As someone who went through college with a gaming itch, an itch that lasts to this day (and it's been some years...), I can tell you the best time to foment gaming withdrawal is as soon as you get to college. The social, entertaining and educational aspects playing games can improve only go so far, and by the time you're applying for higher-ed, the only thing gaming is going to improve is your ability to postpone exercise, reading, studying, outdoor activities and socializing. The "twenty-something gamer" is one of the most overrated characteristics of the millennial generation. People are starting to accept that type as common, and it's not a good thing. It siphons money, time, in ways that resemble the good-ol TV couch-potato. The only reason people are replacing normal TV with games and timeshift TV (e.g. Netflix) is not because of the lack of commercials, but the lack of the News - they can finally sink in to the useless second-life only a game (be it single or multiplayer) can provide for a limited time until the new thing arrives. I know I'm advocating like a zealot for such as stupid topic, but it kinda hits a nerve when a for-profit company attempts to hijack the sacred ethics of human development in order to trigger that impulse-buy, yours, and your kids'.
This is counter-intuitive AF. Basically you're giving away a leisure tool with the purchase of a (mostly) productivity-bound tool. I like the deal, and the people will too, but education packages are supposed to give people an edge on, take a guess: education. If I was such a parent, I'd consider that deal, give the kid the Surface Pro, and keep the Xbox for me. Or maybe keep them both and tell him to use the facilities tuition pays for, so that he stays longer in the campus where he is not distracted by procrastination (as much...).
So they can decide what is congesting the network at will. That is pretty much a free-for-all, and as some said here, the opposite of net neutrality. I can see why the UK wants to leave the EU now: with phrasings like this for "net neutrality" bills, it goes to show how EU legislation has room for improvement on legislation. Shame that the reference nation on the English language is now abandoning the union.
Furthermore, I would like to know how this affects users who are using paid for services that intentionally congest their network, you know, like the mentioned VPNs, or Bitcoin, or Netflix, or any other demanding service where the heavy throughput is part of the feature. Why must an ISP call dibs on "congestive" types of traffic when that is exactly the reasoning behind fears of the net not being neutral: putting power on the providers instead of the consumer who requests all services.
I will take a job that let's me make my own schedules based on my socioeconomic needs: I'm having a bad time financially, I can work longer hours for decent overtime (do they even pay overtime in the US?). I want a rested month, be it 1, 2 or 3 per year, I do part-time. The number of companies offering these two benefits at once. Not to mention some people really enjoy driving in urban traffic. I highly doubt people at Walmart enjoy their jobs half as much as the average. And they admit it's a modest American dream. You know, not one that entails being in the top 1% but actually providing a decent service to society through value your own hands create and not some stupid stock market gambling, seed round handout, a flat out buyout or IPO profits, like them vaporware startups. These people are actually doing something only humans can do safely, at least for the next 10 to 20 years.
The reason those big catalogs don't matter is exactly why you get so much repeats: most labels only allow Spotify/Apple use their artists if they agree to constantly bomb you with their hidden "sponsored" content - artists and songs they'd prefer you to hear. Why do you think Spotify is a "curated playlist"-service, and they bury Discover in the browse section and only update it weekly. Pandora basically only has Discover, and it never is a static, weekly list. It not only trains to offer you music you WANT to listen due to your "likes", instead of forcing you to just listen to the most popular thing of any genre/artist you happened to give a like last YEAR, but it will also train by song structure in order to keep providing you stuff outside your common genres/artists. That is one of the main reasons why Pandora is reported to pay less per song/artist than other services: they just don't repeat that much. of course they also don't force you to subscribe for anything other than clearing up the commercials, unlike Spotify does, for instance.
This is also one of the reasons I feel sad every time I remember my current workplace doesn't allow me to use VPNs and listen to Pandora - I live in Europe, and we don't have "legal" Pandora here.
...and I might use Spotify app on Android (still with a free account) if I'm feeling sadistic for a random playlist, although my lifestyle and current car stereo choices save me the necessity of buying premium - I don't need to listen much in streaming devices that do not support Spotify's free music selection on the web player. And I use a USB drive on my car. But if I did have to pay for a service to let me select any song from a catalog, you know, for instant, non-random play, I'd probably go with Google Music, because besides that ability, I also get to store and stream all my FLAC stuff in the cloud. At least I know those tracks will never be removed due to licensing issues (Google doesn't care if you upload stuff you don't own or they don't have on the catalog - they pay record labels for that liability). And I hear you can pretty much "share" Google Music accounts. Oh and did I mention you also get to listen to Youtube songs on Android WITH THE SCREEN OFF if you have a Music subscription? Yeap! Google had the nerve to only let you do that for them premium users of their services.
I want Microsoft to know I use another browser. If the word reaches DC, I'm even happier about it. So I am a complete non-hypocrite. And the first thing I do in Chrome is go to their store and let them know I'm gonna install uBlock Origin and Tampermonkey for anti-adblock defenses. I also want Google to know that. More recently I even started using Chromium instead of Chrome. But you keep calling people idiots Mr. Anon.
I think you meant debian.org.
Related link: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
Can't say much about mint, but last time I used it, its UI and UX was miles away from and swiftness of Gnome 3, or even unity.
The very first thing I do on my Win10 machines is to use Edge to go to the Chrome download page. Then I turn it off, unpin it, never open it again and set Chrome as my default browser. About 2 minutes in from Chrome startup, it starts using more and more power than Edge ever will on that machine. I can safely say it has now used north of 100kWh than Edge on those machines. And will happily increase.
I agree with you but the problem resides exactly in the fact that there is doubt. I can't be sure Assange or Appelbaum did or did not whatever they're accused of, nobody can. And the Gvm't is playing with that to influence public opinion. For what's it worth, I'd rather go with "innocent until proven guilty" rather than act out like the TOR project and immediately lay off people without substantial proof. All they have are anonymous allegations and/or one-sided stories. I agree that in harassment/rape and many female-bound abuse it is very hard to not have "her word against his" scenarios, but if there's two things we're certain of is this person is technically competent and that his actions seriously affect those with power to influence public opinion. The only thing we can't be certain is that hearsay is nothing more than what we, as a society with a collective opinion, make of it.
Do you see a pattern here? Every single male individual that happens to participate in something that hampers US Government surveillance, will usually be faced with sexual charges or be painted with dubious life choices. Assange and this guy are clear examples, and Snowden's gf professional detail was also outed pretty fast (for those who don't know, she worked in the "exotic dancing industry"). I guess the "traitor" label just wasn't cutting it anymore so they decided to go with the "rapist" one instead.
Not exactly the best choice of words for a (de facto) suspect of sexual assault to let out, if you know what I mean. I totally believe in his innocence though, it's just that the remark that made me giggle.
For those of you who don't want to leave the browser, messenger.com will detect you're on mobile, but with "Request Desktop site" won't force you to the stores and actually be useful. Google also has Hangouts with the similar behavior: will "force" you Google Play instead, will allow usage with the toggle. They really want to force the un-savvy user to them low rated (sub-4), seriously dubious UX apps, probably so they get more ratings from those "either 5 or 1 stars" type of users, and will have some biased way of disregarding the 1 stars thus the average end result is beneficial to the apps.
I believe we're in agreement although it initially looked as if we weren't. You're arguing a media-center can use stuff such as Netflix, and I agree. I just don't think you need that dedicated box as opposed to something that can cast or stream which you might even already have for other reasons (Chromecast, Smart TV embedded features, PS4, etc). Media-centers seem to be for people who want more than the features of the gen pop. I guess that's the article point: "why a smart TV as opposed to a console or any other media-player device".
Until it doesn't for whatever reason. Case in point: My OnePlus One had it, then it changed into "OK Snappdragon" for royalty issues, then it stopped having it for technical reasons we never knew. G5 users might be more lucky in the long run, but what I said still stands: you won't have it with Google's QA like everything else AOSP.
Maybe that's because developers like to keep environments closed to where they can actually gather sources of revenue. So they don't provide unsupported mods as a 60usd piece of plastic that will fail and lead to millions of dollars of buyer lawsuits.
I mean, Steam is the PURRRfect example for this point I am making: it started out from the platform for Valve to gather income for a mod of a mod of a mod of HL (Counter-Strike), which they ended up buying from the modder, then created this great platform that forced keys for the original OFFLINE game to be verified online (thus unreusable) so that people could only use the mod with an purchased key. Take a wild guess at what happened next: nobody else makes community mods of HL without getting a cease and desist from Valve/Steam or going through their very stupid channels to produce a steam-bound mod that can only be played using their platform. Did I mention this platform is from a game-maker who monopolizes the editors of games that get in the platform so people like EA have to create their own platforms for selling/validating their online games? Great guys those Valve guys. Dude you have to face it, developers want money, but they make the great content to back it. Piracy is great and I love it, but it's just not gonna cut it when I reach my 30s and am working an 8h-5day week with children, wife, familly responsibilities. I am just NOT gonna have time to set up a an automated seedbox even with couchpotatoes and the likes just to have my shows ready to see. Im gonna pop that Netflix and go straight to the stuff I want to see for 12 bucks. As for games, I'm just gonna pay for them. If I have the time of course...
Bottomline: I am not gonna be using something so not plug-n-play (in multiple senses) as a media-center for my entertainment. I'm gonna fall in line like everyone else and that's just fine!
I'm really no expert in politics, but I doubt the only way to calculate resource allocation is implying that weight/cost/speed/travel for any form of resource management, be it graphs, trees, schedules, budgets or whatever has to be called a price and directly associated with a monetary value just so that it can be excluded from the "practice" of communism. I think communism has great resource management when it wants to and when the main cost of that management is the impact on the community as a whole instead of the sole gratification of the individual. That is actually my definition of communism. And how can anybody say communists lack resource management when, for example, a communist state such as the USSR actually used a supremely lower space budget and then WON the space race against the US (of course the US changed the goal to "land on Moon" after that... ^_^). I mean... XD
"We're used to getting stock Android on Nexus phones, but Pichai says that could change....There's a lot of software innovation to be had."
There's a lot of innovation to be had and kept by Google apparently. The beauty of shipping the Nexus line with stock Android is that we can count on 100% the features to be available to other OEMs on the AOSP, key initials OS (open source, (and/or sans the payment of royalties to use associated features). That great time they decided to put the always on "Ok Google" only on the Nexus line and the (then Google's) Moto X, and relegating everyone else to restricted use in the Google app. Wanting to customize ROMs with Nexus-only features, or even customizing the Google Apps package shipped on those devices is not only showing the middle finger to manufacturers but also telling your users something in the ways of: "you will only get this feature with Google quality in a Nexus' software".
Fair point, but there is a market called "the video game console market" that is not gonna be disrupted anymore by failures like Ouya, Nvidia TV or any Android TV box for that matter, especially when they attempt to mimic consoles with gold-priced streammable games. The only relevant video game disruption was introduced by the convenience of ubiquity brought up by another flavour of Android devices called "smartphones", where people don't mind lacking graphics and less-usable controls as they fancy instant gratification.
And you have to take into account something else: consoles provide great middle ground by having the potential to steal the "Smart" in Smart TV while giving you near-PC performance, because game developers just don't develop anything that goes far off above console specs - they want to make money after all. And the real problem of set top boxes these days is that people want to stay in a snappy, familiar environment, but most Android TVs on the market only provide the later, while lacking performance when streaming high-res, high-bitrate stuff consistently and definitely lack that too on games, and provide a sucky games catalog for the less instant-gratification-prone place of use: your couch . Consoles don't lack on any of these and are starting to get into the subscription-based EVERYTHING bandwagon pretty hard, with solid benefits for a flat-rate. Competitor Android TVs don't stand a chance with their own concessions when their only benefit is seamless casting and being half-price of a console.
Bottomline: If you game, you'll get a console regardless. And game or not, Smart TV needs cast features and you can get them for cheap unlike a dedicated media center/set-top-box. These are gonna fail like the netbook
I agree with your teacher's opinion about a form of open communism, where no ideological suppression exists and the tendency is actually to foster it through free time instead of long work hours for human beings. Communism in essence has always been a great idea (but never EVER succeeded in practice) and allied with such goals make it one of the most mesmerizing utopias we could hope for. But I believe the human Wille zur Macht will forever lurk behind the scenes and widespread well-being is something we, as a "pack", are not genetically/biologically prepared for.
Some good points there, especially on the isolationism and identity.
Fun fact: if you happen to be a fan of highly political and forward-thinking plot of the Ghost In the Shell shows (especially Stand Alone Complex), you get a solid vibe of what Japan is going to evolve into in what respects to the compulsive allowance their condition requires of immigration... And the cultural clash it causes in such a strong-willed nation.
I agree with suupaabaka's teacher opinion about a form of open communism, where no ideological suppression exists and the tendency is actually to foster it through free time instead of long work hours for human beings. Communism in essence has always been a great idea (but never EVER succeeded in practice) and allied with such goals make it one of the most mesmerizing utopias we could hope for. But I believe the human Wille zur Macht will forever lurk behind the scenes and widespread well-being is something we, as a "pack", are not genetically/biologically prepared for.
The only features I use on my Netcast-OS bearing, mid-2014 LG model is Netflix, Youtube, Spotify, PCT and DLNA casting. The problem is, I know at some point, only the later will keep working due to TV-side firmware upgrades deciding to no longer support the model, thus not even including the app. level cast protocol anymore.
I think the new Vizio TVs and other Google Cast'able new products are going the right way in defining a long-term supportable framework across corporate interests. Why would I even consider a dedicated media-center when piracy is, in all it's glory, dying the hard death, and for better or worse we're all gonna stop storing terabytes and terabytes of media libraries we'll re-watch about 0.5% of it all. It's pointless. I hate to admit it, but this time the companies are actually doing something useful and finding better ways to deliver content end-to-end, affordably, yet if a bit lacking in content variety (but here's to hoping that improves...). Hell, I bet I would spend more on electricity and storage downloading the 40 or so hours I watch every month than I do in a 4-bucks per month Netflix subscription (I share a top tier account with 3 other people. Because I can!).
I hate replying to 0-modded comments, but this one deserves a honourable mention: they really haven't really fallen, they just peaked. Actually Japan is the very first country in this world to experience the future. And by future, I mean the socioeconomic and cultural consequences of "civilizational endgame", for lack of a better expression. Japan was the first country to achieve what many will follow. The real problem here is that unlike other crysis, overflow population combined with ageing and the very fact that the human society values the preservation of individual life is the perfect storm for any given nation to just stop outputing anything. It is a scenario where both capitalism and comunism will try, like many a time before, to seize democratic power, but this time they won't be able to do any "final measure" against it because there is absolutely no pollitically correct way to influence the populace into extreme measures. I know I know, just planted a philosophical bomb in an LCD thread, but it's late at night and I felt inspired for nonsense. It does make sense though.
apparently, this was a reply to a -1 comment which was hidden on my UI due to filters. As another comment of mine (on the same level as the one hidden) showed right above, the UI showed as your reply was directed at my comment. Sorry for the very misunderstood reply.
that is actually a good point, but then they wouldn't sell devices. When you're in a highly competitive, disruptive market, you're not gonna sell anything if you have an innovative piece of hardware that counts heartbeat and then just uses it as a measure of calories, hiding away the inaccurate numbers for the sake of some people's expectations. It is an economic standpoint, but then again, every piece of technology starts out from inaccurate technology that improves over time according to the standards they are bound (case in point: this isn't a medical device and isn't sold as such, thus doesn't need FDA-like approval). Just look at Tesla's Model X - it is apparently full of QA issues, but then again everybody is praising its innovations. Everything has its advantages while some dread its issues. This is how innovation, technology and economy works, and it's also how science itself works - building upon what you have.
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As someone who went through college with a gaming itch, an itch that lasts to this day (and it's been some years...), I can tell you the best time to foment gaming withdrawal is as soon as you get to college. The social, entertaining and educational aspects playing games can improve only go so far, and by the time you're applying for higher-ed, the only thing gaming is going to improve is your ability to postpone exercise, reading, studying, outdoor activities and socializing. The "twenty-something gamer" is one of the most overrated characteristics of the millennial generation. People are starting to accept that type as common, and it's not a good thing. It siphons money, time, in ways that resemble the good-ol TV couch-potato. The only reason people are replacing normal TV with games and timeshift TV (e.g. Netflix) is not because of the lack of commercials, but the lack of the News - they can finally sink in to the useless second-life only a game (be it single or multiplayer) can provide for a limited time until the new thing arrives. I know I'm advocating like a zealot for such as stupid topic, but it kinda hits a nerve when a for-profit company attempts to hijack the sacred ethics of human development in order to trigger that impulse-buy, yours, and your kids'.
This is counter-intuitive AF. Basically you're giving away a leisure tool with the purchase of a (mostly) productivity-bound tool. I like the deal, and the people will too, but education packages are supposed to give people an edge on, take a guess: education. If I was such a parent, I'd consider that deal, give the kid the Surface Pro, and keep the Xbox for me. Or maybe keep them both and tell him to use the facilities tuition pays for, so that he stays longer in the campus where he is not distracted by procrastination (as much...).
So they can decide what is congesting the network at will. That is pretty much a free-for-all, and as some said here, the opposite of net neutrality. I can see why the UK wants to leave the EU now: with phrasings like this for "net neutrality" bills, it goes to show how EU legislation has room for improvement on legislation. Shame that the reference nation on the English language is now abandoning the union. Furthermore, I would like to know how this affects users who are using paid for services that intentionally congest their network, you know, like the mentioned VPNs, or Bitcoin, or Netflix, or any other demanding service where the heavy throughput is part of the feature. Why must an ISP call dibs on "congestive" types of traffic when that is exactly the reasoning behind fears of the net not being neutral: putting power on the providers instead of the consumer who requests all services.
I will take a job that let's me make my own schedules based on my socioeconomic needs: I'm having a bad time financially, I can work longer hours for decent overtime (do they even pay overtime in the US?). I want a rested month, be it 1, 2 or 3 per year, I do part-time. The number of companies offering these two benefits at once. Not to mention some people really enjoy driving in urban traffic. I highly doubt people at Walmart enjoy their jobs half as much as the average. And they admit it's a modest American dream. You know, not one that entails being in the top 1% but actually providing a decent service to society through value your own hands create and not some stupid stock market gambling, seed round handout, a flat out buyout or IPO profits, like them vaporware startups. These people are actually doing something only humans can do safely, at least for the next 10 to 20 years.
The reason those big catalogs don't matter is exactly why you get so much repeats: most labels only allow Spotify/Apple use their artists if they agree to constantly bomb you with their hidden "sponsored" content - artists and songs they'd prefer you to hear. Why do you think Spotify is a "curated playlist"-service, and they bury Discover in the browse section and only update it weekly. Pandora basically only has Discover, and it never is a static, weekly list. It not only trains to offer you music you WANT to listen due to your "likes", instead of forcing you to just listen to the most popular thing of any genre/artist you happened to give a like last YEAR, but it will also train by song structure in order to keep providing you stuff outside your common genres/artists. That is one of the main reasons why Pandora is reported to pay less per song/artist than other services: they just don't repeat that much. of course they also don't force you to subscribe for anything other than clearing up the commercials, unlike Spotify does, for instance. This is also one of the reasons I feel sad every time I remember my current workplace doesn't allow me to use VPNs and listen to Pandora - I live in Europe, and we don't have "legal" Pandora here.
...and I might use Spotify app on Android (still with a free account) if I'm feeling sadistic for a random playlist, although my lifestyle and current car stereo choices save me the necessity of buying premium - I don't need to listen much in streaming devices that do not support Spotify's free music selection on the web player. And I use a USB drive on my car. But if I did have to pay for a service to let me select any song from a catalog, you know, for instant, non-random play, I'd probably go with Google Music, because besides that ability, I also get to store and stream all my FLAC stuff in the cloud. At least I know those tracks will never be removed due to licensing issues (Google doesn't care if you upload stuff you don't own or they don't have on the catalog - they pay record labels for that liability). And I hear you can pretty much "share" Google Music accounts. Oh and did I mention you also get to listen to Youtube songs on Android WITH THE SCREEN OFF if you have a Music subscription? Yeap! Google had the nerve to only let you do that for them premium users of their services.
I want Microsoft to know I use another browser. If the word reaches DC, I'm even happier about it. So I am a complete non-hypocrite. And the first thing I do in Chrome is go to their store and let them know I'm gonna install uBlock Origin and Tampermonkey for anti-adblock defenses. I also want Google to know that. More recently I even started using Chromium instead of Chrome. But you keep calling people idiots Mr. Anon.
I think you meant debian.org. Related link: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... Can't say much about mint, but last time I used it, its UI and UX was miles away from and swiftness of Gnome 3, or even unity.
The very first thing I do on my Win10 machines is to use Edge to go to the Chrome download page. Then I turn it off, unpin it, never open it again and set Chrome as my default browser. About 2 minutes in from Chrome startup, it starts using more and more power than Edge ever will on that machine. I can safely say it has now used north of 100kWh than Edge on those machines. And will happily increase.
I agree with you but the problem resides exactly in the fact that there is doubt. I can't be sure Assange or Appelbaum did or did not whatever they're accused of, nobody can. And the Gvm't is playing with that to influence public opinion. For what's it worth, I'd rather go with "innocent until proven guilty" rather than act out like the TOR project and immediately lay off people without substantial proof. All they have are anonymous allegations and/or one-sided stories. I agree that in harassment/rape and many female-bound abuse it is very hard to not have "her word against his" scenarios, but if there's two things we're certain of is this person is technically competent and that his actions seriously affect those with power to influence public opinion. The only thing we can't be certain is that hearsay is nothing more than what we, as a society with a collective opinion, make of it.
Do you see a pattern here? Every single male individual that happens to participate in something that hampers US Government surveillance, will usually be faced with sexual charges or be painted with dubious life choices. Assange and this guy are clear examples, and Snowden's gf professional detail was also outed pretty fast (for those who don't know, she worked in the "exotic dancing industry"). I guess the "traitor" label just wasn't cutting it anymore so they decided to go with the "rapist" one instead.
Not exactly the best choice of words for a (de facto) suspect of sexual assault to let out, if you know what I mean. I totally believe in his innocence though, it's just that the remark that made me giggle.
For those of you who don't want to leave the browser, messenger.com will detect you're on mobile, but with "Request Desktop site" won't force you to the stores and actually be useful. Google also has Hangouts with the similar behavior: will "force" you Google Play instead, will allow usage with the toggle. They really want to force the un-savvy user to them low rated (sub-4), seriously dubious UX apps, probably so they get more ratings from those "either 5 or 1 stars" type of users, and will have some biased way of disregarding the 1 stars thus the average end result is beneficial to the apps.
I believe we're in agreement although it initially looked as if we weren't. You're arguing a media-center can use stuff such as Netflix, and I agree. I just don't think you need that dedicated box as opposed to something that can cast or stream which you might even already have for other reasons (Chromecast, Smart TV embedded features, PS4, etc). Media-centers seem to be for people who want more than the features of the gen pop. I guess that's the article point: "why a smart TV as opposed to a console or any other media-player device".
Until it doesn't for whatever reason. Case in point: My OnePlus One had it, then it changed into "OK Snappdragon" for royalty issues, then it stopped having it for technical reasons we never knew. G5 users might be more lucky in the long run, but what I said still stands: you won't have it with Google's QA like everything else AOSP.
Maybe that's because developers like to keep environments closed to where they can actually gather sources of revenue. So they don't provide unsupported mods as a 60usd piece of plastic that will fail and lead to millions of dollars of buyer lawsuits.
I mean, Steam is the PURRRfect example for this point I am making: it started out from the platform for Valve to gather income for a mod of a mod of a mod of HL (Counter-Strike), which they ended up buying from the modder, then created this great platform that forced keys for the original OFFLINE game to be verified online (thus unreusable) so that people could only use the mod with an purchased key. Take a wild guess at what happened next: nobody else makes community mods of HL without getting a cease and desist from Valve/Steam or going through their very stupid channels to produce a steam-bound mod that can only be played using their platform. Did I mention this platform is from a game-maker who monopolizes the editors of games that get in the platform so people like EA have to create their own platforms for selling/validating their online games? Great guys those Valve guys. Dude you have to face it, developers want money, but they make the great content to back it. Piracy is great and I love it, but it's just not gonna cut it when I reach my 30s and am working an 8h-5day week with children, wife, familly responsibilities. I am just NOT gonna have time to set up a an automated seedbox even with couchpotatoes and the likes just to have my shows ready to see. Im gonna pop that Netflix and go straight to the stuff I want to see for 12 bucks. As for games, I'm just gonna pay for them. If I have the time of course...
Bottomline: I am not gonna be using something so not plug-n-play (in multiple senses) as a media-center for my entertainment. I'm gonna fall in line like everyone else and that's just fine!
I'm really no expert in politics, but I doubt the only way to calculate resource allocation is implying that weight/cost/speed/travel for any form of resource management, be it graphs, trees, schedules, budgets or whatever has to be called a price and directly associated with a monetary value just so that it can be excluded from the "practice" of communism. I think communism has great resource management when it wants to and when the main cost of that management is the impact on the community as a whole instead of the sole gratification of the individual. That is actually my definition of communism. And how can anybody say communists lack resource management when, for example, a communist state such as the USSR actually used a supremely lower space budget and then WON the space race against the US (of course the US changed the goal to "land on Moon" after that... ^_^). I mean... XD
"We're used to getting stock Android on Nexus phones, but Pichai says that could change. ...There's a lot of software innovation to be had."
There's a lot of innovation to be had and kept by Google apparently. The beauty of shipping the Nexus line with stock Android is that we can count on 100% the features to be available to other OEMs on the AOSP, key initials OS (open source, (and/or sans the payment of royalties to use associated features). That great time they decided to put the always on "Ok Google" only on the Nexus line and the (then Google's) Moto X, and relegating everyone else to restricted use in the Google app. Wanting to customize ROMs with Nexus-only features, or even customizing the Google Apps package shipped on those devices is not only showing the middle finger to manufacturers but also telling your users something in the ways of: "you will only get this feature with Google quality in a Nexus' software".
Fair point, but there is a market called "the video game console market" that is not gonna be disrupted anymore by failures like Ouya, Nvidia TV or any Android TV box for that matter, especially when they attempt to mimic consoles with gold-priced streammable games. The only relevant video game disruption was introduced by the convenience of ubiquity brought up by another flavour of Android devices called "smartphones", where people don't mind lacking graphics and less-usable controls as they fancy instant gratification.
And you have to take into account something else: consoles provide great middle ground by having the potential to steal the "Smart" in Smart TV while giving you near-PC performance, because game developers just don't develop anything that goes far off above console specs - they want to make money after all. And the real problem of set top boxes these days is that people want to stay in a snappy, familiar environment, but most Android TVs on the market only provide the later, while lacking performance when streaming high-res, high-bitrate stuff consistently and definitely lack that too on games, and provide a sucky games catalog for the less instant-gratification-prone place of use: your couch . Consoles don't lack on any of these and are starting to get into the subscription-based EVERYTHING bandwagon pretty hard, with solid benefits for a flat-rate. Competitor Android TVs don't stand a chance with their own concessions when their only benefit is seamless casting and being half-price of a console.
Bottomline: If you game, you'll get a console regardless. And game or not, Smart TV needs cast features and you can get them for cheap unlike a dedicated media center/set-top-box. These are gonna fail like the netbook
I agree with your teacher's opinion about a form of open communism, where no ideological suppression exists and the tendency is actually to foster it through free time instead of long work hours for human beings. Communism in essence has always been a great idea (but never EVER succeeded in practice) and allied with such goals make it one of the most mesmerizing utopias we could hope for. But I believe the human Wille zur Macht will forever lurk behind the scenes and widespread well-being is something we, as a "pack", are not genetically/biologically prepared for.
Some good points there, especially on the isolationism and identity.
Fun fact: if you happen to be a fan of highly political and forward-thinking plot of the Ghost In the Shell shows (especially Stand Alone Complex), you get a solid vibe of what Japan is going to evolve into in what respects to the compulsive allowance their condition requires of immigration... And the cultural clash it causes in such a strong-willed nation.
I agree with suupaabaka's teacher opinion about a form of open communism, where no ideological suppression exists and the tendency is actually to foster it through free time instead of long work hours for human beings. Communism in essence has always been a great idea (but never EVER succeeded in practice) and allied with such goals make it one of the most mesmerizing utopias we could hope for. But I believe the human Wille zur Macht will forever lurk behind the scenes and widespread well-being is something we, as a "pack", are not genetically/biologically prepared for.
The only features I use on my Netcast-OS bearing, mid-2014 LG model is Netflix, Youtube, Spotify, PCT and DLNA casting. The problem is, I know at some point, only the later will keep working due to TV-side firmware upgrades deciding to no longer support the model, thus not even including the app. level cast protocol anymore.
I think the new Vizio TVs and other Google Cast'able new products are going the right way in defining a long-term supportable framework across corporate interests. Why would I even consider a dedicated media-center when piracy is, in all it's glory, dying the hard death, and for better or worse we're all gonna stop storing terabytes and terabytes of media libraries we'll re-watch about 0.5% of it all. It's pointless. I hate to admit it, but this time the companies are actually doing something useful and finding better ways to deliver content end-to-end, affordably, yet if a bit lacking in content variety (but here's to hoping that improves...). Hell, I bet I would spend more on electricity and storage downloading the 40 or so hours I watch every month than I do in a 4-bucks per month Netflix subscription (I share a top tier account with 3 other people. Because I can!).
I hate replying to 0-modded comments, but this one deserves a honourable mention: they really haven't really fallen, they just peaked. Actually Japan is the very first country in this world to experience the future. And by future, I mean the socioeconomic and cultural consequences of "civilizational endgame", for lack of a better expression. Japan was the first country to achieve what many will follow. The real problem here is that unlike other crysis, overflow population combined with ageing and the very fact that the human society values the preservation of individual life is the perfect storm for any given nation to just stop outputing anything. It is a scenario where both capitalism and comunism will try, like many a time before, to seize democratic power, but this time they won't be able to do any "final measure" against it because there is absolutely no pollitically correct way to influence the populace into extreme measures. I know I know, just planted a philosophical bomb in an LCD thread, but it's late at night and I felt inspired for nonsense. It does make sense though.
apparently, this was a reply to a -1 comment which was hidden on my UI due to filters. As another comment of mine (on the same level as the one hidden) showed right above, the UI showed as your reply was directed at my comment. Sorry for the very misunderstood reply.
that is actually a good point, but then they wouldn't sell devices. When you're in a highly competitive, disruptive market, you're not gonna sell anything if you have an innovative piece of hardware that counts heartbeat and then just uses it as a measure of calories, hiding away the inaccurate numbers for the sake of some people's expectations. It is an economic standpoint, but then again, every piece of technology starts out from inaccurate technology that improves over time according to the standards they are bound (case in point: this isn't a medical device and isn't sold as such, thus doesn't need FDA-like approval). Just look at Tesla's Model X - it is apparently full of QA issues, but then again everybody is praising its innovations. Everything has its advantages while some dread its issues. This is how innovation, technology and economy works, and it's also how science itself works - building upon what you have.