That's the opposite of volunteering. Like if I hold a gun to your head, and say 'work or I'll kill you'... if you volunteer that's not a choice. Neither is it a choice if I offer to torture you or let you 'volunteer' to work. Neither is it a choice if I offer to put you in a box for the day, or work.
No, a choice would be: come out to the open road. There you can work, or not.
What the hell? Nobody's holding guns to anybody's head. Nobody's forcing the prisoners to work. They committed crimes and now they're in prison. They can either sit around in prison and do nothing or they can get a prison job and get a break from the ordinary. They do it entirely by choice. They're not in prison by choice, but they have the choice of making their stay more enjoyable.
FYI: Prison is a correctional system. It's a punishment for wrongdoing. It's also a rehabilitation for wrongdoers. Giving them choices about how they want to spend their time is a part of rehabilitation and assessment of whether or not they're fit to re-enter society. Nobody is forcing them to work, and they are free to hang out in the yard and lift weights for the next 10 years if they want, or they can do something different.
You think those guys on the side of the road with the orange jumpsuits have a choice about what they're doing? Or the ones making license plates, etc?
Yes. They do. All of them volunteered for that work because it gives them something to do. In fact, they are on waiting lists for MONTHS trying to score those gigs. It gives them a little money (usually a couple dollars an hour I think), some jobs even teach valuable skills for use when they get out, and most of all it gives them something to do.
<devil's advocate>
Ah yes, cos China's doing such a terrible job economically. I mean they're only the second largest economy in the world
</devil's advocate>
All of China's actual money comes directly from us and our evil capitalist society. The rest of their GDP is artificially inflated by meaningless public works projects such as building gigantic malls or housing complexes that today sit there unoccupied because nobody can afford to use them... but the mere construction of them inflates their GDP so their currency and government will look stronger than it is.
Yes, China is doing a terrible job economically because the government controls everything and nobody has a chance at an independent means of success. Everybody who is successful has the government's hand firmly up their ass... except those who are the most successful, and they have their hand up the government's. You might say that corruption is also quite prevalent in OUR society, and you might be right, but at least it's only the government in the pocket of the large corporations and NOT large and small corporations alike in the pocket of the government.
That implies temporary use. And that would require everybody who wishes to use the systems to have compatible equipment beforehand, or somehow obtain compatible equipment in the midst of a disaster. Would somebody's AT&T phone work with it? I'm assuming no. Then what about radio licenses, etc? I'm just not seeing it.
Honestly, I like Steam for delivery, but I really like the Games for Windows Live client built in to games for the shared achievements and such.
Steam does that too. And without needing a crappy UI hard-coded into the game. Rather, it has an overlay process that also happens to work on any game you launch via Steam, even without Steamworks integration.
Can people please stop spreading all this "slave-labor wages" FUD? For one, it's extremely contradictory (slaves being people who work for NO money against their will, etc). The fact is that electronics manufacturing lines are some of the highest-paying jobs available to most of the people working there. Yeah, by American standards, the wages are ridiculously small... but things are a lot more expensive here. People see numbers like $0.30/day or whatever they're making over there these days and flip their lid saying "WOW SLAVE LABOR WAGES" when that's actually a very respectable wage for lower-middle class in countries like China. I can tell you one thing: Kids in their late teens and early twenties wouldn't be moving hundreds of miles away from home to go get a low-paying job that can't support them. And they're sure as shit not being forced to go there by these companies they work for. It's simply the best opportunity for most of the people on the lines, who would otherwise be struggling to make a living on the farm in a diluted garbage market (or other equally-depressing situation).
(Disclaimer: I hate how much we've outsourced to China as much as the next guy, and I firmly believe that we should be doing as much as we can to get manufacturing jobs back to America... but the way to do that is NOT to spread lies that incite ridiculous humanitarian response. We need to spread truth that incites positive economic and commercial response.)
California is perhaps (I say "perhaps" only because I don't feel like googling to make damn sure I'm completely correct) the most seismically-active region in the United States. I don't understand why Apple is limiting this warning system to only their Japanese users. Hell, Apple is IN California, they should be just as concerned as anybody else. It seems like California is getting closer and closer to being one of the only seismic hotspots that hasn't seen The Big One(TM) in the last couple decades.
You are way overgeneralizing. I shall repeat: Money isn't what draws people into the gaming industry. People enter the gaming industry for the games. You try and tell me that companies like BioWare and Valve don't give a shit about how good their games are. They absolutely have both the marketing prowess and the loyal customer base that they could sell millions of copies of a new game that is absolute crap... but they won't because they care about making good games.
Yes, there's a lot of greed. It's primarily from the major publishers. Activision, EA, etc. They're the greedy ones. They're the ones that only care about profit. But the thing is that accomplished developers have some control in the relationship. People always think it's the publisher in control of everything but if you've made extremely successful games, you've got the publisher by the balls. They basically have to listen to what you say, or else you take your business elsewhere (or even be your own publisher if you're successful enough that you can fund a game yourself).
The impecunious and the kiddies probably aren't going to like the Sony price for a 5-inch OLED, highest-end SoC, slabs of RAM, and new-release titles. A fair few members of both will lust after this; but will they drop their smartphones/NDSes/PSPs-with-a-memory-stick-full-of-ISOs and shell out?
MY problem (and I'm sure I'm not alone) with handheld gaming devices is that I just don't have the opportunity to use one. The Vita looks awesome and I'd love to get one, but I don't think I'd use it enough to justify the price. If I had a lot of downtime away from other things maybe I could use it, but here's my life right now: Five days a week I get up at 4 in the morning, drive myself to work, work 8 hours, and drive myself home. When I get home, I'm greeted by a PS3 hooked up to a 42-inch plasma screen in my family room, and a PC (which I have spent a few thousand dollars on over the years) hooked up to a 24-inch LCD display in my bedroom. Why would I want to sit on the couch and play tiny games on a tiny handheld when there's a PS3 in front of me?
If I was able to take the train to work, or if I flew and/or travelled a lot. If I did things where bringing a console or my PC were infeasible, or I had time alone away from home for more than a few minutes during which I did not have to be focused on other things (like driving or working), then a handheld gaming device would probably be worth the investment. But for anybody in my situation, it just isn't.
And as a game company, where are you going to put your investment?
Are you going to invest 10+ millions to sell a 50 dollars game to one million gamers, or are you going to invest less than 1 million to sell a 99 cents game to 500 million gamers?
There are many game companies out there that make games because they enjoy great games. They're not out to make a quick buck on some shitty game, they want to make a slow (but often immense) buck on a great game they can be proud of. BioWare, DICE, Infinity Ward, Valve, and countless indie developers meet this criteria. Yes, as a decision out of pure financial interest, it is better to invest a smaller amount of money on a game that will attract many more customers, but 95% of game developers did not get into the industry because of the money. They do it because of the games.
Antitrust regulators must be chomping at the bit. This is old-school Microsoft behavior. Imagine how other Android smartphone vendors are feeling right now.
Burning 6 mod points to ask: How so? Google isn't buying competitors... Google is not in any way (until now) a competitor within the Android market. Since Android's inception, Google has worked very closely with Motorola on the Droid line and it only logically follows that they would want to acquire a company that they work so well with so they can actually become a competitor themselves.
To "pull a Microsoft" and lock down Android and make it utter shit for everybody but themselves would be a terrible business decision because manufacturers would drop them (or maybe even fork Android into something that's NOT Google-powered) in a heartbeat. But, if Google were to do that (which, again, would be a very bad move), then how would they be any different from Apple? They make the OS and they manufacture the hardware for it. I don't see Apple taking any heat from antitrust litigation because of their stranglehold on iOS, so why would Google for theirs on Android?
I still don't understand why they elected to change to this system of releasing major versions every flippin month. The old system was working just fine, why can't this be Fx 5.5? And save v6 for when there are actually some major changes that deserve a major version.
The guy certainly was provoking a response, and deserved one, but I'm not so sure leading with a lethal response was in order. He wasn't even capable of doing anything lethal.
Anybody is capable of doing something lethal (especially when they're impaired by substances), and Hill was charging with a knife. A determined attacker standing 21 feet away can have a knife in your body within a second and a half, and the way Hill started fucking with those cops as soon as they exited the train shows he had some motive.
That being said, I think it would have been better for the officer to draw and use his Taser rather than a firearm. The reason for choosing a gun is unknown to me, but it would have garnered the same retarded anti-police mob response anyway. In my eyes, the officer used proper force, and perhaps people can learn from this incident: If you're going to attack police officers with deadly instruments, you might get shot.
There's two things going on that aren't the same thing at all. One is the protests over police using black people for target practice, the other is the looting that takes place during the "riots".
The government keeps making excuses for the actions of their police officers; he was just doing his job, too bad that black person got in his way. This will continue and we'll see more of these protests
The other thing is the looting - this is (to put it simply) those who are just barely getting by taking the opportunity to grab up some of those consumer goods they could never afford to buy.
This is a symptom of the extreme imbalance in income distribution in the US (and England). Explain it however you want, the black and brown folks know that they're getting the dirty end of the stick and they aren't accepting those stories. They're kept in their place most of the time, but when things get protesty they'll come out and get some of what the "rich folks" have.
Of course, the "authorities" says that every protester is a criminal and they're busily putting "those people" back in their place. They'll never admit that it's the actions of their enforcers that start these protests - and they'll never admit that it's the greed in the upper class that creates the tensions that drive the riots and looting.
Those "upper class" folks are very aware of this and they're busily building taller fences, hiring more guards, and loading up on weaponry. They lean on their government friends to "keep things under control" and they do their best. Did you think that monitoring phone and email traffic was to stop terrorists? Maybe it's to keep track of groups forming that might present a threat to the established order in this country?
You'll keep hearing stories about how this is all about bad people - and as long as you keep believing that and supporting those who benefit from keeping those people in their place - you'll just postpone the date and increase the intensity of the "correction".
Here's a tip for those in California - did you know that you white folks are in the minority there? Sleep well...
Wow shut the fuck up.
This latest string of BART protests are still about the death of one Charles Blair Hill, a white homeless drunkard who threw a vodka bottle at a pair of passing police officers and then pulled a knife at them. He was shot as he prepared to throw the knife. I know I'm going to get modded down for this, but I'd say the idiot had it coming. It was clearly an act of self defense by the officer(s) involved.
People see "MAN KILLED BY POLICE" and instantly go into RAGE PROTEST RIOT LOOTING mode and blame the DIRTY PIGS for all of life's ills. Or people like you go and call them RACIST AGAINST THOSE BLACK AND BROWN FOLKS and then subtly threaten us white California residents by telling us we're in the minority. Maybe you were trolling, idk.
You missed the part where he said "CHEAP", right? $50 or less.
And YOU missed the part where I said "an entire computer". You don't need an entire computer's worth of parts in a cheap printer, and you can easily use extremely-low-end components and still have plenty of power to render a few pages for printing. But even still, crappy printers today are usually more than $50, and the rest of the cost is subsidized by ink that costs thousands of dollars per gallon.
It's an interesting reference but it's no replacement for a talented animator.
Talented animators are very good at what they do, but you're wrong. Motion capture is the most accurate method of character animation in existance... it's a matter of having a complex enough rig and a good enough actor. If you have those two things, then you have perfect animation every time. And it's cheaper and less time-consuming too. Something tells me that you're an animator that's afraid he might be out of a job soon.
I disagree, because Google has been focused on stealing rather than litigating.
Hmm.... what?
Don't tell me that you think Google are thieves just because 10 companies are trying to get in on the Android pie by suing them for patent infringement. There's hardly a single bit of software in the world that doesn't infringe on somebody's patents because -- get this -- there's only so many things that software can really do... it's all about how you combine those things that makes your software any different from anybody else's. Android just happens to be the big juicy target today. Next year it'll be somebody else's big new successful product.
Nearly all consumers want CHEAP printers. That means that the translation from text/image to printer imaging codes is done in the computer, not the printer, which saves CPU power and memory in the printer. Look at the difference in price between the typical Windows printer and the Postscript ('specially color) printers. A Windows printer only has to buffer a few raster lines, using the processing power and memory of the host computer, while the Postscript printer has to buffer the entire page, since there could be a command at the end of the page that places something at the top.
Add to this the insanity of any/all software and process patents and it is absolutely in the printer manufacturers' interest to tie the raster-defining codes into obscure and NDA-protected proprietary drivers to avoid tripping over some patent that says " a one bit in this field says put a green dot next on the page".
You have a good point 10 years ago. Today, processors and memory are so cheap that you could build an entire computer into a printer and still sell it for $150. See also: netbooks, handheld gaming devices, mobile phones.
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That's the opposite of volunteering. Like if I hold a gun to your head, and say 'work or I'll kill you' ... if you volunteer that's not a choice. Neither is it a choice if I offer to torture you or let you 'volunteer' to work. Neither is it a choice if I offer to put you in a box for the day, or work.
No, a choice would be: come out to the open road. There you can work, or not.
What the hell? Nobody's holding guns to anybody's head. Nobody's forcing the prisoners to work. They committed crimes and now they're in prison. They can either sit around in prison and do nothing or they can get a prison job and get a break from the ordinary. They do it entirely by choice. They're not in prison by choice, but they have the choice of making their stay more enjoyable.
FYI: Prison is a correctional system. It's a punishment for wrongdoing. It's also a rehabilitation for wrongdoers. Giving them choices about how they want to spend their time is a part of rehabilitation and assessment of whether or not they're fit to re-enter society. Nobody is forcing them to work, and they are free to hang out in the yard and lift weights for the next 10 years if they want, or they can do something different.
You think those guys on the side of the road with the orange jumpsuits have a choice about what they're doing? Or the ones making license plates, etc?
Yes. They do. All of them volunteered for that work because it gives them something to do. In fact, they are on waiting lists for MONTHS trying to score those gigs. It gives them a little money (usually a couple dollars an hour I think), some jobs even teach valuable skills for use when they get out, and most of all it gives them something to do.
<devil's advocate> Ah yes, cos China's doing such a terrible job economically. I mean they're only the second largest economy in the world </devil's advocate>
All of China's actual money comes directly from us and our evil capitalist society. The rest of their GDP is artificially inflated by meaningless public works projects such as building gigantic malls or housing complexes that today sit there unoccupied because nobody can afford to use them... but the mere construction of them inflates their GDP so their currency and government will look stronger than it is.
Yes, China is doing a terrible job economically because the government controls everything and nobody has a chance at an independent means of success. Everybody who is successful has the government's hand firmly up their ass... except those who are the most successful, and they have their hand up the government's. You might say that corruption is also quite prevalent in OUR society, and you might be right, but at least it's only the government in the pocket of the large corporations and NOT large and small corporations alike in the pocket of the government.
The USA has more prisoners and more forced labor.
Forced labor...................... what?
That implies temporary use. And that would require everybody who wishes to use the systems to have compatible equipment beforehand, or somehow obtain compatible equipment in the midst of a disaster. Would somebody's AT&T phone work with it? I'm assuming no. Then what about radio licenses, etc? I'm just not seeing it.
Honestly, I like Steam for delivery, but I really like the Games for Windows Live client built in to games for the shared achievements and such.
Steam does that too. And without needing a crappy UI hard-coded into the game. Rather, it has an overlay process that also happens to work on any game you launch via Steam, even without Steamworks integration.
If California (for example) had an analogous system, Apple could use it.
We do.
slave-labor wages ... slave-labor wages ... Slavery Exported.
Can people please stop spreading all this "slave-labor wages" FUD? For one, it's extremely contradictory (slaves being people who work for NO money against their will, etc). The fact is that electronics manufacturing lines are some of the highest-paying jobs available to most of the people working there. Yeah, by American standards, the wages are ridiculously small... but things are a lot more expensive here. People see numbers like $0.30/day or whatever they're making over there these days and flip their lid saying "WOW SLAVE LABOR WAGES" when that's actually a very respectable wage for lower-middle class in countries like China. I can tell you one thing: Kids in their late teens and early twenties wouldn't be moving hundreds of miles away from home to go get a low-paying job that can't support them. And they're sure as shit not being forced to go there by these companies they work for. It's simply the best opportunity for most of the people on the lines, who would otherwise be struggling to make a living on the farm in a diluted garbage market (or other equally-depressing situation).
(Disclaimer: I hate how much we've outsourced to China as much as the next guy, and I firmly believe that we should be doing as much as we can to get manufacturing jobs back to America... but the way to do that is NOT to spread lies that incite ridiculous humanitarian response. We need to spread truth that incites positive economic and commercial response.)
California: Wildfire alert
California is perhaps (I say "perhaps" only because I don't feel like googling to make damn sure I'm completely correct) the most seismically-active region in the United States. I don't understand why Apple is limiting this warning system to only their Japanese users. Hell, Apple is IN California, they should be just as concerned as anybody else. It seems like California is getting closer and closer to being one of the only seismic hotspots that hasn't seen The Big One(TM) in the last couple decades.
You are way overgeneralizing. I shall repeat: Money isn't what draws people into the gaming industry. People enter the gaming industry for the games. You try and tell me that companies like BioWare and Valve don't give a shit about how good their games are. They absolutely have both the marketing prowess and the loyal customer base that they could sell millions of copies of a new game that is absolute crap... but they won't because they care about making good games.
Yes, there's a lot of greed. It's primarily from the major publishers. Activision, EA, etc. They're the greedy ones. They're the ones that only care about profit. But the thing is that accomplished developers have some control in the relationship. People always think it's the publisher in control of everything but if you've made extremely successful games, you've got the publisher by the balls. They basically have to listen to what you say, or else you take your business elsewhere (or even be your own publisher if you're successful enough that you can fund a game yourself).
The impecunious and the kiddies probably aren't going to like the Sony price for a 5-inch OLED, highest-end SoC, slabs of RAM, and new-release titles. A fair few members of both will lust after this; but will they drop their smartphones/NDSes/PSPs-with-a-memory-stick-full-of-ISOs and shell out?
MY problem (and I'm sure I'm not alone) with handheld gaming devices is that I just don't have the opportunity to use one. The Vita looks awesome and I'd love to get one, but I don't think I'd use it enough to justify the price. If I had a lot of downtime away from other things maybe I could use it, but here's my life right now: Five days a week I get up at 4 in the morning, drive myself to work, work 8 hours, and drive myself home. When I get home, I'm greeted by a PS3 hooked up to a 42-inch plasma screen in my family room, and a PC (which I have spent a few thousand dollars on over the years) hooked up to a 24-inch LCD display in my bedroom. Why would I want to sit on the couch and play tiny games on a tiny handheld when there's a PS3 in front of me?
If I was able to take the train to work, or if I flew and/or travelled a lot. If I did things where bringing a console or my PC were infeasible, or I had time alone away from home for more than a few minutes during which I did not have to be focused on other things (like driving or working), then a handheld gaming device would probably be worth the investment. But for anybody in my situation, it just isn't.
And as a game company, where are you going to put your investment?
Are you going to invest 10+ millions to sell a 50 dollars game to one million gamers, or are you going to invest less than 1 million to sell a 99 cents game to 500 million gamers?
There are many game companies out there that make games because they enjoy great games. They're not out to make a quick buck on some shitty game, they want to make a slow (but often immense) buck on a great game they can be proud of. BioWare, DICE, Infinity Ward, Valve, and countless indie developers meet this criteria. Yes, as a decision out of pure financial interest, it is better to invest a smaller amount of money on a game that will attract many more customers, but 95% of game developers did not get into the industry because of the money. They do it because of the games.
I guess it's up for debate whether censorship is always reprehensible or not
Censorship is always reprehensible. Taking legal action against an entity for publishing stolen personal correspondence is not censorship.
(I haven't read the article, I don't know what Leakymails has published, etc. I'm simply making a point based strictly upon parent.)
Painting a whole religion with millions of followers into the pedophile corner is bigotry.
And calling someone a bigot because they made a joke based on ridiculous stereotypes is called "taking things way too seriously."
Antitrust regulators must be chomping at the bit. This is old-school Microsoft behavior. Imagine how other Android smartphone vendors are feeling right now.
Burning 6 mod points to ask: How so? Google isn't buying competitors... Google is not in any way (until now) a competitor within the Android market. Since Android's inception, Google has worked very closely with Motorola on the Droid line and it only logically follows that they would want to acquire a company that they work so well with so they can actually become a competitor themselves.
To "pull a Microsoft" and lock down Android and make it utter shit for everybody but themselves would be a terrible business decision because manufacturers would drop them (or maybe even fork Android into something that's NOT Google-powered) in a heartbeat. But, if Google were to do that (which, again, would be a very bad move), then how would they be any different from Apple? They make the OS and they manufacture the hardware for it. I don't see Apple taking any heat from antitrust litigation because of their stranglehold on iOS, so why would Google for theirs on Android?
I still don't understand why they elected to change to this system of releasing major versions every flippin month. The old system was working just fine, why can't this be Fx 5.5? And save v6 for when there are actually some major changes that deserve a major version.
The guy certainly was provoking a response, and deserved one, but I'm not so sure leading with a lethal response was in order. He wasn't even capable of doing anything lethal.
Anybody is capable of doing something lethal (especially when they're impaired by substances), and Hill was charging with a knife. A determined attacker standing 21 feet away can have a knife in your body within a second and a half, and the way Hill started fucking with those cops as soon as they exited the train shows he had some motive.
That being said, I think it would have been better for the officer to draw and use his Taser rather than a firearm. The reason for choosing a gun is unknown to me, but it would have garnered the same retarded anti-police mob response anyway. In my eyes, the officer used proper force, and perhaps people can learn from this incident: If you're going to attack police officers with deadly instruments, you might get shot.
There's two things going on that aren't the same thing at all. One is the protests over police using black people for target practice, the other is the looting that takes place during the "riots".
The government keeps making excuses for the actions of their police officers; he was just doing his job, too bad that black person got in his way. This will continue and we'll see more of these protests
The other thing is the looting - this is (to put it simply) those who are just barely getting by taking the opportunity to grab up some of those consumer goods they could never afford to buy.
This is a symptom of the extreme imbalance in income distribution in the US (and England). Explain it however you want, the black and brown folks know that they're getting the dirty end of the stick and they aren't accepting those stories. They're kept in their place most of the time, but when things get protesty they'll come out and get some of what the "rich folks" have.
Of course, the "authorities" says that every protester is a criminal and they're busily putting "those people" back in their place. They'll never admit that it's the actions of their enforcers that start these protests - and they'll never admit that it's the greed in the upper class that creates the tensions that drive the riots and looting.
Those "upper class" folks are very aware of this and they're busily building taller fences, hiring more guards, and loading up on weaponry. They lean on their government friends to "keep things under control" and they do their best. Did you think that monitoring phone and email traffic was to stop terrorists? Maybe it's to keep track of groups forming that might present a threat to the established order in this country?
You'll keep hearing stories about how this is all about bad people - and as long as you keep believing that and supporting those who benefit from keeping those people in their place - you'll just postpone the date and increase the intensity of the "correction".
Here's a tip for those in California - did you know that you white folks are in the minority there? Sleep well...
Wow shut the fuck up.
This latest string of BART protests are still about the death of one Charles Blair Hill, a white homeless drunkard who threw a vodka bottle at a pair of passing police officers and then pulled a knife at them. He was shot as he prepared to throw the knife. I know I'm going to get modded down for this, but I'd say the idiot had it coming. It was clearly an act of self defense by the officer(s) involved.
People see "MAN KILLED BY POLICE" and instantly go into RAGE PROTEST RIOT LOOTING mode and blame the DIRTY PIGS for all of life's ills. Or people like you go and call them RACIST AGAINST THOSE BLACK AND BROWN FOLKS and then subtly threaten us white California residents by telling us we're in the minority. Maybe you were trolling, idk.
You missed the part where he said "CHEAP", right? $50 or less.
And YOU missed the part where I said "an entire computer". You don't need an entire computer's worth of parts in a cheap printer, and you can easily use extremely-low-end components and still have plenty of power to render a few pages for printing. But even still, crappy printers today are usually more than $50, and the rest of the cost is subsidized by ink that costs thousands of dollars per gallon.
Even threatening to report people to the police for illegal activities unless they pay you can be extortion.
AND obstruction of justice.
That goes along with the recent /. story about how Mozilla's Nightingale is why Firefox Still Matters.
You seriously had me confused for a minute. "How does a story about Mozilla's product named 'Nightingale' have anything to do with this conversation?"
It's an interesting reference but it's no replacement for a talented animator.
Talented animators are very good at what they do, but you're wrong. Motion capture is the most accurate method of character animation in existance... it's a matter of having a complex enough rig and a good enough actor. If you have those two things, then you have perfect animation every time. And it's cheaper and less time-consuming too. Something tells me that you're an animator that's afraid he might be out of a job soon.
in the long term electromyography probably will be the long term technology of choice.
I'm sorry, but do you have a license from the Department of Redundancy Department? I'm going to have to see some documentation.
I disagree, because Google has been focused on stealing rather than litigating.
Hmm.... what?
Don't tell me that you think Google are thieves just because 10 companies are trying to get in on the Android pie by suing them for patent infringement. There's hardly a single bit of software in the world that doesn't infringe on somebody's patents because -- get this -- there's only so many things that software can really do... it's all about how you combine those things that makes your software any different from anybody else's. Android just happens to be the big juicy target today. Next year it'll be somebody else's big new successful product.
Nearly all consumers want CHEAP printers. That means that the translation from text/image to printer imaging codes is done in the computer, not the printer, which saves CPU power and memory in the printer. Look at the difference in price between the typical Windows printer and the Postscript ('specially color) printers. A Windows printer only has to buffer a few raster lines, using the processing power and memory of the host computer, while the Postscript printer has to buffer the entire page, since there could be a command at the end of the page that places something at the top.
Add to this the insanity of any/all software and process patents and it is absolutely in the printer manufacturers' interest to tie the raster-defining codes into obscure and NDA-protected proprietary drivers to avoid tripping over some patent that says " a one bit in this field says put a green dot next on the page".
You have a good point 10 years ago. Today, processors and memory are so cheap that you could build an entire computer into a printer and still sell it for $150. See also: netbooks, handheld gaming devices, mobile phones.