...given programming legend Michael Abrash (now currently at Valve Software) just announced that he's currently researching wearable computing more or less as a direct result of Neal Stephenson's book Snow Crash!
His post on the Valve blog is really interesting and worth reading.
FWIW, I think there are a lot of people from here (Australia) travelling to the US now that our dollar has reached parity (or is often worth more) than yours. We're dumping money into your economy for sure, but it seems we're able to do it because your economy has tanked and now our money is worth twice as much there as it is here!
Same. It's almost a bonus for me that they're not user-repairable, because when they break they can't bring them to me and ask me to fix it for them - they know it has to go back to Apple!
Heh I read that xkcd comic a while back and decided it sounded like a completely reasonable practice, so started trying to do that. I almost instantly came up against the limit you describe - it's just not really doable in practice because of this limit.
Just spent the week at the Game Developers Conference in SF and this seemed to be a bit of a recurring theme from having conversations with a couple mobile developers. The cost of supporting Android is too high in many cases and not worth the effort.
Once of the sessions I sat in on (can't remember who it was now, embarrassingly - I think it was PopCap talking about Bejeweled - not a bit player) pointed out that Android has many many variants on many different handsets. Even though the market size is roughly the same as iOS (his numbers were around ~250m each), iOS has way fewer variants to deal with, whereas Android had many. So you get to spend a lot of time messing around trying to make sure it's working on all platforms.
I've noticed from flicking through app reviews in the Market, it's not uncommon to see people with complaints about it not working on their particular handset. I haven't had this problem with anything I've tried so it's hard to tell how big a deal it is, but I don't use many apps.
The general feeling I got from speaking to a few indie developers was that they wouldn't bother doing an Android version unless their title turned out to be a big hit on iPhone.
I would say that is Microsoft's problem in general. They are stuck trying to play catchup with Google and Apple. All their "new" stuff just appears to be attempts to match features that other people have had for ages.
Then they have this weird habit of overcompensating and going too far. Windows 8 seems to be this exactly - they seem to focus on a bunch of features like "runs on tablet!" "has live tiles to keep up to date!". Being on a tablet in itself isn't a feature. Live tiles are just widgets; anyone who has used Android (or any other thing that has had desktop widgets) aren't going to be impressed.
Stop trying to catch up. Stop playing the (losing) following game. Don't tell me what features you now have that are just bringing you in line with everyone else. Do something new and innovative and tell me about THAT.
Rather than mod you down for disagreeing - why do you think DRM exists? You haven't really provided an alternative explanation.
I don't believe it exists specifically for the purpose of screwing legitimate customers by applying post-purchase crippling as in this case. DRM/copy protection has existed for as long as I can remember - I can still remember the copy protection schemes on our old Apple 2 games. And I remember how futile they were at stopping people from copying games.
I think this is almost just a case of Hanlon's razor. I really think they're generally just dumb. I've been to GDC several times now and have seen all the stands there from companies that are offering DRM/copy protection/security solutions. They have nice shiny booklets and whitepapers and deliver a great pitch, and I think they target the level of a business where people have no technical clue about how useless DRM is.
These people are interested in protecting their bottom line and fall for this spiel. I genuinely believe that is why big games companies like Sony, Ubisoft, etc are just so completely retarded - they rely on these DRM schemes to stop a few zero day thefts, the people who are making this decision being utterly oblivious as to the real cost - and the futility - of doing so.
I feel that is historically how things have all worked. DRM in the cloud/Internet age has opened up new avenues to exploit customers, but I think they are the exception rather than the norm.
Well, maybe it's just that I'd/like/ to think that because I'd almost rather people be stupid than evil - stupid will hopefully get wiped out through evolution, but evil can keep finding a way to force its way in.
We went through this same shit years ago in Australia.
ISPs started selling Unlimited* data, and hiding what the asterisk meant in T&Cs under what they called an "Acceptable Use Policy". The Acceptable Use Policy usually said something like, "you can use unlimited data up to this particular limit at which point you will be charged X/throttled/something else".
Our consumer watchdog group, the ACCC (which IMHO is a truly excellent example of well done government regulation that works for the people) took exception to this after user complaints. I can't remember the exact details (and am too lazy to search) but the gist of it was that this was not transparent enough and not clear enough for the end users.
The end result is that every ISP was forced to stop selling these bullshit "unlimited*" plans and required to label them accurately and concisely.
We have quite low monthly download quotas compared to the rest of the world (I work in broadband content and regularly talk to people that struggle on 12-20GB a month because it is all that is available for them), but the plans are clearly labelled and generally very transparent and easy to understand - and while many people are still pretty pissed about the low quotas and sometimes high overage charges (especially on mobile)... the problem of getting bullshitted into an "unlimited" plan only to find out that it is not at all unlimited has all but vanished.
I am not sure what the US equivalent of our ACCC is (FTC?) but I find it staggering that this has not brought their attention yet. Does the FTC have no teeth (seems unlikely from previous readings) or is the government just completely in the pocket of these giant telcos, or is it just user apathy/ignorance...?
The Ninth Circuit's decision in Vernor significantly erodes the first sale doctrine with respect to software and other mass-licensed digital goods.... In Timothy Vernor's case, however, the publisher of the AutoCad software argued that it never actually sold the copies Vernor bought, so there was no "first sale" for copyright purposes. Under the software publisher's logic, which the Ninth Circuit adopted in the case, both the copy and the intellectual property embodied in the copy were only licensed, and quite restrictively so, pursuant to the terms of a mass end user license agreement (EULA); nothing was ever sold, despite the retail transaction that put copies of the software into the hands of the initial purchaser, and despite the downstream transaction that put those copies into Timothy Vernor's hands.... Under Vernor, software copyright owners not only own the work embodied in every copy of a program they sell, they own every copy, too. Consumers are left with both empty pockets and empty hands.
I strongly believe First Sale doctrine should extend to software, but the EULA looks like it is sneaking in to block it.
Creating a service that consumes Twitter posts from a variety of a different countries/regions and notes when there is a discrepancy seems like a great way to automatically Streisand Effect the posts that are, for whatever reason, being censored.
I personally had the exact opposite reaction. I thought it would be completely unwatchable, but once I started watching it, I couldn't stop, because it was awesome.
Exactly the same here. I planned to give it a few minutes before the inevitable closing, but it was just so creative, so different and so hilarious in parts I couldn't stop.
One of the best things I've seen on the Internet and such a great example of the culture of the remix and why it is so important that copyright is not further bastardised so that projects like this can not go ahead.
It was so great to see such a wide range of people involved too - young kids to the elderly. All having a blast making it. Awesome.
Let's get it out in the open. Let's thrash it out. Ebooks kinda suk. They're stuck there on your device, and they're all digitally-slimy. You can't (easily!) draw notes and fold down pages and get pizza grease all over them. I'm not even going to get into Formats and DRM and Backups etc.
This is not a problem for me. I just want to read a book. The rare occasion I want to make notes, my ebook reader lets me highlight and share, so I usually just share it off to my email address so I can do something with it later.
I switched to almost exclusive ebook reading several years ago. I bought an HP Ipaq as a test and found it was fine, although the interface was kludgy due to lack of good app support. Once I got an iPod Touch and Stanza, life improved.
Now I have Android and use FBReader and I just got a Kobo for Christmas.
On the rare occasion I read a real book, I am frustrated by its poor features. I have to hold them in two hands!? I have to use two hands to turn the page?! I can't read it in the dark?! Carrying more than one at a time while traveling weighs HOW MUCH?!
I will only go back to reading paper books when civilization collapses and I can no longer charge them from the wall socket, although given how much I use these things I'll try to buy a solar charger before that happens!
That's how you make sequels - it is not how you make good games. Blizzard make good games; their policy of releasing games "when they're done" is much better than their competitor's policies of releasing sequels simply because they know people will buy them regardless of quality.
You know when you buy a Blizzard game it will be supported for many, many years - they are still releasing patches for the original StarCraft!
I would rather they never bother with console games and stick to PCs, because there are too few developers like them left on PC any more and for those of us that prefer the PC for our gaming... we can't afford to lose them.
Blizzard sent us through a response to this story:
Bashiokâ(TM)s response on Twitter was intended as a confirmation that weâ(TM)re actively exploring the possibility of developing a console version of Diablo III, as weâ(TM)ve mentioned in the past. This is not a confirmation that Diablo III is coming to any console platform. Our focus right now is on finishing the PC/Mac version of Diablo III and making sure itâ(TM)s a worthwhile successor to the Diablo series.
A lot of people here are talking about how nginx is "only" useful as some sort of reverse proxy or cache engine or something. We haven't used it for that, although it's on our list of things to try at some point as a lot of people seem to have success with it.
We do use it for serving files over HTTP - primarily video gaming-related files, so they range in size from a few meg up to several gig. It generally performs flawlessly, although sometimes struggles under significant load.
We did a little formal testing ages back; I can't find the numbers now but generally we seem to squeeze more data out of the same hardware using nginx than we did with Apache.
(We used to use it streaming h264 video; it was great for that as well. We switched back to Apache to use some pseudostreaming mod but I can't remember why because now that I look I see the same module is also available for nginx as well.)
Not really related, but I recall John Carmack recently posted on Twitter saying that a cell phone will use less than $1 of grid electricity over their lifespan (based on this calculation).
Interesting insight into how little power a cell phone uses compared to other devices!
This is a great model and I applaud it. I would much rather pay for software knowing that the end game is open source, rather than continually filling the coffers for the duration of a copyright period.
What software do you make; I would be interested in keeping an eye out?
I did click the link - I saw a list of a handful of things that have never bothered me in 10+ years of writing and managing PHP developments.
I understand that it is easy to get frustrated by things like that but I just shrug and move on with my life and try not to get caught again in future.
Well, basing your coding on unmoderated, non-peer-reviewed, user-contributed comments is something that will bite you in the ass regardless of which language you use. I bet there is more terrible C code out there to copy and paste than examples in the PHP documentation simply because the language has been around for longer!
I disagree that it promotes bad coding practices. I read that as a bit of a tongue-in-cheek comment that actually encourages people to use it the right way, while at the same time drawing attention to the fact that you can swap parameters and you might get unexpected results (i.e., the function working even though it should throw some sort of type error).
Sometimes mistakes are made in libraries and terrible ugly hacks have to be made to work around them so as not to destroy many hours of work. Whether or not PHP has its share doesn't mean the blame for writing terrible code should be laid entirely at its doorstep.
Certainly a few crappy library functions hasn't soured Facebook on PHP; I for one am glad to see their continued investment in it and - more importantly - their continued practice of open sourcing new and innovative ways of dealing with PHP.
Great post. Never forget that if the USA had given up after Apollo 1, you guess would never have gotten to the moon. Make them heroes to inspire, not cautionary tales to scare children and deter them from a lifetime of trying.
Slashdot Mirror
...are along the lines of "I wish I had an iPhone instead of this stupid Blackberry"?
...given programming legend Michael Abrash (now currently at Valve Software) just announced that he's currently researching wearable computing more or less as a direct result of Neal Stephenson's book Snow Crash!
His post on the Valve blog is really interesting and worth reading.
I think DoubleTwist (from DVDJon's company) is also free of the iTunes requirement:
http://www.doubletwist.com/desktop/
Free software and I enjoy doing anything that gives DVDJon support for his efforts in reverse engineering stuff to increase interoperability.
FWIW, I think there are a lot of people from here (Australia) travelling to the US now that our dollar has reached parity (or is often worth more) than yours. We're dumping money into your economy for sure, but it seems we're able to do it because your economy has tanked and now our money is worth twice as much there as it is here!
Same. It's almost a bonus for me that they're not user-repairable, because when they break they can't bring them to me and ask me to fix it for them - they know it has to go back to Apple!
Heh I read that xkcd comic a while back and decided it sounded like a completely reasonable practice, so started trying to do that. I almost instantly came up against the limit you describe - it's just not really doable in practice because of this limit.
Just spent the week at the Game Developers Conference in SF and this seemed to be a bit of a recurring theme from having conversations with a couple mobile developers. The cost of supporting Android is too high in many cases and not worth the effort.
Once of the sessions I sat in on (can't remember who it was now, embarrassingly - I think it was PopCap talking about Bejeweled - not a bit player) pointed out that Android has many many variants on many different handsets. Even though the market size is roughly the same as iOS (his numbers were around ~250m each), iOS has way fewer variants to deal with, whereas Android had many. So you get to spend a lot of time messing around trying to make sure it's working on all platforms.
I've noticed from flicking through app reviews in the Market, it's not uncommon to see people with complaints about it not working on their particular handset. I haven't had this problem with anything I've tried so it's hard to tell how big a deal it is, but I don't use many apps.
The general feeling I got from speaking to a few indie developers was that they wouldn't bother doing an Android version unless their title turned out to be a big hit on iPhone.
I would say that is Microsoft's problem in general. They are stuck trying to play catchup with Google and Apple. All their "new" stuff just appears to be attempts to match features that other people have had for ages.
Then they have this weird habit of overcompensating and going too far. Windows 8 seems to be this exactly - they seem to focus on a bunch of features like "runs on tablet!" "has live tiles to keep up to date!". Being on a tablet in itself isn't a feature. Live tiles are just widgets; anyone who has used Android (or any other thing that has had desktop widgets) aren't going to be impressed.
Stop trying to catch up. Stop playing the (losing) following game. Don't tell me what features you now have that are just bringing you in line with everyone else. Do something new and innovative and tell me about THAT.
That's what I would have thought. Until I started watching the republican primaries.
Except the only candidate that doesn't want to go to war with Iran is Ron Paul. As far as I can tell (from Australia) he is not really in the race.
unfortunately I have to conclude that America is not yet tired enough of war to even select a non war mongering republican candidate. :(
Rather than mod you down for disagreeing - why do you think DRM exists? You haven't really provided an alternative explanation.
I don't believe it exists specifically for the purpose of screwing legitimate customers by applying post-purchase crippling as in this case. DRM/copy protection has existed for as long as I can remember - I can still remember the copy protection schemes on our old Apple 2 games. And I remember how futile they were at stopping people from copying games.
I think this is almost just a case of Hanlon's razor. I really think they're generally just dumb. I've been to GDC several times now and have seen all the stands there from companies that are offering DRM/copy protection/security solutions. They have nice shiny booklets and whitepapers and deliver a great pitch, and I think they target the level of a business where people have no technical clue about how useless DRM is.
These people are interested in protecting their bottom line and fall for this spiel. I genuinely believe that is why big games companies like Sony, Ubisoft, etc are just so completely retarded - they rely on these DRM schemes to stop a few zero day thefts, the people who are making this decision being utterly oblivious as to the real cost - and the futility - of doing so.
I feel that is historically how things have all worked. DRM in the cloud/Internet age has opened up new avenues to exploit customers, but I think they are the exception rather than the norm.
Well, maybe it's just that I'd /like/ to think that because I'd almost rather people be stupid than evil - stupid will hopefully get wiped out through evolution, but evil can keep finding a way to force its way in.
We went through this same shit years ago in Australia.
ISPs started selling Unlimited* data, and hiding what the asterisk meant in T&Cs under what they called an "Acceptable Use Policy". The Acceptable Use Policy usually said something like, "you can use unlimited data up to this particular limit at which point you will be charged X/throttled/something else".
Our consumer watchdog group, the ACCC (which IMHO is a truly excellent example of well done government regulation that works for the people) took exception to this after user complaints. I can't remember the exact details (and am too lazy to search) but the gist of it was that this was not transparent enough and not clear enough for the end users.
The end result is that every ISP was forced to stop selling these bullshit "unlimited*" plans and required to label them accurately and concisely.
We have quite low monthly download quotas compared to the rest of the world (I work in broadband content and regularly talk to people that struggle on 12-20GB a month because it is all that is available for them), but the plans are clearly labelled and generally very transparent and easy to understand - and while many people are still pretty pissed about the low quotas and sometimes high overage charges (especially on mobile)... the problem of getting bullshitted into an "unlimited" plan only to find out that it is not at all unlimited has all but vanished.
I am not sure what the US equivalent of our ACCC is (FTC?) but I find it staggering that this has not brought their attention yet. Does the FTC have no teeth (seems unlikely from previous readings) or is the government just completely in the pocket of these giant telcos, or is it just user apathy/ignorance...?
They can try all the EULA crap that they want. That does not make it right, or legally defensible in a court of law.
I am not sure if that is true any more (in the US) since late last year in the Autodesk trial.
From the Freedom to Tinker blog:
The Ninth Circuit's decision in Vernor significantly erodes the first sale doctrine with respect to software and other mass-licensed digital goods. ... ...
In Timothy Vernor's case, however, the publisher of the AutoCad software argued that it never actually sold the copies Vernor bought, so there was no "first sale" for copyright purposes. Under the software publisher's logic, which the Ninth Circuit adopted in the case, both the copy and the intellectual property embodied in the copy were only licensed, and quite restrictively so, pursuant to the terms of a mass end user license agreement (EULA); nothing was ever sold, despite the retail transaction that put copies of the software into the hands of the initial purchaser, and despite the downstream transaction that put those copies into Timothy Vernor's hands.
Under Vernor, software copyright owners not only own the work embodied in every copy of a program they sell, they own every copy, too. Consumers are left with both empty pockets and empty hands.
I strongly believe First Sale doctrine should extend to software, but the EULA looks like it is sneaking in to block it.
Creating a service that consumes Twitter posts from a variety of a different countries/regions and notes when there is a discrepancy seems like a great way to automatically Streisand Effect the posts that are, for whatever reason, being censored.
Someone please build that!
I personally had the exact opposite reaction. I thought it would be completely unwatchable, but once I started watching it, I couldn't stop, because it was awesome.
Exactly the same here. I planned to give it a few minutes before the inevitable closing, but it was just so creative, so different and so hilarious in parts I couldn't stop.
One of the best things I've seen on the Internet and such a great example of the culture of the remix and why it is so important that copyright is not further bastardised so that projects like this can not go ahead.
It was so great to see such a wide range of people involved too - young kids to the elderly. All having a blast making it. Awesome.
Let's get it out in the open. Let's thrash it out. Ebooks kinda suk. They're stuck there on your device, and they're all digitally-slimy. You can't (easily!) draw notes and fold down pages and get pizza grease all over them. I'm not even going to get into Formats and DRM and Backups etc.
This is not a problem for me. I just want to read a book. The rare occasion I want to make notes, my ebook reader lets me highlight and share, so I usually just share it off to my email address so I can do something with it later.
I switched to almost exclusive ebook reading several years ago. I bought an HP Ipaq as a test and found it was fine, although the interface was kludgy due to lack of good app support. Once I got an iPod Touch and Stanza, life improved.
Now I have Android and use FBReader and I just got a Kobo for Christmas.
On the rare occasion I read a real book, I am frustrated by its poor features. I have to hold them in two hands!? I have to use two hands to turn the page?! I can't read it in the dark?! Carrying more than one at a time while traveling weighs HOW MUCH?!
I will only go back to reading paper books when civilization collapses and I can no longer charge them from the wall socket, although given how much I use these things I'll try to buy a solar charger before that happens!
Facebook recently put up this page that explains how and why Facebook advertise. I thought it was a nice, genuine explanation and it is worth a read.
That's how you make sequels - it is not how you make good games. Blizzard make good games; their policy of releasing games "when they're done" is much better than their competitor's policies of releasing sequels simply because they know people will buy them regardless of quality.
You know when you buy a Blizzard game it will be supported for many, many years - they are still releasing patches for the original StarCraft!
I would rather they never bother with console games and stick to PCs, because there are too few developers like them left on PC any more and for those of us that prefer the PC for our gaming... we can't afford to lose them.
Blizzard sent us through a response to this story:
Bashiokâ(TM)s response on Twitter was intended as a confirmation that weâ(TM)re actively exploring the possibility of developing a console version of Diablo III, as weâ(TM)ve mentioned in the past. This is not a confirmation that Diablo III is coming to any console platform. Our focus right now is on finishing the PC/Mac version of Diablo III and making sure itâ(TM)s a worthwhile successor to the Diablo series.
A lot of people here are talking about how nginx is "only" useful as some sort of reverse proxy or cache engine or something. We haven't used it for that, although it's on our list of things to try at some point as a lot of people seem to have success with it.
We do use it for serving files over HTTP - primarily video gaming-related files, so they range in size from a few meg up to several gig. It generally performs flawlessly, although sometimes struggles under significant load.
We did a little formal testing ages back; I can't find the numbers now but generally we seem to squeeze more data out of the same hardware using nginx than we did with Apache.
(We used to use it streaming h264 video; it was great for that as well. We switched back to Apache to use some pseudostreaming mod but I can't remember why because now that I look I see the same module is also available for nginx as well.)
Not really related, but I recall John Carmack recently posted on Twitter saying that a cell phone will use less than $1 of grid electricity over their lifespan (based on this calculation).
Interesting insight into how little power a cell phone uses compared to other devices!
This is a great model and I applaud it. I would much rather pay for software knowing that the end game is open source, rather than continually filling the coffers for the duration of a copyright period.
What software do you make; I would be interested in keeping an eye out?
I did click the link - I saw a list of a handful of things that have never bothered me in 10+ years of writing and managing PHP developments.
I understand that it is easy to get frustrated by things like that but I just shrug and move on with my life and try not to get caught again in future.
Well, basing your coding on unmoderated, non-peer-reviewed, user-contributed comments is something that will bite you in the ass regardless of which language you use. I bet there is more terrible C code out there to copy and paste than examples in the PHP documentation simply because the language has been around for longer!
I disagree that it promotes bad coding practices. I read that as a bit of a tongue-in-cheek comment that actually encourages people to use it the right way, while at the same time drawing attention to the fact that you can swap parameters and you might get unexpected results (i.e., the function working even though it should throw some sort of type error).
Sometimes mistakes are made in libraries and terrible ugly hacks have to be made to work around them so as not to destroy many hours of work. Whether or not PHP has its share doesn't mean the blame for writing terrible code should be laid entirely at its doorstep.
Certainly a few crappy library functions hasn't soured Facebook on PHP; I for one am glad to see their continued investment in it and - more importantly - their continued practice of open sourcing new and innovative ways of dealing with PHP.
Great post. Never forget that if the USA had given up after Apollo 1, you guess would never have gotten to the moon. Make them heroes to inspire, not cautionary tales to scare children and deter them from a lifetime of trying.