In the past, technology destroyed some jobs but created many more. This has been happening for thousands of years and thus will continue to happen forever. People have worried about this in the past and been wrong, thus they are wrong now.
To summarize: technological progress will continue forever, but we'll never need to adapt economic policy because people will always be able to contribute something that machines can't - and those things will employ enough people for near full employment, in perpetuity, regardless of the capabilities of machines. Like most of the other reflexively doubtful posters in this thread, I can't posit what kind of things those will be (personal touch, maybe?) - but I'm sure it'll be something because:
1. People have been wrong previously about this 2. Cotton gins and farmers 3. Socialism is wrong 4. QED
I'd much rather Netflix spends their money on TV shows (especially originals) than chasing expensive, popular movies. If I feel I need to watch The Dark Knight again (and I don't expect to) I'll find a way. No - I stay subscribed to them for TV: Stranger Things and House of Cards and Better Call Saul.
Well, that and my kids have been into Digimon lately.
I don't have anything to add, and I don't mean to be weird... but, uh, thanks for posting. For the first time in a while, I've come away from a discussion on Slashdot with something new to think about.
Your perspective makes sense... and I am going to be wondering all day why wireless mice still perform so poorly.
You may well be right on graphics and how this will play out; I don't know what kinds of things people will make and what will catch on. I'm sure a lot of my opinion is just informed by what I want personally: the same setup I have now, but wireless.
And yeah, I'd be surprised if the HDMI->WiFi->HDMI type things end up producing something good (even though these guys in particular seem confident). Like, you say, I expect a proper wireless solution will require a custom protocol.
I agree that eventually a standalone option will be preferable - I just don't think you can make a good enough one now, and I think attempting it is going to mean either huge costs (since you're not reusing current hardware) or huge compromises (ie. terrible performance).
I'm currently running a Vive with a 1080, and I still often can't keep framerate perfect (which you really want) at good supersampling (which makes a huge difference too). Sure you'll get some advantages with a dedicated device and integration, but it won't nearly make up for what you're losing in raw horsepower. Worse, requirements still have a ways to go up before they settle - a HMD really wants ~4K/90FPS at very high quality (well, and very low latency). Even without the extra wrench of 2 perspectives, most normal PC games still can't hit that, even on very large advanced hardware that draws big watts. VR needs more raw power, not less. If there were easy shortcuts to get this stuff, PCs and consoles would be using them; turns out sometimes you just need a bajillion transistors and a big power supply.
While I don't think positioning is the hardest problem for a standalone solution to solve, it is a real problem and you could improve current GearVR solutions 10 fold and still have something that's garbage. Tracking needs to be pretty much perfect or else VR is a barf-fest. Eventually inside-out camera based positioning might be good enough - but it has a tough hill to climb to match current state of the art. SteamVR's spinning lasers and fancy algorithms are magically good - crazy accurate, fast, and even cheap to build. They completely outclass current camera based solutions (like the Oculus uses) even though those solutions are much simpler than inside-out (because it's easier to track a diode you control than random surroundings you don't). Tracking tech really is the magic of Vive, and even a small downgrade could really break the experience.
And yes, currently there's nobody doing wireless video with low enough latency, but that's not because it's an insurmountably hard task - it just needs dedicated work, and VR is a good reason to get around to that work. The hard part - bandwidth - is already there, you just need to trim out some protocol transitions and latency would be very good, perhaps better than wired HDMI by the end (assuming that we can start the wireless chain directly from the GPU). Even current Rube Goldberg setups - HDMI->WiFi->HDMI, often on general purpose computers - are close to good enough. I think this is solvable, but it does remain to be seen whether someone with enough juice (eg. NVidia) will give it a proper go.
Anyway, I'm getting a lot of fun out of VR already, and I think it's going to progress really fast over the next couple years. I'd be pleased as punch of someone came out with a great standalone solution, I just think that's still a ways off.
The clear next step, to me, is wireless connection to a computer.
A good VR experience takes way more grunt than you're going to get in a low-power head mounted device anytime soon. Current VR experiences benefit from any extra bit of GPU horsepower, compute speed, or basically any improvement they can get. Using a Rift or Vive, you're working with i7s and GTX 1080s, and still you're not able to run consistently at the supersampling levels you want. Ideally, you'd also have a higher resolution screen with less latency than you're getting in current HMDs. To work well, VR will need even more resources going forward, not way less.
Also, making a standalone device, such that you're not able to reuse your current cell phone or home computer, isn't the path to making your overall device less expensive. For right now, a wireless connection to a computer is the most sensible solution from a technical and economic perspective, assuming they want a reasonable quality experience in the end.
Anyway - yes, wireless would be great, positional tracking is absolutely necessary (and the current "professional" Oculus Rift isn't good enough - the Vive is way better - and yes I've used both of them a lot), and it's all too expensive. Eventually obviously we should expect fully standalone devices, but for now it's just not going to happen, so this is not a reasonable step forwards at this time.
It's easy to make people sick in VR - just spin their surroundings while they're not moving in real life. But your standard room scale experience doesn't do any of that; rather, as you walk around, the tracking is accurate enough that your vision stays synced with your real-life motion. I've had a lot of people use my Vive for longer than 15 minutes, and generally nobody gets sick until they decide they want to try feeling sick (currently I use "Fancy Skiing" for this purpose, it's kind of fun to get all woozified sometimes). This concern is part overblown, partly just a remnant from previous generations of technology and software that were pretty barfy (eg. the old NVidia 3d vision goggles with no head tracking, Oculus DK1s with ball-and-stick movement, etc..)
There's certain kinds of experience (those that need interactive, artificial motion) that are indeed hard to do well - and definitely people who just tried to no-effort port FPS-run-with-your-controller games have ended up making barf-fests - but even if you just give up on artificial locomotion entirely, there's plenty of neat things to do and see in VR. And as VR gets more popular, people's tolerances will go up. It's hard to imagine now, but people used to get sick playing Doom. Similarly, even roller coaster type games with jerky artificial rotation don't bother me now (while they did bother me a lot in the DK2 era). People will get used to it, or they'll limit themselves to stuff that doesn't tend to make anyone sick.
I agree. The question I'm usually answering is "how much did all this cost?" (and I'm in Canada) - but you could certainly go lower budget and still have something cool.
The only reason that VR isn't already a huge mainstream success is price. I've shown Vive games to probably 50 people; a few have since bought one, and pretty much everyone else was blown away... but don't have $3000 sitting around to set one up. Even people who aren't into gaming are often hard to get out of creative stuff like Tilt Brush, or just the experience of being somewhere else. If anything, lots of these things are even more potent to non-geeks who haven't acclimatized to 3d graphics for 20 years. Shooting a zombie in VR is intense; it's even more intense if you haven't played 100 hours of Left 4 Dead and what not.
One of the challenges VR will have over the next year or so is the proliferation of terrible pseudo-VR experiences. Like, I've talked to a few people online who write the whole thing off because they tried some GearVR plastic cell phone box, and those are pointlessly terrible. But eventually there'll be enough good stuff around that this conversation we're having now will disappear. A proper VR setup very quickly explains itself to anyone who tries it. And when such a setup is cheap (which it will be in a couple years), it'll be something that is very widespread, and will replace a good chunk of current TV, movie, and game content.
Having spent a bunch of time with VR, resolution is reasonably far down the list of what I'd fix with the current headsets, and even then I think you'd get most of the benefit out of much more modest increases than this guy seems to want (eg 4k or so). No - what I want is wireless connection to a computer, and more consistency on tracking, latency, and framerate. Also, tracking more objects/body parts/physical room features/etc.. would be great.
But it's also really great right now, even though prime content is still just trickling out. This "oh VR can't be done yet" to me just says that his company wasn't really ready, and wants everyone to wait for them to catch up.
The first thing I usually saw fail was the power supply (or at very least it would need some after-market cooling, like a tiny fan).
But yeah, the core processor stuff was crazy durable. I guess that makes sense when you imagine what it looks like compared to a modern processor - with oceans of empty space between every gargantuan wire and transistor.
I agree with your conclusion - I don't think we're going to see personal flying transport anytime soon - but I think you're exaggerating the case against.
The energy requirements to get something the weight of a human aloft are considerable
It actually isn't that much energy to get a human being up 100 ft (humans are light, and transportation is already very energy expensive) nor does it necessarily take a ton of energy to keep them there. Physics has no problem with (just as an example off the top of my head, not actually practical) a mass transit system made out of escalators and gliders. There's no absolute reasons such a system would take a ton of energy, be all that expensive, or even require bonkers infrastructure; it's just nobody has a plan to do it that would practically work.
So yeah, I think it's silly to imagine huge fleets of conventional VTOL aircraft - but I don't think there's good reason to write all this off as permanently impossible or something, it just needs more creativity than this plan has.
The last point, VR, is also the one place where the grandparent post is probably right. I expect a good percentage of PSVR games to get PC ports, if only because they'll need to hit as much of the small VR market as they can.
PSVR is also likely to be terrible, perhaps bad enough that it may sabotage the whole VR market. Even with a monstrous computer that far outperforms anything the PS4 is going to do, VR presents real challenges to developers. Console developers are going to have to juice visuals for 2d trailers, and end up with a barf-fest in 3d.
The sources I can see all say you're wrong. Estimates have the PC gaming market as being worth ~$32 billion, consoles altogether at about $25 billion, and mobile similar at about $25 billion.
You're point still holds to some extent - the majority of PC gaming money is Free-to-Play MMOs and stuff that isn't a great match to PS4 ports, but your idea of the overall market doesn't appear to match with reality.
If you told me I had to read an entire random article off Softpedia's news page, I'd be disappointed and sad. But if I had to, there's at least 3 more interesting articles than this one (I just checked) right now. If you told me "it has to be one that will generate some cheap fanboy rage", I guess this one would be closer to the top and maybe I might check it out.
But once I did I'd see it was complete nonsense garbage and start shopping for a new one. It's unreadable - I have no idea what they're even claiming in half their sentences - but at very least it's clear their conclusion is way out of step with the data they're reasoning from.
I still read Slashdot out of some weird old habit, but the interesting finds are getting few and far between. It has become an anti-aggregator, finding the least interesting, poorest-written articles on sites that I wouldn't bother going to.
People don't all independently come up with a plan of making up terrible password rules - it's just a difficult to extinguish meme propagated by clueless deal makers.
Many systems I've worked on have terrible password rules. Symbols and numbers, and requirements to change them all the time (thus guaranteeing they'll be written down)... but it was never really our decision. We had to follow the security document, and the security document had to have those rules, because we'd agreed to follow those rules in order to work with a certain client or vendor. Ever wonder why some system won't let you change your password more than once a day? It's dumb, right? It's just one of those things that makes it into someone's weird viral rules.
That client or vendor probably didn't want those rules either, but their security document said they could only use vendors and clients that agreed to those rules, and their security document said that because it was part of a deal with one of their clients.
And it's not just this. There's tons of companies out there trying to get in on this viral security racket. We'll work for you for free! And for extra security we'll do audits of all your vendors and/or clients... and then blackmail them all into buying our software, so that they can be assured they'll pass the security audit they now need to work with you (quite possibly something they need to survive). And maybe some of them, we'll offer a "free" deal with, as long as they set policies that will allow us to blackmail all their vendors. Some of them don't even bother to hide it, they just send you the audit notice, namecheck the client you'll lose, and a price.
..without Java, easily, and I'm sure now they wish they had. They've learned their lesson, and everyone should learn the same lesson from this case: "avoid Oracle, avoid Java".
Oracle is a snake that will bite you as soon as it feels hungry or threatened in any way. Java is no longer a free standard with tools that'll bootstrap your project and help you inter-operate, now it's a Trojan horse that could spill open and burn your business, or at very least can be yanked out from under you at any time (if you aren't willing to pay up or hire good lawyers).
..to negligible returns on resolution increases? I mean, I remember arguing against people who said 1080p was overkill... and I think 4K looks pretty cool up close on a big screen with the right source.
But 8k (and presumably, beyond) must surely be pressing hard on the limits of human eyesight.
...and lots of this content is really spectacular. Don't listen to the people who say it's low-quality or barfy or there isn't any good stuff yet. There is tons of stuff that's amazing.
But do not buy a Vive online; you're asking for heartache. Wait until you can buy it from a store with a good return policy. They have terrible quality control, lots of DOA hardware, and their after-sale support is horrifically bad. If you do have problems with your Vive, do everything you can to get a refund; you don't want to be stuck in repair/RMA hell, where you get to pay for shipping and they keep your parts for months (and won't communicate anything beyond stonewalling and lies).
Sorry - yes - I totally agree, I would like zero crap. As it stands, I was coming off worse bloat so the G3 seemed really clean, but it does have some crap definitely.
Anyway, I understand manufacturers want to differentiate themselves via their exclusive software, but I think a growing percentage of Android users just want none of it and hopefully start pushing for it. I wouldn't be surprised if we start to see brands start emphasizing their phones being "clean" in terms of software.
For lots of people, this $40 worth of shares is going to be the only stock they own. It's another account to maintain, it's potentially tax implications they don't otherwise have to deal with. For lots of people, it'll be a weird hassle they have to register with their employer. It's also going to be significantly more expensive for the company than just giving out money or discounts. And it doesn't tie you in any meaningful way to the company - if T-Mobile goes up 50%, you're still only up $20. It's not like you have some new meaningful connection to the company's success.
The rational action, on receiving this single stock, would be to sell it immediately, before the "free transaction period" expires and before you forget about it or lose your login or whatever; $40 is a lot better than a weird asterisk in your financial position.
So, in the end, they're giving people $40 in a way that might function like a weird small buyback (as a good chunk of these shares will be orphaned nowhere) - but they're going to spend more than $40/person doing it, and most people are going to get less than $40 of value out of it. But it does make for a novel press release I guess.
I don't, and have no intention of playing VR games for hours on end. They work better in short increments, and I don't have a ton of time to get super deep in a long game. Yes, a lot of stuff - maybe even most of the stuff that comes out - will only be good for 15 minutes. I'm OK with that. Hopefully they make lots of fun 15 minute games and what not. But yeah, if you need "game time value per money", VR is definitely not the right place to get it, at least not yet. I'm sure some people will be super disappointed by their VR, because it won't improve the experience of playing CoD for 9 hours, but that doesn't mean VR isn't cool.
And why the nerd party hate? Do all of you cool, non-nerd dudes (who are totally not interested in VR and totally don't want it) take time off from banging cheerleaders to argue about VR on Slashdot?
I know there's been some experimentation with this, and it might end up being an important thing for any setup (even without the performance stuff, it could be that cheesing some "focus effects" using eye position would make things more realistic).
But I don't think we'll see it as a core feature (or a solution to general performance problems) within the next generation or two.
I didn't say it'll catch on - how would I know? People buy tons of stupid crap, and sometimes good ideas get buried. Maybe everyone will think like you do - "oh, I couldn't possibly be seen with something odd looking on my head" or "what if my living room is suddenly full of knives" and "I won't buy a holodeck until it accurately recreates smells"? So yeah, VR could completely flop, I agree on that.
But that's not what we were talking about. You said it will always suck. I said it's already cool. And it is.
Slashdot Mirror
In the past, technology destroyed some jobs but created many more. This has been happening for thousands of years and thus will continue to happen forever. People have worried about this in the past and been wrong, thus they are wrong now.
To summarize: technological progress will continue forever, but we'll never need to adapt economic policy because people will always be able to contribute something that machines can't - and those things will employ enough people for near full employment, in perpetuity, regardless of the capabilities of machines. Like most of the other reflexively doubtful posters in this thread, I can't posit what kind of things those will be (personal touch, maybe?) - but I'm sure it'll be something because:
1. People have been wrong previously about this
2. Cotton gins and farmers
3. Socialism is wrong
4. QED
I'd much rather Netflix spends their money on TV shows (especially originals) than chasing expensive, popular movies. If I feel I need to watch The Dark Knight again (and I don't expect to) I'll find a way. No - I stay subscribed to them for TV: Stranger Things and House of Cards and Better Call Saul.
Well, that and my kids have been into Digimon lately.
I don't have anything to add, and I don't mean to be weird... but, uh, thanks for posting. For the first time in a while, I've come away from a discussion on Slashdot with something new to think about.
Your perspective makes sense... and I am going to be wondering all day why wireless mice still perform so poorly.
You may well be right on graphics and how this will play out; I don't know what kinds of things people will make and what will catch on. I'm sure a lot of my opinion is just informed by what I want personally: the same setup I have now, but wireless.
And yeah, I'd be surprised if the HDMI->WiFi->HDMI type things end up producing something good (even though these guys in particular seem confident). Like, you say, I expect a proper wireless solution will require a custom protocol.
I agree that eventually a standalone option will be preferable - I just don't think you can make a good enough one now, and I think attempting it is going to mean either huge costs (since you're not reusing current hardware) or huge compromises (ie. terrible performance).
I'm currently running a Vive with a 1080, and I still often can't keep framerate perfect (which you really want) at good supersampling (which makes a huge difference too). Sure you'll get some advantages with a dedicated device and integration, but it won't nearly make up for what you're losing in raw horsepower. Worse, requirements still have a ways to go up before they settle - a HMD really wants ~4K/90FPS at very high quality (well, and very low latency). Even without the extra wrench of 2 perspectives, most normal PC games still can't hit that, even on very large advanced hardware that draws big watts. VR needs more raw power, not less. If there were easy shortcuts to get this stuff, PCs and consoles would be using them; turns out sometimes you just need a bajillion transistors and a big power supply.
While I don't think positioning is the hardest problem for a standalone solution to solve, it is a real problem and you could improve current GearVR solutions 10 fold and still have something that's garbage. Tracking needs to be pretty much perfect or else VR is a barf-fest. Eventually inside-out camera based positioning might be good enough - but it has a tough hill to climb to match current state of the art. SteamVR's spinning lasers and fancy algorithms are magically good - crazy accurate, fast, and even cheap to build. They completely outclass current camera based solutions (like the Oculus uses) even though those solutions are much simpler than inside-out (because it's easier to track a diode you control than random surroundings you don't). Tracking tech really is the magic of Vive, and even a small downgrade could really break the experience.
And yes, currently there's nobody doing wireless video with low enough latency, but that's not because it's an insurmountably hard task - it just needs dedicated work, and VR is a good reason to get around to that work. The hard part - bandwidth - is already there, you just need to trim out some protocol transitions and latency would be very good, perhaps better than wired HDMI by the end (assuming that we can start the wireless chain directly from the GPU). Even current Rube Goldberg setups - HDMI->WiFi->HDMI, often on general purpose computers - are close to good enough. I think this is solvable, but it does remain to be seen whether someone with enough juice (eg. NVidia) will give it a proper go.
Anyway, I'm getting a lot of fun out of VR already, and I think it's going to progress really fast over the next couple years. I'd be pleased as punch of someone came out with a great standalone solution, I just think that's still a ways off.
The clear next step, to me, is wireless connection to a computer.
A good VR experience takes way more grunt than you're going to get in a low-power head mounted device anytime soon. Current VR experiences benefit from any extra bit of GPU horsepower, compute speed, or basically any improvement they can get. Using a Rift or Vive, you're working with i7s and GTX 1080s, and still you're not able to run consistently at the supersampling levels you want. Ideally, you'd also have a higher resolution screen with less latency than you're getting in current HMDs. To work well, VR will need even more resources going forward, not way less.
Also, making a standalone device, such that you're not able to reuse your current cell phone or home computer, isn't the path to making your overall device less expensive. For right now, a wireless connection to a computer is the most sensible solution from a technical and economic perspective, assuming they want a reasonable quality experience in the end.
Anyway - yes, wireless would be great, positional tracking is absolutely necessary (and the current "professional" Oculus Rift isn't good enough - the Vive is way better - and yes I've used both of them a lot), and it's all too expensive. Eventually obviously we should expect fully standalone devices, but for now it's just not going to happen, so this is not a reasonable step forwards at this time.
It's easy to make people sick in VR - just spin their surroundings while they're not moving in real life. But your standard room scale experience doesn't do any of that; rather, as you walk around, the tracking is accurate enough that your vision stays synced with your real-life motion. I've had a lot of people use my Vive for longer than 15 minutes, and generally nobody gets sick until they decide they want to try feeling sick (currently I use "Fancy Skiing" for this purpose, it's kind of fun to get all woozified sometimes). This concern is part overblown, partly just a remnant from previous generations of technology and software that were pretty barfy (eg. the old NVidia 3d vision goggles with no head tracking, Oculus DK1s with ball-and-stick movement, etc..)
There's certain kinds of experience (those that need interactive, artificial motion) that are indeed hard to do well - and definitely people who just tried to no-effort port FPS-run-with-your-controller games have ended up making barf-fests - but even if you just give up on artificial locomotion entirely, there's plenty of neat things to do and see in VR. And as VR gets more popular, people's tolerances will go up. It's hard to imagine now, but people used to get sick playing Doom. Similarly, even roller coaster type games with jerky artificial rotation don't bother me now (while they did bother me a lot in the DK2 era). People will get used to it, or they'll limit themselves to stuff that doesn't tend to make anyone sick.
I agree. The question I'm usually answering is "how much did all this cost?" (and I'm in Canada) - but you could certainly go lower budget and still have something cool.
The only reason that VR isn't already a huge mainstream success is price. I've shown Vive games to probably 50 people; a few have since bought one, and pretty much everyone else was blown away... but don't have $3000 sitting around to set one up. Even people who aren't into gaming are often hard to get out of creative stuff like Tilt Brush, or just the experience of being somewhere else. If anything, lots of these things are even more potent to non-geeks who haven't acclimatized to 3d graphics for 20 years. Shooting a zombie in VR is intense; it's even more intense if you haven't played 100 hours of Left 4 Dead and what not.
One of the challenges VR will have over the next year or so is the proliferation of terrible pseudo-VR experiences. Like, I've talked to a few people online who write the whole thing off because they tried some GearVR plastic cell phone box, and those are pointlessly terrible. But eventually there'll be enough good stuff around that this conversation we're having now will disappear. A proper VR setup very quickly explains itself to anyone who tries it. And when such a setup is cheap (which it will be in a couple years), it'll be something that is very widespread, and will replace a good chunk of current TV, movie, and game content.
Having spent a bunch of time with VR, resolution is reasonably far down the list of what I'd fix with the current headsets, and even then I think you'd get most of the benefit out of much more modest increases than this guy seems to want (eg 4k or so). No - what I want is wireless connection to a computer, and more consistency on tracking, latency, and framerate. Also, tracking more objects/body parts/physical room features/etc.. would be great.
But it's also really great right now, even though prime content is still just trickling out. This "oh VR can't be done yet" to me just says that his company wasn't really ready, and wants everyone to wait for them to catch up.
The first thing I usually saw fail was the power supply (or at very least it would need some after-market cooling, like a tiny fan).
But yeah, the core processor stuff was crazy durable. I guess that makes sense when you imagine what it looks like compared to a modern processor - with oceans of empty space between every gargantuan wire and transistor.
I agree with your conclusion - I don't think we're going to see personal flying transport anytime soon - but I think you're exaggerating the case against.
It actually isn't that much energy to get a human being up 100 ft (humans are light, and transportation is already very energy expensive) nor does it necessarily take a ton of energy to keep them there. Physics has no problem with (just as an example off the top of my head, not actually practical) a mass transit system made out of escalators and gliders. There's no absolute reasons such a system would take a ton of energy, be all that expensive, or even require bonkers infrastructure; it's just nobody has a plan to do it that would practically work.
So yeah, I think it's silly to imagine huge fleets of conventional VTOL aircraft - but I don't think there's good reason to write all this off as permanently impossible or something, it just needs more creativity than this plan has.
The last point, VR, is also the one place where the grandparent post is probably right. I expect a good percentage of PSVR games to get PC ports, if only because they'll need to hit as much of the small VR market as they can.
PSVR is also likely to be terrible, perhaps bad enough that it may sabotage the whole VR market. Even with a monstrous computer that far outperforms anything the PS4 is going to do, VR presents real challenges to developers. Console developers are going to have to juice visuals for 2d trailers, and end up with a barf-fest in 3d.
The sources I can see all say you're wrong. Estimates have the PC gaming market as being worth ~$32 billion, consoles altogether at about $25 billion, and mobile similar at about $25 billion.
You're point still holds to some extent - the majority of PC gaming money is Free-to-Play MMOs and stuff that isn't a great match to PS4 ports, but your idea of the overall market doesn't appear to match with reality.
If you told me I had to read an entire random article off Softpedia's news page, I'd be disappointed and sad. But if I had to, there's at least 3 more interesting articles than this one (I just checked) right now. If you told me "it has to be one that will generate some cheap fanboy rage", I guess this one would be closer to the top and maybe I might check it out.
But once I did I'd see it was complete nonsense garbage and start shopping for a new one. It's unreadable - I have no idea what they're even claiming in half their sentences - but at very least it's clear their conclusion is way out of step with the data they're reasoning from.
I still read Slashdot out of some weird old habit, but the interesting finds are getting few and far between. It has become an anti-aggregator, finding the least interesting, poorest-written articles on sites that I wouldn't bother going to.
People don't all independently come up with a plan of making up terrible password rules - it's just a difficult to extinguish meme propagated by clueless deal makers.
Many systems I've worked on have terrible password rules. Symbols and numbers, and requirements to change them all the time (thus guaranteeing they'll be written down)... but it was never really our decision. We had to follow the security document, and the security document had to have those rules, because we'd agreed to follow those rules in order to work with a certain client or vendor. Ever wonder why some system won't let you change your password more than once a day? It's dumb, right? It's just one of those things that makes it into someone's weird viral rules.
That client or vendor probably didn't want those rules either, but their security document said they could only use vendors and clients that agreed to those rules, and their security document said that because it was part of a deal with one of their clients.
And it's not just this. There's tons of companies out there trying to get in on this viral security racket. We'll work for you for free! And for extra security we'll do audits of all your vendors and/or clients... and then blackmail them all into buying our software, so that they can be assured they'll pass the security audit they now need to work with you (quite possibly something they need to survive). And maybe some of them, we'll offer a "free" deal with, as long as they set policies that will allow us to blackmail all their vendors. Some of them don't even bother to hide it, they just send you the audit notice, namecheck the client you'll lose, and a price.
..without Java, easily, and I'm sure now they wish they had. They've learned their lesson, and everyone should learn the same lesson from this case: "avoid Oracle, avoid Java".
Oracle is a snake that will bite you as soon as it feels hungry or threatened in any way. Java is no longer a free standard with tools that'll bootstrap your project and help you inter-operate, now it's a Trojan horse that could spill open and burn your business, or at very least can be yanked out from under you at any time (if you aren't willing to pay up or hire good lawyers).
..to negligible returns on resolution increases? I mean, I remember arguing against people who said 1080p was overkill... and I think 4K looks pretty cool up close on a big screen with the right source.
But 8k (and presumably, beyond) must surely be pressing hard on the limits of human eyesight.
...and lots of this content is really spectacular. Don't listen to the people who say it's low-quality or barfy or there isn't any good stuff yet. There is tons of stuff that's amazing.
But do not buy a Vive online; you're asking for heartache. Wait until you can buy it from a store with a good return policy. They have terrible quality control, lots of DOA hardware, and their after-sale support is horrifically bad. If you do have problems with your Vive, do everything you can to get a refund; you don't want to be stuck in repair/RMA hell, where you get to pay for shipping and they keep your parts for months (and won't communicate anything beyond stonewalling and lies).
Sorry - yes - I totally agree, I would like zero crap. As it stands, I was coming off worse bloat so the G3 seemed really clean, but it does have some crap definitely.
Anyway, I understand manufacturers want to differentiate themselves via their exclusive software, but I think a growing percentage of Android users just want none of it and hopefully start pushing for it. I wouldn't be surprised if we start to see brands start emphasizing their phones being "clean" in terms of software.
..is that they haven't added or changed a bunch of stuff. Currently I'm on an LG G3; I really appreciate how the LG apps are minimal and unobtrusive.
I don't think I'm alone.
For lots of people, this $40 worth of shares is going to be the only stock they own. It's another account to maintain, it's potentially tax implications they don't otherwise have to deal with. For lots of people, it'll be a weird hassle they have to register with their employer. It's also going to be significantly more expensive for the company than just giving out money or discounts. And it doesn't tie you in any meaningful way to the company - if T-Mobile goes up 50%, you're still only up $20. It's not like you have some new meaningful connection to the company's success.
The rational action, on receiving this single stock, would be to sell it immediately, before the "free transaction period" expires and before you forget about it or lose your login or whatever; $40 is a lot better than a weird asterisk in your financial position.
So, in the end, they're giving people $40 in a way that might function like a weird small buyback (as a good chunk of these shares will be orphaned nowhere) - but they're going to spend more than $40/person doing it, and most people are going to get less than $40 of value out of it. But it does make for a novel press release I guess.
I don't, and have no intention of playing VR games for hours on end. They work better in short increments, and I don't have a ton of time to get super deep in a long game. Yes, a lot of stuff - maybe even most of the stuff that comes out - will only be good for 15 minutes. I'm OK with that. Hopefully they make lots of fun 15 minute games and what not. But yeah, if you need "game time value per money", VR is definitely not the right place to get it, at least not yet. I'm sure some people will be super disappointed by their VR, because it won't improve the experience of playing CoD for 9 hours, but that doesn't mean VR isn't cool.
And why the nerd party hate? Do all of you cool, non-nerd dudes (who are totally not interested in VR and totally don't want it) take time off from banging cheerleaders to argue about VR on Slashdot?
I know there's been some experimentation with this, and it might end up being an important thing for any setup (even without the performance stuff, it could be that cheesing some "focus effects" using eye position would make things more realistic).
But I don't think we'll see it as a core feature (or a solution to general performance problems) within the next generation or two.
I didn't say it'll catch on - how would I know? People buy tons of stupid crap, and sometimes good ideas get buried. Maybe everyone will think like you do - "oh, I couldn't possibly be seen with something odd looking on my head" or "what if my living room is suddenly full of knives" and "I won't buy a holodeck until it accurately recreates smells"? So yeah, VR could completely flop, I agree on that.
But that's not what we were talking about. You said it will always suck. I said it's already cool. And it is.