If you read the actual this press release describes ( http://arxiv.org/abs/1007.2327v2 ), it explains that the "Top Publishers" usually try to promote the URLs of their own websites. This can be done by adding the URL to the filenames in the torrents (such as HarryPotter-slashdot.org.avi ) or in the metadata on the portal. The publisher makes profit from ads or subscriptions to the site they own, not from ads on the indexing sites.
People actually go to those sites? I mean, I haven't clicked on a link inside those.NFO files or typed in the addresses contained in the filename, and never needed it. If the file is what I want, great, if not, delete and move on.
I can't see selling ads to a site that's hard to get to as being very popular unless people somehow expect lots of new stuff to be posted there... heck, I think the index sites would make more money.
Or is there some part of this culture I'm not aware of?
It's expected behavior. Many many sites uses javascript or images loaded from elsewhere. Google Analytics, the little badges that say that your site cert is good, on and on.
So... does this mean things like NoScript automatically prevent the issue? I already put google-analytics on the blacklist so it's never displayed in the NoScript menu and the like.
Actually, Moore's law focuses more on the economics of chip making. Because chips become cheaper to make over time, manufactures are able to double the transistor density every 18 months without increasing the cost.
The Moore's law states that the increased transistor density is a side effect of cheaper manufacturing processes, not the other way around.
Correct. But CPUs, GPUs, and chipsets, which are full of random logic are not the stunning examples of transistor density. In fact, what limits the transistor density in random logic parts is wiring density and I/O count (wiring density is how close you can put all the little connections between transistors, I/O count being the number of pins). In fact, most such chips are I/O limited as well which limits what the chip can do.
Memory (all types - EEPROM/Flash/RAM) is however silicon-limited. Once you reach the maximum transistor density, the only way to increase storage is increase silicon area consumed (which means less chips and exponentially greater cost as defects claim more chips).
It's also why memory tends to be anywhere from a half-generation to full generation ahead of CPUs and the like.
Intel's 4 billion transistor CPUs aren't terribly dense when you think a 8/16+ GB memory card already has at least 4 billion transistors, especially the microSD formfactors which limit you to one flash chip. Most of those 4 billion transistors also aren't involved in any computational path, either, being used in cache and various other processor memories onchip.
The response rate for spam is very low (1 in 12.5 million according to http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/spammers-get-1-response-to-12-500-000-emails-483381?src=rss&attr=all), so a spammer would have to pay 12.5M / 1K * $0.10 = $1,250 to get a response by paying Amazon to send emails. Multiple responses will be required to make a sale. If they can't make $1,250 of profit per response, they can't make money by using Amazon to send their spam.
Actually, that would be the business doing the spamming.
Amazon in this case is doing what spammers do - sells email services on a per-email basis. Most spammers get payment to spam N million people, and they don't really care if 99.9999% of them are filtered out by the time it's received - they've gotten their $100 or whatever they've charged. It's the business wanting the spamming service that has to make up the $100 on the remaining few.
That's why spammers make so much money - they just have to send email and not guarantee results. And the business that paid $100 to get $12 worth of business? Well, he may never hire a spammer again, but there's another business "genius" wanting marketing services at his door.
It's also why most spam is virus laden crap - that's far more profitable than trying to sell product.
I've become so used to the alt.binaries being polluted with either passworded inner-rars or corrupt/scrambled files that I'm now used to just grabbing the first couple of rar's and extracting them just to make sure. I'm not too surprised to hear this. What does surprise me a little is the amount of people that continue seeding this crap on BT. Do they not open the damn files as they come down? If only for a cursory glance to confirm.
Not only that, but all the fake EXE files used to spread viruses and trojans - the exact same EXE, except renamed to match all popular search terms have been flooding alt.binaries.*.
Luckily, if you're browsing, you can easily tell because the group gets flooded with 5000+ posts with the exact same size on them...
Yes, you'll also find them as silly things like.rar.exe too.
As for why people continue to spread it - well, one reason is ratios (TPB and MiniNova probably don't have ratios, but many others do), the second is they don't check. A lot of people end up collecting the stuff and they don't bother watching/listening. I'm sure if you ask most people, they grab it because they can, even though their entire collection will take 2 or 3 lifetimes to work through. (Also why piracy stats are misleading - I've grabbed stuff for this reason alone. If I had to pay, I'd probably skip it and move on).
They could go somewhere else (e.g. Farmville already has farmville.com, IIRC), but I doubt they'd get nearly the same amount of marketing. I'm not even sure they could get nearly as many existing customers to move.
There's also the social mechanisms, and the unholy ease with which players can spam the crap out of their Facebook friends with game messages.
Facebook has, IMHO, reached a stage now where they can dictate terms. The question is, how many new game developers will instead say "fuck that" and decide to write an iPhone app instead? Zynga may be stuck (and who knows? Maybe they will get an under-the-table discount?) OTOH, new and outside game developers (e.g. Rovio, the maker of Angry Birds) certainly aren't stuck at all.
Zynga has been diversifying ever since the iPhone couldn't run Flash, and most Facebook games have iPhone apps, including Zynga. Heck, I think last year when Steve Jobs was introducing GameCenter and iOS4, Zynga was a company he trotted out to demonstrate their new FarmVille apps.
Heck, many of these apps are better because they send notifications out when it's time to do something instead of the constant Facebook polling.
I've also started seeing a lot of Flash games in the App Store recently (flash games compiled with Adobe's tools).
All Facebook's really done is the initial startup and get users to blindly install their apps (most won't read even the Android warning instead wanting to try out the Farmville app... even though it probably requests every priviledge so it can rape and pillage all the data contained within).
I read somewhere that if you cool DRAM, the data can stay intact for up to 10 minutes. That's plenty of time to remove the modules and extract the data from them. But if this is really a big concern,
One trick I used for debugging (I had no way to log to a serial port in the OS I was using) was to log to memory. The system would crash, then I would simply reboot it, and then dump the log buffer out via the bootloader.
Even after several seconds, the log was still quite readable.
That paper on reading hard drive bit patterns that lead to the 31 pass erase had a section on semiconductor memory as well, where he found that DRAMs have this ability despite the charge leaking off due to cell effects - a cell holding a 1 is more likely to hold a 1 for seconds to minutes upon powerup, and ditto for a 0. It doesn't power up quite so randomly. This effect is stronger on memory that isn't changed frequently.
This also annoyed me to no end because another OS would test memory for a signature, which if present, meant it had a usable RAM disk... which was corrupted because it was off for a few minutes. It would hang on boot until we cleared the signature from RAM...
It doesn't make laptops cheaper, it just makes inexpensive laptops a bit less inexpensive. The fact that buying a bare laptop is more expensive is a nasty side-effect of MS's licensing arrangements with OEMs. That, in turn, is why people are getting fed up with the Windows tax.
Microsoft's not allowed to do that anymore, and it's been that way for a long time. In fact, what happens is that Microsoft charges the OEM more for the Windows license in that case, so their entire PC line gets more expensive if you buy it with Windows. OEMs don't like this since an overwhelming majority of customers want Windows, and thin margins means a lot when your OEM license fee goes up for Windows.
No, the reason is because of the incredible amount of shovelware on a PC these days. Software companies pay big bucks to the OEMs to ship their software, which can (especially on netbooks) more than offset the cost of Windows, effectively subsidizing the cost. Especially companies like Symantec and the like who offer 90 day trials who know those who don't uninstall it instantly will probably pay the $50/year subscription. Heck, I think Microsoft used to do it as well - Microsoft Works and Office 2010 Trial and the like.
It also helps increase margins if they can offset it enough.
Yeah, that's the great thing about them, but the downside to this sort of sensor is that it doesn't scale well in size. That is, you can't use more than one kinect at a time, as the structured light fields from one will interfere with another. I suppose you can create some timing where one field will be off while another is on, but you can only have so many kinects in an area before this is impractical.
Now, it's true that it doesn't scale as adding additional kinects will cause more interference, but two well-positioned ones can be made to not interfere too badly...
Not only that, but it can remotely delete apps you've purchased off your device, too. Apple's rejected apps, removed apps, etc., but they've never used that power to delete or stop apps from running that you've already bought. Even if you bought an app that was later deleted, iTunes doesn't stop you from reinstalling that app on any iDevice you own. Hell, even iDOS is back in the App Store (with the warning to "not update" for those who purchased it before).
But it's OK when Google does it, and not when Apple says they can do it but hasn't (yet). Just like it's evil when Amazon does it.
Heck, we don't even know if iOS can even do remote deletions. The only capability that comes close is CoreLocation's ability to disable apps, but that only works for apps that use CoreLocation to begin with. Then again, maybe all it does is the app's ability to get anything other than fake GPS data...
it makes parents feel comfortable buying their kids iPads and iPhones
now you don't have to like this marketing ploy, and you don't have to like the rationale behind the parent's thinking. but you have to admit it works, it brings in the $, and that's all that matters
It's basically summarized in Apple's approval guidelines - kids use iPhones and iPod Touches these days, and parents don't always set the parental controls correctly, which make them just as useless as the V-chip and other parental control technology.
It's also why kid-friendly consoles like the Wii and DS have to use the awful friend code system and such gimped connectivity - it adds just enough difficulty that parents don't worry about evils of online gaming, perceived or real.
And yes, it makes Apple and Nintendo a LOT of money.
Microsoft will have an interesting time since Kinect is perceived as kid-friendly, but Xbox Live isn't.
Seems odd, when you consider things like reviews of the iPad getting dinged because it "can't run pirated software" and the Chinese Android marketplace where malware is being spread to Android devices...
You'd think that the vast majority of Chinese users would pirate.
Or is the remaining 10% those who simply aren't detected?
This is going to be a total disaster. Console gamers have enjoyed instant on convenience, game sharing/lending/selling, and in general a concrete certainty that the disc they hold in their hands is guaranteed to work on any console without a hitch. You cannot turn around and change all that overnight without seriously ruffling feathers. Console gamers will expect these features implicitly--it's tradition!
A recent game, Assassin's Creed:Brotherhood, came with a one time serial code which could be used to obtain downloadable content. Lots of console players simply didn't bother. The concept of typing in this alpha-numeric hieroglyph, originally designed for commercial office software, was simply alien to them. It goes beyond intelligence or capability, and enters the realm of culture and society. Console gamers simply don't work this way. This move is taking Sony into three shells territory.
Actually, I credit Sony for the computerization of the console. Think about what Sony's done so far.
After all, some PS3 games need to be installed (and it's a real installation, not like the 360's "copy to hard disk" feature. You can't play without installing). And those installers present you a nice EULA that you have to agree to.
This is just furthering the cause - now you have to enter in your key code, just like a PC.
My guess is that Sony's trying to make the PS4 one of their Vaio PCs - hey, PS3 gamers are used to installing games, agreeing to EULAs and entering codes, let's made the next-gen console a PC!
Also let's not forget it was Sony that pulled the plug on PS3 Linux. They're the only company to ever REMOVE an official feature from a functioning console.
Oh yeah that was a feature that 99% of the userbase used. An OS that was serious gimped by lack of good videodrivers and a lack of RAM. I can buy a second hand computer for 40 that ran Linux a lot better then how Linux ran in OtherOS mode. Are you serious ? Is anybody crying about Linux on the PS3 serious ?
And you think 99% of the userbase cares if the console was region locked? Really, the number of people who care about region locking or OtherOS is pretty small (and the intersection is pretty big). There's a good chance already that 99% of the existing Nintendo DS and DSi have never ever run a foreign legitimately purchased game (no, downloading the ROM and putting it on your flash card doesn't count).
Heck, did you know there was a small region limitation in the DS? Yes, games purchased in China do NOT work on outside-China DSes (technical reason - the ROM in the DS is smaller for rest of world as it doesn't have to contain all the glyphs).
PS3 games aren't region locked. Ever. The console technically has the capability to implement this, but it has never been turned on. Sony won't certify region locked games.
I believe they are actually - looking at the back cover is a picture of a globe with a number attached to it - that's the region number. Now it's possible that Sony doesn't *enforce* it, but it's there.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon is a (very) heavily modified A8. Qualcomm has one of the most expensive ARM licenses, which allows them to extensively modify the cores, rather than just stamp them into SoCs with other stuff.
As does Apple and Marvell (who has the original architecture license - DEC (StrongARM) --> Compaq (acquired DEC) --> Intel (through litigation with Compaq, and produced XScale) --> Marvell (purchasing Intel's mobile division)).
Samsung might have one too - their Cortex A8's were modified by that company Apple acquired as well, unless the A8 licensing allows minor modifications. Still, the A8 core used by Apple and Samsung aren't stock - I think the Apple one is actually a bit more modified as well.
(Fun fact - Apple was one of the original ARM investors (back when it was Acorn RISC Machines) and pretty much made it popular with Newton...)
Completely agreed. The demos of the UI were very off-telling. The final nail in that coffin is that they won't have Market on the device (though you can still install APKs as usual, so you could purchase them from another device and transfer).
You do realize that the Android Open-Source Project has little in relation (other than code) to Android the OS, right? An Android phone, at least the ones by the big guys like HTC, Samsung, LG, and Motorola get their Android drops from the OHA directly, which is how they can launch a phone and Android simultaneously.
As part of that, Google licenses those guys the Google apps (the "with Google" thing you see on Android phones), which include the Marketplace, Gmail, YouTube, Maps, and other utilities. These are NOT in AOSP at all, and unless you meet Google's requirements (OHA member, it's a phone, big enough company), Google won't license the apps to you.
That's the whole reason for "Android" and "Android with Google". Android is the new hotness, and people are dumping lots of money into putting it as the Linux distribution of choice (because it provides a standard API set and everything's pretty much done once you get it working, and apps are easily written and cross-platform).
Could you rig up something similar to Android's "back" button with this? The lack of a back button and the lack of the notification pull-down are the major things that would ever prevent me from getting an iPhone...
But then you'll need apps to actually support it.
Then again, as someone who used iOS, I find the extra back and menu buttons kinda annoying because I'm never remembering to use those buttons - they're just out of the way things - why can't the devs put the damn option on the screen like it is in iOS... and why can't they have the left-pointing pentagon to return me back the way I came.
Annoying either way - but both are valid UI design methodologies. Apple's way is more discoverable because it isn't hiding, Android's way is more efficient because it doesn't waste valuable screen space drawing back buttons and menu selections always on screen. Sort of how in Windows and Linux stuff is often hidden in right-click menus, while in OS X, the design philophy is to not do that (i.e., put the right-click options somewhere else as well).
The vast majority of 360 hacks are firmware hacks. It's essentially a change to the dvd drive firmware to tell it not to check if the disc is signed or not.
The only unpatched hole in the Xbox360 is the modified drive firmware. And yes, Microsoft *does* detect that! (It's also not a terribly interesting hack since it is only enables backups - you cannot run unsigned code).
The other hacks, including JTAG hacks, are also detectable by Microsoft. If you watch the presentation or see the slides presented on the PS3 exploit, you'll see that there are relatively small areas where the Xbox360 was actually broken open (JTAG hack and one other hack, besides the drive hack), but were promptly fixed and modified machines cannot be connected to Xbox Live anymore.
But the PS3 hack reveals a key with high enough priviledges that it's practically impossible to revoke and was never meant to be updated. It also means that multiplayer gaming on PSN is pretty much compromised - a sufficiently capable custom firmware and do very convincing lies to both PSN and the game.
Because RF can go through walls and the whole point of visible band communication is privacy.
And short of a small overlap near doors, each room won't interfere with the room next door or the hallways.
3Mbps might be slow, but then again if you're sharing an 802.11g network with a few folks who are busy anyways but elsewhere in the location, it's gonna be that slow too, or slower. Or if you're in an apartment and can see 30 accesspoints from your location...
Have you called Verzion or Fedex services lately? They are both english language processing menu driven systems. Of course, the most used response from their system is 'Sorry, I didn't quite get that...
Gah. Interactive voice menus are probably singlehandedly the worst innovation in menu systems ever.
The strange thing is, it's actually a fairly easy problem. When you're trying to machine-recognize something, where that something is from a well-enumerated set, it's a lot easier than trying to analyze something generic. That's why voice command systems work so well (but speech-to-text, not so much), etc. Even handwriting recognition works with limited vocabularly (the digits should be easy for anyone studying introductory computer vision, for example), which is why Graffiti works so well.
But the damned IVRs... can't we go back to the low-tech tones of "Push 1 for billing" stuff? At least that's functional, it works, and you're not re-iterating the same word a million times.
But almost zero games on the PS3 render in 1080, most are 720 and are then upscaled
There's a few that are 1080i, but I think only crappy game ports are actually 1080p (i.e., movie games) though I haven't really checked (1080p games are *really* rare). Most of the good games are 720p.
And the PS3 doesn't upscale - it just outputs 720p and your receiver or TV upscales it to 1080p. The only time the PS3 upscales is playing PS2 or PSX games, or DVDs. The Xbox360 upscales to whatever output setting you have it as.
Or just dump the numbers and actually put some effort into new names (works for Nintendo, and I GUESS Microsoft sorta did it but they cheated by using a number to do it).
True, though Microsoft did at least not call it Xbox 2. Xbox 360 I've seen shortened as X360, or simply 360. For all intents and purposes that works really well - you can have the xbox (original), or the 360.
THe next Xbox though is going to be a tough one. 720's kinda boring (and expected), plus doesn't really roll off the tongue (too many syllables - 4 vs. 3). 1000 might work, but that's not readily identifiable.
Give a little more time for HTML5 to become common, and you'll see whole sites popping up to provide web-delivered "Apps" which cache and remain local via HTML5. People are still getting a handle on it. There's loads of apps which are so simple they can be replaced in this way.
Unlikely to happen these days. One of the neat things that happened when mobile devices got popular was the transition to HTML5 for everything. Now that every platform except iOS has Flash, people are starting to move back to Flash (especially as Android leapfrogs in marketshare).
Eventually, even iOS will have to adopt Flash, and we'll be back to the same world we were in.
Okay okay so I'm just being awkward. But seriously, whenever I've used an iPad or iPhone, I've wished it had the Android "back" button. So much more convenient than hunting for application specific menus to get back to where you were.
Ironically, I've forgotten that in Android the "menu" and "back" keys are necessary. I've been so used to iOS that I expect items in the menu to be shown somewhere on the screen, and the back is the left-pointing pentagon at the top. Both make sense in their own way - having it onscreen is more discoverable, having it as a button means you save precious screen real estate.
It can be frustrating when using both devices because of it...
Slashdot Mirror
People actually go to those sites? I mean, I haven't clicked on a link inside those .NFO files or typed in the addresses contained in the filename, and never needed it. If the file is what I want, great, if not, delete and move on.
I can't see selling ads to a site that's hard to get to as being very popular unless people somehow expect lots of new stuff to be posted there... heck, I think the index sites would make more money.
Or is there some part of this culture I'm not aware of?
So... does this mean things like NoScript automatically prevent the issue? I already put google-analytics on the blacklist so it's never displayed in the NoScript menu and the like.
Correct. But CPUs, GPUs, and chipsets, which are full of random logic are not the stunning examples of transistor density. In fact, what limits the transistor density in random logic parts is wiring density and I/O count (wiring density is how close you can put all the little connections between transistors, I/O count being the number of pins). In fact, most such chips are I/O limited as well which limits what the chip can do.
Memory (all types - EEPROM/Flash/RAM) is however silicon-limited. Once you reach the maximum transistor density, the only way to increase storage is increase silicon area consumed (which means less chips and exponentially greater cost as defects claim more chips).
It's also why memory tends to be anywhere from a half-generation to full generation ahead of CPUs and the like.
Intel's 4 billion transistor CPUs aren't terribly dense when you think a 8/16+ GB memory card already has at least 4 billion transistors, especially the microSD formfactors which limit you to one flash chip. Most of those 4 billion transistors also aren't involved in any computational path, either, being used in cache and various other processor memories onchip.
Actually, that would be the business doing the spamming.
Amazon in this case is doing what spammers do - sells email services on a per-email basis. Most spammers get payment to spam N million people, and they don't really care if 99.9999% of them are filtered out by the time it's received - they've gotten their $100 or whatever they've charged. It's the business wanting the spamming service that has to make up the $100 on the remaining few.
That's why spammers make so much money - they just have to send email and not guarantee results. And the business that paid $100 to get $12 worth of business? Well, he may never hire a spammer again, but there's another business "genius" wanting marketing services at his door.
It's also why most spam is virus laden crap - that's far more profitable than trying to sell product.
Not only that, but all the fake EXE files used to spread viruses and trojans - the exact same EXE, except renamed to match all popular search terms have been flooding alt.binaries.*.
Luckily, if you're browsing, you can easily tell because the group gets flooded with 5000+ posts with the exact same size on them...
Yes, you'll also find them as silly things like .rar.exe too.
As for why people continue to spread it - well, one reason is ratios (TPB and MiniNova probably don't have ratios, but many others do), the second is they don't check. A lot of people end up collecting the stuff and they don't bother watching/listening. I'm sure if you ask most people, they grab it because they can, even though their entire collection will take 2 or 3 lifetimes to work through. (Also why piracy stats are misleading - I've grabbed stuff for this reason alone. If I had to pay, I'd probably skip it and move on).
Zynga has been diversifying ever since the iPhone couldn't run Flash, and most Facebook games have iPhone apps, including Zynga. Heck, I think last year when Steve Jobs was introducing GameCenter and iOS4, Zynga was a company he trotted out to demonstrate their new FarmVille apps.
Heck, many of these apps are better because they send notifications out when it's time to do something instead of the constant Facebook polling.
I've also started seeing a lot of Flash games in the App Store recently (flash games compiled with Adobe's tools).
All Facebook's really done is the initial startup and get users to blindly install their apps (most won't read even the Android warning instead wanting to try out the Farmville app... even though it probably requests every priviledge so it can rape and pillage all the data contained within).
One trick I used for debugging (I had no way to log to a serial port in the OS I was using) was to log to memory. The system would crash, then I would simply reboot it, and then dump the log buffer out via the bootloader.
Even after several seconds, the log was still quite readable.
That paper on reading hard drive bit patterns that lead to the 31 pass erase had a section on semiconductor memory as well, where he found that DRAMs have this ability despite the charge leaking off due to cell effects - a cell holding a 1 is more likely to hold a 1 for seconds to minutes upon powerup, and ditto for a 0. It doesn't power up quite so randomly. This effect is stronger on memory that isn't changed frequently.
This also annoyed me to no end because another OS would test memory for a signature, which if present, meant it had a usable RAM disk... which was corrupted because it was off for a few minutes. It would hang on boot until we cleared the signature from RAM...
Microsoft's not allowed to do that anymore, and it's been that way for a long time. In fact, what happens is that Microsoft charges the OEM more for the Windows license in that case, so their entire PC line gets more expensive if you buy it with Windows. OEMs don't like this since an overwhelming majority of customers want Windows, and thin margins means a lot when your OEM license fee goes up for Windows.
No, the reason is because of the incredible amount of shovelware on a PC these days. Software companies pay big bucks to the OEMs to ship their software, which can (especially on netbooks) more than offset the cost of Windows, effectively subsidizing the cost. Especially companies like Symantec and the like who offer 90 day trials who know those who don't uninstall it instantly will probably pay the $50/year subscription. Heck, I think Microsoft used to do it as well - Microsoft Works and Office 2010 Trial and the like.
It also helps increase margins if they can offset it enough.
Well, two Kinects do interfere, but not much - http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/29/two-kinects-join-forces-to-create-better-3d-video-blow-our-mind/
Now, it's true that it doesn't scale as adding additional kinects will cause more interference, but two well-positioned ones can be made to not interfere too badly...
Not only that, but it can remotely delete apps you've purchased off your device, too. Apple's rejected apps, removed apps, etc., but they've never used that power to delete or stop apps from running that you've already bought. Even if you bought an app that was later deleted, iTunes doesn't stop you from reinstalling that app on any iDevice you own. Hell, even iDOS is back in the App Store (with the warning to "not update" for those who purchased it before).
But it's OK when Google does it, and not when Apple says they can do it but hasn't (yet). Just like it's evil when Amazon does it.
Heck, we don't even know if iOS can even do remote deletions. The only capability that comes close is CoreLocation's ability to disable apps, but that only works for apps that use CoreLocation to begin with. Then again, maybe all it does is the app's ability to get anything other than fake GPS data...
It's basically summarized in Apple's approval guidelines - kids use iPhones and iPod Touches these days, and parents don't always set the parental controls correctly, which make them just as useless as the V-chip and other parental control technology.
It's also why kid-friendly consoles like the Wii and DS have to use the awful friend code system and such gimped connectivity - it adds just enough difficulty that parents don't worry about evils of online gaming, perceived or real.
And yes, it makes Apple and Nintendo a LOT of money.
Microsoft will have an interesting time since Kinect is perceived as kid-friendly, but Xbox Live isn't.
Gah. I goofed my hyperlinks. Preview next time... here it is with links..
Seems odd, when you consider things like reviews of the iPad getting dinged because it "can't run pirated software" and the Chinese Android marketplace where malware is being spread to Android devices...
You'd think that the vast majority of Chinese users would pirate.
Or is the remaining 10% those who simply aren't detected?
Actually, I credit Sony for the computerization of the console. Think about what Sony's done so far.
After all, some PS3 games need to be installed (and it's a real installation, not like the 360's "copy to hard disk" feature. You can't play without installing). And those installers present you a nice EULA that you have to agree to.
This is just furthering the cause - now you have to enter in your key code, just like a PC.
My guess is that Sony's trying to make the PS4 one of their Vaio PCs - hey, PS3 gamers are used to installing games, agreeing to EULAs and entering codes, let's made the next-gen console a PC!
And you think 99% of the userbase cares if the console was region locked? Really, the number of people who care about region locking or OtherOS is pretty small (and the intersection is pretty big). There's a good chance already that 99% of the existing Nintendo DS and DSi have never ever run a foreign legitimately purchased game (no, downloading the ROM and putting it on your flash card doesn't count).
Heck, did you know there was a small region limitation in the DS? Yes, games purchased in China do NOT work on outside-China DSes (technical reason - the ROM in the DS is smaller for rest of world as it doesn't have to contain all the glyphs).
As does Apple and Marvell (who has the original architecture license - DEC (StrongARM) --> Compaq (acquired DEC) --> Intel (through litigation with Compaq, and produced XScale) --> Marvell (purchasing Intel's mobile division)).
Samsung might have one too - their Cortex A8's were modified by that company Apple acquired as well, unless the A8 licensing allows minor modifications. Still, the A8 core used by Apple and Samsung aren't stock - I think the Apple one is actually a bit more modified as well.
(Fun fact - Apple was one of the original ARM investors (back when it was Acorn RISC Machines) and pretty much made it popular with Newton...)
You do realize that the Android Open-Source Project has little in relation (other than code) to Android the OS, right? An Android phone, at least the ones by the big guys like HTC, Samsung, LG, and Motorola get their Android drops from the OHA directly, which is how they can launch a phone and Android simultaneously.
As part of that, Google licenses those guys the Google apps (the "with Google" thing you see on Android phones), which include the Marketplace, Gmail, YouTube, Maps, and other utilities. These are NOT in AOSP at all, and unless you meet Google's requirements (OHA member, it's a phone, big enough company), Google won't license the apps to you.
That's the whole reason for "Android" and "Android with Google". Android is the new hotness, and people are dumping lots of money into putting it as the Linux distribution of choice (because it provides a standard API set and everything's pretty much done once you get it working, and apps are easily written and cross-platform).
But then you'll need apps to actually support it.
Then again, as someone who used iOS, I find the extra back and menu buttons kinda annoying because I'm never remembering to use those buttons - they're just out of the way things - why can't the devs put the damn option on the screen like it is in iOS... and why can't they have the left-pointing pentagon to return me back the way I came.
Annoying either way - but both are valid UI design methodologies. Apple's way is more discoverable because it isn't hiding, Android's way is more efficient because it doesn't waste valuable screen space drawing back buttons and menu selections always on screen. Sort of how in Windows and Linux stuff is often hidden in right-click menus, while in OS X, the design philophy is to not do that (i.e., put the right-click options somewhere else as well).
The only unpatched hole in the Xbox360 is the modified drive firmware. And yes, Microsoft *does* detect that! (It's also not a terribly interesting hack since it is only enables backups - you cannot run unsigned code).
The other hacks, including JTAG hacks, are also detectable by Microsoft. If you watch the presentation or see the slides presented on the PS3 exploit, you'll see that there are relatively small areas where the Xbox360 was actually broken open (JTAG hack and one other hack, besides the drive hack), but were promptly fixed and modified machines cannot be connected to Xbox Live anymore.
But the PS3 hack reveals a key with high enough priviledges that it's practically impossible to revoke and was never meant to be updated. It also means that multiplayer gaming on PSN is pretty much compromised - a sufficiently capable custom firmware and do very convincing lies to both PSN and the game.
And short of a small overlap near doors, each room won't interfere with the room next door or the hallways.
3Mbps might be slow, but then again if you're sharing an 802.11g network with a few folks who are busy anyways but elsewhere in the location, it's gonna be that slow too, or slower. Or if you're in an apartment and can see 30 accesspoints from your location...
Gah. Interactive voice menus are probably singlehandedly the worst innovation in menu systems ever.
The strange thing is, it's actually a fairly easy problem. When you're trying to machine-recognize something, where that something is from a well-enumerated set, it's a lot easier than trying to analyze something generic. That's why voice command systems work so well (but speech-to-text, not so much), etc. Even handwriting recognition works with limited vocabularly (the digits should be easy for anyone studying introductory computer vision, for example), which is why Graffiti works so well.
But the damned IVRs... can't we go back to the low-tech tones of "Push 1 for billing" stuff? At least that's functional, it works, and you're not re-iterating the same word a million times.
There's a few that are 1080i, but I think only crappy game ports are actually 1080p (i.e., movie games) though I haven't really checked (1080p games are *really* rare). Most of the good games are 720p.
And the PS3 doesn't upscale - it just outputs 720p and your receiver or TV upscales it to 1080p. The only time the PS3 upscales is playing PS2 or PSX games, or DVDs. The Xbox360 upscales to whatever output setting you have it as.
True, though Microsoft did at least not call it Xbox 2. Xbox 360 I've seen shortened as X360, or simply 360. For all intents and purposes that works really well - you can have the xbox (original), or the 360.
THe next Xbox though is going to be a tough one. 720's kinda boring (and expected), plus doesn't really roll off the tongue (too many syllables - 4 vs. 3). 1000 might work, but that's not readily identifiable.
Unlikely to happen these days. One of the neat things that happened when mobile devices got popular was the transition to HTML5 for everything. Now that every platform except iOS has Flash, people are starting to move back to Flash (especially as Android leapfrogs in marketshare).
Eventually, even iOS will have to adopt Flash, and we'll be back to the same world we were in.
Ironically, I've forgotten that in Android the "menu" and "back" keys are necessary. I've been so used to iOS that I expect items in the menu to be shown somewhere on the screen, and the back is the left-pointing pentagon at the top. Both make sense in their own way - having it onscreen is more discoverable, having it as a button means you save precious screen real estate.
It can be frustrating when using both devices because of it...