Bandwidth isn't like gas. Nobody's mining extra bandwidth or depleting our nation's bandwidth reserves. The cost of data transfer, for a provider, doesn't scale linearly with customer use like a commodity might; up to a certain capacity, it should cost them more or less (not exactly, but close to) the same to operate a network at peak capacity or one at lower than peak capacity. So if I'm transferring 1 MB/hr or 1000 MB/hour, as long as the network isn't being overtaxed and slowed down by my usage it shouldn't matter how much I'm transferring. This is why a flat rate (or bandwidth tier) makes sense for ISPs, and is a fair arrangement with the consumer.
Pay as you go makes it easier to bilk customers and introduce ridiculous fees out of proportion with the cost of the service. Consider the massive disparity in how much you pay in terms of the actual bandwidth used for text messages, as opposed to voice or data.
Now, I'm not an expert in this. It may be that there's some aspect of this I'm not seeing. But as near as I can tell, pay as you go is strictly bullshit that will lead to consumers paying more for the same service and is a gateway to greater price hikes and obfuscation of actual costs.
... except in the sense that they both work through the TV. Apple's device is more of a media gateway for stuff you've already got through iTunes, as I understand it. Without significant internal storage, it doesn't seem like it can really stand as a platform on its own, with app support and development efforts. Even coupled with the TV rentals, it's mostly a quick and dirty way of making iTunes content useful through the TV.
On the other hand, Google TV seems like it's designed to be a real extension of the Android platform, with a full app community and a lot of functions that seem designed to augment TV. They want people to view the TV as something that you can do more than just consume stuff off of. Apple TV has some functionality in this direction, but just the lack of internal storage means there's only so far they can go.
In other words, Google is making a grab for the TV as a new development and consumer platform. Apple is trying to enhance its existing market share through giving people another reason to buy more contents. How are these especially similar, again?
This headline and summary blow and are almost exactly contrary to the facts. The FCC's position, as outlined here is that the FCC is identifying *only* the transmission component of broadband as a telecom service. In practical terms, this means precisely that they will *not* pursue net neutrality-based oversight at this time, and will ignore content-related matters in favor of simple access and transmission oversight.
In other words, the "web" itself is exactly the thing they are not trying to take greater control of.
I remember saying almost this exact same thing while Half-Life 2 kept getting pushed further and further back: they'd waited too long, any hopes of a franchise were dashed, nobody cared, etc. etc. Remember, it was a delay of almost six years between HL and HL2. And imagine how foolish I felt when I actually played HL2, it sold extremely well, and I ultimately had to eat those words. The franchise is gonna be fine, even if it takes them another year to release it. People will still buy it. The fact that people are so pissed about the delay just goes to demonstrate that.
Valve has become more open in the past two years, but they're still a pretty mysterious company that is often reticent to publicize ongoing development efforts. So we've got no way of knowing what they're currently working on or how close to release it may be.
Yes, the review does seem to want a historical simulator and not a spaghetti western game. But I think that's poor expectations, not poor advertising or design. I don't see how anyone could get the idea that historical accuracy is a big part of the game from seeing ads or watching any videos or visiting the website, or whatever. And, as you say, I'd rather have High Plains Drifter than the Donner Party: The Game.
Also, it's interesting that you mention race, because I was pleasantly surprised to find there actually ARE quite a few black cowboys in the game, although so far none of the major characters (a few sidequest chars, though). But the background NPCs you encounter are much more diverse than you're likely to find in most cinematic westerns before the last ten or twenty years.
I like how the review complains about Dead Eye, and notes that being able to shoot a bunch of people really quickly with a pistol is an "odd ability for a historical shooter." Have you ever even SEEN a Western? The lone man fanning the hammer on his pistol and dropping four people in moments is pretty standard fare in any of the spaghetti/Eastwood westerns.
Every time I see this story, there's some ridiculous note about how Activision is screwing Infinity Ward or how Bungie worked to break off from Microsoft, so why would they go back to Activision?
This is a PUBLISHING AGREEMENT. Microsoft owned Bungie, just like Activision *owns* Infinity Ward. A publisher has a degree of control over a developer, yes, but comparing that to an ownership situation like Bungie/MS or IW/Activision is patently absurd. It's not even apples to oranges; it's apples to rocks.
Well, in addition to the simple chatting thing and the gee-whiz hobbyist angle, it can be an extremely valuable resource in emergency response scenarios. Many areas have volunteer emergency networks comprised of ham radio operators that could relay information and coordinate response efforts if the official response groups are overwhelmed or disorganized.
Not really a meaningful distinction, as contract law is very much an aspect of the law. We can bicker about whether terms of service are enforceable and to what extent, but the reality is that this guy has better things to do than wage a complex and almost certainly protracted legal battle against a corporation.
Hey, look, an interesting statistical effect. How to explain it? Rigorous analysis? Nah, let's just blame it on new technology, 'cuz that wasn't around before and now things are different - obviously, there's a meaningful correlation!
Reminds me of the piracy/global warming graph: http://www.samizdata.net/blog/~pdeh/piratesarecool4.gif
MySpace is wise to do this kind of testing and load balancing. You never know when a twelfth person might attempt to connect to the site, throwing their carefully laid plans into total chaos.
I think it's great in theory, but in practice I'm always worried that this is another way for corporations to profit off the work of little guys while paying them less and giving them fewer benefits, backing, and security. Freelancing (and that's what this is) is like contracting, with all the ups and downsides that go along with it, except it's a damn sight harder for a freelancer to make a living comparable to a full-time employee than it is for a contractor to do the same.
The Wii is going to tank? You hope Nintendo has enough cash? Dude, the Wii came out almost three and a half years ago, sales dropping off now means only that it might not have the longevity Nintendo hopes, not that it's tanking, as you say. It's still sold more units than any other Nintendo console. Calling the Wii anything but a success seems silly.
That's what led me to think this, but if I understand the system correctly and this is what Woz is actually talking about then it's not a "bug," just poor design (which could still be considered a bug, in some sense). Now, I'm not 100% certain about this being the case, but this is based on my experience with my fiancee's Prius and how its cruise control SEEMS to work.
The Prius only usually takes one tap for one mph, as far as I know, it just takes a moment and this is not readily apparent. You're going 50. You hit the button and don't notice a difference, so you hit it again, and hit it again, and by now it's accelerated 1mph. So you go "Ah, I see, 3 bumps = 1mph," when in reality you've just told the car to accelerate to 53, which it is still, gradually, doing.
So you hit it a bunch more times, and by the time it's actually at 53 you've told the car to accelerate to, say, 60. The car is still accelerating, but the Prius's cruise control is very slow, as I've noted before, so you may not even realize you're still accelerating. Now you want to get to 55 so you hit it 6 more times, but now you're at 54 and the car thinks you want it to go 66, so it, noting the disparity in requested speed and actual speed, changes the gear ratio and accelerates more rapidly, jumping up 11mph very quickly.
The fact that he says he has to tap the control again and again is what makes me think this is the case. If so, it's poor design on the part of the cruise control, but it WOULD still be working "as intended."
Also, to the guy above complaining about criticizing other people's grammar... that was me, correcting myself. Rancho relaxo!
"A continuously variable transmission (CVT) is a transmission which can change steplessly through an infinite number of effective gear ratios between maximum and minimum values. This contrasts with other mechanical transmissions that only allow a few different distinct gear ratios to be selected. The flexibility of a CVT allows the driving shaft to maintain a constant angular velocity over a range of output velocities."
It then goes on to note that a Prius actually has something a bit different, since it derives power from both the motor and the engine, and not from a single source.
Also, about Woz's thing... I wonder if it doesn't have more to do with impatience than run-away acceleration. The Prius's cruise control accelerates gradually when you increase the threshhold, it doesn't lurch forward and immediately try to attain the new speed. But I believe if you keep pressing it, the threshhold eventually gets high enough above the current speed that it uses a lower gear ratio and will accelerate more quickly to what the CC is now set at.
I know my VW Golf will eventually downshift and leap forward if you increase the cruise control faster than the car can accelerate in whatever it's current gear is. Since you may, by then, have set the CC to like 20mph above where you're currently at, it may indeed seem like a runaway car.
Frankly, it doesn't matter if it happens to OS X. What matters is that it could become the standard going forward, and if we've learned anything from the iPhone and iPod it's that Apple has tremendous influence in driving the standards of consumer electronics. The reason for the app store has nothing to do with security and everything about Apple wringing every last penny out of developers by taking an arbitrary cut of their sales and providing only limited QC and indexing that could easily be provided by any other site or service. If people want a choice, they should GET a choice - use the app store, or don't. Instead, Apple's making the choice for you. And that's no choice at all.
I think the best argument advantage is the ereader function, especially with most commercial ereaders still being fairly expensive. The entry level iPad is almost at a competitive price vs. buying a Kindle DX even at inflated 1st gen Apple product prices, and it inarguably does far more than a Kindle does. The Kindle absolutely does not do the majority of what this does; I think the netbook/media player aspects are less compelling, but certainly bolster the case.
My biggest problem with this is that it seems to be locked into the app store, just like the iPhone. In that sense, it does LESS than a netbook. Not saying this won't be successful, since Apple is nothing if not great at marketing consumer electronics, but what does this do for me task-wise that I can't do on a netbook? It's especially funny because, if you noticed, one of Jobs's slides touted PC software as a downside to netbooks. From where I stand, the huge open architecture of the PC is preferable to a tightly controlled store.
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Bandwidth isn't like gas. Nobody's mining extra bandwidth or depleting our nation's bandwidth reserves. The cost of data transfer, for a provider, doesn't scale linearly with customer use like a commodity might; up to a certain capacity, it should cost them more or less (not exactly, but close to) the same to operate a network at peak capacity or one at lower than peak capacity. So if I'm transferring 1 MB/hr or 1000 MB/hour, as long as the network isn't being overtaxed and slowed down by my usage it shouldn't matter how much I'm transferring. This is why a flat rate (or bandwidth tier) makes sense for ISPs, and is a fair arrangement with the consumer.
Pay as you go makes it easier to bilk customers and introduce ridiculous fees out of proportion with the cost of the service. Consider the massive disparity in how much you pay in terms of the actual bandwidth used for text messages, as opposed to voice or data.
Now, I'm not an expert in this. It may be that there's some aspect of this I'm not seeing. But as near as I can tell, pay as you go is strictly bullshit that will lead to consumers paying more for the same service and is a gateway to greater price hikes and obfuscation of actual costs.
... except in the sense that they both work through the TV. Apple's device is more of a media gateway for stuff you've already got through iTunes, as I understand it. Without significant internal storage, it doesn't seem like it can really stand as a platform on its own, with app support and development efforts. Even coupled with the TV rentals, it's mostly a quick and dirty way of making iTunes content useful through the TV.
On the other hand, Google TV seems like it's designed to be a real extension of the Android platform, with a full app community and a lot of functions that seem designed to augment TV. They want people to view the TV as something that you can do more than just consume stuff off of. Apple TV has some functionality in this direction, but just the lack of internal storage means there's only so far they can go.
In other words, Google is making a grab for the TV as a new development and consumer platform. Apple is trying to enhance its existing market share through giving people another reason to buy more contents. How are these especially similar, again?
Pretty sure anyone with eyes or ears can spot a tornado, bro.
This headline and summary blow and are almost exactly contrary to the facts. The FCC's position, as outlined here is that the FCC is identifying *only* the transmission component of broadband as a telecom service. In practical terms, this means precisely that they will *not* pursue net neutrality-based oversight at this time, and will ignore content-related matters in favor of simple access and transmission oversight.
In other words, the "web" itself is exactly the thing they are not trying to take greater control of.
I remember saying almost this exact same thing while Half-Life 2 kept getting pushed further and further back: they'd waited too long, any hopes of a franchise were dashed, nobody cared, etc. etc. Remember, it was a delay of almost six years between HL and HL2. And imagine how foolish I felt when I actually played HL2, it sold extremely well, and I ultimately had to eat those words. The franchise is gonna be fine, even if it takes them another year to release it. People will still buy it. The fact that people are so pissed about the delay just goes to demonstrate that.
Valve has become more open in the past two years, but they're still a pretty mysterious company that is often reticent to publicize ongoing development efforts. So we've got no way of knowing what they're currently working on or how close to release it may be.
Yes, the review does seem to want a historical simulator and not a spaghetti western game. But I think that's poor expectations, not poor advertising or design. I don't see how anyone could get the idea that historical accuracy is a big part of the game from seeing ads or watching any videos or visiting the website, or whatever. And, as you say, I'd rather have High Plains Drifter than the Donner Party: The Game.
Also, it's interesting that you mention race, because I was pleasantly surprised to find there actually ARE quite a few black cowboys in the game, although so far none of the major characters (a few sidequest chars, though). But the background NPCs you encounter are much more diverse than you're likely to find in most cinematic westerns before the last ten or twenty years.
I like how the review complains about Dead Eye, and notes that being able to shoot a bunch of people really quickly with a pistol is an "odd ability for a historical shooter." Have you ever even SEEN a Western? The lone man fanning the hammer on his pistol and dropping four people in moments is pretty standard fare in any of the spaghetti/Eastwood westerns.
"It has already given us remarkable views of Uranus..."
Well, I never!
Every time I see this story, there's some ridiculous note about how Activision is screwing Infinity Ward or how Bungie worked to break off from Microsoft, so why would they go back to Activision?
This is a PUBLISHING AGREEMENT. Microsoft owned Bungie, just like Activision *owns* Infinity Ward. A publisher has a degree of control over a developer, yes, but comparing that to an ownership situation like Bungie/MS or IW/Activision is patently absurd. It's not even apples to oranges; it's apples to rocks.
Well, in addition to the simple chatting thing and the gee-whiz hobbyist angle, it can be an extremely valuable resource in emergency response scenarios. Many areas have volunteer emergency networks comprised of ham radio operators that could relay information and coordinate response efforts if the official response groups are overwhelmed or disorganized.
Not really a meaningful distinction, as contract law is very much an aspect of the law. We can bicker about whether terms of service are enforceable and to what extent, but the reality is that this guy has better things to do than wage a complex and almost certainly protracted legal battle against a corporation.
Hey, look, an interesting statistical effect. How to explain it? Rigorous analysis? Nah, let's just blame it on new technology, 'cuz that wasn't around before and now things are different - obviously, there's a meaningful correlation!
Reminds me of the piracy/global warming graph: http://www.samizdata.net/blog/~pdeh/piratesarecool4.gif
MySpace is wise to do this kind of testing and load balancing. You never know when a twelfth person might attempt to connect to the site, throwing their carefully laid plans into total chaos.
It's easy to compose like John Cage. Just buy yourself some blank sheet music.
I think it's great in theory, but in practice I'm always worried that this is another way for corporations to profit off the work of little guys while paying them less and giving them fewer benefits, backing, and security. Freelancing (and that's what this is) is like contracting, with all the ups and downsides that go along with it, except it's a damn sight harder for a freelancer to make a living comparable to a full-time employee than it is for a contractor to do the same.
The Wii is going to tank? You hope Nintendo has enough cash? Dude, the Wii came out almost three and a half years ago, sales dropping off now means only that it might not have the longevity Nintendo hopes, not that it's tanking, as you say. It's still sold more units than any other Nintendo console. Calling the Wii anything but a success seems silly.
Perhaps they ought to have developed an open source platform for the development of horizontally scalable *forums*.
That's what led me to think this, but if I understand the system correctly and this is what Woz is actually talking about then it's not a "bug," just poor design (which could still be considered a bug, in some sense). Now, I'm not 100% certain about this being the case, but this is based on my experience with my fiancee's Prius and how its cruise control SEEMS to work.
The Prius only usually takes one tap for one mph, as far as I know, it just takes a moment and this is not readily apparent. You're going 50. You hit the button and don't notice a difference, so you hit it again, and hit it again, and by now it's accelerated 1mph. So you go "Ah, I see, 3 bumps = 1mph," when in reality you've just told the car to accelerate to 53, which it is still, gradually, doing.
So you hit it a bunch more times, and by the time it's actually at 53 you've told the car to accelerate to, say, 60. The car is still accelerating, but the Prius's cruise control is very slow, as I've noted before, so you may not even realize you're still accelerating. Now you want to get to 55 so you hit it 6 more times, but now you're at 54 and the car thinks you want it to go 66, so it, noting the disparity in requested speed and actual speed, changes the gear ratio and accelerates more rapidly, jumping up 11mph very quickly.
The fact that he says he has to tap the control again and again is what makes me think this is the case. If so, it's poor design on the part of the cruise control, but it WOULD still be working "as intended."
Also, to the guy above complaining about criticizing other people's grammar... that was me, correcting myself. Rancho relaxo!
Or, to put it another way... it's not a bug, Mr. Wozniak, it's a *feature*.
Its, not it's. Curses!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuously_variable_transmission
"A continuously variable transmission (CVT) is a transmission which can change steplessly through an infinite number of effective gear ratios between maximum and minimum values. This contrasts with other mechanical transmissions that only allow a few different distinct gear ratios to be selected. The flexibility of a CVT allows the driving shaft to maintain a constant angular velocity over a range of output velocities."
It then goes on to note that a Prius actually has something a bit different, since it derives power from both the motor and the engine, and not from a single source.
Also, about Woz's thing... I wonder if it doesn't have more to do with impatience than run-away acceleration. The Prius's cruise control accelerates gradually when you increase the threshhold, it doesn't lurch forward and immediately try to attain the new speed. But I believe if you keep pressing it, the threshhold eventually gets high enough above the current speed that it uses a lower gear ratio and will accelerate more quickly to what the CC is now set at.
I know my VW Golf will eventually downshift and leap forward if you increase the cruise control faster than the car can accelerate in whatever it's current gear is. Since you may, by then, have set the CC to like 20mph above where you're currently at, it may indeed seem like a runaway car.
Frankly, it doesn't matter if it happens to OS X. What matters is that it could become the standard going forward, and if we've learned anything from the iPhone and iPod it's that Apple has tremendous influence in driving the standards of consumer electronics. The reason for the app store has nothing to do with security and everything about Apple wringing every last penny out of developers by taking an arbitrary cut of their sales and providing only limited QC and indexing that could easily be provided by any other site or service. If people want a choice, they should GET a choice - use the app store, or don't. Instead, Apple's making the choice for you. And that's no choice at all.
Of course.
I think the best argument advantage is the ereader function, especially with most commercial ereaders still being fairly expensive. The entry level iPad is almost at a competitive price vs. buying a Kindle DX even at inflated 1st gen Apple product prices, and it inarguably does far more than a Kindle does. The Kindle absolutely does not do the majority of what this does; I think the netbook/media player aspects are less compelling, but certainly bolster the case.
My biggest problem with this is that it seems to be locked into the app store, just like the iPhone. In that sense, it does LESS than a netbook. Not saying this won't be successful, since Apple is nothing if not great at marketing consumer electronics, but what does this do for me task-wise that I can't do on a netbook? It's especially funny because, if you noticed, one of Jobs's slides touted PC software as a downside to netbooks. From where I stand, the huge open architecture of the PC is preferable to a tightly controlled store.
This was doomed from the start. Everyone knows a driver is a poor choice for getting out of a sandtrap.