EVE is not f2p. But then again f2p eve with paid for ships would suck donkey balls and no one would play. There are other successful games that are not f2p either.
EVE could go f2p in much the same way as other games have made the transition. e.g. by offering a core experience & beginner stuff for free and la carte access to particular missions, ships, skills, materials or whatever. If you paid it would be no different to the way it is now, except of course an a la carte pay model might suit a lot of people than a subscription. e.g. someone who only has time to play a few hours a week is going to find things cheaper than they are under a sub.
The biggest issue with f2p is not the payments but the play model. A la carte probably is cheaper than a sub, but that means the game has to attract more players to compensate and entice them with new content. If you look at games like Lord of the Rings Online which have gone f2p, they've had to become more casual to encourage people to get to the premium content faster. That means levelling is faster and upkeep, drops, cost of travel, penalty for death are all modified. I imagine EVE would have to do likewise if it went f2p and in doing so I could see the hardcore getting severely pissed off.
But at the end of the day the universe is a big place. I'm quite certain that they could accommodate the hardcore and the casuals within the same game. It seems inevitable to me that even EVE and World of Warcraft will have to contemplate f2p models soon enough.
More likely it's a combination of things - Google putting the boot into a competitor, lack of interest in the app, uncertainty about the platform's future, lack of resources and everything else. Mostly I think Google is just putting the boot in.
As for web browsers, yes you can produce a passable "app" from HTML5. However if you compare a native app like GMail, or Facebook to its mobile counterpart its usually the native app which stands out as being the most usable and responsive. Simple example, in native GMail I can hold my finger down on an article (called a long click) and the app responds by showing me a menu of actions I can do with the email. So I could delete the email or mark it as spam. In the mobile version, I have to check the the item and then a secondary floating menu appears that I have to drop down to access the equivalent functionality.
O'Leary and Ryanair float these stupid ideas every 6 months - charging for toilets, making everyone stand up etc. I guess it's one way to gain free publicity.
Conflating the user experience with the programming experience is bizarre. A GUI might be a dog to program but might result in a good user experience or vice versa. And GPU accelerating the GUI should be regarded as a good thing whether we're talking of KDE, GNOME, OS X, Windows or anything else. Treating windows as surfaces massively improves performance on accelerated hardware and reduces the amount of context switching going on when windows damage other windows.
If Mesa is getting a better software rasterizer through LLVMPipe it means that GNOME Shell (and KDE, Unity, xfce et al) can support users of older hardware without constraining what they can do that. That ultimately means better performance for the majority who do have GPUs, and it also means that Linux as a whole offers an experience that can compete against desktops running on other operating systems.
Don't worry Gnome-shell is already slow. Terribly slow. Unbelievably slow. Unusably slow. I could give a load of other adjectives, but I think you get what I mean. The target devices (netbooks and tablets) usually can't handle it, and even proper desktops struggle...
Slow? Perhaps under software emulation it might be. But if you have hardware accelerated driver then no it isn't at all. There is absolutely no issue running GNOME shell on comparatively modest hardware. I have Linux running on a 5 year old PC with an old Radeon driver and it works perfectly well.
In certain ways compositing desktops are a lot faster than their older brethren. When a window is moved over other windows there is no longer any need to send out damage events to the other window's owners because everything is drawn into its own surface so the screen is just recomposed. It means much less context switching and less CPU taken up needlessly repainting stuff.
There is absolutely no possibility of confusion between a restaurant / cafe called appleaday and manufacturer of consumer electronics called Apple. None. There is no trademark infringement here. Neither company competes within the domain of the other. Consumers aren't going to confuse the two. It doesn't dilute Apple's brand. If this went to court it would be dismissed almost immediately which suggests that Apple are just being assholes, vigorously threatening any business containing the word Apple even if their threats are entirely baseless.
I doubt you need FDA approval for something which just prints out a model of a scan. The patient isn't going to have the part shoved back in them, it's a surgeons tool. Though I can see that if it were used as the basis of producing parts that went back into a patient, e.g. a plate, band or whatever that it might become expensive. More likely they just want something they can hold, turn around, poke, practice with etc.
You can encrypt a directory by checking a box on its advanced properties so that every file it contains and every file created / copied thereafter in that folder is encrypted. Encryption is via a key tied to your login so you don't have to mount the folder or anything and presumably you could share keys or do other interesting things. You can't encrypt and compress files at the same time as encryption renders the file data essentially random and therefore impervious to significant compression.
It doesn't stop someone viewing the contents of the folder, but not the contents of the file. If you want to encrypt an entire volume you use Bitlocker, Truecrypt, PGPDisk or a bunch of other similar solutions. Truecrypt is free and well trusted so that would be the defacto choice IMO unless you need enterprise level functionality.
Mac OS X also supports crypto through the GUI. FileVault protects the contents of your home folder, encrypting them with your login credentials. Or you can password protect a folder by turning it into an encrypted disk image and mount that to access it.
One could argue that what you need over the long term is an educated population who can help themselves. So tossing some cheap laptops at their kids may lessen the need for you and your kids to provide food, shelter, clean water or medicine because they'll be able to buy it for themselves.
Yeah I was listening to the clip and noticed that an undetermined chunk of his speech is cut out just as he was about to refer to quotations from Haught's book.
Having to write scripts to explicitly compress a directory and mount it as a regular directory (or whatever) is nowhere near as trivial or convenient as a one-shot checkbox. I also believe that a file system or at least something that looks like a file system to user land does need to support extensions such as compression / encryption natively in some form. It's pretty clear the kernel devs thinks so too or Btrfs wouldn't be striving to offer those features and wouldn't be on track as the replacement for ext4.
I don't think compression is something which Windows actively waves under the nose of users (it's in an advanced dialog) but the fact is it's there. And encryption is too. And when you check the box to compress or encrypt Windows doesn't make a big song and dance about it, it just does what it's told.
This is what open source and Linux needs to learn. Maybe some people are masochists and seriously consider mounting loopback devices pointing at compressed or encrypted files or some other shit as no big deal but they are in a minority. Regular users, even most power users would prefer a GUI that offers a checkbox and an OS which makes such functionality seamless and easy to tap.
I think in the case of compression / crypto part of the issue is ext4 doesn't offer them at all so kludges like loopbacks have to be used. I would hope that btrfs will offer them and perhaps other extension points so perhaps Linux will eventually deliver this sort of functionality.
It's the tablets. I seriously doubt any PC manufacturer would give a crap about you installing whatever you like on your PC. PCs will be the way they've always been for the forseeable future.
But if they're selling Windows branded tablets or other hybrid form factors then that's another matter. I would not be surprised if they become contractually obliged to secure the devices given that Microsoft intends them for delivering premium content like apps, videos, music through their own store. It won't be a case of them choosing not to allow rooting but a case of them being unable to allow it.
I think for Microsoft's sake they should back off this since it would end up in the courts and consider another way of securing their content, e.g. a hardware key in the device which is disabled in rooted devices.
A few links would deal with apps that expect stuff in one place to see it in another. But most apps are configurable these days so it's not a big deal except when have binaries, many of which would go in/opt/ anyway and have scripts to deal with the vagaries of different systems. Really the issue is that Unix filesystem is arcane and in most cases for no good reason. So if Fedora want to simplify it a bit then I don't see the issue with that.
I've used compression on laptops which are running tight on space, especially when a folder contains hundreds or thousands of infrequently but still useful files. e.g. documentation & samples folders, apps I still need but don't run too often and so on.
Eclipse gets slower the more plugins you pile on top of it and the larger your workspace. If you stick with a reasonable set of plugins representing what you actually need then it isn't too bad. Startup is about 20 seconds for me on first invoke, and half that thereafter once Windows 7 caches it. 3.7 feels faster compared to older versions too. And once you open it you are likely to leave it open for a long time. So a hit at startup really shouldn't be considered a big deal.
Yeah I found it excruciating. Hitchens was erudite, informed, gracious and logical. Craig just rambled, stringing together tenuous arguments and logical fallacies at such a rate that no one would have time to refute them all. There is a name for this sort of argumentation - the Gish Gallop and Craig practices it. I didn't even find Craig to be a particularly interesting speaker, quite dull really.
I'm not surprised Dawkins doesn't debate Craig, not because he's afraid of losing (he wouldn't) but simply because it's a waste of time. The guy and his cohorts crave the publicity and would proclaim victory even when it became clear they got their ass handed to them.
That assumes the device belongs to the kid which I doubt is true for most iPads or whatever that a kid might be permitted to play on from time to time.
Facts are facts, and debating them with someone whose world-view is predicated on the existence of an imaginary friend offers no opportunity to increase our knowledge.
Facts are facts but this is a public debate so a theologian still stands a chance of winning assuming they present their case better than the opposition. Doesn't mean they're right of course just that they're the better debater. But in general these debates do end up with the religious speaker having their ass handed to them due to their lack of facts and the fallacious arguments that go with them.
That depends who these free games are targeted at, how much this optional stuff costs, and how essential it is to play the game. Smurf Village (for example) is aimed at 4+ year olds yet allows kids to purchase in game items with real money. Not pocket money either. A "wheelbarrow of smurfberries" costs $60 and can be had with a few taps. It's not the only example and I suspect most of these free games operate along similar lines. That's simply unconscionable exploitation by the game operator and bad design by Apple (and Google) for allowing it to happen at all through their system.
I think at the very least a user should be required to enter a password at least once at the start of a session and per purchase outside of a 15 minute window in any 16 rated game that offers in-app purchases. Better yet Apple (and Google Marketplace) should impose per-app limits on the amount of purchases that may be made in such game, e.g. $10 within any 24 hours and require account holders to manually remove this limit. That would at least limit the damage and would curb the worst excesses of these scummy games.
You've just said it. Pre 0.4.0, the wallet is insecure, it's not encrypted, it's in a predictable location, everything goes in the one wallet. A driveby attack could steal the wallet, a trojan could steal the wallet. Once they had the wallet it was trivial to extract the bitcoins and transfer it. The exposure is just not limited to the time the bitcoin client is running either since the file is plaintext. Off the top of my head I can think of various ways it could have been secured:
Create the wallet in an unpredictable location to stop drive-by attacks.
Encrypt the wallet by default so that while the client is not running the wallet is unreadable. This key could have been generated in the registry or the user's home folder or...
Expose this encryption to the user and require them to create / enter their own passphrase by default. If a user absolutely did not want crypto it should be an opt-out action.
Set timers to close the wallet after a period of inactivity with sensible defaults, e.g. 15 minutes.
Allow user to create and manage multiple wallets from the same client. Not accounts, wallets. Wallets could contain multiple accounts but each wallet could be opened independently of any other, protected independently of any other and the client would provide facilities to move money from one wallet to another.
By default the client creates a wallet for incoming / pending requests (unencrypted), receivables (encrypted) and one for savings (encrypted). The idea being users would move incoming from one wallet to another as their needs dictate. The unencrypted wallet would be for times when the user's wallets are closed to hold incoming transactions and would automatically flush into the receivables wallet when the user next opened it.
Review the RPC / JSON API that the client exposes to miners and even if server mode is enabled, disable actions that most miners have no business ever needing or calling, e.g. wallet backup, lists of transactions and so forth
Full code audit.
Note I said pre 0.4.0 above. 0.4.0 does provide opt-in encryption which is a start but it should be the default and doesn't take many other measures I hilighted. This sort of stuff should have been considered from the get go and highlights the naivety of the project. Nothing would protect a determined trojan with full keylogging but all of the above would certainly make the client secure by default and would absolutely have prevented some notable thefts.
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EVE is not f2p. But then again f2p eve with paid for ships would suck donkey balls and no one would play. There are other successful games that are not f2p either.
EVE could go f2p in much the same way as other games have made the transition. e.g. by offering a core experience & beginner stuff for free and la carte access to particular missions, ships, skills, materials or whatever. If you paid it would be no different to the way it is now, except of course an a la carte pay model might suit a lot of people than a subscription. e.g. someone who only has time to play a few hours a week is going to find things cheaper than they are under a sub.
The biggest issue with f2p is not the payments but the play model. A la carte probably is cheaper than a sub, but that means the game has to attract more players to compensate and entice them with new content. If you look at games like Lord of the Rings Online which have gone f2p, they've had to become more casual to encourage people to get to the premium content faster. That means levelling is faster and upkeep, drops, cost of travel, penalty for death are all modified. I imagine EVE would have to do likewise if it went f2p and in doing so I could see the hardcore getting severely pissed off.
But at the end of the day the universe is a big place. I'm quite certain that they could accommodate the hardcore and the casuals within the same game. It seems inevitable to me that even EVE and World of Warcraft will have to contemplate f2p models soon enough.
As for web browsers, yes you can produce a passable "app" from HTML5. However if you compare a native app like GMail, or Facebook to its mobile counterpart its usually the native app which stands out as being the most usable and responsive. Simple example, in native GMail I can hold my finger down on an article (called a long click) and the app responds by showing me a menu of actions I can do with the email. So I could delete the email or mark it as spam. In the mobile version, I have to check the the item and then a secondary floating menu appears that I have to drop down to access the equivalent functionality.
You don't have to call Linux GNU/Linux and indeed most people don't.
O'Leary and Ryanair float these stupid ideas every 6 months - charging for toilets, making everyone stand up etc. I guess it's one way to gain free publicity.
If Mesa is getting a better software rasterizer through LLVMPipe it means that GNOME Shell (and KDE, Unity, xfce et al) can support users of older hardware without constraining what they can do that. That ultimately means better performance for the majority who do have GPUs, and it also means that Linux as a whole offers an experience that can compete against desktops running on other operating systems.
Don't worry Gnome-shell is already slow. Terribly slow. Unbelievably slow. Unusably slow. I could give a load of other adjectives, but I think you get what I mean. The target devices (netbooks and tablets) usually can't handle it, and even proper desktops struggle...
Slow? Perhaps under software emulation it might be. But if you have hardware accelerated driver then no it isn't at all. There is absolutely no issue running GNOME shell on comparatively modest hardware. I have Linux running on a 5 year old PC with an old Radeon driver and it works perfectly well.
In certain ways compositing desktops are a lot faster than their older brethren. When a window is moved over other windows there is no longer any need to send out damage events to the other window's owners because everything is drawn into its own surface so the screen is just recomposed. It means much less context switching and less CPU taken up needlessly repainting stuff.
There is absolutely no possibility of confusion between a restaurant / cafe called appleaday and manufacturer of consumer electronics called Apple. None. There is no trademark infringement here. Neither company competes within the domain of the other. Consumers aren't going to confuse the two. It doesn't dilute Apple's brand. If this went to court it would be dismissed almost immediately which suggests that Apple are just being assholes, vigorously threatening any business containing the word Apple even if their threats are entirely baseless.
I doubt you need FDA approval for something which just prints out a model of a scan. The patient isn't going to have the part shoved back in them, it's a surgeons tool. Though I can see that if it were used as the basis of producing parts that went back into a patient, e.g. a plate, band or whatever that it might become expensive. More likely they just want something they can hold, turn around, poke, practice with etc.
It doesn't stop someone viewing the contents of the folder, but not the contents of the file. If you want to encrypt an entire volume you use Bitlocker, Truecrypt, PGPDisk or a bunch of other similar solutions. Truecrypt is free and well trusted so that would be the defacto choice IMO unless you need enterprise level functionality.
Mac OS X also supports crypto through the GUI. FileVault protects the contents of your home folder, encrypting them with your login credentials. Or you can password protect a folder by turning it into an encrypted disk image and mount that to access it.
One could argue that what you need over the long term is an educated population who can help themselves. So tossing some cheap laptops at their kids may lessen the need for you and your kids to provide food, shelter, clean water or medicine because they'll be able to buy it for themselves.
Yeah I was listening to the clip and noticed that an undetermined chunk of his speech is cut out just as he was about to refer to quotations from Haught's book.
Having to write scripts to explicitly compress a directory and mount it as a regular directory (or whatever) is nowhere near as trivial or convenient as a one-shot checkbox. I also believe that a file system or at least something that looks like a file system to user land does need to support extensions such as compression / encryption natively in some form. It's pretty clear the kernel devs thinks so too or Btrfs wouldn't be striving to offer those features and wouldn't be on track as the replacement for ext4.
This is what open source and Linux needs to learn. Maybe some people are masochists and seriously consider mounting loopback devices pointing at compressed or encrypted files or some other shit as no big deal but they are in a minority. Regular users, even most power users would prefer a GUI that offers a checkbox and an OS which makes such functionality seamless and easy to tap.
I think in the case of compression / crypto part of the issue is ext4 doesn't offer them at all so kludges like loopbacks have to be used. I would hope that btrfs will offer them and perhaps other extension points so perhaps Linux will eventually deliver this sort of functionality.
But if they're selling Windows branded tablets or other hybrid form factors then that's another matter. I would not be surprised if they become contractually obliged to secure the devices given that Microsoft intends them for delivering premium content like apps, videos, music through their own store. It won't be a case of them choosing not to allow rooting but a case of them being unable to allow it.
I think for Microsoft's sake they should back off this since it would end up in the courts and consider another way of securing their content, e.g. a hardware key in the device which is disabled in rooted devices.
A few links would deal with apps that expect stuff in one place to see it in another. But most apps are configurable these days so it's not a big deal except when have binaries, many of which would go in /opt/ anyway and have scripts to deal with the vagaries of different systems. Really the issue is that Unix filesystem is arcane and in most cases for no good reason. So if Fedora want to simplify it a bit then I don't see the issue with that.
I've used compression on laptops which are running tight on space, especially when a folder contains hundreds or thousands of infrequently but still useful files. e.g. documentation & samples folders, apps I still need but don't run too often and so on.
Eclipse gets slower the more plugins you pile on top of it and the larger your workspace. If you stick with a reasonable set of plugins representing what you actually need then it isn't too bad. Startup is about 20 seconds for me on first invoke, and half that thereafter once Windows 7 caches it. 3.7 feels faster compared to older versions too. And once you open it you are likely to leave it open for a long time. So a hit at startup really shouldn't be considered a big deal.
I'm not surprised Dawkins doesn't debate Craig, not because he's afraid of losing (he wouldn't) but simply because it's a waste of time. The guy and his cohorts crave the publicity and would proclaim victory even when it became clear they got their ass handed to them.
That assumes the device belongs to the kid which I doubt is true for most iPads or whatever that a kid might be permitted to play on from time to time.
Facts are facts, and debating them with someone whose world-view is predicated on the existence of an imaginary friend offers no opportunity to increase our knowledge.
Facts are facts but this is a public debate so a theologian still stands a chance of winning assuming they present their case better than the opposition. Doesn't mean they're right of course just that they're the better debater. But in general these debates do end up with the religious speaker having their ass handed to them due to their lack of facts and the fallacious arguments that go with them.
Correction - that "in any 16 rated game " was meant to read with a < i.e. "in any < 16 rated game " but /. stripped it out
I think at the very least a user should be required to enter a password at least once at the start of a session and per purchase outside of a 15 minute window in any 16 rated game that offers in-app purchases. Better yet Apple (and Google Marketplace) should impose per-app limits on the amount of purchases that may be made in such game, e.g. $10 within any 24 hours and require account holders to manually remove this limit. That would at least limit the damage and would curb the worst excesses of these scummy games.
They might have hoarded them or used them to buy things. The criminal is more likely to cash out.
Except of course I wasn't and this sort of "tu quoque" retort is appears to be a favourite arsenal whenever bitcoin is criticised.
Note I said pre 0.4.0 above. 0.4.0 does provide opt-in encryption which is a start but it should be the default and doesn't take many other measures I hilighted. This sort of stuff should have been considered from the get go and highlights the naivety of the project. Nothing would protect a determined trojan with full keylogging but all of the above would certainly make the client secure by default and would absolutely have prevented some notable thefts.