Working for XBox, and Sony Playstations, constantly looking for new ideas, new games, new strategies, new ways to expand their marketplace... All of them flunked. They did not see Wii coming. They did not see the Angry Birds coming. Why?
There are lots more casual gamers than dedicated gamers. Casual gamers generally don't buy gaming PCs or game consoles, unless they're cheap.
As for the Wii, I saw one once. I don't know anyone who owns one.
That relies on security through obscurity. If you rely on not being publicly visible, you're doing it wrong.
How are you going to hack into my webcam when it has no publically visible IP address? In order to hack it you need to already be on my internal LAN, so my security is already toast.
The only feature I use regularly in gnome 3, unity, and win 7, is the app search bound to the super key. It accomplishes basically everything that I need from an OS GUI in all three.
Pfft. I've been using app search since the 1990s and it comes with a lot more features than any of those lame attempts to rip it off.
It's called/bin/sh.
I'm continually amused that twenty years ago the command line was EVIL yet today it's supposed to be this wonderful new innovation which allows us to work around the fact that all these new GUIs suck goatse ass.
I'm guessing people hated Windows 95 when compared to 3.1 (or equivalent Mac OS version changes).
Everyone I knew thought Windows 95 was great; even those who used Suns had to admit that it was better in many respects.
Because... drum roll please... IT WAS A BETTER UI THAN THOSE THAT PRECEDED IT.
People don't hate change, they hate SHIT THAT'S WORSE THAN WHAT THEY'VE GOT ALREADY.
Which part of this is so hard to understand? Why, instead of three clicks to start a program from a menu or two clicks to start it from a desktop icon, will be life be better if I have to move the mouse to the corner of the screen, wait for some stupid animation to bring up a full-screen overlay, hunt down some random icon which I hope is the right program or take my hand off the mouse to type in what I hope is the name of the program and then probably wait for some more stupid animations while it starts up? What problem is this solving? Why is this supposed to be better?
The Win95 interface was the best thing Microsoft ever did for computing, which is why pretty much everyone else has copied it. GUI design has mostly been downhill since then.
Journalism becomes espionage when leaders expect privacy and technology is applied to eavesdrop.
Journalism becomes nothing but PR when journalists don't report a story because they overheard something that 'was considered private and off-the-record'.
You can charge it at home. That's enough for a lot of folks, especially with a 300 mile range.
It's a 'luxury sedan'; what's the point of paying $60k for it if you're just going to drive to and from the store because you have to turn around after going 150 miles from where you live or you won't get back? You could buy a Hyundai crappy thing for $10k and blow the other $50k on wine and loose women.
You almost sound like an old GM commercial. When the others were bragging about their fuel economy GM was bragging on how far you can go on a tank of gas AKA bad fuel economy but much bigger tanks.
Doesn't sound smart to equip these vehicles with a proprietary connector. Why not have a standardized connector, and sell more vehicles ?
Wow, that's just brilliant. They could sell the vehicle and then sell electricity to them at $10 per kWh when the drivers either pay up or have to pay for a tow from the middle of nowhere.
Maybe Tesla's business plan does make sense after all.
Methinks you might want to start by actually turning out some of those promised cars first.
Chicken and egg: what's the point of building a 'luxury sedan' that can't travel more than 300 miles because there's nowhere to charge it?
I'm guessing most of the people willing to pay $60k for a 'luxury sedan' of such limited use would be in SF or LA, so it makes sense as a place to build a charging point.
... because it's just UNPOSSIBLE to put whatever desktop environment you want on it.
Given a choice between installing Random Distro X and having to build and install a completely new desktop environment or installing Random Distro Y which is sane out of the box, why would anyone pick the former?
Absolutely. I don't understand what's so hard about saying "regardless of its source, all of your income just counts as income, minus some deductions, and you pay a percentage in tax based on these brackets".
Because you're not a politician who's being lobbied to give everyone tax breaks and loopholes so that only the powerless middle-class proles have to actually pay anything.
Re:Best comment in article:
on
The F-35 Story
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· Score: 3, Informative
According to Wikipedia, the Harrier only uses thrust-vectoring for VTOL, not for higher manuverability.
"Vectoring nozzles can also be used for "viffing"—e.g. a rapid braking allowing a chasing fighter jet to overtake thus bringing itself into the range of forward firing weapons. "Viffing" - or Vectoring In Forward Flight was used to great effect during the Anglo-Argentian Falklands War, where 28 Royal Navy and 6 RAF jets did not incur any losses in dogfighting against a force of more than 200 Argentine Air Force jets."
It also says that there's little evidence that they used it for tighter turns in combat, but Harrier pilots have written glowingly about the delights of vectored thrust for dogfighting (e.g. turning inside other aircraft at low speeds and using the wing to hide the exhaust from IR missiles).
Maybe we need to test people in groups on projects and not on there own.
Sure. If you plan to hire that entire group and not the individuals who are part of it.
Re:Marine version tripped up the whole program
on
The F-35 Story
·
· Score: 1
A pointless war? Over a couple sheep and some rocks?
No, over political prestige and possibly enormous oil reserves.
A better policy might just be informing the occupants of said pile of rocks to GTFO or you will bomb it until it is below sea level. If you really desire to get them off such useless property.
The RAF bombing British people on the Falklands might not be considered a good idea. And burning 250,000 gallons of fuel to drop 22,000 pounds of bombs from a Vulcan wouldn't make it very cost-effectve compared to flying Harriers off of whatever ships were available. I seem to remember that one of them even landed on a ship's helipad when they couldn't find the carrier; good luck doing that with an F-16.
Re:Marine version tripped up the whole program
on
The F-35 Story
·
· Score: 1
Just what kind of war could having this particular plane help win that would otherwise be lost?
The Falklands?
Though, admittedly, the US Navy could spare more than enough real carriers to fight a war of that size and wouldn't have to send fighter/bombers out there on container ships.
Of course one of the other big benefits of VTOL is that you can land in weather where no-one would even consider conventional carrier operations. Hovering until you spot an empty piece of deck is easier than smashing down onto a deck you can barely see.
Re:Has there ever been a plane on time on budget?
on
The F-35 Story
·
· Score: 1
Has there ever been a plane on time on budget? I haven't ever heard of one.
I'm pretty sure some aircraft were developed during WWII in less time than developing the paperwork on a modern fighter. Of course that was in wartime when the difference between having it flying and not having it flying could be catastrophic.
And, to be fair, a WWII fighter was a heck of a lot simpler.
Re:Best comment in article:
on
The F-35 Story
·
· Score: 3, Informative
“A lot of design compromises were made especially to give the Marine Corps the STOVL capability which, by the way, they’ve never used in combat,” he said.
The British routinely used thrust-vectoring in combat with their Harriers; I'd be surprised if the Marines didn't take advantage of the same capability. Of course with the F-35's lift fan design I presume it can't use vectored thrust in forward flight?
A central government should be able to recognize this and make the changes, but if they have succumb to the capitalist influence pedaling method used in the West, they are doomed. It will take the will of the people to force the changes.
Uh, no. They have succumbed to the communist influence peddling system used in much of the East.
I know my kid is not carrying weapons or explosives. I don't need some Goverment Groper to feel them up to tell me that.
There is practically a zero chance that any child (or adult, for that matter) is a terrorist, and they all know whether they're terrorists, so Government Gropers just piss off the 99.9999999% who aren't.
Instead looked at in an unbiased fashion, for example this post at Reason magazine, http://reason.com/archives/2006/08/11/dont-be-terrorized terrorism is a lower risk that we run going out to drive, or consuming ordinary products.
But any politician who scraps 'anti-terror' measures will be voted out if there's another major terrorist attack. This is why big government keeps getting bigger until it bankrupts the country and collapses.
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The problem is that for certain purposes, Linux just isn't a viable alternative because it does not contain production-quality support for ZFS.
Well, duh. Maybe if Oracle released ZFS under the GPL, it would be in the Linux kernel.
Working for XBox, and Sony Playstations, constantly looking for new ideas, new games, new strategies, new ways to expand their marketplace... All of them flunked. They did not see Wii coming. They did not see the Angry Birds coming. Why?
There are lots more casual gamers than dedicated gamers. Casual gamers generally don't buy gaming PCs or game consoles, unless they're cheap.
As for the Wii, I saw one once. I don't know anyone who owns one.
That relies on security through obscurity. If you rely on not being publicly visible, you're doing it wrong.
How are you going to hack into my webcam when it has no publically visible IP address? In order to hack it you need to already be on my internal LAN, so my security is already toast.
And why would anyone but an idiot want a phone number or postal address that can be reached by the public at large??
Exactly. Who wants to have to deal with idiot marketing calls all the time?
Nah, Flash is trivial to block and sandbox. HTML5 is going to be a security and privacy nightmare.
The only feature I use regularly in gnome 3, unity, and win 7, is the app search bound to the super key. It accomplishes basically everything that I need from an OS GUI in all three.
Pfft. I've been using app search since the 1990s and it comes with a lot more features than any of those lame attempts to rip it off.
It's called /bin/sh.
I'm continually amused that twenty years ago the command line was EVIL yet today it's supposed to be this wonderful new innovation which allows us to work around the fact that all these new GUIs suck goatse ass.
I'm guessing people hated Windows 95 when compared to 3.1 (or equivalent Mac OS version changes).
Everyone I knew thought Windows 95 was great; even those who used Suns had to admit that it was better in many respects.
Because... drum roll please... IT WAS A BETTER UI THAN THOSE THAT PRECEDED IT.
People don't hate change, they hate SHIT THAT'S WORSE THAN WHAT THEY'VE GOT ALREADY.
Which part of this is so hard to understand? Why, instead of three clicks to start a program from a menu or two clicks to start it from a desktop icon, will be life be better if I have to move the mouse to the corner of the screen, wait for some stupid animation to bring up a full-screen overlay, hunt down some random icon which I hope is the right program or take my hand off the mouse to type in what I hope is the name of the program and then probably wait for some more stupid animations while it starts up? What problem is this solving? Why is this supposed to be better?
The Win95 interface was the best thing Microsoft ever did for computing, which is why pretty much everyone else has copied it. GUI design has mostly been downhill since then.
So then the answer is "yes". The "I refuse to adapt to change" crowd gets a new poster boy.
Ah, yes. It's not that the new UI sucks, it's that we 'refuse to adapt to change' unlike the so uber-l33t "change at any cost" crowd.
Journalism becomes espionage when leaders expect privacy and technology is applied to eavesdrop.
Journalism becomes nothing but PR when journalists don't report a story because they overheard something that 'was considered private and off-the-record'.
Compared to a plug in electric car? yes.
I guess the miles per gallon becomes infinite when you're stuck in the middle of nowhere because the battery went flat.
You can charge it at home. That's enough for a lot of folks, especially with a 300 mile range.
It's a 'luxury sedan'; what's the point of paying $60k for it if you're just going to drive to and from the store because you have to turn around after going 150 miles from where you live or you won't get back? You could buy a Hyundai crappy thing for $10k and blow the other $50k on wine and loose women.
You almost sound like an old GM commercial. When the others were bragging about their fuel economy GM was bragging on how far you can go on a tank of gas AKA bad fuel economy but much bigger tanks.
You think a Civic has bad fuel economy?
Doesn't sound smart to equip these vehicles with a proprietary connector. Why not have a standardized connector, and sell more vehicles ?
Wow, that's just brilliant. They could sell the vehicle and then sell electricity to them at $10 per kWh when the drivers either pay up or have to pay for a tow from the middle of nowhere.
Maybe Tesla's business plan does make sense after all.
Methinks you might want to start by actually turning out some of those promised cars first.
Chicken and egg: what's the point of building a 'luxury sedan' that can't travel more than 300 miles because there's nowhere to charge it?
I'm guessing most of the people willing to pay $60k for a 'luxury sedan' of such limited use would be in SF or LA, so it makes sense as a place to build a charging point.
... because it's just UNPOSSIBLE to put whatever desktop environment you want on it.
Given a choice between installing Random Distro X and having to build and install a completely new desktop environment or installing Random Distro Y which is sane out of the box, why would anyone pick the former?
Absolutely. I don't understand what's so hard about saying "regardless of its source, all of your income just counts as income, minus some deductions, and you pay a percentage in tax based on these brackets".
Because you're not a politician who's being lobbied to give everyone tax breaks and loopholes so that only the powerless middle-class proles have to actually pay anything.
According to Wikipedia, the Harrier only uses thrust-vectoring for VTOL, not for higher manuverability.
I see your Wikipedia and raise you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectoring_nozzles
"Vectoring nozzles can also be used for "viffing"—e.g. a rapid braking allowing a chasing fighter jet to overtake thus bringing itself into the range of forward firing weapons. "Viffing" - or Vectoring In Forward Flight was used to great effect during the Anglo-Argentian Falklands War, where 28 Royal Navy and 6 RAF jets did not incur any losses in dogfighting against a force of more than 200 Argentine Air Force jets."
It also says that there's little evidence that they used it for tighter turns in combat, but Harrier pilots have written glowingly about the delights of vectored thrust for dogfighting (e.g. turning inside other aircraft at low speeds and using the wing to hide the exhaust from IR missiles).
Maybe we need to test people in groups on projects and not on there own.
Sure. If you plan to hire that entire group and not the individuals who are part of it.
A pointless war? Over a couple sheep and some rocks?
No, over political prestige and possibly enormous oil reserves.
A better policy might just be informing the occupants of said pile of rocks to GTFO or you will bomb it until it is below sea level. If you really desire to get them off such useless property.
The RAF bombing British people on the Falklands might not be considered a good idea. And burning 250,000 gallons of fuel to drop 22,000 pounds of bombs from a Vulcan wouldn't make it very cost-effectve compared to flying Harriers off of whatever ships were available. I seem to remember that one of them even landed on a ship's helipad when they couldn't find the carrier; good luck doing that with an F-16.
Just what kind of war could having this particular plane help win that would otherwise be lost?
The Falklands?
Though, admittedly, the US Navy could spare more than enough real carriers to fight a war of that size and wouldn't have to send fighter/bombers out there on container ships.
Of course one of the other big benefits of VTOL is that you can land in weather where no-one would even consider conventional carrier operations. Hovering until you spot an empty piece of deck is easier than smashing down onto a deck you can barely see.
Has there ever been a plane on time on budget? I haven't ever heard of one.
I'm pretty sure some aircraft were developed during WWII in less time than developing the paperwork on a modern fighter. Of course that was in wartime when the difference between having it flying and not having it flying could be catastrophic.
And, to be fair, a WWII fighter was a heck of a lot simpler.
“A lot of design compromises were made especially to give the Marine Corps the STOVL capability which, by the way, they’ve never used in combat,” he said.
The British routinely used thrust-vectoring in combat with their Harriers; I'd be surprised if the Marines didn't take advantage of the same capability. Of course with the F-35's lift fan design I presume it can't use vectored thrust in forward flight?
A central government should be able to recognize this and make the changes, but if they have succumb to the capitalist influence pedaling method used in the West, they are doomed. It will take the will of the people to force the changes.
Uh, no. They have succumbed to the communist influence peddling system used in much of the East.
OK, here's the problem.
I know my kid is not carrying weapons or explosives. I don't need some Goverment Groper to feel them up to tell me that.
There is practically a zero chance that any child (or adult, for that matter) is a terrorist, and they all know whether they're terrorists, so Government Gropers just piss off the 99.9999999% who aren't.
Instead looked at in an unbiased fashion, for example this post at Reason magazine, http://reason.com/archives/2006/08/11/dont-be-terrorized terrorism is a lower risk that we run going out to drive, or consuming ordinary products.
But any politician who scraps 'anti-terror' measures will be voted out if there's another major terrorist attack. This is why big government keeps getting bigger until it bankrupts the country and collapses.