App Store should not be trademarkable, unless you also believe that "Shoe Store", "Grocery Store", "Hardware Store", etc. also should be. It's a store where you buy apps. Of course it's going to be called an app store.
When almost everything consumers already have hooked up to their TVs (game consoles, TiVos, blu-ray players, hell even the TVs themselves now) are able to stream media over the internet, it's becoming less and less necessary to have a cable subscription. It doesn't take long to get over the "OMG I CAN'T WATCH THE LATEST EPISODE OF [new show] TONIGHT" feeling, and once that is gone the wealth of streaming-available content is overwhelming.
Assuming they already have a broadband connection (which most people do), for under $20/month plus the initial outlay for an antenna, people can have access to Netflix ($7.99), Hulu Plus ($7.99), YouTube (free), and broadcast TV (free). Unless someone is really addicted to one particular cable channel, that's an extremely hard offer to beat and will offer far, far, far more choices than anyone could ever get through.
As more and more people realize this and get rid of their cable subscriptions, more cable networks will put their shows on Netflix/Hulu/Youtube and cable TV will fade away.
The no-price-until-login thing is called MAP and it exists at most online stores. They're forced by the manufacturers to do this if they have a price lower than the 'minimum advertised price'. It's total horseshit, but they're forced.
Do you really need all of them available at all times? What's wrong with putting them on Google Music and downloading them to your phone when you want them?
Yes, and that laptop will be heavier, more bulky, less secure, have much worse battery life, start up much slower, resume from sleep much slower, etc. etc.
Chromeboks are brilliant machines for people who value price, convenience, and security over versatility.
1) Twitter and Google are not the same company. I'm not sure why both are mentioned.
2) This type of speech is illegal in Germany, and I doubt Twitter feels like putting up much of a fuss to fight in this instance. It makes sense that they'd censor it in the country it's not legal in.
People don't want targeted ads? That's completely made up. Maybe a tiny subclass of people don't, but people at large do. Why do you think they work so well? If you're a guy, haven't you complained about TV ads for tampons?
Face it - ads are a part of life, and if you're going to have to see them anyway, they may as well be for things you'd be interested in. I'll take ads for video games, car products, and electronics over random ONE WEIRD TIP FOR WHITENING YOUR TEETH shit any day.
Looking at it another way, sites expect to earn a certain amount of money. If the ads are less effective because they're not targeted, then the ads will become more annoying. If the ads are blocked, then the ads will become unskippable (think: interstitials, sites blocking people who block ads, etc).
A world without targeted ads would be a lot more annoying than the present.
Liability won't be an issue. If (when) these are truly safer than humans driving, the insurance industry will be falling over themselves to insure the cars. It'll be pure profit for them, and the incredibly rare incidents that pop up will be more than covered by all the other people driving problem-free.
You don't own the things you buy, you're just licensing them. Since the licenses aren't transferable, that's the end of that story. It sucks, but at the same time, these services have a right to dictate the terms that you're purchasing under. By using the service and buying from them, you agree to those terms, so you don't have much of a right to complain about them.
There are two valid solutions to this:
1) Only buy physical media. Yes, it can be kind of a pain in the ass sometimes, but it's the only way to guarantee that you absolutely and irrevocably own what you're buying.
2) Only support digital businesses that don't use copy protection. This may mean going without the latest top 40 music download or the hottest new ebook, but in this age of self-publishing, there's a vast array of unrestricted content available, much of it wonderful. The people producing it are far more likely to appreciate the purchase, and you won't just be lining the pockets of companies fighting to take away your rights.
Some people may say that piracy is a valid option, but even discounting any moral arguments around it, all you're doing is giving companies reason to further lock down content. If nobody is buying their stuff AND nobody is pirating it, they'll have no scapegoat, and will be forced to make a real change. Meanwhile, you'll be helping the actual authors / musicians / etc. make a living off of their works and avoid the publishing middlemen.
How often do YOU write code for ridiculously complex systems that always works for every use case anyone ever throws at it and stays bug free forever?
I'm not in the game industry, but with the projects I work on things are somewhat parallel. There are people (DB admins, UI designers, etc) whose contributions are mostly in the beginning of a project who can start working on V2 features once they've finished up the V1 stuff. Bugs happen, and they need to be fixed after people start using the product in weird ways and uncover them.
I'd think that Slashdot of all places would have people who understand how this stuff works.
People who rail against day 1 DLC have no idea how releasing a game works. Especially with giant sprawling games, once you near the release date, there are a lot of specialists who have completed their contribution to the final project. Artists may be done with their portion, story writers may be done with their portion, certain programming teams may be done with their portion, etc. They need something to do, so they start working on DLC.
"Ah, but they could put that right on the disc in the first place!", you may say. No, they can't. By this point, the game needs to be finalized so they can thoroughly test it, create a master copy, and begin mass production. In the month(s) that this can take on a large title, there's plenty of time to get a significant DLC pack out.
Now, I'm not saying ALL day 1 DLC is because of this (especially rageworthy is something that's on-disc but a day 1 "unlock" DLC) but a very significant portion is. They're not trying to cheat you out of content you should have had, they're just making good use of the time it takes for a game to go from finished to available in stores.
Gold isn't worth ANYTHING inherently, it's only valuable because people say it's valuable, just like the "fiat currencies" that people rail against. If it suddenly goes out of style, you've lost everything.
"Gold will always hold its value" sounds far too much like "real estate will always hold its value", and we saw how well that turned out. The major difference is that you can still live in a worthless house, you can't do anything with worthless gold.
The problem with that is that Apple's stock price is, essentially, set by those same people. The only reason it's so high is because everyone is expecting Apple to continue to make increasingly ridiculous profits. So if the profits aren't quite as ridiculous as everyone was hoping for, then the extremely high stock price is no longer justified, and it'll drop, even though the company is still doing very, very well.
(Especially now, as Android is skyrocketing, Wall Street is looking for any sign of weakness in Apple.)
That said, coal plants aren't exactly clean and eco-friendly, but they're a hell of a lot more efficient than refining oil and burning gasoline in your car.
It's probably more likely that younger users don't use Yahoo for anything important, so they don't bother with strong passwords. Older users are more likely to have a Yahoo address as their primary email, etc.
Have you been keeping up with new technologies and languages? Are you as proficient in them as the new grads who studied them in school and have two high-selling smartphone apps? Then you'll do fine.
Are you still insistent that the best way to do anything is in C? Are you completely crippled by the thought of doing anything over the internet? Then you're screwed, and probably deservedly so.
This article only somewhat reflects reality. There's a huge amount of respect and jobs for people who have been in the field for a long time, but ONLY if they're also current in their knowledge. This is a field you just can't stagnate in.
So what are YOU doing? It's the people's job to control their government. These people wouldn't be in office unless they were put there by the people.
Don't like what they're doing? Vote them out. Don't like the field of candidates? Run for office.
The beauty of a democracy is that real people can make a huge difference. The drawback is that everyone thinks that all the other people will do it for them.
I've run into plenty of people who have loudly proclaimed that they've been IN THE FIELD FOR 30 YEARS, but yet don't know how to do anything on modern systems, don't understand the internet, etc.
Old, "experienced" people aren't worth anything unless they've kept their skills up to date. In cases like that, people fresh out of college with no real-world experience may actually be better for a job.
Tolkien's strengths were never in the quality of his writing. (though it's still tons better than a lot of authors)
His strengths were always in his ability to build a world - to make a place and its inhabitants so memorable that they'd be remembered for ages. He succeeded greatly in that, and has likely influenced the fantasy genre more than everybody else combined.
Slashdot Mirror
App Store should not be trademarkable, unless you also believe that "Shoe Store", "Grocery Store", "Hardware Store", etc. also should be. It's a store where you buy apps. Of course it's going to be called an app store.
When almost everything consumers already have hooked up to their TVs (game consoles, TiVos, blu-ray players, hell even the TVs themselves now) are able to stream media over the internet, it's becoming less and less necessary to have a cable subscription. It doesn't take long to get over the "OMG I CAN'T WATCH THE LATEST EPISODE OF [new show] TONIGHT" feeling, and once that is gone the wealth of streaming-available content is overwhelming.
Assuming they already have a broadband connection (which most people do), for under $20/month plus the initial outlay for an antenna, people can have access to Netflix ($7.99), Hulu Plus ($7.99), YouTube (free), and broadcast TV (free). Unless someone is really addicted to one particular cable channel, that's an extremely hard offer to beat and will offer far, far, far more choices than anyone could ever get through.
As more and more people realize this and get rid of their cable subscriptions, more cable networks will put their shows on Netflix/Hulu/Youtube and cable TV will fade away.
The no-price-until-login thing is called MAP and it exists at most online stores. They're forced by the manufacturers to do this if they have a price lower than the 'minimum advertised price'. It's total horseshit, but they're forced.
Are Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime Video suddenly non-existent?
Do you really need all of them available at all times? What's wrong with putting them on Google Music and downloading them to your phone when you want them?
Yes, and that laptop will be heavier, more bulky, less secure, have much worse battery life, start up much slower, resume from sleep much slower, etc. etc.
Chromeboks are brilliant machines for people who value price, convenience, and security over versatility.
1) Twitter and Google are not the same company. I'm not sure why both are mentioned.
2) This type of speech is illegal in Germany, and I doubt Twitter feels like putting up much of a fuss to fight in this instance. It makes sense that they'd censor it in the country it's not legal in.
People don't want targeted ads? That's completely made up. Maybe a tiny subclass of people don't, but people at large do. Why do you think they work so well? If you're a guy, haven't you complained about TV ads for tampons?
Face it - ads are a part of life, and if you're going to have to see them anyway, they may as well be for things you'd be interested in. I'll take ads for video games, car products, and electronics over random ONE WEIRD TIP FOR WHITENING YOUR TEETH shit any day.
Looking at it another way, sites expect to earn a certain amount of money. If the ads are less effective because they're not targeted, then the ads will become more annoying. If the ads are blocked, then the ads will become unskippable (think: interstitials, sites blocking people who block ads, etc).
A world without targeted ads would be a lot more annoying than the present.
Liability won't be an issue. If (when) these are truly safer than humans driving, the insurance industry will be falling over themselves to insure the cars. It'll be pure profit for them, and the incredibly rare incidents that pop up will be more than covered by all the other people driving problem-free.
You don't own the things you buy, you're just licensing them. Since the licenses aren't transferable, that's the end of that story. It sucks, but at the same time, these services have a right to dictate the terms that you're purchasing under. By using the service and buying from them, you agree to those terms, so you don't have much of a right to complain about them.
There are two valid solutions to this:
1) Only buy physical media. Yes, it can be kind of a pain in the ass sometimes, but it's the only way to guarantee that you absolutely and irrevocably own what you're buying.
2) Only support digital businesses that don't use copy protection. This may mean going without the latest top 40 music download or the hottest new ebook, but in this age of self-publishing, there's a vast array of unrestricted content available, much of it wonderful. The people producing it are far more likely to appreciate the purchase, and you won't just be lining the pockets of companies fighting to take away your rights.
Some people may say that piracy is a valid option, but even discounting any moral arguments around it, all you're doing is giving companies reason to further lock down content. If nobody is buying their stuff AND nobody is pirating it, they'll have no scapegoat, and will be forced to make a real change. Meanwhile, you'll be helping the actual authors / musicians / etc. make a living off of their works and avoid the publishing middlemen.
How often do YOU write code for ridiculously complex systems that always works for every use case anyone ever throws at it and stays bug free forever?
I'm not in the game industry, but with the projects I work on things are somewhat parallel. There are people (DB admins, UI designers, etc) whose contributions are mostly in the beginning of a project who can start working on V2 features once they've finished up the V1 stuff. Bugs happen, and they need to be fixed after people start using the product in weird ways and uncover them.
I'd think that Slashdot of all places would have people who understand how this stuff works.
People who rail against day 1 DLC have no idea how releasing a game works. Especially with giant sprawling games, once you near the release date, there are a lot of specialists who have completed their contribution to the final project. Artists may be done with their portion, story writers may be done with their portion, certain programming teams may be done with their portion, etc. They need something to do, so they start working on DLC.
"Ah, but they could put that right on the disc in the first place!", you may say. No, they can't. By this point, the game needs to be finalized so they can thoroughly test it, create a master copy, and begin mass production. In the month(s) that this can take on a large title, there's plenty of time to get a significant DLC pack out.
Now, I'm not saying ALL day 1 DLC is because of this (especially rageworthy is something that's on-disc but a day 1 "unlock" DLC) but a very significant portion is. They're not trying to cheat you out of content you should have had, they're just making good use of the time it takes for a game to go from finished to available in stores.
Gold isn't worth ANYTHING inherently, it's only valuable because people say it's valuable, just like the "fiat currencies" that people rail against. If it suddenly goes out of style, you've lost everything.
"Gold will always hold its value" sounds far too much like "real estate will always hold its value", and we saw how well that turned out. The major difference is that you can still live in a worthless house, you can't do anything with worthless gold.
The problem with that is that Apple's stock price is, essentially, set by those same people. The only reason it's so high is because everyone is expecting Apple to continue to make increasingly ridiculous profits. So if the profits aren't quite as ridiculous as everyone was hoping for, then the extremely high stock price is no longer justified, and it'll drop, even though the company is still doing very, very well.
(Especially now, as Android is skyrocketing, Wall Street is looking for any sign of weakness in Apple.)
That exists, it's called a PC.
Nearly none of the energy produced by power plants in the US is from oil: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#Generation
That said, coal plants aren't exactly clean and eco-friendly, but they're a hell of a lot more efficient than refining oil and burning gasoline in your car.
It's better than the alternative of having to pay Microsoft (and charge customers more) for a copy of Office, isn't it?
To be honest, it wouldn't be much different than his normal voice. Maybe he'd sound a little more robotic than froggy, I guess.
It's probably more likely that younger users don't use Yahoo for anything important, so they don't bother with strong passwords. Older users are more likely to have a Yahoo address as their primary email, etc.
Depends.
Have you been keeping up with new technologies and languages? Are you as proficient in them as the new grads who studied them in school and have two high-selling smartphone apps? Then you'll do fine.
Are you still insistent that the best way to do anything is in C? Are you completely crippled by the thought of doing anything over the internet? Then you're screwed, and probably deservedly so.
This article only somewhat reflects reality. There's a huge amount of respect and jobs for people who have been in the field for a long time, but ONLY if they're also current in their knowledge. This is a field you just can't stagnate in.
So what are YOU doing? It's the people's job to control their government. These people wouldn't be in office unless they were put there by the people.
Don't like what they're doing? Vote them out.
Don't like the field of candidates? Run for office.
The beauty of a democracy is that real people can make a huge difference. The drawback is that everyone thinks that all the other people will do it for them.
That didn't stop Windows.
I've run into plenty of people who have loudly proclaimed that they've been IN THE FIELD FOR 30 YEARS, but yet don't know how to do anything on modern systems, don't understand the internet, etc.
Old, "experienced" people aren't worth anything unless they've kept their skills up to date. In cases like that, people fresh out of college with no real-world experience may actually be better for a job.
Agreed.
Tolkien's strengths were never in the quality of his writing. (though it's still tons better than a lot of authors)
His strengths were always in his ability to build a world - to make a place and its inhabitants so memorable that they'd be remembered for ages. He succeeded greatly in that, and has likely influenced the fantasy genre more than everybody else combined.
Someone call the Earth Defense Force.