I can't get to Polygon from here, so I read the entry on the Unreal Engine blog/wiki prior to my previous post. The game code doesn't look like it'll be under some kind of copyleft, but it *does* look like access to the data will be cheap ($19/seat/month and 5% of income from games based on the engine). In the EULA (which appears to govern licensee actions with the engine and UT Project game assets), I don't see anything stopping a developer from making a modified version of the main game executable and distributing it for free (presumably, the developer would be on the hook for hosting charges, since 5% of gross income from the game would go to Epic).
You can't distribute licensed source, licensed tools, or enough to allow users to create a "standalone product". You might be able to give them enough leeway to freely create content that relies on the product that you built (and are giving away for free). I'd imagine that someone will take at least that twisted of a view of their developer license, at some point.
"All code" doesn't mean a subset of the code. It means "all code". Anyhow, if one has the game code and the art assets, then there's nothing to stop you from replacing the assets in the game. If there's some DRM-encumbered binary blob for talking to the store, there'd be nothing stopping someone from coding their own replacement that points to another store.
Personally, from the tone of the announcement, I'd expect something like Google's app market. The official market would be the default, but there's nothing stopping you from connecting to an alternate market, or from installing modpacks you grab off some modder's website. Of course, if Epic doesn't make any money on the game, it'd be counted as a failed experiment, and we wouldn't see something similar from them anytime soon.
It seems like you have cause and effect backwards, here. Having privacy, even within a married couple, is healthy. There needs to be trust that your spouse isn't going to purposefully do something to harm the relationship. For instance, my wife texts and calls friends, and I generally don't know the content of those conversations. My wife telling me if I ask is trust, and it's healthy. If I demanded access to her E-mail, phone history, etc, that's not healthy, and it wouldn't be her fault if she wanted to maintain a corner of privacy in her life. You can't blame my jealousy and irrationality on her actions.
If I'm being abusive, then I'm not going to want her to find outside help, and I'm not going to want her to talk to her friends about her problems. I'll want to control every aspect of her life. That's the situation we're looking at, not an otherwise-stable relationship with communications issues.
In the U.S., that isn't strictly true (although it's often the case). By the Fair Labor Standards Act, if an employee doesn't make the federal minimum wage by a combination of the $2.13/hour direct wage and their tips, the employer is required to make up the difference.
Got a citation for that? A quick search shows Nexus 5 in-ear SAR to be 0.96W/kg (below the FCC's 1.6W/kg limit), and surface SAR for an operating microwave at roughly 8x that level.
If you're worried about someone tracking you, then I hope you pull the battery when you aren't using the phone. Even something that would be called a "feature phone" or a "dumb phone" has to keep in contact with the towers. A cell provider knows which towers you're in range of and the strength of signal to each tower. It's enough to get a decent idea of your location.
Social media is crap. I like having texting available, though (and I think you'd be hardpressed to find a phone that doesn't support some form of SMS). I like being able to carry a phone, GPS, camera, bookshelf, set of reference materials, pile of games, music and video player, programming environment, instrument, voice recorder, and OBD-2 reader in my pocket with me. Other than that, I agree; smartphones are only good for social media nonsense, email, and texts. Completely useless.
But if you have previous agreements with a large number of property owners to put up cameras in public places and use *those* to record someone's every move, you're not likely to be charged with anything (especially since setting up those agreements implies you have money, power, or both).
there will also be a market for those who want to physically own something
I'm in that market, generally. I own disks for most of the movies that I'd care to have. On DVD, $3-$5 is a good impulse buy price, $10 is reasonable for something that I'm really interested in, and something in the $15-$20 range *might* be doable if it's something that I really want (maybe one video per year). Blu-Ray *might* be reasonable to me at the same cost tiers, except that it's still less flexible. I can play a DVD on the device of my choice, using the OS of my choice. With Blu-Rays, I'm stuck using an appliance like a stand-alone player or a game console. It's more difficult to use them the ways that *I* want to, and in the most favorable light that I care to shine on them, the inconvenience provides a near-equal offset to their increased quality.
I've bought a number of them when the price came close to the price of the same thing on DVD (or when the package has both kinds of disk). My original assumption was that the encryption would be reliably cracked pretty quickly. That didn't really happen, so now I've got a bunch of disks that won't play in un-updated players, won't play on my PC that has a Blu-Ray drive, etc. When I buy a movie (a rarity, now), I tend to go for the DVD first. Blu-Ray is pretty, but it's a pain in the ass, and it's generally not worth the hassle and extra cost.
it's not as if you're being deprived of some designed, intended function of the vehicle.
Let's have a computer analogy. I write a piece of software that can fail in some known way (say, it can't open a file containing a cache of previously-retrieved information). Instead, it warns of the error, re-retrieves the information, and continues operation (essentially with a 0% cache hit rate). I release a new version that fails the operation if it can't open the cache. I'll receive complaints from customers. Similarly, extended crank time is a warning of impending trouble, but allows the vehicle to be used at a degraded level of operation. Proper handling of failure modes most certainly *is* "designed, intended function", and if you flub it, then you deserve the complaints you get.
Or I'm using a commonly-understood metaphor and assuming that no one's going to take me literally. Political correctness is bullshit. Heaven forbid I should ever say something that offends someone.
Change "web services" to "targeted advertising" (i.e., get rid of the marketing obfuscation), and most people will say "no" again. If you don't clearly tell someone who you're giving their information to and for what purposes, then the "yes" that they give isn't exactly informed consent.
Or, you're a grandmother, the computer-box is working like it always has, and you're afraid of changes that an upgrade would bring, don't have money for new hardware, etc.
Sprint recently (mid-March) announced a pay-as-you-go no-contract plan. I hadn't really looked into it; apparently your device choice is limited (iPhone 4s, Moto G, Galaxy S3, Galaxy S4 mini, and a feature phone). In my case, I bought the phone after my contract ended and got it activated on their network without signing a new agreement. I guess I should've attached a couple of asterisks on the end, in their case. AT&T has a bring your own device no-contract plan. I don't know when they announced it. T-Mobile has been offering no-contract plans for a while now (about a year ago).
Regardless, yes, you're right. T-Mobile is the only one of the "big 4" carriers that really advertises no-contract plans. There are a number of smaller carriers that do, but they often have device limitations. The U.S. is far behind Europe in terms of cell phone service and consumer choice; I was mostly taking exception to the statement that it is actually impossible to have a smartphone without a contract here.
Really? I've got a Nexus 5 purchased off contract. I can take the device to Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile, and presumably at least some of the smaller carriers and set up a non-contract account. In Sprint's case, I'd have to take the phone into the store to activate it. For the SIM-based networks, they can send me the SIM in the mail, and I can pop it in the phone. Even in the States, many carriers have bring-your-own-phone programs.
They'd use internally-stored energy to consume the glass for use as a structural material, possibly using sunlight as a further energy source as they did so. As far as cellulose, life *did* evolve a way to eat it eons ago. How else would you explain the gut flora of termites?
You're missing the point. The amendment doesn't say that firearms can only be used within a well-regulated militia. The justification clause doesn't legally limit the valid purposes for owning a weapon. If it said "Home defense being necessary for the security of the people,...", it wouldn't preclude someone from owning it for reasons that *don't* include home defense.
I would think that part of being "well-regulated" would be to require a safety device so that only the owner could actually fire the gun.
That's a silly thing to think. Is the US Army not "well-regulated" because its weapons don't require proof of ownership to fire?
If your central argument is that guns are dangerous, and we should accept some reasonable limitations for safety purposes, then I don't entirely disagree with that. If your argument is that the Supreme Court's interpretation of the 2nd amendment isn't valid, then I'd have to disagree (either that, or question the validity of the government as a whole).
And I've got an older phone than that, which got two weeks of operating time out of one charge. Since you've established that we can compare less-functional phones to more-functional ones and consider it a fair arrangement, I'm sure that you won't mind that it has a tiny non-touch screen, VGA camera, and 2G internet connection.
We've got a lot of robotics work to go if we're going to make it there by 2017.
Dalvik bytecode is processor agnostic and linux is multiarch
True, but from what I've heard, a fair number of apps use native architecture C/C++ libraries compiled to ARM, and some of the developers don't package x86 versions of the libraries in their apps. I'm all for more modular phones, though. I'd love to be able to replace the radio with a new one (swap out CDMA for GSM, or at least update to a newer one that hits the new frequencies that my provider has expanded into).
By the same argument, you could call a plumber a wrench-user (or, heck, an "operator of a hand-wrench interface"), and it would be true. The distinction is between someone trained primarily in how to use a tool and someone trained in developing fixes for problems and using an interface as a tool to put the fix in place. Any monkey can hit buttons on an interface without knowing the underlying theory and yell "Success!" when some near-randomly chosen combination of pokes happens to work. What we need in IT is someone that plans their changes ahead of time, based on an understanding of how the system works. It's incidental that they use an interface to actually deploy the fix.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't get to Polygon from here, so I read the entry on the Unreal Engine blog/wiki prior to my previous post. The game code doesn't look like it'll be under some kind of copyleft, but it *does* look like access to the data will be cheap ($19/seat/month and 5% of income from games based on the engine). In the EULA (which appears to govern licensee actions with the engine and UT Project game assets), I don't see anything stopping a developer from making a modified version of the main game executable and distributing it for free (presumably, the developer would be on the hook for hosting charges, since 5% of gross income from the game would go to Epic).
You can't distribute licensed source, licensed tools, or enough to allow users to create a "standalone product". You might be able to give them enough leeway to freely create content that relies on the product that you built (and are giving away for free). I'd imagine that someone will take at least that twisted of a view of their developer license, at some point.
"All code" doesn't mean a subset of the code. It means "all code". Anyhow, if one has the game code and the art assets, then there's nothing to stop you from replacing the assets in the game. If there's some DRM-encumbered binary blob for talking to the store, there'd be nothing stopping someone from coding their own replacement that points to another store.
Personally, from the tone of the announcement, I'd expect something like Google's app market. The official market would be the default, but there's nothing stopping you from connecting to an alternate market, or from installing modpacks you grab off some modder's website. Of course, if Epic doesn't make any money on the game, it'd be counted as a failed experiment, and we wouldn't see something similar from them anytime soon.
It seems like you have cause and effect backwards, here. Having privacy, even within a married couple, is healthy. There needs to be trust that your spouse isn't going to purposefully do something to harm the relationship. For instance, my wife texts and calls friends, and I generally don't know the content of those conversations. My wife telling me if I ask is trust, and it's healthy. If I demanded access to her E-mail, phone history, etc, that's not healthy, and it wouldn't be her fault if she wanted to maintain a corner of privacy in her life. You can't blame my jealousy and irrationality on her actions.
If I'm being abusive, then I'm not going to want her to find outside help, and I'm not going to want her to talk to her friends about her problems. I'll want to control every aspect of her life. That's the situation we're looking at, not an otherwise-stable relationship with communications issues.
In the U.S., that isn't strictly true (although it's often the case). By the Fair Labor Standards Act, if an employee doesn't make the federal minimum wage by a combination of the $2.13/hour direct wage and their tips, the employer is required to make up the difference.
I would say petition for a law where everyone gets paid the same no matter what they do.
....I'd rather not. If a coworker is competent, then I don't really care why they're working with me, as long as they're doing good work.
Got a citation for that? A quick search shows Nexus 5 in-ear SAR to be 0.96W/kg (below the FCC's 1.6W/kg limit), and surface SAR for an operating microwave at roughly 8x that level.
If you're worried about someone tracking you, then I hope you pull the battery when you aren't using the phone. Even something that would be called a "feature phone" or a "dumb phone" has to keep in contact with the towers. A cell provider knows which towers you're in range of and the strength of signal to each tower. It's enough to get a decent idea of your location.
Social media is crap. I like having texting available, though (and I think you'd be hardpressed to find a phone that doesn't support some form of SMS). I like being able to carry a phone, GPS, camera, bookshelf, set of reference materials, pile of games, music and video player, programming environment, instrument, voice recorder, and OBD-2 reader in my pocket with me. Other than that, I agree; smartphones are only good for social media nonsense, email, and texts. Completely useless.
But if you have previous agreements with a large number of property owners to put up cameras in public places and use *those* to record someone's every move, you're not likely to be charged with anything (especially since setting up those agreements implies you have money, power, or both).
there will also be a market for those who want to physically own something
I'm in that market, generally. I own disks for most of the movies that I'd care to have. On DVD, $3-$5 is a good impulse buy price, $10 is reasonable for something that I'm really interested in, and something in the $15-$20 range *might* be doable if it's something that I really want (maybe one video per year). Blu-Ray *might* be reasonable to me at the same cost tiers, except that it's still less flexible. I can play a DVD on the device of my choice, using the OS of my choice. With Blu-Rays, I'm stuck using an appliance like a stand-alone player or a game console. It's more difficult to use them the ways that *I* want to, and in the most favorable light that I care to shine on them, the inconvenience provides a near-equal offset to their increased quality.
I've bought a number of them when the price came close to the price of the same thing on DVD (or when the package has both kinds of disk). My original assumption was that the encryption would be reliably cracked pretty quickly. That didn't really happen, so now I've got a bunch of disks that won't play in un-updated players, won't play on my PC that has a Blu-Ray drive, etc. When I buy a movie (a rarity, now), I tend to go for the DVD first. Blu-Ray is pretty, but it's a pain in the ass, and it's generally not worth the hassle and extra cost.
America looks more and more like a communist country every coming decade.
I think the words you were looking for are "totalitarian police state", or the like.
it's not as if you're being deprived of some designed, intended function of the vehicle.
Let's have a computer analogy. I write a piece of software that can fail in some known way (say, it can't open a file containing a cache of previously-retrieved information). Instead, it warns of the error, re-retrieves the information, and continues operation (essentially with a 0% cache hit rate). I release a new version that fails the operation if it can't open the cache. I'll receive complaints from customers. Similarly, extended crank time is a warning of impending trouble, but allows the vehicle to be used at a degraded level of operation. Proper handling of failure modes most certainly *is* "designed, intended function", and if you flub it, then you deserve the complaints you get.
Or I'm using a commonly-understood metaphor and assuming that no one's going to take me literally. Political correctness is bullshit. Heaven forbid I should ever say something that offends someone.
Change "web services" to "targeted advertising" (i.e., get rid of the marketing obfuscation), and most people will say "no" again. If you don't clearly tell someone who you're giving their information to and for what purposes, then the "yes" that they give isn't exactly informed consent.
Or, you're a grandmother, the computer-box is working like it always has, and you're afraid of changes that an upgrade would bring, don't have money for new hardware, etc.
Sprint recently (mid-March) announced a pay-as-you-go no-contract plan. I hadn't really looked into it; apparently your device choice is limited (iPhone 4s, Moto G, Galaxy S3, Galaxy S4 mini, and a feature phone). In my case, I bought the phone after my contract ended and got it activated on their network without signing a new agreement. I guess I should've attached a couple of asterisks on the end, in their case. AT&T has a bring your own device no-contract plan. I don't know when they announced it. T-Mobile has been offering no-contract plans for a while now (about a year ago).
Regardless, yes, you're right. T-Mobile is the only one of the "big 4" carriers that really advertises no-contract plans. There are a number of smaller carriers that do, but they often have device limitations. The U.S. is far behind Europe in terms of cell phone service and consumer choice; I was mostly taking exception to the statement that it is actually impossible to have a smartphone without a contract here.
Does the Nexus 5 ship with support for both GSM/UMTS and CDMA2000 networks?
Yes. The phone's only got 2 models (in terms of radios, that it): US and World. The difference between them seems to be which CDMA bands they support.
A discount on the plan for not taking a subsidized phone is a fairly recent phenomenon.
True, and it's one of several reasons that I'm switching carriers.
Really? I've got a Nexus 5 purchased off contract. I can take the device to Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile, and presumably at least some of the smaller carriers and set up a non-contract account. In Sprint's case, I'd have to take the phone into the store to activate it. For the SIM-based networks, they can send me the SIM in the mail, and I can pop it in the phone. Even in the States, many carriers have bring-your-own-phone programs.
They'd use internally-stored energy to consume the glass for use as a structural material, possibly using sunlight as a further energy source as they did so. As far as cellulose, life *did* evolve a way to eat it eons ago. How else would you explain the gut flora of termites?
I would think that part of being "well-regulated" would be to require a safety device so that only the owner could actually fire the gun.
That's a silly thing to think. Is the US Army not "well-regulated" because its weapons don't require proof of ownership to fire?
If your central argument is that guns are dangerous, and we should accept some reasonable limitations for safety purposes, then I don't entirely disagree with that. If your argument is that the Supreme Court's interpretation of the 2nd amendment isn't valid, then I'd have to disagree (either that, or question the validity of the government as a whole).
Just because you need your hand held doesn't mean C++ is a turd. It means you aren't qualified to use it.
I'd paraphrase that more as "C++ is good, and you're too stupid to realize it." The AC wasn't calling C++ a turd.
And I've got an older phone than that, which got two weeks of operating time out of one charge. Since you've established that we can compare less-functional phones to more-functional ones and consider it a fair arrangement, I'm sure that you won't mind that it has a tiny non-touch screen, VGA camera, and 2G internet connection.
Dalvik bytecode is processor agnostic and linux is multiarch
True, but from what I've heard, a fair number of apps use native architecture C/C++ libraries compiled to ARM, and some of the developers don't package x86 versions of the libraries in their apps. I'm all for more modular phones, though. I'd love to be able to replace the radio with a new one (swap out CDMA for GSM, or at least update to a newer one that hits the new frequencies that my provider has expanded into).
And those Android phones are user upgradeable?
Replaceable and expandable memory and improved-capacity replacement batteries sound like upgrades to me.
By the same argument, you could call a plumber a wrench-user (or, heck, an "operator of a hand-wrench interface"), and it would be true. The distinction is between someone trained primarily in how to use a tool and someone trained in developing fixes for problems and using an interface as a tool to put the fix in place. Any monkey can hit buttons on an interface without knowing the underlying theory and yell "Success!" when some near-randomly chosen combination of pokes happens to work. What we need in IT is someone that plans their changes ahead of time, based on an understanding of how the system works. It's incidental that they use an interface to actually deploy the fix.