Mobile games have to fun, easy to play, fast to start, playable on the go and in changing light and not punish the player for having to suddenly stop playing or even accidental input. And they should be cheap.
Which is why my iPhone is noticeably warmer after a long session of trying to solve Trainyard puzzles.
Sony hardware slaps you hard across the face and screams "You're a thief and I'm going to stop you!" and then the company asks "What can I sell you, sir?"
For one thing, we might have practical fusion power by now.
The Apollo program taught a lot of lessons, but one of them was "If you're a government-funded research program, DO NOT SUCCEED." Congress began axing the budget for space exploration about ten minutes after Armstrong's "One small step for a man..." After all, we did the job, beat the Rooskies, hallelujah now we can quit wasting all that money.
I've noticed one thing about fusion: it's *always* "twenty years off" and has been since the early fifties. Tiny little steps, "we need more funding", and "maybe we'll get something in (this year+20). And over the past forty years, a lot of bold proposals for testbeds that, while crude and inefficient, might actually have WORKED so they could be improved, have been shot down. (cf. Bussard's proposal to use heavy, water-cooled high-strength magnets to brute-force a solution.)
See you in 2032, when "We'll have fusion in 2052." will be the rallying cry.
With Oracle responsible for Java, is it even worth it to learn the language any more? I mean they will be killing it off soon.
Actually, I have to ask if it ever was worth learning? The original promise of "write once, run anywhere" long ago dissolved into "Write once, curse (and debug) everywhere." Add on to that an eternally-growing library that can take years just to learn the categories, never mind the content, and you end up with the current bloated nightmare that even intimidates experienced developers.
In addition, Oracle has the typical mainstream vendor's approach of "we don't have to own your code if we own YOU," and Java would appear to have become something to run from instead of to.
Insurance companies are notorious for avoiding risky customers, if not outright persecuting them (cf. "undisclosed prior conditions" in health insurance). If a company wants to get (or keep) cyber-insurance, it's a fair bet that the insurance company will have conditions of contract which will ensure better (not necessarily best) practices for things like interfaces, coding, intrusion detection, etc. that will minimize THEIR losses in event of a breach. The overall effect will be to make good security/coding/etc. practices actually cheaper than the amateurish "self-insurance" companies like Sony have practiced.
Hi. I'm Bob, and I'll be your Code Review Actuary. If you pass, your premiums will drop by about ten percent.
RIM is neither secure (as witness their cooperation with governments wishing to monitor communications) nor reliable, as the recent several-day outage proved.
I ran into a student (circa 18-(low)twenties) using her Blackberry and commented on her using it to text. Her reply was "Yeah, but they're on the way out. None of my friends use them and they're just not cool." When you can't catch and enthrall your own future user base.....
Sounds like publishers are trying to stifle out E-books with discriminatory pricing.
Why aren't publishers being hauled in front of congress to explain how a few megabyte download is more expensive than a hard bound book?
It's called the "free market." If they want to cut out a market segment, such as those of us who have gone all eBook, all the time, good riddance to them. There's plenty of good reading out there without having to say "Mother May I?" to the greediest.
Slashdot Mirror
Like everything else, security is no better than the people implementing it.
It also means that "Zune Buggy" will no longer be an oxymoron.
Mobile games have to fun, easy to play, fast to start, playable on the go and in changing light and not punish the player for having to suddenly stop playing or even accidental input. And they should be cheap.
Which is why my iPhone is noticeably warmer after a long session of trying to solve Trainyard puzzles.
Sony hardware slaps you hard across the face and screams "You're a thief and I'm going to stop you!" and then the company asks "What can I sell you, sir?"
How do YOU answer that?
Apparently Sony is STILL letting the Hollywood Divisions call the shots, though. There's a scathing review here.
Charging people per ounce of shit? There are precedents for that.
They call them taxes, and the government charges you for the shit it lays on you.
Unless you have a Playstation(TM) or some other Sony(TM) or Sony(TM)-licensed for access product plugged in, all your power sockets will shut down.
I, for one, welcome our new Google Overlord.
“Full speed ahead. All hands to battlestations. We attack.”
To paraphrase Robert Heinlein, Tradition is doing things in the same grand style as your ancestors.
I'm glad Poland has not forgotten their traditions.
This day will hopefully be remembered just as September 17, 1939 is.
Life doesn't have to be mobile or sentient.
But it should be at least one of the above. I offer most of the current crop of Presidential candidates as exemplars of mobility.
Or they'll cancel the 'ole bleedin' lot!
That's the real question.
As I said:
Tiny little steps, "we need more funding", and "maybe we'll get something in (this year+20)."
From "Fusion Is Not Free" in IEEE Spectrum:
Each time the ITER reactor has been reassessed, its estimated cost has expanded and its completion date has been nudged further out.
And so Penelope's tapestry continues.
For one thing, we might have practical fusion power by now.
The Apollo program taught a lot of lessons, but one of them was "If you're a government-funded research program, DO NOT SUCCEED." Congress began axing the budget for space exploration about ten minutes after Armstrong's "One small step for a man..." After all, we did the job, beat the Rooskies, hallelujah now we can quit wasting all that money.
I've noticed one thing about fusion: it's *always* "twenty years off" and has been since the early fifties. Tiny little steps, "we need more funding", and "maybe we'll get something in (this year+20). And over the past forty years, a lot of bold proposals for testbeds that, while crude and inefficient, might actually have WORKED so they could be improved, have been shot down. (cf. Bussard's proposal to use heavy, water-cooled high-strength magnets to brute-force a solution.)
See you in 2032, when "We'll have fusion in 2052." will be the rallying cry.
with enough evolution it could fly and fold even more into a (not heavy) briefcase.
Not evolution. Intelligent design should work, though.
Translation: In the not so distant future, every passing cop will be able to search you without a warrant.
Oh, wait.......
"Like Webster's Dictionary They're Morocco Bound..."
With Oracle responsible for Java, is it even worth it to learn the language any more? I mean they will be killing it off soon.
Actually, I have to ask if it ever was worth learning? The original promise of "write once, run anywhere" long ago dissolved into "Write once, curse (and debug) everywhere." Add on to that an eternally-growing library that can take years just to learn the categories, never mind the content, and you end up with the current bloated nightmare that even intimidates experienced developers.
In addition, Oracle has the typical mainstream vendor's approach of "we don't have to own your code if we own YOU," and Java would appear to have become something to run from instead of to.
Don't pick a fight with the internet.
Insurance companies are notorious for avoiding risky customers, if not outright persecuting them (cf. "undisclosed prior conditions" in health insurance). If a company wants to get (or keep) cyber-insurance, it's a fair bet that the insurance company will have conditions of contract which will ensure better (not necessarily best) practices for things like interfaces, coding, intrusion detection, etc. that will minimize THEIR losses in event of a breach. The overall effect will be to make good security/coding/etc. practices actually cheaper than the amateurish "self-insurance" companies like Sony have practiced.
Hi. I'm Bob, and I'll be your Code Review Actuary. If you pass, your premiums will drop by about ten percent.
RIM is neither secure (as witness their cooperation with governments wishing to monitor communications) nor reliable, as the recent several-day outage proved.
I ran into a student (circa 18-(low)twenties) using her Blackberry and commented on her using it to text. Her reply was "Yeah, but they're on the way out. None of my friends use them and they're just not cool." When you can't catch and enthrall your own future user base.....
Sounds like publishers are trying to stifle out E-books with discriminatory pricing.
Why aren't publishers being hauled in front of congress to explain how a few megabyte download is more expensive than a hard bound book?
It's called the "free market." If they want to cut out a market segment, such as those of us who have gone all eBook, all the time, good riddance to them. There's plenty of good reading out there without having to say "Mother May I?" to the greediest.
Honestly, nobody cares.
Oh? I didn't ask the question out of indifference.