You're being a bit harsh. Maybe the tone of TFA was a bit blaming towards Amazon, but I see the article as a review of the service from a developer's point of view. If Amazon's service is crap, then that's a reason for other developers to not bother. Maybe he saved quite a few developers large headaches with his article. I'd say that this article is more useful and interesting than a similar article about iTunes would be, because iOS developers have no alternatives, so such an article would be kind of pointless.
It's not about sales. It's about innovation growing stale in triple-A game development. Developers and publishers don't want to take risks anymore so you'll see more copying of ideas being done than innovating for themselves. It is the indie market where the real innovation is being done these days.
The reason for this is simple though. Many indies work on their games as part of a hobby or on relatively small budgets, where taking a risk is a choice they can make all by themselves. A game developer that works on a $100 million+ title can't afford to take risks because that scares away investors. Investors don't want risk. They want profit.
Sorry, but skimming over the other comments and reminding myself of the general attitude of the average Slashdot visitor, I assumed there was no real need for me to explain why I thought it was a bad idea. Maybe this comment enlightens you.
Why would it be a really bad idea to make those that wear the roads down most pay more for fixing them up again?
That, in itself is not a bad idea. However, the means of getting there are. I'm not happy with a device in my car that can be used to track when my car went where. And with stories such as these, about TomTom selling driver data to the Dutch police, I'm not confident that such data is used exclusively for the purpose it was originally intended for. The most preposterous thing is that if my device is broken and I'm unaware of this, I can be fined for it and any costs to install, repair or replace the device are completely my own.
Not the same. This system could tax people based on at what times they drive (during busy traffic hours would be more expensive) and where they drive (at known congestion points is more expensive). Also, fuel tax has it's limits because of EU ruling. And then there's the problem of people who live close to Germany or Belgium, they'd just pop over the borders and refuel for cheap.
Here in the Netherlands, they've already been planning for something like this for some time. Not sure what the current status is on that though.
Anyway, the idea is that all cars will be equipped with some kind of GPS enabled device that records the movements of the car and reports this to big brother...err, I mean the tax administration. Based on how much you've driven your car and on what kind of roads and on what times your taxes are calculated. They say this system is a lot fairer than the current 'one tax level for all car owners' system. The idea is also to make the car owner responsible for the condition of the device and driving around with a disabled, modified or broken device is punishable with a fine. It's the govt's form of automated road pricing. I think it's a really, really bad idea.
Well no, it didn't. It's just that the focus is shifting.
The article is basically about the influence of the reception of Nintendo's Project Café on Sony and Microsoft's plans for the future. The interesting thing about Project Café is that it uses hardware that, in terms of CPU/GPU power, is similar to XBox 360 and PS3. It doesn't push that envelope any further. And with the success of Wii and handhelds such as the DS and mobile gaming, the question should be asked: is improved graphics still a driving force behind console sales. The answer to that is most likely "no, it doesn't". A success story for Project Café will confirm this.
What I find most interesting though is if Project Café had any chance of success, or if Nintendo would even go ahead with this strategy if MS and Sony wouldn't have come with Kinect and Move. Both companies are aiming for two, three, maybe even four more years for their current consoles. Kinect and Move should be the main driving forces behind their consoles for those coming years. It's easy for Nintendo to slot a new console into this time frame that's equally powerful (= cheap to produce) with some new and interesting peripherals tied to it. During Kinect/Move's lifetime, Nintendo could build a user base and possibly disrupt Kinect and Move's sales, forcing the two companies to jump the gun on new consoles at which time Nintendo already has a comfortable user base with Project Café and MS/Sony have to start from scratch. But if MS/Sony would release completely new consoles next year instead of going for Kinect/Move, would a gimicky, under-powered console work for Nintendo a second time around?
I'm afraid that Mr Brin's so called ease of management means that there's simply less or no access to lower level features of the OS. In Google OS you can probably set your desktop theme, rearrange some icons and that's it. The problem is that I do want access to all the little nooks and crannies of the OS.
What did they release before Steam? No more than just Half-Life and a handful of bought-in mods, no? I don't think there's a real difference between pre-steam and post-steam output of Valve. If any, the output has increased with titles like HL2, Ep 1, Ep 2, L4D, L4D2, Portal, Portal 2, TF2 and the upcoming DOTA.
Another important thing is to be aware of cultural differences and deal with them. I'm not talking about fundamental Christians having to work together with extremist Muslims or anything on that scale, it's just that cultural differences lead to different interpretation of facts or requests and assumptions made on different grounds.
For instance, we used to work with a group of people located in the Ukraine (us being in the Netherlands). Turned out that in ex-soviet countries, the culture is still to never oppose those that give your "orders" and do what they ask of you, no questions asked.
So if we asked them to do something, they would literally do what we asked them. This may sound like a good thing, but often it wasn't because it resulted in them also not doing things we took for granted as things that came with the task. Also, if things weren't entirely clear to them, they'd rather find a solution the way they thought we wanted to have it rather than actually go and say "you didn't specify this clearly enough, please elaborate on this".
I don't understand the problem. I assume that the stuff I put in my locker can only be streamed by me? Sure, login credentials can be shared among friends, but is that really Amazon's problem? At most Amazon could put in some anti-sharing measures like only accepting one connection per locker simultaneously.
Why is the iPad costing them more work? The article refers to it as the "traffic hungry iPad". Traffic hungry? A PC downloading Torrents every day is not traffic hungry?
Because they are the publishers of some absolutely fantastic games.
You know, it's very easy to say "simply don't buy their games", but with that attitude, we'd most likely never get any form of entertainment anymore, because almost all of them include some restriction or price tag we're not happy with.
The choice remains between sticking up for your own values and missing out on some piece of entertainment you're dying to experience, or accepting the restrictions and enjoy the game after all. Considering that option 1 makes virtually no difference to EA, the choice is often easily made for option 2. But IMO, even having made that choice, it's still valid to rant about the restrictions on the entertainment. You may have bought the game, but that doesn't mean you fully agree with the restrictions it comes with.
It does, when installing an app you get a list of permissions required for the app which you have to agree to before it is installed. And yes, I must admit that the meaning of this list isn't always as clear and obvious to the less tech-savvy people among us, but it is especially those people that should be careful with what apps they install.
I'm sorry, but if I ask you to download and execute a windows batch file that simply called "del/s/q C:\*.*" then your Windows box would still be completely wrecked.
It's not the OS that is insecure, it's the user that's completely and utterly moronic.
Slashdot Mirror
$100? How about 3000 UK pound for 5m of cable?
Eurogamer's Digital Foundry blog did some extensive testing with HDMI cables which shows that it really doesn't matter what type of cables you buy: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-vs-hdmi
You're being a bit harsh. Maybe the tone of TFA was a bit blaming towards Amazon, but I see the article as a review of the service from a developer's point of view. If Amazon's service is crap, then that's a reason for other developers to not bother. Maybe he saved quite a few developers large headaches with his article. I'd say that this article is more useful and interesting than a similar article about iTunes would be, because iOS developers have no alternatives, so such an article would be kind of pointless.
Did you even read TFA? The entire article is about how Windows 8 will not lack .NET support, nor native C++ support.
... that thinks this summary is written so poorly that it might well set a new low for Slashdot summaries?
I don't stand for the accuracy or correctness of this list though.
It's not about sales. It's about innovation growing stale in triple-A game development. Developers and publishers don't want to take risks anymore so you'll see more copying of ideas being done than innovating for themselves. It is the indie market where the real innovation is being done these days.
The reason for this is simple though. Many indies work on their games as part of a hobby or on relatively small budgets, where taking a risk is a choice they can make all by themselves. A game developer that works on a $100 million+ title can't afford to take risks because that scares away investors. Investors don't want risk. They want profit.
Sorry, but skimming over the other comments and reminding myself of the general attitude of the average Slashdot visitor, I assumed there was no real need for me to explain why I thought it was a bad idea. Maybe this comment enlightens you.
Why would it be a really bad idea to make those that wear the roads down most pay more for fixing them up again?
That, in itself is not a bad idea. However, the means of getting there are. I'm not happy with a device in my car that can be used to track when my car went where. And with stories such as these, about TomTom selling driver data to the Dutch police, I'm not confident that such data is used exclusively for the purpose it was originally intended for. The most preposterous thing is that if my device is broken and I'm unaware of this, I can be fined for it and any costs to install, repair or replace the device are completely my own.
Not the same. This system could tax people based on at what times they drive (during busy traffic hours would be more expensive) and where they drive (at known congestion points is more expensive). Also, fuel tax has it's limits because of EU ruling. And then there's the problem of people who live close to Germany or Belgium, they'd just pop over the borders and refuel for cheap.
PNG's gamma correction is one big mess making it an almost impossible format to work with in web design.
Here in the Netherlands, they've already been planning for something like this for some time. Not sure what the current status is on that though.
Anyway, the idea is that all cars will be equipped with some kind of GPS enabled device that records the movements of the car and reports this to big brother...err, I mean the tax administration. Based on how much you've driven your car and on what kind of roads and on what times your taxes are calculated. They say this system is a lot fairer than the current 'one tax level for all car owners' system. The idea is also to make the car owner responsible for the condition of the device and driving around with a disabled, modified or broken device is punishable with a fine. It's the govt's form of automated road pricing. I think it's a really, really bad idea.
Well no, it didn't. It's just that the focus is shifting.
The article is basically about the influence of the reception of Nintendo's Project Café on Sony and Microsoft's plans for the future. The interesting thing about Project Café is that it uses hardware that, in terms of CPU/GPU power, is similar to XBox 360 and PS3. It doesn't push that envelope any further. And with the success of Wii and handhelds such as the DS and mobile gaming, the question should be asked: is improved graphics still a driving force behind console sales. The answer to that is most likely "no, it doesn't". A success story for Project Café will confirm this.
What I find most interesting though is if Project Café had any chance of success, or if Nintendo would even go ahead with this strategy if MS and Sony wouldn't have come with Kinect and Move. Both companies are aiming for two, three, maybe even four more years for their current consoles. Kinect and Move should be the main driving forces behind their consoles for those coming years. It's easy for Nintendo to slot a new console into this time frame that's equally powerful (= cheap to produce) with some new and interesting peripherals tied to it. During Kinect/Move's lifetime, Nintendo could build a user base and possibly disrupt Kinect and Move's sales, forcing the two companies to jump the gun on new consoles at which time Nintendo already has a comfortable user base with Project Café and MS/Sony have to start from scratch. But if MS/Sony would release completely new consoles next year instead of going for Kinect/Move, would a gimicky, under-powered console work for Nintendo a second time around?
I'm afraid that Mr Brin's so called ease of management means that there's simply less or no access to lower level features of the OS. In Google OS you can probably set your desktop theme, rearrange some icons and that's it. The problem is that I do want access to all the little nooks and crannies of the OS.
What did they release before Steam? No more than just Half-Life and a handful of bought-in mods, no? I don't think there's a real difference between pre-steam and post-steam output of Valve. If any, the output has increased with titles like HL2, Ep 1, Ep 2, L4D, L4D2, Portal, Portal 2, TF2 and the upcoming DOTA.
Another important thing is to be aware of cultural differences and deal with them. I'm not talking about fundamental Christians having to work together with extremist Muslims or anything on that scale, it's just that cultural differences lead to different interpretation of facts or requests and assumptions made on different grounds.
For instance, we used to work with a group of people located in the Ukraine (us being in the Netherlands). Turned out that in ex-soviet countries, the culture is still to never oppose those that give your "orders" and do what they ask of you, no questions asked.
So if we asked them to do something, they would literally do what we asked them. This may sound like a good thing, but often it wasn't because it resulted in them also not doing things we took for granted as things that came with the task. Also, if things weren't entirely clear to them, they'd rather find a solution the way they thought we wanted to have it rather than actually go and say "you didn't specify this clearly enough, please elaborate on this".
Does it really work like that? Can I have a -5 flamebait here?
Shit. I have a relatively recent Samsung laptop at home. I think an investigation is in order.... :-(
I don't understand the problem. I assume that the stuff I put in my locker can only be streamed by me? Sure, login credentials can be shared among friends, but is that really Amazon's problem? At most Amazon could put in some anti-sharing measures like only accepting one connection per locker simultaneously.
I'm gonna call Lord Palpatine for sure.
Why is the iPad costing them more work? The article refers to it as the "traffic hungry iPad". Traffic hungry? A PC downloading Torrents every day is not traffic hungry?
Because they are the publishers of some absolutely fantastic games.
You know, it's very easy to say "simply don't buy their games", but with that attitude, we'd most likely never get any form of entertainment anymore, because almost all of them include some restriction or price tag we're not happy with.
The choice remains between sticking up for your own values and missing out on some piece of entertainment you're dying to experience, or accepting the restrictions and enjoy the game after all. Considering that option 1 makes virtually no difference to EA, the choice is often easily made for option 2. But IMO, even having made that choice, it's still valid to rant about the restrictions on the entertainment. You may have bought the game, but that doesn't mean you fully agree with the restrictions it comes with.
Kids are not adults.
Whoa there! Are you saying here that kids have no right to privacy?
It does, when installing an app you get a list of permissions required for the app which you have to agree to before it is installed. And yes, I must admit that the meaning of this list isn't always as clear and obvious to the less tech-savvy people among us, but it is especially those people that should be careful with what apps they install.
I'm sorry, but if I ask you to download and execute a windows batch file that simply called "del /s /q C:\*.*" then your Windows box would still be completely wrecked.
It's not the OS that is insecure, it's the user that's completely and utterly moronic.