I'll argue that Nokia was already on it's death bed (as a respected brand), they were completely missing in the smart phone market, which is the market you need to be in if you want to be a respected cell phone manufacturer brand. Yes, they were working on neat products, but it seemed that they were quite a bit away from shipping (and being new, they carried a lot of risk as well).
Nokia did have smart phone offerings such as the C7. The C7 has been praised for its hardware and the software is tolerable but most reviews suggest Symbian is just poor by comparison to iOS or Android.
I really don't understand why they didn't just dump Symbian for Android. They could have skinned it to look like Symbian, maybe even include a Symbian / QT runtime so apps still work, and integrate Ovi in there too. Then they'd have a modern smart phone with legacy support and they'd be back in the game while still being masters of their own destiny. By shutting down most of their R&D and sucking Microsoft's cock they just become another generic phone OEM.
Re:So much for plan B...
on
Nokia Sells Qt
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· Score: 4, Insightful
'Kinda risky' is putting it mildly. Watching Nokia is like watching an alcoholic drinking themselves to death. It's tragic.
I doubt it's death, so much as transformation. Before the announcement Nokia was an innovator producing distinct hardware & software. After the announcement they become one of Microsoft's bitches pumping out handsets which are substantially similar to the likes coming out from LG / Samsung / HTC. Perhaps it's cheaper to do, but at the end of the day Nokia's brand will be severely tarnished.
It's also worth noting that Nokia is the only manufacturer to bet the farm on a single phone OS vendor. LG, Samsung and HTC all have their fingers in many pies (e.g. WP7, Android, Bada, Brew). It seems like a good way to hedge if the WP7 ship sinks which is entirely possible.
There is a long history of these "school decides to standardize all pupils on $TECH_TOY because it is The Future of Education(tm)" stories. They generally starkly underperform expectations.
I have to wonder why ANY school would insist kids carry fragile, highly stealable and expensive e-toys. Kids by definition will break them, lose them, get beaten up for them, or simply mess around with them when they should be listening in class.
There are far more suitable tools for class, starting with a simple notebook & pen, but also cheaper netbooks including the OLPC. If tablets are the future, they'd have to be ruggedized, allow notetaking and a damned sight cheaper than the likes of the iPad to be viable.
If Melbourne College were giving the Motorola Xoom instead of an Apple product, would there be as many butthurt comments here?
Probably yes because many of the same issues apply. The Xoom is as expensive as an iPad and suffers from a capacitive screen. Neither is suitable for an environment where students are likely to be taking notes on their tablets (which are precariously perched on narrow lecture desks) and in many cases simply don't have the money to buy a tablet in addition to a notebook computer.
No uni in their right minds should be locking themselves into a solution like this. There is nothing wrong with anticipating tablets, but mandating a specific tablet is nuts. At the very least content should be web based so it is device agnostic and doesn't need to be refactored when the next fad du jour turns up and any course material which is sold online should do so from a service which is not tied to one device either.
If there is one game that should be on a smart phone, it's Creatures. It would make a metric fuck ton of money.
Best part of the whole Creatures "scene" was a guy called Antinorn. He used to abuse, torture and otherwise mess up Norns so they were quivering wrecks addicted to pain and hunger. People used to get upset for this for some reason... others used to try and rehabilitate his creations as a challenge.
If Windows 8 is 64-bit only I assume they'll have to draw a line in the sand which 32-bit users cannot cross or will have to upgrade users properly.
I'm disappointed that Microsoft didn't make the whole 32/64 bit thing largely invisible the way OS X did. I realise OS X had less baggage to carry and less hardware to support, but it would have been great if MS had been far more aggressive making the move, if only to relieve the hassles for developers of building two versions of the same code.
I look at things like LLVM and wonder why operating systems even need natively compiled apps any more. The app could compile to low level bitcode, built against a certain OS profile and be compiled natively when it hits the box. It would certainly make developer's lives a lot easier if this were the case and I expect it would make Microsoft's life a lot easier especially now they're contemplating porting to ARM.
Oh I bet they do "vet" apps, in the sense that they undoubtedly run some kind of virus scanner / pattern matcher over them. They also have reporting tools for users who think apps are malicious.
It won't catch everything of course. Neither would Apple either assuming someone anticipated how the process usually works and took steps to avoid it. e.g. it should be relatively trivial with cloud based apps to produce something that looks innocent and benign to an inspector looking at the client assembly code but which is capable of executing a remote payload when the author decides to flip a switch (e.g. when 500,000 users have installed the app).
No, but as a professional computer scientist you need to go to conferences because it's part of your job.
You're right too but your answer is too short. As a professional computer scientist you need to go to conferences because your employer is giving you an excuse to go on an all expenses jolly and skip off work for a few days.
The Tolkien estate can't stop someone producing a drama or book with a dead figure in it. You can't libel the dead and short of malicious falsehood the portrayal could be anything the producers liked. If the portrayal could be perceived as malicious, (e.g. fictional Tolkien shown example fucking farmyard animals), the estate might be able to sue for damage they have suffered from the portrayal but they'd have to prove it was done maliciously and harmed them.
What the estate could also do is curtail / limit the extent in which his living relatives are portrayed and his works. Without their permission they might force a story to be heavily fictionalized and prevent it saying much about his works than the title and a few allusions to the contents.
The BBFC is more strict when rating games vs movies but they still see fit to offer an 18 rating. Their premise is a game is more likely to be played by a minor so they err on the side of caution. In some cases such as Manhunt 2 this will erupt into a minor controversy but it's usually a functioning ratings system. I'm not sure why Australia can't adopt something akin BBFC's 18 rating for games.
The funny part is that an outsider I would naively consider Australia to be a fairly liberal country but it is things like this and firewalls that make me wonder what the hell is going on in that country.
It's simple. Vote with your wallet and don't buy Sony. Even if they make something which looks nice, DON'T BUY IT. Basically, they hate their customers and unless you stop buying from them, they will never stop abusing their customers.
As an added bonus, if you don't buy from them, they can't abuse you.
So, it's simple. Every slashdotter should know this by now. If you're on slashdot and complaining about recent bad experiences with Sony, then it's your own fault and you do not have my sympathy.
They don't hate their customers. They hate people fucking up a platform they have billions of dollars invested in.
Considering their (high end) TVs and cameras, and I'd hazard a guess that their Blu-Ray players as well, all run Linux you'd think they'd be FOSS friendly, wouldn't you?
They use free software and they fulfill their obligations. I'm sure you could also find projects where they've made substantial contributions too.
None of which means squat for the current situation. They're going after people modding their closed source firmware with the ultimate goal of facilitating piracy and other unauthorised mods. I doubt they would give a rat's ass if someone produced a 1-way firmware update that turned a PS3 into a dedicated Linux box running XBMC.
But it does mean they didn't just post the image as received. Why not? The image is quite sharp, clearly framed and was taken in bright light. I see no reason to modify anything here. And, in the name of journalistic neutrality/integrity, don't you think they would avoid manipulating something that didn't need it?
Perhaps because the image is quite sharp, clearly framed and taken in bright light because someone may have cropped and adjusted the image. Aside from that they may have adjusted the colour palette for RGB presentation, and certainly scaled the image down and applied compression. All these imply tools were used. Doesn't mean the image was 'shopped. I'm not even sure what about the image makes people think it matters one way or another.
Then you weigh in the cost of anti-piracy measures. Fair use, gone. Property rights in your own equipment? Sorry, that belongs to corporations now -- Linux is just for hackers anyway. Does the DRM think you're a pirate even though you're not? Guess you paid $50 for nothing. And I hope you like paying the Microsoft tax, because if corporations can intentionally exclude FOSS from being able to play various media, you end up paying big money for what would by all rights otherwise be free. Oh, and losing your ability to control it.
If you think the majority of people buy a console ever expecting "fair use" you're living in cloud cuckoo land. It is almost by definition a closed box, and Sony / Microsoft / Nintendo will do their damnedest to keep it that way.
Though I doubt Sony would give a crap if someone produced firmware that turned their PS3 into a dedicated Linux box. What they do care about is people modifying their closed firmware to enable piracy, isoloaders, game hacks, PSN hacks, aimbots, trophy editors etc. etc.
I thought "never trust the client" was the first rule of security for games like these?
It probably is. However in a controlled console environment I bet most online games are replete with exploits, holes, bugs for griefers / modders / cheats to run amok through if they are not constrained by the normal firmware and client software. It's one obvious reason why Sony would deny PSN to people with modded consoles because they could and probably would ruin the service for people who paid for their games.
I'm sure given the new potential for piracy that games may be more proactive in protecting themselves against the threat but they still won't be perfect.
Some of us are regularly in hotels and we don't always have a network connection (and if we do there's no guarantee the connection is any good), or your provider might have some big outage etc etc.
I doubt people hauling around a PS3 to play in a non-internet enabled hotel room represents a typical use case. There are obvious workarounds such as ensuring to book into a hotel which has wifi or taking a device which offers a personal wifi hotspot, e.g. some android phones.
But the fact is that you can't stop the later, so why crucify the former? More importantly why spend a huge cost in time money and civil rights going after "lost revenue" from people that are not, never were, and never will be your customer?
Probably because some of that lost revenue is from people who would have been customers. We all know that not every pirate would have bought the game. Most probably wouldn't. But even if 10-20% of pirates would have bought the game then it represents a lot of money. There might also have been another 10-20% who would have bought the game later on when it was discounted or rented out a copy. Again these sales would be lost.
By laying the smack down on pirates, crackers etc., by denying access to PSN (where griefers and cheats would run amok), by bloating up download discs and extra copy detection / protection Sony will dampen piracy and keep most people honest. If they did nothing at all, the situation could easily become as bad as it is on the DS, Wii or even the 360.
Server-side checks: You don't have to Like Blizzard's "got-to-be-online-to-play" for Starcraft II, but notice: no cheating, with 1000000+ connected users and a easy to hack platform (PC+Mac).
And that appears to one prong of attack Sony are pursuing. Sony have put modders on notice they won't get into PSN most likely to stop griefers and other assholes exploiting bugs / behaviours not normally seen in the server and ruining the experience for normal players. I expect future games with substantial online components will have mandatory sign on requirements and feature stronger, punkbuster like checks during gameplay to stop modders too.
How is this any different than the collectable card series that were highly prevelent throughout my childhood - football, baseball, TMNT, Battlestar Galactica, and then on to the collectable card games like Spellfire, Magic etc etc. Not to mention the crap that came along with the interest in Warhammer 40K (what a scam! I occassionally pop into my local store to see what they are doing, and the prices are even more ludicrous today!) and the various AD&D packs.
Kids have been encouraged to buy tat for decades, this isn't new and it isn't any different than back in my youth.
Besides, what kind of a parent links a credit card to a childs iTunes account? Where are these kids getting $99 to spend on crap?
I think you know how it's different. Chances are that your parents directly supervised you when you bought your cards. Or if you were older and allowed to buy stuff by yourself you did so with an allowance. Either way there was direct control over how much you bought. And if you had raided their wallets to buy more they would almost certainly have noticed the missing money far more quickly. They might also notice the suspicious number of empty game wrappers & stacks of cards floating around the house. They might even have received a call from the local store or the school about the suspiciously about the number of cards you were purchasing. Aside from all that you as a kid bought your cards with hard cash, not smurfberries or some other ethereal point system designed to cause you to disassociate the worth of the item.
The point is that all this human interaction and control needs to have as good a counterpart in the digital world. Parents need to be able to control kids spending and expect reasonable protections to be offered by the system. Responsible kid games and infrastructures should impose spending / credit hard limits as a failsafe and account holders should have tools to further limit spending and receive delivery notifications / reports of spending habits. All transactions should also be conducted in a real currency not "smurfberries" or whatever so the kid themselves has a handle on what they're spending.
I realise that some games and stores may be close to that already. But given that we hear reports of abuses I don't think it would be wrong to issue code of conduct guidelines and possibly changes to the ratings system to ensure games abide by them.
Don't buy your kids smart phones. And if you do, don't set them up with unlimited accounts on the market / app store. Better yet, would be if the market / app store allowed the account holder to prohibit certain kinds of transaction, e.g. in-game purchases and games that depended on it would flag themselves as such so they weren't shown to the user.
That said, apps that encourage kids to spend real money for shit like costumes etc. are treading on moral thin ice. The better ones would separate the concepts of player and account holder, put limits on the amount that could be spend by a child, and would put tools in for the parent to further restrict / shape the experience as they saw fit.
I know it might be unfashionable to point it out, but it is open source. If you have a fix for a bug, you can just go and fix it. I expect they'll take contributions assuming the patch was clean, secure and signed off on.
Well that's a pretty cretinous statement. The market already provides a perfectly adequate way to control legit copies with the market licensing server. Apps can say how long they'll work without calls home and the code enforces it.
Apps outside of market can do whatever they want to protect themselves just like happens in the PC / Mac world.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll argue that Nokia was already on it's death bed (as a respected brand), they were completely missing in the smart phone market, which is the market you need to be in if you want to be a respected cell phone manufacturer brand. Yes, they were working on neat products, but it seemed that they were quite a bit away from shipping (and being new, they carried a lot of risk as well).
Nokia did have smart phone offerings such as the C7. The C7 has been praised for its hardware and the software is tolerable but most reviews suggest Symbian is just poor by comparison to iOS or Android.
I really don't understand why they didn't just dump Symbian for Android. They could have skinned it to look like Symbian, maybe even include a Symbian / QT runtime so apps still work, and integrate Ovi in there too. Then they'd have a modern smart phone with legacy support and they'd be back in the game while still being masters of their own destiny. By shutting down most of their R&D and sucking Microsoft's cock they just become another generic phone OEM.
'Kinda risky' is putting it mildly. Watching Nokia is like watching an alcoholic drinking themselves to death. It's tragic.
I doubt it's death, so much as transformation. Before the announcement Nokia was an innovator producing distinct hardware & software. After the announcement they become one of Microsoft's bitches pumping out handsets which are substantially similar to the likes coming out from LG / Samsung / HTC. Perhaps it's cheaper to do, but at the end of the day Nokia's brand will be severely tarnished.
It's also worth noting that Nokia is the only manufacturer to bet the farm on a single phone OS vendor. LG, Samsung and HTC all have their fingers in many pies (e.g. WP7, Android, Bada, Brew). It seems like a good way to hedge if the WP7 ship sinks which is entirely possible.
There is a long history of these "school decides to standardize all pupils on $TECH_TOY because it is The Future of Education(tm)" stories. They generally starkly underperform expectations.
I have to wonder why ANY school would insist kids carry fragile, highly stealable and expensive e-toys. Kids by definition will break them, lose them, get beaten up for them, or simply mess around with them when they should be listening in class.
There are far more suitable tools for class, starting with a simple notebook & pen, but also cheaper netbooks including the OLPC. If tablets are the future, they'd have to be ruggedized, allow notetaking and a damned sight cheaper than the likes of the iPad to be viable.
If Melbourne College were giving the Motorola Xoom instead of an Apple product, would there be as many butthurt comments here?
Probably yes because many of the same issues apply. The Xoom is as expensive as an iPad and suffers from a capacitive screen. Neither is suitable for an environment where students are likely to be taking notes on their tablets (which are precariously perched on narrow lecture desks) and in many cases simply don't have the money to buy a tablet in addition to a notebook computer.
No uni in their right minds should be locking themselves into a solution like this. There is nothing wrong with anticipating tablets, but mandating a specific tablet is nuts. At the very least content should be web based so it is device agnostic and doesn't need to be refactored when the next fad du jour turns up and any course material which is sold online should do so from a service which is not tied to one device either.
About 2 seconds into the vid clips you can tell it's a creepy robot. I suppose some of the stills might fool you at first glance.
Best part of the whole Creatures "scene" was a guy called Antinorn. He used to abuse, torture and otherwise mess up Norns so they were quivering wrecks addicted to pain and hunger. People used to get upset for this for some reason... others used to try and rehabilitate his creations as a challenge.
I'm disappointed that Microsoft didn't make the whole 32/64 bit thing largely invisible the way OS X did. I realise OS X had less baggage to carry and less hardware to support, but it would have been great if MS had been far more aggressive making the move, if only to relieve the hassles for developers of building two versions of the same code.
I look at things like LLVM and wonder why operating systems even need natively compiled apps any more. The app could compile to low level bitcode, built against a certain OS profile and be compiled natively when it hits the box. It would certainly make developer's lives a lot easier if this were the case and I expect it would make Microsoft's life a lot easier especially now they're contemplating porting to ARM.
It won't catch everything of course. Neither would Apple either assuming someone anticipated how the process usually works and took steps to avoid it. e.g. it should be relatively trivial with cloud based apps to produce something that looks innocent and benign to an inspector looking at the client assembly code but which is capable of executing a remote payload when the author decides to flip a switch (e.g. when 500,000 users have installed the app).
No, but as a professional computer scientist you need to go to conferences because it's part of your job.
You're right too but your answer is too short. As a professional computer scientist you need to go to conferences because your employer is giving you an excuse to go on an all expenses jolly and skip off work for a few days.
The Tolkien estate can't stop someone producing a drama or book with a dead figure in it. You can't libel the dead and short of malicious falsehood the portrayal could be anything the producers liked. If the portrayal could be perceived as malicious, (e.g. fictional Tolkien shown example fucking farmyard animals), the estate might be able to sue for damage they have suffered from the portrayal but they'd have to prove it was done maliciously and harmed them. What the estate could also do is curtail / limit the extent in which his living relatives are portrayed and his works. Without their permission they might force a story to be heavily fictionalized and prevent it saying much about his works than the title and a few allusions to the contents.
They don't hate their customers. They hate people fucking up a platform they have billions of dollars invested in.
That's like Nike saying they get pissed off when someone scuffs a pair of their trainers...
No it isn't. Nothing of the sort.
The funny part is that an outsider I would naively consider Australia to be a fairly liberal country but it is things like this and firewalls that make me wonder what the hell is going on in that country.
It's simple. Vote with your wallet and don't buy Sony. Even if they make something which looks nice, DON'T BUY IT. Basically, they hate their customers and unless you stop buying from them, they will never stop abusing their customers.
As an added bonus, if you don't buy from them, they can't abuse you.
So, it's simple. Every slashdotter should know this by now. If you're on slashdot and complaining about recent bad experiences with Sony, then it's your own fault and you do not have my sympathy.
They don't hate their customers. They hate people fucking up a platform they have billions of dollars invested in.
Considering their (high end) TVs and cameras, and I'd hazard a guess that their Blu-Ray players as well, all run Linux you'd think they'd be FOSS friendly, wouldn't you?
They use free software and they fulfill their obligations. I'm sure you could also find projects where they've made substantial contributions too.
None of which means squat for the current situation. They're going after people modding their closed source firmware with the ultimate goal of facilitating piracy and other unauthorised mods. I doubt they would give a rat's ass if someone produced a 1-way firmware update that turned a PS3 into a dedicated Linux box running XBMC.
But it does mean they didn't just post the image as received. Why not? The image is quite sharp, clearly framed and was taken in bright light. I see no reason to modify anything here. And, in the name of journalistic neutrality/integrity, don't you think they would avoid manipulating something that didn't need it?
Perhaps because the image is quite sharp, clearly framed and taken in bright light because someone may have cropped and adjusted the image. Aside from that they may have adjusted the colour palette for RGB presentation, and certainly scaled the image down and applied compression. All these imply tools were used. Doesn't mean the image was 'shopped. I'm not even sure what about the image makes people think it matters one way or another.
Then you weigh in the cost of anti-piracy measures. Fair use, gone. Property rights in your own equipment? Sorry, that belongs to corporations now -- Linux is just for hackers anyway. Does the DRM think you're a pirate even though you're not? Guess you paid $50 for nothing. And I hope you like paying the Microsoft tax, because if corporations can intentionally exclude FOSS from being able to play various media, you end up paying big money for what would by all rights otherwise be free. Oh, and losing your ability to control it.
If you think the majority of people buy a console ever expecting "fair use" you're living in cloud cuckoo land. It is almost by definition a closed box, and Sony / Microsoft / Nintendo will do their damnedest to keep it that way.
Though I doubt Sony would give a crap if someone produced firmware that turned their PS3 into a dedicated Linux box. What they do care about is people modifying their closed firmware to enable piracy, isoloaders, game hacks, PSN hacks, aimbots, trophy editors etc. etc.
I thought "never trust the client" was the first rule of security for games like these?
It probably is. However in a controlled console environment I bet most online games are replete with exploits, holes, bugs for griefers / modders / cheats to run amok through if they are not constrained by the normal firmware and client software. It's one obvious reason why Sony would deny PSN to people with modded consoles because they could and probably would ruin the service for people who paid for their games.
I'm sure given the new potential for piracy that games may be more proactive in protecting themselves against the threat but they still won't be perfect.
Some of us are regularly in hotels and we don't always have a network connection (and if we do there's no guarantee the connection is any good), or your provider might have some big outage etc etc.
I doubt people hauling around a PS3 to play in a non-internet enabled hotel room represents a typical use case. There are obvious workarounds such as ensuring to book into a hotel which has wifi or taking a device which offers a personal wifi hotspot, e.g. some android phones.
But the fact is that you can't stop the later, so why crucify the former? More importantly why spend a huge cost in time money and civil rights going after "lost revenue" from people that are not, never were, and never will be your customer?
Probably because some of that lost revenue is from people who would have been customers. We all know that not every pirate would have bought the game. Most probably wouldn't. But even if 10-20% of pirates would have bought the game then it represents a lot of money. There might also have been another 10-20% who would have bought the game later on when it was discounted or rented out a copy. Again these sales would be lost.
By laying the smack down on pirates, crackers etc., by denying access to PSN (where griefers and cheats would run amok), by bloating up download discs and extra copy detection / protection Sony will dampen piracy and keep most people honest. If they did nothing at all, the situation could easily become as bad as it is on the DS, Wii or even the 360.
Server-side checks: You don't have to Like Blizzard's "got-to-be-online-to-play" for Starcraft II, but notice: no cheating, with 1000000+ connected users and a easy to hack platform (PC+Mac).
And that appears to one prong of attack Sony are pursuing. Sony have put modders on notice they won't get into PSN most likely to stop griefers and other assholes exploiting bugs / behaviours not normally seen in the server and ruining the experience for normal players. I expect future games with substantial online components will have mandatory sign on requirements and feature stronger, punkbuster like checks during gameplay to stop modders too.
How is this any different than the collectable card series that were highly prevelent throughout my childhood - football, baseball, TMNT, Battlestar Galactica, and then on to the collectable card games like Spellfire, Magic etc etc. Not to mention the crap that came along with the interest in Warhammer 40K (what a scam! I occassionally pop into my local store to see what they are doing, and the prices are even more ludicrous today!) and the various AD&D packs.
Kids have been encouraged to buy tat for decades, this isn't new and it isn't any different than back in my youth.
Besides, what kind of a parent links a credit card to a childs iTunes account? Where are these kids getting $99 to spend on crap?
I think you know how it's different. Chances are that your parents directly supervised you when you bought your cards. Or if you were older and allowed to buy stuff by yourself you did so with an allowance. Either way there was direct control over how much you bought. And if you had raided their wallets to buy more they would almost certainly have noticed the missing money far more quickly. They might also notice the suspicious number of empty game wrappers & stacks of cards floating around the house. They might even have received a call from the local store or the school about the suspiciously about the number of cards you were purchasing. Aside from all that you as a kid bought your cards with hard cash, not smurfberries or some other ethereal point system designed to cause you to disassociate the worth of the item.
The point is that all this human interaction and control needs to have as good a counterpart in the digital world. Parents need to be able to control kids spending and expect reasonable protections to be offered by the system. Responsible kid games and infrastructures should impose spending / credit hard limits as a failsafe and account holders should have tools to further limit spending and receive delivery notifications / reports of spending habits. All transactions should also be conducted in a real currency not "smurfberries" or whatever so the kid themselves has a handle on what they're spending.
I realise that some games and stores may be close to that already. But given that we hear reports of abuses I don't think it would be wrong to issue code of conduct guidelines and possibly changes to the ratings system to ensure games abide by them.
That said, apps that encourage kids to spend real money for shit like costumes etc. are treading on moral thin ice. The better ones would separate the concepts of player and account holder, put limits on the amount that could be spend by a child, and would put tools in for the parent to further restrict / shape the experience as they saw fit.
I know it might be unfashionable to point it out, but it is open source. If you have a fix for a bug, you can just go and fix it. I expect they'll take contributions assuming the patch was clean, secure and signed off on.
Apps outside of market can do whatever they want to protect themselves just like happens in the PC / Mac world.
I wonder what happens when 2.4 turns up and this leveling system completely breaks down.