope that people won't use it. That just wouldn't be proper, even if it did increase profit in the short-term.
Next thing I know you'll be telling me that all of those "unlimited" broadband connections aren't unlimited, and that my $2 per month "unlimited" hosting account won't really let me host unlimited files with unlimited bandwidth!
Games in the past could benefit, but it would have to be retro "real" adverts. F1 games might benefit a bit as it would be even closer to real, but I've always been quite happy with the spoofs. After all, if you're in an F1 car doing a couple of hundred Mph then you're not focusing on the boards!