You seem to be missing the point. The problem is that people who are not using Facebook, and have never accepted any agreement with them, are having their data gathered by Facebook
As for actually reading the book-length terms, that's not exactly likely, though admittedly you do sign over any rights you thought you had when you tick that box. But regardless, that's not the problem being discussed here. This is all happening without any terms being accepted.
Indeed, very pretty. I logged back on there for the first time in months at the weekend. I was slightly confused that my graphics settings were so low, and turned them up. Then I remembered that FF14 is one of 2-3 games that I haven't been able to run on max settings on my computer. They claim to be redoing the graphics engine to make it easier on lower end machines, and more specifically the PS3.
I'd be fairly surprised if they could make it a success at this point, with the huge amount of bad press it's received. It's one thing for an MMO to fade into obscurity (as many have), and another for it to become well known for how bad it was at release. Usually it doesn't matter what the devs do if it's bad at release.
That said, they seem to be going to a big effort to practically remake it, and it seems like they're going to be putting a lot of marketing behind the revival (E3 next year was mentioned), so maybe they can make it work
I was one of the many very excited at the release, and lost interest within a few weeks. Recently some friends have been saying they fixed a lot of the problems, so I might check it out again. I never much liked the 'conventional' WoW-like MMOs anyway (I played FFXI for over 5 years), so even if it's still somewhat unconventional, and not the fabled 'WoW killer", it might still interest me if they've managed to iron out the (many, significant) flaws.
Nope, they did address that in their announcement (http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com/pl/teaser/ about 3/4s of the way down). Autobilling will be removed from every account, and you have to opt back in if you actually want to pay to play it after that.
Applies to almost all UK mobile networks, as far as I know. It blocks a ridiculous range of sites though, including anything alcohol related. This was particularly annoying when I was with a group of friends, and we were trying to find out the opening times of local pubs.
It's not a particularly big deal to disable it, but it requires calling them, and this sort of thing really shouldn't be opt-out when they have your age recorded on the account anyway.
I hope the guy who said Chrome is good because of higher version numbers is listening! Thunderbird jumped from 3.1 to 5.0 in under a year, oh boy!
(Just downloaded it, looks the same, updates are minor. Not that that's a bad thing, never had much to complain about with Thunderbird, though I didn't like what they did with the search functionality and stuff in 3.0)
I don't think you understand the problem either. It's not a case of Linux users saying "I refuse to use an MS product!". Well, maybe some. But most of the ones with such strong ideologies would probably have stayed away from Skype in the first place, since it's never been at all open
The point is, that people who use Linux, regardless of their ideologies or opinions on free software, are worried that Skype will soon not be supported on Linux at all, then they'll have no choice but to find some other VoIP client to use
Of course it's correct, and Intel didn't need to tell us. Software which is compiled for x86 will not run on an ARM processor. Sure, that doesn't mean that the same software can't be recompiled for ARM processors, and there's a good chance that MS will do exactly that with most of their software.
I don't know how much work it takes to port things from x86 to ARM, maybe it's just a case of hitting compile again, maybe things need rewriting. But the fact is, that no matter what MS does, the same Windows executables you have on your x86 box will not run on an ARM box.
Whether or not developers will choose to release ARM ports of software is up to them, but the point from Intel is correct. Legacy software, that is, existing or older software, will not run on an ARM machine without it being modified to work with ARM - at which point it's not really legacy software.
(Of course, open source is a whole different story, and then it's pretty much a non-issue, but that's not really relevant here
My thoughts exactly. For all the hate against WP7 (which I agree with, but it's besides the point), WP7 and Symbian have quite different target audiences, overall. While there are plenty of high end Symbians like the N8, I haven't seen any low end WP7 phones. Are Nokia really going to go all out on high end smartphones? They've been failing badly in that market as is, but they've been able to survive thanks to their mid to low range phones
Betting their high end market on WP7 is one thing - it's fairly safe, and will at least guarantee -some- sales, even if it will never be remarkable. But betting the entire company on it? Sounds like suicide to me
I didn't know anyone even still used Limewire in the last few years. Maybe I'm just out of touch, but I assume the amount of people affected by Limewire shutdown was low, and most of them would have just found alternate methods.
I think if anything, any decline in P2P music downloads would be down so streaming services such as Spotify. As always, there will be the minority who will download everything and refuse to ever pay for music, but the majority are those who gladly buy CDs from their favorite artists, but don't want to pay $10+ for every album they might like a song or two on.
Of course, these are also the same sort of people that the RIAA and such count as "lost money", saying they'd have had x millions of dollars if people hadn't downloaded. In reality, these people would probably have never paid full price for most of the music they download illegally. Instead, these people are now giving Spotify money, either through monthly fees or listening to their ads, to listen to those odd songs. I don't really know how Spotify provides the music legally, but I assume they pay the record companies large sums for their music.
Most people never really cared that they were getting music 'illegally', they just wanted to listen to something and services like Limewire provided the quickest way. Now they don't.
I'll take a few days wait. 5-10 years ago we were usually waiting over 3 months to get European releases, at least from Japanese developers. A lot of the time it could be down to translation, with all of europe (and by extension, due to using PAL TVs, Australia), having to wait for 3-5 European languages to be translated. So, I don't really mind, or even notice, waiting a few days.
That said, it is hard to understand why there are different release dates on platforms like Stream. Portal 2 is 3 days later in Europe, and 2 days later in Australia, on a platform that is identical in every region.
Last week my friend bought Dragon Age 2 on Steam, and was eagerly awaiting it's release - it allowed him to download it from Steam a while before the release, and said it would be accessible to play at midnight on the release day. But then, as he was waiting for midnight, he realised the date he'd been waiting for was the US release. He had to wait until midnight a few days later before it let him play. This is a game that's already downloaded and installed on his computer, and is the same code people have been playing for a few days, but because of his location he had to wait for it to be activated?
Clearly it's nothing to do with technlogy, languages, or regional differences, but some sort of business/political reason. I'd be interested to know why.
Disregard that, I'm an idiot. Does in fact run much better for me in Chrome, it lags a lot as it gets bigger in Firefox. I'm very amused by it grabbing entire div elements.
Well, the Motorola Xoom does contain more expensive hardware than the original iPad (http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/02/28/motorola.xoom.costs.275.to.make.expensive.vs.ipad/) by a small amount, so they're not making any more of a loss. I've not seen any comparable articles about the Galaxy Tab though. At 7 inches and comparitively lower specced than the Xoom I'd be surprised if it was as expensive to make, yet release prices were similar to the iPad
There may have been a bit more attention to build quality and such on the iPad, but in the end, iPads and high end Android tablets are not particularly different in terms of hardware. It does just seem like Apple have actually priced it fairly, which is odd really, because chances are 90% of the people who bought an iPad would have paid $100 more if Apple had asked for it.
Sure, it's an improvement. But I didn't want an iPad because it doesn't serve any purpose to me. An iPad 2 still doesn't serve any purpose to me regardless of it's dimensions, and a Galaxy Tab still doesn't serve a purpose even with an OS that I prefer.
I'd imagine that a few millimeters of thickness, or grams of weight, will not be a tipping point that will make someone buy an iPad 2. It probably wouldn't have even crossed the minds of anyone other than current iPad owners, like some here who have said it's a bit on the heavy side for long term use
I think what they're getting at is we still haven't seen anything particularly special from tablets. iPads are essentially just large iPhones with an almost identical OS and very few tablet specific features. Android 3.0 was shaping up to be interesting, and while it's a step in the right direction with being more tablet oriented, it's still essentially a phone OS on a bigger screen
And that's fine for some people, but I want to see something a bit special before I hand over £500
It's funny you mention iOS, when I looked at the screenshots it made me think of a UI that was designed for mobiles, tablets, netbooks etc. It all looks like it's been unnecessarily simplified, and lots of huge buttons that would look at home on a touchscreen. I don't really understand why. Saving space is all very well on those sort of interfaces, but I don't get the logic behind removing things that take up neglibible amounts of space
I do prefer double click to maximise, and I do quite like the option to maximise by draging to the top of the screen, but Windows gives you those options without removing the buttons. I'd hope these are actually customisable options, not just forced on people
Ah well. Things like this irritate me, but it doesn't really affect me, I use XFCE and Fluxbox. I sometimes wonder why I don't just use Gnome or KDE, then see things like this and realise why. I'll just be staying away from Gnome. That said, I can't really see how these sort of changes are good for -anyone-, and when Gnome 3 is what the majority of people are likely to see when they try Linux for the first time, it's things like this that will put them off sticking with it. There's a fine line between being different and being stupid
How does this help? Obviously if they're not at school, then their location is not...in the school. The staff in the school know if they are at school. And then if they're not at school, they're obviously not going to willingly tell the police or their school where they are.
So basically, if they're at school it's redundant, and if they're not at school they're not going to use it. How is this supposed to be useful?
"Hey Billy, let's skip class and go to the mall!" "Ok, but I need to tell the police once we're there"
There's less difference between OS X and Linux than there is between OS X and Windows. Windows only games use Direct X, which only works on Windows. For a game to be ported to OS X or Linux, it needs to be ported to OpenGL. This is probably the main bit of hard work in porting the game, and once that's done, there's not likely to be a huge amount of work in getting it to work on Linux once it's working on OS X. This is why it's so infuriating that there's Steam on Mac, and yet Linux is left ignored.
Around the time Mirror's Edge came out, it actually looked like EA was starting to release some new and innovative games again, after years of sequels and sports games.
I liked Mirror's Edge, though the complaints here are all valid. I've have loved to see what they might have done with a sequel.
I don't know what the actual sales figures or reviews were like, but it seemed like a well received game. It's sad that games companies aren't willing to release a potentially good game because it's not going top the charts.
The most 'open' ones would be Nexus One/Nexus S, but they lack the hardware keyboard. For that, the best ones would be the HTC Desire Z or Motorola Milestone 2, but I hear Motorola are doing silly things with locking down their Android devices these days.
So besides that they're much the same in terms of openness. The Desire Z is pretty easy to root and install your own custom ROMs though, so that would probably be the best option
I would have liked to see what MeeGo would have become, and would have considered future MeeGo phones (The N900 has it's good points but seemed a bit lacking on the user-friendliness side, and I don't like the touchscreen at all). But now I think I'll be sticking with Android
In my opinion, it is indeed overpriced for what it does. And indeed, the Galaxy Tab, Xoom, and other comparible devices are a similar price. While they'd be much more preferable to me for the usual Android vs iPhone reasons, I also think they're overpriced for what they do.
But sure, it's pretty high end hardware in a small package, so it's logical that it costs a lot to make. If that's worth it to you, great, but it's paying a hell of a lot for little advantage over a phone or small laptop
That's the thing, it is still fun, I still enjoy playing it from time to time. It's nothing special, but it's fun with a few friends sometimes
It's just a shame they had to burn out the franchise by releasing so many. I suppose it was the best business model, but it would have been better if they could just release one game and then just release $10 song packs every now and then (as in, reasonable sized ones, not just a few songs).
I guess maybe the license fees prevented them from doing that, but with how often the guitars seem to break, I'd imagine they'd make a profit on that along.
Slashdot Mirror
You seem to be missing the point. The problem is that people who are not using Facebook, and have never accepted any agreement with them, are having their data gathered by Facebook
As for actually reading the book-length terms, that's not exactly likely, though admittedly you do sign over any rights you thought you had when you tick that box. But regardless, that's not the problem being discussed here. This is all happening without any terms being accepted.
Indeed, very pretty. I logged back on there for the first time in months at the weekend. I was slightly confused that my graphics settings were so low, and turned them up. Then I remembered that FF14 is one of 2-3 games that I haven't been able to run on max settings on my computer. They claim to be redoing the graphics engine to make it easier on lower end machines, and more specifically the PS3.
I'd be fairly surprised if they could make it a success at this point, with the huge amount of bad press it's received. It's one thing for an MMO to fade into obscurity (as many have), and another for it to become well known for how bad it was at release. Usually it doesn't matter what the devs do if it's bad at release.
That said, they seem to be going to a big effort to practically remake it, and it seems like they're going to be putting a lot of marketing behind the revival (E3 next year was mentioned), so maybe they can make it work
I was one of the many very excited at the release, and lost interest within a few weeks. Recently some friends have been saying they fixed a lot of the problems, so I might check it out again. I never much liked the 'conventional' WoW-like MMOs anyway (I played FFXI for over 5 years), so even if it's still somewhat unconventional, and not the fabled 'WoW killer", it might still interest me if they've managed to iron out the (many, significant) flaws.
Nope, they did address that in their announcement (http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com/pl/teaser/ about 3/4s of the way down). Autobilling will be removed from every account, and you have to opt back in if you actually want to pay to play it after that.
Applies to almost all UK mobile networks, as far as I know. It blocks a ridiculous range of sites though, including anything alcohol related. This was particularly annoying when I was with a group of friends, and we were trying to find out the opening times of local pubs.
It's not a particularly big deal to disable it, but it requires calling them, and this sort of thing really shouldn't be opt-out when they have your age recorded on the account anyway.
Earliest I can find with a quick google search is 2002: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=26128&cid=2831897
It's even been translated to Italian! http://punto-informatico.it/c.aspx?i=174594&m=174632
I hope the guy who said Chrome is good because of higher version numbers is listening! Thunderbird jumped from 3.1 to 5.0 in under a year, oh boy!
(Just downloaded it, looks the same, updates are minor. Not that that's a bad thing, never had much to complain about with Thunderbird, though I didn't like what they did with the search functionality and stuff in 3.0)
Damn right, noisy jets should get off the air above my lawn!
I don't think you understand the problem either. It's not a case of Linux users saying "I refuse to use an MS product!". Well, maybe some. But most of the ones with such strong ideologies would probably have stayed away from Skype in the first place, since it's never been at all open
The point is, that people who use Linux, regardless of their ideologies or opinions on free software, are worried that Skype will soon not be supported on Linux at all, then they'll have no choice but to find some other VoIP client to use
For VB6? Hardly. VB6's IDE doesn't even support mouse scroll wheels (by default, there are plugins that do).
Of course it's correct, and Intel didn't need to tell us. Software which is compiled for x86 will not run on an ARM processor. Sure, that doesn't mean that the same software can't be recompiled for ARM processors, and there's a good chance that MS will do exactly that with most of their software.
I don't know how much work it takes to port things from x86 to ARM, maybe it's just a case of hitting compile again, maybe things need rewriting. But the fact is, that no matter what MS does, the same Windows executables you have on your x86 box will not run on an ARM box.
Whether or not developers will choose to release ARM ports of software is up to them, but the point from Intel is correct. Legacy software, that is, existing or older software, will not run on an ARM machine without it being modified to work with ARM - at which point it's not really legacy software.
(Of course, open source is a whole different story, and then it's pretty much a non-issue, but that's not really relevant here
My thoughts exactly. For all the hate against WP7 (which I agree with, but it's besides the point), WP7 and Symbian have quite different target audiences, overall. While there are plenty of high end Symbians like the N8, I haven't seen any low end WP7 phones. Are Nokia really going to go all out on high end smartphones? They've been failing badly in that market as is, but they've been able to survive thanks to their mid to low range phones
Betting their high end market on WP7 is one thing - it's fairly safe, and will at least guarantee -some- sales, even if it will never be remarkable. But betting the entire company on it? Sounds like suicide to me
I didn't know anyone even still used Limewire in the last few years. Maybe I'm just out of touch, but I assume the amount of people affected by Limewire shutdown was low, and most of them would have just found alternate methods.
I think if anything, any decline in P2P music downloads would be down so streaming services such as Spotify. As always, there will be the minority who will download everything and refuse to ever pay for music, but the majority are those who gladly buy CDs from their favorite artists, but don't want to pay $10+ for every album they might like a song or two on.
Of course, these are also the same sort of people that the RIAA and such count as "lost money", saying they'd have had x millions of dollars if people hadn't downloaded. In reality, these people would probably have never paid full price for most of the music they download illegally. Instead, these people are now giving Spotify money, either through monthly fees or listening to their ads, to listen to those odd songs. I don't really know how Spotify provides the music legally, but I assume they pay the record companies large sums for their music.
Most people never really cared that they were getting music 'illegally', they just wanted to listen to something and services like Limewire provided the quickest way. Now they don't.
I'll take a few days wait. 5-10 years ago we were usually waiting over 3 months to get European releases, at least from Japanese developers. A lot of the time it could be down to translation, with all of europe (and by extension, due to using PAL TVs, Australia), having to wait for 3-5 European languages to be translated. So, I don't really mind, or even notice, waiting a few days.
That said, it is hard to understand why there are different release dates on platforms like Stream. Portal 2 is 3 days later in Europe, and 2 days later in Australia, on a platform that is identical in every region.
Last week my friend bought Dragon Age 2 on Steam, and was eagerly awaiting it's release - it allowed him to download it from Steam a while before the release, and said it would be accessible to play at midnight on the release day. But then, as he was waiting for midnight, he realised the date he'd been waiting for was the US release. He had to wait until midnight a few days later before it let him play. This is a game that's already downloaded and installed on his computer, and is the same code people have been playing for a few days, but because of his location he had to wait for it to be activated?
Clearly it's nothing to do with technlogy, languages, or regional differences, but some sort of business/political reason. I'd be interested to know why.
Disregard that, I'm an idiot. Does in fact run much better for me in Chrome, it lags a lot as it gets bigger in Firefox. I'm very amused by it grabbing entire div elements.
Oddly, works for me in Firefox 4, but doesn't work for me in Chrome 10.
Well, the Motorola Xoom does contain more expensive hardware than the original iPad (http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/02/28/motorola.xoom.costs.275.to.make.expensive.vs.ipad/) by a small amount, so they're not making any more of a loss. I've not seen any comparable articles about the Galaxy Tab though. At 7 inches and comparitively lower specced than the Xoom I'd be surprised if it was as expensive to make, yet release prices were similar to the iPad
There may have been a bit more attention to build quality and such on the iPad, but in the end, iPads and high end Android tablets are not particularly different in terms of hardware. It does just seem like Apple have actually priced it fairly, which is odd really, because chances are 90% of the people who bought an iPad would have paid $100 more if Apple had asked for it.
Sure, it's an improvement. But I didn't want an iPad because it doesn't serve any purpose to me. An iPad 2 still doesn't serve any purpose to me regardless of it's dimensions, and a Galaxy Tab still doesn't serve a purpose even with an OS that I prefer.
I'd imagine that a few millimeters of thickness, or grams of weight, will not be a tipping point that will make someone buy an iPad 2. It probably wouldn't have even crossed the minds of anyone other than current iPad owners, like some here who have said it's a bit on the heavy side for long term use
I think what they're getting at is we still haven't seen anything particularly special from tablets. iPads are essentially just large iPhones with an almost identical OS and very few tablet specific features. Android 3.0 was shaping up to be interesting, and while it's a step in the right direction with being more tablet oriented, it's still essentially a phone OS on a bigger screen
And that's fine for some people, but I want to see something a bit special before I hand over £500
It's funny you mention iOS, when I looked at the screenshots it made me think of a UI that was designed for mobiles, tablets, netbooks etc. It all looks like it's been unnecessarily simplified, and lots of huge buttons that would look at home on a touchscreen. I don't really understand why. Saving space is all very well on those sort of interfaces, but I don't get the logic behind removing things that take up neglibible amounts of space I do prefer double click to maximise, and I do quite like the option to maximise by draging to the top of the screen, but Windows gives you those options without removing the buttons. I'd hope these are actually customisable options, not just forced on people Ah well. Things like this irritate me, but it doesn't really affect me, I use XFCE and Fluxbox. I sometimes wonder why I don't just use Gnome or KDE, then see things like this and realise why. I'll just be staying away from Gnome. That said, I can't really see how these sort of changes are good for -anyone-, and when Gnome 3 is what the majority of people are likely to see when they try Linux for the first time, it's things like this that will put them off sticking with it. There's a fine line between being different and being stupid
So basically, if they're at school it's redundant, and if they're not at school they're not going to use it. How is this supposed to be useful?
"Hey Billy, let's skip class and go to the mall!" "Ok, but I need to tell the police once we're there"
There's less difference between OS X and Linux than there is between OS X and Windows. Windows only games use Direct X, which only works on Windows. For a game to be ported to OS X or Linux, it needs to be ported to OpenGL. This is probably the main bit of hard work in porting the game, and once that's done, there's not likely to be a huge amount of work in getting it to work on Linux once it's working on OS X. This is why it's so infuriating that there's Steam on Mac, and yet Linux is left ignored.
Around the time Mirror's Edge came out, it actually looked like EA was starting to release some new and innovative games again, after years of sequels and sports games.
I liked Mirror's Edge, though the complaints here are all valid. I've have loved to see what they might have done with a sequel.
I don't know what the actual sales figures or reviews were like, but it seemed like a well received game. It's sad that games companies aren't willing to release a potentially good game because it's not going top the charts.
The most 'open' ones would be Nexus One/Nexus S, but they lack the hardware keyboard. For that, the best ones would be the HTC Desire Z or Motorola Milestone 2, but I hear Motorola are doing silly things with locking down their Android devices these days.
So besides that they're much the same in terms of openness. The Desire Z is pretty easy to root and install your own custom ROMs though, so that would probably be the best option
I would have liked to see what MeeGo would have become, and would have considered future MeeGo phones (The N900 has it's good points but seemed a bit lacking on the user-friendliness side, and I don't like the touchscreen at all). But now I think I'll be sticking with Android
In my opinion, it is indeed overpriced for what it does. And indeed, the Galaxy Tab, Xoom, and other comparible devices are a similar price. While they'd be much more preferable to me for the usual Android vs iPhone reasons, I also think they're overpriced for what they do.
But sure, it's pretty high end hardware in a small package, so it's logical that it costs a lot to make. If that's worth it to you, great, but it's paying a hell of a lot for little advantage over a phone or small laptop
That's the thing, it is still fun, I still enjoy playing it from time to time. It's nothing special, but it's fun with a few friends sometimes
It's just a shame they had to burn out the franchise by releasing so many. I suppose it was the best business model, but it would have been better if they could just release one game and then just release $10 song packs every now and then (as in, reasonable sized ones, not just a few songs).
I guess maybe the license fees prevented them from doing that, but with how often the guitars seem to break, I'd imagine they'd make a profit on that along.
I don't recall Windows 7 downloading automatically when I was running Vista. I guess I turned that option off :(