How to be a minor pirate: Go to the Pirate Bay. Click on a torrent. Download pre-cracked, DRM-free game. Play.
Plausibility of your statement: zero.
I think you mean, try to find out what the current country code for TPB is, and then circumvent any ISP blocking you have, then go to Pirate Bay, get served pop-up ad, hope your AV software prevents the drive-by, and hope you're not fooled into downloading Flash Player Deluxe from the PU that AdBlock on Chrome still doesn't filter out because it's a Java on-click, click the DOWNLOAD NOW button instead of the tiny magnet link button because it's not obvious, get more malware installed instead of actually getting your software, which I hope you chose from a trusted uploader, since on release day there's dozens of fakes.
Also, hope that your ISP hasn't sent you a three-strike letter already, since you forgot to install Peer-somethingorother, and the default on uTorrent was to seed until the cows came home.
It might seem simple to you, but it's not that simple to mom and pop.
Because of the shovelware issue, and mostly locked, un-rooted phones owned by people who can't root their phones by themselves [It's not easy for the general population], they don't have most of the options you suggest.
Their best bet is to never logon to the shovelware version (good luck, grandpa!), and download an app that they've never heard of.
I'd never heard of Tinfoil until today, but I'll check it out -- since, as I mentioned, Facebook is a necessary evil for me. I've got it set to the minimum number of notifications allowed (my personal peeve, since I don't value my privacy over my convenience [generally]), but as long as my friends and family use it to coordinate social functions instead of voice and paper, I'm stuck with it.
...while I agree, the next step is that applications start crashing when you revoke their permissions, or the authors simply refuse to let them run.
Anyone who writes a program that makes its money by spying on you (while presenting you a game of Hearts), will simply stop dealing the cards when it can't read your text messages. HOSTS blocking already kills ads on a lot of software, but it's an arms race.
The revenue model is the issue. We want 99 "free" apps.
Starcraft 2 has no such restriction for local play. You can install it on as many computers as you'd like; you can only have one concurrent logon to battle.net.
I can't imagine building a game today without licensing Unreal or Havoc for physics or Eclipse/Lycium for your RPG, or even Bigworld (or whatever) for your new MMO.
You'd have to be an industry juggernaut to sink the costs into reinventing that wheel.
They feel that for the six people on Slashdot that they dissuade from buying their product BECAUSE DRM!, that they'll actually get seven more paying customers by at least preventing the sort of piracy that makes you go to TPB.
Plenty of people have been burned by virus/malware from visiting TPB (more often in the spam and ads than the torrents), and they're one of the good sites.
It's not like the bean counters there are just willfully ignoring DRM. They weigh their options and make a choice.
You're free to choose not to buy DRM'd software, but it's hardly an insight...
"Public" schools include charter schools, many of which have non-secular curriculum. Money is fungible, so giving them $200 for "arts" means they can not spend $200 of their total budget there, giving them $200 to do whatever they want with as long as their total budget for the arts is over $200.
And, since the state pays you back $200 for doing it, it is, ultimately, the state's money.
In the end, the school is $200 richer, to do with whatever it pleases, I'm exactly where I started, with $0 spent after rebate, and the state has to take $200 it would spend elsewhere and, essentially, give it to the school.
....in case it wasn't clear in my post, you don't actually need a child in school. Anyone can donate $200 to a specific school in Arizona (grade school, high school, charter school) and reduce their Arizona tax liability by $200.
Arizona: As many as 15 schools that teach creationism may be participating in the state’s tax credit scholarship program for disabled children or children attending underperforming schools. (Arizona has not released a list of private schools that have received students on this scholarship.)
READ: There are 15 schools in Arizona that teach creationism (*sigh*), and they are apparently eligible to receive tax credits for certain disadvantaged students on a scholarship, but there's no data that says any of these schools actually have any of those students.
The Slate doesn't mention this, but there's a WAY bigger loophole.
You can, in Arizona (as well as a lot of other places) donate up to $200 per person (or $400 per household, IIRC) to a school fully tax deductible from your state taxes. As long as you've got $200 worth of state tax liability, and you like the school your kid goes to more than the general education fund, you can just give them $200 in cash in December, and "get" $200 off your Arizona taxes as soon as you file. Every school here sends their kids home with a donation form every year - it's a cash grab.
So, as long as it's a valid school, you can use state money (in a roundabout way) to pay for their creationism.
But that's mostly the app's fault, not the Kinect's.
I hope that's the take-away that people are getting here.
Speech recognition isn't perfect on the One, but I do most of what you do, watching my Media Center machine as the "TV" in my One. I spend a fair deal of time saying basic commands, "Xbox Stop/Mute/Play/Turn Off," "Yes" and "No" at it, as it's fairly convenient. Most of the time, it gets it right, and rarely does it do something silly. "Stop" never deletes anything. "Pause" never records anything. The worst thing that happens is it ignores me and I repeat myself.
I *love* walking into the room and saying, "XBox On," and/or "XBox Watch TV." Sure, it may be a gimmick, but it's a neat gimmick.
There are people that would argue that a internet browser is just as important and integral on a modern smartphone as messaging.
I suppose it's a matter of perspective. I do a dozen searches of the web for every text message I get/send, but I'm not a teenager -- I just have the attention span of one.
My last few phones have all been Google Play Editions, and I can't be happier.
I'd toyed with Cyanogenmod, but there's a breakeven point between the time I spend dicking with a phone to unlock and reflash it - then deal with any of the incompatibilities that come up (especially with things like NFC and cameras, as previous loading/updating Google apps), and just getting an unlocked phone for what I'd have paid my carrier for it after they sneak the actual cost into my bill.
Most people will never know. They're going to have a crazy launcher, and tons of bloat, and locked tethering, and who knows what the hell else shoehorned into their phone because AT&T-MobRision made a deal with ESPN.
Slashdot Mirror
It was a hard day down in the device mines. :(
The paying customer did make their wishes known, about 5 million times.
How to be a minor pirate: Go to the Pirate Bay. Click on a torrent. Download pre-cracked, DRM-free game. Play.
Plausibility of your statement: zero.
I think you mean, try to find out what the current country code for TPB is, and then circumvent any ISP blocking you have, then go to Pirate Bay, get served pop-up ad, hope your AV software prevents the drive-by, and hope you're not fooled into downloading Flash Player Deluxe from the PU that AdBlock on Chrome still doesn't filter out because it's a Java on-click, click the DOWNLOAD NOW button instead of the tiny magnet link button because it's not obvious, get more malware installed instead of actually getting your software, which I hope you chose from a trusted uploader, since on release day there's dozens of fakes.
Also, hope that your ISP hasn't sent you a three-strike letter already, since you forgot to install Peer-somethingorother, and the default on uTorrent was to seed until the cows came home.
It might seem simple to you, but it's not that simple to mom and pop.
Casual pirates are getting pushed out.
Because of the shovelware issue, and mostly locked, un-rooted phones owned by people who can't root their phones by themselves [It's not easy for the general population], they don't have most of the options you suggest.
Their best bet is to never logon to the shovelware version (good luck, grandpa!), and download an app that they've never heard of.
I'd never heard of Tinfoil until today, but I'll check it out -- since, as I mentioned, Facebook is a necessary evil for me. I've got it set to the minimum number of notifications allowed (my personal peeve, since I don't value my privacy over my convenience [generally]), but as long as my friends and family use it to coordinate social functions instead of voice and paper, I'm stuck with it.
But, but, DRM!
...while I agree, the next step is that applications start crashing when you revoke their permissions, or the authors simply refuse to let them run.
Anyone who writes a program that makes its money by spying on you (while presenting you a game of Hearts), will simply stop dealing the cards when it can't read your text messages. HOSTS blocking already kills ads on a lot of software, but it's an arms race.
The revenue model is the issue. We want 99 "free" apps.
Starcraft 2 has no such restriction for local play. You can install it on as many computers as you'd like; you can only have one concurrent logon to battle.net.
The bigger issue is that Facebook is shovelware on most providers handsets.
I had to go get Facebook, since I live on this planet, and have friends who use it to coordinate, you know, life. ...but at least I had a choice.
Admittedly, people do have to sign into that big F icon. It doesn't just auto-authenticate.
Yeah, one time activation for single-player seems real douchey.
I can't imagine building a game today without licensing Unreal or Havoc for physics or Eclipse/Lycium for your RPG, or even Bigworld (or whatever) for your new MMO.
You'd have to be an industry juggernaut to sink the costs into reinventing that wheel.
They feel that for the six people on Slashdot that they dissuade from buying their product BECAUSE DRM!, that they'll actually get seven more paying customers by at least preventing the sort of piracy that makes you go to TPB.
Plenty of people have been burned by virus/malware from visiting TPB (more often in the spam and ads than the torrents), and they're one of the good sites.
It's not like the bean counters there are just willfully ignoring DRM. They weigh their options and make a choice.
You're free to choose not to buy DRM'd software, but it's hardly an insight...
"Public" schools include charter schools, many of which have non-secular curriculum. Money is fungible, so giving them $200 for "arts" means they can not spend $200 of their total budget there, giving them $200 to do whatever they want with as long as their total budget for the arts is over $200.
And, since the state pays you back $200 for doing it, it is, ultimately, the state's money.
In the end, the school is $200 richer, to do with whatever it pleases, I'm exactly where I started, with $0 spent after rebate, and the state has to take $200 it would spend elsewhere and, essentially, give it to the school.
If there's a map of public schools with forced Muslim or Jewish teachings, please share it.
....in case it wasn't clear in my post, you don't actually need a child in school. Anyone can donate $200 to a specific school in Arizona (grade school, high school, charter school) and reduce their Arizona tax liability by $200.
Arizona: As many as 15 schools that teach creationism may be participating in the state’s tax credit scholarship program for disabled children or children attending underperforming schools. (Arizona has not released a list of private schools that have received students on this scholarship.)
READ: There are 15 schools in Arizona that teach creationism (*sigh*), and they are apparently eligible to receive tax credits for certain disadvantaged students on a scholarship, but there's no data that says any of these schools actually have any of those students.
The Slate doesn't mention this, but there's a WAY bigger loophole.
You can, in Arizona (as well as a lot of other places) donate up to $200 per person (or $400 per household, IIRC) to a school fully tax deductible from your state taxes. As long as you've got $200 worth of state tax liability, and you like the school your kid goes to more than the general education fund, you can just give them $200 in cash in December, and "get" $200 off your Arizona taxes as soon as you file. Every school here sends their kids home with a donation form every year - it's a cash grab.
So, as long as it's a valid school, you can use state money (in a roundabout way) to pay for their creationism.
But that's mostly the app's fault, not the Kinect's.
I hope that's the take-away that people are getting here.
Speech recognition isn't perfect on the One, but I do most of what you do, watching my Media Center machine as the "TV" in my One. I spend a fair deal of time saying basic commands, "Xbox Stop/Mute/Play/Turn Off," "Yes" and "No" at it, as it's fairly convenient. Most of the time, it gets it right, and rarely does it do something silly. "Stop" never deletes anything. "Pause" never records anything. The worst thing that happens is it ignores me and I repeat myself.
I *love* walking into the room and saying, "XBox On," and/or "XBox Watch TV." Sure, it may be a gimmick, but it's a neat gimmick.
$550. Now all you need is a wireless controller, a Kinect, and free labor
The only thing Disable doesn't do that Uninstall does is leave data on the filesystem. It's out of sight, out of mind.
I went HTC last round, the wife wants to go S4, and the kid got himself a MotoG under the Christmas tree.
...uniformly radiating their goods and services in all directions.
What part of a Google account is required to install an .apk file?
For most people, there isn't too much on a GPE phone that you can't delete that you wouldn't want if you wanted an Android phone to begin with.
I suppose you might not want Chrome, or even the Play Store for that matter, but there's not much on a GPE device that qualifies as bloat.
Nobody ever complained that Windows included CALC.EXE
There are people that would argue that a internet browser is just as important and integral on a modern smartphone as messaging.
I suppose it's a matter of perspective. I do a dozen searches of the web for every text message I get/send, but I'm not a teenager -- I just have the attention span of one.
My last few phones have all been Google Play Editions, and I can't be happier.
I'd toyed with Cyanogenmod, but there's a breakeven point between the time I spend dicking with a phone to unlock and reflash it - then deal with any of the incompatibilities that come up (especially with things like NFC and cameras, as previous loading/updating Google apps), and just getting an unlocked phone for what I'd have paid my carrier for it after they sneak the actual cost into my bill.
Most people will never know. They're going to have a crazy launcher, and tons of bloat, and locked tethering, and who knows what the hell else shoehorned into their phone because AT&T-MobRision made a deal with ESPN.
My car adds about $20/mo to my electric bill, or 10%. They're not much of an issue if you can already power your house.