Sorry to sound negative, but I wonder how long it will be before Verizon remove both the unlimited data and the free tethering plans..? I suspect this will be something they offer only in the short term, to get people on board.
It wouldn't surprise me if they bring a 500MB cap to the data plans in 2012 and also began charging for tethering, much like how providers such as Orange have done in the UK...
I can live with 500MB, myself, but I know this annoys the living hell out of a lot of other people.
Please pardon my likely sheer ignorance (or even misunderstanding) on this topic, but how is it possible for someone to code a backdoor into encryption software in an open source project..? I mean, wouldn't someone notice..? Isn't that like someone just making another entrance to your house and then painting it over to match the brickwork..?
Unless, of course, all code is accepted in general good faith and there are very few eyes that are looking at this sort of thing.
Or it's open source code talking to closed source drivers, or something..?
... Wikipedia (yes, I know, I know)
From the criticism of the EPUB format: "One criticism of EPUB is that, while good for text-centric books, it may be unsuitable for publications which require precise layout or specialized formatting, such as a comic book"[1]
Comparing this with what the article says that Apple is doing, it sounds like they are trying to deal with this problem. I'm probably wrong, but that's my first impression. Let's just hope that they decide to submit the proposal for an update back to the standards committee.
I tend to always make an effort to finish a game that I start playing, even if I begin to dislike it (much like I do with books and films - I've never walked out of a movie, and only stop reading a book if it really, really is doing nothing for me). I rarely ever play games online (like many here, I'm unable to cope against exhaustively practiced 12-year-olds), so it's the single player experience for me that counts.
Generally, I also only ever have one game on a go at a time, which I guess helps things.
I even made it through to the end of Demon's Souls, a feat that I know many either gave up on or were simply unable to achieve.
I've been playing games since I was about 8, moving from a Commodore Plus 4, to C64, to Amiga, to PS1, to PS2, and now to PS3. I have noticed a sharp decline in the number of games that I play, through. Likely I'll become far more casual and start to only play games on my phone or something...
Given that there are really only two major retailers in the UK: GAME and GameStation, it's most likely them. Of course, it might be HMV, but they're not exactly specialist game retailers.
It's the sound of Oracle, Apple, Microsoft and Nokia all rubbing their hands together in glee, for all the patent infringement damages they'll be able to bring against Sony.
Seriously, these software patent disputes are pissing me off. It's like watching children fighting in a playground about who gets to go on the swings first...
Plaintiff: "When users of the Hacks download, install, and use the Hacks, they copy StarCraft II copyrighted content into their computer's RAM in excess of the scope of their limited license, as set forth in the EULA and ToU, and create derivative works of StarCraft II"
Judge: "Mr Player, how do you plead?"
Player: "Innocent, Your Honour. I didn't do it, a virus did."
... like Google is actually bending to the whim of the content providers, rather than forcing this on users themselves. After all, YouTube is free, and has ads at the bottom of the video (which you can click to remove), as well as the occasional 10 second ad before the main event. I don't believe this is *Google* being "evil"!
After all, wasn't it the music industry that forced Apple in to adopting DRM..? (or is that just what Apple would have us believe?)
An ideal would be:
This broadcast is free! But you'll have to watch a few ads before the main item begins, and have to view unskippable ads every now and again during it.
OR
Thanks for paying $2 for watching. You'll see no ads whatsoever.
That way, people who aren't too bothered about the ads can watch for free, and those that want to see it uninterrupted need just shell out $2 (or whatever the going rate is).
Of course, if you're a well known satellite broadcaster in the UK, you'd insist that viewers do both...
... Robert Langdon!!! I'm sure that buried somewhere in that seemingly random sequence of 1s and 0s is a code that will shake the very foundations of the human race and expose a truth that has long been hidden!
I can already hear Dan Brown feverishly scratching away at his notepad, as he begins researching and stringing together a load geographically accurate, but ultimately randomly contrived pile of nonsense for his next magnum opus, "The Canada Complex"
(disclaimer - I currently don't own an Android device, and don't have access to the store, so this may already exist)
... is a community-centric app evaluation system, so that rogue apps can be flagged up and possibly pulled from the store. We keep hearing about how Android apps are apparently harvesting data and shipping it off to some website or another. Or accessing people's phonebooks.
(yes, yes - I know that people are warned about these things, but a lot of end users are dumb and blinding press "YES" when they see a dialog box)
So, what would help is for members of the community to report malicious apps, and allow installing users to see before hand that it has been reported as misbehaving.
Of course, this won't help people who install APKs directly off the net, but then you only have yourself to blame. Example: BFTSSQuiz 0.65.apkDON'T INSTALL THIS APP - IT'S PRE-ALPHA! I wonder how many people'll download it, anyway...
How long would it take to set up a sustainable colony on Mars? Would we actually have more luck on the moon, or even building habitable orbital stations?
Domed settlements on Mars would be a short-term solution, but you'd probably need to terraform it at some point, to deal with the demands a species such as the human race would place on it. Wouldn't that take a few decades or more? We're not even sure if seeding an atmosphere with algae would work.
Likely some nutcase would sabotage the entire space faring race project by calling it a pox in the eye of God or something ridiculous like that.
And ultimately, by the time all this was done wouldn't Earth already be teetering on the brink of overpopulation, leading to wars for resources, global famine and zombie uprisings?
Sure, but the issue here is the ability to delete accounts. It's perfectly possible for someone to write something libelous and then wish a few years later that they could delete it. You could argue that it may not be possible to trace it back to its original owner, but most Slashdot users at some point point towards a website / project, etc. that can identify them.
"Registered slashdot users also tend not to be complete morons"
Slashdot uses a moderation system that allows users to mark others' comments as (amongst other things), Troll, as well as changing their relationship with one another. This therefore makes your statement largely a matter of personal opinion.
However, if you mean that Slashdot is largely devoid of txt spk 12 yr olds, then, yes.
Three of my own open source games have "Medals" implemented in them. I may be wrong, but other than online scoreboards, I don't believe any other open source games support such a system. Blob Wars : Metal Blob Solid was likely the first of its kind to do so.
Similar to Xbox Live and PSN, the player is rewarded for performing certain tasks, such as finishing a level, finding a secret, etc. The Medals come in a range of values: Bronze, Silver, Gold and Ruby.
It was largely something I did for fun and proof-of-concept, but also formed an interesting social experiment, since I was interested to see just how many people actually would just read the source code and cheat their way to earning all the rewards. So far, it appears that no one (or very few) have actually done so. But since the game is open source, there is no way of me from authenticating that a person really have completed a level or anything else, other than eyeballing the order and speed at which they have earned the medals.
For those interested, you may sign up for the medals at Parallel Realities:
But why do I have a sinking feeling that adoption of this new standard will be held back by Internet Explorer's atrocious handling of it?
I mean, IE7 is meant to be the most advanced and standards compliant IE there is, and yet it STILL can't render pages correctly; pages that Firefox, Safari, Opera and Konqueror all have no problems with.
Mull over whether or not your PC is ninja enough to play it
Buy, take home and insert disc(s)
Install, download patches, upgrade DirectX
Play
Game is slower than you like, tweak resolution, AA, sound, effects, etc. until game is smoother
Play
Crash
Play
Crash
Log into forums and post hardware specs, discuss with others experiencing problems
Download new driver for piece of hardware
Play
Crash
Remove / disable piece of hardware
Play
etc.
That's my own personal experience of PC vs Console gaming, and quite frankly I (as I imagine quite literally millions of gamers also do), prefer to simply insert the disc and play the game. I don't care that I don't have a nVidia 10 Billion X, allowing 19404 x 19304 resolutions, 256-bit colour, 32x multi scene ahead-of-frame anti-aliasing, with hardware bloom and post-processing eyeball burning rendering effects, I just want the game to work the developer intended it.
Blu-Ray > DVD, yet people still buy DVDs
MP3 > CD, yet people still buy CDs
HD > SD, yet people still buy SD TVs
UBS sticks > floppy disks, yet people still buy floppies
Judging by the sheer amount of space Blu-Ray is beginning to take up in most stores, I'm guessing that Blu-Ray will die a slow death of about 10 - 15 years.
There's also the other considerations: just because I have the ability to download and stream video online, doesn't mean it's better or I'd want to. In my experience, it's often lower quality, more expensive, more restrictive and is dependent on too many other factors (monthly bandwidth allowances, the need for a constant internet connection, strength of connection, etc).
Also, don't forget that people are shallow - people would look at the Mac Mini and ask "Where's the Blu-Ray? Isn't this thing meant to be cutting edge?".
Slashdot Mirror
Google Marketplace: "My house, my rules."
Android Phone User: "My phone, my rules."
Apple App Store: "My house, my rules."
iPhone User: "My phone, Apple's rules."
What's all this talk about piracy? As far as I understood it, people were cracking the PS3 so that they could install Linux and run homebrew...
Sorry to sound negative, but I wonder how long it will be before Verizon remove both the unlimited data and the free tethering plans..? I suspect this will be something they offer only in the short term, to get people on board.
It wouldn't surprise me if they bring a 500MB cap to the data plans in 2012 and also began charging for tethering, much like how providers such as Orange have done in the UK...
I can live with 500MB, myself, but I know this annoys the living hell out of a lot of other people.
Please pardon my likely sheer ignorance (or even misunderstanding) on this topic, but how is it possible for someone to code a backdoor into encryption software in an open source project..? I mean, wouldn't someone notice..? Isn't that like someone just making another entrance to your house and then painting it over to match the brickwork..?
Unless, of course, all code is accepted in general good faith and there are very few eyes that are looking at this sort of thing.
Or it's open source code talking to closed source drivers, or something..?
... Wikipedia (yes, I know, I know) From the criticism of the EPUB format: "One criticism of EPUB is that, while good for text-centric books, it may be unsuitable for publications which require precise layout or specialized formatting, such as a comic book"[1] Comparing this with what the article says that Apple is doing, it sounds like they are trying to deal with this problem. I'm probably wrong, but that's my first impression. Let's just hope that they decide to submit the proposal for an update back to the standards committee.
... is good, but I'm holding out for 4 Girls, 3 Kinects, 2 Boxes, 1 Cup :)
I tend to always make an effort to finish a game that I start playing, even if I begin to dislike it (much like I do with books and films - I've never walked out of a movie, and only stop reading a book if it really, really is doing nothing for me). I rarely ever play games online (like many here, I'm unable to cope against exhaustively practiced 12-year-olds), so it's the single player experience for me that counts.
Generally, I also only ever have one game on a go at a time, which I guess helps things.
I even made it through to the end of Demon's Souls, a feat that I know many either gave up on or were simply unable to achieve.
I've been playing games since I was about 8, moving from a Commodore Plus 4, to C64, to Amiga, to PS1, to PS2, and now to PS3. I have noticed a sharp decline in the number of games that I play, through. Likely I'll become far more casual and start to only play games on my phone or something...
... the biggest loser in all of this is the customer.
As per fucking usual.
The as-yet-unnamed retailers...
Given that there are really only two major retailers in the UK: GAME and GameStation, it's most likely them. Of course, it might be HMV, but they're not exactly specialist game retailers.
"...the PlayStation Phone will run Android"
It's the sound of Oracle, Apple, Microsoft and Nokia all rubbing their hands together in glee, for all the patent infringement damages they'll be able to bring against Sony.
Seriously, these software patent disputes are pissing me off. It's like watching children fighting in a playground about who gets to go on the swings first...
Plaintiff: "When users of the Hacks download, install, and use the Hacks, they copy StarCraft II copyrighted content into their computer's RAM in excess of the scope of their limited license, as set forth in the EULA and ToU, and create derivative works of StarCraft II"
Judge: "Mr Player, how do you plead?"
Player: "Innocent, Your Honour. I didn't do it, a virus did."
... like Google is actually bending to the whim of the content providers, rather than forcing this on users themselves. After all, YouTube is free, and has ads at the bottom of the video (which you can click to remove), as well as the occasional 10 second ad before the main event. I don't believe this is *Google* being "evil"!
After all, wasn't it the music industry that forced Apple in to adopting DRM..? (or is that just what Apple would have us believe?)
An ideal would be:
OR
That way, people who aren't too bothered about the ads can watch for free, and those that want to see it uninterrupted need just shell out $2 (or whatever the going rate is).
Of course, if you're a well known satellite broadcaster in the UK, you'd insist that viewers do both...
... Robert Langdon!!! I'm sure that buried somewhere in that seemingly random sequence of 1s and 0s is a code that will shake the very foundations of the human race and expose a truth that has long been hidden!
I can already hear Dan Brown feverishly scratching away at his notepad, as he begins researching and stringing together a load geographically accurate, but ultimately randomly contrived pile of nonsense for his next magnum opus, "The Canada Complex"
(disclaimer - I currently don't own an Android device, and don't have access to the store, so this may already exist)
... is a community-centric app evaluation system, so that rogue apps can be flagged up and possibly pulled from the store. We keep hearing about how Android apps are apparently harvesting data and shipping it off to some website or another. Or accessing people's phonebooks.
(yes, yes - I know that people are warned about these things, but a lot of end users are dumb and blinding press "YES" when they see a dialog box)
So, what would help is for members of the community to report malicious apps, and allow installing users to see before hand that it has been reported as misbehaving.
Of course, this won't help people who install APKs directly off the net, but then you only have yourself to blame. Example: BFTSSQuiz 0.65.apkDON'T INSTALL THIS APP - IT'S PRE-ALPHA! I wonder how many people'll download it, anyway...
... because you'll be giving me the book for free, right?
But if not, I don't want the ads. You've already made your money off me, thanks.
One or the other, guys. But not both. This is the one reason I don't subscribe to Sky - I have to pay for it AND put up with ads. Greedy bastards.
... is the asking price of the dongle. They're taking pre-orders now, apparently. Take the money and run..?
How long would it take to set up a sustainable colony on Mars? Would we actually have more luck on the moon, or even building habitable orbital stations?
Domed settlements on Mars would be a short-term solution, but you'd probably need to terraform it at some point, to deal with the demands a species such as the human race would place on it. Wouldn't that take a few decades or more? We're not even sure if seeding an atmosphere with algae would work.
Likely some nutcase would sabotage the entire space faring race project by calling it a pox in the eye of God or something ridiculous like that.
And ultimately, by the time all this was done wouldn't Earth already be teetering on the brink of overpopulation, leading to wars for resources, global famine and zombie uprisings?
... irony.
"Slashdot is a different beast, though."
Sure, but the issue here is the ability to delete accounts. It's perfectly possible for someone to write something libelous and then wish a few years later that they could delete it. You could argue that it may not be possible to trace it back to its original owner, but most Slashdot users at some point point towards a website / project, etc. that can identify them.
"Registered slashdot users also tend not to be complete morons"
Slashdot uses a moderation system that allows users to mark others' comments as (amongst other things), Troll, as well as changing their relationship with one another. This therefore makes your statement largely a matter of personal opinion.
However, if you mean that Slashdot is largely devoid of txt spk 12 yr olds, then, yes.
... the only winning move is not to play.
Three of my own open source games have "Medals" implemented in them. I may be wrong, but other than online scoreboards, I don't believe any other open source games support such a system. Blob Wars : Metal Blob Solid was likely the first of its kind to do so.
Similar to Xbox Live and PSN, the player is rewarded for performing certain tasks, such as finishing a level, finding a secret, etc. The Medals come in a range of values: Bronze, Silver, Gold and Ruby.
It was largely something I did for fun and proof-of-concept, but also formed an interesting social experiment, since I was interested to see just how many people actually would just read the source code and cheat their way to earning all the rewards. So far, it appears that no one (or very few) have actually done so. But since the game is open source, there is no way of me from authenticating that a person really have completed a level or anything else, other than eyeballing the order and speed at which they have earned the medals.
For those interested, you may sign up for the medals at Parallel Realities:
http://www.parallelrealities.co.uk/medals/index.php
Currently, Metal Blob Solid, Virus Killer and Legend of Edgar support the system.
But why do I have a sinking feeling that adoption of this new standard will be held back by Internet Explorer's atrocious handling of it?
I mean, IE7 is meant to be the most advanced and standards compliant IE there is, and yet it STILL can't render pages correctly; pages that Firefox, Safari, Opera and Konqueror all have no problems with.
Console:
PC:
That's my own personal experience of PC vs Console gaming, and quite frankly I (as I imagine quite literally millions of gamers also do), prefer to simply insert the disc and play the game. I don't care that I don't have a nVidia 10 Billion X, allowing 19404 x 19304 resolutions, 256-bit colour, 32x multi scene ahead-of-frame anti-aliasing, with hardware bloom and post-processing eyeball burning rendering effects, I just want the game to work the developer intended it.
(goes and puts on anti-flame suit)
I remember when I used to use the internet all the time - shopping on Amazon, reading the news, doing research, etc.
Now I don't bother and nor does anyone else. People are now into Facebook and Twitter, iPhones and iTunes.
Prince is right - The internet could've been massive, but it's now just full of ads.
"Blu-Ray is dead, it just doesn't know it yet."
Blu-Ray > DVD, yet people still buy DVDs
MP3 > CD, yet people still buy CDs
HD > SD, yet people still buy SD TVs
UBS sticks > floppy disks, yet people still buy floppies
Judging by the sheer amount of space Blu-Ray is beginning to take up in most stores, I'm guessing that Blu-Ray will die a slow death of about 10 - 15 years.
There's also the other considerations: just because I have the ability to download and stream video online, doesn't mean it's better or I'd want to. In my experience, it's often lower quality, more expensive, more restrictive and is dependent on too many other factors (monthly bandwidth allowances, the need for a constant internet connection, strength of connection, etc).
Also, don't forget that people are shallow - people would look at the Mac Mini and ask "Where's the Blu-Ray? Isn't this thing meant to be cutting edge?".