Maybe things are different from when I used to play it, but back then (2 or 3 of years ago) it was always possible for the little guy to make a difference. I was in a Corporation with maybe a dozen active members, in an Alliance of maybe 4 similar sized Corporations- and we held down a small chunk of null-sec territory, ran a small network of stations, took part in some of the great wars and politics of the day. I commanded a large fleet on a few occasions, and took part in fleet actions on plenty of others- and I only played an hour or two a day, a few days a week. We'd never have dominated the universe with our lack of obsessiveness, but we still "mattered" (you know, insofar as anything matters in a game of internet spaceships).
EVE is not really a space sim. To me, space sim means real time flying and dog fighting... specifically things like having to lead your target.
That's your definition. Real flying and dog-fighting is the sign of a flight sim, or a first-person shooter. It's in a lot of the great space sims, but is it THE key trait? Can it not be a space sim if the focus is on bigger ships (instead of little unrealistic fighter-jets-in-space), with more "captain of the ship" tactics-based combat?
To me, a space sim is about exploring, trading, and combat (of some sort). Big worlds to discover, and ways of making your mark on it. That's why Elite was great, and that's why EVE and X3 both tick the box. X-Wing Alliance? FreesSpace? Fun games, but almost an entirely different genre.
If I had a truly unique and special book that must not be damaged, and I wanted to digitize it, I'd bite the bullet and do it very carefully by hand (which you could do, over a long enough time scale, with just about any household USB scanner).
If, however, I wanted to digitize the contents of my personal book collection, which is several hundred books none of which couldn't be replaced via Amazon or eBay, this would be good for the job. So it shreds my 20 year old copy of Asimov's Foundation- I'd be a bit cross, but it's not like it's worth much. And there's no way I could scan my entire book collection by hand.
I wonder how it will be before other large organisations start following suit as a sensible precaution?
My company has been doing full hard-disk encryption since before I joined, and so does every one of our partners who I've asked (and we usually do; if you're going to have a sniff of any of our customer data, you need to take at least a basic interest in keeping it safe). Do many major organisations not encrypt at least MOST things these days?
In the Windows 7, Vista, XP, and Mac OSX world (so, almost all users), the standard method of installing software is still: 1) Go to the website 2) Download the installation file (or get a disk if you're feeling retro) 3) Run the installation programme
This works in Ubuntu too- you go to the website, and download the.deb package. Double click it, run it. You don't have to be a geek to do this; the fact that mobile phones don't let you do this doesn't mean it's been scrubbed from the users' skillset quite yet. And as long as this remains an option, it is fundamentally not a walled garden.
The key word in "walled garden" is "walled". The fact that your experience is controlled- that it is difficult for you to install programmes or change settings that the manufacturer doesn't want you to- is what people get upset about. iOS obviously does this very strongly. Android does it too (although "rooting" is easier, it is still implemented to put off casual users from doing so). Win 8 RT and Win Phone both go this route.
Ubuntu doesn't stop you doing anything. It has a pretty software distribution programme (akin to Steam or Impulse), but there's nothing to stop you installing any other package you like, or installing from source. It's designed to look and feel like the iOS experience, without the lockdown. It is, if you like, an attempt to make a garden without the walls.
Hardware was never the problem. Nokia hardware has always been very good, and HTC hardware is certainly not bad. The Lumia is a great piece of hardware; it's basically an upgrade to the MeeGo phone of yesteryear.
The problem is the software. Win Phone 7 phones didn't sell because people didn't want a Windows phone. At a glance (as someone who has played with them but not bought them), Win Phone 8 looks extremely similar, superficially, to 7. Why would the higher version number persuade me to change my mind?
I've never heard anyone claim ARM is cheaper than Intel, necessarily. Lower power consumption, yes. Lower clock speed. yes. Lower per-unit price? A 32nm chip is a 32nm chip- I'd have thought the fab costs would be much the same, regardless of the architecture.
My £200 Asus Eee PC, running vanilla Ubuntu (resource-hogging Unity and all) has a 5.5 hour battery life. For an "everything happens in the cloud" device, I'd expect at least similar.
The US is basically crying out for what happened in the UK in the early 20th century.
We had a nominally left wing party, and a right wing party (Liberals and Conservatives). But both were creeping further to the right; the Liberals were arguably not really left wing at all, just "more left" than the other guys. A new "actually left wing" party was established- Labour. They quickly harvested all the voters who were voting Liberal because there was no better left wing choice. But moreover, their success dragged the entire discourse to the left; once Labour were popular, the Conservatives were some of the biggest backers of the Beveridge Report- the founding of the UK welfare state.
Estimates are that around 10% of Apple's proftis each year come from UK sales. What do you think would happen to Apple's stock if they announced that they were going to lose 10% of their profit, and abandon what is most likely their second or third biggest market to their rivals?
Apple need the UK a lot more than the UK needs the second most popular shiny gadget of the moment.
That's because if you admit you were wrong, you open yourself up to a metric *crapton* of lawsuits.
Considering we're talking about one of the richest companies in the world here, I think it'd be a good time to break out the world's smallest violin.
Option 1 is don't break the law. Option 2 is, having been caught breaking the law, take your medicine quietly and without fuss. Option 3- wriggle, throw a tantrum, and try to weasel your way out of things- is not a good choice for one of the world's favourite brands.
Technically you're getting into territory of legal tender, rather than contempt of court. In the UK, £ coins are legal tender up to any amount, and therefore a valid way of paying a court-ordered debt. Coins under £1 are only legal tender up to a certain low amount, so you can legitimately refuse a court-ordered debt that is offered to be paid in 50p coins.
All bugs are found by *someone* doing *something* (obviously). That something is either running some software, or developing some software. The big difference between the world of Linux/FOSS and Windows/proprietary software is: is the dirty laundry aired in public, or in private?
In the world of Linux, if a developer (either application or kernel) discovers a bug, it ends up on publicly-accessible mailing lists etc. If a Windows developer finds a bug, the only people who will hear about it are other Microsoft employees. If a Linux user submits a bug report, it goes on a public-facing bug tracker. If a Windows user submits a bug report, it disappears into the corridors of Redmond and will be fixed in an anonymous Windows Update patch (if at all).
So you can count pretty much every Linux bug and vulnerability accurately, whereas Windows bugs generally don't go public.
It is rational to point out that the US healthcare system was one of the most expensive per-head in the world, one of the least efficient per-dollar in the world, and had one of the lowest coverages in the world. Championing a policy of reform to solve those issues is rational.
Arguing "keep the gubbermint oudda my life!" as a reason to not reform it is ideological and irrational.
ARM chips were made by Acorn originally (the A stood for "acorn"). ARM Holdings is just the name given to the spun-off chunk off Acorn that survived the company going bankrupt.
I believe Acorn were developing ARM as early as 1983 (so says Wikipedia), meaning they pre-date MIPS Technologies as a RISC-making company. Although Wikipedia tells me that the original academic origins of MIPS pre-date ARM, so the technology (rather than the company) can claim to be "first".
Agreed. I'm on my second since the form factor really took off, and I'll happily replace it with #3 when this one reaches the end of its life.
And ditto with Linux (my current one is running vanilla Ubuntu- Unity is pretty decent for the form factor. Although considering its heritage as Ubuntu Netbook Remix, that's not a huge surprise).
Tablets just aren't laptops, however hard you squint at them. And big "proper laptops" (desktop replacements, like the one I use for work) just aren't portable enough. For a good, portable, proper laptop, the form factor is exactly what I want.
It's the first time one of the premier game distribution services has been ported to Linux with a 10% performance increase on their most popular games.
Even if performance has been better on Linux before, there's never been the AAA games collection to pull in the numbers before now.
WINE is fine for the most popular AAA games (and software), as long as you're willing to tweak it and cherrypick versions. For my back-catalogue of games, not so much. The number of times I've picked a game off the shelf and looked it up on WineDB, to find that the best it has is a bronze rating for a version 3 patches ago, without one of the expansion packs, and with a version of WINE from 5 years ago...
Sometimes it's just simpler to keep a native OS installed in a dual-boot or VM somewhere.
Service seller Amazon has recently lost money, whereas gadget makers Apple and Samsung are reporting sky-high profits. Amazon has also recently branched in to gadget-making (Kindles) in the hope of maintaining their profitability.
CEO of service-selling company declaring that people want services over all is about as shocking as Walmart declaring that people prefer home cooking and Dominos declaring that people prefer takeaways.
Dual boot with Windows RT, if MS ever open it up to public sale. Although the way things are going with MS, I wonder if you'll be able to buy any Windows off the shelf in the future- it MS ditch the OEM model, we might see the OS software going the same way as Apple Mac.
The joy of EVE is the PvP, which derives its appeal essentially from the same place as gambling. You need to put in lots of work in order to get the best ships (or indeed real life money). Combat in EVE is "risk everything"- if you get blown up in combat, you lose all that hard work (or cash).
As someone who played for a good couple of years on and off, I can tell you that that's an addictive thrill. I still remember fondly the time I was transporting my best ship through hostile space, on a journey that would take about 30 minutes non-stop; being ambushed by enemy players, and fighting a 30 minute running battle through a dozen systems, engaging, fighting, getting the upper hand, forcing a retreat, the enemy regrouping and re-attacking, me hiding and trying to throw them off my trail, getting caught again. One of the most stand-out gaming experiences of my life.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe things are different from when I used to play it, but back then (2 or 3 of years ago) it was always possible for the little guy to make a difference. I was in a Corporation with maybe a dozen active members, in an Alliance of maybe 4 similar sized Corporations- and we held down a small chunk of null-sec territory, ran a small network of stations, took part in some of the great wars and politics of the day. I commanded a large fleet on a few occasions, and took part in fleet actions on plenty of others- and I only played an hour or two a day, a few days a week. We'd never have dominated the universe with our lack of obsessiveness, but we still "mattered" (you know, insofar as anything matters in a game of internet spaceships).
EVE is not really a space sim. To me, space sim means real time flying and dog fighting... specifically things like having to lead your target.
That's your definition. Real flying and dog-fighting is the sign of a flight sim, or a first-person shooter. It's in a lot of the great space sims, but is it THE key trait? Can it not be a space sim if the focus is on bigger ships (instead of little unrealistic fighter-jets-in-space), with more "captain of the ship" tactics-based combat?
To me, a space sim is about exploring, trading, and combat (of some sort). Big worlds to discover, and ways of making your mark on it. That's why Elite was great, and that's why EVE and X3 both tick the box. X-Wing Alliance? FreesSpace? Fun games, but almost an entirely different genre.
If I had a truly unique and special book that must not be damaged, and I wanted to digitize it, I'd bite the bullet and do it very carefully by hand (which you could do, over a long enough time scale, with just about any household USB scanner).
If, however, I wanted to digitize the contents of my personal book collection, which is several hundred books none of which couldn't be replaced via Amazon or eBay, this would be good for the job. So it shreds my 20 year old copy of Asimov's Foundation- I'd be a bit cross, but it's not like it's worth much. And there's no way I could scan my entire book collection by hand.
Came here to express the same surprise.
I wonder how it will be before other large organisations start following suit as a sensible precaution?
My company has been doing full hard-disk encryption since before I joined, and so does every one of our partners who I've asked (and we usually do; if you're going to have a sniff of any of our customer data, you need to take at least a basic interest in keeping it safe). Do many major organisations not encrypt at least MOST things these days?
In the Windows 7, Vista, XP, and Mac OSX world (so, almost all users), the standard method of installing software is still:
1) Go to the website
2) Download the installation file (or get a disk if you're feeling retro)
3) Run the installation programme
This works in Ubuntu too- you go to the website, and download the .deb package. Double click it, run it. You don't have to be a geek to do this; the fact that mobile phones don't let you do this doesn't mean it's been scrubbed from the users' skillset quite yet. And as long as this remains an option, it is fundamentally not a walled garden.
The key word in "walled garden" is "walled". The fact that your experience is controlled- that it is difficult for you to install programmes or change settings that the manufacturer doesn't want you to- is what people get upset about. iOS obviously does this very strongly. Android does it too (although "rooting" is easier, it is still implemented to put off casual users from doing so). Win 8 RT and Win Phone both go this route.
Ubuntu doesn't stop you doing anything. It has a pretty software distribution programme (akin to Steam or Impulse), but there's nothing to stop you installing any other package you like, or installing from source. It's designed to look and feel like the iOS experience, without the lockdown. It is, if you like, an attempt to make a garden without the walls.
Hardware was never the problem. Nokia hardware has always been very good, and HTC hardware is certainly not bad. The Lumia is a great piece of hardware; it's basically an upgrade to the MeeGo phone of yesteryear.
The problem is the software. Win Phone 7 phones didn't sell because people didn't want a Windows phone. At a glance (as someone who has played with them but not bought them), Win Phone 8 looks extremely similar, superficially, to 7. Why would the higher version number persuade me to change my mind?
I've never heard anyone claim ARM is cheaper than Intel, necessarily. Lower power consumption, yes. Lower clock speed. yes. Lower per-unit price? A 32nm chip is a 32nm chip- I'd have thought the fab costs would be much the same, regardless of the architecture.
My £200 Asus Eee PC, running vanilla Ubuntu (resource-hogging Unity and all) has a 5.5 hour battery life. For an "everything happens in the cloud" device, I'd expect at least similar.
Solent Green Is People!
Soylent Green. The Solent is a waterway in England.
Maybe you should let me hold your geek card for a little while, and...um...escort our friend AC to the euthanization centre?
The US is basically crying out for what happened in the UK in the early 20th century.
We had a nominally left wing party, and a right wing party (Liberals and Conservatives). But both were creeping further to the right; the Liberals were arguably not really left wing at all, just "more left" than the other guys. A new "actually left wing" party was established- Labour. They quickly harvested all the voters who were voting Liberal because there was no better left wing choice. But moreover, their success dragged the entire discourse to the left; once Labour were popular, the Conservatives were some of the biggest backers of the Beveridge Report- the founding of the UK welfare state.
Estimates are that around 10% of Apple's proftis each year come from UK sales. What do you think would happen to Apple's stock if they announced that they were going to lose 10% of their profit, and abandon what is most likely their second or third biggest market to their rivals?
Apple need the UK a lot more than the UK needs the second most popular shiny gadget of the moment.
That's because if you admit you were wrong, you open yourself up to a metric *crapton* of lawsuits.
Considering we're talking about one of the richest companies in the world here, I think it'd be a good time to break out the world's smallest violin.
Option 1 is don't break the law. Option 2 is, having been caught breaking the law, take your medicine quietly and without fuss. Option 3- wriggle, throw a tantrum, and try to weasel your way out of things- is not a good choice for one of the world's favourite brands.
Technically you're getting into territory of legal tender, rather than contempt of court. In the UK, £ coins are legal tender up to any amount, and therefore a valid way of paying a court-ordered debt. Coins under £1 are only legal tender up to a certain low amount, so you can legitimately refuse a court-ordered debt that is offered to be paid in 50p coins.
Fair enough- but at $1500 (so says the rumour mill), they're hardly competing for the same market as the $200 netbook.
That's a bit of a false distinction.
All bugs are found by *someone* doing *something* (obviously). That something is either running some software, or developing some software. The big difference between the world of Linux/FOSS and Windows/proprietary software is: is the dirty laundry aired in public, or in private?
In the world of Linux, if a developer (either application or kernel) discovers a bug, it ends up on publicly-accessible mailing lists etc. If a Windows developer finds a bug, the only people who will hear about it are other Microsoft employees. If a Linux user submits a bug report, it goes on a public-facing bug tracker. If a Windows user submits a bug report, it disappears into the corridors of Redmond and will be fixed in an anonymous Windows Update patch (if at all).
So you can count pretty much every Linux bug and vulnerability accurately, whereas Windows bugs generally don't go public.
It is rational to point out that the US healthcare system was one of the most expensive per-head in the world, one of the least efficient per-dollar in the world, and had one of the lowest coverages in the world. Championing a policy of reform to solve those issues is rational.
Arguing "keep the gubbermint oudda my life!" as a reason to not reform it is ideological and irrational.
ARM chips were made by Acorn originally (the A stood for "acorn"). ARM Holdings is just the name given to the spun-off chunk off Acorn that survived the company going bankrupt.
I believe Acorn were developing ARM as early as 1983 (so says Wikipedia), meaning they pre-date MIPS Technologies as a RISC-making company. Although Wikipedia tells me that the original academic origins of MIPS pre-date ARM, so the technology (rather than the company) can claim to be "first".
Agreed. I'm on my second since the form factor really took off, and I'll happily replace it with #3 when this one reaches the end of its life.
And ditto with Linux (my current one is running vanilla Ubuntu- Unity is pretty decent for the form factor. Although considering its heritage as Ubuntu Netbook Remix, that's not a huge surprise).
Tablets just aren't laptops, however hard you squint at them. And big "proper laptops" (desktop replacements, like the one I use for work) just aren't portable enough. For a good, portable, proper laptop, the form factor is exactly what I want.
Good question; I've never tried, I dual boot. I might be talking nonsense on that front.
It's the first time one of the premier game distribution services has been ported to Linux with a 10% performance increase on their most popular games.
Even if performance has been better on Linux before, there's never been the AAA games collection to pull in the numbers before now.
WINE is fine for the most popular AAA games (and software), as long as you're willing to tweak it and cherrypick versions. For my back-catalogue of games, not so much. The number of times I've picked a game off the shelf and looked it up on WineDB, to find that the best it has is a bronze rating for a version 3 patches ago, without one of the expansion packs, and with a version of WINE from 5 years ago...
Sometimes it's just simpler to keep a native OS installed in a dual-boot or VM somewhere.
Service seller Amazon has recently lost money, whereas gadget makers Apple and Samsung are reporting sky-high profits. Amazon has also recently branched in to gadget-making (Kindles) in the hope of maintaining their profitability.
CEO of service-selling company declaring that people want services over all is about as shocking as Walmart declaring that people prefer home cooking and Dominos declaring that people prefer takeaways.
Dual boot with Windows RT, if MS ever open it up to public sale. Although the way things are going with MS, I wonder if you'll be able to buy any Windows off the shelf in the future- it MS ditch the OEM model, we might see the OS software going the same way as Apple Mac.
But hey, there's always Linux.
The joy of EVE is the PvP, which derives its appeal essentially from the same place as gambling. You need to put in lots of work in order to get the best ships (or indeed real life money). Combat in EVE is "risk everything"- if you get blown up in combat, you lose all that hard work (or cash).
As someone who played for a good couple of years on and off, I can tell you that that's an addictive thrill. I still remember fondly the time I was transporting my best ship through hostile space, on a journey that would take about 30 minutes non-stop; being ambushed by enemy players, and fighting a 30 minute running battle through a dozen systems, engaging, fighting, getting the upper hand, forcing a retreat, the enemy regrouping and re-attacking, me hiding and trying to throw them off my trail, getting caught again. One of the most stand-out gaming experiences of my life.