Precisely. Until I read this article, I had no idea that T:TSCC and Dollhouse air on Friday night, despite the fact that I watch both shows regularly. My TiVo does the magic of recording the shows when they're on, and I just watch them when I see them in the Now Playing list. In all seriousness, they could air at 2:30 AM on Tuesday, and it wouldn't change a thing for me.
This scenario is not exactly uncommon in general, especially in markets with sufficiently low barriers to entry. Look at software in general. There are TONS of applications and games for sale out there, most of the authors of which still maintain a day job out of financial necessity.
The fact is, it's just really easy to become a software developer, regardless of your platform of choice. It's difficult, however, to make a living doing it unless you a) write something so unique and interesting that it spreads by word-of-mouth, b) write something good and market it well, or c) work for a big company that has already accomplished a or b.
There's nothing special about the app store in this regard. It's just another platform where the major players will make a killing selling good-to-mediocre products, and the little guys will never make more than a few bucks unless they happen to produce something extraordinary.
Interesting how this gets modded "funny", but if the author had used any of a number of ethnic groups in place of "hillbillies", this would have been modded into oblivion.
Priceless, sure, but where do you put it? The Chargepod is designed like a hub and the device adapters are like short little spokes, so if you're going to be charging a full load of six devices, you're now going to need to devote a flat surface to being the permanent home of the Chargepod and its guests.
If it was an attractive setup, that would be one thing, but it's not. It's a crapload of cables. I can't think of any place in my house where I'd want to leave something like that laying out and cluttering up a surface.
a lot of "regular" people believe that they invented "the cumputa".
I remember being torn between laughter, sadness, and fear when, in a broadcast game of Jeopardy's "Teen Tournament", a kid responded that Bill Gates was the inventor of the first supercomputer.
In retrospect, I think that fear was the most appropriate emotional response. This kid didn't know jack shit about the history of technology, and he's apparently one of the smart ones.
I don't know which car he's talking about, but I know that similar things aren't uncommon... I have myself owned cars where one would, for example, have to remove the tire in order to reach the oil filter. And there are vehicles (such as the Buick Century) where the tail lights are not easily user-replaceable.
I had to purchase a special tool in order to be able to remove the oil filter in my Mini Cooper S. This same car also has an oil pan plug that is designed to be discarded and replaced rather than reused after an oil change.
The idea is that vehicle manufacturers want you to come back to the dealership as often as possible for service. If that means making normal maintenance difficult for the average Joe by putting things in hard-to-reach places, or requiring special, proprietary tools to do maintenance, so be it.
"Letting the free market decide" won't leave me with a lot of options in the near term. Where I live, the options for broadband service are basically Time Warner (cable) and AT&T (DSL). I currently use Time Warner, and if they start capping bandwidth, voting with my dollar means switching to AT&T... which is like voting "yes" to content filtering.
So, currently, I have a choice between supporting one of two evils, or having no broadband service whatsoever. Awesome.
It's not uncommon for drives -- even tray-loaders -- to have problems with nonstandard media. I just bought a Pioneer DVR-115D DVD drive, and the instructions explicitly warn that business-card-size discs, as well as other oddly-shaped discs, are not to be played in the drive.
"When you have carpentry to get done you don't have time to figure out an abtruse tool like a plane or a mitre. That's why for the first year, I did all of my woodworking with a hammer, a handsaw, and a chisel. I got the same result, it just took twice as long."
...which is why they are called "usability experts" and not "application designers". vi is powerful, sure, but it takes most people a good deal of time to figure out how to use it. And when you really have stuff to get done, you don't have time to screw around with figuring out how to use an abstruse tool just because it is more powerful (there's a reason that I used pico rather than vi for most of my freshman year of college).
If someone were to turn good usability experts loose on vi, you'd sacrifice none of vi's power, but you'd get something that most people could teach themselves to use without having to reference a man page printout every thirty seconds.
The only people who should fear usability experts are those whose job security is based primarily on the fact that they know how to use one or more user-unfriendly and arcane tools.
Geometry Wars you grind until you beat your next high score. Guitar Hero you grind on a song until you can get 5 stars. Etc. etc.
The difference here is that this isn't "grinding", this is practice.
If you play a song over and over in Guitar Hero, you get better at it, which eventually allows you to get five stars. You, the player actually get better at the game. In most MMORPGS, however, grinding is mere repitition, doing something over and over and over for experience points (or something similar), to improve the game character. The player is no better at the game, the game character is merely powered up.
Ultimately, these things differ in that the former affects the real world and the latter only affects the game world; if I play a song enough to get five stars in Guitar Hero, I can likely go to someone else's house and five-star it there, too. If I delete my character in an MMORPG, I forever lose all of the progress that was made, and getting a new character back to my old character's level requires going through all of that grinding all over again. While I may have figured out some easy ways to gain experience, I am still no better at the game itself. And really, I don't have to do anything challenging in the course of my grinding, because there is always some simple task (easy battles, for example) that can simply be done over and over to accrue easy experience.
To this extent, Guitar Hero (and Geometry Wars, and most non-RPGs, really) is no more a "grind" than any other skill-based activity that you do in the real world. Is writing code "grinding"? What about painting? Soldering? Singing? Playing cards? Cooking? Sex?
"Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither" Ben Franklin.
I am so very, very tired of seeing this, as it is both a misquote and a mis-attribution.
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Though featured in Poor Richard's Almanack, most likely originally written by one Richard Jackson.
The closest similar quote from Benjamin Franklin is "Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power."
You really can't trust everything you read on a bumper sticker. Just FYI.
In a world where content is created only by those who really enjoy doing it, and not by those who are simply in it for the money, there would be no Britney Spears albums, no Michael Bay movies, and no more anything by Dr. Phil.
The Church of Scientology would dry up and disappear due to a shortage of funds and perceived "star power".
I am having a very difficult time understanding what is "bad" about any of this.
Except that, if they're dictating the world's DRM schemes, they're also probably going to be responsible for most of the software used to encode and decode the DRMed data, and therefore also responsible for the OS that runs that software, and the hardware that runs that OS, etc., etc.
So to revise your simile:
It's like being locked in the Alcatraz for life and realizing that the walls are made of wet cardboard. But if you break out prison, it doesn't really matter, because every building, vehicle, and flat surface is also made out of that same wet cardboard.
Encouraging more choice isn't the problem, it's that MS is trying to ensure that both of the choices are inferior to the alternative that they're offering (which, as chance would have it, happens to be the one that makes them the most profit and helps them to be one of the first to establish a strong foothold in a new market).
At the end of the day, MS isn't encouraging choice at all. The choices were already there, MS is just trying to take them down from the inside.
It's a matter of increasing the effort required to listen in.
Think about where you live for a moment. If you don't have a security system on your house or apartment, anyone can break into your home, take whatever they want, and be gone before anyone notices. So, if you don't have a security system, why even bother closing your windows or locking your doors?
Because doing so increases the effort that it requires for one to gain entry. If you don't lock the door, anyone can just wander by, try the knob, and be in your house. If you lock the door, anyone can wander by and try the knob, but most of them will keep moving when they find it locked. The ones who will get in and steal your stuff are the ones who really want to get in, and who are willing to make the effort to kick open a door or break a window.
Similarly, encrypting the communications, even with a poor cipher, is better than nothing at all. The only people who can listen in on what you're doing are the ones who really want to. If it were totally unsecured, it would take far less effort to pick up what your keyboard is sending. Neighbor who just happens to own a computer with a compatible dongle, perhaps? You may not be the type of person who would try to decrypt a stranger's communications, but if they just started showing up on your screen, wouldn't you be tempted to read, even just a little?
This weak cipher may not be enough to keep out anyone who really wants to see what you're doing, but it's certainly enough to prevent accidental intrusions.
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He has a point. After a few rounds of capture the flag in my favorite First-Person Knifer, I sometimes just want to go outside and stab some hobos.
Precisely. Until I read this article, I had no idea that T:TSCC and Dollhouse air on Friday night, despite the fact that I watch both shows regularly. My TiVo does the magic of recording the shows when they're on, and I just watch them when I see them in the Now Playing list. In all seriousness, they could air at 2:30 AM on Tuesday, and it wouldn't change a thing for me.
This scenario is not exactly uncommon in general, especially in markets with sufficiently low barriers to entry. Look at software in general. There are TONS of applications and games for sale out there, most of the authors of which still maintain a day job out of financial necessity.
The fact is, it's just really easy to become a software developer, regardless of your platform of choice. It's difficult, however, to make a living doing it unless you a) write something so unique and interesting that it spreads by word-of-mouth, b) write something good and market it well, or c) work for a big company that has already accomplished a or b.
There's nothing special about the app store in this regard. It's just another platform where the major players will make a killing selling good-to-mediocre products, and the little guys will never make more than a few bucks unless they happen to produce something extraordinary.
digital camera's
There also isn't a proven shortage of apostrophes, but that doesn't mean that you have to go around wasting them like that.
But how awesome would it be if he gave a speech about unicorns?
Well, he does like to talk about the advantages that DRM provides to consumers. Same difference.
O HURRAY NOW IF OWNLY THER WUZ A REEL LIFE GRAMMER & SPELING CITY TAHT WOLD B GRATE
(no, seriously. Proofread much?)
Interesting how this gets modded "funny", but if the author had used any of a number of ethnic groups in place of "hillbillies", this would have been modded into oblivion.
Priceless, sure, but where do you put it? The Chargepod is designed like a hub and the device adapters are like short little spokes, so if you're going to be charging a full load of six devices, you're now going to need to devote a flat surface to being the permanent home of the Chargepod and its guests.
If it was an attractive setup, that would be one thing, but it's not. It's a crapload of cables. I can't think of any place in my house where I'd want to leave something like that laying out and cluttering up a surface.
So I guess GEICO will have to drop their moderately-funny caveman ads and revert back to their entirely unfunny gecko ads?
a lot of "regular" people believe that they invented "the cumputa".
I remember being torn between laughter, sadness, and fear when, in a broadcast game of Jeopardy's "Teen Tournament", a kid responded that Bill Gates was the inventor of the first supercomputer.
In retrospect, I think that fear was the most appropriate emotional response. This kid didn't know jack shit about the history of technology, and he's apparently one of the smart ones.
I don't know which car he's talking about, but I know that similar things aren't uncommon... I have myself owned cars where one would, for example, have to remove the tire in order to reach the oil filter. And there are vehicles (such as the Buick Century) where the tail lights are not easily user-replaceable.
I had to purchase a special tool in order to be able to remove the oil filter in my Mini Cooper S. This same car also has an oil pan plug that is designed to be discarded and replaced rather than reused after an oil change.
The idea is that vehicle manufacturers want you to come back to the dealership as often as possible for service. If that means making normal maintenance difficult for the average Joe by putting things in hard-to-reach places, or requiring special, proprietary tools to do maintenance, so be it.
"Letting the free market decide" won't leave me with a lot of options in the near term. Where I live, the options for broadband service are basically Time Warner (cable) and AT&T (DSL). I currently use Time Warner, and if they start capping bandwidth, voting with my dollar means switching to AT&T... which is like voting "yes" to content filtering.
So, currently, I have a choice between supporting one of two evils, or having no broadband service whatsoever. Awesome.
I can't wait to play a game where I'm a shiny silver ball floating above a checkered marble floor.
It's not uncommon for drives -- even tray-loaders -- to have problems with nonstandard media. I just bought a Pioneer DVR-115D DVD drive, and the instructions explicitly warn that business-card-size discs, as well as other oddly-shaped discs, are not to be played in the drive.
You're confusing the skill with the tool.
To correct your rephrasing:
"When you have carpentry to get done you don't have time to figure out an abtruse tool like a plane or a mitre. That's why for the first year, I did all of my woodworking with a hammer, a handsaw, and a chisel. I got the same result, it just took twice as long."
...which is why they are called "usability experts" and not "application designers". vi is powerful, sure, but it takes most people a good deal of time to figure out how to use it. And when you really have stuff to get done, you don't have time to screw around with figuring out how to use an abstruse tool just because it is more powerful (there's a reason that I used pico rather than vi for most of my freshman year of college).
If someone were to turn good usability experts loose on vi, you'd sacrifice none of vi's power, but you'd get something that most people could teach themselves to use without having to reference a man page printout every thirty seconds.
The only people who should fear usability experts are those whose job security is based primarily on the fact that they know how to use one or more user-unfriendly and arcane tools.
Geometry Wars you grind until you beat your next high score. Guitar Hero you grind on a song until you can get 5 stars. Etc. etc.
The difference here is that this isn't "grinding", this is practice.
If you play a song over and over in Guitar Hero, you get better at it, which eventually allows you to get five stars. You, the player actually get better at the game. In most MMORPGS, however, grinding is mere repitition, doing something over and over and over for experience points (or something similar), to improve the game character. The player is no better at the game, the game character is merely powered up.
Ultimately, these things differ in that the former affects the real world and the latter only affects the game world; if I play a song enough to get five stars in Guitar Hero, I can likely go to someone else's house and five-star it there, too. If I delete my character in an MMORPG, I forever lose all of the progress that was made, and getting a new character back to my old character's level requires going through all of that grinding all over again. While I may have figured out some easy ways to gain experience, I am still no better at the game itself. And really, I don't have to do anything challenging in the course of my grinding, because there is always some simple task (easy battles, for example) that can simply be done over and over to accrue easy experience.
To this extent, Guitar Hero (and Geometry Wars, and most non-RPGs, really) is no more a "grind" than any other skill-based activity that you do in the real world. Is writing code "grinding"? What about painting? Soldering? Singing? Playing cards? Cooking? Sex?
"Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither" Ben Franklin.
I am so very, very tired of seeing this, as it is both a misquote and a mis-attribution.
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Though featured in Poor Richard's Almanack, most likely originally written by one Richard Jackson.
The closest similar quote from Benjamin Franklin is "Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power."
You really can't trust everything you read on a bumper sticker. Just FYI.
In a world where content is created only by those who really enjoy doing it, and not by those who are simply in it for the money, there would be no Britney Spears albums, no Michael Bay movies, and no more anything by Dr. Phil. The Church of Scientology would dry up and disappear due to a shortage of funds and perceived "star power". I am having a very difficult time understanding what is "bad" about any of this.
Don't fool yourself, Democrats are just as beholden to corporate interests as Republicans are. They're two sides of the same dirty, tarnished coin.
Wait, are you trying to accelerate the evolution of the human race, or of Gonorrhea? I'm confused.
Except that, if they're dictating the world's DRM schemes, they're also probably going to be responsible for most of the software used to encode and decode the DRMed data, and therefore also responsible for the OS that runs that software, and the hardware that runs that OS, etc., etc.
So to revise your simile:
It's like being locked in the Alcatraz for life and realizing that the walls are made of wet cardboard. But if you break out prison, it doesn't really matter, because every building, vehicle, and flat surface is also made out of that same wet cardboard.
Encouraging more choice isn't the problem, it's that MS is trying to ensure that both of the choices are inferior to the alternative that they're offering (which, as chance would have it, happens to be the one that makes them the most profit and helps them to be one of the first to establish a strong foothold in a new market).
At the end of the day, MS isn't encouraging choice at all. The choices were already there, MS is just trying to take them down from the inside.
I've got serveral area's of expertise...
I've encountered asshat's like this before...
I take it that "proper use of apostrophes" is not one of your areas of expertise.
It's a matter of increasing the effort required to listen in.
Think about where you live for a moment. If you don't have a security system on your house or apartment, anyone can break into your home, take whatever they want, and be gone before anyone notices. So, if you don't have a security system, why even bother closing your windows or locking your doors?
Because doing so increases the effort that it requires for one to gain entry. If you don't lock the door, anyone can just wander by, try the knob, and be in your house. If you lock the door, anyone can wander by and try the knob, but most of them will keep moving when they find it locked. The ones who will get in and steal your stuff are the ones who really want to get in, and who are willing to make the effort to kick open a door or break a window.
Similarly, encrypting the communications, even with a poor cipher, is better than nothing at all. The only people who can listen in on what you're doing are the ones who really want to. If it were totally unsecured, it would take far less effort to pick up what your keyboard is sending. Neighbor who just happens to own a computer with a compatible dongle, perhaps? You may not be the type of person who would try to decrypt a stranger's communications, but if they just started showing up on your screen, wouldn't you be tempted to read, even just a little?
This weak cipher may not be enough to keep out anyone who really wants to see what you're doing, but it's certainly enough to prevent accidental intrusions.