Why attack any of them? The reasoning is tenuous, the method of attack is juvenile and the outcome is guaranteed to be inconsequential. The most likely outcome is some of the more tenacious / stupid / naive anonymous attackers will leave enough evidence leading back to themselves that they will face criminal charges for their troubles.
No I am being completely serious. 4chan is a bunch of kiddies that does stuff like DDOS, griefing etc. for lulz. If they actually cared about the issues they pretend to espouse there would be numerous more legitimate routes of protest.
It doesn't come down to this at all. They could write to their democratically elected representatives, they could write to newspapers, they could organize rallies, or contribute to blogs, or start a visasucks.com style site, or hand out flyers, or vote for any propositions which punish Amazon or run counter to its interests. Instead some assholes decided to launch a DDOS attack. I doubt it had anything whatsoever with hacktivism and was more a convenient excuse for some kiddies to try and vandalise a site.
Fat lot of good it will do in the long or short term. Most sites of the size of Amazon, Visa etc. have the resources to shrug off even the most concerted attacks.
Some people like playing games by themselves, or like the option to be able to play a game by themselves.
Some people like buying a game, knowing the game they bought is the game they bought forever with no further obligation.
Some people don't have internet or don't have the bandwidth or simply don't want to be logged in to play a game.
Every piece of bullshit EA / Activision / Ubisoft puts out about some existing form of gaming being dead is a prelude to a payment model they intend to rape their prospective customers with.
I suspect that EA et al would rather people subscribe to a game rather than it being a one shot transaction. Erode what people would rightfully expect a game to offer out of the box and move it to a "premium" service that requires monthly payment. Want to use our matchmaking services? Subscribe. Want to get that cool new map? Subscribe. Once games go subscription, the second hand market doesn't matter, and sellers are largely cut out of the loop too.
Sony are already doing something similar with PSN+ and I believe the industry is greedily eyeing it up and thinking of making their own models.
And Forrest Gump, Watchmen, Sky Captain etc. There is certainly a fine line, but arguably some movies are using historical figures for context, or splicing existing film footage as a framework to hang a story. Others such as the Fred Astaire advert are using a dead man to sell a product. I recall Steve McQueen being spliced into a car advert in a similar way. Personally I find the latter examples repugnant.
There is a line and it would be good to know where it's drawn. If Lucas is allowed to digitally render actors, what's to stop adverts doing the same? What to stop porn films doing the same? There would certainly be a market for porn featuring dead celebs. Perhaps actors unions need to lay down guidelines for this that state exactly what is permitted and what is not and provide facilities to record the wishes of living actors in case the same happens to them.
I hope they intend to provide another way to enable all caps. For example in Android you double tap shift to enable all caps. That might be a reasonable compromise, which saves a small bit of keyboard space without removing functionality which is useful and sometimes vital.
No, it's just recognition that if Google make Google Games (or whatever they wished to call their service) that most if not all phone mobos will pick it up or would be powerless to stop it.
Even if it were an "optional" install, chances are that more and more games would appear that required it because it would offer services they need such as cloud sync, achievements, high scores and whatnot. Much the way that Steam has taken off.
So here's Sony in one corner with one phone which does PSP games up against everyone else in Android land, plus Windows Phone 7 licensees, plus Apple. They're going to get slaughtered.
I think Sony's best chance of getting PSP to live on as a brand would have been to licence the tech to other manufacturers. The more phones that buy into the brand the more powerful the brand becomes. Maybe Google would even see merit in it. Conversely if they try to stick it alone they're going to crash and burn.
I think it would be better to say "you are using a pirate version, it'll continue working for 30 days, then auto updates will stop working, if you want to buy go here". If people want to continue using it then fine but after 30 days they're putting themselves are greater and greater risk because it won't stay up to date any more.
The Zeus seems to have a fairly unconventional form factor except that instead of having a slide out keyboard it has a slide out game pad. It makes the device a little chunky but otherwise nothing extradordinary.
The biggest issues I see it facing is how much the games cost for it. And how the PSP brand can survive if it is tied to a single android phone model from a single manufacturer. The PSP 1 platform asted 5 years (and is still limping along). Phones don't last a year before something better comes along, so what are Sony's long term plans here? What happens if Google launches a gaming platform for example.
I agree it would be nice if smart phones lasted longer before charges but the way they are now is still useful. A single device that does music, vids, phone, internet, games, PIM, apps etc. on a charge that lasts a day or two is still better than carrying around a whole bunch of different devices.
Of course, if anyone can screw this up, it's Sony. Their recent track record with both phones (Ericsson, ick) and portable gaming (PSPGo, double ick) is not great, so trying to do both at once could be a big bag of fail.
Sony can screw this up simply by not licensing the PSP brand to other handset manufacturers. A single handset model from a single manufacturer which may end up on a limited number of networks / payplans is never, ever in a million years going to compete with gaming options available for iPhone, Windows Phone or even Android. I realise Android has crappy gaming support (no cloud services for gaming), but I don't believe that Google don't have plans to rectify this.
Sony have a very limited window to convince a other handset manufacturers, and Google that Playstation is the best way to extend the Android platform with gaming functionality. If they don't do that then this thing is a deadend. It might sell well as a handset but it isn't an industry changer.
I have no issue with Wikileaks or what they are doing but I also see no reason to boycott Amazon. I think Wikileaks were always on shakey ground using a US corporation, one with an AUP, one which has ample reason to earn brownie points with the government by dumping their ass.
Besides, perhaps Wikileaks (and others) could use the opportunity to consider ways to avoid the situation in future. The most obvious would be to release each tranche of documents over Bittorrent. A more sophisticated solution is considering how P2P could become a cloud in its own right - that the cloud is tens of thousands of host computes all around the world, all sharing the load. Think bittorrent crossed with a distributed database crossed with freenet.
The thing is basically gutted. Propellers gone, rudder locked, machinery removed or broken, much of the super structure gone, electrics shot to pieces. It's a floating bathtub. I suppose someone could tow it somewhere, a naval museum or whatever and restore it sufficiently for tours. But I expect it's really destined to be scrapped. It's sad in a way. Looking back on WWII it's a shame all the military hardware which ended up just getting scuttled or dumped overboard and the value it would have had if it had been saved.
.. that if the US were to target Assange in this way that he's living next door to Palin when the drone orders in the strike. We could take sollace in his death if the collateral damage took out this deeply stupid and offensive woman at the same time.
I don't own any B&N device but I'd point out that just because it was done that way on one device / OS over a year ago does not necessarily mean it's done the same way now. It is possible for a device to support more than one crypto sceheme, or for this new device to store its key somewhere other than on disk. For example it could be stored in a flash partition that is inaccessible when the device is rooted.
If B&N were so incompetent the first time around I wouldn't credit them with doing any of that, but it's still a possibility I suppose.
I expect at worst you could recover the encrypted files. You might be able to get the plaintext if B&N were foolish enough to implement their crypto in software only. If they were smart then crypto is done in hardware and therefore it is more difficult but not impossible to recover the plaintext.
The most obvious way to recover plaintext from any ebook is to lay the thing on a flatbed scanner and take a picture of every page. I expect most OCR software would work extremely well given the quality of the display. The process could be automated of course (e.g simulate page turnand a more sophisticated hack might include replacing the display with a custom device which rips the screen data directly. If android were unrooted perhaps it would be possible to take screen shots from the display driver at intervals to accomplish the same.
All well and good except current consoles don't even realize the potential of the TV's they are connected to right now. Most 22"+ HD TVs can do 1080p, usually up to 60fps progressive. Some even implement 3D functionality. In a few years you'll probably even see 1440p TVs starting to appear in the mass market.
Most current gen console games struggle to do 720p at 30fps. There are a few exceptions, especially on the PS3 but results are variable. Most games face difficult decisions on things like AA, enemies, AI, poly count, animation, lighting, shadows etc. to stay inside budget and not result in dropped or torn frames.
So a next gen console has plenty of issues that it could address just from a pure CPU / GPU / memory standpoint. I expect that throughput would have to be at least 4-6x what current gen consoles do now to max out what is possible for the immediate future.
This might be UK centric, but there is a pretty cool set of educational apps called Learning Ladder. The preschool version has hundreds of games in it and doesn't require literacy skills. Later versions add numeracy, literacy etc and generally correspond to their school curriculum. Biggest criticism of it is that it's getting on a bit in years and the runtime uses some ancient version of Quicktime.
Another potential offering is Magic Desktop which is best described as Windows for Kids and has games, puzzles, internet browser etc. You can't quit from it without knowing the password, so you could set up an account for the kid which launches straight into it and lets them browse but restricts the sites they can visit.
One technical reason for this is to make sure that everybody is on the same playing field when it comes to things like architecture changes.
That doesn't make any difference. Flash (for example) would still be coded over the top of whatever APIs iOS exposes. If architecture undert those APIs changes then you're talking about a recompile at most. But since iOS apps are compiled to LLVM byte code, the chances are it wouldn't even need that.
This is more or less their philosophy. Look at their attempts to squash scripting languages, runtimes & browsers on iOS. There is absolutely zero technical reason for this, it's all to force developers to code to Apple's APIs. The last thing they want is for apps to become heterogenous so they do everything in their power to prevent that happening starting with making devs choose which platform to sink their efforts into.
Superficially this is a good strategy but things can easily swing the other way. After all Android is here and takes virtually the opposite approach. It's quite likely in a few years that Apple will be playing second banana to Android and it will be they who are waiting for apps to get ported.
If you track so closely, technically what's to stop GNUStep / LLVM being used as a platform to host and run iOS apps? Potentially GNUStep + LLVM could even find its way into Android or similar and provide a means for people to run iPhone apps on non-iPhone platforms.
Once a change breaks something, you're left trying to install multiple versions, locking versions, modifying the source, or other such deep magic. Very quickly, the whole system gets to be too big a hassle to deal with.
Maybe the answer is something akin to restore points in Windows, noting prior to an upgrade what system files will be overwritten, backing them up (and the dpkg database) and then installing the update. If there is a screwup, then you can rollback to some point in the past.
And if you draw this you come from the Isle of Man. Versions of the symbol have legs going the other way too. I'm sure someone would take umbrage with it, and of course the Nazis co-opted the triskelion too, e.g. here.
So some common sense has to be applied. In most cases I expect it is very clear what the intent is from the logo.
In fact, let ban all cross type symbols. Most were use, in the past, by despicable peoples. And all the remaining will be use by others despicable peoples in the future. We might as well ban them all right now.
I'd be comfortable with that. Ban all religious symbols on the grounds that they are provocative and inflammatory. It's a game FFS, not a springboard for someone's lunatic religious or ideological beliefs.
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Why attack any of them? The reasoning is tenuous, the method of attack is juvenile and the outcome is guaranteed to be inconsequential. The most likely outcome is some of the more tenacious / stupid / naive anonymous attackers will leave enough evidence leading back to themselves that they will face criminal charges for their troubles.
No I am being completely serious. 4chan is a bunch of kiddies that does stuff like DDOS, griefing etc. for lulz. If they actually cared about the issues they pretend to espouse there would be numerous more legitimate routes of protest.
Fat lot of good it will do in the long or short term. Most sites of the size of Amazon, Visa etc. have the resources to shrug off even the most concerted attacks.
I suspect that EA et al would rather people subscribe to a game rather than it being a one shot transaction. Erode what people would rightfully expect a game to offer out of the box and move it to a "premium" service that requires monthly payment. Want to use our matchmaking services? Subscribe. Want to get that cool new map? Subscribe. Once games go subscription, the second hand market doesn't matter, and sellers are largely cut out of the loop too.
Sony are already doing something similar with PSN+ and I believe the industry is greedily eyeing it up and thinking of making their own models.
There is a line and it would be good to know where it's drawn. If Lucas is allowed to digitally render actors, what's to stop adverts doing the same? What to stop porn films doing the same? There would certainly be a market for porn featuring dead celebs. Perhaps actors unions need to lay down guidelines for this that state exactly what is permitted and what is not and provide facilities to record the wishes of living actors in case the same happens to them.
I hope they intend to provide another way to enable all caps. For example in Android you double tap shift to enable all caps. That might be a reasonable compromise, which saves a small bit of keyboard space without removing functionality which is useful and sometimes vital.
I wouldn't be surprised if this is the sort of tech Sony will use on their phone to keep the gaming portion separate from the android portion.
Even if it were an "optional" install, chances are that more and more games would appear that required it because it would offer services they need such as cloud sync, achievements, high scores and whatnot. Much the way that Steam has taken off.
So here's Sony in one corner with one phone which does PSP games up against everyone else in Android land, plus Windows Phone 7 licensees, plus Apple. They're going to get slaughtered.
I think Sony's best chance of getting PSP to live on as a brand would have been to licence the tech to other manufacturers. The more phones that buy into the brand the more powerful the brand becomes. Maybe Google would even see merit in it. Conversely if they try to stick it alone they're going to crash and burn.
I think it would be better to say "you are using a pirate version, it'll continue working for 30 days, then auto updates will stop working, if you want to buy go here". If people want to continue using it then fine but after 30 days they're putting themselves are greater and greater risk because it won't stay up to date any more.
The biggest issues I see it facing is how much the games cost for it. And how the PSP brand can survive if it is tied to a single android phone model from a single manufacturer. The PSP 1 platform asted 5 years (and is still limping along). Phones don't last a year before something better comes along, so what are Sony's long term plans here? What happens if Google launches a gaming platform for example.
I agree it would be nice if smart phones lasted longer before charges but the way they are now is still useful. A single device that does music, vids, phone, internet, games, PIM, apps etc. on a charge that lasts a day or two is still better than carrying around a whole bunch of different devices.
Sony can screw this up simply by not licensing the PSP brand to other handset manufacturers. A single handset model from a single manufacturer which may end up on a limited number of networks / payplans is never, ever in a million years going to compete with gaming options available for iPhone, Windows Phone or even Android. I realise Android has crappy gaming support (no cloud services for gaming), but I don't believe that Google don't have plans to rectify this.
Sony have a very limited window to convince a other handset manufacturers, and Google that Playstation is the best way to extend the Android platform with gaming functionality. If they don't do that then this thing is a deadend. It might sell well as a handset but it isn't an industry changer.
Besides, perhaps Wikileaks (and others) could use the opportunity to consider ways to avoid the situation in future. The most obvious would be to release each tranche of documents over Bittorrent. A more sophisticated solution is considering how P2P could become a cloud in its own right - that the cloud is tens of thousands of host computes all around the world, all sharing the load. Think bittorrent crossed with a distributed database crossed with freenet.
The thing is basically gutted. Propellers gone, rudder locked, machinery removed or broken, much of the super structure gone, electrics shot to pieces. It's a floating bathtub. I suppose someone could tow it somewhere, a naval museum or whatever and restore it sufficiently for tours. But I expect it's really destined to be scrapped. It's sad in a way. Looking back on WWII it's a shame all the military hardware which ended up just getting scuttled or dumped overboard and the value it would have had if it had been saved.
.. that if the US were to target Assange in this way that he's living next door to Palin when the drone orders in the strike. We could take sollace in his death if the collateral damage took out this deeply stupid and offensive woman at the same time.
If B&N were so incompetent the first time around I wouldn't credit them with doing any of that, but it's still a possibility I suppose.
The most obvious way to recover plaintext from any ebook is to lay the thing on a flatbed scanner and take a picture of every page. I expect most OCR software would work extremely well given the quality of the display. The process could be automated of course (e.g simulate page turnand a more sophisticated hack might include replacing the display with a custom device which rips the screen data directly. If android were unrooted perhaps it would be possible to take screen shots from the display driver at intervals to accomplish the same.
Most current gen console games struggle to do 720p at 30fps. There are a few exceptions, especially on the PS3 but results are variable. Most games face difficult decisions on things like AA, enemies, AI, poly count, animation, lighting, shadows etc. to stay inside budget and not result in dropped or torn frames.
So a next gen console has plenty of issues that it could address just from a pure CPU / GPU / memory standpoint. I expect that throughput would have to be at least 4-6x what current gen consoles do now to max out what is possible for the immediate future.
Another potential offering is Magic Desktop which is best described as Windows for Kids and has games, puzzles, internet browser etc. You can't quit from it without knowing the password, so you could set up an account for the kid which launches straight into it and lets them browse but restricts the sites they can visit.
That doesn't make any difference. Flash (for example) would still be coded over the top of whatever APIs iOS exposes. If architecture undert those APIs changes then you're talking about a recompile at most. But since iOS apps are compiled to LLVM byte code, the chances are it wouldn't even need that.
Superficially this is a good strategy but things can easily swing the other way. After all Android is here and takes virtually the opposite approach. It's quite likely in a few years that Apple will be playing second banana to Android and it will be they who are waiting for apps to get ported.
If you track so closely, technically what's to stop GNUStep / LLVM being used as a platform to host and run iOS apps? Potentially GNUStep + LLVM could even find its way into Android or similar and provide a means for people to run iPhone apps on non-iPhone platforms.
Maybe the answer is something akin to restore points in Windows, noting prior to an upgrade what system files will be overwritten, backing them up (and the dpkg database) and then installing the update. If there is a screwup, then you can rollback to some point in the past.
So some common sense has to be applied. In most cases I expect it is very clear what the intent is from the logo.
I'd be comfortable with that. Ban all religious symbols on the grounds that they are provocative and inflammatory. It's a game FFS, not a springboard for someone's lunatic religious or ideological beliefs.