Not sure what Apple's current limit on a single in-app purchase is, but I thought it was $99.99. I've not seen an F2P game with a larger in-app purchases than that, and many don't go that high. So to spend $6k, you'd have to make at least 60 purchases of the highest-priced in-game-currency pack. Either very rapidly after a password had been entered, or with the password entered multiple times, before buying more.
This woman set up one of the first womens shelters, and founded the charity now known as 'Refuge': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
She set out to help female victims of domestic violence, and her work basically turned her into an MRA. She suggested, based on her experiences, that women are equally capable of violence as men - and ended up on the recieving end of death threats... from feminists!
She's now involved with probably the most vocal and controversial men's rights group out there - 'A Voice for Men'
Not exactly your stereotypical neckbeard misogynist keyboard warrior, is she?
Sometimes it's not entirely clear which side is doing the bullying.
Those engaging in very harsh, perhaps aggressive, discussion and criticism within a challenging and highly technical project? Or those trying to force change upon a community/organisation with public shaming and social media activism?
That seems like a bad idea...
Even if you can't communicate with critical systems, there could be the possibility of denial-of-service type attacks? And if the system can resist software-based attacks, what about a malicious user killing the network by somehow feeding a high voltage into a passenger-accessible network port?...
A few grams of cheap consumer-grade GPS module to maintain an air gap for safety/security? Seems like a no-brainer?
If the weight is a big deal, carry one less bag of peanuts on the drink/snack trolley...
There's a lot of really poor pixel art, often being made by young/inexperienced indie devs - too young to have played games on hardware with real palette limitations and real hardware sprites.
You end up with several pixel sizes on screen, rotating pixels(!), super-smooth gradients, and inconsistent use of palettes. And then there's the resolution/scaling problems on top making things look worse. To older gamers/retro game enthusiasts, it can often just look a mess.
Creating good pixel art is hard. Some of the greatest pixel art (e.g. Bitmap Brothers games) came from working with severe limitations, such as 16-color screen modes, which led to some very creative use of palettes and dithering.
The rules for model aircraft were made in the days when big, heavy, dangerous models with IC engines were the only thing you could fly. These days we have sub-20g 'toy-grade' quadcopters and very light foam RC planes powered by small electric motors.
One-size-fits-all rules don't work any more. We need different weight/risk classes. IMHO, the smallest/safest of toys should be pretty much unregulated (max 100g at 100ft altitude, maybe?). Then we've got the medium sized consumer/hobbyist drones (usually under 1kg or so) - which start to pose more of a risk, then there's the higher-end aerial photography rigs (up to 10kg?) - potentially very nasty if it crashes into somebody. And of course, beyond that, we've got much larger military drones, which are more-or-less unmanned full-sized aircraft.
I wonder if they could theoretically charge without landing, by induction from high-voltage power lines - use the power grid as drone highways?...
Although rooftop charging stations are probably simpler.
Making a laptop/smartphone 'halt and catch fire' is potentialy a real threat. Not by overheating the CPU, but by targeting the battery charging system. Lithium-based batteries can 'explode' (burn very violently) - if mistreated - e.g. overcharged. If the battery charging system has elements of firmware control, that might be a real risk?
But those who die young require less healthcare in their old age.
Old people dying very slowly of 'natural causes' are expensive to look after.
(Pretty sure that smokers at least are actually a net win for the government here in the UK - lots of tobacco tax, less pension paid out when they die younger)
Deployment to devices gets rather slow when dealing with large apps (e.g. games with lots of assets), though.
Slow iteration time kills productivity. I want the absolute minimum time between editing a line of code and being able to test/debug that line of code.
RC planes and helis have been around for decades. Small microcontroller kits and GPS modules have been around for years.
Yet we've not seen this tech used as a weapon. Why? - because an amateur drone is a rather fiddly, unreliable, and failure-prone method or carrying out any sort of attack, compared to the simplicity and much higher payload capacity of a suicide bomber or car/truck bomb.
It's not so much about the menu itself, at least for more serious users.
It's about ctrl-esc bringing up the start menu search box, where almost anything can be launched by typing the first 2-3 characters of the application name then hitting enter, without a highly disruptive switch in and out of full-screen mode, to and from a full screen of rainbow-coloured animating tiles - in a completely different UI, almost a completely separate OS within an OS, a world of restrictions, code-signing, and app stores...
But 'right now' is possibly the hardest that it's ever been to *make money* from indie development - simply because there's so many people making games (due to much-improved tools), it's incredibly hard to get noticed, and the bulk of the media attention goes to the already-successful 'super-indies'.
And even with all the digital distribution options out there, there are new all-powerful middlemen controlling what has a chance of real success - Steam, Humble, Apple (featured content), etc
Personally, I loved the 90s, when the technology was really exciting and evolving fast. The indie boom of the late 2000s was cool too, but now we seem to be facing oversaturation and race-to-the-bottom pricing (even beyond mobile).
I don't really want to give him ideas, but attaching a pair of wheels/castors to the front of the drone might allow it to roll up and down a large/smooth vertical 'canvas' with far less flying skill than required for a close hover...
Slashdot Mirror
Not sure what Apple's current limit on a single in-app purchase is, but I thought it was $99.99. I've not seen an F2P game with a larger in-app purchases than that, and many don't go that high. So to spend $6k, you'd have to make at least 60 purchases of the highest-priced in-game-currency pack. Either very rapidly after a password had been entered, or with the password entered multiple times, before buying more.
The market has spoken. They'd rather have IAP-laden shit for free than quality products for even as low as a dollar or two.
Well, you might be blamed if your drone is stolen, or if somebody puts your registration number on their drone.
Left-wing terrorism uses social media these days - online bullying and public shaming campaigns, rather than physical violence.
Let's just hope they're not entering anything case-sensitive with the iOS8 on-screen keyboard...
This woman set up one of the first womens shelters, and founded the charity now known as 'Refuge': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
She set out to help female victims of domestic violence, and her work basically turned her into an MRA. She suggested, based on her experiences, that women are equally capable of violence as men - and ended up on the recieving end of death threats... from feminists!
She's now involved with probably the most vocal and controversial men's rights group out there - 'A Voice for Men'
Not exactly your stereotypical neckbeard misogynist keyboard warrior, is she?
Sometimes it's not entirely clear which side is doing the bullying.
Those engaging in very harsh, perhaps aggressive, discussion and criticism within a challenging and highly technical project? Or those trying to force change upon a community/organisation with public shaming and social media activism?
Well, first they've got to get the ants dressing a bit smarter, then they might perform...
Well, at least they didn't make the astronauts wear ties...
But where do you draw the line between banned 'drones', and, say, Air Hogs toys (lightweight toy-grade RC aircraft)
There's toy quadcopters as light as 11.5g now (Hubsan Q4 Nano) - they're great fun to fly around the living room or office. Do these get banned, too?
What about the 'powered paper airplane' kits? are they now 'drones' too?
That seems like a bad idea... Even if you can't communicate with critical systems, there could be the possibility of denial-of-service type attacks? And if the system can resist software-based attacks, what about a malicious user killing the network by somehow feeding a high voltage into a passenger-accessible network port?...
A few grams of cheap consumer-grade GPS module to maintain an air gap for safety/security? Seems like a no-brainer? If the weight is a big deal, carry one less bag of peanuts on the drink/snack trolley...
There's a lot of really poor pixel art, often being made by young/inexperienced indie devs - too young to have played games on hardware with real palette limitations and real hardware sprites.
You end up with several pixel sizes on screen, rotating pixels(!), super-smooth gradients, and inconsistent use of palettes. And then there's the resolution/scaling problems on top making things look worse. To older gamers/retro game enthusiasts, it can often just look a mess.
Creating good pixel art is hard. Some of the greatest pixel art (e.g. Bitmap Brothers games) came from working with severe limitations, such as 16-color screen modes, which led to some very creative use of palettes and dithering.
The rules for model aircraft were made in the days when big, heavy, dangerous models with IC engines were the only thing you could fly. These days we have sub-20g 'toy-grade' quadcopters and very light foam RC planes powered by small electric motors.
One-size-fits-all rules don't work any more. We need different weight/risk classes. IMHO, the smallest/safest of toys should be pretty much unregulated (max 100g at 100ft altitude, maybe?). Then we've got the medium sized consumer/hobbyist drones (usually under 1kg or so) - which start to pose more of a risk, then there's the higher-end aerial photography rigs (up to 10kg?) - potentially very nasty if it crashes into somebody. And of course, beyond that, we've got much larger military drones, which are more-or-less unmanned full-sized aircraft.
I wonder if they could theoretically charge without landing, by induction from high-voltage power lines - use the power grid as drone highways?... Although rooftop charging stations are probably simpler.
But online murders have been happening for a while, via military UAVs...
Making a laptop/smartphone 'halt and catch fire' is potentialy a real threat. Not by overheating the CPU, but by targeting the battery charging system. Lithium-based batteries can 'explode' (burn very violently) - if mistreated - e.g. overcharged. If the battery charging system has elements of firmware control, that might be a real risk?
But those who die young require less healthcare in their old age.
Old people dying very slowly of 'natural causes' are expensive to look after.
(Pretty sure that smokers at least are actually a net win for the government here in the UK - lots of tobacco tax, less pension paid out when they die younger)
Deployment to devices gets rather slow when dealing with large apps (e.g. games with lots of assets), though. Slow iteration time kills productivity. I want the absolute minimum time between editing a line of code and being able to test/debug that line of code.
RC planes and helis have been around for decades. Small microcontroller kits and GPS modules have been around for years.
Yet we've not seen this tech used as a weapon. Why? - because an amateur drone is a rather fiddly, unreliable, and failure-prone method or carrying out any sort of attack, compared to the simplicity and much higher payload capacity of a suicide bomber or car/truck bomb.
It's not so much about the menu itself, at least for more serious users.
It's about ctrl-esc bringing up the start menu search box, where almost anything can be launched by typing the first 2-3 characters of the application name then hitting enter, without a highly disruptive switch in and out of full-screen mode, to and from a full screen of rainbow-coloured animating tiles - in a completely different UI, almost a completely separate OS within an OS, a world of restrictions, code-signing, and app stores...
There's at least a dozen start menu replacements out there. Aren't they becoming the new 'browser toolbar' for installing spyware/junkware?
MS don't want to encourage that any more than they already have....
But Win8 is all about the Shop button.
But 'right now' is possibly the hardest that it's ever been to *make money* from indie development - simply because there's so many people making games (due to much-improved tools), it's incredibly hard to get noticed, and the bulk of the media attention goes to the already-successful 'super-indies'.
And even with all the digital distribution options out there, there are new all-powerful middlemen controlling what has a chance of real success - Steam, Humble, Apple (featured content), etc
Personally, I loved the 90s, when the technology was really exciting and evolving fast. The indie boom of the late 2000s was cool too, but now we seem to be facing oversaturation and race-to-the-bottom pricing (even beyond mobile).
I don't really want to give him ideas, but attaching a pair of wheels/castors to the front of the drone might allow it to roll up and down a large/smooth vertical 'canvas' with far less flying skill than required for a close hover...