I've been both a console and PC gamer my entire life. I'd be willing to bet that I'm better than you at just about any genre you care to compete in.
Any PC-exclusive gamer with a smug sense of superiority over consoles games being "dumbed down" is a jackass. Yeah, there are some examples of bad ports, and of bad sequels; fortunately, those aren't actually indicative of the entire library of video games of the past 30 years. There are a few specific genres that are definitely easier to play on a PC (strategy games in particular) and that allows for some additional complexity in some cases, but in general, it's the same shit on both platforms and it has nothing to do with PC games somehow being dragged down to the level of console games.
I don't own a PS3, do own (but barely use) a 360, and pretty much have no interest in either of the upcoming consoles. I think Sony is the historically more evil than Microsoft, with the rootkit, removal of Other OS, and general incompetence in handling their customer data.
That said, no, I don't think Sony would do exactly the same, especially now that Microsoft has tested the waters and been sent reeling. I don't know what perfect storm of stupidity happened that made Microsoft think that this "feature" would be a good idea, but I don't expect that whatever random set of events caused it would happen somewhere else as well.
You had a great point in your GGP post, and then went and added this response to refute it all by yourself.
Good job.
If it's identifying information that matters, then knowing whether or not the person on the driver's license is naturally producing a hormone is pretty worthless as a piece of identifying information.
You know, it was meant in the figurative, not literal -- "to live in the basement" as it were means to be cut off from reality
Nice attempt to save face, but it was still an ad-hom. In fact, it's one of the most common silencing tactics that feminists use to shame people who dissent from their narrow interpretation of the world. "You disagree? You must be a misogynist gay neckbeard virgin living in his mom's basement."
Your analogy to using attractive men to sell, e.g., clothing doesn't work. In those cases, the message is "Buy our product, and look like this!"
Sometimes, and sometimes it's "buy our product, get this." Or "buy our product, and your husband/boyfriend/other will become this." And all of these types of messages are given to both men and women. And jackasses with the "but women are objectified!" filter have severe confirmation bias when seeing the messages they disagree with and ignore all the rest.
If something truly isn't worth paying minimum wage to someone to do it, then it's not worth doing. Period. If something is worth doing, then whoever is doing it deserves compensation.
Why is it that "conservatives" are quick to point out that the Fed printing money isn't real wealth, but then can't see the contradiction of equating taxes with "forcibly taking wealth"?
This is the single biggest reason I am an iOS user.
Oh, good for you. And many of the rest of us have either weighed the benefits/potential drawbacks and seen that there is effectively no difference between the two approaches, except that Android's approach gives the user far more control; OR, the the case of the vast majority of people, have given it no thought, and went with whatever device they thought looked prettiest and ended up with an iPhone or an Android phone.
If you enjoy your walled garden -- fine. Hang out in there and talk about how beautiful it is. There might be a few more weeds out here in the rest of the world, but they aren't common and aren't particularly dangerous. I'm sorry that you've convinced yourself that they are and that it has made you too fearful to try something different, instead rationalizing your restrictive choices.
The iOS system of having a single point for download of apps, and having them vetted in advance is a far better security design.
Android has the same fucking thing. Except that the user can make the choice to disable that restriction and install from any source if they'd prefer.
And iOS apps aren't vetted for shit. They're tested to see if they run and if they break any obvious community guidelines. But the numbers clearly show that iOS apps leak more personal data than Android apps. (I'll provide the same quality of citation that you have for all of your claims)
Enjoy living with your restrictions. It doesn't make any difference to me what you do. Just don't piss on our legs and tell us it's raining and expect us to believe you.
And in what way was it not obvious for the entire history of the iPhone that it could be reflashed through the USB?
There's a huge difference between reflashing something and gaining root to infect an existing install.
One is very obvious to the user because their phone is suddenly reflashed to some configuration that isn't the user's any more. The other could be incredibly subtle because there's no visible change to the user.
It's entirely possible that a similar attack could happen to Android devices as well (for example, run an ADB instance and have it auto-install and execute something whenever it detects a device with debugging enabled. My phone would be vulnerable to this kind of attack, because for convenience, I've got it set up to auto-enter debugging mode whenever it plugs into a device. I'm willing to accept that risk, but I'm not an idiot that insists that the risk isn't there.)
Thing is, it's just another example of how that device that you insist is so damn impregnable because it's from mother Apple can, in fact, be easily exploited. All it takes is for someone to do it. Just because it hasn't happened in the wild *yet* (that you know of) doesn't make you any safer than anyone else.
Just because you are ignorant of other media libraries (Winamp, Windows Media Player, etc) that can handle this, and ignorant of devices that they can manage, and ignorant of the fact that on these devices you can bypass the media management entirely if you want to, doesn't mean that they don't exist.
The Kenwood head unit I installed in my car is one of these many, many devices. You can use the Kenwood software to manage everything, or you can do it yourself. It will happily work in either mode.
Not one of the features that you've listed is exclusive to iTunes. The only "feature" that is exclusive to iTunes and iPods is that this is the *only* way to manage your library and music player.
Also, I base *all* of my media player purchases on how accurately they keep track of last play dates and accurate play counts. <rolls eyes>
In other words: "free market when I say so! Free market good!" And what's one of the tenets of free market capitalism? Informed customers. However, in this case, you're arguing that people SHOULD NOT BE INFORMED, and then doing mental gymnastics to do a piss-poor job of justifying it.
It makes it impossible to even have a discussion with libertarians because you move the goalposts CONSTANTLY and won't even admit that you routinely violate your own core principles when it suits you.
Most of the loss of split screen is because it was beginning to get too difficult to afford the processing power.
What a load of apologist horse shit.
So you're telling me that an N64 with its sub-100MHz processor and very limited 3d rendering hardware was somehow able to do 4-way split screen but newer consoles just can't possibly handle it? That they can't tweak the settings to sacrifice just a bit of detail to have 2-4 players on the screen?
It's entirely due to laziness and greed, and because gamers are too pathetic to demand better.
To you, perhaps. What was it you were saying about batteries? Most users don't want to change them? Well most users don't give a shit about Skype seeing their contacts, either. They just want it to work. In fact, Skype having automatic access to their contacts is a beneficial feature to the non-paranoid, because it's very convenient.
Also, I wonder how long you'll keep this double-think talking point. "Slavery is freedom!"
And EVERY JAILBREAKABLE iPHONE is vulnerable to malware that can completely bypass any of these restrictions that you're hiding behind, yet you conveniently forget that. In fact, some iPhone jailbreaks are so trivial that simply visiting a webpage puts your device at the mercy of the page's owner.
Slashdot Mirror
As opposed to the people who try to find sexism *everywhere* they look, who are perfectly reasonable, objective individuals.
--Jeremy
I've been both a console and PC gamer my entire life. I'd be willing to bet that I'm better than you at just about any genre you care to compete in.
Any PC-exclusive gamer with a smug sense of superiority over consoles games being "dumbed down" is a jackass. Yeah, there are some examples of bad ports, and of bad sequels; fortunately, those aren't actually indicative of the entire library of video games of the past 30 years. There are a few specific genres that are definitely easier to play on a PC (strategy games in particular) and that allows for some additional complexity in some cases, but in general, it's the same shit on both platforms and it has nothing to do with PC games somehow being dragged down to the level of console games.
--Jeremy
I don't own a PS3, do own (but barely use) a 360, and pretty much have no interest in either of the upcoming consoles. I think Sony is the historically more evil than Microsoft, with the rootkit, removal of Other OS, and general incompetence in handling their customer data.
That said, no, I don't think Sony would do exactly the same, especially now that Microsoft has tested the waters and been sent reeling. I don't know what perfect storm of stupidity happened that made Microsoft think that this "feature" would be a good idea, but I don't expect that whatever random set of events caused it would happen somewhere else as well.
--Jeremy
Yeah, as someone who has no interest in either the XBox One or Windows 8, I think you're kind of reaching there.
Of course, it *sounds* good to anyone who hates Microsoft, so you still get cheap mod points.
--Jeremy
He hasn't been charged with anything. How can he be a fugitive?
--Jeremy
You had a great point in your GGP post, and then went and added this response to refute it all by yourself.
Good job.
If it's identifying information that matters, then knowing whether or not the person on the driver's license is naturally producing a hormone is pretty worthless as a piece of identifying information.
--Jeremy
feeling in no small way like I have to represent all of womankind when making these comments
There's your problem. You don't represent all womankind. Get the fuck over yourself.
--Jeremy
You know, it was meant in the figurative, not literal -- "to live in the basement" as it were means to be cut off from reality
Nice attempt to save face, but it was still an ad-hom. In fact, it's one of the most common silencing tactics that feminists use to shame people who dissent from their narrow interpretation of the world. "You disagree? You must be a misogynist gay neckbeard virgin living in his mom's basement."
--Jeremy
Your analogy to using attractive men to sell, e.g., clothing doesn't work. In those cases, the message is "Buy our product, and look like this!"
Sometimes, and sometimes it's "buy our product, get this." Or "buy our product, and your husband/boyfriend/other will become this." And all of these types of messages are given to both men and women. And jackasses with the "but women are objectified!" filter have severe confirmation bias when seeing the messages they disagree with and ignore all the rest.
--Jeremy
Oh the irony.
If something truly isn't worth paying minimum wage to someone to do it, then it's not worth doing. Period. If something is worth doing, then whoever is doing it deserves compensation.
--Jeremy
Why is it that "conservatives" are quick to point out that the Fed printing money isn't real wealth, but then can't see the contradiction of equating taxes with "forcibly taking wealth"?
--Jeremy
This is the single biggest reason I am an iOS user.
Oh, good for you. And many of the rest of us have either weighed the benefits/potential drawbacks and seen that there is effectively no difference between the two approaches, except that Android's approach gives the user far more control; OR, the the case of the vast majority of people, have given it no thought, and went with whatever device they thought looked prettiest and ended up with an iPhone or an Android phone.
If you enjoy your walled garden -- fine. Hang out in there and talk about how beautiful it is. There might be a few more weeds out here in the rest of the world, but they aren't common and aren't particularly dangerous. I'm sorry that you've convinced yourself that they are and that it has made you too fearful to try something different, instead rationalizing your restrictive choices.
--Jeremy
Until the malware removes the block of course... If it can escalate permissions it can probably also take out a lot of system safeguards.
And can the malware do this, or is this just uninformed conjecture masquerading as "insight" coming from an Apple troll?
--Jeremy
The iOS system of having a single point for download of apps, and having them vetted in advance is a far better security design.
Android has the same fucking thing. Except that the user can make the choice to disable that restriction and install from any source if they'd prefer.
And iOS apps aren't vetted for shit. They're tested to see if they run and if they break any obvious community guidelines. But the numbers clearly show that iOS apps leak more personal data than Android apps. (I'll provide the same quality of citation that you have for all of your claims)
Enjoy living with your restrictions. It doesn't make any difference to me what you do. Just don't piss on our legs and tell us it's raining and expect us to believe you.
--Jeremy
Such an insightful and informative response.
--Jeremy
As opposed to the non-progressives, who do *none* of these things.
--Jeremy
And in what way was it not obvious for the entire history of the iPhone that it could be reflashed through the USB?
There's a huge difference between reflashing something and gaining root to infect an existing install.
One is very obvious to the user because their phone is suddenly reflashed to some configuration that isn't the user's any more. The other could be incredibly subtle because there's no visible change to the user.
It's entirely possible that a similar attack could happen to Android devices as well (for example, run an ADB instance and have it auto-install and execute something whenever it detects a device with debugging enabled. My phone would be vulnerable to this kind of attack, because for convenience, I've got it set up to auto-enter debugging mode whenever it plugs into a device. I'm willing to accept that risk, but I'm not an idiot that insists that the risk isn't there.)
Thing is, it's just another example of how that device that you insist is so damn impregnable because it's from mother Apple can, in fact, be easily exploited. All it takes is for someone to do it. Just because it hasn't happened in the wild *yet* (that you know of) doesn't make you any safer than anyone else.
--Jeremy
Except that isn't true - if a product was crap, but the marketing was good, it still won't sell.
Case in point: the pop music industry. Nobody buys that stuff.
--Jeremy
Just because you are ignorant of other media libraries (Winamp, Windows Media Player, etc) that can handle this, and ignorant of devices that they can manage, and ignorant of the fact that on these devices you can bypass the media management entirely if you want to, doesn't mean that they don't exist.
The Kenwood head unit I installed in my car is one of these many, many devices. You can use the Kenwood software to manage everything, or you can do it yourself. It will happily work in either mode.
Not one of the features that you've listed is exclusive to iTunes. The only "feature" that is exclusive to iTunes and iPods is that this is the *only* way to manage your library and music player.
Also, I base *all* of my media player purchases on how accurately they keep track of last play dates and accurate play counts. <rolls eyes>
--Jeremy
In other words: "free market when I say so! Free market good!" And what's one of the tenets of free market capitalism? Informed customers. However, in this case, you're arguing that people SHOULD NOT BE INFORMED, and then doing mental gymnastics to do a piss-poor job of justifying it.
It makes it impossible to even have a discussion with libertarians because you move the goalposts CONSTANTLY and won't even admit that you routinely violate your own core principles when it suits you.
--Jeremy
This is a terrible analogy. But then, most of what comes out of the mouths of people who scream "victim blamer!" is idiocy anyway.
--Jeremy
Well, AFAIC no person should be paying income taxes and if he is forced to then he is in captivity
Yeah, but you're so blinded by ideology that you look insane to the rest of us.
--Jeremy
Most of the loss of split screen is because it was beginning to get too difficult to afford the processing power.
What a load of apologist horse shit.
So you're telling me that an N64 with its sub-100MHz processor and very limited 3d rendering hardware was somehow able to do 4-way split screen but newer consoles just can't possibly handle it? That they can't tweak the settings to sacrifice just a bit of detail to have 2-4 players on the screen?
It's entirely due to laziness and greed, and because gamers are too pathetic to demand better.
--Jeremy
in the ways that matter most.
To you, perhaps. What was it you were saying about batteries? Most users don't want to change them? Well most users don't give a shit about Skype seeing their contacts, either. They just want it to work. In fact, Skype having automatic access to their contacts is a beneficial feature to the non-paranoid, because it's very convenient.
Also, I wonder how long you'll keep this double-think talking point. "Slavery is freedom!"
And EVERY JAILBREAKABLE iPHONE is vulnerable to malware that can completely bypass any of these restrictions that you're hiding behind, yet you conveniently forget that. In fact, some iPhone jailbreaks are so trivial that simply visiting a webpage puts your device at the mercy of the page's owner.
--Jeremy