I'm surprised there are console games that allow you to buy one copy and play on more than one console at the same time, as tepples seems to imply in the GP post.
Two on PS3/4 and Xbox360/One - the "master" console (which can be changed on either) which lets the game play offline, and the subsidiary one, which lets the game play while logged in online (though only one login per account).
But it's true, right? If a cheap Dell off-the-shelf computer was far better than the current generation, that would definitely show how terrible the current consoles are. Instead, you need to spend maybe $800 minimum, you probably want to build the computer yourself and therefor need to have the time and the knowledge to build the computer yourself and then deal with any potential issues...
Are you kidding? Dell's $500 SteamBox entry was a pathetic i3 entrant. And $500 gets you an Xbone with depth-sensing camera. You could save $100 and get a PS4 or Xbone without.
Someone needs to explain to Valve and everyone that if SteamBoxes are to be the "next big thing in consoles" that they need to cost like one. And to be stuck with it because people don't want to upgrade it yearly - if I spend $500 on a SteamBox, I expect to be able to play the latest games on it for 5+ years at 1080p with the same quality (or better - console graphics typically improve through its lifespan as people optimized).
And if a SteamBox is supposed to be a gaming PC and not a console, well, geez, how about selling it more as a PC than as a console.
You know, there used to be a time where there were excellent webmasters that could do both HTML and Javascript great. Where you went to a website and without JS, it degraded gracefully.
Apple's website was like that, maybe about 8 years ago or so. Other than being a bit ugly in parts, it worked extremely well without JavaScript. (turning it on made it prettier and things worked a lot better, though). In fact, I only noticed it when I noticed it rendered differently on two different Firefoxes - on one, I had NoScript set to allow apple.com, on the other, I didn't.
It was a thing of beauty.
Of course, these days, it's gone to requiring javascript, though you may see old remnants of the time when it worked just fine without.
Wait, I was alive during that time -- the smallpox vaccine wasn't made from smallpox, it was made from cowpox. So samples of the vaccine would not be smallpox, dead or otherwise. Samples of smallpox would be from labs specifically testing the disease. (Hopefully, testing for means to eradicate it.)
And only a decade or so ago, smallpox was effectively eradicated from the world - a win for vaccinations.
Of course, then we had the whole anti-vaxxer thing and now, smallpox is back and as infectious as ever. And you thought whooping cough was bad. All these controlled diseases are now rampaging communities again, except instead of in poorer nations in Africa and the like where the lack of medical care derives from corrupt governments and poverty, it's in first-world nations with access to clean water, medical aid, education, etc.
I wasn't ecstatic about all the non-major courses I had to take when my primary worry was getting a programming job after I got my degree, and I might have taken an $100K out if it was available. But now 10-15 years later I'm glad I that my formal education included a psychology class, a statistics class, a history class, and others. Maybe I would have picked all that up on my own, or maybe I'd have a giant black hole in my world view.
There's a training side to education and there's a wisdom side to education, and they're both important in the long run. Telling young people to get jobs right out of high school because being well-rounded isn't necessary for "smart" people just means it's going to be a crap shoot as to whether their decisions repeat history or learn from it.
Actually, we have a proxy for it a decade and a half ago.
It was called the "dot-com boom" then - where kids fresh out of high school decided to either start their own companies, get hired by startups, etc., and bypass the college route to earn some big bucks early and retire at 35 (the dream)..
We're seeing the effects about now, really and as everyone knows, history repeats itself.
Hell, many of the early millionaires lost all their money because high school home economics courses don't really teach you how to handle money anymore (home ec was really a "how to survive out there" style course - cooking, budgeting, saving/spending/retiring, etc.), so they spent their money on flashy cars and big houses.
And here we go around again, dot-com 2.0. Though, hiring high school kids has the advantage in that they're young and easy to excite with money, while those who have been around or studied at college can take a more critical look at things and see the shiny bauble is nothing more than a cheap exploitive ploy.
The limiting factor on a phone is what you can wrap your hand around. This thing looks so wide it couldn't be operated in a single hand. I notice that a lot of BB users are two-handers though, perhaps because of the keyboard, so maybe it isn't a problem in their target market.
Square screens aren't a Blackberry issue - they've had square screens ever since they used that godawful pager protocol.
The thing is, it was fine to use a blackberry two handed because they strongly considered the single-handed use case and developed around that.
The UI, etc, are designed to be used single handedly - back when it was a 160x160 screen, they had the scroll wheel that let you go up down and select. And things modernized, they used the central click-ball as a virtual 5-way controller (up/down/left/right/center) and as a left/right up/down scroller. That became an IR sensor (not unlike an optical mouse sensor) later on.
And that makes a HUGE difference in usability - it didn't matter you needed two hands to type - you could navigate and figure out if something needed an immediate response or could be deferred on the go.
And that's what big screen Android phones lack - they don't take into account the single-handed use-case. They assume your hand can reach all four corners of the screen at all times, which generally requires two hands.
Well, if single hand use is important, then you either have to use a smaller screen (impossible on Android as small screen phones tend to be crappier as no one seems to innovate at making flagship phones with decent high-res screens 4.5" or smaller), or use Blackberries or iOS.
Perhaps Google needs to rethink how we interact with our phones and impose a new paradigm for large-screen phones where all controls need to be reachable on the left or right (depending on handedness).
Because that's one way Blackberry excelled - it was a two handed phone that let you use it as a viewer singlehandedly.
But how many people actually reset phone and reset data? I'd imagine a lot of people simply manually delete their photos and unhook their Internet accounts from the phone. Hardly a wipe.
But it's so easy to do on iOS. You can do it on the phone - Settings->General->Reset
And it wipes the phone - the flash storage is encrypted. Resetting it wipes the key and generates a new one. It then reboots and reformats the user storage using the new key and mounts it. The old data is irrecoverable because the key is lost, and the new data is written using a new key.
Even prior to encrypted storage, iOS3 created the option to do it where it erases and wipes the storage - anything 3GS and newer wipes keys (so wiping takes a couple of minutes), older ones took a couple of hours.
No reason Android can't do the same - either by sending TRIM commands to the entire user storage area and then forcing a write-all-with-zeroes to be doubly sure.
Choice is good. You get to have your itty bitty little phone with it's itty bitty screen and I get to have my 5" phone with a beautiful screen I can actually see
Only if there was a choice.
I mean, the only GOOD android phones have huge screens, lots of RAM and powerful CPUs. The small screen android phones have shitty screens, shitty RAM, shitty CPUs, or all three.
And Apple is following this lead. It means I want a smaller screened phone I can use single-handedly, but I have to compromise something.
Be it iPhone, Android, or whatever, if you want something smaller, you give up a lot.
That's not a lot of choice there. Either I go your route and get a nice phone with nice everything, or I get a shitty phone with a shitty things. That's not choice.
It can be argued that an OS really isn't much more than a kernel and init with everything else as userspace.
init isn't all that special to begin with, either. It just happens that it's something the kernel looks for when spawning the first userspace process.
Other than that, it's just a regular program. Linux has a fallback to/bin/sh if it can't start init for some reason, but you can have the kernel launch any other binary as the first process.
Of course, if you're complaining about systemd, check out Android's init sometime. That's something that requires an incantation...
I wish the online maps "Google" would put those features in and allow you to push the trip to your mobile device.
It's such an obvious ad-selling feature, I'm surprised they don't. I mean, when you're planning your trip, it can suggest stop points based on ad sales. Perhaps there's a business having a lunch special, well, I'm sure Google will make sure to plan you a stop point right there.
Ditto gas stations and other things along the trip.
Even better, it can display a nice full screen ad on your phone when you push the route to your phone, thus monetizing what is a money loser right now for Google. I mean, once you reach the stop point, boom the ad can play using the navigation system built in.
It's so brilliant you wonder why Google doesn't do it. It sells ads.
As the video points out, this is not limited to Google Glass, any video capturing device will work. But beyond that, this is really kind of obvious. Yeah, video recording someone entering their password on a touch device will give you a fairly accurate idea of what that password is. Record, playback at 1/4 speed, password. I would bet that security camera footage might even be better to work with due to the angle. The custom software I suppose is a nice achievement, but I would guess it's not all that necessary.
Except with Glass it's easier to do it by casually looking in the direction of the person. I'm fairly certain if someone has their smartphone or camcorder pointed in your direction steadily it's a little more obvious than someone just looking past you who happens to be wearing Glass.
I'm not sure that's true. These big publishers hire companies such as RightsCorp to "monitor and search for unauthorized usage" of their "intellectual property".
If their rights protection contractor(s) found a Superman statue: there's no way these greedy b****rds could resist that potential revenue stream.
True, but the media LOVES a sob story. Especially a David-and-Goliath one where it's a grieving family and a statue of their son vs. Big Bad Media corp.
Doesn't matter who's in the right, or wrong, Big Bad Media Corp will be vilified in every news, blog, and article from then on. Politicians will make or break their careers on it (not to mention there's going to be an election for Toronto mayor later this year - you can bet all the mayoral candidates will be all over themselves trying to be first to capitalize on it).
In other words, there's no way for DC (or Time Warner, owners) to win.
Even if it goes to court, too. They may win legally, but lose in the court of public opinion.
Judging from the drawings, and the statements that Airbus has made bragging about how they can now put the cockpit anywhere in the plane (because of the lack of need for front-viewing), I'm going to guess that's not in the plans.
The cockpit can be anywhere... including on the ground.
That is not how the trial lawyers work. They are not defacto regulators in most cases. The are far more often just parasites and are very much like the patent trolls, just using the legal system to extort money. They will sue doctors who did receive correct data from a device and who made a medically well informed decision. They will use the fact that the device is not FDA certified to sow FUD and confuse and mislead a jury who is clueless about medicine and devices. Every once in a while they will find a gullible jury and get a payday, and insurance companies/doctors will just give them money to go away even when their suits are baseless.
Why do you assume a doctor will be using this data?
From what I can tell, patients will be using this to avoid going to the doctor. The doctor is inconvenient, can cost money, takes a lot of time (hours waiting in the waiting room), etc., so an app that says "you're fine!" means I don't have to take a day off work, don't have to spend it waiting with 16 others coughing up lungs and germs and disease, pay whatever co-pay or deductible and make an insurance claim.
In fact, the primary use of health sensors so far is quantifying one's health - how many calories have I burned so far today, how far have I run/walked/biked/hiked/etc so far, what my heart rate is, etc.
The FDA came down hard on people that claimed "a special wavelength of light cures acne" and the apps therein. But why does that app exist? I mean, there are plenty of acne medications on the shelf, OTC and prescription. The app was easier, cheaper, and avoided a doctor's visit. And that's what's really going to happen.
A doctor might be alerted by oddities in a patient's readings, but they aren't going to rely on it anymore than "can you come in and we need to run a full diagnostic on you". The sensors may detect say, heart arrhythmia or potential diabetes, but it would be very stupid for the doctor to rely on those alerts and not perform tests themselves to verify the condition.
It certainly won't replace a doctor's periodic tests - it may help fill in the gaps between visits, what doctor and hospital will want to rely on tests and diagnoses by apps? Especially when you can do the tests again "to be sure" and run up the insurance bill?
Well, the problem is that Amazon doesn't have all the experience Apple has.
Why do you think there is a 15 minute timeout now? (iOS4)
Why do you think the 15 minute timeout is split between IAP and regular app store purchases (iOS5)?
Why do you think apps now have clearer markings on IAPs (iOS7)?
Apple ran into this, then implemented the safeguards - the 15 minute timeout because kids were clicking "buy now" without realizing it and running up thousand-dollar bills.
The split because mommy/daddy would get the app, and within 15 minutes the first IAP would pop up and the kid would run up charges.
The clearer text because the FTC, after seeing Apple settle the class action, decided Apple didn't do enough and fined Apple for what the FTC felt was more "sufficient" damages. (Apple did not contest this because of the legal costs).
Sorry, but for me to feel Amazon any sympathy, I feel they all should have the same restrictions.
As for banning IAPs? Well, the rise of IAPs and all that helped produce alternative business models for games, and created innovation (as well as exploitation, such is the world).
Stuff like free-to-play, ad-supported, etc., helps combat piracy (rampant in the Android and PC works) and revitalize those markets. The PC world was headed to an online-only world where the online component was the DRM part, and now we have it where it doesn't matter if you pirate anymore (because pirates can't do IAPs and can be put in a disadvantage).
Why can I sidestep most of the regulations for milk if I have 3 or fewer cows? New designs on airplanes are pretty much non-existent because it would cost millions to send them through safety testing.
Because 3 cows or fewer mean the milk is most likely for yourself - it's uneconomical to really milk 3 cows and expect to meet your demand and have leftovers to sell to someone else. The "raw milk" crowd would love you to believe that raw milk is better, but given how some producers of raw milk react, the public definitely needs a guardian. (E. coli was found in some cheese produced from unpasteurized milk by a farm specializing in it. Despite the alert, the farm did NOT issue a recall notice, stating they do not have the resources to handle a product recall, and they would basically prefer risking a lawsuit. I pity the family that gets sick, bankrupts the farm and gets a pittance because the owners walked away).
You can build your own airplanes, and in fact, a LOT of innovation is happening. Building your own aircraft is perfectly acceptable, and with minimal oversight (the Experimental Aircraft Association has plenty of documents on how to build your own aircraft, and encourages the activity). The FAA is fairly light on requirements, other than standardized placarding to ensure any passengers you carry are notified that the aircraft has not been tested to regulatory specifications.
Tons of innovations happen because of the light regulatory touch. Avionics are far more advanced for experimental aircraft, and experimental versions of radios and other equipment are far cheaper than the certified counterpart. The use of composites in aircraft generally started from experimental aircraft as well.
You can build your own aircraft just fine, the only license required is the pilot's license of the guy who's going to test-fly it. Many of the more popular aircraft are experimental class aircraft.
No. Just no. My god what a silly-ass comment. Most people wore watches well past 2000. The thing of ditching your watch and using your cell phone instead really only took off with the era of smart phones. So unless you're claiming that the time of segregation ended in the 21st century, instead of the 1960s & 1970s...
And ironically, we're heading back to watches because the smartphones are so damn big they're useless now at consulting often, so instead the phone must live in some deep recess because it's not so convenient to hold or carry anymore.
Or so big that every beep/buzz/text that comes in is too troublesome to check, and nomophobia (the fear of missing out, or the fear of not having your phone) means one must compulsively check it.
I honestly doubt physicians will base medical decisions on data from non-FDA approved devices. That is an enormous opening for the trial lawyers and their malpractice lawsuits.
And that is what would regulate the market in the meantime.
The FDA doesn't want to regulate because not only is it going to be hard, but it's going to stifle what is a tremendous source of innovation that's happening.
But even better is that the industry will either self-regulate, or will call on rules after a few court cases come out. I mean, you're going to start small, like those "this app produces lightwaves that will cure acne" apps that were blocked a while ago. Small wins, but even then you'll get some traction from those who wanted to go acne-free to prom or something.
Sensors are probably regulated under some other set of rules - after all, you can buy glucosometers, blood pressure monitors, scales, and a pile of other medical devices at your local Wal-Mart. Probably under a bunch of rules stating "This product only works in conjunction with regular visits to your physician" or something.
But apps that take that data and do stuff will be an interesting field. Like those "cancer detecting" apps where you snap a mole and it tells you if it's melanoma or something. Even without regulation those things will probably fall under a court case from someone who dies from it and sues the app maker.
As far as I can tell, the FDA should regulate against obvious snake oil, but some of the other stuff, it's probably a wait-and-see approach.
Hell, Apple consulted with the FDA too - they're wondering how far they're going to allow it as well, so between Apple and Google (both of whom have their own health related ecosystems now), I think that's where the main body of regulations may come in. After all, a lawyer will go after the app developer and Apple/Google for the latter have the money.
"Sapphire display glass." A Red Herring. The Corning "Gorilla Glass" product currently available is incredibly scratch resistant and costs 1/10th the price.
Guess what the glass on an iPhone is? Yes, Gorilla Glass!
Ever since the very first iPhone - Apple actually was the company that got Corning to resurrect it (Corning actually shelved the idea because it wasn't commercially viable), and the glass has been Gorilla Glass ever since then.
iOS is still happily twirping your data, hence the mac change in iOS 8.
No, that's solving a different problem, namely one of tracking. In sending probe frames (to find out what accesspoints are around) it uses a random MAC address in order to foil those MAC address sniffers they plant in malls and stores that are used to track people as they wander around.
There's nothing unique about London cabbies, in that regard. All over the world there are drivers who are familiar with the road system they live/work in.
Except London cabdrivers are required by law to know the roads. They have to literally memorize the map of London and be able to instantly create a trip given any two endpoints without consulting a map. (That is part of the test). Most cabbies spend 1-2 years just studying for this part of the test.
That has been one of the distinguishing features of London taxis - the drivers know where they're going. By law.
Or just old 802.11a devices that pre-date the Dynamic Frequency Selection requirements.
I think DFS was mandatory for 802.11a in order for it to even use the band - otherwise no one would approve the use of it. There's even a bit in the management frame to be used when radar is detected and for everyone to switch channels.
All the FCC did was find it was possible on some devices to disable it to force it to use a specific frequency.
That's actually a pretty good business idea, especially for the thousands of hosting companies that are struggling (or already died) because of the big names taking over the game. Not all of them could do it, but someone could, especially if, within their small ranks of coworkers, partners, and investors, they already know a small legal team that is up for making some extra money. Heck, a law firm could buy up a couple small hosting providers and turn it into just such a thing.
Except if you become known as the hosting provider that fights for its customers, guess which customers you'll end up attracting?
Yes, you'll get those actually hosting copyrighted material that don't belong to them!
It's one thing to fight for what is legitimately your copyrighted content. But quite another when you're hosting other people's copyrighted material, to whom your customer may not have a distribution agreement with.
And unfortunately, the latter will ruin it for everyone else.
Internal networks are typically set up with some goal in mind, like to "promote new ideas and enhance creative discussion". The main problem is that their existence is driven by the goal, not by demand. Employees are not asking for these tools. Employees can actually meet and talk to each other, there is typically already an infrastructure set up to support that. Therefore, employees are not getting any benefit from them.
The other problem is they're often set up to be a means unto themselves. People have email. They get notified when an email comes in and they respond. Internal social networks mean they get an email to check the damn site, which for a lot of people adds absolutely no value to their work.
And that's the thing, the internal social networks add little perceived value. People don't want to check another inbox when they have a perfectly good one already. Especially if it's pushing work onto them. E.g., you want to solicit feedback on something - people would be happy to email you their comments, but if you ask them to post it on an internal webpage, response will be lower because they see extra work they need to do in order to satisfy someone else's optional request.
Life involves physical activity. Where do you draw the line? What's enough "physical activity" to qualify? Is Jeopardy a sport? There's physical activity involved in pressing that motherfucking button, right?
When physical activity is required in order to get better at the sport. You don't train for chess by moving pieces around the board, for example, so not a sport. You don't train for "eSports" by typing on the keyboard (it certainly can help, but it doesn't help you become a better player because of it).
Soccer is a sport because training by running around and chasing a ball DOES help you become better at it. Likewise chasing a puck around a rink makes Hockey a sport.
Hitting lots of balls and running makes you a better baseball player.
Thus, the main physical activity you do in the sport, you have to keep doing to get better at it.
Sure, learning to type and practicing typing can help you get your APM up in StarCraft, but being a brilliant typist does NOT make you good at StarCraft.
Of course, the more questionable area is in motorsports - where physical training DOES help you become better, but is not sufficient enough to become good (being able to withstand the forces and all that make you a better driver, but it's not all physical).
Slashdot Mirror
Two on PS3/4 and Xbox360/One - the "master" console (which can be changed on either) which lets the game play offline, and the subsidiary one, which lets the game play while logged in online (though only one login per account).
Are you kidding? Dell's $500 SteamBox entry was a pathetic i3 entrant. And $500 gets you an Xbone with depth-sensing camera. You could save $100 and get a PS4 or Xbone without.
Someone needs to explain to Valve and everyone that if SteamBoxes are to be the "next big thing in consoles" that they need to cost like one. And to be stuck with it because people don't want to upgrade it yearly - if I spend $500 on a SteamBox, I expect to be able to play the latest games on it for 5+ years at 1080p with the same quality (or better - console graphics typically improve through its lifespan as people optimized).
And if a SteamBox is supposed to be a gaming PC and not a console, well, geez, how about selling it more as a PC than as a console.
You know, there used to be a time where there were excellent webmasters that could do both HTML and Javascript great. Where you went to a website and without JS, it degraded gracefully.
Apple's website was like that, maybe about 8 years ago or so. Other than being a bit ugly in parts, it worked extremely well without JavaScript. (turning it on made it prettier and things worked a lot better, though). In fact, I only noticed it when I noticed it rendered differently on two different Firefoxes - on one, I had NoScript set to allow apple.com, on the other, I didn't.
It was a thing of beauty.
Of course, these days, it's gone to requiring javascript, though you may see old remnants of the time when it worked just fine without.
And only a decade or so ago, smallpox was effectively eradicated from the world - a win for vaccinations.
Of course, then we had the whole anti-vaxxer thing and now, smallpox is back and as infectious as ever. And you thought whooping cough was bad. All these controlled diseases are now rampaging communities again, except instead of in poorer nations in Africa and the like where the lack of medical care derives from corrupt governments and poverty, it's in first-world nations with access to clean water, medical aid, education, etc.
Actually, we have a proxy for it a decade and a half ago.
It was called the "dot-com boom" then - where kids fresh out of high school decided to either start their own companies, get hired by startups, etc., and bypass the college route to earn some big bucks early and retire at 35 (the dream)..
We're seeing the effects about now, really and as everyone knows, history repeats itself.
Hell, many of the early millionaires lost all their money because high school home economics courses don't really teach you how to handle money anymore (home ec was really a "how to survive out there" style course - cooking, budgeting, saving/spending/retiring, etc.), so they spent their money on flashy cars and big houses.
And here we go around again, dot-com 2.0. Though, hiring high school kids has the advantage in that they're young and easy to excite with money, while those who have been around or studied at college can take a more critical look at things and see the shiny bauble is nothing more than a cheap exploitive ploy.
Square screens aren't a Blackberry issue - they've had square screens ever since they used that godawful pager protocol.
The thing is, it was fine to use a blackberry two handed because they strongly considered the single-handed use case and developed around that.
The UI, etc, are designed to be used single handedly - back when it was a 160x160 screen, they had the scroll wheel that let you go up down and select. And things modernized, they used the central click-ball as a virtual 5-way controller (up/down/left/right/center) and as a left/right up/down scroller. That became an IR sensor (not unlike an optical mouse sensor) later on.
And that makes a HUGE difference in usability - it didn't matter you needed two hands to type - you could navigate and figure out if something needed an immediate response or could be deferred on the go.
And that's what big screen Android phones lack - they don't take into account the single-handed use-case. They assume your hand can reach all four corners of the screen at all times, which generally requires two hands.
Well, if single hand use is important, then you either have to use a smaller screen (impossible on Android as small screen phones tend to be crappier as no one seems to innovate at making flagship phones with decent high-res screens 4.5" or smaller), or use Blackberries or iOS.
Perhaps Google needs to rethink how we interact with our phones and impose a new paradigm for large-screen phones where all controls need to be reachable on the left or right (depending on handedness).
Because that's one way Blackberry excelled - it was a two handed phone that let you use it as a viewer singlehandedly.
But it's so easy to do on iOS. You can do it on the phone - Settings->General->Reset
And it wipes the phone - the flash storage is encrypted. Resetting it wipes the key and generates a new one. It then reboots and reformats the user storage using the new key and mounts it. The old data is irrecoverable because the key is lost, and the new data is written using a new key.
Even prior to encrypted storage, iOS3 created the option to do it where it erases and wipes the storage - anything 3GS and newer wipes keys (so wiping takes a couple of minutes), older ones took a couple of hours.
No reason Android can't do the same - either by sending TRIM commands to the entire user storage area and then forcing a write-all-with-zeroes to be doubly sure.
Only if there was a choice.
I mean, the only GOOD android phones have huge screens, lots of RAM and powerful CPUs. The small screen android phones have shitty screens, shitty RAM, shitty CPUs, or all three.
And Apple is following this lead. It means I want a smaller screened phone I can use single-handedly, but I have to compromise something.
Be it iPhone, Android, or whatever, if you want something smaller, you give up a lot.
That's not a lot of choice there. Either I go your route and get a nice phone with nice everything, or I get a shitty phone with a shitty things. That's not choice.
init isn't all that special to begin with, either. It just happens that it's something the kernel looks for when spawning the first userspace process.
Other than that, it's just a regular program. Linux has a fallback to /bin/sh if it can't start init for some reason, but you can have the kernel launch any other binary as the first process.
Of course, if you're complaining about systemd, check out Android's init sometime. That's something that requires an incantation...
It's such an obvious ad-selling feature, I'm surprised they don't. I mean, when you're planning your trip, it can suggest stop points based on ad sales. Perhaps there's a business having a lunch special, well, I'm sure Google will make sure to plan you a stop point right there.
Ditto gas stations and other things along the trip.
Even better, it can display a nice full screen ad on your phone when you push the route to your phone, thus monetizing what is a money loser right now for Google. I mean, once you reach the stop point, boom the ad can play using the navigation system built in.
It's so brilliant you wonder why Google doesn't do it. It sells ads.
I knew of Streets and Trips from way back when - it was one of the earliest available GPS packages that almost featured turn-by-turn.
Way back when GPS was horrendously expensive.
I didn't even know they still sold it - I suppose its advantage was it was offline and had everything or so in one box.
Guess that's why they killed it - people remember it, but didn't realize it was still around - you certainly don't see it advertised anywhere.
Except with Glass it's easier to do it by casually looking in the direction of the person. I'm fairly certain if someone has their smartphone or camcorder pointed in your direction steadily it's a little more obvious than someone just looking past you who happens to be wearing Glass.
True, but the media LOVES a sob story. Especially a David-and-Goliath one where it's a grieving family and a statue of their son vs. Big Bad Media corp.
Doesn't matter who's in the right, or wrong, Big Bad Media Corp will be vilified in every news, blog, and article from then on. Politicians will make or break their careers on it (not to mention there's going to be an election for Toronto mayor later this year - you can bet all the mayoral candidates will be all over themselves trying to be first to capitalize on it).
In other words, there's no way for DC (or Time Warner, owners) to win.
Even if it goes to court, too. They may win legally, but lose in the court of public opinion.
The cockpit can be anywhere... including on the ground.
Why do you assume a doctor will be using this data?
From what I can tell, patients will be using this to avoid going to the doctor. The doctor is inconvenient, can cost money, takes a lot of time (hours waiting in the waiting room), etc., so an app that says "you're fine!" means I don't have to take a day off work, don't have to spend it waiting with 16 others coughing up lungs and germs and disease, pay whatever co-pay or deductible and make an insurance claim.
In fact, the primary use of health sensors so far is quantifying one's health - how many calories have I burned so far today, how far have I run/walked/biked/hiked/etc so far, what my heart rate is, etc.
The FDA came down hard on people that claimed "a special wavelength of light cures acne" and the apps therein. But why does that app exist? I mean, there are plenty of acne medications on the shelf, OTC and prescription. The app was easier, cheaper, and avoided a doctor's visit. And that's what's really going to happen.
A doctor might be alerted by oddities in a patient's readings, but they aren't going to rely on it anymore than "can you come in and we need to run a full diagnostic on you". The sensors may detect say, heart arrhythmia or potential diabetes, but it would be very stupid for the doctor to rely on those alerts and not perform tests themselves to verify the condition.
It certainly won't replace a doctor's periodic tests - it may help fill in the gaps between visits, what doctor and hospital will want to rely on tests and diagnoses by apps? Especially when you can do the tests again "to be sure" and run up the insurance bill?
Well, the problem is that Amazon doesn't have all the experience Apple has.
Why do you think there is a 15 minute timeout now? (iOS4)
Why do you think the 15 minute timeout is split between IAP and regular app store purchases (iOS5)?
Why do you think apps now have clearer markings on IAPs (iOS7)?
Apple ran into this, then implemented the safeguards - the 15 minute timeout because kids were clicking "buy now" without realizing it and running up thousand-dollar bills.
The split because mommy/daddy would get the app, and within 15 minutes the first IAP would pop up and the kid would run up charges.
The clearer text because the FTC, after seeing Apple settle the class action, decided Apple didn't do enough and fined Apple for what the FTC felt was more "sufficient" damages. (Apple did not contest this because of the legal costs).
Sorry, but for me to feel Amazon any sympathy, I feel they all should have the same restrictions.
As for banning IAPs? Well, the rise of IAPs and all that helped produce alternative business models for games, and created innovation (as well as exploitation, such is the world).
Stuff like free-to-play, ad-supported, etc., helps combat piracy (rampant in the Android and PC works) and revitalize those markets. The PC world was headed to an online-only world where the online component was the DRM part, and now we have it where it doesn't matter if you pirate anymore (because pirates can't do IAPs and can be put in a disadvantage).
Because 3 cows or fewer mean the milk is most likely for yourself - it's uneconomical to really milk 3 cows and expect to meet your demand and have leftovers to sell to someone else. The "raw milk" crowd would love you to believe that raw milk is better, but given how some producers of raw milk react, the public definitely needs a guardian. (E. coli was found in some cheese produced from unpasteurized milk by a farm specializing in it. Despite the alert, the farm did NOT issue a recall notice, stating they do not have the resources to handle a product recall, and they would basically prefer risking a lawsuit. I pity the family that gets sick, bankrupts the farm and gets a pittance because the owners walked away).
You can build your own airplanes, and in fact, a LOT of innovation is happening. Building your own aircraft is perfectly acceptable, and with minimal oversight (the Experimental Aircraft Association has plenty of documents on how to build your own aircraft, and encourages the activity). The FAA is fairly light on requirements, other than standardized placarding to ensure any passengers you carry are notified that the aircraft has not been tested to regulatory specifications.
Tons of innovations happen because of the light regulatory touch. Avionics are far more advanced for experimental aircraft, and experimental versions of radios and other equipment are far cheaper than the certified counterpart. The use of composites in aircraft generally started from experimental aircraft as well.
You can build your own aircraft just fine, the only license required is the pilot's license of the guy who's going to test-fly it. Many of the more popular aircraft are experimental class aircraft.
And ironically, we're heading back to watches because the smartphones are so damn big they're useless now at consulting often, so instead the phone must live in some deep recess because it's not so convenient to hold or carry anymore.
Or so big that every beep/buzz/text that comes in is too troublesome to check, and nomophobia (the fear of missing out, or the fear of not having your phone) means one must compulsively check it.
And that is what would regulate the market in the meantime.
The FDA doesn't want to regulate because not only is it going to be hard, but it's going to stifle what is a tremendous source of innovation that's happening.
But even better is that the industry will either self-regulate, or will call on rules after a few court cases come out. I mean, you're going to start small, like those "this app produces lightwaves that will cure acne" apps that were blocked a while ago. Small wins, but even then you'll get some traction from those who wanted to go acne-free to prom or something.
Sensors are probably regulated under some other set of rules - after all, you can buy glucosometers, blood pressure monitors, scales, and a pile of other medical devices at your local Wal-Mart. Probably under a bunch of rules stating "This product only works in conjunction with regular visits to your physician" or something.
But apps that take that data and do stuff will be an interesting field. Like those "cancer detecting" apps where you snap a mole and it tells you if it's melanoma or something. Even without regulation those things will probably fall under a court case from someone who dies from it and sues the app maker.
As far as I can tell, the FDA should regulate against obvious snake oil, but some of the other stuff, it's probably a wait-and-see approach.
Hell, Apple consulted with the FDA too - they're wondering how far they're going to allow it as well, so between Apple and Google (both of whom have their own health related ecosystems now), I think that's where the main body of regulations may come in. After all, a lawyer will go after the app developer and Apple/Google for the latter have the money.
Guess what the glass on an iPhone is? Yes, Gorilla Glass!
Ever since the very first iPhone - Apple actually was the company that got Corning to resurrect it (Corning actually shelved the idea because it wasn't commercially viable), and the glass has been Gorilla Glass ever since then.
No, that's solving a different problem, namely one of tracking. In sending probe frames (to find out what accesspoints are around) it uses a random MAC address in order to foil those MAC address sniffers they plant in malls and stores that are used to track people as they wander around.
FYI - Android does not have this feature (yet).
Except London cabdrivers are required by law to know the roads. They have to literally memorize the map of London and be able to instantly create a trip given any two endpoints without consulting a map. (That is part of the test). Most cabbies spend 1-2 years just studying for this part of the test.
That has been one of the distinguishing features of London taxis - the drivers know where they're going. By law.
I think DFS was mandatory for 802.11a in order for it to even use the band - otherwise no one would approve the use of it. There's even a bit in the management frame to be used when radar is detected and for everyone to switch channels.
All the FCC did was find it was possible on some devices to disable it to force it to use a specific frequency.
Except if you become known as the hosting provider that fights for its customers, guess which customers you'll end up attracting?
Yes, you'll get those actually hosting copyrighted material that don't belong to them!
It's one thing to fight for what is legitimately your copyrighted content. But quite another when you're hosting other people's copyrighted material, to whom your customer may not have a distribution agreement with.
And unfortunately, the latter will ruin it for everyone else.
The other problem is they're often set up to be a means unto themselves. People have email. They get notified when an email comes in and they respond. Internal social networks mean they get an email to check the damn site, which for a lot of people adds absolutely no value to their work.
And that's the thing, the internal social networks add little perceived value. People don't want to check another inbox when they have a perfectly good one already. Especially if it's pushing work onto them. E.g., you want to solicit feedback on something - people would be happy to email you their comments, but if you ask them to post it on an internal webpage, response will be lower because they see extra work they need to do in order to satisfy someone else's optional request.
When physical activity is required in order to get better at the sport. You don't train for chess by moving pieces around the board, for example, so not a sport. You don't train for "eSports" by typing on the keyboard (it certainly can help, but it doesn't help you become a better player because of it).
Soccer is a sport because training by running around and chasing a ball DOES help you become better at it. Likewise chasing a puck around a rink makes Hockey a sport.
Hitting lots of balls and running makes you a better baseball player.
Thus, the main physical activity you do in the sport, you have to keep doing to get better at it.
Sure, learning to type and practicing typing can help you get your APM up in StarCraft, but being a brilliant typist does NOT make you good at StarCraft.
Of course, the more questionable area is in motorsports - where physical training DOES help you become better, but is not sufficient enough to become good (being able to withstand the forces and all that make you a better driver, but it's not all physical).