If Apple gets away with it, what can their competitors offer to get you to buy their version instead of Apple's?
Apple can offer a heavily DRMed and locked down experience because they serve it up with a reputation for a highly polished overall user experience right out of the box.
Can the competitor provide higher quality? Maybe...but they still need to get the consumer to believe that. More innovation? We wouldn't be having this conversation about Apple if it was their competitor leading the way. Lower prices? Yes, definitely, Apple's products tend to be overpriced and are quickly undercut by the competition, but the competition's price cuts hacks directly at their profit margin.
How about a more open experience? It's a cheap way to one-up Apple, and it saves money on the overhead of running everything through an approval process. Certainly less damage to their bottom-line than engaging in a price war.
Obviously not all companies will see it the same way, but there is incentive for at least some of them to give it a shot. Particularly if all of them drive at the locked-down approach of Apple, then there will be an underserved niche market of geeks who want to install their own stuff on it. Then some company will try to sell to that market.
There's a problem for those who aren't interested in sports, because unlike national healthcare, I can't ignore it.
I know all the top headlines, I can't bring myself to set aside time to study sports. It's so painfully boring to read about sets of people reperforming the same actions every week, every year. They even attach numbers to the repetition and find amazement and wonder in it. All I see is that somebody put a ball through the hoop...AGAIN, what makes it different this time? They do it all the time!
Nobody wants to talk to me about the news, and nobody wants to hear me talk to them about it. But sports? It's/everywhere/, and I have to either study it, or sit there numbly while everybody else bonds and networks around me.
Flash is poorly optimized, but even using the original EEEPC with the weakest hardware of all the netbooks out there, running the default Xandros distro, I haven't had any issues with websites using Flash.
I'm half-joking and half-serious here, but man-bags are on the rise.
It's still sort of taboo here in the US(unless it's a bag for work), but in Europe and Asia, there's nothing out of the ordinary when a man walks around with a bag. It's a bit odd since men had been wearing bags for quite a long time before men in the US decided it was unfashionable.
I was a little anxious about walking around in public with a man-purse, but I got over it. Yes all my friends made fun of me at first, but they had to grudgingly acknowledge that all they were carrying was keys, phone, and a wallet because they couldn't fit anything else. Meanwhile I had a keys, wallet, phone, ipod, card wallet, gum, glasses, cleaning cloth, contact case, eye drops, aspirin, pen, notepad, athsma inhaler, and a multi-tool, and an alcohol spray by default, with room to add anything I might need specifically for that day like gloves, tieclip, USBstick, etc. etc. A manbag works well with the geek-lifestyle, particularly for the gadget fiends out there. It even works for Jack Bauer man-of-action! Saw him sporting a new leather bag this season.
I could conceivably toss an "iPad" in there(that is, if I wanted one). The main issue is weight because once a shoulderbag goes beyond 2lbs it stops being comfortable during long walks. Netbooks can be carried in a shoulderbag, but not comfortably, I'd rather leave it at home if I didn't need it. At 1lb, an iPad may be feasible for some people to carry on a day to day basis.
Kenneth Cole has a fine variety of man-bags (The canvas day bag at around $50 is a great place to start), there are also some good deals at Ebags.com
Yes, I was forced to make the switch about 2 weeks ago starting a new job that used office 2007 on all computers by default. It was rocky at first but I got used to it and I've found qualities that I like in 2007, such as the alt-key throwing up key reference bubbles on every icon so that I can learn the keyboard navigation more quickly.
However, I don't like that all the keyboard navigation I'd already memorized had been switched around...but again, I got used to it. I had already tried to switch on my home computer several months ago and hated it, but having it imposed on me at work was the impetus needed for me to stare hard enough to learn it properly.
The layout is indeed an improvement to 2003's, it's just a pain to learn a different one when I've already memorized the last one. I appreciate Format Painter.
However, while I appreciate the key reference bubbles when I press ALT, I HATE that they've removed the ability to customize keys! I used ALT+R to highlight in red, ALT+B to highlight in blue, and ALT+G to return to normal formatting. But in Excel 2007, customization has been removed, now all you have is Macros, and all macro hotkeys must use CTRL. Almost all the letters in combination with CTRL already have a function bound to them. That leaves me with a combination of CTRL+ALT, or CTRL+SHIFT as the modifier, and hitting CTRL+AlT+G just isn't practical with one hand. Too awkward, too slow. That means I have to waste time reaching over for the mouse all the time. Not good. Adding Font Color or Fill Color to the Quick-Access toolbar allows you to assign them to ALT+ number keys, but unlike 2003, you can only assign them to open the font color or fill color menus, which I don't need. I want it to/apply/ the color so I don't have to keep moving for the damn mouse.
If someone knows of the Excel 2007 workaround to get this Excel 2003 functionality, I'd love to hear it.
Deleting still isn't the best way for them to cover-up e-mails.
The best way would to be say you "lost them", take time to filter through and delete anything incriminating, then come out and say you "found them" so that people won't think you just deleted everything to cover yourself.
More importantly, it doesn't matter if the slashdotter thinks it's "obvious". The scientific method isn't waived aside because someone thinks the information is "obvious". It still needs either a proof or a proper study. Plenty of "obvious" facts turn out to be wrong after someone takes the time to check if it's fact or fiction.
I remember hearing that burning off aggression with physical exertion was widely advocated. Then it was found that it formed a habit of channeling aggression into physical expression.
Instead they advocated suppressing the aggression. Instead of building up a hidden repository of repressed anger as was expected by many, some psychologists showed their subjects were learning to eliminate their aggression instead of storing it up for later.
But I am not a psychologist. I cannot reference the studies. I'm just passing along an interesting point made by my psychology professor (for an intro course I was merely taking to satisfy graduation requirements). There's probably plenty of ongoing debate on the subject, as is often the case in soft sciences.
I think this study underscores that there should be more co-op games out there. I like to play with my friends, but I don't like playing against them competitively. We end up having to try to squeeze all of us onto the same team, but invariably there's still one of us marooned on the other side. Even if we all successfully join the same team, we end up severely unbalancing the competition since we have a pre-existing foundation in working together.
Cooperative games like Left 4 Dead are a blast, it's shame there isn't more like it.
Gaming has become more ubiquitous. The title of gamer isn't reserved for pale, lonesome, sickly youths anymore. Everybody's dabbled in games a little bit, some more than others.
And really, since most gamers are 20-30, they're well past the high-school clique classifications. Unless they happen to be one of the few people on a college's sports team, they're probably just another faceless student in the crowd. And in that mass of people, plenty of them make use of the gym in anonymity. The relationship between gaming and athleticism is far weaker than it used to be.
It's reverse marketing. They put out a video so horrendously bad that the internet devours it and regurgitates it over and over as an orgy of viral revulsion sweeps through the population.
Now we're all talking about Windows 7, even if it's just to laugh at how lame this video is.
The problem with sanctions is that the people in power don't give a damn how bad you hurt their constituents. They didn't even vote for Ahmadinejad in the last election and he's still in power.
The international community can either invade or get used to the idea of Iran getting a nuclear weapon. That's pretty much it. War is too distasteful, especially right now, so nobody's going to invade. So sooner or later, Iran WILL have their nuclear weapons. The opposition just doesn't have the economic or political capital to blow on a pre-emptive war right now.
Re:Pathologic, not fun; depressing
on
Imagination In Games
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Thanks for the reference, I'll check it out (if I can find a place to get it!)
It's surprising that that this game is so long. Typically indie games don't have the resources to develop a game's depth through content, and are forced to generate it through gameplay mechanics.
Re:like Oddworld or Psychonauts
on
Imagination In Games
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I think players want realistic games to be realistic and stylistic games to be stylistic.
Katamari damacy and Okami have very distinctive presentations that aren't realistic at all. Beyond Good and Evil had fantastic art design but used acartoon style.
Like the OP was saying about immersion, the game should suck the player in. Perhaps the problem for many games is that they're all trying to be realistic, but the bar for realism has already been set absurdly high by all the expensive AAA titles. Katamari's blocky whimsical design isn't bashed for being realistic because it was never intended to be. Everything in the game looked like it "belonged" in the setting.
Games that try to present a realistic atmosphere end up getting judged by the likes of Gears of War and Crysis, while a games with a unique art design aren't subjected to that standard. Perhaps dev studios could save a lot of money by intentionally avoiding any comparison to realism?
"The problem is, we have this odd expectation that any software, from a compiler, to a game, to an office suite to a browser should be instinctive by use of other software. That is, they think Word processor == Word. So when you take another word processor such as Open Office, they expect it to work -exactly- like Word. Any differences are seen as "faults".
That's an accurate characterization of the average joe trying to use Linux.
But it's a fair evaluation on behalf of the average joe. Bottom line is that the benefits of switching to Linux need out outweigh the cost of learning how to use it. Clearly, most people are willing to either stick with pre-installed windows, buying windows, or pirating windows since they already know how to use it. From their perspective, differences are indeed faults, and if Linux is to spread to these people the software will need to measure up to the user's standards.
For linux distro to increase adoption rates, I would suggest that the usability threshold should be set at the level of the average/windows/ user.
Because that's what the majority of the population is using, and they'll just switch right back to windows if they try Linux and can't accomplish what they already know how to accomplish in windows. If they're exploring Linux, the benefits will need to outweigh the drawback of researching how to get things done. Lowering the barriers to entry would help Linux adoption considerably. Some distros are better than others at doing this, but sooner or later they all force the user to look up obscure console command syntax so that they get things working.
The judge may very well see this as: "You agreed to the terms of the contract, so you're bound by them. If you didn't like it, you shouldn't have agreed."
Continuing to pay for the service can be used as proof that you agree to the modified terms.
I'd be interested in hearing more about this. It sounds like the only way for consumers to prevent a "no class-action lawsuit" clause from getting handed down on them from above.
I'm wondering what arguments they could have used to convince the court? I'm sure that Paypal would simply counter that they should just stop using Paypal if they don't like it, and that they can just use money-orders or some other alternative.
We already have a lot of stuff on treads and wheels, so they want to lead in a new direction. Literally, there's no point in re-inventing the wheel.
Much of human civilization is designed around the human form, and a robot capable of humanoid movement may have advantages than other forms of movement do not. Maybe they'll be able to walk down the hall, open the door, bend over and grab the newspaper, go up the stairs, sidestep around the hyper-active 6-year old running down the hall, and hand us the newspaper. Perhaps with time they'll surpass humans at humanoid movement. Who knows? But these researchers want to try and see.
Slashdot Mirror
There's another way to look at it:
If Apple gets away with it, what can their competitors offer to get you to buy their version instead of Apple's?
Apple can offer a heavily DRMed and locked down experience because they serve it up with a reputation for a highly polished overall user experience right out of the box.
Can the competitor provide higher quality? Maybe...but they still need to get the consumer to believe that. More innovation? We wouldn't be having this conversation about Apple if it was their competitor leading the way. Lower prices? Yes, definitely, Apple's products tend to be overpriced and are quickly undercut by the competition, but the competition's price cuts hacks directly at their profit margin.
How about a more open experience? It's a cheap way to one-up Apple, and it saves money on the overhead of running everything through an approval process. Certainly less damage to their bottom-line than engaging in a price war.
Obviously not all companies will see it the same way, but there is incentive for at least some of them to give it a shot. Particularly if all of them drive at the locked-down approach of Apple, then there will be an underserved niche market of geeks who want to install their own stuff on it. Then some company will try to sell to that market.
There's a problem for those who aren't interested in sports, because unlike national healthcare, I can't ignore it.
I know all the top headlines, I can't bring myself to set aside time to study sports. It's so painfully boring to read about sets of people reperforming the same actions every week, every year. They even attach numbers to the repetition and find amazement and wonder in it. All I see is that somebody put a ball through the hoop...AGAIN, what makes it different this time? They do it all the time!
Nobody wants to talk to me about the news, and nobody wants to hear me talk to them about it. But sports? It's /everywhere/, and I have to either study it, or sit there numbly while everybody else bonds and networks around me.
Except sports, the more sports you know, the better off you'll be.
Flash is poorly optimized, but even using the original EEEPC with the weakest hardware of all the netbooks out there, running the default Xandros distro, I haven't had any issues with websites using Flash.
I'm half-joking and half-serious here, but man-bags are on the rise.
It's still sort of taboo here in the US(unless it's a bag for work), but in Europe and Asia, there's nothing out of the ordinary when a man walks around with a bag. It's a bit odd since men had been wearing bags for quite a long time before men in the US decided it was unfashionable.
I was a little anxious about walking around in public with a man-purse, but I got over it. Yes all my friends made fun of me at first, but they had to grudgingly acknowledge that all they were carrying was keys, phone, and a wallet because they couldn't fit anything else. Meanwhile I had a keys, wallet, phone, ipod, card wallet, gum, glasses, cleaning cloth, contact case, eye drops, aspirin, pen, notepad, athsma inhaler, and a multi-tool, and an alcohol spray by default, with room to add anything I might need specifically for that day like gloves, tieclip, USBstick, etc. etc. A manbag works well with the geek-lifestyle, particularly for the gadget fiends out there. It even works for Jack Bauer man-of-action! Saw him sporting a new leather bag this season.
I could conceivably toss an "iPad" in there(that is, if I wanted one). The main issue is weight because once a shoulderbag goes beyond 2lbs it stops being comfortable during long walks. Netbooks can be carried in a shoulderbag, but not comfortably, I'd rather leave it at home if I didn't need it. At 1lb, an iPad may be feasible for some people to carry on a day to day basis.
Kenneth Cole has a fine variety of man-bags (The canvas day bag at around $50 is a great place to start), there are also some good deals at Ebags.com
Yes, I was forced to make the switch about 2 weeks ago starting a new job that used office 2007 on all computers by default. It was rocky at first but I got used to it and I've found qualities that I like in 2007, such as the alt-key throwing up key reference bubbles on every icon so that I can learn the keyboard navigation more quickly.
However, I don't like that all the keyboard navigation I'd already memorized had been switched around...but again, I got used to it. I had already tried to switch on my home computer several months ago and hated it, but having it imposed on me at work was the impetus needed for me to stare hard enough to learn it properly.
The layout is indeed an improvement to 2003's, it's just a pain to learn a different one when I've already memorized the last one. I appreciate Format Painter.
However, while I appreciate the key reference bubbles when I press ALT, I HATE that they've removed the ability to customize keys! I used ALT+R to highlight in red, ALT+B to highlight in blue, and ALT+G to return to normal formatting. But in Excel 2007, customization has been removed, now all you have is Macros, and all macro hotkeys must use CTRL. Almost all the letters in combination with CTRL already have a function bound to them. That leaves me with a combination of CTRL+ALT, or CTRL+SHIFT as the modifier, and hitting CTRL+AlT+G just isn't practical with one hand. Too awkward, too slow. That means I have to waste time reaching over for the mouse all the time. Not good. Adding Font Color or Fill Color to the Quick-Access toolbar allows you to assign them to ALT+ number keys, but unlike 2003, you can only assign them to open the font color or fill color menus, which I don't need. I want it to /apply/ the color so I don't have to keep moving for the damn mouse.
If someone knows of the Excel 2007 workaround to get this Excel 2003 functionality, I'd love to hear it.
Deleting still isn't the best way for them to cover-up e-mails.
The best way would to be say you "lost them", take time to filter through and delete anything incriminating, then come out and say you "found them" so that people won't think you just deleted everything to cover yourself.
What do you guys think about the ethics of pirating a PC game if you've paid for the console version? (Regardless of what the law might say about it)
It looks like it'll be more painful from having to hold your fingers in the air all day to avoid clicking somewhere at random!
More importantly, it doesn't matter if the slashdotter thinks it's "obvious". The scientific method isn't waived aside because someone thinks the information is "obvious". It still needs either a proof or a proper study. Plenty of "obvious" facts turn out to be wrong after someone takes the time to check if it's fact or fiction.
I remember hearing that burning off aggression with physical exertion was widely advocated. Then it was found that it formed a habit of channeling aggression into physical expression.
Instead they advocated suppressing the aggression. Instead of building up a hidden repository of repressed anger as was expected by many, some psychologists showed their subjects were learning to eliminate their aggression instead of storing it up for later.
But I am not a psychologist. I cannot reference the studies. I'm just passing along an interesting point made by my psychology professor (for an intro course I was merely taking to satisfy graduation requirements). There's probably plenty of ongoing debate on the subject, as is often the case in soft sciences.
I think this study underscores that there should be more co-op games out there. I like to play with my friends, but I don't like playing against them competitively. We end up having to try to squeeze all of us onto the same team, but invariably there's still one of us marooned on the other side. Even if we all successfully join the same team, we end up severely unbalancing the competition since we have a pre-existing foundation in working together.
Cooperative games like Left 4 Dead are a blast, it's shame there isn't more like it.
Gaming has become more ubiquitous. The title of gamer isn't reserved for pale, lonesome, sickly youths anymore. Everybody's dabbled in games a little bit, some more than others.
And really, since most gamers are 20-30, they're well past the high-school clique classifications. Unless they happen to be one of the few people on a college's sports team, they're probably just another faceless student in the crowd. And in that mass of people, plenty of them make use of the gym in anonymity. The relationship between gaming and athleticism is far weaker than it used to be.
It's reverse marketing. They put out a video so horrendously bad that the internet devours it and regurgitates it over and over as an orgy of viral revulsion sweeps through the population.
Now we're all talking about Windows 7, even if it's just to laugh at how lame this video is.
The problem with sanctions is that the people in power don't give a damn how bad you hurt their constituents. They didn't even vote for Ahmadinejad in the last election and he's still in power.
The international community can either invade or get used to the idea of Iran getting a nuclear weapon. That's pretty much it. War is too distasteful, especially right now, so nobody's going to invade. So sooner or later, Iran WILL have their nuclear weapons. The opposition just doesn't have the economic or political capital to blow on a pre-emptive war right now.
Thanks for the reference, I'll check it out (if I can find a place to get it!)
It's surprising that that this game is so long. Typically indie games don't have the resources to develop a game's depth through content, and are forced to generate it through gameplay mechanics.
I think players want realistic games to be realistic and stylistic games to be stylistic.
Katamari damacy and Okami have very distinctive presentations that aren't realistic at all. Beyond Good and Evil had fantastic art design but used acartoon style.
Like the OP was saying about immersion, the game should suck the player in. Perhaps the problem for many games is that they're all trying to be realistic, but the bar for realism has already been set absurdly high by all the expensive AAA titles. Katamari's blocky whimsical design isn't bashed for being realistic because it was never intended to be. Everything in the game looked like it "belonged" in the setting.
Games that try to present a realistic atmosphere end up getting judged by the likes of Gears of War and Crysis, while a games with a unique art design aren't subjected to that standard. Perhaps dev studios could save a lot of money by intentionally avoiding any comparison to realism?
"The problem is, we have this odd expectation that any software, from a compiler, to a game, to an office suite to a browser should be instinctive by use of other software. That is, they think Word processor == Word. So when you take another word processor such as Open Office, they expect it to work -exactly- like Word. Any differences are seen as "faults".
That's an accurate characterization of the average joe trying to use Linux.
But it's a fair evaluation on behalf of the average joe. Bottom line is that the benefits of switching to Linux need out outweigh the cost of learning how to use it. Clearly, most people are willing to either stick with pre-installed windows, buying windows, or pirating windows since they already know how to use it. From their perspective, differences are indeed faults, and if Linux is to spread to these people the software will need to measure up to the user's standards.
For linux distro to increase adoption rates, I would suggest that the usability threshold should be set at the level of the average /windows/ user.
Because that's what the majority of the population is using, and they'll just switch right back to windows if they try Linux and can't accomplish what they already know how to accomplish in windows. If they're exploring Linux, the benefits will need to outweigh the drawback of researching how to get things done. Lowering the barriers to entry would help Linux adoption considerably. Some distros are better than others at doing this, but sooner or later they all force the user to look up obscure console command syntax so that they get things working.
Nice, sounds like there's hope for the consumer after all.
Thanks for the reference! I appreciate it.
Why do you say that?
The judge may very well see this as:
"You agreed to the terms of the contract, so you're bound by them. If you didn't like it, you shouldn't have agreed."
Continuing to pay for the service can be used as proof that you agree to the modified terms.
I'd be interested in hearing more about this. It sounds like the only way for consumers to prevent a "no class-action lawsuit" clause from getting handed down on them from above.
I'm wondering what arguments they could have used to convince the court? I'm sure that Paypal would simply counter that they should just stop using Paypal if they don't like it, and that they can just use money-orders or some other alternative.
We already have a lot of stuff on treads and wheels, so they want to lead in a new direction. Literally, there's no point in re-inventing the wheel.
Much of human civilization is designed around the human form, and a robot capable of humanoid movement may have advantages than other forms of movement do not. Maybe they'll be able to walk down the hall, open the door, bend over and grab the newspaper, go up the stairs, sidestep around the hyper-active 6-year old running down the hall, and hand us the newspaper. Perhaps with time they'll surpass humans at humanoid movement. Who knows? But these researchers want to try and see.
I was a little incredulous that in this setting, they chose to confine the player to a bland city of greys and browns.
They could have taken the player on a joyride through any number of settings since /reality itself/ is malleable in the Matrix universe.
Xbox Live Arcade of course, but I heard rumors that they're trying to push indie developers away recently. Haven't looked into it.
There's been a lot of successful indie releases through it, and Xbox 360 has the most developed multiplayer system among the 3 consoles.
Bridging the gap between a PC and the Xbox360 was made to be considerably easier than PC to the PS3 or Wii.