I've said it a few times before: Apple is a Consumer Electronics Phone marketing company. One single product - the iPhone - accounts for half their revenues and nearly 60% of their profits. EVERYTHING ELSE - iPads, iPods, Macs, iTunes, software, accessories, etc - accounts for the minority of their revenue and profits.
Apple has evolved in spectacularly profitable fashion to become a literal one-trick pony - the iPhone. They are losing marketshare in all other areas, nothing else has taken fire like the iPhone. So they are single-mindedly pursuing the iPhone metaphor across all business segments hoping it will ignite those other, smaller segments. But so far - nothing's caught.
Apple's big problem is going to be keeping the momentum in the phone market, or replacing it with momentum in another market. The iPhone is losing marketshare in the smartphone world, and its biggest share is in the US and EU markets - which are close to saturation. The growth markets for smartphones is China, South East Asia, and India - and Apple has very little penetration or positive growth in those markets. As the US and EU market growth for smartphones slows down, and that is coupled with Apple's slow loss of marketshare in those markets, they will face falling revenues and profits from the iPhone business.
Yeah, the iPhone was a huge hit in 1997, when Apple was nearly dead. Oh wait. the iPhone wasn't invented yet.
No, Steve Jobs came back, and released the iMac, which was a wildly popular computer. You know, that floppy-less computer.
Then in 2001, came the iPod, right at the time portable music players were taking off ("no wireless, less space than a nomad, lame").
Then in 2005 Apple switched to Intel.
And finally, in 2007, Apple released the iPhone.
So for 10 years from when Jobs took over a company that was basically dysfunctional, Apple magically created money off a hypothetical iPhone that never existed for that time.
No. Today, the iPhone makes 50%+ profits at Apple, and the iPod is dying, a product they profited immensely for the past 6 years prior to its release, which was inevitable.
Apple, like other companies, reinvented themselves - from computers (the iMac basically "saved" the company), to MP3 players (iPods) to smartphones.
As for marketshare - yes, Android phones outsell iPhones. However, when Apple basically gets 66% of profits of the entire mobile sector (including featurephones and Androids and everything else), you think Apple really cares? (Source: http://www.macrumors.com/2011/07/29/apples-profit-share-among-top-mobile-phone-vendors-rises-to-66/ ). This profit share is up from 57%. It basically means Android phones are being sold for little profit, while Apple rakes in more money per iPhone sale than Android sale by a huge margin.
And yes, iPhone profits will drop. And Apple will have to produce a new product. Perhaps it'll kill the iPhone like the iPhone killed the iPod. Apple's been doing the one-trick pony thing 3 times in the past 15 years. They know they have to come up with something new.
The Classic emulator was meant only for individual applications, so OS 9's shell enhancements such as the Chooser and the Launcher were probably out of the question unless you were one of the lucky few mac geeks dual booting into their full-featured OS 9 installs prior to the sale of the last OS 9 CD.
Funny. When I bought my brand new powerbook G4 8 years ago, I was still using a 68k Mac running System 7.5. The PowerBook came with 10.3 and only does AFP via TCP/IP. System 7.5 doesn't offer AFP via TCP/IP - neither Mac could see each other.
I started Classic - it runs apps, but you can get into the environment by using a Classic app. Launch the Classic app, the Apple Menu transforms into the old MacOS system menu, and Chooser worked - it saw my old Mac and I could mount it. Heck, all the little desk accessories worked, and I could go into the MacOS control panel and play with MacInTalk.
Classic was basically a paravirtualized environment.
One drawback is Amazon allows you to download and install the app even if your phone is not compatible. This is because Amazon wants you to get a free copy of the app if you upgrade your phone or Android OS in the future.
However there is no warning of this to end users, so what ends up happening is random bugs or FC's which lead to poor reviews by uneducated users.
Given Apple's App Store has the same problem (it too lets you download any app you want, paid or free, from within iTunes), you would expect it to be a huge problem within the App Store - which it doesn't seem to be.
Sure, you come across a bunch of them (and you can tell because the first two lines of the description are "This only works on iPhone 4 or iPod Touch 3/4. Require Gyroscope!" or other such thing like "Requires recent device due to graphics" and somesuch. But if there's been a request to Apple to have people restrict downloads, it certainly isn't very public.
Whereas for Android it seems to be common. And I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to download an app that was "free today" buy my Android device couldn't run it now. And given Google's inability to list all the apps I've obtained (I'm not sure what shows up on the list - it seems random even though all were free), it seems I need to root to backup all the APKs just because I might have to pay for them later.
Anyhow, Apple has promised to pay Samsung damages should its injunction be found invalid. So Apple believes it has a strong case, and if not, well, free money from Apple, and they didn't have to sell one device to earn it. (Not that the first mover advantage would've helped - those in AU who wanted it would've imported it much more cheaply from the US than buy it retail...).
I use flash blockers which gets rid of most of the bother, but as html5 takes off that will stop working.
Why would HTML5 remove that? It removes the ability of your flash blocker to block flash, but your browser can still block audio. In fact, it's easier for it to do so than trying to block audio ads.
Hell, your browser can even do the old "Site X wants to play audio" notification thing, far better than a flash video can. Hell, it's how people are getting around flash blockers - by having the ads play before loading the real flash content.
I hate to break the news to ya pal but governments haven't needed MSFT to provide backdoors in years. As someone who spends 6 days a week fixing the things I can tell you foolproof way to get into a good 90%+ of the machines out there. 1.- For the guys a webpage that says "Hey want to look at teh titiez! Just run our Iz_Not_Backdoor_Iz-Codec.exe to get teh free pronz!" 2.-For the ladies a chat window that pops up "Hey you just got to see teh cute kitteh videoz!" which takes them to a malware laden page, and 3.- for the old folks a page that looks like Windows Update that says "ZOMG you got teh viruz ZOMG! Run Iz_Not_Backdoor_Iz-cleaner to kill it ZOMG!" and voila! you have just pwned any damned machine you want.
I wish it weren't so but I have actually seen a user uninstall the AV because it wouldn't let him install malware so sadly i know it is true. Linux or Mac OSX wouldn't help either because all you'd have to do is send Iz_Not_Backdoor_Iz- stuff _u_want.sh with helpful instructions on how to run it and they WILL run it as long as they think they are getting something, titties, free movies, kitteh pictures, or protection from a mythical bug.
You've just described the Dancing Pigs problem. And worse yet, there's no security system on the market that will solve it.
It doesn't matter how many dialogs you throw up, how many warnings and big scary screens - the user will find a way around it. Oh yeah, they won't read any warning signs either.
The only real effective way is to run LUA, in which the user doesn't have any sort of admin priviledges and passwords (and thus can't blindly type it in). But that isn't practical at all, especially for home PCs. For family PCs it's a bit easier (especially with remote access), but then updates are a pain.
And no, sending them off to Geek Squad after refusing the fix their PC won't doing it either - they'll just bitch about how much Geek Squad charges.
All OSes suffer from this problem. OS X, Linux, Windows. Even iOS and Android. Either one has to do an iOS style walled garden (no guarantees), or accept that having to deal with infected PCs and phones are going to be a fact of life. (Android's permission screen is a nice step, if you limit Android users to tech-savvy people. Eveyrone else just hits "Install".)
The real problem with this, is that soon advertisers will start making canvas ads instead of flash ads, and then what have end users really gained? The reason that Flash is hated is mostly because it's been misused. And now it will be easy to misuse HTML5/canvas too.
The problem is, Flash has way less customizability than my browser.
With NoScript, I can control where Javascript comes from. That HTML ad? Blocked and rejected. But if I was using some Flash app and it ran an ad, I have no way of controlling it because Flash doesn't offer me that level of control. Or even the ability to let me easily figure out where that offensive element came from so I can manually block it at the firewall.
Plus, if Flash decided to create popups (it can), it's a lot harder for the browser to block it. Right now, I'm not sure if there's anything keeping a Flash ad from taking over the screen other than the generic "Press ESC to return" generated by Flash. If it requires a click, good, but then you'll have a flash ad that on the slightest thing interprets it as a "go full screen" command.
The fact that HTML5 requires the browser user to manually go full screen is a good thing.
Of course getting the average user to help you install malware is trivially easy, even after all these years of MSFT trying to warn people not just to run any old thing they find on the net.
It's called the dancing pigs problem, and is probably the biggest problem with any security systems. Warning the user isn't enough - the user will do anything that gets in the way of what they want to do.
Anyway I think his statement must be blowing smoke. I personally would never buy any product with such restrictive DRM, but say I had bought the game, I for one would have also immediately downloaded a hacked version just so I could play it offline, and so I could play after they turn off their DRM server when the product is no longer making them money. It seems to me, overly restrictive DRM would necessarily cause more piracy not less.
What they do is simple. You advertise it as storing your game saves In The Cloud(tm). Sorta like SteamPlay where the game saves are uploaded to the server.
Except in Ubisoft's case, if the game save server isn't available, then no game saving is possible. Thus initial "offline play" basically consists of running through the game and hoping to not die (which requires reloading a game save) as well as keeping the game running on the PC for the duration of play.
So, it's DRM, but it can be spun around as "Cloud Saves - pick up and play your game anywhere on any PC".
The beauty of this DRM scheme is, well, nothing needs to be installed on the PC to handle it - no special drivers, no licensing agents, nothing. The game starts up, connects to your account, and accesses your save on the remote side. Plus, it can be advertised as a feature.
Google blew past evil and kept on going. They just did it right under everybody's nose.
Not really, it's just the public being fickle. Or/. to be more precise. The same things happened with Amazon, Apple, Second Life, MySpace, and Facebook - at one point it was all adoration, then hatred, and now indifference. Google's just the next party on the list (at the adoration stage), while Apple is at the hatred stage.
About the only company not on that list is Microsoft, but I guess the "adoration" part happened earlier.
It's just like social networks came and went - Second Life, MySpace, and now Facebook - they come in to fix their predecessor, grow big, someone else comes up, boom. Facebook is seeing that from G+.
But games need to support it, no? The problem with third-party, optional addons is that game developers can't count on people having them unless they want to restrict immensely their market.
it's a little aluminum nub (with a protective plastic bottom to protect the screen) inside a plastic frame. The aluminum makes it work with the capacitative screen. It basically adds tactile feedback to the virtual onscreen joystick(it feels like a thumbpad, it doesn't shift, etc).
For what it is, it makes playing games on a touchscreen MUCH better. You can't do better with a touchscreen.
The problem I have with Aldi in the US is that they'll advertise something like a 5000W portable gas generator for $350, then only send two to the stores so that unless you camp out in front of the store with a kubotan to fed off your opponents (some call them "shoppers"), you ain't gettin' one.
A lot of stores do that - they usually call them "door crashers". And in the US, it oddly usually happens on the Friday that follows the 4th Thursday of November for whatever reason. The prevalence of online sales though has dampened it somewhat, so you usually see websites come to a crashing halt the moment the clock ticks from 11:59:59 to midnight (at whatever timezone they're using).
2, Routing hardware has been supporting ipv6 for a LONG time... Cisco introduced support for it in 2001 - 10 years ago, i would hardly call the current hardware "1st generation". Windows also gained production support in 2001 (XP), and other systems had it around the same time or earlier.
I was mucking around with L3 switches because I needed to test IPv6 routing with some software I wrote (part of the network stack - I needed to make sure traceroutev6 and pingv6 worked). The first switch I got said it had software support for Ipv6 routing, and yes, it had the ipv6 commands, but no, it didn't route.
I then got a hold of a spare 48-port PoE GigE switch (also Cisco). Alas, no one bought the IPv6 option.
Cisco may have supported it since 2001, but until recently it's a paid option. You could buy the switches with or without IPv6 routing (you can buy an upgrade license later). And naturally, people bought the cheaper IPv4 only gear.
No, the big reason why the transition stalled is the IPv6 proponents have failed to look beyond the opportunities IPv6 brings and see the reality. First, end-to-end connectivity is dead. Blame NAT if you want, but even with IPv6 I'm going to stick a firewall up and have it deny incoming by default, and pass through outgoing 80 and 443. Next, end-to-end connectivity isn't needed for most situations, as proven by the success of NAT. Finally, NAT gives one benefit - it isolates my network numbering from my ISPs. I don't care what IP addresses my ISP gives - my internal network numbering works independently. IPv6 tries to complicate this by allowing multiple IPs so I can have internal IPs, and external routable IPs - nice but a PITA if I'm having issues.
That and the IPv6 proponents seem to keep blocking any implementationj of NAT-PT and NATv6 - I can bet for a good number of uesrs, it's Good Enough(tm) (like NAT is right now).
The point of stuff like Transformers, My Little Pony, GI Joe, etc is to sell toys. Hasbro is a toy company. The fact that they can make 30 minute "ads" that children love to watch is a bonus.
Hell, Hasbro basically licensed Transformers to Paramount for nothing - Paramount keeps all the cash from the movie. Hasbro reaps the rewards of people buying the toys. (It may have changed with the success of the first movie - but it was true for the first - completely funded and Paramount kept the profits).
What's happening here is basically fans have created ads for Hasbro. If they sell more toys as a result, even better.
NATv6 exists. As does NAT-PT (which actually does translation so IPv4-only can access IPv6-only and vice-versa).
I don't see why we can't have NATv6 routers now - I like the fact that my internal network numbering doesn't change whenever my ISP decides to give me a new prefix. So I don't get end-to-end connectivity. I don't care - even if I did, I'd stick a firewall in front and it'll break end-to-end connectivity anyways.
Also, unlike Move or the Wii, the Kinect doesn't require a controller. Which means... you can use a regular normal controller with Kinect and have it's added capabilities used elsewhere.
Mass Effect 3 is to support voice commands. Other games have gestures you can do whilst using a controller. No one will play an FPS with Kinect only, but there's no reason why Halo 4 can't have Kinect augmentation. Or other games - wasn't the next Forza supposed to let you turn your head to look around? Certainly better than trying to do it via a d-pad on the wheel controller. (And yeah, there were TrackIRs, but who wanted to put reflective dots on their head? Though it was popular with the flight sim crowds, who could put the dots on their helmets instead).
Eye Toy and the like can't manage that - they deal with a 2D image and use various tricks to separate the background from the foreground (notably movement) while Kinect uses the cheap but effective structured light fields to do 3D mapping so the player can be tracked always, even if they plop on the couch and not move.
After watching the Ghost Recon future soldier demo videos, it seems like the kinect is certainly CAPABLE of actually tracking minute motions (the guy opening and closing his hand to shoot). For example if you just open the calbration menu, you can barely make out your fingers if you open and close your hand unless you are extremely close, but if you boot up the UFC Trainer the little green tracking display in the corner has a much higher level of detail.
Actually, the problem with Kinect is the Xbox360's USB2.0 port - it's not fast enough.
The kinect is equipped with a VGA camera (60fps), and the QVGA IR camera (60fps) and a 4-microphone array. This configuration just barely falls under the current USB bandwidth supported by the 360. And by current, it's what you can achieve with the 360 right now. The theoretical maximum transfer speed for the hardware is around 35MB/sec. Achieving that would let them run the IR camera at full VGA resolution, which should make it possible to detect fingers.
It's very possible Microsoft has got it working in a beta state for the E3 demos, but nothing solid and releasable yet (perhaps the overhead on the CPU is too high - it is USB, after all)
Sorry, but no. Given the choice, they're cheap bastards. VVVVV is easily worth $5 on its own. The average Windows purchase price is $3.66. And Yet It Moves is easily worth $5 on its own. The average Windows purchase price is $3.66. Cogs is easily worth $5. The average Wind...well, you get the picture. I bought one bundle for more than the Linux average for my brother and bought another for myself. I paid less the second time round (but still more than the Windows average) as I've already bought all but one of those games on Steam. If anyone thinks those 5 games combined are not worth $5 they are either a lying prick or a stupid fuck.
I paid $10. Because other than Cogs (which I've played on iOS), I've never heard of the other games. VVVVVV might very well be worth $10 for all I know, but I don't, and to be honest, I haven't played ANY of the indie bundle games despite buying all of them. Hell, I probably only recognize maybe 1 or two games from each bundle.
So I threw $10 in, as a fair price since I don't want to do the research behind it nor want to put it off and miss it entirely.
Truth is, I have more games than time. I tossed money for these games to support the devs, most of which will probably sit uninstalled on my fileserver to support the devs.
Paying $30 for a game I might not play is kinda painful. Paying $10-15 for a set of 5 games I might not play isn't as bad, and offers something should I find myself with a chunk of free time. And when I pay $60 for a game, I sort of have to know the game first to see if I really want to spend that kind of cash (and requisite time).
The alternative is for me to not spend any money at all on these games (since I don't know about them - it's all about marketing and I don't go through Steam daily to see what's new and cool) and let them languish unknown.
...I see we're all back to using PayPal again? How about all the "No WikiLeaks Support --> PayPal = Evil --> I cancelled my account" postings?
So don't use Paypal, sheesh.
They support Paypal, Amazon Payments and Google Checkout. That's practically all the large processors except their own merchant account.
They make every effort to allow you to pay with whatever means you want.
Now, Paypal has no competition. If you have two random people, one of which needs to pay the other, Paypal is pretty much the only way to do it with a credit card. Maybe the seller is a business and qualifies for Amazon Payments or Google Checkout or their own merchant account, but until the day everyone has their own merchant account, Paypal's pretty much the only way. (And trust me - merchant accounts make Paypal look pretty damn saintly).
Face it - the PS3 wasn't a pirated platform until the beginning of the year. All the people who had the skills were playing around with Cell Linux. Then Sony took away OtherOS and those people and pirates interests aligned again.
Now that you can pirate easily on the PS3 (and who cares about PSN...) things start taking off. It's apparently a big worry that people are doing stuff like install codes and other crap. Which is unusual since the Wii and Xbox360 had piracy for a while now and people aren't worrying too much about it
The PSX and PS2 lasted for ages because of modchips and piracy let lots of people take interest and buy machines for modding, and they may buy the odd game or two as well..
The PS3 doesn't need a mod anymore - just a special firmware update and you're done.
And right now all but one of the brand name phone firmwares use Webkit as their go to HTML rendering library (Windows Phone 7 being the "odd" one out).
This then becomes a kind of mobile web monoculture, and i have already seen one site that focuses on mobile Safari. Shades of "Requires IE6" anyone?
It's actually less of a monoculture than you think.
Sure, Chrome, Android, iOS, Nokia, RIM, OS X, Steam all use WebKit as their rendering engine, but they all customize in wierd and wonderful ways. All the Google ones replace the standard WebKit JavaScript engine with the Google one, and Apple makes their own tweaks to WebKit, as does everyone else.
It's about as monoculture as Linux or Android is a monoculture - the underlying engine is the same, but damn does everyone make their own customizations.
Also one of the more unusual Apple projects to have suddenly taken off so dramatically or scale so widely. As for mobile browsers, there's also IE (Windows Phone 7) and Opera as contenders. Perhaps I should try mobile Firefox - last time I tried it, it ran as well as I expected (barely usable).
Dunno if it is what you mean, but with NoScript/. works quite well. As evident it's possible to post,
It's things like NoScript which is why I want stuff to be in HTML5, and not "3rd party plugins".
After all, if you load a Flash object, sure it can do tons more than HTML5, but it does so all at once - pulling ads and possibly malicious javascript, tons of cookies and other crap all together, and all the control I have is "all or none".
But with NoScript and other extensions, I can deny ad networks their cookies, deny javascript from unknown domains, while still getting a reasonable experience.
(NoScript on/;. also disables the ajaxy crap that/. is using - some of us want to open in new tabs, tyvm).
It is possible, but highly unlikely that Bitcoin will be used on as widespread a basis as paypal, let alone Visa (and MasterCard). If you think that when widespread, that the bitcoin system will not be used by banks and intermediaries to perpetuate a fractional-reserve system of credit (possibly by forking the bitcoin system), I think that you are going to be disappointed even if bitcoin becomes popular. There might be a few takers on the other side of that bet on intrade or at the long now foundation.
The problem is, Bitcoin's value is continually growing (the number of bitcoins in the system is hard coded and fixed), and its exchange value is really based on speculation right now, so it's very volatile.
End result is paying any sort of bills becomes a strange form of gambling - you want to buy when it's low and sell high, while your merchant has to adjust prices quickly if they expect to get anything out of the deal (or you end up with "it's 1 bitcoin now, valid for the next 5 minutes" deals).
And the other problem with Bitcoin will happen once the speculators and other wall-street types move in. They haven't yet because the money isn't there yet...
Finally, I see this Bitcoin as basically the 21st century form of $cientology. It's value is held up purely because a bunch of techie people got together and decided to create it. It's highly possible someone might create Bitcoin 2.0 and see success - since there's nothing backing the original Bitcoin, the barrier to entry is low.
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Yeah, the iPhone was a huge hit in 1997, when Apple was nearly dead. Oh wait. the iPhone wasn't invented yet.
No, Steve Jobs came back, and released the iMac, which was a wildly popular computer. You know, that floppy-less computer.
Then in 2001, came the iPod, right at the time portable music players were taking off ("no wireless, less space than a nomad, lame").
Then in 2005 Apple switched to Intel.
And finally, in 2007, Apple released the iPhone.
So for 10 years from when Jobs took over a company that was basically dysfunctional, Apple magically created money off a hypothetical iPhone that never existed for that time.
No. Today, the iPhone makes 50%+ profits at Apple, and the iPod is dying, a product they profited immensely for the past 6 years prior to its release, which was inevitable.
Apple, like other companies, reinvented themselves - from computers (the iMac basically "saved" the company), to MP3 players (iPods) to smartphones.
As for marketshare - yes, Android phones outsell iPhones. However, when Apple basically gets 66% of profits of the entire mobile sector (including featurephones and Androids and everything else), you think Apple really cares? (Source: http://www.macrumors.com/2011/07/29/apples-profit-share-among-top-mobile-phone-vendors-rises-to-66/ ). This profit share is up from 57%. It basically means Android phones are being sold for little profit, while Apple rakes in more money per iPhone sale than Android sale by a huge margin.
And yes, iPhone profits will drop. And Apple will have to produce a new product. Perhaps it'll kill the iPhone like the iPhone killed the iPod. Apple's been doing the one-trick pony thing 3 times in the past 15 years. They know they have to come up with something new.
Funny. When I bought my brand new powerbook G4 8 years ago, I was still using a 68k Mac running System 7.5. The PowerBook came with 10.3 and only does AFP via TCP/IP. System 7.5 doesn't offer AFP via TCP/IP - neither Mac could see each other.
I started Classic - it runs apps, but you can get into the environment by using a Classic app. Launch the Classic app, the Apple Menu transforms into the old MacOS system menu, and Chooser worked - it saw my old Mac and I could mount it. Heck, all the little desk accessories worked, and I could go into the MacOS control panel and play with MacInTalk.
Classic was basically a paravirtualized environment.
Given Apple's App Store has the same problem (it too lets you download any app you want, paid or free, from within iTunes), you would expect it to be a huge problem within the App Store - which it doesn't seem to be.
Sure, you come across a bunch of them (and you can tell because the first two lines of the description are "This only works on iPhone 4 or iPod Touch 3/4. Require Gyroscope!" or other such thing like "Requires recent device due to graphics" and somesuch. But if there's been a request to Apple to have people restrict downloads, it certainly isn't very public.
Whereas for Android it seems to be common. And I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to download an app that was "free today" buy my Android device couldn't run it now. And given Google's inability to list all the apps I've obtained (I'm not sure what shows up on the list - it seems random even though all were free), it seems I need to root to backup all the APKs just because I might have to pay for them later.
Here's what Android looked like 2007. Oh, 2007, the year the iPhone was released - completely different UI.
http://pocketnow.com/android/remember-this-early-android-demo-video
In 2008 it was completely revamped.
Anyhow, Apple has promised to pay Samsung damages should its injunction be found invalid. So Apple believes it has a strong case, and if not, well, free money from Apple, and they didn't have to sell one device to earn it. (Not that the first mover advantage would've helped - those in AU who wanted it would've imported it much more cheaply from the US than buy it retail...).
Why would HTML5 remove that? It removes the ability of your flash blocker to block flash, but your browser can still block audio. In fact, it's easier for it to do so than trying to block audio ads.
Hell, your browser can even do the old "Site X wants to play audio" notification thing, far better than a flash video can. Hell, it's how people are getting around flash blockers - by having the ads play before loading the real flash content.
You've just described the Dancing Pigs problem. And worse yet, there's no security system on the market that will solve it.
It doesn't matter how many dialogs you throw up, how many warnings and big scary screens - the user will find a way around it. Oh yeah, they won't read any warning signs either.
The only real effective way is to run LUA, in which the user doesn't have any sort of admin priviledges and passwords (and thus can't blindly type it in). But that isn't practical at all, especially for home PCs. For family PCs it's a bit easier (especially with remote access), but then updates are a pain.
And no, sending them off to Geek Squad after refusing the fix their PC won't doing it either - they'll just bitch about how much Geek Squad charges.
All OSes suffer from this problem. OS X, Linux, Windows. Even iOS and Android. Either one has to do an iOS style walled garden (no guarantees), or accept that having to deal with infected PCs and phones are going to be a fact of life. (Android's permission screen is a nice step, if you limit Android users to tech-savvy people. Eveyrone else just hits "Install".)
The problem is, Flash has way less customizability than my browser.
With NoScript, I can control where Javascript comes from. That HTML ad? Blocked and rejected. But if I was using some Flash app and it ran an ad, I have no way of controlling it because Flash doesn't offer me that level of control. Or even the ability to let me easily figure out where that offensive element came from so I can manually block it at the firewall.
Plus, if Flash decided to create popups (it can), it's a lot harder for the browser to block it. Right now, I'm not sure if there's anything keeping a Flash ad from taking over the screen other than the generic "Press ESC to return" generated by Flash. If it requires a click, good, but then you'll have a flash ad that on the slightest thing interprets it as a "go full screen" command.
The fact that HTML5 requires the browser user to manually go full screen is a good thing.
It's called the dancing pigs problem, and is probably the biggest problem with any security systems. Warning the user isn't enough - the user will do anything that gets in the way of what they want to do.
That includes opening their PC to security holes.
And get ready for the screwiness of copyright law to come into play.
It's already happened, with groups doing DMCA notifications on sites containing 3D shape files.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/04/the-next-napster-copyright-questions-as-3d-printing-comes-of-age.ars
I wonder what the wrapper on the Apple iPrinter3D will have. "Please don't steal... " ...? (Like how the iPods all say "please don't steal music").
What they do is simple. You advertise it as storing your game saves In The Cloud(tm). Sorta like SteamPlay where the game saves are uploaded to the server.
Except in Ubisoft's case, if the game save server isn't available, then no game saving is possible. Thus initial "offline play" basically consists of running through the game and hoping to not die (which requires reloading a game save) as well as keeping the game running on the PC for the duration of play.
So, it's DRM, but it can be spun around as "Cloud Saves - pick up and play your game anywhere on any PC".
The beauty of this DRM scheme is, well, nothing needs to be installed on the PC to handle it - no special drivers, no licensing agents, nothing. The game starts up, connects to your account, and accesses your save on the remote side. Plus, it can be advertised as a feature.
Not really, it's just the public being fickle. Or /. to be more precise. The same things happened with Amazon, Apple, Second Life, MySpace, and Facebook - at one point it was all adoration, then hatred, and now indifference. Google's just the next party on the list (at the adoration stage), while Apple is at the hatred stage.
About the only company not on that list is Microsoft, but I guess the "adoration" part happened earlier.
It's just like social networks came and went - Second Life, MySpace, and now Facebook - they come in to fix their predecessor, grow big, someone else comes up, boom. Facebook is seeing that from G+.
it's a little aluminum nub (with a protective plastic bottom to protect the screen) inside a plastic frame. The aluminum makes it work with the capacitative screen. It basically adds tactile feedback to the virtual onscreen joystick(it feels like a thumbpad, it doesn't shift, etc).
For what it is, it makes playing games on a touchscreen MUCH better. You can't do better with a touchscreen.
A lot of stores do that - they usually call them "door crashers". And in the US, it oddly usually happens on the Friday that follows the 4th Thursday of November for whatever reason. The prevalence of online sales though has dampened it somewhat, so you usually see websites come to a crashing halt the moment the clock ticks from 11:59:59 to midnight (at whatever timezone they're using).
It's probably because the 30 year old equipment was pretty high end.
Sure it may be $200 now used, but when it was new, it was probably over $1000. Adding inflation it's probably a $3000 system.
If you're comparing a today's $300 system with yesterday's $1000 system, the old one SHOULD sound better.
Try repeating this test with modern higher end equipment...
I was mucking around with L3 switches because I needed to test IPv6 routing with some software I wrote (part of the network stack - I needed to make sure traceroutev6 and pingv6 worked). The first switch I got said it had software support for Ipv6 routing, and yes, it had the ipv6 commands, but no, it didn't route.
I then got a hold of a spare 48-port PoE GigE switch (also Cisco). Alas, no one bought the IPv6 option.
Cisco may have supported it since 2001, but until recently it's a paid option. You could buy the switches with or without IPv6 routing (you can buy an upgrade license later). And naturally, people bought the cheaper IPv4 only gear.
No, the big reason why the transition stalled is the IPv6 proponents have failed to look beyond the opportunities IPv6 brings and see the reality. First, end-to-end connectivity is dead. Blame NAT if you want, but even with IPv6 I'm going to stick a firewall up and have it deny incoming by default, and pass through outgoing 80 and 443. Next, end-to-end connectivity isn't needed for most situations, as proven by the success of NAT. Finally, NAT gives one benefit - it isolates my network numbering from my ISPs. I don't care what IP addresses my ISP gives - my internal network numbering works independently. IPv6 tries to complicate this by allowing multiple IPs so I can have internal IPs, and external routable IPs - nice but a PITA if I'm having issues.
That and the IPv6 proponents seem to keep blocking any implementationj of NAT-PT and NATv6 - I can bet for a good number of uesrs, it's Good Enough(tm) (like NAT is right now).
The point of stuff like Transformers, My Little Pony, GI Joe, etc is to sell toys. Hasbro is a toy company. The fact that they can make 30 minute "ads" that children love to watch is a bonus.
Hell, Hasbro basically licensed Transformers to Paramount for nothing - Paramount keeps all the cash from the movie. Hasbro reaps the rewards of people buying the toys. (It may have changed with the success of the first movie - but it was true for the first - completely funded and Paramount kept the profits).
What's happening here is basically fans have created ads for Hasbro. If they sell more toys as a result, even better.
NATv6 exists. As does NAT-PT (which actually does translation so IPv4-only can access IPv6-only and vice-versa).
I don't see why we can't have NATv6 routers now - I like the fact that my internal network numbering doesn't change whenever my ISP decides to give me a new prefix. So I don't get end-to-end connectivity. I don't care - even if I did, I'd stick a firewall in front and it'll break end-to-end connectivity anyways.
Also, unlike Move or the Wii, the Kinect doesn't require a controller. Which means... you can use a regular normal controller with Kinect and have it's added capabilities used elsewhere.
Mass Effect 3 is to support voice commands. Other games have gestures you can do whilst using a controller. No one will play an FPS with Kinect only, but there's no reason why Halo 4 can't have Kinect augmentation. Or other games - wasn't the next Forza supposed to let you turn your head to look around? Certainly better than trying to do it via a d-pad on the wheel controller. (And yeah, there were TrackIRs, but who wanted to put reflective dots on their head? Though it was popular with the flight sim crowds, who could put the dots on their helmets instead).
Eye Toy and the like can't manage that - they deal with a 2D image and use various tricks to separate the background from the foreground (notably movement) while Kinect uses the cheap but effective structured light fields to do 3D mapping so the player can be tracked always, even if they plop on the couch and not move.
Actually, the problem with Kinect is the Xbox360's USB2.0 port - it's not fast enough.
The kinect is equipped with a VGA camera (60fps), and the QVGA IR camera (60fps) and a 4-microphone array. This configuration just barely falls under the current USB bandwidth supported by the 360. And by current, it's what you can achieve with the 360 right now. The theoretical maximum transfer speed for the hardware is around 35MB/sec. Achieving that would let them run the IR camera at full VGA resolution, which should make it possible to detect fingers.
It's very possible Microsoft has got it working in a beta state for the E3 demos, but nothing solid and releasable yet (perhaps the overhead on the CPU is too high - it is USB, after all)
I paid $10. Because other than Cogs (which I've played on iOS), I've never heard of the other games. VVVVVV might very well be worth $10 for all I know, but I don't, and to be honest, I haven't played ANY of the indie bundle games despite buying all of them. Hell, I probably only recognize maybe 1 or two games from each bundle.
So I threw $10 in, as a fair price since I don't want to do the research behind it nor want to put it off and miss it entirely.
Truth is, I have more games than time. I tossed money for these games to support the devs, most of which will probably sit uninstalled on my fileserver to support the devs.
Paying $30 for a game I might not play is kinda painful. Paying $10-15 for a set of 5 games I might not play isn't as bad, and offers something should I find myself with a chunk of free time. And when I pay $60 for a game, I sort of have to know the game first to see if I really want to spend that kind of cash (and requisite time).
The alternative is for me to not spend any money at all on these games (since I don't know about them - it's all about marketing and I don't go through Steam daily to see what's new and cool) and let them languish unknown.
So don't use Paypal, sheesh.
They support Paypal, Amazon Payments and Google Checkout. That's practically all the large processors except their own merchant account.
They make every effort to allow you to pay with whatever means you want.
Now, Paypal has no competition. If you have two random people, one of which needs to pay the other, Paypal is pretty much the only way to do it with a credit card. Maybe the seller is a business and qualifies for Amazon Payments or Google Checkout or their own merchant account, but until the day everyone has their own merchant account, Paypal's pretty much the only way. (And trust me - merchant accounts make Paypal look pretty damn saintly).
The reason the PS3 is taking off? Piracy.
Face it - the PS3 wasn't a pirated platform until the beginning of the year. All the people who had the skills were playing around with Cell Linux. Then Sony took away OtherOS and those people and pirates interests aligned again.
Now that you can pirate easily on the PS3 (and who cares about PSN...) things start taking off. It's apparently a big worry that people are doing stuff like install codes and other crap. Which is unusual since the Wii and Xbox360 had piracy for a while now and people aren't worrying too much about it
The PSX and PS2 lasted for ages because of modchips and piracy let lots of people take interest and buy machines for modding, and they may buy the odd game or two as well..
The PS3 doesn't need a mod anymore - just a special firmware update and you're done.
It's actually less of a monoculture than you think.
Sure, Chrome, Android, iOS, Nokia, RIM, OS X, Steam all use WebKit as their rendering engine, but they all customize in wierd and wonderful ways. All the Google ones replace the standard WebKit JavaScript engine with the Google one, and Apple makes their own tweaks to WebKit, as does everyone else.
It's about as monoculture as Linux or Android is a monoculture - the underlying engine is the same, but damn does everyone make their own customizations.
Also one of the more unusual Apple projects to have suddenly taken off so dramatically or scale so widely. As for mobile browsers, there's also IE (Windows Phone 7) and Opera as contenders. Perhaps I should try mobile Firefox - last time I tried it, it ran as well as I expected (barely usable).
It's things like NoScript which is why I want stuff to be in HTML5, and not "3rd party plugins".
After all, if you load a Flash object, sure it can do tons more than HTML5, but it does so all at once - pulling ads and possibly malicious javascript, tons of cookies and other crap all together, and all the control I have is "all or none".
But with NoScript and other extensions, I can deny ad networks their cookies, deny javascript from unknown domains, while still getting a reasonable experience.
(NoScript on /;. also disables the ajaxy crap that /. is using - some of us want to open in new tabs, tyvm).
The problem is, Bitcoin's value is continually growing (the number of bitcoins in the system is hard coded and fixed), and its exchange value is really based on speculation right now, so it's very volatile.
End result is paying any sort of bills becomes a strange form of gambling - you want to buy when it's low and sell high, while your merchant has to adjust prices quickly if they expect to get anything out of the deal (or you end up with "it's 1 bitcoin now, valid for the next 5 minutes" deals).
And the other problem with Bitcoin will happen once the speculators and other wall-street types move in. They haven't yet because the money isn't there yet...
Finally, I see this Bitcoin as basically the 21st century form of $cientology. It's value is held up purely because a bunch of techie people got together and decided to create it. It's highly possible someone might create Bitcoin 2.0 and see success - since there's nothing backing the original Bitcoin, the barrier to entry is low.