How you do figure, where's your data? Their data clearly shows that a CRT displaying all white uses 85W, and the same monitor displaying all black uses 63W, which sounds to me like it's using 25% less power to display the black screen.
True. But really, who's using a CRT these days? Especially with a mobile device or some other method where you're using a battery instead of running off the mains? The fact that the power draw of a CRT changes with the image is technically true, but it's also practically irrelevant since CRT is a dead technology.
If you read my original post (the GP), you'll see that I'm not. This sub-thread is about handheld game consoles rather than mobile devices.
The only place OpenGL is alive and well is on mobile devices, and that's not even technically OpenGL. That's OpenGL ES, which is the complete break that game developers wanted.
Most of the modern gaming consoles can use OpenGL. But the developers don't. Virtually all of the major games are programed in LibGCM, kind-of DirectX, and GX for the PS3, 360, and Wii respectively. And the handhelds don't use OpenGL at all, especially not the DS which is only barely 3D capable in the first place.
When you're working with a fixed platform you can work at a much lower level to maximize your performance. In fact you basically have to. Pure OpenGL is too high level for that.
Also, while it's true that Blizzard uses OpenGL on their Mac ports, I would hesitate to count Blizzard as being big on OpenGL. They use OpenGL because they have to, not because they want to. Their Windows games all use DirectX, and the Mac ports are rarely as graphically advanced. Now if they were using OpenGL on Windows and Mac OS X that would be a different story. But as it stands you're not seeing anyone besides id voluntarily use OpenGL on Windows, which is the only desktop platform where that API is optional.
And now OpenGL basically owns the entire gaming universe except for the steadily shrinking part over which Microsoft is able to exercise monopoly control.
Let me be the first to say "huh?"
Desktop OpenGL use has never been as dead as it is now. The only new game to use OpenGL to come out in the last 18 months is id's Rage, and that was a bit of a flop. Looking forward the only game using OpenGL is Doom 4, which is based on the same engine as Rage. No one else is commissioning new projects based on OpenGL. At best OpenGL is what you add to your engine as a hack to get it working on Macs.
The only place OpenGL is alive and well is on mobile devices, and that's not even technically OpenGL. That's OpenGL ES, which is the complete break that game developers wanted.
No, I'm quite afraid OpenGL on the desktop is dead. The CAD guys will hold on to it until the end of time, but everyone else has moved to Direct3D.
Not if you're one of the many people who bought a netbook or "nettop" with XP on it in the last few years.
Not to sound unsympathetic, but you bought a disposable computer that was outdated the day it was manufactured. Netbooks were meant to be frequently replaced; making them underpowered and easy to break is how they got the costs so low in the first place.
To be more precise, loss leaders are promotions designed to get people into a store. However if you're selling below cost with the purpose to drive the competition out of the market, that's predatory pricing, which the DoJ will sometimes go after if they can prove you're trying to establish a monopoly.
As so clearly painted out on Apple's website, there are two factors in play.
Apple's 1 year warranty
EU Consumer Law regarding to product quality at the time of sale
Apple's warranty continues to stand at 1 year. If anything short of intentional damage happens in that one year, you get full Apple tech support.
EU Consumer Law meanwhile covers a 2 year period, and as the weaker program takes effect during the second year of ownership. Pay attention here, this is important: if the buyer can prove the product was defective when it was sold, then and only then can they take the product to the seller (who is not necessarily Apple) for coverage. This is not the same as a 2 year warranty as you do not get any direct support from Apple - no phone support, no Apple Store, no authorized service providers; you get what the seller can provide, unless that seller is Apple. And even then Apple will not give the buyer the same treatment as a full warranty, and the burden of proof is on the buyer to prove that the product was defective at the time of sale.
For a real warranty over 1 year you still need to purchase an AppleCare plan. That gets you full and direct Apple support, and more importantly there is no burden of proof on the buyer to prove that the product was defective at the time of sale.
That's the thing though, they did buy PSPs. A lot of them. Over 73 million of them to be precise. It was the most successful non-Nintendo handheld ever, and in terms of total console sales that's more than the 360, PS3, or even the NES/SNES.
The thing that killed it was a lack of software sales. And that can be directly traced back to piracy, which was made all the easier by the fact that CFW was a pure software hack that was accessible to anyone.
This is already a solved problem. The tax is based on the location of the buyer. For all practical purposes the billing address they have on file (if they have a validated credit card) is good enough, though with location aware devices you can always go for more precision.
It's the apps. I was using Boxee to watch out of market NHL and MLB games on my HTPC, since it was the only thing out there that supports paid content and integrates well with Windows Media Center and remotes.
Boxee can go to hell after throwing out their PC/Mac/Linux userbase virtually overnight. Dropping support is their rightful choice, but they did it in just about the worst possible manner.
To be fair, all of your setup issues are documented in the quick setup guide. It tells you to put the SIM in before you start the console the first time, and to use the temporary account for firmware updates. But that doesn't excuse Sony from making things so weird in the first place.
Also, the botched Bulldozer launch: they should have used the no. of complete modules in the processor name, instead of the number of Integer units
That way they wouldnt have a 6 core which was actually 3 core, but rather a 3 core which performed better in Hyperthreading than an equivalent Intel
The problem with that is that you're setting up a losing proposition for AMD. HyperThreading is basically free for Intel, but those extra integer cores for CMT cost significant die space for AMD. They can't sell a full Bulldozer chip for that cheap, it's simply too big to be put against Intel's cheaper i3 and i5 CPUs.
As it stands the game is effectively pre-funded. Every sale Double Fine makes on top of the Kickstarter campaign is going to be pure profit so long as they don't go over budget, which greatly changes the market dynamics. DRM is first and foremost about being able to recover your investment, after which there's not nearly as great a need to stop freeloaders. So I don't think anyone should be surprised that their game will be DRM free; it's a nice gesture for sure, but it's not as if Double Fine is in a position where they need to use it.*
* Even more so since Notch is effectively writing them a blank check for their next game, Psychonauts 2
Actually for a tablet it won't make all that huge of a difference. On a tablet the primary power consumer is the screen, not the electronics; the electronics are almost an afterthought compared to trying to light up a 9.7" screen. This is the inverse of phones where the electronics are the primary consumer and the screen is the secondary consumer (although it's not lopsided like it is on tablets).
So Apple could easily throw in a 40nm LTE radio with only a small impact to battery life (~1H). However it's Apple, so they're more likely to use a 28nm radio, in which case the power hit will be noticeably less, and not all that different from a 3G radio.
Considering Flash's extensive use as an attack vector this is great news. I would sleep better at night though if Firefox itself was also sandboxed; in fact I'm a bit surprised you can even sandbox Flash when the browser doesn't support it.
Because under an NDA you have no control over the information once it's leaked. An NDA only lets you punish the person who leaked it; the person they leaked it to is free to do whatever they want with it because they haven't signed an NDA. So if someone leaks it and does a halfway competent job in the process, the leak will never be traced back and other parties will be to pass around the information without restriction.
A copyright on the other hand allows you to reign in on the information and whoever has it, regardless of whether they were the initial leak or not.
Or in time-honored Slashdot tradition, a car analogy: Your car is stolen and the next day you see someone else driving it down the street. Using copyright is like having laws against possessing stolen property; your car can be recovered regardless of whether the person who has it was the original thief. An NDA means you can sue the thief, but your car is gone forever.
Just to play Devil's Advocate here, while you may be willing to pay $70 more does that mean everyone else will? A standard of living is effectively defined as being how much money you make versus how much of that money you have to spend to acquire goods. To pay more for electronics is tantamount to a decrease in the standard of living for westerners, and no one is going to be in favor of giving up their standard of living.
This article is stupid and the Washington Post should be ashamed. ArsTechnica ran the numbers 2 months ago and came up with an average of 63KB per query, and even less for queries that were just voice commands for the phone itself (as opposed to an internet lookup).
In total, our 11 queries added up to 693.6KB, or an average of 63KB per query. As you can see above, Siri tasks that are local to the phone appear to require less data than ones that need further lookups on the Internet, which makes sense.
If you use Siri 2-3 times per day at an average of 63KB per instance, you might expect to use 126KB to 189KB per day, or 3.7 to 5.5MB per month. For 4-6 times a day, that might come out to 252KB to 378KB per day, or 7.4 to 11MB per month. If you use it 10-15 times per day, you might end up using 630KB to 945KB per day, or 18.5 to 27.7MB per month.
If Siri is a bandwidth hog, $deity help us all, because that means all that voice traffic and streaming video we do on our phones and tablets must be killing cellular networks and running their bodies through the wood chipper.
The only problem I see with that is that it doesn't do much to solve the Dancing Bunnies problem within the Market. So long as loading unsigned applications is allowed it will always be an issue, but not allowing unreviewed applications at all in the Market is a much better solution. Otherwise people are going to grab their Counter Strike knock-offs whether they're reviewed or not, because after all they're coming from Google and Google can be trusted.
Although I seriously doubt Symantec's 5 million number is right, the fact that malware keep showing up on the market is disturbing. Actually, we're beyond disturbing, it's getting downright annoying. Google needs to do better than removing bad applications after the fact, and while this doesn't need to be a Jobsian walled garden, at a minimum Google needs to start reviewing all applications (and updates!) before posting them to make sure they're clean.
Phones are appliances, and trying to handle malware the same way we handle it on computers (which is to say, after the fact) is not going to work.
Now the interesting thing with that timeline is that it was directly influenced by the MPAA/RIAA's lawsuits - services such as MegaUpload effectively masked the identities of copyright infringers, shielding them from such suits. If this does swing back to BitTorrent, those infringers are going to once again become visible. Does this mean we'll see the RIAA/MPAA step up their civil lawsuits once more, since they'll be able to catch more people in the act now?
If these sites can be shut down with lawsuits now, why do we need SOPA and PIPA?
Because the owners of these sites are only punishable under US law so long as they're doing business here and they are in a country that extradites to the US. The moment someone sets up an operation like this in a US-unfriendly country (and makes absolutely sure not to conduct any business in the US), there will be no way for the US to shut them down by going after the owners.
Thus SOPA. You can't shut the site down, but if you can prevent them from engaging in transactions with US residents, you've effectively achieved the same thing.
Slashdot Mirror
True. But really, who's using a CRT these days? Especially with a mobile device or some other method where you're using a battery instead of running off the mains? The fact that the power draw of a CRT changes with the image is technically true, but it's also practically irrelevant since CRT is a dead technology.
If you read my original post (the GP), you'll see that I'm not. This sub-thread is about handheld game consoles rather than mobile devices.
Most of the modern gaming consoles can use OpenGL. But the developers don't. Virtually all of the major games are programed in LibGCM, kind-of DirectX, and GX for the PS3, 360, and Wii respectively. And the handhelds don't use OpenGL at all, especially not the DS which is only barely 3D capable in the first place.
When you're working with a fixed platform you can work at a much lower level to maximize your performance. In fact you basically have to. Pure OpenGL is too high level for that.
Also, while it's true that Blizzard uses OpenGL on their Mac ports, I would hesitate to count Blizzard as being big on OpenGL. They use OpenGL because they have to, not because they want to. Their Windows games all use DirectX, and the Mac ports are rarely as graphically advanced. Now if they were using OpenGL on Windows and Mac OS X that would be a different story. But as it stands you're not seeing anyone besides id voluntarily use OpenGL on Windows, which is the only desktop platform where that API is optional.
Let me be the first to say "huh?"
Desktop OpenGL use has never been as dead as it is now. The only new game to use OpenGL to come out in the last 18 months is id's Rage, and that was a bit of a flop. Looking forward the only game using OpenGL is Doom 4, which is based on the same engine as Rage. No one else is commissioning new projects based on OpenGL. At best OpenGL is what you add to your engine as a hack to get it working on Macs.
The only place OpenGL is alive and well is on mobile devices, and that's not even technically OpenGL. That's OpenGL ES, which is the complete break that game developers wanted.
No, I'm quite afraid OpenGL on the desktop is dead. The CAD guys will hold on to it until the end of time, but everyone else has moved to Direct3D.
Not to sound unsympathetic, but you bought a disposable computer that was outdated the day it was manufactured. Netbooks were meant to be frequently replaced; making them underpowered and easy to break is how they got the costs so low in the first place.
To be more precise, loss leaders are promotions designed to get people into a store. However if you're selling below cost with the purpose to drive the competition out of the market, that's predatory pricing, which the DoJ will sometimes go after if they can prove you're trying to establish a monopoly.
As usual, TFS and TFA got it all wrong.
As so clearly painted out on Apple's website, there are two factors in play.
Apple's warranty continues to stand at 1 year. If anything short of intentional damage happens in that one year, you get full Apple tech support.
EU Consumer Law meanwhile covers a 2 year period, and as the weaker program takes effect during the second year of ownership. Pay attention here, this is important: if the buyer can prove the product was defective when it was sold, then and only then can they take the product to the seller (who is not necessarily Apple) for coverage. This is not the same as a 2 year warranty as you do not get any direct support from Apple - no phone support, no Apple Store, no authorized service providers; you get what the seller can provide, unless that seller is Apple. And even then Apple will not give the buyer the same treatment as a full warranty, and the burden of proof is on the buyer to prove that the product was defective at the time of sale.
For a real warranty over 1 year you still need to purchase an AppleCare plan. That gets you full and direct Apple support, and more importantly there is no burden of proof on the buyer to prove that the product was defective at the time of sale.
That's the thing though, they did buy PSPs. A lot of them. Over 73 million of them to be precise. It was the most successful non-Nintendo handheld ever, and in terms of total console sales that's more than the 360, PS3, or even the NES/SNES.
The thing that killed it was a lack of software sales. And that can be directly traced back to piracy, which was made all the easier by the fact that CFW was a pure software hack that was accessible to anyone.
This is already a solved problem. The tax is based on the location of the buyer. For all practical purposes the billing address they have on file (if they have a validated credit card) is good enough, though with location aware devices you can always go for more precision.
This just in: Free 2 Play Publisher Says $60 Games Doomed.
Meanwhile In other news this evening, RJ Reynolds has a new study out proving that smoking is good for you and makes you look cooler.
It's the apps. I was using Boxee to watch out of market NHL and MLB games on my HTPC, since it was the only thing out there that supports paid content and integrates well with Windows Media Center and remotes.
Boxee can go to hell after throwing out their PC/Mac/Linux userbase virtually overnight. Dropping support is their rightful choice, but they did it in just about the worst possible manner.
Be quiet you. We're reminiscing and we enjoy it.
To be fair, all of your setup issues are documented in the quick setup guide. It tells you to put the SIM in before you start the console the first time, and to use the temporary account for firmware updates. But that doesn't excuse Sony from making things so weird in the first place.
The problem with that is that you're setting up a losing proposition for AMD. HyperThreading is basically free for Intel, but those extra integer cores for CMT cost significant die space for AMD. They can't sell a full Bulldozer chip for that cheap, it's simply too big to be put against Intel's cheaper i3 and i5 CPUs.
As it stands the game is effectively pre-funded. Every sale Double Fine makes on top of the Kickstarter campaign is going to be pure profit so long as they don't go over budget, which greatly changes the market dynamics. DRM is first and foremost about being able to recover your investment, after which there's not nearly as great a need to stop freeloaders. So I don't think anyone should be surprised that their game will be DRM free; it's a nice gesture for sure, but it's not as if Double Fine is in a position where they need to use it.*
* Even more so since Notch is effectively writing them a blank check for their next game, Psychonauts 2
Actually for a tablet it won't make all that huge of a difference. On a tablet the primary power consumer is the screen, not the electronics; the electronics are almost an afterthought compared to trying to light up a 9.7" screen. This is the inverse of phones where the electronics are the primary consumer and the screen is the secondary consumer (although it's not lopsided like it is on tablets).
So Apple could easily throw in a 40nm LTE radio with only a small impact to battery life (~1H). However it's Apple, so they're more likely to use a 28nm radio, in which case the power hit will be noticeably less, and not all that different from a 3G radio.
Considering Flash's extensive use as an attack vector this is great news. I would sleep better at night though if Firefox itself was also sandboxed; in fact I'm a bit surprised you can even sandbox Flash when the browser doesn't support it.
Because under an NDA you have no control over the information once it's leaked. An NDA only lets you punish the person who leaked it; the person they leaked it to is free to do whatever they want with it because they haven't signed an NDA. So if someone leaks it and does a halfway competent job in the process, the leak will never be traced back and other parties will be to pass around the information without restriction.
A copyright on the other hand allows you to reign in on the information and whoever has it, regardless of whether they were the initial leak or not.
Or in time-honored Slashdot tradition, a car analogy: Your car is stolen and the next day you see someone else driving it down the street. Using copyright is like having laws against possessing stolen property; your car can be recovered regardless of whether the person who has it was the original thief. An NDA means you can sue the thief, but your car is gone forever.
Just to play Devil's Advocate here, while you may be willing to pay $70 more does that mean everyone else will? A standard of living is effectively defined as being how much money you make versus how much of that money you have to spend to acquire goods. To pay more for electronics is tantamount to a decrease in the standard of living for westerners, and no one is going to be in favor of giving up their standard of living.
This article is stupid and the Washington Post should be ashamed. ArsTechnica ran the numbers 2 months ago and came up with an average of 63KB per query, and even less for queries that were just voice commands for the phone itself (as opposed to an internet lookup).
If Siri is a bandwidth hog, $deity help us all, because that means all that voice traffic and streaming video we do on our phones and tablets must be killing cellular networks and running their bodies through the wood chipper.
The only problem I see with that is that it doesn't do much to solve the Dancing Bunnies problem within the Market. So long as loading unsigned applications is allowed it will always be an issue, but not allowing unreviewed applications at all in the Market is a much better solution. Otherwise people are going to grab their Counter Strike knock-offs whether they're reviewed or not, because after all they're coming from Google and Google can be trusted.
Although I seriously doubt Symantec's 5 million number is right, the fact that malware keep showing up on the market is disturbing. Actually, we're beyond disturbing, it's getting downright annoying. Google needs to do better than removing bad applications after the fact, and while this doesn't need to be a Jobsian walled garden, at a minimum Google needs to start reviewing all applications (and updates!) before posting them to make sure they're clean.
Phones are appliances, and trying to handle malware the same way we handle it on computers (which is to say, after the fact) is not going to work.
Now the interesting thing with that timeline is that it was directly influenced by the MPAA/RIAA's lawsuits - services such as MegaUpload effectively masked the identities of copyright infringers, shielding them from such suits. If this does swing back to BitTorrent, those infringers are going to once again become visible. Does this mean we'll see the RIAA/MPAA step up their civil lawsuits once more, since they'll be able to catch more people in the act now?
Because the owners of these sites are only punishable under US law so long as they're doing business here and they are in a country that extradites to the US. The moment someone sets up an operation like this in a US-unfriendly country (and makes absolutely sure not to conduct any business in the US), there will be no way for the US to shut them down by going after the owners.
Thus SOPA. You can't shut the site down, but if you can prevent them from engaging in transactions with US residents, you've effectively achieved the same thing.