As in "Do whatever it takes to survive." That means:
* Find out why old users leave * Find out why new users don't come * Fix those problems * Make sure fixing those problems doesn't lead to new problems
I know I don't run FF anymore -- I switched to Chrome mostly because I was having PC troubles and often jumping from computer to computer or reformatting, and needed the seamless bookmarks sync (which turned out to be a major time saver). My original reason, however, was that when I was using my old computer, I had a 15-20 second wait to get Firefox loaded, which left me handshy of ever closing the damn thing in the first place, and that ramped up the memory usage from leaks or whatever. On that same computer, Chrome loaded in under about 3 seconds, so I could close it without feeling like a damned idiot the next time I needed to open it again for a quick link. Since I've gotten used to it, I'm not terribly interested in trying to go back to using FF merely because I'm happy with the current setup.
That said, FF did serve me very well for years, and I don't think it's dead, dying, or that it SHOULD die.
Search is hard work and takes massive data crunching.
Yeah. No, seriously. How many tens or hundreds of thousands, or millions, of servers does Google own? In how many data centers, connected by how much fiber, pulling down how much bandwith, with how much spidering, requiring how much infrastructure, and expecting how little downtime yearly?
Correct me if I'm wrong but Apple doesn't do more than a bit of any one of those things. If they tried to half-ass a search engine, it would fail horribly, what with downtime, poor performance, poor results, lag, etc. Microsoft at least has server experience, and has from the start, and Bing still isn't the killer they were looking for. Even if they do buy an existing engine, nothing they have any experience with is going to help in improving that search engine to the point where it's competitive.
Either this article is beyond bogus or Apple is out of its fucking mind.
If you suddenly discovered a way of phrasing your requests to your boss that always got you what you wanted, wouldn't you always try to phrase things that way?
No, I wouldn't, especially not if I was doing a public service. Because sometimes, shockingly, there are things more important than whether or not I get what I want, such as, oh, say, the truth. If you aren't dealing with the truth, you probably won't actually solve the problem.
I'll understand if you think it's a bit naive to expect that sort of attitude from others though.
Let's all stop for a moment to remember that we are talking about the entertainment industry. Let that sink in. Entertainment: something affording pleasure, diversion, or amusement, esp. a performance of some kind. (ref)
All of these people--RIAA, MPAA, and their equivalents across the world--are fighting tooth and nail because some people do not consider entertainment to be worth the sometimes exorbitant fees required to access it, and because some people get their entertainment and chafe at being told they have to jump through hoops to enjoy it.
There are still people starving in this world. There are people fighting for their lives and their beliefs. There are human rights violations. And there is so much else.
And these people are fighting for the right to overcharge and micromanage your entertainment.
I don't know Leiss, but you remind me of a science fiction title by L.E. Modesitt, Jr called "Octagonal Raven."
In it, mixed in with the main character's action sequences and his day job doing analysis for advertisers, is a story of a world where gene tweaked brains give you better reasoning ability, and the upper crust are trying to restrict access to politics and top schools to gene tweaked people (note the poor, as always, can't afford it and are left out), which means that the whole system is looking like it's about to get a whole lot more insular.
Good book, good author. I recommend it if you're interested.
It is specifically a "For all" proof, which is possible (however infeasible) because there are explicitly a finite number of things which can happen. User input is finite-sized. Webpages are finite-sized. Every html tag, and every script, has a limited number of acceptable permutations and a limited number of hooks into places where things can go wrong. After that, the user-visible data, that's just fluff that gets passed through it.
There is, in theory, perfect code on a perfect OS with perfect libraries that will be impeccably bug-proof no matter what you throw at it. However, if you don't know why that perfect code is written the way it is, you won't write it yourself (discounting an infinite number of monkeys), and you won't learn without experience fixing bugs.
This is another excellent reason for open source--in theory, you can look at thoroughly debugged code and learn from it, and you can watch the process evolve, where things that didn't look like bugs are shown to be such. It isn't just about not reinventing the wheel; it can be an excellent opportunity to improve the quality of code in general.
Yeah, I think so. Recall, energy is conserved. So, compared to say, wind, where the energy level is high enough to move a huge mass of air around, the only thing they're talking about taking energy from is something at such low intensities that they're safe to use around the human ear (unless they stick them at airports, or strap them to jackhammers, or something).
Sound doesn't even usually waste much energy passing through things, if I recall correctly; I think most of the energy is lost from the expanding wavefront. Then, I suppose that's where the 18% efficiency number comes in.
I guess the only saving grace in this department is that it can (I assume) take input continuously and indiscriminately, especially if the materials are cheap.
Also, suddenly I'm imagining some kind of hardware failure in some of these devices that have run out of water, produced a lot of H, and are now suddenly buoyant. That would be amusing.
I can understand the point of it just being a new way to deliver DLC, but at the same time, don't act like it isn't sleazy. You may not expect it of company owners, and you certainly can't demand it, but there are people who will throw in freebies and extras without raising the cost, because they're loyal to their customers, or because they just enjoy the making process, or because they like the fact that their customers like them. And when you see someone making the very calculating, very self-absorbed move of saying, "We had this ready anyway, but, meh, give us another few bucks if you want it"... well, it pisses people off.
I refer you to my first post:
Is this point of view naive? Yes, and fuck any company that points that out. If you tread on naive consumers as a matter of policy, expect some heated feedback from them.
Is it within their rights? Yes, that's capitalism. Go figure. But don't be surprised because consumers continue to cry foul when you shit on them--even if only a minority see it as unfair. People are still people.
Lock-in: Then don't buy the device Crippleware: (assuming you mean that it can't use its 'full potential') As above, plus limits things that can go wrong so that there don't have to be as many patches No multitasking: As above, plus prevents the user from stupidly slowing down their device without knowing why iTunes: I think it's fair to say that millions of users who are satisfied with the store don't constitute something inherently wrong with the product. Do you mean that they can't install apps from wherever? Then as above, plus addresses security concerns.
"Inherently wrong" means if you buy the product, it will sneak out of your house, murder your neighbors, and blame it on a passing nun. "Inherently wrong" means if you buy the product, a hypnotic spiral will light up on the screen, drawing you down further and further into a circle of insanity where you lose your will to live. "Inherently wrong" means that if you give it to your child, they will grow up to be a rapist criminal who gives people cancer just by touching them.
It does NOT mean "I have objections to how this device is managed." That's covered under the GP's "Not for you" category. Grow the fuck up.
If it was verifiably "managed to get it finished before the game was released" instead of "always meant to be day-one DLC", then that's different, but that's what the parent was saying. Once the game has gone to master, or whatever the proper term is, they're no longer able to edit what will go on the CD. In other words, if they had changed it anytime in that last 30 days, those changes would have to be part of that patch, and from the size of it, it couldn't be much more than a trivial bugfix or two and some activation code.
Someone said it higher in the comments (top of this thread?) pretty well. They shipped a game not capable of using all the data that they had prepared when they shipped the game, data that's already on the disk. They had it all finished, took an axe, and hewed off a portion and said, 'This will still be here, but you have to pay to get it.' Compare this to what I said in the GP post. It's no contest.
What DLC claims to be--and isn't in cases like this--is a justification for the people who made the game to spend more time making extra content for it, after the original game has shipped--the programmers are doing extra work month after month, improving the game in a way that has nothing to do (ostensibly) with patches/fixing errors. In other words, "As long as you are willing to pay for more, we can justify paying our programmers and content creators to keep working on it after the game has officially shipped, when otherwise, we would have a bugfix team and nothing more."
In a way, that's completely betrayed by any kind of day-1 DLC. In another, it isn't, because in theory, you're judging whether or not they'll pay to come back for more. I think I subscribe to the first camp, though. If you aren't paying additional month-over-month expenses (that have nothing to do with your mistakes / bugs), then don't charge the players.
Is this point of view naive? Yes, and fuck any company that points that out. If you tread on naive consumers as a matter of policy, expect some heated feedback from them.
Part of the impetus for having labor done elsewhere is its cheapness. If you could still produce useful quantities of your product without hiring an MBA to do sleazy deals with sweatsh--I mean, legitimate overseas businessmen, maybe you could bring industry back to [first-world-nation] where it belongs. After all, those robots will still need technicians, overseers, shipping companies, etc.
I'm really not sure whether it's a good idea or not, but still...
Or more simply, it exploits the huge crowd of people interested in a particular outcome and with nothing better to do.
There really are lots who would love to make a difference in some random subjects, like this, but feel like any effort they started on their own would be completely meaningless. So, you just give them all a place to go, and they don't feel like small fries in a big world anymore. Problem solved.
where "appliance" is so very conveniently defined as "Doing what this Apple product can do, and not not including the things that it can't do."
If it's an appliance, every functionality is added functionality. See also: iPod Touch, iPhone
If it's a computer, every restriction is an added restriction. See also: DRM.
They aren't selling it as a computer. Computers are the user's playtoys, and trying to keep up with the user invokes the "the universe creates a bigger idiot" clause of idiot-proofing. Users still want it, so they can find it with Windows/linux/etc.
In the meantime, you want to make a new "computer", you either make a better computer from the existing mold, or you make an appliance that does exactly what it says on the box, and anything else is bonus.
I agree that their effort shouldn't be based on the "make it look good with rounded bubbles that you can move anywhere on the screen, because THAT is what programmers lack" that the video shows. That's retarded.
However, my first thought when I read the title of this was that, for example when debugging, the IDE would put together a fake "file" for your editing purposes that contains all the relevant functions / code segments, with simple breaks that showed where one file ended and the next started. This might even be multi-column, with each "bubble" being movable between columns, so that you could compare side-by-side.
You could of course switch tabs to the actual files if you needed to, for editing C macros or things that seem unrelated to the IDE, and it wouldn't be hard to have it jump to the line you already have selected in the "bubble" view.
I admit I'm not a pilot myself, but I've taken many rides in them, dating back much of my life. I trust the pilots involved not to have done anything illegal; that said, in retrospect, we really didn't do a whole lot of flying over crowded areas and roadways--even if they made the biggest impression on me. However, it's not like airports are only located in the boonies, either.
Depends on comfort and how it handles. Have you ever BEEN in an ultralight? Or skydiving/parachuting? (I don't mean to closely associate those two, generally you do one or the other, not both at the same time, ho ho he he.)
Actually flying, and looking down on the world below you, and knowing that it really is the ground, and not some sort of BS simulation, is a heck of a thing. The world below that was once almost entirely hidden by facades is all laid out bare before you; you don't see storefronts, you see the entire complex, including the service entrances. You don't see the eight cars directly around you, you see a hundred in a line, some merging in and out of traffic, some carrying onwards. You don't see houses with their trimmed lawns, trying to make themselves look like DISTINGUISHED suburbanites, you just see another prefab lot out of thousands.
With airplanes, if only as a matter of control (and law), you can never drop below several hundred feet. But if, with a jetpack, you could... you could be in both worlds at once--seeing the land below, as you did from the ground, and then the roofs and patterns and skies from above.
If you get caught up in something like that... thirty minutes is nothing. You could spend that thirty minutes just noticing things you'd never seen before in your favorite places--and not just the first time out, but the tenth or more. And then, since you spent thirty minutes flying instead of fifteen out and fifteen back, you'll run out of fuel...
GP is very naive in saying that people self-regulate with safety. NORMAL people do. Some people want to know exactly how far they come before they hit that point of no return, and jetpacks are a little more dangerous to play with than skateboards, motorcycles, ATVs, or whatever else.
They're also VERY likely to try landing places where they absolutely (by law or by sanity) shouldn't. If these things were readily available, expect to see people landing places that do not YET have security (cameras, locked doors, etc) but will soon. And god help us ALL if Homeland Security catches wind of the idea. Good LORD.
When something is per se illegal, but a team of lawyers with questionable ethics find a way to phrase it that somehow circumvents the law, that situation is certainly in the border of the illegal.
When something goes against the spirit of the law, but steps carefully over regulations, and is "technically" legal, that is bordering the illegal too.
You could sum that up, "Pretty much all of politics."
A large fraction of the people who bought it aren't learning any lesson about DRM because it's likely a lot of gamers won't even register that the game is doing anything other than crashing, even if the error message spells out why.
It's bad software. They would have to understand the political climate of the games world to realize it was made that way on purpose. Everyone else is going to be pissy about it, just not in an informed way.
Slashdot Mirror
As in "Do whatever it takes to survive." That means:
* Find out why old users leave
* Find out why new users don't come
* Fix those problems
* Make sure fixing those problems doesn't lead to new problems
I know I don't run FF anymore -- I switched to Chrome mostly because I was having PC troubles and often jumping from computer to computer or reformatting, and needed the seamless bookmarks sync (which turned out to be a major time saver). My original reason, however, was that when I was using my old computer, I had a 15-20 second wait to get Firefox loaded, which left me handshy of ever closing the damn thing in the first place, and that ramped up the memory usage from leaks or whatever. On that same computer, Chrome loaded in under about 3 seconds, so I could close it without feeling like a damned idiot the next time I needed to open it again for a quick link. Since I've gotten used to it, I'm not terribly interested in trying to go back to using FF merely because I'm happy with the current setup.
That said, FF did serve me very well for years, and I don't think it's dead, dying, or that it SHOULD die.
there is a strong ideological motivation for the claim that pulsars do it best.
Ideologically speaking, when ideology and science clash, ideology should take the back seat and shut the fuck up.
Only until the isotope, Walmartium, is discovered.
Search is hard work and takes massive data crunching.
Yeah. No, seriously. How many tens or hundreds of thousands, or millions, of servers does Google own? In how many data centers, connected by how much fiber, pulling down how much bandwith, with how much spidering, requiring how much infrastructure, and expecting how little downtime yearly?
Correct me if I'm wrong but Apple doesn't do more than a bit of any one of those things. If they tried to half-ass a search engine, it would fail horribly, what with downtime, poor performance, poor results, lag, etc. Microsoft at least has server experience, and has from the start, and Bing still isn't the killer they were looking for. Even if they do buy an existing engine, nothing they have any experience with is going to help in improving that search engine to the point where it's competitive.
Either this article is beyond bogus or Apple is out of its fucking mind.
To be fair, my fatty tissue is an ass, and my connective tissues jerk me around all the time.
If you suddenly discovered a way of phrasing your requests to your boss that always got you what you wanted, wouldn't you always try to phrase things that way?
No, I wouldn't, especially not if I was doing a public service. Because sometimes, shockingly, there are things more important than whether or not I get what I want, such as, oh, say, the truth. If you aren't dealing with the truth, you probably won't actually solve the problem.
I'll understand if you think it's a bit naive to expect that sort of attitude from others though.
Let's all stop for a moment to remember that we are talking about the entertainment industry. Let that sink in. Entertainment: something affording pleasure, diversion, or amusement, esp. a performance of some kind. (ref)
All of these people--RIAA, MPAA, and their equivalents across the world--are fighting tooth and nail because some people do not consider entertainment to be worth the sometimes exorbitant fees required to access it, and because some people get their entertainment and chafe at being told they have to jump through hoops to enjoy it.
There are still people starving in this world. There are people fighting for their lives and their beliefs. There are human rights violations. And there is so much else.
And these people are fighting for the right to overcharge and micromanage your entertainment.
I don't know Leiss, but you remind me of a science fiction title by L.E. Modesitt, Jr called "Octagonal Raven."
In it, mixed in with the main character's action sequences and his day job doing analysis for advertisers, is a story of a world where gene tweaked brains give you better reasoning ability, and the upper crust are trying to restrict access to politics and top schools to gene tweaked people (note the poor, as always, can't afford it and are left out), which means that the whole system is looking like it's about to get a whole lot more insular.
Good book, good author. I recommend it if you're interested.
It is specifically a "For all" proof, which is possible (however infeasible) because there are explicitly a finite number of things which can happen. User input is finite-sized. Webpages are finite-sized. Every html tag, and every script, has a limited number of acceptable permutations and a limited number of hooks into places where things can go wrong. After that, the user-visible data, that's just fluff that gets passed through it.
There is, in theory, perfect code on a perfect OS with perfect libraries that will be impeccably bug-proof no matter what you throw at it. However, if you don't know why that perfect code is written the way it is, you won't write it yourself (discounting an infinite number of monkeys), and you won't learn without experience fixing bugs.
This is another excellent reason for open source--in theory, you can look at thoroughly debugged code and learn from it, and you can watch the process evolve, where things that didn't look like bugs are shown to be such. It isn't just about not reinventing the wheel; it can be an excellent opportunity to improve the quality of code in general.
Yeah, I think so. Recall, energy is conserved. So, compared to say, wind, where the energy level is high enough to move a huge mass of air around, the only thing they're talking about taking energy from is something at such low intensities that they're safe to use around the human ear (unless they stick them at airports, or strap them to jackhammers, or something).
Sound doesn't even usually waste much energy passing through things, if I recall correctly; I think most of the energy is lost from the expanding wavefront. Then, I suppose that's where the 18% efficiency number comes in.
I guess the only saving grace in this department is that it can (I assume) take input continuously and indiscriminately, especially if the materials are cheap.
Also, suddenly I'm imagining some kind of hardware failure in some of these devices that have run out of water, produced a lot of H, and are now suddenly buoyant. That would be amusing.
I think I need sleep.
I can understand the point of it just being a new way to deliver DLC, but at the same time, don't act like it isn't sleazy. You may not expect it of company owners, and you certainly can't demand it, but there are people who will throw in freebies and extras without raising the cost, because they're loyal to their customers, or because they just enjoy the making process, or because they like the fact that their customers like them. And when you see someone making the very calculating, very self-absorbed move of saying, "We had this ready anyway, but, meh, give us another few bucks if you want it"... well, it pisses people off.
I refer you to my first post:
Is this point of view naive? Yes, and fuck any company that points that out. If you tread on naive consumers as a matter of policy, expect some heated feedback from them.
Is it within their rights? Yes, that's capitalism. Go figure. But don't be surprised because consumers continue to cry foul when you shit on them--even if only a minority see it as unfair. People are still people.
Lock-in: Then don't buy the device
Crippleware: (assuming you mean that it can't use its 'full potential') As above, plus limits things that can go wrong so that there don't have to be as many patches
No multitasking: As above, plus prevents the user from stupidly slowing down their device without knowing why
iTunes: I think it's fair to say that millions of users who are satisfied with the store don't constitute something inherently wrong with the product. Do you mean that they can't install apps from wherever? Then as above, plus addresses security concerns.
"Inherently wrong" means if you buy the product, it will sneak out of your house, murder your neighbors, and blame it on a passing nun. "Inherently wrong" means if you buy the product, a hypnotic spiral will light up on the screen, drawing you down further and further into a circle of insanity where you lose your will to live. "Inherently wrong" means that if you give it to your child, they will grow up to be a rapist criminal who gives people cancer just by touching them.
It does NOT mean "I have objections to how this device is managed." That's covered under the GP's "Not for you" category. Grow the fuck up.
If it was verifiably "managed to get it finished before the game was released" instead of "always meant to be day-one DLC", then that's different, but that's what the parent was saying. Once the game has gone to master, or whatever the proper term is, they're no longer able to edit what will go on the CD. In other words, if they had changed it anytime in that last 30 days, those changes would have to be part of that patch, and from the size of it, it couldn't be much more than a trivial bugfix or two and some activation code.
Someone said it higher in the comments (top of this thread?) pretty well. They shipped a game not capable of using all the data that they had prepared when they shipped the game, data that's already on the disk. They had it all finished, took an axe, and hewed off a portion and said, 'This will still be here, but you have to pay to get it.' Compare this to what I said in the GP post. It's no contest.
What DLC claims to be--and isn't in cases like this--is a justification for the people who made the game to spend more time making extra content for it, after the original game has shipped--the programmers are doing extra work month after month, improving the game in a way that has nothing to do (ostensibly) with patches/fixing errors. In other words, "As long as you are willing to pay for more, we can justify paying our programmers and content creators to keep working on it after the game has officially shipped, when otherwise, we would have a bugfix team and nothing more."
In a way, that's completely betrayed by any kind of day-1 DLC. In another, it isn't, because in theory, you're judging whether or not they'll pay to come back for more. I think I subscribe to the first camp, though. If you aren't paying additional month-over-month expenses (that have nothing to do with your mistakes / bugs), then don't charge the players.
Is this point of view naive? Yes, and fuck any company that points that out. If you tread on naive consumers as a matter of policy, expect some heated feedback from them.
I think the people who named those worked at the Mt. God I'm So Drunk Observatory.
Part of the impetus for having labor done elsewhere is its cheapness. If you could still produce useful quantities of your product without hiring an MBA to do sleazy deals with sweatsh--I mean, legitimate overseas businessmen, maybe you could bring industry back to [first-world-nation] where it belongs. After all, those robots will still need technicians, overseers, shipping companies, etc.
I'm really not sure whether it's a good idea or not, but still...
Or more simply, it exploits the huge crowd of people interested in a particular outcome and with nothing better to do.
There really are lots who would love to make a difference in some random subjects, like this, but feel like any effort they started on their own would be completely meaningless. So, you just give them all a place to go, and they don't feel like small fries in a big world anymore. Problem solved.
where "appliance" is so very conveniently defined as "Doing what this Apple product can do, and not not including the things that it can't do."
If it's an appliance, every functionality is added functionality. See also: iPod Touch, iPhone
If it's a computer, every restriction is an added restriction. See also: DRM.
They aren't selling it as a computer. Computers are the user's playtoys, and trying to keep up with the user invokes the "the universe creates a bigger idiot" clause of idiot-proofing. Users still want it, so they can find it with Windows/linux/etc.
In the meantime, you want to make a new "computer", you either make a better computer from the existing mold, or you make an appliance that does exactly what it says on the box, and anything else is bonus.
Stop expecting more. Goddamn.
I agree that their effort shouldn't be based on the "make it look good with rounded bubbles that you can move anywhere on the screen, because THAT is what programmers lack" that the video shows. That's retarded.
However, my first thought when I read the title of this was that, for example when debugging, the IDE would put together a fake "file" for your editing purposes that contains all the relevant functions / code segments, with simple breaks that showed where one file ended and the next started. This might even be multi-column, with each "bubble" being movable between columns, so that you could compare side-by-side.
You could of course switch tabs to the actual files if you needed to, for editing C macros or things that seem unrelated to the IDE, and it wouldn't be hard to have it jump to the line you already have selected in the "bubble" view.
I admit I'm not a pilot myself, but I've taken many rides in them, dating back much of my life. I trust the pilots involved not to have done anything illegal; that said, in retrospect, we really didn't do a whole lot of flying over crowded areas and roadways--even if they made the biggest impression on me. However, it's not like airports are only located in the boonies, either.
Depends on comfort and how it handles. Have you ever BEEN in an ultralight? Or skydiving/parachuting? (I don't mean to closely associate those two, generally you do one or the other, not both at the same time, ho ho he he.)
Actually flying, and looking down on the world below you, and knowing that it really is the ground, and not some sort of BS simulation, is a heck of a thing. The world below that was once almost entirely hidden by facades is all laid out bare before you; you don't see storefronts, you see the entire complex, including the service entrances. You don't see the eight cars directly around you, you see a hundred in a line, some merging in and out of traffic, some carrying onwards. You don't see houses with their trimmed lawns, trying to make themselves look like DISTINGUISHED suburbanites, you just see another prefab lot out of thousands.
With airplanes, if only as a matter of control (and law), you can never drop below several hundred feet. But if, with a jetpack, you could... you could be in both worlds at once--seeing the land below, as you did from the ground, and then the roofs and patterns and skies from above.
If you get caught up in something like that... thirty minutes is nothing. You could spend that thirty minutes just noticing things you'd never seen before in your favorite places--and not just the first time out, but the tenth or more. And then, since you spent thirty minutes flying instead of fifteen out and fifteen back, you'll run out of fuel...
Also, teenagers.
GP is very naive in saying that people self-regulate with safety. NORMAL people do. Some people want to know exactly how far they come before they hit that point of no return, and jetpacks are a little more dangerous to play with than skateboards, motorcycles, ATVs, or whatever else.
They're also VERY likely to try landing places where they absolutely (by law or by sanity) shouldn't. If these things were readily available, expect to see people landing places that do not YET have security (cameras, locked doors, etc) but will soon. And god help us ALL if Homeland Security catches wind of the idea. Good LORD.
When something is per se illegal, but a team of lawyers with questionable ethics find a way to phrase it that somehow circumvents the law, that situation is certainly in the border of the illegal.
When something goes against the spirit of the law, but steps carefully over regulations, and is "technically" legal, that is bordering the illegal too.
You could sum that up, "Pretty much all of politics."
Somehow saying the one tends to get the other in response anyway...
A large fraction of the people who bought it aren't learning any lesson about DRM because it's likely a lot of gamers won't even register that the game is doing anything other than crashing, even if the error message spells out why.
It's bad software. They would have to understand the political climate of the games world to realize it was made that way on purpose. Everyone else is going to be pissy about it, just not in an informed way.