I honestly would like to see how much console games sell vs PC games. Saying how much of that is due to piracy, I'm afraid, is impossible unless you come up with a model which is better than the download=lost sale model, which is absurdly broken.
I know vgchartz isn't a very reliable source, but according to that site, the super-top-selling game franchise CoD sells 20M. This is a non-trivial delta. Now, maybe Steam accounts for most downloads and those don't show up in vgchartz. I honestly don't know. As I said, I would like to see some real data about sales of PC vs console.
But given the a-priori data I am seeing, I would not be surprised to see that the PC has, in fact, become a very different gamer audience.
The fact that many games (including this one) does not sell well among PC gamers is no secret. I don't like Ubisoft because they do lots of bad ports and put very aggressive DRM on some of their games, but right now I can't blame them for being realistic.
This is no WoW, no StarCraft, no Minecraft, its one of those games that can sell tons on consoles but almost nothing on PCs. It's not like this is something new, the data is there, it's not an opinion. They know it isn't going to sell well in the PC platform and I don't think you can blame them for not throwing money at a risky move right away.
I'm thinking that maybe this isn't a typo, and its intended to just avoid reading. But how would you prevent it from being overwritten, thus producing a new, rebuilt, forged but apparently cryptographically correct hashed logfile?
"journal all entries are cryptographically hashed along with the hash of the previous entry in the file. This results in a chain of entries, where each entry authenticates all previous ones. If the top-most hash is regularly saved to a secure write-only location, the full chain is authenticated by it." (emphasis mine)
This is the first thing I thought too. But if I'm going to have many piped commands, why not add one more that cats the thing in text format? I can't think of a reason to why that would be inconvenient. My rotated syslog is gzipped and I can just zcat it, or even cat | gunzip - | whatever it. So the slight inconvenience *might* well be outweighed by the new benefits.
Last time it was planned as an upgrade, has the alpha channel made it to the improvements? It's a bit sad to release an image file format for the future of the web that doesn't support transparency IMHO
As much as I hate flash..
on
Occupy Flash?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
As much as I hate flash, you gotta admit flash existed for a reason: it filled the gaps where HTML was more lacking. Unfortunately, that's still true today even with HTML5, although the trend towards HTML5 is very obvious and clear.
Many browsers still can't playback HTML5 properly and there isn't even a single video codec which will work consistently across browsers just like flash does, AFAIK. (I'm talking about h264 license issues, WebM's lack of hardware decoding, etc..). Also, while rich media solutions are certainly possible with CSS3 and javascript, it still requires significantly more effort than its flash counterparts.
Of course, that doesn't excuse many many (many) uses where flash isn't really necessary but still being used. THAT must go. And flash video should be avoided where possible if the browser supports anything else. I think the main issue with that is that many web developers are still being lazy (hey, megavideo, I'm looking at you!).
But flash still accomplishes some things across browsers consistently in a way that HTML5 and CSS3 still can't - or at least not effortlessly for the web developer, which is what counts most of the times; let's hope Adobe helps with that with the HTML5 tools they are building.
So don't blame everything on flash, the standards are advancing too slowly IMHO even with backers such as Apple and Google.
Everybody knew eventually this was going to happen. Adobe started transitioning to HTML5 years ago. Clearly they aren't there yet, but this is proof that progress is being made. (finally! the end of flash is not near, but it's certainly coming!)
It's almost 2012, I think Adobe is doing this at the right time now that most browsers are starting to be fairly HTML5-complete (as complete as HTML5 itself is, which is not _that_ much).
I know many now think "Steve Jobs was right!". Well, I don't think it took a genius to know that this was coming, Adobe has been preparing for it ever since HTML5 started going big (thanks to Apple and Google, among many others). I would not say this is Adobe "finally giving in" to Steve, because Adobe has never really opposed HTML5 AFAIK. Flash has always been complementary to stuff the web was not ready for; even if we hate flash that's why it existed. Now its 2012, not 2007, and most people are ready to go HTML5 and definitely drop flash (wide browser support, more mature spec, somewhat consistent across browsers, etc.. at least compared to 2007).
The article explains why the asteroid looks like a pixelated sprite taken from the era of Monkey Island.
For those that didn't want to bother reading both articles and just wanted to have a look at the image but then thought "WTF" after having a look at it:
"The individual pulses can be timed very accurately as well, so that the shape of the asteroid can be determined, too. If there is a bump on the asteroid, like a hill, then a pulse hitting that won’t travel quite as far as a pulse that hits a crater. It gets back sooner, and this can be measured. The spatial resolution of this method at the distance of YU 55 will be about 4 meters, so they’ll be able to make an image that’s about 100 pixels across of it."
Right, but I think the motivation here is greatly exaggerated. The search is only "broken" (if you can call it that) when doing search from the phone. Fire up the android market website and it gets much better. I recall reading somewhere that the market now uses google's search for providing search results, maybe someone can confirm (or refute) this.
So what will happen to all those companies if google flips a switch tomorrow and all phones provide better search results? Also, keep in mind that there are not many apps, as in there are 1M apps for any app store. It's not like you have a lot of quality results to show like when you search the web.
Excellent. I have never seen all this common sense about this matter summarized in a post so briefly without resorting to typical "fanboy-ish" claims. Someone should mod this up!
You are right. Yes, there is nothing wrong with removing the complexity if it is unnecessary. Before trying to solve a problem you first must find an authentic problem to solve. Maybe this isn't really considered a problem at all, and someone just feels like simplifying things. In the open source community, people will probably work on what they enjoy.
Not only that, he completely disregards for no apparent reason those existing services that are exactly like Siri was before Apple acquired it (read: same functionality, inferior interface/design). Speaktoit allows you to speak english to your phone and will do almost the same that Siri does. Google would need to buy them and integrate it in a nice way with Android. The current interface is a bit lacking but the technology is definitely there. This is obviously a VERY biased opinion from a Siri board member.
What users should care about where binaries go? Really, which kind of users are baffled to find several binary directories?
I bet that most that do, understand simple concepts such as $PATH, which and are probably able to deal with there being multiple directories.
I can see how this could be beneficial for installers and could help package maintainers that port from one distribution to another. Maybe Linux Standard Base already addresses this and this is only a moot point. This is only good if everybody does it equally anyways, or you will be just another distribution making things their own (different) way.
Is it really that important to consolidate binaries and libraries? I find other things like networking configuration and boot process, init scripts or inittab to be more confusing to system administrators, for example. But binaries?
Why not work on having _persistent_ system setup (like boot process, networking, config files, etc) work as universally as other tools such as ip/ifconfig. Imagine doing package search nmap and have it translate into apt-cache search on debian and yum search on fedora or CentOS. Or "network eth0 192.168.20.3 gateway 192.168.20.1": would write the corresponding/etc/network/interfaces on debian or/etc/sysconfig/network under redhat-based distros. Now THAT would be great.
Everything which works towards being not distro-specific is great, but IMHO you get that through abstraction. Not by saying "no, THIS is the right directory to put things in, I am right and everyone should do it the same way". It's probably much more easily said than done, but that's how I see it.
Actually, if you really want to see anything that comes close to Siri, it's speaktoit. It's available for free from the Android Market and is very similar to Siri.
They did not release the source code for Honeycomb because it was not ready. Why would they release the "incomplete" source code in the future, when its obsolete?
Do you REALLY want to nitpick about Google not releasing the previous, broken source code version which they did not release for a reason in the first place?
Google will release the source code to ICS a few days after it has been released on hardware, just as they almost always do.
Why do people always think about those crazy conspiracy theories when past indicates that they DO release the source code shortly after the new handsets release, and google has always been true to their word in this respect? With other releases they told us the source was coming shortly, and it came. With Honeycomb they told is the source was NOT coming until the next release, and so it was. And now they are telling us the source is coming shortly, and people speculate about there being evil intentions behind all that. Pity.
"framented" is very ambiguous. You are twisting the meaning. Android remains compatible between versions. You can totally take a binary that was compiled for Android 1.0 and have it run under an Android 4.0 just fine.
About *new* features, you can't really do anything if someone is running something old. Same thing happens with new APIs for hardware that does not exist on older phones. You can't do much about it. Yes, Android is fragmented in that many phones are running old versions. And it is not fragmented in the sense that every Android phone has run a test suite that ensures compatibility between versions.
I still don't understand why people blame Google for not releasing the source when the source release is NOT ready. Instead, they think Google is plotting to make Android close source. Even while they repeatedly say that this is temporary because they took shortcuts, which would make the open source release irresponsible because it might break the platform.
It is clearly not about that, I think you misunderstood the reasons behind this move.
This is about preventing the "Android ecosystem" to go berzerk with incompatibilities if systems based on Honeycomb's source code start appearing. I think they have done the right thing. A binary release and a source code release are different things, you can't just release the source just because it "runs". Especially not when it is a platform that should remain compatible and backwards-compatible.
Why is this suddenly described as revolutionary when Siri was, in fact, bought by Apple and had been working for like, years?
It's not like Apple innovated in any way, they just put a shortcut to Siri and redid the interface. (And of course, they probably had a ton of work to do on the backend side in order to accomodate the hordes of iPhone 4S users, but you get the idea..)
It is statements like this: "Apple's Siri as revolutionary as the Mac" that strike me as: "why do always people think this is suddenly something revolutionary, when it is NOTHING NEW?"
Sure, people would not have used it as much because Siri was originally not as much advertised and didn't have Apple's design and loyal customers behind it, but it wasn't much different if you look up what it was already capable of before it was acquired by Apple.
Excuse me, but I would trying to use an inexistent computer would be a bit troublesome. That requirement you speak of is the first thing of a very long list of things of ridiculous things Apple puts you through which they should have fixed YEARS ago. It is not only displeasing, but untrustworthy.
Either way, that is no excuse for such a lame syncing process. Everything of iTunes, from the "1 computer only, and if your computer is replaced then there is HELL" to 1000 steps for doing a simple thing, to "I know it doesn't make sense, but we are restoring your INEXISTENT copy of applications to your iDevice, therefore wiping it!" is total nonsense.
To sum up: bad experience. (Note how this conclusion funny considering what Apple likes to think about themselves)
1. Connect iPad to macbook 2. iTunes detects iOS 5 is available, I hit update button 3. WARNING! Unsynced items, I am going to delete all your precious apps, do you want to continue? Mind you, I won't offer an option in the dialog that says: "backup my stuff and then continue". 4. I click sync and the system detects that this is a new macbook: "Looks like this is a new, unauthorized device! If you proceed, all your iPad contents will be NUKED! haha!" 5. Cancel and look around for a while trying to find a way of doing the obvious thing. 6. Find the "transfer my stuff" option that warns that only authorized content will be transfered. Duh-huh.. OK. 7. Need to authorize my device, only 3 left. Geee... well, OK.. 8. Everything but 4 items get transferred. Not pretty, but good enough. 9. Try to update now: warning about unsynced items persists. Scary, but I go on since step 7. doesn't improve even after trying several times in different ways. 10...Long update process, its 700MB after all... BANG! Your device coul not be restored, internal error occurred. 11. iPad library must be deleted because it can only be synced with one device at a time... bla bla bla all the iPad contents will be replaced by this macbook's library contents. VERY SCARY, but there is no other way as far as I see. Well... OK. 12. Update again...wait...wait...wait... yes, I want to use iCloud, yes I want to use localization, re-enter my apple ID, yes, yes yes a couple more times... 13... and all my stuff is __GONE__ ! 14. Go to iTunes, explicitly tell it to sync applications, hit sync.. 15. Only a few apps have been restored 16. Back to iTunes, manually check all applications that you want to have restored (why are most of them unchecked and not synced by default!?) 17. Sync.. 18...wait..wait..wait...wait.... FINALLY. DONE.
Conclusion: ARE YOU F****** KIDDING ME?
NOT pretty, VERY SCARY. But in the end it worked (miraculously). Seriously, why on earth would someone design a syncing process that makes it SO EASY to lose all your stuff? Why not a single step?
Let's hope that OTA updates take this nightmarish process away. We'll see.
Slashdot Mirror
I honestly would like to see how much console games sell vs PC games. Saying how much of that is due to piracy, I'm afraid, is impossible unless you come up with a model which is better than the download=lost sale model, which is absurdly broken. I know vgchartz isn't a very reliable source, but according to that site, the super-top-selling game franchise CoD sells 20M. This is a non-trivial delta. Now, maybe Steam accounts for most downloads and those don't show up in vgchartz. I honestly don't know. As I said, I would like to see some real data about sales of PC vs console. But given the a-priori data I am seeing, I would not be surprised to see that the PC has, in fact, become a very different gamer audience.
The fact that many games (including this one) does not sell well among PC gamers is no secret. I don't like Ubisoft because they do lots of bad ports and put very aggressive DRM on some of their games, but right now I can't blame them for being realistic. This is no WoW, no StarCraft, no Minecraft, its one of those games that can sell tons on consoles but almost nothing on PCs. It's not like this is something new, the data is there, it's not an opinion. They know it isn't going to sell well in the PC platform and I don't think you can blame them for not throwing money at a risky move right away.
I'm thinking that maybe this isn't a typo, and its intended to just avoid reading. But how would you prevent it from being overwritten, thus producing a new, rebuilt, forged but apparently cryptographically correct hashed logfile?
Nice security, erm, feature..?
This is the first thing I thought too. But if I'm going to have many piped commands, why not add one more that cats the thing in text format? I can't think of a reason to why that would be inconvenient. My rotated syslog is gzipped and I can just zcat it, or even cat | gunzip - | whatever it. So the slight inconvenience *might* well be outweighed by the new benefits.
Whoops, I totally missed that ;) thanks
Last time it was planned as an upgrade, has the alpha channel made it to the improvements? It's a bit sad to release an image file format for the future of the web that doesn't support transparency IMHO
As much as I hate flash, you gotta admit flash existed for a reason: it filled the gaps where HTML was more lacking. Unfortunately, that's still true today even with HTML5, although the trend towards HTML5 is very obvious and clear.
Many browsers still can't playback HTML5 properly and there isn't even a single video codec which will work consistently across browsers just like flash does, AFAIK. (I'm talking about h264 license issues, WebM's lack of hardware decoding, etc..).
Also, while rich media solutions are certainly possible with CSS3 and javascript, it still requires significantly more effort than its flash counterparts.
Of course, that doesn't excuse many many (many) uses where flash isn't really necessary but still being used. THAT must go. And flash video should be avoided where possible if the browser supports anything else. I think the main issue with that is that many web developers are still being lazy (hey, megavideo, I'm looking at you!).
But flash still accomplishes some things across browsers consistently in a way that HTML5 and CSS3 still can't - or at least not effortlessly for the web developer, which is what counts most of the times; let's hope Adobe helps with that with the HTML5 tools they are building.
So don't blame everything on flash, the standards are advancing too slowly IMHO even with backers such as Apple and Google.
Hey! This was just posted to slashdot, check it out:
Linux Kernel Power Bug Is Fixed http://linux.slashdot.org/story/11/11/11/2036245/linux-kernel-power-bug-is-fixed
It JUST so happens the bug has been fixed, in case you didn't know ;)
Everybody knew eventually this was going to happen. Adobe started transitioning to HTML5 years ago. Clearly they aren't there yet, but this is proof that progress is being made. (finally! the end of flash is not near, but it's certainly coming!)
It's almost 2012, I think Adobe is doing this at the right time now that most browsers are starting to be fairly HTML5-complete (as complete as HTML5 itself is, which is not _that_ much).
I know many now think "Steve Jobs was right!". Well, I don't think it took a genius to know that this was coming, Adobe has been preparing for it ever since HTML5 started going big (thanks to Apple and Google, among many others). I would not say this is Adobe "finally giving in" to Steve, because Adobe has never really opposed HTML5 AFAIK. Flash has always been complementary to stuff the web was not ready for; even if we hate flash that's why it existed. Now its 2012, not 2007, and most people are ready to go HTML5 and definitely drop flash (wide browser support, more mature spec, somewhat consistent across browsers, etc.. at least compared to 2007).
The article explains why the asteroid looks like a pixelated sprite taken from the era of Monkey Island.
For those that didn't want to bother reading both articles and just wanted to have a look at the image but then thought "WTF" after having a look at it:
"The individual pulses can be timed very accurately as well, so that the shape of the asteroid can be determined, too. If there is a bump on the asteroid, like a hill, then a pulse hitting that won’t travel quite as far as a pulse that hits a crater. It gets back sooner, and this can be measured. The spatial resolution of this method at the distance of YU 55 will be about 4 meters, so they’ll be able to make an image that’s about 100 pixels across of it."
image: http://news.discovery.com/space/2011/11/07/asteroid-2005-yu55-new-825.jpg
I would not have expected this sort of news from Microsoft a decade ago. Then again, maybe we are getting too used to Apple.
I think this is a nice move by MS :)
Right, but I think the motivation here is greatly exaggerated. The search is only "broken" (if you can call it that) when doing search from the phone. Fire up the android market website and it gets much better. I recall reading somewhere that the market now uses google's search for providing search results, maybe someone can confirm (or refute) this.
So what will happen to all those companies if google flips a switch tomorrow and all phones provide better search results?
Also, keep in mind that there are not many apps, as in there are 1M apps for any app store. It's not like you have a lot of quality results to show like when you search the web.
Excellent. I have never seen all this common sense about this matter summarized in a post so briefly without resorting to typical "fanboy-ish" claims.
Someone should mod this up!
You are right. Yes, there is nothing wrong with removing the complexity if it is unnecessary. Before trying to solve a problem you first must find an authentic problem to solve. Maybe this isn't really considered a problem at all, and someone just feels like simplifying things. In the open source community, people will probably work on what they enjoy.
Not only that, he completely disregards for no apparent reason those existing services that are exactly like Siri was before Apple acquired it (read: same functionality, inferior interface/design). Speaktoit allows you to speak english to your phone and will do almost the same that Siri does. Google would need to buy them and integrate it in a nice way with Android. The current interface is a bit lacking but the technology is definitely there.
This is obviously a VERY biased opinion from a Siri board member.
What users should care about where binaries go? Really, which kind of users are baffled to find several binary directories?
I bet that most that do, understand simple concepts such as $PATH, which and are probably able to deal with there being multiple directories.
I can see how this could be beneficial for installers and could help package maintainers that port from one distribution to another. Maybe Linux Standard Base already addresses this and this is only a moot point. This is only good if everybody does it equally anyways, or you will be just another distribution making things their own (different) way.
Is it really that important to consolidate binaries and libraries? I find other things like networking configuration and boot process, init scripts or inittab to be more confusing to system administrators, for example. But binaries?
Why not work on having _persistent_ system setup (like boot process, networking, config files, etc) work as universally as other tools such as ip/ifconfig. Imagine doing package search nmap and have it translate into apt-cache search on debian and yum search on fedora or CentOS. Or "network eth0 192.168.20.3 gateway 192.168.20.1": would write the corresponding /etc/network/interfaces on debian or /etc/sysconfig/network under redhat-based distros. Now THAT would be great.
Everything which works towards being not distro-specific is great, but IMHO you get that through abstraction. Not by saying "no, THIS is the right directory to put things in, I am right and everyone should do it the same way".
It's probably much more easily said than done, but that's how I see it.
Actually, if you really want to see anything that comes close to Siri, it's speaktoit. It's available for free from the Android Market and is very similar to Siri.
You fail big time at common sense.
They did not release the source code for Honeycomb because it was not ready. Why would they release the "incomplete" source code in the future, when its obsolete?
Do you REALLY want to nitpick about Google not releasing the previous, broken source code version which they did not release for a reason in the first place?
Google will release the source code to ICS a few days after it has been released on hardware, just as they almost always do.
Why do people always think about those crazy conspiracy theories when past indicates that they DO release the source code shortly after the new handsets release, and google has always been true to their word in this respect? With other releases they told us the source was coming shortly, and it came. With Honeycomb they told is the source was NOT coming until the next release, and so it was. And now they are telling us the source is coming shortly, and people speculate about there being evil intentions behind all that. Pity.
"framented" is very ambiguous. You are twisting the meaning. Android remains compatible between versions. You can totally take a binary that was compiled for Android 1.0 and have it run under an Android 4.0 just fine.
About *new* features, you can't really do anything if someone is running something old. Same thing happens with new APIs for hardware that does not exist on older phones. You can't do much about it.
Yes, Android is fragmented in that many phones are running old versions. And it is not fragmented in the sense that every Android phone has run a test suite that ensures compatibility between versions.
I still don't understand why people blame Google for not releasing the source when the source release is NOT ready. Instead, they think Google is plotting to make Android close source. Even while they repeatedly say that this is temporary because they took shortcuts, which would make the open source release irresponsible because it might break the platform.
It is clearly not about that, I think you misunderstood the reasons behind this move.
This is about preventing the "Android ecosystem" to go berzerk with incompatibilities if systems based on Honeycomb's source code start appearing. I think they have done the right thing. A binary release and a source code release are different things, you can't just release the source just because it "runs". Especially not when it is a platform that should remain compatible and backwards-compatible.
Why is this suddenly described as revolutionary when Siri was, in fact, bought by Apple and had been working for like, years?
It's not like Apple innovated in any way, they just put a shortcut to Siri and redid the interface. (And of course, they probably had a ton of work to do on the backend side in order to accomodate the hordes of iPhone 4S users, but you get the idea..)
It is statements like this: "Apple's Siri as revolutionary as the Mac" that strike me as: "why do always people think this is suddenly something revolutionary, when it is NOTHING NEW?"
Sure, people would not have used it as much because Siri was originally not as much advertised and didn't have Apple's design and loyal customers behind it, but it wasn't much different if you look up what it was already capable of before it was acquired by Apple.
Excuse me, but I would trying to use an inexistent computer would be a bit troublesome. That requirement you speak of is the first thing of a very long list of things of ridiculous things Apple puts you through which they should have fixed YEARS ago. It is not only displeasing, but untrustworthy.
Either way, that is no excuse for such a lame syncing process. Everything of iTunes, from the "1 computer only, and if your computer is replaced then there is HELL" to 1000 steps for doing a simple thing, to "I know it doesn't make sense, but we are restoring your INEXISTENT copy of applications to your iDevice, therefore wiping it!" is total nonsense.
To sum up: bad experience. (Note how this conclusion funny considering what Apple likes to think about themselves)
How can you say that with a straight face after I had to list so many confusing steps to do so? Hard != confusing, scary, hideous, unfriendly
Hell, Apple could just provide you with command line git for the update process and users would have a better experience!
1. Connect iPad to macbook ..Long update process, its 700MB after all... BANG! Your device coul not be restored, internal error occurred. .. bla bla bla all the iPad contents will be replaced by this macbook's library contents. VERY SCARY, but there is no other way as far as I see. Well... OK. .. and all my stuff is __GONE__ ! ..wait..wait..wait...wait.... FINALLY. DONE.
2. iTunes detects iOS 5 is available, I hit update button
3. WARNING! Unsynced items, I am going to delete all your precious apps, do you want to continue? Mind you, I won't offer an option in the dialog that says: "backup my stuff and then continue".
4. I click sync and the system detects that this is a new macbook: "Looks like this is a new, unauthorized device! If you proceed, all your iPad contents will be NUKED! haha!"
5. Cancel and look around for a while trying to find a way of doing the obvious thing.
6. Find the "transfer my stuff" option that warns that only authorized content will be transfered. Duh-huh.. OK.
7. Need to authorize my device, only 3 left. Geee... well, OK..
8. Everything but 4 items get transferred. Not pretty, but good enough.
9. Try to update now: warning about unsynced items persists. Scary, but I go on since step 7. doesn't improve even after trying several times in different ways.
10.
11. iPad library must be deleted because it can only be synced with one device at a time.
12. Update again...wait...wait...wait... yes, I want to use iCloud, yes I want to use localization, re-enter my apple ID, yes, yes yes a couple more times...
13.
14. Go to iTunes, explicitly tell it to sync applications, hit sync..
15. Only a few apps have been restored
16. Back to iTunes, manually check all applications that you want to have restored (why are most of them unchecked and not synced by default!?)
17. Sync..
18.
Conclusion: ARE YOU F****** KIDDING ME?
NOT pretty, VERY SCARY.
But in the end it worked (miraculously).
Seriously, why on earth would someone design a syncing process that makes it SO EASY to lose all your stuff? Why not a single step?
Let's hope that OTA updates take this nightmarish process away. We'll see.