I think it's out of evolution. Spinning rust HDDs are only really good at one thing - massive capacity. With the rising popularity of SSDs (despite their cost), it's the only thing that a hard disk really has over an SSD.
Capacity growth of hard drives is slso slowing down (faster than Moore's Law still) but even then it isn't sustainable.
The HDD market isn't big enough anymore to sustain so many players, and even things that once used hard drives may start using SSDs. For example, take a few years ago the iPod Mini which got bested by the iPod Nano. Or how the iPod Classic is basically stagnating (Toshiba only recently started manufacturing a 250GB hard drive in that form factor - but the 120GB will be done in by an iPod Touch wielding 128GB of flash).
Hard drives are a very mature technology - they'll still be around, but much of the growth is gone, and the big players will start consolidating as companies migrate to other growth areas.
Only AOSP is "open-source". Android itself is very much closed source. AOSP receives contributions in kind from the main Android tree. Google's just not bothered to do it for 3.0 yet.
If you want to make a Honeycomb tablet, just join the OHA and get your hands on the code (which comes under commercial terms of use). You have to do it anyways if you want the "with Google" stuff (GMail, YouTube, Marketplace, etc). Android apps outside the Marketplace are slim pickings.
I think what this will end up doing is making developers revert to either their own rating system or not rating their games at all.
You missed the most important point. The whole reason why the ESRB was created - to avoid government from doing it!
It's one of those necessary evils that seems to keep the legislators at bay, other than trying (and failing) to get actual enforcement of the ratings.
Yes, scrap the ESRB and you'll start finding calls from parents on the evils of games and trying to get video games banned.
It's already a tricky enough topic. We complain about how Nintendo makes it hard to do online gaming with their consoles - it's a part technical limitation (there's no "OS" like the Xbox/Xbox360/PS3 - the Wii/DS is pretty much bare metal development), but also one to keep all the "OMG Pedobear!" crowd from overreacting and vowing to get all their products banned or to remove wifi and all that, after all, Nintendo's the "kid-friendly" alternative. Apple's pretty much still getting burned by it, and Microsoft (via Kinect) got into some hot water over when some third party (unrelated to Microsoft) commenter/PR folk started envisioning "Kinect Sex" game possibilities.
Alas, those people make such loud noises that legistlators unfortunately listen which forces companies to put in all sorts of strange and wonderful things to toe the line.
As a frequent user of Facebook, I find the numbers of rogue and bogus applications to be the most annoying aspect of the site. They need to start seriously vetting the developers and apps NOW. No more allowing apps to just be posted and start spreading SPAM from user-to-user.
Two problems.
One, Apple probably has a patent on a curated app store.
Two, Apple App Store. Facebook vetting apps and developers is just like Apple vetting apps.
The only difference is that while Apple demands changes to apps to fulfill its requirements for Apps, Facebook would most likely just start implementing a "reported app fee". For everytime your app is reported, you can pay Facebook $0.01 to keep your app up. After all, Facebook got to make money, and scamming users to get ad pageviews is the name of the game.
Facebook's just about monetizing the user information people voluntarily give to sell to advertisers. Scam apps are just another way for Facebook to do that by keeping users on its site.
that's some extremely unprofessional interface design
Actually that's highly professional. Industrial/professional UIs are never pretty because it's not a requirement. Why waste time and money on making things pretty? These aren't consumer products where the buyer first and foremost looks at how it looks instead of what it does.
I've grown to think that the more expensive and/or specialized the program, the worse the UI is. And it's not about making the UI "pretty" but more "usable".
Sure the program is designed by an engineer who cares little about UI design and slaps every button on the main screen, or puts UI controls where they're easiest for their QA testing, but that doesn't mean it's usable or even conducive to a sensible workflow. (Imagine your daily job is to use those things and it involves clicking in 100 different places to get two pieces of information that really ought to be shown together, etc).
Bad UI design has also contributed to many an accident, as well. And who know what sort of software engineering practices went into its production? Having seen one package be a horrendous mix of C, Visual Basic (of varying versions), Lisp and probably a half dozen other languages...
Of course, the professionals in the field tolerate such crap because well, it's probably the only software package out there. And new versions bring about old and new bugs again, so everyone ends up using some ancient version because it works and they know the workarounds for its bugs and its UI quirks.
And yes, those workarounds may involve all sorts of other crap thrown together - including taking the results of the program, feeding it into some Excel spreadsheet, taking the results of that and feeding it back into the program because it somehow doesn't (or won't easily) calculate something.
There's probably some chewing gum and duct tape in the whole process as well. It can be... scary.
I like how Apple is thinking big, yet missing obvious and practical "backup" issues. Ask anyone who has gotten a new i-device, or had to wipe one: there is no way in iTunes to figure out what all you've bought previously without attempting to download it again. Maybe when you click that "Buy" button, it pops up and says you already bought it, and you re-download it for free. But maybe you clicked on the wrong version of the app thinking it was the one you'd already paid for, and welp, you just bought it. Stupid.
A workaround is to click the little arrow beside it and "Add to Wishlist". It turns out iTunes will refuse to add apps to the wishlist that you've already bought.
And Apple does know how to make it happen. The iPad iTunes Store changes the "Buy $x.99" button to an "Install" button if you've already bought it. I don't know if the iPhone/iPod Touch App Store does a similar thing. So yes, Apple can do it, they just haven't deployed it to iTunes yet (probably because of load issues?).
Now if only I can figure out why some of my Android Marketplace apps seem to show up in my account rather than all or none of them... (I paid the same price for all of them - they were all free).
The PS3 has had cheaters galore ever since Geohot did his thing with it. I'd just been starting to dip my toe into online multiplayer on the platform, since PS Move support actually made Killzone 3 feel... almost PC once you got used to it. Unfortunately, the wave of cheating that followed the system's protection being broken pretty much killed my interest dead.
Which is yet another reason why I can't blame Sony for trying to flay the little fucker alive...
MW2 was the problem, not PSN. Infinity Ward did some incredibly stupid things with their network code that enabled such things. In fact, the MW2 cheating happened *before* the GeoHot hack - remember the keys were only exposed at the beginning of the year. It was flawed to begin with, and without the keys, it still would've happened.
I blame Sony and not GeoHot though because they've basically gave me another bill for my PS3. It says "If you want to keep all your features of your PS3, pay us another $300". You see, prior to Sony's idioticy on April 1, 2010, I could do all these things with my PS3: OtherOS, Games, Blu-Ray. Now, I can do OtherOS and old games *OR* Games/Blu-Ray. To do both requires me to buy a new PS3.
I personally don't care for the PS3 anymore, and I hope PSN dies because of cheaters before I invest another 50% into my PS3. I hope cheaters infect all games through PSN hacks. Either that or Sony should give me another PS3 as compensation. All GeoHot did was make it possible to regain our PS3s back to their former state.
And yes, the same problems have plagued the Xbox360 as well - the Halo cheats are well known and they don't rely on a hacked system to perform. Later revisions to matchmaking and stats tend to fix the problem of "standbying" and "ragequits".
Disregarding the bandwidth your service provider may or may not provide you, VoIP clients on mobile devices are difficult or impossible to use due to the reliance of even modern VoIP protocols such as SIP on RTP which uses UDP for media transport, and every 3G provider I've ever seen deploys wide scale NATing to all their connected devices. They could make a legitimate argument for a lack of addresses, but there's kind of a conflict of interest there too.
The solution to that is to quit paying for "unlimited data" and buy the more expensive laptop "internet stick" with VPN service. That'll get you a live IP on the internet with no NAT/Proxy/Gateway screwing things up.
Of course, it also costs an arm and a leg and comes in pretty poor selections of data usage.
Cellular providers differentiate the service - "unlimited" on Blackberry is quite different than "unlimited" on smartphones, which are different from those internet stick plans, featurephone "social networking" plans and other plans. It's how they end up knowing if you're fake-tethering as well since the laptop does a few things that trip up the gateway easily enough (and you don't know if it's resizing images and the like, either).
My data plan is grandfathered, and I have a live unfirewalled IP address (I have run Apache on it and hit it over the Internet). This was back in the days when data plans were rare beasts and the only real reason they were around were for the few lucky ones who grabbed a Sierra Wireless Aircard or something. Then the carriers got wise and realized they could differentiate services.
Problem is, most sites use the "something you know" method of authenticating emails from them to you. E.g., if you get an e-mail from Paypal, Paypal will use your name (as entered in the account) in the email. So if you get one that says "Dear Sir" or somesuch other than "Dear $First $Last", you know it's not a legit email. After all, a phisher won't have your name and email address togethered.
You'll find most sites do that - it's a simple way to verify email authenticity. Now that names-emails mappings have been released, it'll be harder to tell phishing emails from real ones.
I started out plagiarizing programs to solve the quadratic equation. (I wrote a trivial solver for it, but came across a super version that gave you two roots unless it crossed at the apex, which it detected).
After I learned the mathematics behind it, I never needed to plagiarize it every again - I could write it out perfectly, including a quick graph of it. I even added "show your work" mode.
But by the time that was the case, it was expected to know it and apply it as necessary, so only convenience was gained by programming it in.
Then I got an HP48 and did it manually - it's easy enough when you learn the stack to do it all quickly and efficiently.
If you make the collection of social security numbers a felony I guarantee you the banks would stop doing it. To make doubly sure, make it a civil tort so that the individual who was asked for their SSN can sue the bank. Let everyone know they can do this. It would stop instantly.
And yet we'll just need another ID code. Registered with the IRS, because financial institutions report such incomes to the IRS. Which then becomes the de-facto ID code that the entire industry uses for credit reports and other stuff, and we'd be exactly in the same position we're in now.
Not using an ID code is such an inexact match that it's really unusable. Think of all the people who get calls from collection agencies because they share the same name as a creditor (but not SSN), or a creditor gave the wrong phone number or address, etc.
As a nerd I have an affinity for things I can tweak but I have to admit this represents a minority opinion and that sealed boxes make sense for typical users (cost reductions, simplified supply chain, etc).
I guess you miss the days when you had to flip DIP switches or jumpers to set IRQs, DMA channels, IO memory and memory maps, then edit cryptic configuration files and environment variables setting to configure it correctly. Then hope all the software actually accepted such settings or end up rearranging all your boards again to run a program.
These days of PCI, USB, Plug and Play/Pray really ache, don't they? After all, nothings more fun than buying a new graphics card and spending the next week trying to get everything working so you can finally play that new game.
It's tough to draw the line between "I want to tweak everything" and "I want to tweak some things"...
These days, the number of things I want to tweak varies, sometimes a Mac is best because I only care for hard drives and RAM (and the challenges Apple poses satisfies my "tweaking" and "screwdriver" urges).
So open that if you modify it then sell your Mac, you're liable for copyright infringement (see also: Psystar).
Would you advocate breaking the terms of the GPL as well?
Psystar not only pissed off Apple (by distributing copyrighted content that wasn't open-source), but they pissed off the people who made it possible (the OSX86 folks). It got so bad the licensing terms added "no commercial use".
Psystar basically ripped off everyone. And yet, Apple hasn't bothered going after all the Hackintosh folks.
The cable TV model is doomed, due to streaming. Cable TV will be for the next decade what the land-line home telephone was for the last decade - everyone's favorite way to cut costs. Comcast, et al., will have to find ways to squeeze more money out of people like me who got rid of cable because we were paying $75 a month for just one or two channels we felt we couldn't live without, probably via bandwidth caps.
I've never understood how replacing a very efficient broadcast mechanism with a unicast mechanism is "better". It's better for the user, but really, it's not scalable.
In the current TV system we have, adding an extra TV costs very little to the network (maybe another amplifier if the signal gets marginal). But if we add another TV for Hulu or Netflix or something, the bandwidth usage goes up linearly. Add 100 TVs, bandwidth goes up 100 times.
Multicast won't save you, unless people have a habit of starting the same program at the same time and never pausing (in which case it's just as inconvenient as the broadcast method). This is used by cable providers in SDV because of bandwidth issues.
In the end, it's far more efficient to broadcast the show somehow then have some sort of DVR to record it for later playback. Which, hey hey, is what Netflix and Hulu are, in essence. The DVR is "in the cloud" (really, at your ISP). But hey, any cable provider can do that too - they usually call it "on demand" or something.
In the end, all that's happening is the DVR is moving somewhere because supporting 300M TVs with streaming data 24/7 is quite inefficient on bandwidth capacity. So the networks broadcast it to someone who records it, that recording is passed down the line to a local (to you) entity - ISP, cable provider, etc., and given to you "on demand".
No, the big change really is that cable is too freaking expensive, the bundling rules suck, etc. All Hulu and Netflix have done is shown that people don't want to pay $200/month because they want 6 channels spread throughout 6 different packages. I can understand why it happens (contracts - and you know one of your favorite channels will die off with a la carte because it's a niche one).
Streaming services are great, but I won't bet the house on them yet. If something like the Superbowl was availavle exclusively via streaming, people would complain of stuttery video, connection failures, etc.
can someone explain what justification they are offering for this decision? besides what seems to be the only obvious answer of simply allowing the law enforcement to do whatever they please?
I dunno, the official list will have stuff like "obscene materials" (child porn), terrorist activities, and the like.
A reason you won't see is "we want your corporate secrets". Industrial espionage - nothing's better than seeing a competitor crossing hte border, seizing his laptop and sending it off the American company he's competing with. Government aided industrial espionage, at that (not unusual and has happened before).
If you're travelling to the US - clean out your laptop (or have a brand new one with nothing on it other than the basics) and VPN in for all the data, just to prevent it falling into the wrong hands. Your competitors will love to get their hands on your customer lists, your current contracts and other private materials.
This introduces one huge risk. If you simplify it far enough that it's easy enough to understand, you are by necessity downplaying the novelty of any underlying patent.
At which point the patent holder (Oracle) doing the prosecution has to show the judge why it's novel, by showing the case where it breaks down.
One definition of novel is to string together a bunch of items until the person goes "Aha! Why didn't I think of that?".
If while going through the problems with the analogy, the Judge (who isn't even a practioner in the field) can figure out the (patented) solution by himself, then it's really not that novel now, is it?
Of course, another issue is things that were novel 10 years ago may not be novel these days because it's been around so long it's obvious (e.g., DVRs). In which case the prosecution has to prove why it was novel and interesting back then. Many technology patents fall into this arena - what was amazing back then falls into the humdrum 5 years later.
Can on Apple (was a problem for me on a form I made, Apple users would put the date with slashes in their file names).
Apple can't do ':' though.
This may have changed though.
This would be pre-OS X. In the old Classic days, ":" was the path separator (so you'd have "Macintosh HD:System Folder:Preferences:..."). In modern OS X times, it's a BSD underpinning (and UNIX(tm) the last few years) and thus "/" is the path separator.
Code that uses the Carbon API will use ":" as a separator, but they're disappearing now (Carbon was a classic MacOS transition API). I believe Cocoa uses "/" to keep things in line with the Unix underpinnings.
Even amongst Linux users who likely would be using nothing more than a text interface, there are serious issues. For one, Linux implements *no* method for the system firmware to describe serial output. So you can't put in arbitrary linux boot media without first tweaking the kernel command line. There exists a specification for firmware to communicate this data, but it's considered IP of Microsoft and forbidden to Linux.
Or Linux just defines its own method. Several BIOSes can redirect output to serial (there are serveral x86 boards include soekris ones that have no video), which is all you need to get to something like GRUB, at which point GRUB tells the kernel to use a serial console (well supported and used by practically all embedded LInux devices).
Yes you're not able to stick in any old Linux boot CD and have it work unless they have serial console support built in (rare - most immediately do a video mode switch and use a framebuffer console rather than plain text console), but if you've got a thousand servers like this, I'm sure the guy maintaining it can build his own boot CD with the requisite support.
Also annoying, and you end up with people who just really don't want to keep upgrading every month. I held off upgrading a bunch of PCs from FF2 expecting FF4 "any day now" for months, and did the same for others running 3.5 - I didn't update them to 3.6 expecting to update them to 4.
But if 5 is comig out in a few weeks, it may be best to just hold off until then, no? Having to do the whole update and fix plugins thing gets annoying.
Is Google trying to fragment its own platform or what? I thought Honeycomb was their touchscreen tablet OS. Does Google even have a plan?
More like hedging bets - remember that Google wants to sell ads and to put those ads everywhere. First in apps (whether it be Android, iOS, etc - free apps supported by AdMob sold ads), websites, and now in their cloud-based OS.
If their Android tablet takes off, great. If their OS takes off, even better. If one fails, no big deal, they have fingers in the other pot as well and can sell ads any which way.
The simple question is - when you run Pandora, did you get a popup asking if you wanted to let Pandora access Location Services?
It's a popup that's generated by CoreLocation itself when an app tries to initialize it. And apps can't readily bypass it because GPS may not be available period (CoreLocation has several methods of determining location - the GPS will get you the best coordinates, but non-GPS equipped devices (WiFi only iPads, iPod Touches) can attempt to use WiFi triangulation.
Where does this idea come from? It was NEVER advertised by Sony. Sure it got mentioned on Slashdot and other geek outlets, but OtherOS was never mentioned in Sony advertisements.
Also you can always keep OtherOS by not updating your PS3.
It was advertised at one of the E3 shows in an attempt to differentiate it from the already-released Xbox360 by showing the PS3 is more open.
It wasn't advertised on TV but it was heavily advertised on the Internet, and even Sony's own documentation makes it appear that OtherOS isn't just a toy feature meant to satisfy some feature list item, but a real thing Sony was getting behind.
And finally, prior to the announcement, Sony even renewed their commitment to OtherOS.
And yes, you can keep OtherOS by not updating your PS3. Except if you need to get it serviced, in which case Sony will NOT send you one with old firmware. Also, if you wish to keep playing PSN games you purchased, you need to update. Or wish to continue playing online multiplayer.
Sony killed PSN access for old firmware a month and a half after the OtherOS. And games released after April 1, 2010 require firmware updates. And any Blu-Rays that require firmware updates to play.
So, prior to April 1, 2010, I could use my PS3 for PSN, games AND OtherOS. After April 1, 2010, I could have PSN and games, OR OtherOS. Sony's effectively devalued the PS3 since I bought it.
My option left is to update and use the exploits to get full functionality that I had when I bought my PS3, risking a lawsuit by Sony. Or not update, and waste another $300 on a new PS3.
Honestly, I'd trade OtherOS for a feature of equivalent value to me - which is the ability to play games for free. And I say this despite my Xbox360 not being modded to pirate, my Wii not running homebrew channel at all. etc.
To a pull system from a push content system. A push system is defined as something like television, where everything is pushed with a schedule at timed intervals. A pull content gives you a choice, instead of waiting and being forced to stay for a show.
A push system is more efficient bandwidth wise, because you can broadcast it and additonal receivers don't impact much. Going to a pull system results in a linear bandwidth increase - for every extra viewer you have, you have to provide more bandwidth.
I don't see internet TV as taking off because of it.
Netflix and Hulu are popular, but they don't have 300M TVs using them 24/7.
In the end, what will happen is we aggregate the content at the ISP level and pull from it (the content comes in via broadcast/multicast), but that's just an ISP-level DVR in that case. All we've done is pushed the DVR into the cloud. And if your ISP doesn't have a content mirroring box, then you've pushed the DVR further up the cloud.
And right now, Hulu and Netflix really are cloud DVRs - Hulu gets programming from networks and lets people play it when and where they want it, after it's shown, like a DVR set to tape it. Netflix does the same, after the DVD's been released.
How many games these days really do offer co-op gaming? I mean, so far I haven't seen a SINGLE game in years that offers the ability for you to play through the story mode with a friend/spouse/etc. No, they're all just rehashes of CTF or deathmatch, and those are stuffed in every single god damn game, regardless of whether it makes sense or not. But why, oh, why no co-op, ever?
Halo, for one, on all games. Some of my friends went through story mode on harder settings because of it.
Halo 3 ODST and Halo Reach offer co-op multipleyer competition modes too - Firefight mode where the basic premise is you versus a pile of computer controlled aliens. (I think Reach goes one further and lets you be the aliens).
It's a great mode too for single player. Sometimes I get home and the only thing that calms me down is blowing off steam killing a pile of Covenant over and over again. Just the mindlessness of it seems to make me feel better for whatever reason.
And heck, in Reach they added co-op campaign as a game mode so you and 3 other random people online can play through a campaign mission.
And that's one game. Many games now are into co-op and online co-op. There'll always be competitive play, but co-op modes seem to be getting a lot of steam.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's out of evolution. Spinning rust HDDs are only really good at one thing - massive capacity. With the rising popularity of SSDs (despite their cost), it's the only thing that a hard disk really has over an SSD.
Capacity growth of hard drives is slso slowing down (faster than Moore's Law still) but even then it isn't sustainable.
The HDD market isn't big enough anymore to sustain so many players, and even things that once used hard drives may start using SSDs. For example, take a few years ago the iPod Mini which got bested by the iPod Nano. Or how the iPod Classic is basically stagnating (Toshiba only recently started manufacturing a 250GB hard drive in that form factor - but the 120GB will be done in by an iPod Touch wielding 128GB of flash).
Hard drives are a very mature technology - they'll still be around, but much of the growth is gone, and the big players will start consolidating as companies migrate to other growth areas.
Only AOSP is "open-source". Android itself is very much closed source. AOSP receives contributions in kind from the main Android tree. Google's just not bothered to do it for 3.0 yet.
If you want to make a Honeycomb tablet, just join the OHA and get your hands on the code (which comes under commercial terms of use). You have to do it anyways if you want the "with Google" stuff (GMail, YouTube, Marketplace, etc). Android apps outside the Marketplace are slim pickings.
You missed the most important point. The whole reason why the ESRB was created - to avoid government from doing it!
It's one of those necessary evils that seems to keep the legislators at bay, other than trying (and failing) to get actual enforcement of the ratings.
Yes, scrap the ESRB and you'll start finding calls from parents on the evils of games and trying to get video games banned.
It's already a tricky enough topic. We complain about how Nintendo makes it hard to do online gaming with their consoles - it's a part technical limitation (there's no "OS" like the Xbox/Xbox360/PS3 - the Wii/DS is pretty much bare metal development), but also one to keep all the "OMG Pedobear!" crowd from overreacting and vowing to get all their products banned or to remove wifi and all that, after all, Nintendo's the "kid-friendly" alternative. Apple's pretty much still getting burned by it, and Microsoft (via Kinect) got into some hot water over when some third party (unrelated to Microsoft) commenter/PR folk started envisioning "Kinect Sex" game possibilities.
Alas, those people make such loud noises that legistlators unfortunately listen which forces companies to put in all sorts of strange and wonderful things to toe the line.
Two problems.
One, Apple probably has a patent on a curated app store.
Two, Apple App Store. Facebook vetting apps and developers is just like Apple vetting apps.
The only difference is that while Apple demands changes to apps to fulfill its requirements for Apps, Facebook would most likely just start implementing a "reported app fee". For everytime your app is reported, you can pay Facebook $0.01 to keep your app up. After all, Facebook got to make money, and scamming users to get ad pageviews is the name of the game.
Facebook's just about monetizing the user information people voluntarily give to sell to advertisers. Scam apps are just another way for Facebook to do that by keeping users on its site.
Hrm, I think they may be out-Googling Google.
I've grown to think that the more expensive and/or specialized the program, the worse the UI is. And it's not about making the UI "pretty" but more "usable".
Sure the program is designed by an engineer who cares little about UI design and slaps every button on the main screen, or puts UI controls where they're easiest for their QA testing, but that doesn't mean it's usable or even conducive to a sensible workflow. (Imagine your daily job is to use those things and it involves clicking in 100 different places to get two pieces of information that really ought to be shown together, etc).
Bad UI design has also contributed to many an accident, as well. And who know what sort of software engineering practices went into its production? Having seen one package be a horrendous mix of C, Visual Basic (of varying versions), Lisp and probably a half dozen other languages...
Of course, the professionals in the field tolerate such crap because well, it's probably the only software package out there. And new versions bring about old and new bugs again, so everyone ends up using some ancient version because it works and they know the workarounds for its bugs and its UI quirks.
And yes, those workarounds may involve all sorts of other crap thrown together - including taking the results of the program, feeding it into some Excel spreadsheet, taking the results of that and feeding it back into the program because it somehow doesn't (or won't easily) calculate something.
There's probably some chewing gum and duct tape in the whole process as well. It can be ... scary.
A workaround is to click the little arrow beside it and "Add to Wishlist". It turns out iTunes will refuse to add apps to the wishlist that you've already bought.
And Apple does know how to make it happen. The iPad iTunes Store changes the "Buy $x.99" button to an "Install" button if you've already bought it. I don't know if the iPhone/iPod Touch App Store does a similar thing. So yes, Apple can do it, they just haven't deployed it to iTunes yet (probably because of load issues?).
Now if only I can figure out why some of my Android Marketplace apps seem to show up in my account rather than all or none of them... (I paid the same price for all of them - they were all free).
MW2 was the problem, not PSN. Infinity Ward did some incredibly stupid things with their network code that enabled such things. In fact, the MW2 cheating happened *before* the GeoHot hack - remember the keys were only exposed at the beginning of the year. It was flawed to begin with, and without the keys, it still would've happened.
I blame Sony and not GeoHot though because they've basically gave me another bill for my PS3. It says "If you want to keep all your features of your PS3, pay us another $300". You see, prior to Sony's idioticy on April 1, 2010, I could do all these things with my PS3: OtherOS, Games, Blu-Ray. Now, I can do OtherOS and old games *OR* Games/Blu-Ray. To do both requires me to buy a new PS3.
I personally don't care for the PS3 anymore, and I hope PSN dies because of cheaters before I invest another 50% into my PS3. I hope cheaters infect all games through PSN hacks. Either that or Sony should give me another PS3 as compensation. All GeoHot did was make it possible to regain our PS3s back to their former state.
And yes, the same problems have plagued the Xbox360 as well - the Halo cheats are well known and they don't rely on a hacked system to perform. Later revisions to matchmaking and stats tend to fix the problem of "standbying" and "ragequits".
The solution to that is to quit paying for "unlimited data" and buy the more expensive laptop "internet stick" with VPN service. That'll get you a live IP on the internet with no NAT/Proxy/Gateway screwing things up.
Of course, it also costs an arm and a leg and comes in pretty poor selections of data usage.
Cellular providers differentiate the service - "unlimited" on Blackberry is quite different than "unlimited" on smartphones, which are different from those internet stick plans, featurephone "social networking" plans and other plans. It's how they end up knowing if you're fake-tethering as well since the laptop does a few things that trip up the gateway easily enough (and you don't know if it's resizing images and the like, either).
My data plan is grandfathered, and I have a live unfirewalled IP address (I have run Apache on it and hit it over the Internet). This was back in the days when data plans were rare beasts and the only real reason they were around were for the few lucky ones who grabbed a Sierra Wireless Aircard or something. Then the carriers got wise and realized they could differentiate services.
Problem is, most sites use the "something you know" method of authenticating emails from them to you. E.g., if you get an e-mail from Paypal, Paypal will use your name (as entered in the account) in the email. So if you get one that says "Dear Sir" or somesuch other than "Dear $First $Last", you know it's not a legit email. After all, a phisher won't have your name and email address togethered.
You'll find most sites do that - it's a simple way to verify email authenticity. Now that names-emails mappings have been released, it'll be harder to tell phishing emails from real ones.
I started out plagiarizing programs to solve the quadratic equation. (I wrote a trivial solver for it, but came across a super version that gave you two roots unless it crossed at the apex, which it detected).
After I learned the mathematics behind it, I never needed to plagiarize it every again - I could write it out perfectly, including a quick graph of it. I even added "show your work" mode.
But by the time that was the case, it was expected to know it and apply it as necessary, so only convenience was gained by programming it in.
Then I got an HP48 and did it manually - it's easy enough when you learn the stack to do it all quickly and efficiently.
And yet we'll just need another ID code. Registered with the IRS, because financial institutions report such incomes to the IRS. Which then becomes the de-facto ID code that the entire industry uses for credit reports and other stuff, and we'd be exactly in the same position we're in now.
Not using an ID code is such an inexact match that it's really unusable. Think of all the people who get calls from collection agencies because they share the same name as a creditor (but not SSN), or a creditor gave the wrong phone number or address, etc.
I guess you miss the days when you had to flip DIP switches or jumpers to set IRQs, DMA channels, IO memory and memory maps, then edit cryptic configuration files and environment variables setting to configure it correctly. Then hope all the software actually accepted such settings or end up rearranging all your boards again to run a program.
These days of PCI, USB, Plug and Play/Pray really ache, don't they? After all, nothings more fun than buying a new graphics card and spending the next week trying to get everything working so you can finally play that new game.
It's tough to draw the line between "I want to tweak everything" and "I want to tweak some things"...
These days, the number of things I want to tweak varies, sometimes a Mac is best because I only care for hard drives and RAM (and the challenges Apple poses satisfies my "tweaking" and "screwdriver" urges).
Would you advocate breaking the terms of the GPL as well?
Psystar not only pissed off Apple (by distributing copyrighted content that wasn't open-source), but they pissed off the people who made it possible (the OSX86 folks). It got so bad the licensing terms added "no commercial use".
Psystar basically ripped off everyone. And yet, Apple hasn't bothered going after all the Hackintosh folks.
I've never understood how replacing a very efficient broadcast mechanism with a unicast mechanism is "better". It's better for the user, but really, it's not scalable.
In the current TV system we have, adding an extra TV costs very little to the network (maybe another amplifier if the signal gets marginal). But if we add another TV for Hulu or Netflix or something, the bandwidth usage goes up linearly. Add 100 TVs, bandwidth goes up 100 times.
Multicast won't save you, unless people have a habit of starting the same program at the same time and never pausing (in which case it's just as inconvenient as the broadcast method). This is used by cable providers in SDV because of bandwidth issues.
In the end, it's far more efficient to broadcast the show somehow then have some sort of DVR to record it for later playback. Which, hey hey, is what Netflix and Hulu are, in essence. The DVR is "in the cloud" (really, at your ISP). But hey, any cable provider can do that too - they usually call it "on demand" or something.
In the end, all that's happening is the DVR is moving somewhere because supporting 300M TVs with streaming data 24/7 is quite inefficient on bandwidth capacity. So the networks broadcast it to someone who records it, that recording is passed down the line to a local (to you) entity - ISP, cable provider, etc., and given to you "on demand".
No, the big change really is that cable is too freaking expensive, the bundling rules suck, etc. All Hulu and Netflix have done is shown that people don't want to pay $200/month because they want 6 channels spread throughout 6 different packages. I can understand why it happens (contracts - and you know one of your favorite channels will die off with a la carte because it's a niche one).
Streaming services are great, but I won't bet the house on them yet. If something like the Superbowl was availavle exclusively via streaming, people would complain of stuttery video, connection failures, etc.
I dunno, the official list will have stuff like "obscene materials" (child porn), terrorist activities, and the like.
A reason you won't see is "we want your corporate secrets". Industrial espionage - nothing's better than seeing a competitor crossing hte border, seizing his laptop and sending it off the American company he's competing with. Government aided industrial espionage, at that (not unusual and has happened before).
If you're travelling to the US - clean out your laptop (or have a brand new one with nothing on it other than the basics) and VPN in for all the data, just to prevent it falling into the wrong hands. Your competitors will love to get their hands on your customer lists, your current contracts and other private materials.
At which point the patent holder (Oracle) doing the prosecution has to show the judge why it's novel, by showing the case where it breaks down.
One definition of novel is to string together a bunch of items until the person goes "Aha! Why didn't I think of that?".
If while going through the problems with the analogy, the Judge (who isn't even a practioner in the field) can figure out the (patented) solution by himself, then it's really not that novel now, is it?
Of course, another issue is things that were novel 10 years ago may not be novel these days because it's been around so long it's obvious (e.g., DVRs). In which case the prosecution has to prove why it was novel and interesting back then. Many technology patents fall into this arena - what was amazing back then falls into the humdrum 5 years later.
This would be pre-OS X. In the old Classic days, ":" was the path separator (so you'd have "Macintosh HD:System Folder:Preferences:..."). In modern OS X times, it's a BSD underpinning (and UNIX(tm) the last few years) and thus "/" is the path separator.
Code that uses the Carbon API will use ":" as a separator, but they're disappearing now (Carbon was a classic MacOS transition API). I believe Cocoa uses "/" to keep things in line with the Unix underpinnings.
Or Linux just defines its own method. Several BIOSes can redirect output to serial (there are serveral x86 boards include soekris ones that have no video), which is all you need to get to something like GRUB, at which point GRUB tells the kernel to use a serial console (well supported and used by practically all embedded LInux devices).
Yes you're not able to stick in any old Linux boot CD and have it work unless they have serial console support built in (rare - most immediately do a video mode switch and use a framebuffer console rather than plain text console), but if you've got a thousand servers like this, I'm sure the guy maintaining it can build his own boot CD with the requisite support.
Also annoying, and you end up with people who just really don't want to keep upgrading every month. I held off upgrading a bunch of PCs from FF2 expecting FF4 "any day now" for months, and did the same for others running 3.5 - I didn't update them to 3.6 expecting to update them to 4.
But if 5 is comig out in a few weeks, it may be best to just hold off until then, no? Having to do the whole update and fix plugins thing gets annoying.
More like hedging bets - remember that Google wants to sell ads and to put those ads everywhere. First in apps (whether it be Android, iOS, etc - free apps supported by AdMob sold ads), websites, and now in their cloud-based OS.
If their Android tablet takes off, great. If their OS takes off, even better. If one fails, no big deal, they have fingers in the other pot as well and can sell ads any which way.
The simple question is - when you run Pandora, did you get a popup asking if you wanted to let Pandora access Location Services?
It's a popup that's generated by CoreLocation itself when an app tries to initialize it. And apps can't readily bypass it because GPS may not be available period (CoreLocation has several methods of determining location - the GPS will get you the best coordinates, but non-GPS equipped devices (WiFi only iPads, iPod Touches) can attempt to use WiFi triangulation.
It was advertised at one of the E3 shows in an attempt to differentiate it from the already-released Xbox360 by showing the PS3 is more open.
It wasn't advertised on TV but it was heavily advertised on the Internet, and even Sony's own documentation makes it appear that OtherOS isn't just a toy feature meant to satisfy some feature list item, but a real thing Sony was getting behind.
And finally, prior to the announcement, Sony even renewed their commitment to OtherOS.
And yes, you can keep OtherOS by not updating your PS3. Except if you need to get it serviced, in which case Sony will NOT send you one with old firmware. Also, if you wish to keep playing PSN games you purchased, you need to update. Or wish to continue playing online multiplayer.
Sony killed PSN access for old firmware a month and a half after the OtherOS. And games released after April 1, 2010 require firmware updates. And any Blu-Rays that require firmware updates to play.
So, prior to April 1, 2010, I could use my PS3 for PSN, games AND OtherOS. After April 1, 2010, I could have PSN and games, OR OtherOS. Sony's effectively devalued the PS3 since I bought it.
My option left is to update and use the exploits to get full functionality that I had when I bought my PS3, risking a lawsuit by Sony. Or not update, and waste another $300 on a new PS3.
Honestly, I'd trade OtherOS for a feature of equivalent value to me - which is the ability to play games for free. And I say this despite my Xbox360 not being modded to pirate, my Wii not running homebrew channel at all. etc.
And a global identity card already exists. It's a little booklet that lets you pass through ports, I think they call it a "passport".
There's a standardized format for them and everything too.
Oh criminals? They won't have a real ID card anyways, so going with passports is just as effective.
People who don't have passports? They don't migrate anywhere, so it's not Interpol's responsibility, either.
Problem solved.
A push system is more efficient bandwidth wise, because you can broadcast it and additonal receivers don't impact much. Going to a pull system results in a linear bandwidth increase - for every extra viewer you have, you have to provide more bandwidth.
I don't see internet TV as taking off because of it.
Netflix and Hulu are popular, but they don't have 300M TVs using them 24/7.
In the end, what will happen is we aggregate the content at the ISP level and pull from it (the content comes in via broadcast/multicast), but that's just an ISP-level DVR in that case. All we've done is pushed the DVR into the cloud. And if your ISP doesn't have a content mirroring box, then you've pushed the DVR further up the cloud.
And right now, Hulu and Netflix really are cloud DVRs - Hulu gets programming from networks and lets people play it when and where they want it, after it's shown, like a DVR set to tape it. Netflix does the same, after the DVD's been released.
Halo, for one, on all games. Some of my friends went through story mode on harder settings because of it.
Halo 3 ODST and Halo Reach offer co-op multipleyer competition modes too - Firefight mode where the basic premise is you versus a pile of computer controlled aliens. (I think Reach goes one further and lets you be the aliens).
It's a great mode too for single player. Sometimes I get home and the only thing that calms me down is blowing off steam killing a pile of Covenant over and over again. Just the mindlessness of it seems to make me feel better for whatever reason.
And heck, in Reach they added co-op campaign as a game mode so you and 3 other random people online can play through a campaign mission.
And that's one game. Many games now are into co-op and online co-op. There'll always be competitive play, but co-op modes seem to be getting a lot of steam.