Here they control things from getting *too* out of hand (3/week at most), they mandate brand alignment (AMC theaters), and sure they have people who will pay and not use, but it won't be too terrible for people to feel like they *should* go to the theater to get value for their subscription and then blow a ton of money on concessions ('hey, I didn't have to buy tickets, I can buy even *more* crazy expensive concessions!' is the sort of thing our brains tend to do).
And chances are, your three movies a week won't tend to be expensive first run ones - you may have noticed that there are generally only 2-3 movies opening a week, and "big name" movies generally only have one (e.g., Star Wars). So in general, you're not likely to get people seeing all three first run, and probably even better, they won't all congregate on the busy periods (i.e., you're not likely to see 3 movies all day Friday, or all day Saturday), so you'd likely catch the latest, and then something else during the cheaper times of the week (e.g., midweek).
So in reality, they probably calculated that most people will see at most one brand new movie a week on opening day. If they see a first run movie after the first couple of weeks, the studio share goes down (first two weeks, maybe it's 100%/0% for the studio/theatre, then drops down to 75/25 or 50/50 as time goes on).
And if they were smart, they'd throw in small concessions now and again - especially if they realize people travel in groups (movie going is a social thing). So if someone has a pass and gets a free small popcorn, it generally will encourage "upgrading" to a large popcorn, as well as now everyone in the group would buy a drink. Or the other people now will want their own popcorn and a drink. And this can be encouraged by simply offering a small discount as well - say 10% to everyone in the group if someone has a pass.
It's much more likely AMC will succeed in this because they know exactly their customer behavior, and even things like cheap or free concessions to the cardholder or their group can encourage more sales (e.g., if a small popcorn causes everyone to buy concessions versus no one buying in the first place)..
It would be a perk I expect customers to get as a bonus - which is a win-win - AMC gets more concession sales, and customers get extra value.
Given the class of Spectre and Meltdown attacks rely on someone else having the freedom to execute code on your hardware, shouldn't something like this be opt-in? There's a whole world of servers out that where Spectre is ultimately completely irrelevant in terms of a security threat, but hyperthreading is definitely not irrelevant in terms of performance.
I've wondered - would it be possible for the scheduler to schedule related threads together on a core? I mean, if you query the number of processors, it's easy to tell how many sockets you have (physical CPUs), how many cores each physical CPU has, and how many threads each core has. Most schedulers don't differentiate between threads/cores/sockets but it's possible to tell.
So instead of disabling it completely, or enabling it completely, you only schedule same-process threads on each core? After all, Spectre/Meltdown doesn't really apply at the thread level (why go through all that effort to exfiltrate information from the same process, when you already have full access to the address space?). So a scheduler would schedule same process threads on cores or threads, and different processes on different cores only. After all, it's hyper threading, so you're supposed to do that to begin with, not run disparate process threads on each thread unit.
Not because I don't think Google can make a better product technologically - but because I don't want the software to suddenly change its policies and randomly do something I don't want because it has a chance of making Google some money.
I don't want to be listening to a carefully researched discussion touching on the tragedies of Nazi Germany, the suddenly have the next MP3 be Glenn Beck by association - then have all my adverts everywhere suddenly be pro-Trump propaganda.
Google is legitimately good for searching for things (Google scholar is great!), but living in a nation with 40+% Trump supporters has completely messed up the associations and logic behind targeted advertising - it's kind of made it poisonous along with the nation at large.
Or how about the obvious - after a year, Google can't seem to make money off it and then cans the app. It's not just the data harvesting part, it's the fact that if you use it and like it, and Google doesn't make enough money from it, they will just can it. Google is good at that sort of thing, making it hard to rely on them for any sort of long term support
Just drink from the cup, assuming you're not a baby who can't do so.
An interesting form of greenwashing presented itself when some restaurants did that - get rid of plastic straws. Because of that, I ordered the drinks "without ice" - i hate trying to drink from a cup with ice in it (something a straw avoids nicely, but I can adapt).
Turns out some restaurants really hate when you do this - as if the fraction of penny of soda saved by ice (it really only costs a few cents for a 20oz soda) was going to hurt them. Heck, the cost of the straw probably makes up for it.
Still, it's interesting how some restaurants try to cheat you a few cents at a time. Much easier to do with a straw since you don't notice how much ice is used, versus having to drink from the cup itself and thus noticing all the ice they put in.
And no, unless you're in a restaurant in the south without air conditioning, your drink will not get warm. It will stay reasonably cold without ice.
If Apple loses this, then maybe they'll be forced to provide options for allowing side-loading apps with the general populace. This would allow GPL licensed libraries and applications to become available on iOS devices. The GPL requires that code licensed under it be redistributal and usable anywhere; however, there is a license agreement when you make and publish apps on the App Store that limits the code reuse capabilities. Some relevant links, 1 2.
Oh, you mean Apple hasn't for the past 3 years allowed side loading?
There's a whole ecosystem around apps that are not allowed in the App Store - lots of emulators for iOS are available.
In fact, it's slightly ironic, because Apple is enforcing the provision that if you use this, the app MUST be open-source. You cannot ship just binaries and have the build system link it. (Well you could, but Apple frowns on that). It's why there's a whole ecosystem of apps for iOS that are source only, but things like f.lux didn't (they p rovided binaries only).
And if you don't care, there are tools for Windows that use the same mechanisms to sideload precompiled apps the same way. It's only the official tool (Xcode) that Apple requests you supply source with.
And yes, there is slight irony in that Apple is doing the open-source enforcement thing.
How does this compare with the ETSI standard for Advanced Mobile Location which Android has supported since 2015 and has started mass rollout in Europe?
Is Apple going their own way here with yet another incompatible thing, only this time not at the expense of consumer convenience but rather at the expense of actual lives? The article is really shy on details.
It's kinda-sorta similar, but that's about it. You have to remember that the emergency systems in North America and Europe are completely different. In North America, the "old E911" centers are POTS based with digital signalling aside that lets you get GPS data (through the control plane). That is, the moment you call 911, the modem itself will acquire GPS lock and transmit it on the control channel so while you're on the call, the cellular switches and all that will pass it to the E911 center.
New style 911 centers are VoIP based - they are effectively all data connectivity, which is why they can do things like handle texts and all that now as well. These centers can still receive E911 data "the old way" but since they are fully data hookups, they do allow for enhanced location awareness Here GPS data can be sent any which way - even VoIP phones equipped with GPS locators can send their proper location when you call 911 and not rely on the subscriber database.
Europe, because they did not have such ability to use the control plane data, only gets GPS data via the user plane, so your phone will have to create and establish a data session to the carrier first, then connect to the 911 center as if you were connect to a website. It's a system that works well but lacks any real prioritization features since the location information is sent via a normal data channel. It's also fraught with issues - if your SIM does not support data, for example, it doesn't work (the system will force a data connection, and if the SIM lacks the configuration information to establish the data connection, then it's not possible).
Basically, they're two competing systems that everyone will have to support in the end.
Go search "Lockpicking lawyer" on Youtube. That guy shows how useless locks are, mechanical or digital.
Locks are not about 100% security - nothing can accomplish that. No lock can secure a house, when a burglar can just smash a window.
The goal is to provide adequate security - any lock that requires lock picks already qualify. The locks that are easily defeated without actually picking the lock I deem inadequate - like one lock I saw that was "smart" and had fingerprint authentication. To defeat it, you just need about 10 seconds and a torx screwdriver - you undo the three screws around the edge and the lock falls apart, shackle and all. That is inadequate - you did not have to tamper with the lock mechanism in any way to bypass the lock - opening the case was sufficient.
Then there was another lock, and he used a Ramset gun on it. To me, even though it failed, I see it as pretty strong because that's one specialized tool to be carrying around, makes a lot of noise, and really leaves a lot of evidence behind of malfeasance.
Serious question: how well can a developer get paid writing C64 games? Are these part time projects or can a developer afford to work on these full time?
It's been a long time since I've done any C64 programming. Is it possible to find the C64 Programmer's Reference Guide or some of the Compute's books online? Those were very helpful for learning C64 programming.
One scene I was involved in and I'm sorry to say is pretty much dead is TI calculator gaming. There are still a few releases, but most of the developers have moved on and new ones haven't entered the community at nearly the same rate. I have fond memories of the old Zshell games and, later on, some of the really good games released for the TI-89.
No, just like the 80s, most software developed for these platforms were developed by hobbyists.
You're going to need a regular day job. The 8-Bit Guy on YouTube released a game last year, and made about 1000 copies of his game for C64 (at least the materials - boxes and such. Manuals and disks he replicates himself). They sold quickly, but he's been hesitant to order a new print run in case they hang around far too long. (Of course, he has a "baggie" version of his game with the disk and manual in a plastic bag, again, like the 80s).
The market is small, and it's really easy to get into. Usually that's a recipe for disaster as it leads to an influx of poor quality software, but it's a niche small enough that it doesn't generally attract much attention. The tools are easy to get and really easy to develop for these days (since most emulators have really good debuggers, and yes, you're developing in emulators because you can assemble/run/debug much quicker on your desktop PC (with nice high res screen, quality keyboard, etc) than to write it out on your C-64 and debug and assemble there.
If you're lucky, you'll make a couple hundred bucks out of it. Like I said, hobby money.
News to me! Had no idea these platforms were still supported and if supporting a system that was 'obsolete' more than 20 years ago is not nerdy, then I'm handing my card in!
Well, they aren't supported - the companies behind these platforms are long dead (except maybe Apple), and the platforms dead.
However, just because the machines are effectively dead, doesn't 'mean there isn't still a fan community. And better yet, a lot of these platforms are still readily available, because they were made in such quantities that there are plenty hidden in attics and basements and still plentiful at swap meets
And of course, there are emulators. Almost all these new releases may come on floppy discs or cartridges and also digital download.
Practically any common 8-bit platform has new releases for it - the Atari 2600, C-64 (and other Commodores - VIC-20, C-128), NES, game boy, etc.
"As a game developer myself, gameplay-related analytics are incredibly valuable. That is, metrics that tell game designers about how the player progressed through the game in various ways."
In other words, you're too poor to hire a proper QA testing team from the get-go, and thus you need to rely upon the suckered general public to figure out shit that you should've figured out before you put the fucking game out for public consumption.
I'm not touching a damned thing you produce.
Well, QA lies. And if you're a small developer, your QA team consists of those you can recruit for the beta test, who generally end up being a self-selected group of people.
Sure, you may know how to kill the third boss - you coded it, but to everyone else, knowing you need to hit that blinking yellow dot may not be as obvious. Short of putting up giant signs saying "hit the blinking yellow dot", that is.
And since your group is generally self-selected, they may know a lot about the game already - perhaps they are well versed in your previous games and know you have a certain style, something newcomers might not catch onto. Thus what is obvious to everyone in your group, is completely unnatural and unexpected to the general public.
We've seen it all before - Apple or Microsoft release a product after extensive public beta tests, only to have some stupidly glaring bug that makes you wonder "didn't anyone actually TRY this?!". And usually, the answer is no - because no one in the group would consider actually doing it (it's so stupidly obvious to them it's the wrong thing to do, so why do it? Or perhaps, no one has a set up configured in that way, even if say, its what 50% of people use).
Everyone does analytics. Every FPS in the world has heatmaps that show where people get killed the most (sometimes they get published), or where people spend their time in a map (if a map is supposed to encourage movement around the map and avoid camping, knowing that people have found camping spots can be helpful in updates).
And finally, sometimes things just happen unexpectedly - a bug in the game, a bug in the map, and you find people have taken unexpected routes and strategies through the world. This can be important to see - perhaps you want to encourage this behavior in a sequel to the game, or maybe it's an emergent behaviour you need to stamp out as it buggers up the map dynamics, balance or general fun. You may only find it out long after the game is released and people have gotten to become experts and turned a formerly challenging level into a cakewalk because they exploit several errors in the map that individually didn't seem to do much.
And finally, it helps weed out imbalances - you may have a level that's completely balanced on paper, but experts down the road figure out if you do A, then B, then C, then D, your balance suddenly gets thrown way out of wack. People get very clever at figuring these things out.
Unless you were tracking the metrics and analytics, you'd never discover this, or worse, may not discover it in time to fix things and now the gaming public just says to avoid some aspect of your game because it's horrendously bugged.
With a desktop app, they can't track location and it is easier to share an account, and thus makes it harder to track payments to a particular individual. For instance, my family all share one PayPal account.
Venmo is "free", so you are the product. You are worth less, and are apparently worthless, when accessing the service from the desktop.
I think it's closer to a duplication of services. Venmo is for social payments - you use it when you want to split the bill with friends but don't carry cash, so you use Venmo when you're out to to send the payer your share of the bill.
While you're at the desktop, there's no reason to use Venmo - if you wanted to pay, you use Paypal at the desktop.
And that's where they want to draw the line - Venmo is for out-and-about payments that you do (which you may have done with cash, but since everyone's going all electronic, you use your phone to send your friend the money). You use Paypal for regular payments that can occur over the internet.
Considering Venmo is owned and operated by Paypal, this makes sense - why have two sites to do the same thing? Twice the work and one site will never be able to do something the other site can. So Paypal concentrates on being able to be the payment processor for websites and individuals, and Venmo be the "social" payment app friends use to send money between themselves. This would allow them to use technologies like NFC to tap money between accounts and such.
Also kind of reinforces the repayment immediately - just as people reimburse others immediately, you'd use Venmo the same way - not getting home and remembering you owe Bob $10 for your lunch.
when sending cops to somebody's home counts as attempted murder? Britain and Canada don't have this problem, btw. A bunch of Youtubers from those countries were genuinely confused by the concept of swatting. It just wouldn't work in their countries.
First of all, Britian and Canada aren't full of gun nuts, and guns we do have generally are used for either recreation, sport or hunting. From my interactions with Americans, it appears a lot of Americans use guns for a purpose other than those listed - namely, self-defense. Ignoring whether or not that is a valid purpose, that's a primary difference.
Heck, we don't have "Stand your Ground" laws, and the courts have agreed that you can only retaliate in a manner the situation dictates, so shooting a fleeing criminal in the back can land you manslaughter charges
Thus, the cops here rarely, even in hostage situations, are confronted with the firepower even the typical American seems to pack. And yes, even things like ballistic vests have to be registered.
And forget things like AR-15s and such - those are completely banned. As is concealed carry, and most handguns are highly restricted (typically must be locked "safe" until at the range).
That's what confuses most people in the world - because it seems in the US guns are literally everywhere, and everyone's got an AR-15 ready to shoot at anything that moves. Here those are generally illegal weapons so it's not necessary to bring out the heavy weapons and armor - the average hostage situation usually involves knives as the primary weapon.
Hrm, I don't know about you, but aren't we already having problems with little critters loving to eat the soy-insulating cabling modern cars use? They love the stuff and eat it up, causing short circuits galore.
Now people are suggesting continuing the practice and using it in buildings and cars? Seems like a potential case of being eaten (literally!) out of house and home.
And I know there's a joke about parking "in the wrong neighbourhood" and finding your car stripped, but now it seems it will literally start to happen. Park in the wrong spot, and you'll have fed all the little critters in the neighbourhood with your now swiss-cheese like car.
I honestly wonder who these people are, who flit around from place to place, using their laptop 30 minutes at a time. Sip of battery here, sip of battery there. Oops! Battery almost out, I'll just take smaller sips. I don't use my laptop like that, and I don't think most people do.
Most of the time, my work laptop is at my desk on AC power.
But I do go to meetings, and I carry it in, and the meetings can lasts anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours.
I think last week was the worst when I literally was flitting from meeting to meeting. No, I didn't bother bringing the adapter, if I needed it, I could run to my desk and fetch it.
"This means that after that date the Steam Client will no longer run on those versions of Windows."
I can understand the desire to not have to support the older operating systems. But, why completely stop in from running?
Why not just say, "if it breaks too bad" and let people risk it if they want to?
Well, everything breaks because of well, HTTPS.
XP and Vista just do not support modern day TLS encryption - you have to revert back to ancient ciphers in order to have a secure channel. You know, the ones that are vulnerable to heartbleed and the like exploits.
In order to disable those ciphers, you have to give up support for XP and Vista.
Just another victim if you want your HTTPS everywhere...
I've never quite gotten used to the "ribbon" interface in MS Office apps since 2007. Which is why I prefer LibreOffice, a menu system (accessible with keyboard shortcuts) seems much more logical to me than a mess of icons up top.
If you hit Alt, you know, the key you use to trigger any menu or other thing in Windows, you'll find the Ribbon helpfully pops up all the shortcuts. It first pops up the categories, then it'll list the items inside the ribbon category you select. And the quick menu is listed as Alt-1 through Alt-9 (also through the little popups).
The only annoying thing is that if you want to access what's on the current ribbon panel, you have to still select it, so if you'r elooking at the "home" ribbon on Word, you still have to press alt-h and then the letter of the option. It's treated internally as a menu system.
This may not hold true for other Ribbons, as Microsoft had 3 different ribbon implementations available. One was in Office, the second was used by other Microsoft products (notably, Visual Studio), the third was provided by Microsoft (or a third party?) to get a ribbon into third party applications.
And yes, this is handy to avoid having to mouse all the way over at times.
Where similar measures have been tried in other countries it has been found to be effective at reducing the total amount of plastic being used for bags of one kind of another. It seems that people use more of something if it is free*.
* Obviously the cost is rolled into their shopping bill, but that's psychologically very different to being charged a few cents at the checkout.
Hah. The few cents at checkout thing is a great example of greenwashing actually.
The real cost per plastic bag is stupidly cheap. It's fractions of a cent. The good quality ones are still under a penny each.
The fact that companies charge 5 cents each for them is a profit center - it's low enough that people don't bother with the reusable bags, and they always just buy 3 or 4 of them. It's like popcorn and soda at the movies - pure profit.
It's greenwashing, pure and simple. It makes the company look good in many ways (reducing plastic bag usage, "saving you money", etc) but in reality, everyone realizes it's a profit center.
For a store that may go through thousands of bags a day (at a real cost of maybe $20-30 or so), they rake in hundreds of dollars in bag fees. For a grocery store with less than 5% margins, that's a huge boost to the bottom line.
This of course became front and center in the spot light again today now that the Switch version of the game launched this morning, and a fuckton of people are pissed off that their in-game progress and paid content is entirely inaccessible on the Switch if they've ever touched the PS4 version.
They're pissed because Switch is the first mobile/portable platform that has real controllers. The appeal is you can take your progress with you - perhaps you played on PC or console at home, take your switch and play on the road with a controller. Yes, you can play on mobile, but touchscreen? Sure you may have gyro aim, but still.
I'm guessing this is one time everyone else should be moving to capitalize on Sony's mis-step.
I'd have thought if you were on a console blocking PC players from joining would be welcomed...?
Except in battle royale games, which require a massive number of players (most start with 100 players). Having players from different consoles and platforms means a bigger pool of players to begin with.
And I believe with this type of game, with rounds being really quick, advantages of platforms gets minimized.
I suspect Epic will quickly offer an option to unlink their PS4 account from their Epic account.
, it's that being about the size and weight of car it's packed with way more power hungry systems the RTG may not be able to power anymore once it's been going around for the better part of a decade
And the goal is to simply not power everything at once. There's a minimum amount of power it needs to run the basics, yes, and that minimum is probably served by the RTG for decades
All the power hungry science packages can simply be turned off when they're not needed or used, conserving available power as it decays. As it decays further, it means one has to be even more careful.
The Voyager probes are in the same boat - at first they had all the equipment powered up, but now as the RTG output decays more and more of the equipment has to be turned off.
The advantage Curiousity has is it's a rover. If you can't do everything at once, you can simply stop and do everything one at a time, or do what you can simultaneously within the power budget, then do other science when you're done with the first set. It may take longer, but that's how it rolls.
That's ridiculous. You had up to a year to file before Obama changed that if you were the inventor. Now, Obama changed the rules to first to file so that has destroyed the concept of the small guy using patents to protect their work.
The only difference between first to invent and first to file is when two people try to patent the same thing. In first to invent, the patent office has to examine all the documentation behind it and figure out who rightfully invented it first. In first to file, it's simple - whoever gets their application to the patent office first wins.
The "1 year disclosure" is a separate issue - in the US, you could disclose your idea to the public up to a year before filing your patent. That's it. Obviously, under first to file, this is no longer workable (since someone could see your idea and patent it first).
Be aware the US was the only country in the world with first to invent and 1 year disclosure. Every other country in the world was first to file, and no disclosure.
The implications are bigger - first, no disclosure means the first time someone speaks out in public about the idea, the idea is no longer patentable. By spilling the beans prior to filing the patent, you've invalidated your right to the patent (after all, what's to keep someone else from filing a patent somewhere else and stealing it from you?).
First to file makes no attempt to figure out who invented something first - so the little guy no longer has to prove he got this idea while hanging a clock, slipping and bonking his head on the toilet. BTW, it was rumored that Bell got the patent for the telephone by beating whomever else it was by about 15 minutes to the patent office.
This way, disclosure trumps patenting worldwide. The fact this guy's algorithm is public means you cannot patent it at all. What can be patented is a novel modification to it, though I'm not sure what Google did to it to make it work with video.
Depends on the coin. It's not all that crazy to think a mobile platform as an alternative to ads could pull in enough revenue from mining and selling alt coins to be a viable product.
Nearly 5 years ago, there was a plugin for Unity (game engine) to mine Bitcoin. Not sure if it was ever deployed, but your device was already running something intensive, so the miner would be hidden among the normal execution of the game anyways.
I think this was basically just prior to the bitcoin mania. Not sure if it ever left beta, but I do recall there being an extremely negative reaction to the article.
There's plenty of people out there who'd take that risk if they could pay less than full price.
Depends on the store. At the very least, it must be destroyed - rendered non-working. And stores take great care in this - stuff marked as destroyed cannot be sold or given to anyone but a recycler. (This is especially important if insurance claims are involved - a fire in a part of the warehouse may "destroy" everything, but insurance will require that every last item be accounted for - even if the product is sealed inside the packaging and thus still good (think products like booster packs for games and such, plus tons of shrinkwrapped and clamshell products).
Of course, other stores can do this - if they don't mind having Amazon hold onto them, you can list it on eBay and other sites as an "AS IS" product and have Amazon drop-ship it for you to them.
Problem is, it's up to the stores to do it - Amazon themselves can't do it since they don't appear to have an "AS IS" capability on their site that basically means you bought it, you can't return it, etc.
Customers demand the best graphics, full voice acting, more features than the previous games, and so forth.
No they don't. It's very clear that Nintendo systems do not have the power to do any of this, Even the latest Nintendo system (Switch) is a higher end mobile system, processing power wise.
What people want is fun. For a lot of people playing multiplayer FPS, fun comes in the form of well-balanced maps, weapons and scenarios, as well as careful network monitoring keeping cheaters at bay. For others, it's a cheery platformer.
Problem is, "fun" is hard. Making a well-balanced map is extremely difficult. Ensuring weapons aren't overpowered even more so. And monitoring, detection and banning of cheaters is even more difficult.
By comparison, it's easy to make graphics more detailed, hire celebrity talent, etc. It's a very measurable improvement over all the other things. I mean, you can't really sell more balanced maps, fair weapons, or even your anti-cheat system.
I suppose it's why I've been pulling away from video games of late - I used to buy tons of games every year. I have all the consoles, but I find I'm buying very little for them, except maybe the Switch. I do buy games on Steam for PC, but generally speaking I have such a huge backlog from my game buying days I don't usually buy a game unless it's under $10 (on sale). If it means waiting a year or so, so be it - very very very few game franchises out there mandate an immediate play.
That, and all the free games Xbox Live Gold gives me, plus the lower quality free games PS Plus gives me (the quality of PS+ games has gone down significantly compared to the PS3 era) means really, there is always a "new" game for me to try.
It's incredible, since most of my "videogaming" money now goes into board games, and half the fun is provided by other people - and not directly by playing the game itself. Heck, sometimes I'm excluded because of the player limit and I can still enjoy myself watching people play and comment on the games.
Our company doesn't use Agile anything. Strictly speaking, it's waterfall - we get a project from a customer, and we (engineers, sales and customer) work hard figuring out a list of requirements (we have to know what we're building, after all). This can take a little while - often engineering will scrap a list of requirements, step back, and ask the customer "what are you REALLY wanting here?"
As in, the customer gave us a list of stuff, but we stepped back, asked what they really wanted in the end (i.e., we go from the detailed view to the 10,000 foot view) This makes it possible to see if there is a better way to accomplish what the customer actually wants.
Then once we have requirements, we start building. Weekly, we'd meet with the customer and provide status updates, and the customer can redirect our efforts - perhaps a priority changed, or it turns out the customer doesn't want something anymore, and we work on new stuff. When something is complete, or a milestone reached, we cut a release and give the customer time to play with it and redirect our efforts again. Lather rinse repeat.
We have no "sprints" or tasks to do in a sprint - we have a list of what the customer wants done, and for the most part, those tasks take far longer than most sprints. (We have had many customers who do Agile and asked about what we'd do in the sprint, and we'd have to explain that the feature they want can't be broken down into one week work periods - it's a task that will take 3 weeks. We could break it into meaningless subtasks but that makes a huge assumption that you can work on a subtask alone - most of the work in a task is closely related so you may work on subtask A, switch to subtask B because A needs a modification in B, then go back to A, switch to C, etc.). ' For the most part, it works - customers are generally quite happy, they know where the sore points are and we fix them immediately, and it's happened that many projects start out as a tiny little one that grew into a huge multi-year thing as customers want to try us out, are satisfied and impressed with our work and then give us more bits and pieces to do.
And no, our releases are on the order of once a month or so - the systems are complex enough that builds can take a day or so (often customers get source code, but some parts they can't because it requires licensing they don't have, so we have to make partial binary builds. And yes, we test to make sure those actually build). And there's also a QA process too to ensure no regressions. Customers cannot skip QA (builds often signify milestones), but they can get "early releases" which mean they get builds as soon as they hit QA with the caveat that some things may be broken And it does mean sometimes we've halted the release because of a showstopper and take time to fix it and re-release.
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And chances are, your three movies a week won't tend to be expensive first run ones - you may have noticed that there are generally only 2-3 movies opening a week, and "big name" movies generally only have one (e.g., Star Wars). So in general, you're not likely to get people seeing all three first run, and probably even better, they won't all congregate on the busy periods (i.e., you're not likely to see 3 movies all day Friday, or all day Saturday), so you'd likely catch the latest, and then something else during the cheaper times of the week (e.g., midweek).
So in reality, they probably calculated that most people will see at most one brand new movie a week on opening day. If they see a first run movie after the first couple of weeks, the studio share goes down (first two weeks, maybe it's 100%/0% for the studio/theatre, then drops down to 75/25 or 50/50 as time goes on).
And if they were smart, they'd throw in small concessions now and again - especially if they realize people travel in groups (movie going is a social thing). So if someone has a pass and gets a free small popcorn, it generally will encourage "upgrading" to a large popcorn, as well as now everyone in the group would buy a drink. Or the other people now will want their own popcorn and a drink. And this can be encouraged by simply offering a small discount as well - say 10% to everyone in the group if someone has a pass.
It's much more likely AMC will succeed in this because they know exactly their customer behavior, and even things like cheap or free concessions to the cardholder or their group can encourage more sales (e.g., if a small popcorn causes everyone to buy concessions versus no one buying in the first place)..
It would be a perk I expect customers to get as a bonus - which is a win-win - AMC gets more concession sales, and customers get extra value.
I've wondered - would it be possible for the scheduler to schedule related threads together on a core? I mean, if you query the number of processors, it's easy to tell how many sockets you have (physical CPUs), how many cores each physical CPU has, and how many threads each core has. Most schedulers don't differentiate between threads/cores/sockets but it's possible to tell.
So instead of disabling it completely, or enabling it completely, you only schedule same-process threads on each core? After all, Spectre/Meltdown doesn't really apply at the thread level (why go through all that effort to exfiltrate information from the same process, when you already have full access to the address space?). So a scheduler would schedule same process threads on cores or threads, and different processes on different cores only. After all, it's hyper threading, so you're supposed to do that to begin with, not run disparate process threads on each thread unit.
Or how about the obvious - after a year, Google can't seem to make money off it and then cans the app. It's not just the data harvesting part, it's the fact that if you use it and like it, and Google doesn't make enough money from it, they will just can it. Google is good at that sort of thing, making it hard to rely on them for any sort of long term support
An interesting form of greenwashing presented itself when some restaurants did that - get rid of plastic straws. Because of that, I ordered the drinks "without ice" - i hate trying to drink from a cup with ice in it (something a straw avoids nicely, but I can adapt).
Turns out some restaurants really hate when you do this - as if the fraction of penny of soda saved by ice (it really only costs a few cents for a 20oz soda) was going to hurt them. Heck, the cost of the straw probably makes up for it.
Still, it's interesting how some restaurants try to cheat you a few cents at a time. Much easier to do with a straw since you don't notice how much ice is used, versus having to drink from the cup itself and thus noticing all the ice they put in.
And no, unless you're in a restaurant in the south without air conditioning, your drink will not get warm. It will stay reasonably cold without ice.
Oh, you mean Apple hasn't for the past 3 years allowed side loading?
There's a whole ecosystem around apps that are not allowed in the App Store - lots of emulators for iOS are available.
In fact, it's slightly ironic, because Apple is enforcing the provision that if you use this, the app MUST be open-source. You cannot ship just binaries and have the build system link it. (Well you could, but Apple frowns on that). It's why there's a whole ecosystem of apps for iOS that are source only, but things like f.lux didn't (they p rovided binaries only).
And if you don't care, there are tools for Windows that use the same mechanisms to sideload precompiled apps the same way. It's only the official tool (Xcode) that Apple requests you supply source with.
And yes, there is slight irony in that Apple is doing the open-source enforcement thing.
It's kinda-sorta similar, but that's about it. You have to remember that the emergency systems in North America and Europe are completely different. In North America, the "old E911" centers are POTS based with digital signalling aside that lets you get GPS data (through the control plane). That is, the moment you call 911, the modem itself will acquire GPS lock and transmit it on the control channel so while you're on the call, the cellular switches and all that will pass it to the E911 center.
New style 911 centers are VoIP based - they are effectively all data connectivity, which is why they can do things like handle texts and all that now as well. These centers can still receive E911 data "the old way" but since they are fully data hookups, they do allow for enhanced location awareness Here GPS data can be sent any which way - even VoIP phones equipped with GPS locators can send their proper location when you call 911 and not rely on the subscriber database.
Europe, because they did not have such ability to use the control plane data, only gets GPS data via the user plane, so your phone will have to create and establish a data session to the carrier first, then connect to the 911 center as if you were connect to a website. It's a system that works well but lacks any real prioritization features since the location information is sent via a normal data channel. It's also fraught with issues - if your SIM does not support data, for example, it doesn't work (the system will force a data connection, and if the SIM lacks the configuration information to establish the data connection, then it's not possible).
Basically, they're two competing systems that everyone will have to support in the end.
Locks are not about 100% security - nothing can accomplish that. No lock can secure a house, when a burglar can just smash a window.
The goal is to provide adequate security - any lock that requires lock picks already qualify. The locks that are easily defeated without actually picking the lock I deem inadequate - like one lock I saw that was "smart" and had fingerprint authentication. To defeat it, you just need about 10 seconds and a torx screwdriver - you undo the three screws around the edge and the lock falls apart, shackle and all. That is inadequate - you did not have to tamper with the lock mechanism in any way to bypass the lock - opening the case was sufficient.
Then there was another lock, and he used a Ramset gun on it. To me, even though it failed, I see it as pretty strong because that's one specialized tool to be carrying around, makes a lot of noise, and really leaves a lot of evidence behind of malfeasance.
No, just like the 80s, most software developed for these platforms were developed by hobbyists.
You're going to need a regular day job. The 8-Bit Guy on YouTube released a game last year, and made about 1000 copies of his game for C64 (at least the materials - boxes and such. Manuals and disks he replicates himself). They sold quickly, but he's been hesitant to order a new print run in case they hang around far too long. (Of course, he has a "baggie" version of his game with the disk and manual in a plastic bag, again, like the 80s).
The market is small, and it's really easy to get into. Usually that's a recipe for disaster as it leads to an influx of poor quality software, but it's a niche small enough that it doesn't generally attract much attention. The tools are easy to get and really easy to develop for these days (since most emulators have really good debuggers, and yes, you're developing in emulators because you can assemble/run/debug much quicker on your desktop PC (with nice high res screen, quality keyboard, etc) than to write it out on your C-64 and debug and assemble there.
If you're lucky, you'll make a couple hundred bucks out of it. Like I said, hobby money.
Well, they aren't supported - the companies behind these platforms are long dead (except maybe Apple), and the platforms dead.
However, just because the machines are effectively dead, doesn't 'mean there isn't still a fan community. And better yet, a lot of these platforms are still readily available, because they were made in such quantities that there are plenty hidden in attics and basements and still plentiful at swap meets
And of course, there are emulators. Almost all these new releases may come on floppy discs or cartridges and also digital download.
Practically any common 8-bit platform has new releases for it - the Atari 2600, C-64 (and other Commodores - VIC-20, C-128), NES, game boy, etc.
Well, QA lies. And if you're a small developer, your QA team consists of those you can recruit for the beta test, who generally end up being a self-selected group of people.
Sure, you may know how to kill the third boss - you coded it, but to everyone else, knowing you need to hit that blinking yellow dot may not be as obvious. Short of putting up giant signs saying "hit the blinking yellow dot", that is.
And since your group is generally self-selected, they may know a lot about the game already - perhaps they are well versed in your previous games and know you have a certain style, something newcomers might not catch onto. Thus what is obvious to everyone in your group, is completely unnatural and unexpected to the general public.
We've seen it all before - Apple or Microsoft release a product after extensive public beta tests, only to have some stupidly glaring bug that makes you wonder "didn't anyone actually TRY this?!". And usually, the answer is no - because no one in the group would consider actually doing it (it's so stupidly obvious to them it's the wrong thing to do, so why do it? Or perhaps, no one has a set up configured in that way, even if say, its what 50% of people use).
Everyone does analytics. Every FPS in the world has heatmaps that show where people get killed the most (sometimes they get published), or where people spend their time in a map (if a map is supposed to encourage movement around the map and avoid camping, knowing that people have found camping spots can be helpful in updates).
And finally, sometimes things just happen unexpectedly - a bug in the game, a bug in the map, and you find people have taken unexpected routes and strategies through the world. This can be important to see - perhaps you want to encourage this behavior in a sequel to the game, or maybe it's an emergent behaviour you need to stamp out as it buggers up the map dynamics, balance or general fun. You may only find it out long after the game is released and people have gotten to become experts and turned a formerly challenging level into a cakewalk because they exploit several errors in the map that individually didn't seem to do much.
And finally, it helps weed out imbalances - you may have a level that's completely balanced on paper, but experts down the road figure out if you do A, then B, then C, then D, your balance suddenly gets thrown way out of wack. People get very clever at figuring these things out.
Unless you were tracking the metrics and analytics, you'd never discover this, or worse, may not discover it in time to fix things and now the gaming public just says to avoid some aspect of your game because it's horrendously bugged.
I think it's closer to a duplication of services. Venmo is for social payments - you use it when you want to split the bill with friends but don't carry cash, so you use Venmo when you're out to to send the payer your share of the bill.
While you're at the desktop, there's no reason to use Venmo - if you wanted to pay, you use Paypal at the desktop.
And that's where they want to draw the line - Venmo is for out-and-about payments that you do (which you may have done with cash, but since everyone's going all electronic, you use your phone to send your friend the money). You use Paypal for regular payments that can occur over the internet.
Considering Venmo is owned and operated by Paypal, this makes sense - why have two sites to do the same thing? Twice the work and one site will never be able to do something the other site can. So Paypal concentrates on being able to be the payment processor for websites and individuals, and Venmo be the "social" payment app friends use to send money between themselves. This would allow them to use technologies like NFC to tap money between accounts and such.
Also kind of reinforces the repayment immediately - just as people reimburse others immediately, you'd use Venmo the same way - not getting home and remembering you owe Bob $10 for your lunch.
First of all, Britian and Canada aren't full of gun nuts, and guns we do have generally are used for either recreation, sport or hunting. From my interactions with Americans, it appears a lot of Americans use guns for a purpose other than those listed - namely, self-defense. Ignoring whether or not that is a valid purpose, that's a primary difference.
Heck, we don't have "Stand your Ground" laws, and the courts have agreed that you can only retaliate in a manner the situation dictates, so shooting a fleeing criminal in the back can land you manslaughter charges
Thus, the cops here rarely, even in hostage situations, are confronted with the firepower even the typical American seems to pack. And yes, even things like ballistic vests have to be registered.
And forget things like AR-15s and such - those are completely banned. As is concealed carry, and most handguns are highly restricted (typically must be locked "safe" until at the range).
That's what confuses most people in the world - because it seems in the US guns are literally everywhere, and everyone's got an AR-15 ready to shoot at anything that moves. Here those are generally illegal weapons so it's not necessary to bring out the heavy weapons and armor - the average hostage situation usually involves knives as the primary weapon.
Hrm, I don't know about you, but aren't we already having problems with little critters loving to eat the soy-insulating cabling modern cars use? They love the stuff and eat it up, causing short circuits galore.
Now people are suggesting continuing the practice and using it in buildings and cars? Seems like a potential case of being eaten (literally!) out of house and home.
And I know there's a joke about parking "in the wrong neighbourhood" and finding your car stripped, but now it seems it will literally start to happen. Park in the wrong spot, and you'll have fed all the little critters in the neighbourhood with your now swiss-cheese like car.
Most of the time, my work laptop is at my desk on AC power.
But I do go to meetings, and I carry it in, and the meetings can lasts anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours.
I think last week was the worst when I literally was flitting from meeting to meeting. No, I didn't bother bringing the adapter, if I needed it, I could run to my desk and fetch it.
Well, everything breaks because of well, HTTPS.
XP and Vista just do not support modern day TLS encryption - you have to revert back to ancient ciphers in order to have a secure channel. You know, the ones that are vulnerable to heartbleed and the like exploits.
In order to disable those ciphers, you have to give up support for XP and Vista.
Just another victim if you want your HTTPS everywhere...
If you hit Alt, you know, the key you use to trigger any menu or other thing in Windows, you'll find the Ribbon helpfully pops up all the shortcuts. It first pops up the categories, then it'll list the items inside the ribbon category you select. And the quick menu is listed as Alt-1 through Alt-9 (also through the little popups).
The only annoying thing is that if you want to access what's on the current ribbon panel, you have to still select it, so if you'r elooking at the "home" ribbon on Word, you still have to press alt-h and then the letter of the option. It's treated internally as a menu system.
This may not hold true for other Ribbons, as Microsoft had 3 different ribbon implementations available. One was in Office, the second was used by other Microsoft products (notably, Visual Studio), the third was provided by Microsoft (or a third party?) to get a ribbon into third party applications.
And yes, this is handy to avoid having to mouse all the way over at times.
Hah. The few cents at checkout thing is a great example of greenwashing actually.
The real cost per plastic bag is stupidly cheap. It's fractions of a cent. The good quality ones are still under a penny each.
The fact that companies charge 5 cents each for them is a profit center - it's low enough that people don't bother with the reusable bags, and they always just buy 3 or 4 of them. It's like popcorn and soda at the movies - pure profit.
It's greenwashing, pure and simple. It makes the company look good in many ways (reducing plastic bag usage, "saving you money", etc) but in reality, everyone realizes it's a profit center.
For a store that may go through thousands of bags a day (at a real cost of maybe $20-30 or so), they rake in hundreds of dollars in bag fees. For a grocery store with less than 5% margins, that's a huge boost to the bottom line.
They're pissed because Switch is the first mobile/portable platform that has real controllers. The appeal is you can take your progress with you - perhaps you played on PC or console at home, take your switch and play on the road with a controller. Yes, you can play on mobile, but touchscreen? Sure you may have gyro aim, but still.
I'm guessing this is one time everyone else should be moving to capitalize on Sony's mis-step.
Except in battle royale games, which require a massive number of players (most start with 100 players). Having players from different consoles and platforms means a bigger pool of players to begin with.
And I believe with this type of game, with rounds being really quick, advantages of platforms gets minimized.
I suspect Epic will quickly offer an option to unlink their PS4 account from their Epic account.
And the goal is to simply not power everything at once. There's a minimum amount of power it needs to run the basics, yes, and that minimum is probably served by the RTG for decades
All the power hungry science packages can simply be turned off when they're not needed or used, conserving available power as it decays. As it decays further, it means one has to be even more careful.
The Voyager probes are in the same boat - at first they had all the equipment powered up, but now as the RTG output decays more and more of the equipment has to be turned off.
The advantage Curiousity has is it's a rover. If you can't do everything at once, you can simply stop and do everything one at a time, or do what you can simultaneously within the power budget, then do other science when you're done with the first set. It may take longer, but that's how it rolls.
The only difference between first to invent and first to file is when two people try to patent the same thing. In first to invent, the patent office has to examine all the documentation behind it and figure out who rightfully invented it first. In first to file, it's simple - whoever gets their application to the patent office first wins.
The "1 year disclosure" is a separate issue - in the US, you could disclose your idea to the public up to a year before filing your patent. That's it. Obviously, under first to file, this is no longer workable (since someone could see your idea and patent it first).
Be aware the US was the only country in the world with first to invent and 1 year disclosure. Every other country in the world was first to file, and no disclosure.
The implications are bigger - first, no disclosure means the first time someone speaks out in public about the idea, the idea is no longer patentable. By spilling the beans prior to filing the patent, you've invalidated your right to the patent (after all, what's to keep someone else from filing a patent somewhere else and stealing it from you?).
First to file makes no attempt to figure out who invented something first - so the little guy no longer has to prove he got this idea while hanging a clock, slipping and bonking his head on the toilet. BTW, it was rumored that Bell got the patent for the telephone by beating whomever else it was by about 15 minutes to the patent office.
This way, disclosure trumps patenting worldwide. The fact this guy's algorithm is public means you cannot patent it at all. What can be patented is a novel modification to it, though I'm not sure what Google did to it to make it work with video.
Nearly 5 years ago, there was a plugin for Unity (game engine) to mine Bitcoin. Not sure if it was ever deployed, but your device was already running something intensive, so the miner would be hidden among the normal execution of the game anyways.
I think this was basically just prior to the bitcoin mania. Not sure if it ever left beta, but I do recall there being an extremely negative reaction to the article.
Depends on the store. At the very least, it must be destroyed - rendered non-working. And stores take great care in this - stuff marked as destroyed cannot be sold or given to anyone but a recycler. (This is especially important if insurance claims are involved - a fire in a part of the warehouse may "destroy" everything, but insurance will require that every last item be accounted for - even if the product is sealed inside the packaging and thus still good (think products like booster packs for games and such, plus tons of shrinkwrapped and clamshell products).
Of course, other stores can do this - if they don't mind having Amazon hold onto them, you can list it on eBay and other sites as an "AS IS" product and have Amazon drop-ship it for you to them.
Problem is, it's up to the stores to do it - Amazon themselves can't do it since they don't appear to have an "AS IS" capability on their site that basically means you bought it, you can't return it, etc.
No they don't. It's very clear that Nintendo systems do not have the power to do any of this, Even the latest Nintendo system (Switch) is a higher end mobile system, processing power wise.
What people want is fun. For a lot of people playing multiplayer FPS, fun comes in the form of well-balanced maps, weapons and scenarios, as well as careful network monitoring keeping cheaters at bay. For others, it's a cheery platformer.
Problem is, "fun" is hard. Making a well-balanced map is extremely difficult. Ensuring weapons aren't overpowered even more so. And monitoring, detection and banning of cheaters is even more difficult.
By comparison, it's easy to make graphics more detailed, hire celebrity talent, etc. It's a very measurable improvement over all the other things. I mean, you can't really sell more balanced maps, fair weapons, or even your anti-cheat system.
I suppose it's why I've been pulling away from video games of late - I used to buy tons of games every year. I have all the consoles, but I find I'm buying very little for them, except maybe the Switch. I do buy games on Steam for PC, but generally speaking I have such a huge backlog from my game buying days I don't usually buy a game unless it's under $10 (on sale). If it means waiting a year or so, so be it - very very very few game franchises out there mandate an immediate play.
That, and all the free games Xbox Live Gold gives me, plus the lower quality free games PS Plus gives me (the quality of PS+ games has gone down significantly compared to the PS3 era) means really, there is always a "new" game for me to try.
It's incredible, since most of my "videogaming" money now goes into board games, and half the fun is provided by other people - and not directly by playing the game itself. Heck, sometimes I'm excluded because of the player limit and I can still enjoy myself watching people play and comment on the games.
Guess I gotta go chase everyone off my lawn now.
I've never gotten Agile.
Our company doesn't use Agile anything. Strictly speaking, it's waterfall - we get a project from a customer, and we (engineers, sales and customer) work hard figuring out a list of requirements (we have to know what we're building, after all). This can take a little while - often engineering will scrap a list of requirements, step back, and ask the customer "what are you REALLY wanting here?"
As in, the customer gave us a list of stuff, but we stepped back, asked what they really wanted in the end (i.e., we go from the detailed view to the 10,000 foot view) This makes it possible to see if there is a better way to accomplish what the customer actually wants.
Then once we have requirements, we start building. Weekly, we'd meet with the customer and provide status updates, and the customer can redirect our efforts - perhaps a priority changed, or it turns out the customer doesn't want something anymore, and we work on new stuff. When something is complete, or a milestone reached, we cut a release and give the customer time to play with it and redirect our efforts again. Lather rinse repeat.
We have no "sprints" or tasks to do in a sprint - we have a list of what the customer wants done, and for the most part, those tasks take far longer than most sprints. (We have had many customers who do Agile and asked about what we'd do in the sprint, and we'd have to explain that the feature they want can't be broken down into one week work periods - it's a task that will take 3 weeks. We could break it into meaningless subtasks but that makes a huge assumption that you can work on a subtask alone - most of the work in a task is closely related so you may work on subtask A, switch to subtask B because A needs a modification in B, then go back to A, switch to C, etc.).
'
For the most part, it works - customers are generally quite happy, they know where the sore points are and we fix them immediately, and it's happened that many projects start out as a tiny little one that grew into a huge multi-year thing as customers want to try us out, are satisfied and impressed with our work and then give us more bits and pieces to do.
And no, our releases are on the order of once a month or so - the systems are complex enough that builds can take a day or so (often customers get source code, but some parts they can't because it requires licensing they don't have, so we have to make partial binary builds. And yes, we test to make sure those actually build). And there's also a QA process too to ensure no regressions. Customers cannot skip QA (builds often signify milestones), but they can get "early releases" which mean they get builds as soon as they hit QA with the caveat that some things may be broken And it does mean sometimes we've halted the release because of a showstopper and take time to fix it and re-release.