You missed the lock in model of being forced to work with the applications that the cloud provider supports.
Just like with a desktop app, if the provider chooses to lock you in, you're locked in. If they let you export to a standards based format, you're fine.
Any time I choose to export my messages out of GMail, I can do so (of course, due to volume, it may take some time).
It's something you don't need to care about, unless you're hosting a service that needs to scale. Then "The Cloud" is an unspecified bunch of computers out there, and your application is spread across them in such a way that if some of them break, things are redistributed across the rest.
This is what Google, Amazon etc. use to provide their search app, their shop, and so on.
The big, newish, thing, is that now you don't need to be as big as Amazon or Google to host your app on a cloud platform, since they'll sell you space on theirs.
As a consumer, you needn't care how the web apps you use are hosted. Just be happy that they're there and they don't slow down just because a million other people have signed up.
As the guy running the site, though, it's huge. If you build an app right, on one of these cloud platforms, you can start very cheap indeed, only paying for what you need, and scale instantly (or even automatically) as demand increases.
You're an online shop selling Christmas goods? Host it on a cloud, rein it right back to a low capacity service ten months a year, then crank it up to hundreds of servers in November and December, and back again in January.
In other words, for most of the games that require a lot of processing power (IE the games that this service is supposed to make playable on low-end machines) latency is a concern, but for casual games (which are playable on basically any PC), it's not?
I don't think there's a correlation.
Two expert Street Fighter II players competing would demand single frame input latency - but they could get that performance from an 8 bit Neo Geo with a tiny fraction of the power that's now in an iPhone.
Something like Bioshock requires a high end GPU, lots of memory and CPU, but its combat does not depend on twitch reactions in the same way. (Whereas Quake III, for example, did). I haven't played Crysis -- one of OnLive's big titles -- but I know it's renowned for having crazy graphics card requirements. I can believe it could be on the less twitchy end of the FPS combat styles.
I do expect to see games that are engineered in favour of the OnLive/Gaikai architecture's strengths. That means the most detailed textures/models their GPUs can support, and gameplay mechanics that work at the latency available.
And stop there. No remember how great gaming was on a TFT with a latency of 25ms.
Some hardcore gamers playing twitchy hardcore games were bothered by TFT latency. We're talking about the type of people who think it's worth investing in hardware so they can play Quake at 120FPS.
Most people can't tell the difference between 30FPS and 60FPS. Most modern games aren't reflex-oriented enough for it to matter. (At 30FPS, you're talking an average of 17ms lag, even if every input is guaranteed to be reflected in the next frame).
Yes, this is a concern for some racing games, the more hardcore fighting games, and the most intense FPSs. But for the vast majority of consumers, for the style of games popular today, it's not relevant.
What really raises a red flag for me is that they want to test your computer for hardware compatibility. Wasn't the whole point of Onlive that any system could connect to their network regardless of hardware because all the actual processing is done server side? By their own words you'd think that a 300$ netbook should be able to play Crysis as long as it's connected to a solid, low-ping cable modem.
This simply means they want data on what kind of hardware their testers are using. I'd guess that at some point in the beta program (probably not the early stages), you'll be *more* likely to get picked if you're on a $300 netbook.
I get 25ms latency in an ideal online gaming situation
This article measures GTA IV on the PS3 as having 166ms latency -- from button press to weapon firing.
This shows that for certain types of game, latency of the kind you'd expect sending video over DSL would be acceptable.
Then you have the lack of ANY sort of "predictive" technology
I think they're doing some smart stuff in that area. Remember, this isn't just a matter of running Crysis on a VNC-like server. The game is ported to OnLive's API, which has some tricks to help out in that area.
I do think that the ideal game for this service doesn't yet exist. I think the kind of game that will work best will be some sort of MMO, where this architecture will make it easy to implement vast, detailed game worlds with lots of concurrent players.
Their servers are only in the US. They just handpick ideal candidates, so that no sub-optimal beta tester has anything negative to report about the service.
To do that would be stupid. I have to assume they're not stupid.
Even when OnLive goes gold, customers will be expected to be within a certain distance of a server farm. So beta testers should be selected within the same constraints.
They should, however, be picking beta testers at the edge of that distance, on streets with lots of contention, with crappy PCs, with ropey old DSL modems, etc., so that they can iron out problems.
The purpose of the beta test is not to demonstrate that everything works perfectly first time. It's to find problems and solve them. You don't do that by rejecting problematic testers.
Of course they must set expectations accordingly. You also don't want a load of beta testers blogging about how their free beta is crappy.
Of course, I believe that it's the PRS's job to collect those royalties
The PRS only represents the songwriter/composer. Performing Rights Society == managing the rights to perform a composition.
Someone else represents the performers (Equity? The Musicians' Union?) and someone else again represents the technicians. I strongly suspect that most of the technicians etc. for on a for-hire basis (a one-off payment for their services), but I'm only guessing.
Aren't music videos supposed to be promotional material? Kind of like adverts for the albums/singles? Why would anyone NOT want people to see them?
Not quite, not any more.
There are dozens of video jukebox channels on the TV, supported by ads and premium rate phone calls (for making requests). Many people leave a channel like that on all day, rather than buy music or listen to the radio. Here, the music video is the consumer product, not a promotional item for some other product.
Having access to any video for free online, undermines that business model.
They think 'Everyone will want to know I watched Top Model tonight, and 90210 and Gossip Girl last night.'
If this hypothetical twitterer has an appreciable number of followers, it would appear they're right. I mean, not "everybody" is interested, but if a handful are, then where's the harm?
I just don't understand the hostility.
I follow quite a few people on Twitter. If they bombarded me with drivel, I'd unfollow them.
You get a '+1 Insightful' for not 'getting' something nowadays?
The appeal is that you can very conveniently get updated whenever some person/organisation/thing has something to broadcast.
Likewise if you're the person/organisation/thing it's very convenient to broadcast things. Yeah, there's the 140 char limit, but that can include links.
So far, this doesn't really outdo RSS. The big plus is the ability to query the whole "twitterverse" using a centralised API.
streaming audio to the phone does not compete with the itunes store in anyway, shape nor form.
Of course it competes in some way.
Perhaps consumer X's daily routine is to listen to music on his walk to work. Now he can stream insteady of buy from iTunes.
Perhaps consumer Y likes to listen to music on headphones while working, but his employer won't let him stream over the office network connection. Now he can stream over his phone instead of buying from iTunes.
Yes, there's a small percentage of the market who want music where there's no phone signal. But that doesn't mean this can't eat into iTunes' market.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not your software. It's their software.
Depends. If I host Wordpress on Amazon EC2, it's my software.
You missed the lock in model of being forced to work with the applications that the cloud provider supports.
Just like with a desktop app, if the provider chooses to lock you in, you're locked in. If they let you export to a standards based format, you're fine.
Any time I choose to export my messages out of GMail, I can do so (of course, due to volume, it may take some time).
So you keep all your money in your home?
It's something you don't need to care about, unless you're hosting a service that needs to scale. Then "The Cloud" is an unspecified bunch of computers out there, and your application is spread across them in such a way that if some of them break, things are redistributed across the rest.
This is what Google, Amazon etc. use to provide their search app, their shop, and so on.
The big, newish, thing, is that now you don't need to be as big as Amazon or Google to host your app on a cloud platform, since they'll sell you space on theirs.
As a consumer, you needn't care how the web apps you use are hosted. Just be happy that they're there and they don't slow down just because a million other people have signed up.
As the guy running the site, though, it's huge. If you build an app right, on one of these cloud platforms, you can start very cheap indeed, only paying for what you need, and scale instantly (or even automatically) as demand increases.
You're an online shop selling Christmas goods? Host it on a cloud, rein it right back to a low capacity service ten months a year, then crank it up to hundreds of servers in November and December, and back again in January.
Hope this explains it.
In other words, for most of the games that require a lot of processing power (IE the games that this service is supposed to make playable on low-end machines) latency is a concern, but for casual games (which are playable on basically any PC), it's not?
I don't think there's a correlation.
Two expert Street Fighter II players competing would demand single frame input latency - but they could get that performance from an 8 bit Neo Geo with a tiny fraction of the power that's now in an iPhone.
Something like Bioshock requires a high end GPU, lots of memory and CPU, but its combat does not depend on twitch reactions in the same way. (Whereas Quake III, for example, did). I haven't played Crysis -- one of OnLive's big titles -- but I know it's renowned for having crazy graphics card requirements. I can believe it could be on the less twitchy end of the FPS combat styles.
I do expect to see games that are engineered in favour of the OnLive/Gaikai architecture's strengths. That means the most detailed textures/models their GPUs can support, and gameplay mechanics that work at the latency available.
And stop there. No remember how great gaming was on a TFT with a latency of 25ms.
Some hardcore gamers playing twitchy hardcore games were bothered by TFT latency. We're talking about the type of people who think it's worth investing in hardware so they can play Quake at 120FPS.
Most people can't tell the difference between 30FPS and 60FPS. Most modern games aren't reflex-oriented enough for it to matter. (At 30FPS, you're talking an average of 17ms lag, even if every input is guaranteed to be reflected in the next frame).
Yes, this is a concern for some racing games, the more hardcore fighting games, and the most intense FPSs. But for the vast majority of consumers, for the style of games popular today, it's not relevant.
The point is that gamers are known to tolerate 160ms latency on certain games.
They're on record as saying their video codec adds 1ms. We could speculate that they're lying or exaggerating, of course...
You're pretty much guaranteed a good server over a good network link with this system - the whole idea is that their server farms are 'near' you.
What really raises a red flag for me is that they want to test your computer for hardware compatibility. Wasn't the whole point of Onlive that any system could connect to their network regardless of hardware because all the actual processing is done server side? By their own words you'd think that a 300$ netbook should be able to play Crysis as long as it's connected to a solid, low-ping cable modem.
This simply means they want data on what kind of hardware their testers are using. I'd guess that at some point in the beta program (probably not the early stages), you'll be *more* likely to get picked if you're on a $300 netbook.
I get 25ms latency in an ideal online gaming situation
This article measures GTA IV on the PS3 as having 166ms latency -- from button press to weapon firing.
This shows that for certain types of game, latency of the kind you'd expect sending video over DSL would be acceptable.
Then you have the lack of ANY sort of "predictive" technology
I think they're doing some smart stuff in that area. Remember, this isn't just a matter of running Crysis on a VNC-like server. The game is ported to OnLive's API, which has some tricks to help out in that area.
I do think that the ideal game for this service doesn't yet exist. I think the kind of game that will work best will be some sort of MMO, where this architecture will make it easy to implement vast, detailed game worlds with lots of concurrent players.
Their servers are only in the US. They just handpick ideal candidates, so that no sub-optimal beta tester has anything negative to report about the service.
To do that would be stupid. I have to assume they're not stupid.
Even when OnLive goes gold, customers will be expected to be within a certain distance of a server farm. So beta testers should be selected within the same constraints.
They should, however, be picking beta testers at the edge of that distance, on streets with lots of contention, with crappy PCs, with ropey old DSL modems, etc., so that they can iron out problems.
The purpose of the beta test is not to demonstrate that everything works perfectly first time. It's to find problems and solve them. You don't do that by rejecting problematic testers.
Of course they must set expectations accordingly. You also don't want a load of beta testers blogging about how their free beta is crappy.
Of course, I believe that it's the PRS's job to collect those royalties
The PRS only represents the songwriter/composer. Performing Rights Society == managing the rights to perform a composition.
Someone else represents the performers (Equity? The Musicians' Union?) and someone else again represents the technicians. I strongly suspect that most of the technicians etc. for on a for-hire basis (a one-off payment for their services), but I'm only guessing.
Blame Mandelson - he swans off on holiday to Corfu, meets with various people including someone involved in organisations not unlike the MPAA
That someone was David Geffen, of Geffen Records and Dreamworks SKG.
Aren't music videos supposed to be promotional material? Kind of like adverts for the albums/singles? Why would anyone NOT want people to see them?
Not quite, not any more.
There are dozens of video jukebox channels on the TV, supported by ads and premium rate phone calls (for making requests). Many people leave a channel like that on all day, rather than buy music or listen to the radio. Here, the music video is the consumer product, not a promotional item for some other product.
Having access to any video for free online, undermines that business model.
2. Iraq
The Tories backed the war in Iraq.
I don't think anyone in the UK has a problem with Mrs Windsor.
I think a significant number of people in the UK oppose the system of monarchy, if not the arbitrary family we happen to have. The thing is, it's not an opinion that's aired all that often, because of the 1848 Treason Felony Act, which makes it a criminal offence, punishable by life imprisonment, to advocate abolition of the monarchy in print. ... which is pretty shameful.
Hahahahaha.
It's funny because you call people who "twitter" "twits".
I bet you're the first person to think of that.
Oh...
At least I put it in "ironic" quotes for you.
Frankly though, I don't see what's wrong with having a short word to mean "the domain of objects that communicate with one another via Twitter".
They think 'Everyone will want to know I watched Top Model tonight, and 90210 and Gossip Girl last night.'
If this hypothetical twitterer has an appreciable number of followers, it would appear they're right. I mean, not "everybody" is interested, but if a handful are, then where's the harm?
I just don't understand the hostility.
I follow quite a few people on Twitter. If they bombarded me with drivel, I'd unfollow them.
You get a '+1 Insightful' for not 'getting' something nowadays?
The appeal is that you can very conveniently get updated whenever some person/organisation/thing has something to broadcast.
Likewise if you're the person/organisation/thing it's very convenient to broadcast things. Yeah, there's the 140 char limit, but that can include links.
So far, this doesn't really outdo RSS. The big plus is the ability to query the whole "twitterverse" using a centralised API.
Hopefully this launches an exciting patent landgrab of devices that are socially enabled.
... or suppresses any such innovation, since there's a prior patent.
Jeez, I could respond to all kinds of /. posts in this way.
This is news for nerds. You might reasonably be expected to know what Scrum is - or at least how to find out.
... and correcting my correction. Apparently the WiFi only thing is false. But the cacheing thing holds true.
means Apple wont be getting its share from the sales on the app store, because those premium subscriptions are bought directly from Spotify's site.
I *bet* there's a bit of quid pro quo going on there.
Correcting myself. Apparently it only streams over WiFi, not over a phone connection.
But! It can cache 2000 tracks. So even your tube traveller will be able to use it as a viable alternative to iTunes.
streaming audio to the phone does not compete with the itunes store in anyway, shape nor form.
Of course it competes in some way.
Perhaps consumer X's daily routine is to listen to music on his walk to work. Now he can stream insteady of buy from iTunes.
Perhaps consumer Y likes to listen to music on headphones while working, but his employer won't let him stream over the office network connection. Now he can stream over his phone instead of buying from iTunes.
Yes, there's a small percentage of the market who want music where there's no phone signal. But that doesn't mean this can't eat into iTunes' market.