Google themselves are doing a lackluster job of selling Lollipop as well.
Seriously, I see ads all over the place extolling the virtues of the new Nexus phones and tablets, the "first devices designed *for* Lollipop". You know what I don't see on those ads? Any device actually *running* Lollipop. It's always just a black screen.
And to all those who say that there *are* device updates, we just haven't gone looking? The average user shouldn't *have* to root their phone. I will argue to the death for their right to do so, but if the manufacturer and carrier doesn't want to commit to a release date for the upgrade, then the average person using that phone is going to keep using KitKat.
Sony have already done this. Until I moved to the US this year, I was happily using the PlayTV accessory for my Playstation 3 to do basically exactly the same thing in Australia.
It should be noted that the main benefit here isn't access to TV channels. It's the DVR functionality that comes along with it. Pausing and rewinding live TV, scheduling recordings, and live TV Guides.
One of the main problems I've always seen with top lists is that the ones who make it in there stay there, because people don't see anything else.
One solution I would propose is that the requirements for listing in a top list change the longer you are there. Sure, you made 10,000 downloads in your first day. great. You'd better make 12,000 the next day. And 14,000 the day after that.... and so on.
With that method, even the most popular apps will eventually drop off to make room for the newer apps which are just getting started.
The biggest problem I see with regards to the porn on the internet isn't its availability or controlling access. It's preventing people from *accidentally* accessing pornography, and this is something which is going to need cooperation on both sides.
For a start, typo-squatting should be discontinued on the part of the pornographers. It is a deceptive practice, and is one of the more common ways that a child can accidentally find themselves looking at pornography. Secondly, searching should only return porn results when you *actually search for pornography*. The easiest way to do this would be to give all porn sites a tag, and introduce a porn-search option, say, for example, porn.google.com. Normal search would exclude porn sites, and porn-search would *only* return porn sites. This way, both the web at large, *and* the porn is freely accessible and searchable, but it is no longer possible to accidentally stumble across a porn site. Finally, pornographers need to ensure that their advertising in only injected into appropriate channels, such that porn ads are not likely to appear on otherwise PG rated websites.
Controlling pornography *can* be done, if everyone does their part and the pornographers act responsibly.
I agree fully.
To say that Halo 3 sales figures indicates that more would rather see big explosions that play the 'intellectually superior' Bioshock or Portal is just naive. The important distinction to make in this case is that Halo 3 is the culmination of a *trilogy*. Halo 1 and 2 sold huge numbers and people were hugely invested in the series. If you owned Halo 1 and/or 2, and owned an XBox 360, then it was pretty much a no-brainer that you were going to buy Halo 3.
Compare this to Bioshock and Portal, and you should be able to see the difference. Both are original properties, which means that the consumers have no previous attachment. They have to make a choice about whether or not they want to buy this game, whereas with Halo 3, it was, as I said, a no-brainer for a lot of people. Include into this calculation that Portal on the 360 was part of a *bundle*, and you further muddy the waters, since who can say how many bought the Orange Box *for* HL2:Ep2, or TF2, or Portal.
Please, if you're going to make a comparison of games based on sales numbers, at least make sure they're comparable coming out of the gate
I find it odd that I have not seen a single mention of the music from the Myst series. For me, sitting abck and listening to a Myst soundtrack is a very relaxing and deep time. Just try and listen to the Main Theme from Myst 3: Exile, and not get chills down your spine. Myst 3 was the reason I got interested in soundtracks in the first place.
Coming to stores this holiday season, it's.....
The WiiStationBox!
More seriously though, a fixed platform isn't necessarily a bad thing. Someone has pointed out that competition drives technological advancement. I would contest that demand also drives it, and if the console owners don't demand more, the content developers *will*.
As for the advantages of having a single platform, they remain the same as with the various consoles when seen individually: A console is a fixed set of hardware with a fixed software platform, for which a developer can create. That fixed platform allows the developers to be 100% sure that the end user can run the game. When the developers hit a wall in how much the console can do, they'll start clammering for the console developers to make a new, better model. The developers also reap a benefit in development costs, since they don't have to develop for multiple platforms.
It's also consumer friendly. I would much rather have 1 console which runs everything, than have to buy 3 consoles just to ensure I get the full range of games being developed.
As for the open-ness of the platform, we should strive to make sure it isn't *too* open. A game shouldn't modify the platform, and games being released at retail *should* be certified, but as long as the certification process is relatively cheap, I don't see that being an issue.
I use Firefox, and I have AdBlock installed. However, I have never made it my goal to elliminate ads from my browsing experience entirely, because I do know that I'm affecting a site-owner's revenue. Thus, I only block ads if they actively detract from my experience on a website. This includes popups (which block my view), ads from slow third-party ad servers (which delay the loading of the entire page), and ads which take up a ridiculous amount of page real-estate (don't make me have to scroll down a page to get to the content I want to see!). As long as a website owner uses advertising in accordance with these restrictions, I have no problem with their adverts on the page, as my brain is quite capable of filtering them out without technological assistance anyway.
...it's going to be pokemon racing? Seriously, let's look at the similarities: Breeding, trading, 'battling', and a world to explore with your 'beast' helping you. About the only thing they're adding to the formula is a persistant online presense, and even the latest pokemon games have online capabilities.
OK, so it is now required that they log the contents of the RAM for future analysis. That means the data must be read from RAM and stored somewhere. Now, the odd thing here is that, apart from being impractical, the logging company may run into legal issues if they aren't careful of exactly *what* data they're pulling out of the RAM and storing. What if they pull out the wrong section of memory, end up with an AACS decryption key, and get sued for circumvention of a copy-protection mechanism under the DMCA? They were just ordered to by the court, sure, but it's got to complicate matters. After all, the MPAA and co. are already looking at anyone who visits the website; do you really think they'd overlook the opening that would give them?
OK, so the FBI has just gone and raided a whole bunch of places looking for mod-chips. Presumably they would be looking for installed chips in consoles they raid at homes.
How are they detecting these mod chips? Are they running a program to detect modified hardware (I would have thought MS, Sony, et al. would be doing that already). If not that, then they must be physically opening the cases to find the chips...
Which brings me to my ultimate point: what happens if their information proves to be faulty, and the console is found chipless. Is the owner compensated for bother? Wear and tear? Damage? Loss of warranty after the console has just been opened?
One would hope that the apology would extend to some sort of written proof that the console was opened for legal purposes, so that if that 360 red-rings, they can send it back without MS complaining.
Many years ago, I took the time to actually learn the rules of Minesweeper. To this day, Minesweeper is the first thing I do when I install a new Windows OS. Literally. My first action on the first boot is to register ctrl-alt-m as a keybaord shortcut to minesweeper. I now have a personal best of 57 second on expert. Minesweeper is a game which, once you get hooked, you will never escape from, and never want to.
I had trouble with censorship on a MMOG recently, although nowhere near as extreme as being permanently banned from the service. I was watching a friend give me a demo of Second Life and it reminded me that it had been quite some time since I'd logged in to Active Worlds (a very similar 3D building world, although a lot older). I went and visited Active Worlds, said 'hi' to a few old friends, and then mentioned that I was visiting because Second Life had reminded me of how good Active Worlds was. I was promptly booted from the server for course language. To be booted is to be ejected from a given world for a period of about 5 minutes, during which you can see nothing but a blue screen. Any attempt to rejoin the world will be unsuccessful. Reasons for booting include the use of bad language (a single utterance will do it, since the bots who control such things are very unforgiving) or harrasing other players, which is controlled by the gatekeepers. However, I couldn't work out what I had said which set the bots off. There were no curse words in my last line, in fact, it was quite polite and praised Active Worlds. It wasn't until I rejoined the World that I got my answer. The phrase 'Second Life' had been what set the bot off, since apparently they didn't want people talking about competitors products. I even heard one story where a person was booted off the world for talking about 'living twice'!
One system I've seen my university adopting more and more recently is to have multiple versions of exams, say 4 versions, spread out in the exam room. This way, no-one is in view of someone they can cheat from. I mostly see this with 'multiple-guess' exams where they are marked my machines. The best part of this system is that you don't need to change the questions themselves, just the order.
Another tactic I ran into recently was to have assignments with the same questions but different parameters. We even had a simulation where we had to model interactions from the point of view of different actors, with each group being given a different actor to model.
I'm not actually a professional programmer, still being in uni. However, in my experience, I cannot program well when I am actually in front of the computer. I find that my best programming is done when I am walking about town, since my mind then has lots of time to work things out on its own. What I end up with at the end of this isn't actually code, but during my ponderings I have so completely worked out how it will work that the actual process of typing it out is trivial.
I realise that this method probably isn't for everyone, especially for those chained to their desk
Slashdot Mirror
Google themselves are doing a lackluster job of selling Lollipop as well. Seriously, I see ads all over the place extolling the virtues of the new Nexus phones and tablets, the "first devices designed *for* Lollipop". You know what I don't see on those ads? Any device actually *running* Lollipop. It's always just a black screen. And to all those who say that there *are* device updates, we just haven't gone looking? The average user shouldn't *have* to root their phone. I will argue to the death for their right to do so, but if the manufacturer and carrier doesn't want to commit to a release date for the upgrade, then the average person using that phone is going to keep using KitKat.
Sony have already done this. Until I moved to the US this year, I was happily using the PlayTV accessory for my Playstation 3 to do basically exactly the same thing in Australia. It should be noted that the main benefit here isn't access to TV channels. It's the DVR functionality that comes along with it. Pausing and rewinding live TV, scheduling recordings, and live TV Guides.
One of the main problems I've always seen with top lists is that the ones who make it in there stay there, because people don't see anything else. One solution I would propose is that the requirements for listing in a top list change the longer you are there. Sure, you made 10,000 downloads in your first day. great. You'd better make 12,000 the next day. And 14,000 the day after that.... and so on. With that method, even the most popular apps will eventually drop off to make room for the newer apps which are just getting started.
The biggest problem I see with regards to the porn on the internet isn't its availability or controlling access. It's preventing people from *accidentally* accessing pornography, and this is something which is going to need cooperation on both sides. For a start, typo-squatting should be discontinued on the part of the pornographers. It is a deceptive practice, and is one of the more common ways that a child can accidentally find themselves looking at pornography. Secondly, searching should only return porn results when you *actually search for pornography*. The easiest way to do this would be to give all porn sites a tag, and introduce a porn-search option, say, for example, porn.google.com. Normal search would exclude porn sites, and porn-search would *only* return porn sites. This way, both the web at large, *and* the porn is freely accessible and searchable, but it is no longer possible to accidentally stumble across a porn site. Finally, pornographers need to ensure that their advertising in only injected into appropriate channels, such that porn ads are not likely to appear on otherwise PG rated websites. Controlling pornography *can* be done, if everyone does their part and the pornographers act responsibly.
I agree fully. To say that Halo 3 sales figures indicates that more would rather see big explosions that play the 'intellectually superior' Bioshock or Portal is just naive. The important distinction to make in this case is that Halo 3 is the culmination of a *trilogy*. Halo 1 and 2 sold huge numbers and people were hugely invested in the series. If you owned Halo 1 and/or 2, and owned an XBox 360, then it was pretty much a no-brainer that you were going to buy Halo 3. Compare this to Bioshock and Portal, and you should be able to see the difference. Both are original properties, which means that the consumers have no previous attachment. They have to make a choice about whether or not they want to buy this game, whereas with Halo 3, it was, as I said, a no-brainer for a lot of people. Include into this calculation that Portal on the 360 was part of a *bundle*, and you further muddy the waters, since who can say how many bought the Orange Box *for* HL2:Ep2, or TF2, or Portal. Please, if you're going to make a comparison of games based on sales numbers, at least make sure they're comparable coming out of the gate
I find it odd that I have not seen a single mention of the music from the Myst series. For me, sitting abck and listening to a Myst soundtrack is a very relaxing and deep time. Just try and listen to the Main Theme from Myst 3: Exile, and not get chills down your spine. Myst 3 was the reason I got interested in soundtracks in the first place.
More seriously though, a fixed platform isn't necessarily a bad thing. Someone has pointed out that competition drives technological advancement. I would contest that demand also drives it, and if the console owners don't demand more, the content developers *will*.
As for the advantages of having a single platform, they remain the same as with the various consoles when seen individually: A console is a fixed set of hardware with a fixed software platform, for which a developer can create. That fixed platform allows the developers to be 100% sure that the end user can run the game. When the developers hit a wall in how much the console can do, they'll start clammering for the console developers to make a new, better model. The developers also reap a benefit in development costs, since they don't have to develop for multiple platforms.
It's also consumer friendly. I would much rather have 1 console which runs everything, than have to buy 3 consoles just to ensure I get the full range of games being developed.
As for the open-ness of the platform, we should strive to make sure it isn't *too* open. A game shouldn't modify the platform, and games being released at retail *should* be certified, but as long as the certification process is relatively cheap, I don't see that being an issue.
I use Firefox, and I have AdBlock installed. However, I have never made it my goal to elliminate ads from my browsing experience entirely, because I do know that I'm affecting a site-owner's revenue. Thus, I only block ads if they actively detract from my experience on a website. This includes popups (which block my view), ads from slow third-party ad servers (which delay the loading of the entire page), and ads which take up a ridiculous amount of page real-estate (don't make me have to scroll down a page to get to the content I want to see!). As long as a website owner uses advertising in accordance with these restrictions, I have no problem with their adverts on the page, as my brain is quite capable of filtering them out without technological assistance anyway.
...it's going to be pokemon racing?
Seriously, let's look at the similarities: Breeding, trading, 'battling', and a world to explore with your 'beast' helping you. About the only thing they're adding to the formula is a persistant online presense, and even the latest pokemon games have online capabilities.
OK, so it is now required that they log the contents of the RAM for future analysis. That means the data must be read from RAM and stored somewhere.
Now, the odd thing here is that, apart from being impractical, the logging company may run into legal issues if they aren't careful of exactly *what* data they're pulling out of the RAM and storing. What if they pull out the wrong section of memory, end up with an AACS decryption key, and get sued for circumvention of a copy-protection mechanism under the DMCA? They were just ordered to by the court, sure, but it's got to complicate matters. After all, the MPAA and co. are already looking at anyone who visits the website; do you really think they'd overlook the opening that would give them?
OK, so the FBI has just gone and raided a whole bunch of places looking for mod-chips. Presumably they would be looking for installed chips in consoles they raid at homes. How are they detecting these mod chips? Are they running a program to detect modified hardware (I would have thought MS, Sony, et al. would be doing that already). If not that, then they must be physically opening the cases to find the chips... Which brings me to my ultimate point: what happens if their information proves to be faulty, and the console is found chipless. Is the owner compensated for bother? Wear and tear? Damage? Loss of warranty after the console has just been opened? One would hope that the apology would extend to some sort of written proof that the console was opened for legal purposes, so that if that 360 red-rings, they can send it back without MS complaining.
Many years ago, I took the time to actually learn the rules of Minesweeper. To this day, Minesweeper is the first thing I do when I install a new Windows OS. Literally. My first action on the first boot is to register ctrl-alt-m as a keybaord shortcut to minesweeper. I now have a personal best of 57 second on expert. Minesweeper is a game which, once you get hooked, you will never escape from, and never want to.
I had trouble with censorship on a MMOG recently, although nowhere near as extreme as being permanently banned from the service.
I was watching a friend give me a demo of Second Life and it reminded me that it had been quite some time since I'd logged in to Active Worlds (a very similar 3D building world, although a lot older).
I went and visited Active Worlds, said 'hi' to a few old friends, and then mentioned that I was visiting because Second Life had reminded me of how good Active Worlds was.
I was promptly booted from the server for course language.
To be booted is to be ejected from a given world for a period of about 5 minutes, during which you can see nothing but a blue screen. Any attempt to rejoin the world will be unsuccessful. Reasons for booting include the use of bad language (a single utterance will do it, since the bots who control such things are very unforgiving) or harrasing other players, which is controlled by the gatekeepers. However, I couldn't work out what I had said which set the bots off. There were no curse words in my last line, in fact, it was quite polite and praised Active Worlds.
It wasn't until I rejoined the World that I got my answer. The phrase 'Second Life' had been what set the bot off, since apparently they didn't want people talking about competitors products. I even heard one story where a person was booted off the world for talking about 'living twice'!
One system I've seen my university adopting more and more recently is to have multiple versions of exams, say 4 versions, spread out in the exam room. This way, no-one is in view of someone they can cheat from. I mostly see this with 'multiple-guess' exams where they are marked my machines. The best part of this system is that you don't need to change the questions themselves, just the order.
Another tactic I ran into recently was to have assignments with the same questions but different parameters. We even had a simulation where we had to model interactions from the point of view of different actors, with each group being given a different actor to model.
I'm not actually a professional programmer, still being in uni. However, in my experience, I cannot program well when I am actually in front of the computer. I find that my best programming is done when I am walking about town, since my mind then has lots of time to work things out on its own. What I end up with at the end of this isn't actually code, but during my ponderings I have so completely worked out how it will work that the actual process of typing it out is trivial. I realise that this method probably isn't for everyone, especially for those chained to their desk