The content industry doesn't have the business model of making a sustained profit, they have the business model of making MORE AND MORE AND MORE MONEY! If the content industry was run by the supermarkets, your example would work. But it is not. It is run by people who make wallstreet bankers look wholesome and they want ever more cash from you.
There was a dutch version of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. As a naive kid I inquired how it could be obtained. The NOS would very happy to supply the copyrighted material. All I would have to do was pay a sound engineer to make the copies. The price was... well... rather high doesn't do it justice.
But it is available... for a price...
You can probably get any movie you want to. For a couple of million.
DNT only works if websites honor it. Some have already said that if browsers turned it on by default, they would not honor it. So... could MS, a company with a long history of embrace and strange while raping it up the ass, be enabling it by default to give websites an excuse to ignore it and thereby kill it from within while appearing to the gullible as a nice company?
Well, Soulskill sure is gullible enough. a great browser again. Indeed.
It ain't Paranoia if you think MS is out to screw everyone else. In fact, that is hopelessly naive. MS happily screws itself too.
Gamestop is the equivalent to the Used Car Dealer. How many Used Car Dealers put the New and the Used cars right next to each other with the used cars in the exact same minty perfect new condition with zero difference except a tiny reduction in price?
The cloud is a tool. Same as a hammer or indeed a hard drive. Hammers if used wrong can cause serious injury (why didn't they warn me it was not a sex toy and if you wanted to use it as a sex toy, you should only use the bottom?) HD's can die and the cloud can fail.
If you want your data to be available outside the home, you can buy storage to take with you. There are wifi/3G routers with internal storage if internal storage is not enough and other solutions. But carrying everything with you, is cumbersome and you could loose it all very easily by just forgetting it.
You can do without, it is a viable solution, for the ludite.
Or you can host it from your home, if your home connection is fast enough on the upload, most aren't no matter what your ISP promises.
Or you put it on someone elses computer. For some reason, people think a shared or dedicated server is more reliable and safe then a cloud server. Poppy cock to that. ISP's go bust, datacenters burn down or are raided by cops controlled by corrupt officials elected by stupid voters.
Data. ANY data, whether it is a photograph, a CD or a bit in the cloud, can get lost, stolen or confiscated. That is why smart people use backups and the rest of us just ignore the potential for disaster and hope to get lucky and buy lottery tickets.
REALLY smart people also consider which data they want to get what exposure. DO NOT USE YOUR WORK ACCOUNT TO VISIT PORN SITES. Simple really but if you leave your phone on your desk, don't set the background to you raping your kid. Simple really.
People worry about uploading their ripped music to the cloud and then having it found out by the copyright industry. Gosh, you upload your non-payed for content to the services of a content seller and think that might cause a conflict? How unexpected, why not steal a car from a garage then bring it in for a service? (And people have really been caught with this).
I use Amazon AWS for some websites, it is very cheap (free) but I do not use it for all. For that matter, I won't even tell on a semi-anonymous account like this, all the websites I own or have worked or even visit. No reason to broadcast everything to the world.
Use the cloud as a tool but use it wisely. I am baffled by pedo's caught at airports with tons of illegal material. I mean, what are they thinking? You know you are going to be searched and you take stuff that absolutely nobody who anybody cares about has trouble killing you for, past guards who LOVE to make a real case against a real criminal? What would you rather do? Lecture someone on water bottles or send a child rapist to jail?
Don't upload things to the net you can't afford to loose control over and keep backups of things you can't afford to loose. Simple really.
Oh and Wozniak, if the PC had followed the direction of Apple, they would have been un-affordable. Apple neither invented the computer or popularized it, it just made a nice case for it. It would be like saying Daimler or Peugot is responsible for your car. (One of the first true car companies and the oldest company that makes cars) and ignoring Ford because all they did was take the car to the masses.
What about the poor Martian this US colonizing robot landed on eh? And the sky crane carelessly thrown away? Flattened a Martian orphanage but I bet the US press won't be reporting on THAT!
Why doesn't NASA release a statement they are going to stop killing Martians in their stellar conquest?
Really? On a touch screen keyboard. Edit code? No right click? Murderous copy past? For gods sakes if you force me to work on windows with no 3rd mouse button I already loose productivity and you want me to work with one click? You an apple fan?
I hate to imagine what kind of code you write.
What about 3D modelling or even photoshopping? On a tablet with a touch screen finger input? Man, and I thought I hated designers but even I would not torture them like this.
I suppose I am just to old to get caught in the next wave of excitement that is going to change everything and then it doesn't.
Come back in ten years, if everything is still the same... well... then you are an old fart too getting fed up with young kids crazy dreams. Just like me and those who came before. Everything the same as always.
If you sell 2 tablets in 2009 and sell 4 tablets in 2010, that is what percentage of growth?
Meanwhile, if you sell 100 million desktops in 2009 and 110 million desktops in 2010, what percentage of growth is that?
It is the same with the so called BRIC economies. Massive growth? Yup, percentage wise. Easy when you come from nothing. I could double my speed on the mile if I actually did some excersise for once. Meanwhile olympic athletes are happy with a tenth of a second! They must SUCK!
Calculating what is really being used out there, that is hard. For instance, mobile gaming devices. We know they are being sold but I don't see them in public. Turns out that many use them at HOME and NOT on the go. Many a laptop never leaves its desk. Meanwhile how many tablets are gathering dust like the Wii which outsold in hardware but severely undersells in software? Nintendo ain't reporting losses for nothing.
People who claim because item X sold a lot is going to kill off item Y are the kind who just love headlines and stop to think. Like you.
Attach a keyboard and a tablet becomes a laptop? Really? So all of a sudden it gets a HD? USB Hub? Ethernet port? Multi-channel sound output? Expansion bays? Right click? Multi screen support?
I didn't understand how people could be reviewing Windows 8 in a positive way. And then I saw a video review on a "reputable" site and they reviewed it on a "desktop" with a resolution that would make a netbook weep. Yah... no wonder then that the slashdot sentiment differs a bit, how many here run at netbook resolutions?
Tablets can only replace a PC for those people who barely use a PC, in the same way a bicycle or public transport can only replace a car for those who barely use the functionality of a car. I should know, I don't have a car and don't miss it and when people ask, but how do you move house with your own car then, I say "I don't!". Really who the fuck wants the hassle, I pay a company who sends a big truck and strong men and they do it faster, safer and me not getting tired which is the most important bit.
If you use a PC without needing to easily cut and paste, have a right click menu for ease of access or for that matter, pin-point control... well... then a tablet can replace your PC. I have tried to make slashdot posts on a tablet and it is a pain in the ass for editing.
And ergonomic. I know the kind of people that can replace a desktop with a laptop. They are the ones who will develop back problems. You are NOT SUPPOSED to work in the position that a laptop forces you to work in. Head UPRIGHT, screen at eye height!
Sure, you can buy a dock and external monitors and you just made your laptop into an easily overheating overly expensive non-upgradable desktop. Wheee!
But hey, if you think tablets can replace PC's, fine. I give you my tablet for free. But if you EVER even touch a PC or laptop for the rest of your live, you put a tattoo on your forehead "I am to dumb to exist, please kill me". Deal?
Didn't think so.
People have been crying the death of the desktop for years if not decades. By the way, what happened to smartphones replacing the desktop? That seems to have dropped away, suddenly it is the tablet that is the new king... odd that... did you ever post that the smartphone would replace the PC?
Zero growth is normal in mature markets, it is inevitable that someday everyone will have the product and you can only sell replacements and PC's last a long a time now. High growth is normal in immature markets. Only a fool would make absolute predictions by comparing these two figures.
Half-Life showed the way, it was the first big game I recall where being told to go to the Boiler room, meant you looked at the wall and followed the arrows marked Boiler room. No more red card for red door or wondering why this room identical to all the others had special significance.
A mod for Morrowind replaced the default non-sense roadsigns that only had tooltip on mouse over, to readable signs. Made the world a LOT more immersive. So the answer is simple:
MORE DETAIL == MORE IMMERSION
Well, unless you are very dimwitted/American and need a HUGE sign to be told a box with a redcross sign on it that looks just like a real word first aid box could be used as a first aid box and restore your health. I suppose some people prefer it to be a blue bottle because everyone knows blue bottles restore magic.... oops wait. Red potions then? Obviously the color for danger heals.
When they stopped using these non-obvious icons and medpacks looked like first aid boxes instead that people could stop reading the manual.
For first person shooters, being able to shoot through wooden doors, have realistic collision detection so that an obvious line of fire in the 3D world also is a line of fire in the collesion detection world, just makes these games easier and more fun to play as you are playing the game not an arbitrary set of rules that are never explained.
Some people claim that Tomb Raider was merely popular for its lead characters assets. They forget that it was the first "platform" game, especially on the PC where pixel perfect precession was not needed. Close enough was good enough meaning you could focus on playing the game and not on finding the exact pixel to jump from.
Not that everything has to be realistic. For instance the new MMO The Secret World does away with fall damage, you can jump from any height with no effect. Makes going around the world a lot more fun. In Lord of the Rings Online, a simple glitch going down a slope might cause fall damage to occur, slowing you to a crawl for far to long to be fun.
I am personally convinced that a lot of the failure of SWTOR was due to the ingame graphics not being detailed or realistic enough. A cartoon style can work, I am an anime fan but NOT if the source material is live action movies. And all the trailers give big budget cgi movies a run for their money.
Make it look "real". Not necessarily realistic but if people go "oh right, so that is what that is supposed to be, who would have thought", you failed.
Typical Apple fanboy, the one who kept evidence hidden for months was Apple in this case, making it impossible for Samsung to get this evidence any earlier. As can be read clearly in Samsungs appeal. Mind you, facts never get in the way of an Apple fanboy.
Oh wait, that was for WP7 and WP7.5 and for every version before that with tons of different names and everyone of them was hailed as next coming of the Ballmer and all failed miserably. Usually the next coming doesn't even have the decency to wait until the previous prophet has bitten the dust. 7 wasn't even out when talk of 8 start and 7.5 wasn't even given a chance and current phones with it are pretty much sold with "yeah, it will be obsolete in a matter of months and you won't be able to upgrade". And yet MS is surprised it don't sell.
Will 8 do it? The signs are hopeful. Nobody has talked about 9 yet at least.
If you do not consider the countless blunders with early versions, then WP7 and 7.5 both made the mistake of making the OS and phones horribly crippled when they were announced and just plain obsolete when they became availabe. It seems MS plans their OS roughly like this:
Planning meeting:
Bill: What did our competitors release last yet?
Steve: Well, they released X and Y.
Bill: Good, we won't have that then, what didn't they do?
Steve: Well, they didn't do W and Z.
Bill: Alright, well, lets make sure we don't that either. Time to start developing
Release:
Bill: So, did we achieve our goal of NOT having the features our competitors did not have 2 years ago but they do have now?
Steve: Yes sir! We are most certainly about to release a product that was obsolete a year ago!
Bill: And have we managed to add any insane restrictions our competitors can use to laugh at us?
Steve: Absolutely, we support just one resolution, one cpu, the smallest amount of memory to be found, no memory cards, and multi-tasking? PAHAHAHA!
Bill: Excellent!
WP8 will no doubt have similar crap. And MS fanboys will seriously post long lists explaining that all the bad bits are bad and that is takes a lot of getting used to and that it is expensive... and that is the FANBOY's defence. Seriously, read some of the posts on WP7, the fanboys can't come up with anything better then "awh, come on, please?" as a selling point.
I have no idea of what WP8 will do but if past results are any indication. DISASTER!
The class story line is pretty much the only reason to play. It is a classic black and white Bioware storyline complete with all the standard plot elements and binary characters that have become the staple of recent Bioware RPG's.
Limitted access to flashpoints? Only the first one is anything like what was shown in the teasers, a story rich, choice rich, not endlessly long instance. The rest? One moral non-voiced choice in the middle, that is it for story telling.
Travel was never that hot to begin with, for F2P, you can make do without it.
Fewer space missions? Oh NO! Those were like the best part of the game!!! Not! The only value they had was that for people with an insane boredom treshold, they were a way to level up with ease. Just very very boring. Mind you, there are bots for them. Anyway, since the class story is the best thing about the game and you would miss that if you just auto-levelled to 50 and there is no end-game... I can't quite see the point.
Bioware screwed up. They already become something of a joke once they started releasing more RPG's because they all had the same story and the same support characters but that was okay in a 60 then 40 then 20 hour game. Then you can ignore that one support character gets upset if you don't kiss a kitten while saving the world, the other gets upset you don't kill said kitten while saving the world and the third says he has meaningful advice on saving the world but never actually gives it.
This can carry a single player story but a MMO that is supposed to have infinity playing hours? Not so much. Bioware and indeed many single player RPG's already suffer from dungeon creep. The Bard's tale was extreem in this. In the beginning you get 70% story and 30% dungeon, near the end you get 1% story and 999999% dungeon. 3 fucking levels of endless monster slaying without a single story advancement for the Bard's tale.
For SWTOR, actually getting from class story point to class story point is a very long slog. At one point I was already level 50 I was just passing all the side quests and getting really fed up with yet another dungeon crawl having to defeat mindless mobs randomly played along copy and paste hallways I had already defeated a thousand times before.
SWTOR for story is as if someone took Kotor and increased the non-skippable fights by a factor of 10 and at the same time increasing the "didn't I meet this side character before" by three.
Bioware has never made games with really good combat systems. This has been true since the Baldur Gates series where a wizzard has to take a nap after every fight to be of any use. Might be true to the table top game but in a computer game with endless dungeon's it just gets boring.
MMO's typically have trash mobs who come in groups, regular mobs who can be pulled alone or come in 2-3 groups, harder mobs that usually are alone or two and elites who represent mid bosses.
SWTOR contained far to many hard mobs. Hard isn't hard as in good AI but as in use every skill on your skill bar three times before they finally run out of hit points. THAT IS NOT FUN!
It is Quake all over again with its shamblers requiring 3 rockets to the face. Except it ain't 3, it is 30 with a lenghty reload cycle every 5th rocket. It isn't fun, exciting or a challenge, it is WORK!
The reason realistic military shooters are now completely dominating FPS is that other people apparently too got tired of emptying clip after clip into enemies. One shot, one kill is just more rewarding.
For MMO's the same goes, ONE high health mid boss is a nice challenge. An entire hallway filled with them, is not.
For me, I stopped with SWTOR when I saw yet another hallway with a ten or so single hard mobs and just didn't want to fucking do them just to get another cookie cutter story bit.
In the days of quake, the only way to make a hard monster was to make it have lots of hit points, same with Everquest. But single player games have advanced, MMO's often haven't. Even new games like TSW a
You must be really stupid, your parents weren't just related, they must have been the same person.
A thought stays in your head, well except in your case. If you want to call it a crime, call it a Twitter crime or even a speak crime. But thought crime is about THOUGHT. This would have been obvious anyone who isn't a walking poster for abortion at any age but alas, killing those with low IQ is not yet standard practice.
You are still free to THINK in the UK what you want. It is when you start broadcasting it to the entire world, that the law steps in. You might not like but call it what it is. A limit on free speech, not on thought.
Only in some countries can you be fired for accidentally opening a nsfw link, since the people in those countries have themselves voted for decades for these kind of rules and refused to have proper legal unions to protect them from their employers, THOUGH COOKIES!
If a Slashdot editor starts removing posts other then by the moderation system, where will it end? My signature deals with sex. Is that bad too? I am willing to bet it is somewhere on this planet. Freedom is absolute, you either have it or you don't. And the moment you start making compromises, you loose it. The GNAA was horrible and racist as hell but to have them removed would be very bad for having an open discussion. Same with extremist posts from all sides.
As posted below, "Each user, by using Geeknet Sites, may be exposed to Content that is offensive, indecent or objectionable. Each user must evaluate, and bear all risks associated with the use of any Content, including any reliance on the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of such Content."
Slashdot is not hosting porn, you clicked a random link in a first post. How new to the internets are you anyway?
Do you also open email from Nigerian royalty?
This is Darwin in action, if nature hasn't given you the tools not to open doubtful links, then you got to adjust your environment to make this deficiency non-decremental (naked humans make houses to not freeze to death at night). Evolution, either adapt yourself or adapt your environment, the rest dies, or gets fired.
And if you think I am nasty? The parent poster wants a Politically Correct Slashdot. There, that should have him torn to shreds.
Outlaw young people, round them all up and put them in work camps. That will teach them and get them of my lawn too!
On a more serious note, Brein (dutch RIAA) knows its block on the piratebay is meaningless. It is just the first small baby step to get politicians to swallow the poisoned pill. They know what they want to achieve in the end, a completely locked down society where every bit of content is payed for repeatedly and all creation belongs to the 1% no matter who created it or when it was created or how free that person made it.
But you can't ask for total control at once because most politicians are not completely amoral yet. But every small step, readies the ground for the next step.
More "primitive" music might indeed be the same, after all, if we are talking about the same thing, it is meant to sweep people up into a trance. Whether you do it for fun or to experience "god", the tech is the same.
But there has always been commercial music, music designed to easily fit into a slot. Just that it has become easier and easier to make music so we experience far more. I got music on almost every waking moment thanks to mp3 players. Something you just couldn't do before (I am old enough to have had the original walkman) because the headphones hurt or batteries ran out or you got sick to death of the tape you had with you.
And another part is, music you don't like, sounds alike. Because you don't like it, you don't bother regonizing it. People who hate classical music say that it all sounds the same. Same with Jazz etc etc.
After all, the classic guitar is MEANT to only play a few chords, it is a ritme instrument, not a "musical" instrument, you are supposed to listen to the song, not the guitar (in country western at least).
But go look beyond the pop charts and you can still find all types of music being created. So if there are more types of musics being made, how can variation go down? People still make "classical", Jazz, country western and god knows what else. It is not always easy to find but it is there.
The guys on Slashdot say they're not gay - even though they are effeminate, histrionic, dandy, mincing, androgynous, gynomastic, vain, sissy, dainty, and fussy manchild weenies.
-- Ethanol-fueled
P.S. The above comment does not apply to me. I am assuredly the most masculine, stoic, somber, manly man to frequent this site.
German was a subject in my school, I even passed it. When do I use it? Very rarely... except... the skill (rusted) is always there. I CAN work in Germany or with Germans. It broadens my potential to find work. Same with English, I am Dutch, why should I be able to speak English? Because English people can't be bothered to learn a second language, and English is a language understood my most people as a second language, it again broadens my potential to find work. Even in companies were the owner speaks English.
Math isn't there to do, it is there to know how to do it so that when you come across a problem you at least got a clue.
People can live very happy lives being unable to read or do basic math. But they are also incapable of advancing and become very vulnerable to being exploited.
It is like knowing how to perform CPR. When do you need it in your daily live? But in that 5 minute gap you MIGHT need it, it is the difference between life and death. I learned how to swim with my clothes, Holland is a country with a lot of water, so all kids used to learn it so they didn't drown if they fell in. I have NEVER fallen into the water in my entire life! Useless lesson then? I think not. About two years ago I saw a little kid on a bike get near a small canal with a not so steep incline loose control and just slide into the water. No real problem, lowered myself in, and pulled the kid out. It was very muddy and more half walk, half crawl swim BUT would I have done it if I never learned how to swim?
Maybe someone else would have pulled the kid out. Maybe the kid would have been fine on his own. Maybe.
Math is around us all the time and we use it all time. When calculating how much our shopping is going to be, how much cheaper item X is at store Y. It is simple stuff you do without thinking but you can only do because you were taught how to do it once, long ago.
School isn't about creating employees perfectly suited to just one task, it is to create well rounded individuals who can adapt to changing environments and demands. This includes being able to do basic math.
You don't even need to remember HOW to calculate the height of a tree. If you just remember that it can be done, you can always look it up.
But if you were never shown how to do it, it would remain a mystery to you if you ever needed to work on your house.
There used to be a "rule" that music had a beginning, a middle and an end. Lots of music still does but "techno" (excuse my ignorance on a type of music I don't like listening to) has some songs (not all) that are just a synthesizer left on auto-run and song "length" is just how long it took the sound engineer to take a crap after he hit record and hitting stop.
It is probably valid music but it doesn't carry much variation.
Some music is meant to be enjoyed with beer and some is meant to be enjoyed with xtc. Want variance? Go for music that doesn't require you to cripple your brain first.
Because the article makes one fatal flaw. The old music, it is still here. Never went away in fact. With each new song, the variation goes UP not down. It might not be a variant you like but you can still listen to the old stuff. And lets be honest, back in the golden days, the pop charts were just a filled with the same copies as now. The difference is that we only remember the really good ones.
Listen to a top 2000 from the bottom. It takes a LONG time before the music starts getting good.
Get rid of the party system. Get rid of popularity contests and get rid of single sentence referendums.
The entire problem is that the running of a country, a society, a culture is FAR to complex to leave to religious lunatics and sound bite issue describers.
Religious lunatics? You don't have to believe in a talking bush to believe. Socialist, Capitalist, Communists and Libertarians and god knows what other feeble dregs exist, they ALL believe in the doctrine of their chosen fate.
An excellent example of this was in The Netherlands when right during a parliamentary investigation into the effects of privatization during the last two decades and wide spread condemnation of the miserable results of privatization in healthcare and public transport, the VVD and CDA were caught advocating taking it even FURTHER while a few doors away the disastrous effects were being discussed.
These two parties BELIEVE in the free market and facts be damned.
Not that it is just a failing of the right. The bleeding hearts keep ignoring clear evidence of troubles with immigration. Belgian TV has aired a docu showing a hidden camera following a woman through several areas, recording the harassment by immigrants. The left media is AMAZINGLY silent on this, not even mentioning it. News that youth unemployment among immigrants is sky high could not be ignored but the list of causes was mysteriously short in the left wing media.
They BELIEVE that nothing can be going wrong with the idea of a multi-cultural society and will do EVERYTHING to ignore it. And the right? The VVD (right wing) had a minister say Holland needed MORE Moroccan immigrants to start new businesses to boost the economy... guess who let immigration get out of control in the first place? The right, to import cheap labor to break the unions and lower salaries.
When the boss of the dutch state bank was questioned about the bank crisis, he kept referring to the people who didn't see it coming (himself included) as the experts and those who did see it coming as doomsayers. He couldn't grasp that HE was no expert, that he and everyone close to him that he hired was wrong and incompetent and the people he was still dismissing as quacks, were the ones who really understand economics.
------
It is NOT right vs left
BOTH sides, ALL sides, are WRONG.
Really running a country (and the US that claims to be capitalist but has tons of socialist programs is a prime example) is the job of balancing a pendulum upside down. You can't do it if you are convinced that the counter movement that needs to be done is "wrong". You just need to do it. That means sometimes you need to do a "leftie" policy and sometimes "right" and sometimes a weird mix or something else altogether.
And neither can you do it with simple referendums. LA has these. Do you think cannabis should be legal for the ill? DOES NOT WORK.
Because it doesn't then give a full policy such as "what defines ill". "who is going to grow it". "when does someone become better again". "when does medinal use become recreational use" "who pays for it" "who pays for it when people abuse it".
Nor does it answer questions about heroine which started out as a drug and can still be used for medical purposes if it did not carry the drugs stigma. It is a very effective pain killer and for terminal patients, the addiction is not an issue.
A real policy on drugs needs to be extremely broad and you cannot run it on ideals of people who smoke and drink who think abusing substances is against the word of god.
You would need a body of wise men who have NO opinion of their own, who can look at what society needs and wants (and wants and needs can easily contradict each other) and then create a policy that is mostly in line with this.
It would require looking at public transport not as a restriction of the freedom of car travel or the environment or road congestion but ALL of them at once without to much bias but with a very heavy dose of reality. the s
Slashdot Mirror
The content industry doesn't have the business model of making a sustained profit, they have the business model of making MORE AND MORE AND MORE MONEY! If the content industry was run by the supermarkets, your example would work. But it is not. It is run by people who make wallstreet bankers look wholesome and they want ever more cash from you.
There was a dutch version of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. As a naive kid I inquired how it could be obtained. The NOS would very happy to supply the copyrighted material. All I would have to do was pay a sound engineer to make the copies. The price was... well... rather high doesn't do it justice.
But it is available... for a price...
You can probably get any movie you want to. For a couple of million.
If I race an olympic athlete, my result will suck.
If I race a dead person, my result will STILL suck even if I win.
You can be better then your competition AND still be crap. In the land of the blind, one-eye is king, but not automatically a great king.
DNT only works if websites honor it. Some have already said that if browsers turned it on by default, they would not honor it. So... could MS, a company with a long history of embrace and strange while raping it up the ass, be enabling it by default to give websites an excuse to ignore it and thereby kill it from within while appearing to the gullible as a nice company?
Well, Soulskill sure is gullible enough. a great browser again. Indeed.
It ain't Paranoia if you think MS is out to screw everyone else. In fact, that is hopelessly naive. MS happily screws itself too.
Gamestop is the equivalent to the Used Car Dealer. How many Used Car Dealers put the New and the Used cars right next to each other with the used cars in the exact same minty perfect new condition with zero difference except a tiny reduction in price?
The cloud is a tool. Same as a hammer or indeed a hard drive. Hammers if used wrong can cause serious injury (why didn't they warn me it was not a sex toy and if you wanted to use it as a sex toy, you should only use the bottom?) HD's can die and the cloud can fail.
If you want your data to be available outside the home, you can buy storage to take with you. There are wifi/3G routers with internal storage if internal storage is not enough and other solutions. But carrying everything with you, is cumbersome and you could loose it all very easily by just forgetting it.
You can do without, it is a viable solution, for the ludite.
Or you can host it from your home, if your home connection is fast enough on the upload, most aren't no matter what your ISP promises.
Or you put it on someone elses computer. For some reason, people think a shared or dedicated server is more reliable and safe then a cloud server. Poppy cock to that. ISP's go bust, datacenters burn down or are raided by cops controlled by corrupt officials elected by stupid voters.
Data. ANY data, whether it is a photograph, a CD or a bit in the cloud, can get lost, stolen or confiscated. That is why smart people use backups and the rest of us just ignore the potential for disaster and hope to get lucky and buy lottery tickets.
REALLY smart people also consider which data they want to get what exposure. DO NOT USE YOUR WORK ACCOUNT TO VISIT PORN SITES. Simple really but if you leave your phone on your desk, don't set the background to you raping your kid. Simple really.
People worry about uploading their ripped music to the cloud and then having it found out by the copyright industry. Gosh, you upload your non-payed for content to the services of a content seller and think that might cause a conflict? How unexpected, why not steal a car from a garage then bring it in for a service? (And people have really been caught with this).
I use Amazon AWS for some websites, it is very cheap (free) but I do not use it for all. For that matter, I won't even tell on a semi-anonymous account like this, all the websites I own or have worked or even visit. No reason to broadcast everything to the world.
Use the cloud as a tool but use it wisely. I am baffled by pedo's caught at airports with tons of illegal material. I mean, what are they thinking? You know you are going to be searched and you take stuff that absolutely nobody who anybody cares about has trouble killing you for, past guards who LOVE to make a real case against a real criminal? What would you rather do? Lecture someone on water bottles or send a child rapist to jail?
Don't upload things to the net you can't afford to loose control over and keep backups of things you can't afford to loose. Simple really.
Oh and Wozniak, if the PC had followed the direction of Apple, they would have been un-affordable. Apple neither invented the computer or popularized it, it just made a nice case for it. It would be like saying Daimler or Peugot is responsible for your car. (One of the first true car companies and the oldest company that makes cars) and ignoring Ford because all they did was take the car to the masses.
What about the poor Martian this US colonizing robot landed on eh? And the sky crane carelessly thrown away? Flattened a Martian orphanage but I bet the US press won't be reporting on THAT!
Why doesn't NASA release a statement they are going to stop killing Martians in their stellar conquest?
Next question?
Edit code... on a tablet?
Really? On a touch screen keyboard. Edit code? No right click? Murderous copy past? For gods sakes if you force me to work on windows with no 3rd mouse button I already loose productivity and you want me to work with one click? You an apple fan?
I hate to imagine what kind of code you write.
What about 3D modelling or even photoshopping? On a tablet with a touch screen finger input? Man, and I thought I hated designers but even I would not torture them like this.
I suppose I am just to old to get caught in the next wave of excitement that is going to change everything and then it doesn't.
Come back in ten years, if everything is still the same... well... then you are an old fart too getting fed up with young kids crazy dreams. Just like me and those who came before. Everything the same as always.
You must be working on wall street.
If you sell 2 tablets in 2009 and sell 4 tablets in 2010, that is what percentage of growth?
Meanwhile, if you sell 100 million desktops in 2009 and 110 million desktops in 2010, what percentage of growth is that?
It is the same with the so called BRIC economies. Massive growth? Yup, percentage wise. Easy when you come from nothing. I could double my speed on the mile if I actually did some excersise for once. Meanwhile olympic athletes are happy with a tenth of a second! They must SUCK!
Calculating what is really being used out there, that is hard. For instance, mobile gaming devices. We know they are being sold but I don't see them in public. Turns out that many use them at HOME and NOT on the go. Many a laptop never leaves its desk. Meanwhile how many tablets are gathering dust like the Wii which outsold in hardware but severely undersells in software? Nintendo ain't reporting losses for nothing.
People who claim because item X sold a lot is going to kill off item Y are the kind who just love headlines and stop to think. Like you.
Attach a keyboard and a tablet becomes a laptop? Really? So all of a sudden it gets a HD? USB Hub? Ethernet port? Multi-channel sound output? Expansion bays? Right click? Multi screen support?
I didn't understand how people could be reviewing Windows 8 in a positive way. And then I saw a video review on a "reputable" site and they reviewed it on a "desktop" with a resolution that would make a netbook weep. Yah... no wonder then that the slashdot sentiment differs a bit, how many here run at netbook resolutions?
Tablets can only replace a PC for those people who barely use a PC, in the same way a bicycle or public transport can only replace a car for those who barely use the functionality of a car. I should know, I don't have a car and don't miss it and when people ask, but how do you move house with your own car then, I say "I don't!". Really who the fuck wants the hassle, I pay a company who sends a big truck and strong men and they do it faster, safer and me not getting tired which is the most important bit.
If you use a PC without needing to easily cut and paste, have a right click menu for ease of access or for that matter, pin-point control... well... then a tablet can replace your PC. I have tried to make slashdot posts on a tablet and it is a pain in the ass for editing.
And ergonomic. I know the kind of people that can replace a desktop with a laptop. They are the ones who will develop back problems. You are NOT SUPPOSED to work in the position that a laptop forces you to work in. Head UPRIGHT, screen at eye height!
Sure, you can buy a dock and external monitors and you just made your laptop into an easily overheating overly expensive non-upgradable desktop. Wheee!
But hey, if you think tablets can replace PC's, fine. I give you my tablet for free. But if you EVER even touch a PC or laptop for the rest of your live, you put a tattoo on your forehead "I am to dumb to exist, please kill me". Deal?
Didn't think so.
People have been crying the death of the desktop for years if not decades. By the way, what happened to smartphones replacing the desktop? That seems to have dropped away, suddenly it is the tablet that is the new king... odd that... did you ever post that the smartphone would replace the PC?
Zero growth is normal in mature markets, it is inevitable that someday everyone will have the product and you can only sell replacements and PC's last a long a time now. High growth is normal in immature markets. Only a fool would make absolute predictions by comparing these two figures.
Half-Life showed the way, it was the first big game I recall where being told to go to the Boiler room, meant you looked at the wall and followed the arrows marked Boiler room. No more red card for red door or wondering why this room identical to all the others had special significance.
A mod for Morrowind replaced the default non-sense roadsigns that only had tooltip on mouse over, to readable signs. Made the world a LOT more immersive. So the answer is simple:
MORE DETAIL == MORE IMMERSION
Well, unless you are very dimwitted/American and need a HUGE sign to be told a box with a redcross sign on it that looks just like a real word first aid box could be used as a first aid box and restore your health. I suppose some people prefer it to be a blue bottle because everyone knows blue bottles restore magic.... oops wait. Red potions then? Obviously the color for danger heals.
When they stopped using these non-obvious icons and medpacks looked like first aid boxes instead that people could stop reading the manual.
For first person shooters, being able to shoot through wooden doors, have realistic collision detection so that an obvious line of fire in the 3D world also is a line of fire in the collesion detection world, just makes these games easier and more fun to play as you are playing the game not an arbitrary set of rules that are never explained.
Some people claim that Tomb Raider was merely popular for its lead characters assets. They forget that it was the first "platform" game, especially on the PC where pixel perfect precession was not needed. Close enough was good enough meaning you could focus on playing the game and not on finding the exact pixel to jump from.
Not that everything has to be realistic. For instance the new MMO The Secret World does away with fall damage, you can jump from any height with no effect. Makes going around the world a lot more fun. In Lord of the Rings Online, a simple glitch going down a slope might cause fall damage to occur, slowing you to a crawl for far to long to be fun.
I am personally convinced that a lot of the failure of SWTOR was due to the ingame graphics not being detailed or realistic enough. A cartoon style can work, I am an anime fan but NOT if the source material is live action movies. And all the trailers give big budget cgi movies a run for their money.
Make it look "real". Not necessarily realistic but if people go "oh right, so that is what that is supposed to be, who would have thought", you failed.
In the US, it is up to the jury to decide who is right. Not the judge.
Typical Apple fanboy, the one who kept evidence hidden for months was Apple in this case, making it impossible for Samsung to get this evidence any earlier. As can be read clearly in Samsungs appeal. Mind you, facts never get in the way of an Apple fanboy.
Oh wait, that was for WP7 and WP7.5 and for every version before that with tons of different names and everyone of them was hailed as next coming of the Ballmer and all failed miserably. Usually the next coming doesn't even have the decency to wait until the previous prophet has bitten the dust. 7 wasn't even out when talk of 8 start and 7.5 wasn't even given a chance and current phones with it are pretty much sold with "yeah, it will be obsolete in a matter of months and you won't be able to upgrade". And yet MS is surprised it don't sell.
Will 8 do it? The signs are hopeful. Nobody has talked about 9 yet at least.
If you do not consider the countless blunders with early versions, then WP7 and 7.5 both made the mistake of making the OS and phones horribly crippled when they were announced and just plain obsolete when they became availabe. It seems MS plans their OS roughly like this:
Planning meeting:
Bill: What did our competitors release last yet?
Steve: Well, they released X and Y.
Bill: Good, we won't have that then, what didn't they do?
Steve: Well, they didn't do W and Z.
Bill: Alright, well, lets make sure we don't that either. Time to start developing
Release:
Bill: So, did we achieve our goal of NOT having the features our competitors did not have 2 years ago but they do have now?
Steve: Yes sir! We are most certainly about to release a product that was obsolete a year ago!
Bill: And have we managed to add any insane restrictions our competitors can use to laugh at us?
Steve: Absolutely, we support just one resolution, one cpu, the smallest amount of memory to be found, no memory cards, and multi-tasking? PAHAHAHA!
Bill: Excellent!
WP8 will no doubt have similar crap. And MS fanboys will seriously post long lists explaining that all the bad bits are bad and that is takes a lot of getting used to and that it is expensive... and that is the FANBOY's defence. Seriously, read some of the posts on WP7, the fanboys can't come up with anything better then "awh, come on, please?" as a selling point.
I have no idea of what WP8 will do but if past results are any indication. DISASTER!
The class story line is pretty much the only reason to play. It is a classic black and white Bioware storyline complete with all the standard plot elements and binary characters that have become the staple of recent Bioware RPG's.
Limitted access to flashpoints? Only the first one is anything like what was shown in the teasers, a story rich, choice rich, not endlessly long instance. The rest? One moral non-voiced choice in the middle, that is it for story telling.
Travel was never that hot to begin with, for F2P, you can make do without it.
Fewer space missions? Oh NO! Those were like the best part of the game!!! Not! The only value they had was that for people with an insane boredom treshold, they were a way to level up with ease. Just very very boring. Mind you, there are bots for them. Anyway, since the class story is the best thing about the game and you would miss that if you just auto-levelled to 50 and there is no end-game... I can't quite see the point.
Bioware screwed up. They already become something of a joke once they started releasing more RPG's because they all had the same story and the same support characters but that was okay in a 60 then 40 then 20 hour game. Then you can ignore that one support character gets upset if you don't kiss a kitten while saving the world, the other gets upset you don't kill said kitten while saving the world and the third says he has meaningful advice on saving the world but never actually gives it.
This can carry a single player story but a MMO that is supposed to have infinity playing hours? Not so much. Bioware and indeed many single player RPG's already suffer from dungeon creep. The Bard's tale was extreem in this. In the beginning you get 70% story and 30% dungeon, near the end you get 1% story and 999999% dungeon. 3 fucking levels of endless monster slaying without a single story advancement for the Bard's tale.
For SWTOR, actually getting from class story point to class story point is a very long slog. At one point I was already level 50 I was just passing all the side quests and getting really fed up with yet another dungeon crawl having to defeat mindless mobs randomly played along copy and paste hallways I had already defeated a thousand times before.
SWTOR for story is as if someone took Kotor and increased the non-skippable fights by a factor of 10 and at the same time increasing the "didn't I meet this side character before" by three.
Bioware has never made games with really good combat systems. This has been true since the Baldur Gates series where a wizzard has to take a nap after every fight to be of any use. Might be true to the table top game but in a computer game with endless dungeon's it just gets boring.
MMO's typically have trash mobs who come in groups, regular mobs who can be pulled alone or come in 2-3 groups, harder mobs that usually are alone or two and elites who represent mid bosses.
SWTOR contained far to many hard mobs. Hard isn't hard as in good AI but as in use every skill on your skill bar three times before they finally run out of hit points. THAT IS NOT FUN!
It is Quake all over again with its shamblers requiring 3 rockets to the face. Except it ain't 3, it is 30 with a lenghty reload cycle every 5th rocket. It isn't fun, exciting or a challenge, it is WORK!
The reason realistic military shooters are now completely dominating FPS is that other people apparently too got tired of emptying clip after clip into enemies. One shot, one kill is just more rewarding.
For MMO's the same goes, ONE high health mid boss is a nice challenge. An entire hallway filled with them, is not.
For me, I stopped with SWTOR when I saw yet another hallway with a ten or so single hard mobs and just didn't want to fucking do them just to get another cookie cutter story bit.
In the days of quake, the only way to make a hard monster was to make it have lots of hit points, same with Everquest. But single player games have advanced, MMO's often haven't. Even new games like TSW a
You must be really stupid, your parents weren't just related, they must have been the same person.
A thought stays in your head, well except in your case. If you want to call it a crime, call it a Twitter crime or even a speak crime. But thought crime is about THOUGHT. This would have been obvious anyone who isn't a walking poster for abortion at any age but alas, killing those with low IQ is not yet standard practice.
You are still free to THINK in the UK what you want. It is when you start broadcasting it to the entire world, that the law steps in. You might not like but call it what it is. A limit on free speech, not on thought.
No, just that 80% of Facebook users fail the Turing test.
The remaining 20% ate the test.
Only in some countries can you be fired for accidentally opening a nsfw link, since the people in those countries have themselves voted for decades for these kind of rules and refused to have proper legal unions to protect them from their employers, THOUGH COOKIES!
If a Slashdot editor starts removing posts other then by the moderation system, where will it end? My signature deals with sex. Is that bad too? I am willing to bet it is somewhere on this planet. Freedom is absolute, you either have it or you don't. And the moment you start making compromises, you loose it. The GNAA was horrible and racist as hell but to have them removed would be very bad for having an open discussion. Same with extremist posts from all sides.
As posted below, "Each user, by using Geeknet Sites, may be exposed to Content that is offensive, indecent or objectionable. Each user must evaluate, and bear all risks associated with the use of any Content, including any reliance on the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of such Content."
Slashdot is not hosting porn, you clicked a random link in a first post. How new to the internets are you anyway?
Do you also open email from Nigerian royalty?
This is Darwin in action, if nature hasn't given you the tools not to open doubtful links, then you got to adjust your environment to make this deficiency non-decremental (naked humans make houses to not freeze to death at night). Evolution, either adapt yourself or adapt your environment, the rest dies, or gets fired.
And if you think I am nasty? The parent poster wants a Politically Correct Slashdot. There, that should have him torn to shreds.
How dare you post my work email address?
Signed,
F. Last
Outlaw young people, round them all up and put them in work camps. That will teach them and get them of my lawn too!
On a more serious note, Brein (dutch RIAA) knows its block on the piratebay is meaningless. It is just the first small baby step to get politicians to swallow the poisoned pill. They know what they want to achieve in the end, a completely locked down society where every bit of content is payed for repeatedly and all creation belongs to the 1% no matter who created it or when it was created or how free that person made it.
But you can't ask for total control at once because most politicians are not completely amoral yet. But every small step, readies the ground for the next step.
More "primitive" music might indeed be the same, after all, if we are talking about the same thing, it is meant to sweep people up into a trance. Whether you do it for fun or to experience "god", the tech is the same.
But there has always been commercial music, music designed to easily fit into a slot. Just that it has become easier and easier to make music so we experience far more. I got music on almost every waking moment thanks to mp3 players. Something you just couldn't do before (I am old enough to have had the original walkman) because the headphones hurt or batteries ran out or you got sick to death of the tape you had with you.
And another part is, music you don't like, sounds alike. Because you don't like it, you don't bother regonizing it. People who hate classical music say that it all sounds the same. Same with Jazz etc etc.
After all, the classic guitar is MEANT to only play a few chords, it is a ritme instrument, not a "musical" instrument, you are supposed to listen to the song, not the guitar (in country western at least).
But go look beyond the pop charts and you can still find all types of music being created. So if there are more types of musics being made, how can variation go down? People still make "classical", Jazz, country western and god knows what else. It is not always easy to find but it is there.
The guys on Slashdot say they're not gay - even though they are effeminate, histrionic, dandy, mincing, androgynous, gynomastic, vain, sissy, dainty, and fussy manchild weenies.
-- Ethanol-fueled
P.S. The above comment does not apply to me. I am assuredly the most masculine, stoic, somber, manly man to frequent this site.
-- Ethanol-fueled
In the land of the blind, one eye is king.
German was a subject in my school, I even passed it. When do I use it? Very rarely... except... the skill (rusted) is always there. I CAN work in Germany or with Germans. It broadens my potential to find work. Same with English, I am Dutch, why should I be able to speak English? Because English people can't be bothered to learn a second language, and English is a language understood my most people as a second language, it again broadens my potential to find work. Even in companies were the owner speaks English.
Math isn't there to do, it is there to know how to do it so that when you come across a problem you at least got a clue.
People can live very happy lives being unable to read or do basic math. But they are also incapable of advancing and become very vulnerable to being exploited.
It is like knowing how to perform CPR. When do you need it in your daily live? But in that 5 minute gap you MIGHT need it, it is the difference between life and death. I learned how to swim with my clothes, Holland is a country with a lot of water, so all kids used to learn it so they didn't drown if they fell in. I have NEVER fallen into the water in my entire life! Useless lesson then? I think not. About two years ago I saw a little kid on a bike get near a small canal with a not so steep incline loose control and just slide into the water. No real problem, lowered myself in, and pulled the kid out. It was very muddy and more half walk, half crawl swim BUT would I have done it if I never learned how to swim?
Maybe someone else would have pulled the kid out. Maybe the kid would have been fine on his own. Maybe.
Math is around us all the time and we use it all time. When calculating how much our shopping is going to be, how much cheaper item X is at store Y. It is simple stuff you do without thinking but you can only do because you were taught how to do it once, long ago.
School isn't about creating employees perfectly suited to just one task, it is to create well rounded individuals who can adapt to changing environments and demands. This includes being able to do basic math.
You don't even need to remember HOW to calculate the height of a tree. If you just remember that it can be done, you can always look it up.
But if you were never shown how to do it, it would remain a mystery to you if you ever needed to work on your house.
There used to be a "rule" that music had a beginning, a middle and an end. Lots of music still does but "techno" (excuse my ignorance on a type of music I don't like listening to) has some songs (not all) that are just a synthesizer left on auto-run and song "length" is just how long it took the sound engineer to take a crap after he hit record and hitting stop.
It is probably valid music but it doesn't carry much variation.
Some music is meant to be enjoyed with beer and some is meant to be enjoyed with xtc. Want variance? Go for music that doesn't require you to cripple your brain first.
Because the article makes one fatal flaw. The old music, it is still here. Never went away in fact. With each new song, the variation goes UP not down. It might not be a variant you like but you can still listen to the old stuff. And lets be honest, back in the golden days, the pop charts were just a filled with the same copies as now. The difference is that we only remember the really good ones.
Listen to a top 2000 from the bottom. It takes a LONG time before the music starts getting good.
Get rid of the party system. Get rid of popularity contests and get rid of single sentence referendums.
The entire problem is that the running of a country, a society, a culture is FAR to complex to leave to religious lunatics and sound bite issue describers.
Religious lunatics? You don't have to believe in a talking bush to believe. Socialist, Capitalist, Communists and Libertarians and god knows what other feeble dregs exist, they ALL believe in the doctrine of their chosen fate.
An excellent example of this was in The Netherlands when right during a parliamentary investigation into the effects of privatization during the last two decades and wide spread condemnation of the miserable results of privatization in healthcare and public transport, the VVD and CDA were caught advocating taking it even FURTHER while a few doors away the disastrous effects were being discussed.
These two parties BELIEVE in the free market and facts be damned.
Not that it is just a failing of the right. The bleeding hearts keep ignoring clear evidence of troubles with immigration. Belgian TV has aired a docu showing a hidden camera following a woman through several areas, recording the harassment by immigrants. The left media is AMAZINGLY silent on this, not even mentioning it. News that youth unemployment among immigrants is sky high could not be ignored but the list of causes was mysteriously short in the left wing media.
They BELIEVE that nothing can be going wrong with the idea of a multi-cultural society and will do EVERYTHING to ignore it. And the right? The VVD (right wing) had a minister say Holland needed MORE Moroccan immigrants to start new businesses to boost the economy... guess who let immigration get out of control in the first place? The right, to import cheap labor to break the unions and lower salaries.
When the boss of the dutch state bank was questioned about the bank crisis, he kept referring to the people who didn't see it coming (himself included) as the experts and those who did see it coming as doomsayers. He couldn't grasp that HE was no expert, that he and everyone close to him that he hired was wrong and incompetent and the people he was still dismissing as quacks, were the ones who really understand economics.
------
It is NOT right vs left
BOTH sides, ALL sides, are WRONG.
Really running a country (and the US that claims to be capitalist but has tons of socialist programs is a prime example) is the job of balancing a pendulum upside down. You can't do it if you are convinced that the counter movement that needs to be done is "wrong". You just need to do it. That means sometimes you need to do a "leftie" policy and sometimes "right" and sometimes a weird mix or something else altogether.
And neither can you do it with simple referendums. LA has these. Do you think cannabis should be legal for the ill? DOES NOT WORK.
Because it doesn't then give a full policy such as "what defines ill". "who is going to grow it". "when does someone become better again". "when does medinal use become recreational use" "who pays for it" "who pays for it when people abuse it".
Nor does it answer questions about heroine which started out as a drug and can still be used for medical purposes if it did not carry the drugs stigma. It is a very effective pain killer and for terminal patients, the addiction is not an issue.
A real policy on drugs needs to be extremely broad and you cannot run it on ideals of people who smoke and drink who think abusing substances is against the word of god.
You would need a body of wise men who have NO opinion of their own, who can look at what society needs and wants (and wants and needs can easily contradict each other) and then create a policy that is mostly in line with this.
It would require looking at public transport not as a restriction of the freedom of car travel or the environment or road congestion but ALL of them at once without to much bias but with a very heavy dose of reality. the s