You actually believe their story that they accidentally enabled a "debugging feature" for all the years they collected and archived the data? Even more incredible, you're actually arguing that it should have been kept a secret and that the public should never have found out about it?
The only reason Google admitted it in the first place was due to threat of investigation by the German government. If Google had their way, we most definitely would have never known about it. That's not a good thing.
I have to ask. In every Google article on Slashdot, I notice these angry anonymous posts attacking people who are critical of Google. It's obvious that it's the same person. Do you work for them or something?
I think he made a very good point--that if this wasn't about Android, it would be treated as a big security issue. When it's Android, or more correctly, Linux, there are justifications and excuses made.
Calling him names isn't going to change the validity of the point he made.
The fact that there's no evidence that 800 out of 10,000 iPhone apps are leaking private data suggests an inherently superior security process, whatever the cause. I don't think it's a leap in logic to suggest it might have to do with the approval process apps must go through before they can reach customers.
That article you links says "PC shipments in the U.S were also down 4.2%." Both IDC and Gartner reached the same conclusion about the declining PC market.
Strategy Analytics is talking about units shipped. Unit shipments aren't the same as actual sales to customers. Microsoft used that same word-twisting when they tried to convince everyone that Vista was doing well. As John Gruber pointed out yesterday, what Strategy Analytics is calling market share is actually "shipment share." That's not market share in the way most people think of it. If you go by actual sales, the iPad has sold almost 30 million total, while Android tablets have only sold about 1.35 million.
I'm surprised Apple's earnings report didn't make it to Slashdot's front page. Sales of the iPad have tripled since last year, at 9.25 million, and iPhone sales more than doubled. iPad sales have been so successful that retailers reserved inventory space for them at the expense of PCs. PC shipments declined by about 6%, and the PC industry overall declined by 4.2%. I think that's the biggest untold story of all in this--after decades of growth, the PC is in a downward trend because of the iPad.
Because it's percentage-based and can therefore fluctuate based on total size, market share is not as important a figure as it's often made out to be. It can be used to paint a negative picture where there isn't one. It can also be twisted by citing units shipped rather than sold. The iPad is doing better than ever and doesn't seem to be stopping any time soon. I realize that Slashdot is historically pro-Linux and will present Linux-based products as always "catching up" or being on the cusp of taking over, but there's just no evidence of that happening at this point in time.
This study looked at 10,000 Android apps. Your claim is that iPhone apps are "just as bad," which implies that you also studied 10,000 iPhone apps and that 800 were found to be leaking private data. Could you provide the link to your study, or is all you have an anonymously posted anecdote about running Cydia on your single phone without any examples given of the apps you're describing?
That's not the idea Slashdot tries to put out, though. According to them, all piracy is good, and there's a war between heroic culture hackers and evil, faceless corporate lobbies.
Conveniently, the artists who aren't getting paid are left out of that equation, because they're a reminder that piracy has a negative effect, which dismantles the ideology that pirates are the good guys.
Hell, just for posting this, I'll probably get modded down. Anti-piracy viewpoints are typically not welcome here.
The point is that Minecraft has graphics straight out of a 1993 DOS game, written by one guy in his spare time as a hack for his friends to play with. Console games are running on hardware that's over five years old. The days of the graphics-driven video game market are long gone.
It sounds like you're just taking the opportunity to bash Doom 3. Understand, Carmack is arguing here FOR on-rails shooters. He's saying that games don't need to be incredibly creative and new every time they get released, they just have to do their job - provide entertainment that people are willing to pay for. And you're arguing against that by marching out a game which... provides entertatinment that people were willing to pay for...
You're missing the point that Doom 3 was widely panned for not straying from a formula. Doom 3 is the most recent game from id Software, so naturally, it's going to be brought up. The damn thing had monster closets. It wasn't retro in an ironic way, either.
Incidentally, someone else made the point that the arguments Carmack is using to justify formula shooters are the same that Uwe Bowell and other directors use to justify their generic movies. Carmack is one of those guys who will tell you that big, dumb movies like Transformers 3 are just "doing their job" and that filmmakers making movies nobody has seen before are "snooty."
I played with the lights off. That got old after an hour. The game is just very, very repetitive in almost all aspects, to the point that you can barely distinguish one level of shiny metal walls from another.
You're referring to a multiplayer era that existed almost 20 years ago. id Tech 3's code is neat, but how is that relevant to a discussion on FPS creativity?
I disagree with the car analogy because, for most people, a car is little more than a tool to move them between locations. Games, on the other hand, are purely entertainment. Black & White's problem wasn't its attempt to be innovative (the reviewers who barely played past the first world rated it highly for that)--it's that it turned out to be a buggy mess that didn't live up to the promises Molyneaux made.
You don't have to come out of left field to make something that pushes a genre forward. Taking what exists and adding enough innovative twists on it is also good enough. World of Warcraft did that with the Everquest formula, for example. "Creative" refers to something that the developers care about on an artistically expressive level, that they want to present something that will make it stand out and not just make something that fits an expected standard in order to make money for a publisher.
You don't seem to understand what "indie developer" is describing. It doesn't suggest anything about their personality. It's simply someone who's not selling through a traditional publisher. One of the reasons innovation is so important to them is that it's one of the ways they are able to compete in a market dominated by EA, Bethesda, and other tie-wearing behemoths.
To be fair, COD has a multiplayer component driving it, so when people pick up the latest COD, you want to pick it up too so you can play with everyone else online and take advantage of the latest multiplayer additions. That said, even a multiplayer game can be creatively unique--Team Fortress 2 is fantastic.
I thought the first hour was great, but unfortunately, the rest of Doom III became an unmemorable blur of repetitive metal walls and monster spawns, broken up with an excellent Hell trip. At one point, I began to predict where monsters would appear when I entered a room.
It's not your job to do something nobody's ever seen before, sure. But raising the bar should be your goal nonetheless. Visuals are a solved problem, and the days of the tech demo are over. Even the hardware race is over--id's new game Rage is targeting six-year-old console hardware. So what else is there but to push creative expressiveness in a genre that's crying out for some artistic legitimacy on the level that movies and novels enjoy? It's clear that a game like Portal 2 would never come out of id Software.
It's amusing how the summary claims the "main objective of this version is to prevent the hacking in Apple iOS devices which occurs through malicious PDF files" when the objective is actually to fix the security vulnerability that was used to hack the device in the first place. Apple doesn't care all that much about jailbreaking because you already bought their hardware. Their only real concern would be that it allows for app piracy, but they make more money on hardware than they do on software.
It's not that you don't have a right to know. Its that the NSA is under no obligation to tell you. There's a big difference.
You can't find out if they won't tell you. There is no difference.
You're buying right into what they're doing. They're skirting around the issue of right to public knowledge by simply not saying anything. "Oh, it's not that you don't have a right to know. We just don't have to tell you when you ask. Therefore, we're not violating your right to know."
Right now, the Dems are popular with the middle and the left. The Repubs are popular with the middle and the right.
Actually, Democrats are so unpopular right now that a generic Republican candidate beats Obama in the polls. This isn't surprising since the Democrats have been running the country without a budget for the last two years, in violation of the law.
Also, that you ever believed Obama in the first place is funny. The man broke his promises right from the beginning when he didn't use public campaign funds like he said he would, so it was obvious that he was nothing but an empty celebrity politician riding a wave of hype. I'll never understand how former Obama supporters can be surprised about the current state of affairs when it was obvious from the beginning. His policies have damaged the economy so greatly and raised the debt so astronomically that it will take decades to recuperate.
Slashdot Mirror
You actually believe their story that they accidentally enabled a "debugging feature" for all the years they collected and archived the data? Even more incredible, you're actually arguing that it should have been kept a secret and that the public should never have found out about it?
The only reason Google admitted it in the first place was due to threat of investigation by the German government. If Google had their way, we most definitely would have never known about it. That's not a good thing.
I have to ask. In every Google article on Slashdot, I notice these angry anonymous posts attacking people who are critical of Google. It's obvious that it's the same person. Do you work for them or something?
Oh, well, hey, if a major security flaw is almost a year old, it's no longer news!
Why are Android security problems always justified and dismissed on Slashdot? If this was iOS, I suspect your post would be completely different.
I think he made a very good point--that if this wasn't about Android, it would be treated as a big security issue. When it's Android, or more correctly, Linux, there are justifications and excuses made.
Calling him names isn't going to change the validity of the point he made.
The fact that there's no evidence that 800 out of 10,000 iPhone apps are leaking private data suggests an inherently superior security process, whatever the cause. I don't think it's a leap in logic to suggest it might have to do with the approval process apps must go through before they can reach customers.
Keep on postin' anonymously.
What you wrote doesn't contradict my point. People are choosing tablets because they're easier to use and maintain than PCs.
That article you links says "PC shipments in the U.S were also down 4.2%." Both IDC and Gartner reached the same conclusion about the declining PC market.
Strategy Analytics is talking about units shipped. Unit shipments aren't the same as actual sales to customers. Microsoft used that same word-twisting when they tried to convince everyone that Vista was doing well. As John Gruber pointed out yesterday, what Strategy Analytics is calling market share is actually "shipment share." That's not market share in the way most people think of it. If you go by actual sales, the iPad has sold almost 30 million total, while Android tablets have only sold about 1.35 million.
I'm surprised Apple's earnings report didn't make it to Slashdot's front page. Sales of the iPad have tripled since last year, at 9.25 million, and iPhone sales more than doubled. iPad sales have been so successful that retailers reserved inventory space for them at the expense of PCs. PC shipments declined by about 6%, and the PC industry overall declined by 4.2%. I think that's the biggest untold story of all in this--after decades of growth, the PC is in a downward trend because of the iPad.
Because it's percentage-based and can therefore fluctuate based on total size, market share is not as important a figure as it's often made out to be. It can be used to paint a negative picture where there isn't one. It can also be twisted by citing units shipped rather than sold. The iPad is doing better than ever and doesn't seem to be stopping any time soon. I realize that Slashdot is historically pro-Linux and will present Linux-based products as always "catching up" or being on the cusp of taking over, but there's just no evidence of that happening at this point in time.
This study looked at 10,000 Android apps. Your claim is that iPhone apps are "just as bad," which implies that you also studied 10,000 iPhone apps and that 800 were found to be leaking private data. Could you provide the link to your study, or is all you have an anonymously posted anecdote about running Cydia on your single phone without any examples given of the apps you're describing?
That's not the idea Slashdot tries to put out, though. According to them, all piracy is good, and there's a war between heroic culture hackers and evil, faceless corporate lobbies.
Conveniently, the artists who aren't getting paid are left out of that equation, because they're a reminder that piracy has a negative effect, which dismantles the ideology that pirates are the good guys.
Hell, just for posting this, I'll probably get modded down. Anti-piracy viewpoints are typically not welcome here.
No worries. Google hard-codes its services to appear on the results page like a good monopoly should.
The point is that Minecraft has graphics straight out of a 1993 DOS game, written by one guy in his spare time as a hack for his friends to play with. Console games are running on hardware that's over five years old. The days of the graphics-driven video game market are long gone.
You're missing the point that Doom 3 was widely panned for not straying from a formula. Doom 3 is the most recent game from id Software, so naturally, it's going to be brought up. The damn thing had monster closets. It wasn't retro in an ironic way, either.
Incidentally, someone else made the point that the arguments Carmack is using to justify formula shooters are the same that Uwe Bowell and other directors use to justify their generic movies. Carmack is one of those guys who will tell you that big, dumb movies like Transformers 3 are just "doing their job" and that filmmakers making movies nobody has seen before are "snooty."
I played with the lights off. That got old after an hour. The game is just very, very repetitive in almost all aspects, to the point that you can barely distinguish one level of shiny metal walls from another.
You're referring to a multiplayer era that existed almost 20 years ago. id Tech 3's code is neat, but how is that relevant to a discussion on FPS creativity?
I disagree with the car analogy because, for most people, a car is little more than a tool to move them between locations. Games, on the other hand, are purely entertainment. Black & White's problem wasn't its attempt to be innovative (the reviewers who barely played past the first world rated it highly for that)--it's that it turned out to be a buggy mess that didn't live up to the promises Molyneaux made.
You don't have to come out of left field to make something that pushes a genre forward. Taking what exists and adding enough innovative twists on it is also good enough. World of Warcraft did that with the Everquest formula, for example. "Creative" refers to something that the developers care about on an artistically expressive level, that they want to present something that will make it stand out and not just make something that fits an expected standard in order to make money for a publisher.
You don't seem to understand what "indie developer" is describing. It doesn't suggest anything about their personality. It's simply someone who's not selling through a traditional publisher. One of the reasons innovation is so important to them is that it's one of the ways they are able to compete in a market dominated by EA, Bethesda, and other tie-wearing behemoths.
I wouldn't need to say a thing. I'd just hold up the sales figure chart for Minecraft and watch them blink in astonishment.
To be fair, COD has a multiplayer component driving it, so when people pick up the latest COD, you want to pick it up too so you can play with everyone else online and take advantage of the latest multiplayer additions. That said, even a multiplayer game can be creatively unique--Team Fortress 2 is fantastic.
I thought the first hour was great, but unfortunately, the rest of Doom III became an unmemorable blur of repetitive metal walls and monster spawns, broken up with an excellent Hell trip. At one point, I began to predict where monsters would appear when I entered a room.
It's not your job to do something nobody's ever seen before, sure. But raising the bar should be your goal nonetheless. Visuals are a solved problem, and the days of the tech demo are over. Even the hardware race is over--id's new game Rage is targeting six-year-old console hardware. So what else is there but to push creative expressiveness in a genre that's crying out for some artistic legitimacy on the level that movies and novels enjoy? It's clear that a game like Portal 2 would never come out of id Software.
It's amusing how the summary claims the "main objective of this version is to prevent the hacking in Apple iOS devices which occurs through malicious PDF files" when the objective is actually to fix the security vulnerability that was used to hack the device in the first place. Apple doesn't care all that much about jailbreaking because you already bought their hardware. Their only real concern would be that it allows for app piracy, but they make more money on hardware than they do on software.
You can't find out if they won't tell you. There is no difference.
You're buying right into what they're doing. They're skirting around the issue of right to public knowledge by simply not saying anything. "Oh, it's not that you don't have a right to know. We just don't have to tell you when you ask. Therefore, we're not violating your right to know."
That's complete bullshit.
Actually, Democrats are so unpopular right now that a generic Republican candidate beats Obama in the polls. This isn't surprising since the Democrats have been running the country without a budget for the last two years, in violation of the law.
Your third-party vote is a wasted vote.
Also, that you ever believed Obama in the first place is funny. The man broke his promises right from the beginning when he didn't use public campaign funds like he said he would, so it was obvious that he was nothing but an empty celebrity politician riding a wave of hype. I'll never understand how former Obama supporters can be surprised about the current state of affairs when it was obvious from the beginning. His policies have damaged the economy so greatly and raised the debt so astronomically that it will take decades to recuperate.