Homebrew was necessary in the past because there was no outlet for hobby game developer to develop on "closed" game platforms.
Today, there are SO MANY outlets for hobby game developers to create content that it is no longer necessary to "hack" a device to get your content on it.
I don't think its a question that manufacturers are finding ways to "lock down" their systems, just that they have provided alternative ways to independents to get content on those boxes.
For instance, why "hack" a homebrew game onto an iOS device? Apple opened the door for anyone to develop content for their platform, and while Apple's platform isn't as "open" as many would like, you have to either be blatantly discriminatory or outlandish to not have an application posted on iTunes. If iOS isn't open enough a platform for you, then Android welcomes all the rest of the apps Apple won't touch. That too closed for you, then fire up a website with flash/HTML 5 and build your own game online directly without much censorship.
It's kind of lame to pursue hacking a system that embraces independent development. While some companies haven't quite figured it out yet (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo), companies like Apple, Google and Valve are new champions of relatively open hobby game platform. I know people get a rush out of doing something they are not supposed to do, but spending a lot of time and effort to break into a system when your buddy already posted, and perhaps making a profit, on a hobby game on the same system is silly.
Seriously, the "updated" in Mountain Lion is akin to offering a few free apps on the Mac App store and a patch, or should have been at least.
Is Apple that desperate for cash they needed to orchestrate an obvious cash grab for an OS patch? Is Apple so greedy they need to find more ways to cheat money from their consumers? Surprised that Apple didn't offer a subscription model for OS X (oh, they did, called iCloud).
Seems kind of obvious that on the same day as a financial report that saw Apple miss their targets, wow, Mountain Lion is released with its low, low, low price.
It is obvious that Apple's "PC" and their "Post-PC" divisions are working at different wavelengths.
The last time Apple tried to make iPhone users pay for an iOS update they got slammed with a class action lawsuit. Since then iOS updates are free. The $3000+ TCO you pay for the pleasure of owning an iPhone is a different story.
It is very obvious that Mac users are all retarded hipsters. and Apple is keenly aware of this. They accept the fact they are assumed to pay for an OS X update in the "post-PC" era and so helped to make Mountain Lion Apple's fastest con yet. There won't be a class action lawsuit over Mountain Lion because Mac users are too smug to realize that the world's most "advanced" OS didn't advanced very far for $20.
The problem with Apple fanboys is they are completely and utterly oblivious. Its incredible that the same people who would never pay for an iOS update (and in fact outright cried because of paid upgrades in the past) would gladly hand over $19.99 for an OS X update without missing a beat, and even defend it.
Yes, that is right, respond to this comment by defending Apple in this case makes you a retarded oblivious hipster fanboy and there is no denying it because there is no rational argument that can be made for Apple charging for trivial OS X upgrades when they have offered free substantial iOS upgrades in the past, so why were you part of the 3 million?
I think the current educational system is in shambles due to the fact they try to shove education down children's throats without realizing they are ever increasingly creating generations of kids (and eventually adults) that do not want to learn and explore for themselves.
I agree that forms of mathematics and other subject matter are completely unnecessary at early levels of school. Why force a child to learn something boring and unusable in the real world, only to have them score low on a test and be deemed unfit for higher forms of education, with the social stigmatism that poor grades usually are associated with.
Instead these subjects should be introduced when a student enters an vocational path that will eventually lead to a career that would require those skills. I mean, you would never teach a child how to do brain surgery if they are never intending to become a medical doctor. Why teach a high school student Calculus or Algebra when there is a high chance they will never use those math skills in the future. Why introduce an opportunity for a student to fail by teaching them something they might hate?
But, you may say, what if you don't introduce a student to some subject mater early enough; they may never want to BE a doctor, even if most don't intend to become a doctor. So instead you cram hundreds of hours of biology, chemistry, math and science classes and thousands of hours of homework, to make them WANT to become a doctor? That idea is ridiculous, but unfortunately is the truth behind of our current education system.
What SHOULD happen at the elementary and secondary level's of education is to teach a child HOW TO LEARN, rather then forcing them to learn specific subject matter. At the end of high school, you should have learned enough life skills to be a successful adult, which means a solid understanding that most forms of jobs that pay well require additional education, so a student would aim to continue down a path for higher education, and enjoy it. However by learning skills that involve self discovery and exploration of knowledge a person with a high school education should also be just as prepared for success in other ventures.that do not necessarily require a degree or diploma.
The biggest thing I took out of leaving university and taking a job was finally LEARNING how to LEARN. It sounds crazy but when you switch from an education system where you are lectured to and tested against subject mater to a reality where you explore and learn content on your own, at your own pace, for stuff you love and are keenly interested in, this was one of the most profound transitions I experienced in my life.
Most adults are so profoundly sick and tired of learning and being tested that by the time they are done any level of school they have "peaked" intellectually and refuse to learn more.
I believe changing education to focusing on when and how to learn instead of worrying about what to learn will change the way people view education, and instead build a foundation for life-long commitment to learning and growing rather then a life of peaking and settling for a career they hate.
But he is and will always be far richer then all of us so in this case I will shut the fuck up. I would rather make the mistakes he made then the successes I have made in life.
I thought that was journalism 101. If you are writing an article for a science mag then it better be filled with the scientific terminology used by the audience expected to read the magazine. If you dumb down the scientific jargon into layman's terms then you are going to lose credibility with your target audience.
On the other hand if you are writing about Higg's Boson in Reader's Digest then by all means revert to expressing science by turning distances into a measurement of football fields, volume in terms of Olympic sized swimming pools, and speeds in terms of Nascar racing with gobs of references to Star Trek and Star Wars.
First, it is still SIGNIFICANTLY easier to get a real gun versus printing your own gun.
Second, even if it is impossible to buy real guns and everyone resorts to printing their own guns, people will ALWAYS find a way to kill each other. Ban all guns and all ways to make a gun, people are going to sharpen down their toothbrushes to do the trick.
There is a fundamental failing in society that results in people not valuing other people's lives.
The ways people kill each other is moot and yet so much energy is spent debating and complaining about the availability of weapons. The WHYS people kill each other is more important and should be the focal point of effort to correct.
Apple shunned other 3rd party app platforms like Flash because they wanted to lock down their walled garden, so I don't really think Apple wants Java on their platform.
Java for web is dead, period. Any website that requires Java to view is a failure, on any platform, period.
Java as a platform has been pretty much shunned by almost every other platform due to Oracle, Apple isn't going to let Java touch iOS and have them bastards hard on there case.
Java the language can live on, but Java the platform has to die.
In spite of the UI of Windows 8 that takes some getting used to and my verdict is till in deciding if I like it, Windows 8 is Windows as usual.
The desktop still exists in the background, which can run Steam and install any of the "closed ecosystem" provided by Valve. I mean, isn't this at the heart of what Valve does these days? Valve stopped making video games (I mean really one new game every 5 years is not a game development company), and instead promoted a platform which largely whores the Valve gaming engine. Really Gabe, seriously, what is your definition of a closed ecosystem?
Gabe doesn't like the idea of other people selling games on other closed ecosystems, that is all he is shooting his mouth off about. He dissed the PS3 and Xbox 360 because of their game stores and didn't want to ship Valve games using some other companies licensing scheme. The idea of Microsoft selling games on the App Store goes against Gabe's business plan of selling Windows games on the Valve platform. But why no outrage over Apple and their walled garden approach to iOS and OS X? Because its an easy win to bitch about Windows and not about Apple these days.
So fine Gabe, if you want to port Steam to Linux because its the last platform you can't dominate, go ahead. Sony fucked you, Nintendo fucked you, Google fucked you, Apple fucked you, Microsoft fucked you, so why not go to Linux. Just don't be surprised when the banks run dry because people on Linux don't actually like to PAY for anything. A game store on Linux is like asking people to pay for air.
And before you go running off your mouth again take a good hard look at your own company and realize you are doing NOTHING different then everyone else, you are just as much as a greedy schmuck as every other CEO, just too smug to accept it.
After a disastrous attempt at installing Lion on its release, will will gladly wait for one maybe even two patches before I even attempt to touch Mountain Lion (including buying it). Also I hope that I can simply upgrade to Mountain Lion and not be forced to buy the Server package just because I previously had the server package installed (Lion Server added VERY little value BTW). I was charged twice by the Mac Store in addition to the Server update for something that didn't work out of the proverbial box (it bricked my Mac Mini Server). Lion was pretty much Apple's version of Vista, hopefully Mountain Lion their Windows 7.
My Dad is interested in Netflix, but the problem is what to get for him. Apple TV ties him to a walled garden, Boxee is too complicated for him (seriously). Then you are stuck with a bunch of middling boxes that never rate very well.
There are a slew of people that probably have heard of Netflix streaming but just do not have any idea how to get it on their TV. older folks tend to think of TV's as requiring some component attached to them to get content.
So why doesn't Netflix just market a TV box or HDMI dongle to access their service, period.
I guarantee that the 50+ crowd would flock to their local big box electronics stores, see a "Netflix" product and snap them up.
Yeah, there are tons of solutions for Netflix on TV's, but there is a large slew of people out there that don't have the time, inclination or desire to investigate one of the 100's of possible ways to get Netflix on their TV, they just want to buy something and plug it in without it being too complicated or convoluted in presentation to use.
Netflix subscription rates are not increasing, this suggest they have tapped the market of technically savvy enough people that can and will find a way to connect Netflix to their TV. What Netflix needs to realize is that to grow their market they need to find even easier ways to access their services. As incredible as that might seem to us Slashdotters, the flat line subscription numbers are speaking volumes of the need fore easier to use electronics as the "Baby Boomers" start retiring with limited pensions and gobs of free time.
How does Windows malware get into an iOS app package? You can generally only develop iOS apps on OS X, so someone either purposely put it there, or has some retarded app development setup that managed to suck a windows virus into an iOS package..
Then it got deployed by Apple.
Then in order for it to infect a target PC, you got to screw around with the iOS package file on WIndows and then purposely run content (and ignore ALL the Windows warnings). Also the malware is generally already covered by most Windows anti-virus, so it would only be deployed if you didn't have anything installed, or not up-to-date in the last few years.
So I consider this an epic fail for all involved, Apple, Microsoft, the developer, the hacker, and anyone this infects because they are all being retarded.
Why? What would the benefit be in an ultra fast speed port on a mobile device?
A lot of people scream for USB ports and stuff on tablets and phones, but why? The whole point of these things is to be mobile, not tied down married to a bunch of dangling attachments. Why do I want to connect my phone to a terrabyte server when there are a SLEW of wireless data streaming options available? Why do I need to connect to a printer by a wire when wireless solutions have existed for 10 years. Whats the point of "the cloud" if you are still tied to a PC/Mac for data transfer and updates.
A thunderbolt port would be about the most useless thing to add to a "modern" phone.
Seriously, the only thing worse then a constant barrage of Apple iPhone speculation and rumors is REPETITIVE Apple iPhone speculation and rumors.
iPhone 5 is the worst kept secret in the industry these days. Apple has forgotten how to write (or enforce) an NDA, and they wonder why every competitor copies their product before its even released.
Google's been a software company for 99.99% of its history. Even though it entered the tablet/phone market, it doesn't actually make anything.
While Google has made some commercial sever products in the past, the Nexus 7 is the first piece of consumer electronic equipment Google has ever made, and so it is obvious they no nothing about packaging.
What I find absolutely hilarious is that Google measures software performance in terms of people's lifespans. If it takes 2 seconds to access GMail, and a billion people access GMail, they consider that to be X number of lives wasted accessing GMail, so they strive to make accessing GMail faster to "save" lives..
Seems like all the time Google has saved you with their software just got wasted trying unboxing their hardware.
Of course, I am sure most of the people in the Nexus unboxing video are tools anyways.
Bottom line is that content "creators" have adopted a business model where cloning shit that has a proven track record of success is preferred over venturing into new territories to build a new franchise or even just create that one-off masterpiece.
Of course the biggest issue is that society (or mostly teenagers) gobbles up this shit and makes it profitable.
This is why 9 out of 10 movies are pure derivative garbage This is why every game is a sequel to a previous game This is why every book is about vampires, werewolves or has dragons. This is why every TV show is about crime scene investigation
There is a general lack of creativity in Hollywood, and by extension, ALL entertainment industries. When you can produce cookie-cuter products that make gobs of money because their is a market of addled minds craving nothing new, why even bother attempting at something that might fail just to have integrity?
Any writer, director or producer of and entertainment that wants to maintain any sort of creative integrity should never work on a sequel or prequel or take on a project that involves similar IP to other franchises. I don't care who you are in the industry, produce a sequel, prequel, remake, or copying someone else's IP is just lazy and overtly greedy.
As opposed to the silent pollutants emitted from gas engines that will eventually kill people from cancer and emphysema.
Also its a myth that electric cars are silent. They tend to whine loudly and once up to speed the wheels and wind noise still make quite a racket. Its only when the vehicle is moving slowly in parking lots that the noise level is nearly imperceptible. Low speed impact with a pedestrian might suck for the pedestrian, but in most cases they are going to get up, brush themselves off, and maybe next time LOOK before they cross the F*CKING ROAD.
If your going to use some crazy scheme to rate games, then perhaps those websites should provide some kind of a translation value so that Metacritic can correctly identify the intention of the crazy review schemes.
But ultimately if you are getting reviews from 100's of websites, the aggregate value should be fairly accurate. I think a game that is rated 50% is bad compared to a game rated 90%, but I don't think people really care about the perceived quality between two games if their ratings are like 85% and 88%.
Of course, "professional" reviewers are among the most useless professions on the planet due to the sheer amount of online public opinion that come with every game or movie release.
Slashdot Mirror
Homebrew was necessary in the past because there was no outlet for hobby game developer to develop on "closed" game platforms.
Today, there are SO MANY outlets for hobby game developers to create content that it is no longer necessary to "hack" a device to get your content on it.
I don't think its a question that manufacturers are finding ways to "lock down" their systems, just that they have provided alternative ways to independents to get content on those boxes.
For instance, why "hack" a homebrew game onto an iOS device? Apple opened the door for anyone to develop content for their platform, and while Apple's platform isn't as "open" as many would like, you have to either be blatantly discriminatory or outlandish to not have an application posted on iTunes. If iOS isn't open enough a platform for you, then Android welcomes all the rest of the apps Apple won't touch. That too closed for you, then fire up a website with flash/HTML 5 and build your own game online directly without much censorship.
It's kind of lame to pursue hacking a system that embraces independent development. While some companies haven't quite figured it out yet (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo), companies like Apple, Google and Valve are new champions of relatively open hobby game platform. I know people get a rush out of doing something they are not supposed to do, but spending a lot of time and effort to break into a system when your buddy already posted, and perhaps making a profit, on a hobby game on the same system is silly.
Seriously, the "updated" in Mountain Lion is akin to offering a few free apps on the Mac App store and a patch, or should have been at least.
Is Apple that desperate for cash they needed to orchestrate an obvious cash grab for an OS patch? Is Apple so greedy they need to find more ways to cheat money from their consumers? Surprised that Apple didn't offer a subscription model for OS X (oh, they did, called iCloud).
Seems kind of obvious that on the same day as a financial report that saw Apple miss their targets, wow, Mountain Lion is released with its low, low, low price.
It is obvious that Apple's "PC" and their "Post-PC" divisions are working at different wavelengths.
The last time Apple tried to make iPhone users pay for an iOS update they got slammed with a class action lawsuit. Since then iOS updates are free. The $3000+ TCO you pay for the pleasure of owning an iPhone is a different story.
It is very obvious that Mac users are all retarded hipsters. and Apple is keenly aware of this. They accept the fact they are assumed to pay for an OS X update in the "post-PC" era and so helped to make Mountain Lion Apple's fastest con yet. There won't be a class action lawsuit over Mountain Lion because Mac users are too smug to realize that the world's most "advanced" OS didn't advanced very far for $20.
The problem with Apple fanboys is they are completely and utterly oblivious. Its incredible that the same people who would never pay for an iOS update (and in fact outright cried because of paid upgrades in the past) would gladly hand over $19.99 for an OS X update without missing a beat, and even defend it.
Yes, that is right, respond to this comment by defending Apple in this case makes you a retarded oblivious hipster fanboy and there is no denying it because there is no rational argument that can be made for Apple charging for trivial OS X upgrades when they have offered free substantial iOS upgrades in the past, so why were you part of the 3 million?
I think the current educational system is in shambles due to the fact they try to shove education down children's throats without realizing they are ever increasingly creating generations of kids (and eventually adults) that do not want to learn and explore for themselves.
I agree that forms of mathematics and other subject matter are completely unnecessary at early levels of school. Why force a child to learn something boring and unusable in the real world, only to have them score low on a test and be deemed unfit for higher forms of education, with the social stigmatism that poor grades usually are associated with.
Instead these subjects should be introduced when a student enters an vocational path that will eventually lead to a career that would require those skills. I mean, you would never teach a child how to do brain surgery if they are never intending to become a medical doctor. Why teach a high school student Calculus or Algebra when there is a high chance they will never use those math skills in the future. Why introduce an opportunity for a student to fail by teaching them something they might hate?
But, you may say, what if you don't introduce a student to some subject mater early enough; they may never want to BE a doctor, even if most don't intend to become a doctor. So instead you cram hundreds of hours of biology, chemistry, math and science classes and thousands of hours of homework, to make them WANT to become a doctor? That idea is ridiculous, but unfortunately is the truth behind of our current education system.
What SHOULD happen at the elementary and secondary level's of education is to teach a child HOW TO LEARN, rather then forcing them to learn specific subject matter. At the end of high school, you should have learned enough life skills to be a successful adult, which means a solid understanding that most forms of jobs that pay well require additional education, so a student would aim to continue down a path for higher education, and enjoy it. However by learning skills that involve self discovery and exploration of knowledge a person with a high school education should also be just as prepared for success in other ventures.that do not necessarily require a degree or diploma.
The biggest thing I took out of leaving university and taking a job was finally LEARNING how to LEARN. It sounds crazy but when you switch from an education system where you are lectured to and tested against subject mater to a reality where you explore and learn content on your own, at your own pace, for stuff you love and are keenly interested in, this was one of the most profound transitions I experienced in my life.
Most adults are so profoundly sick and tired of learning and being tested that by the time they are done any level of school they have "peaked" intellectually and refuse to learn more.
I believe changing education to focusing on when and how to learn instead of worrying about what to learn will change the way people view education, and instead build a foundation for life-long commitment to learning and growing rather then a life of peaking and settling for a career they hate.
I, and I am sure many many others, will not resort to being fed continuous streams of disinformation wearing gimmicky hipster devices.
But he is and will always be far richer then all of us so in this case I will shut the fuck up. I would rather make the mistakes he made then the successes I have made in life.
I thought that was journalism 101. If you are writing an article for a science mag then it better be filled with the scientific terminology used by the audience expected to read the magazine. If you dumb down the scientific jargon into layman's terms then you are going to lose credibility with your target audience.
On the other hand if you are writing about Higg's Boson in Reader's Digest then by all means revert to expressing science by turning distances into a measurement of football fields, volume in terms of Olympic sized swimming pools, and speeds in terms of Nascar racing with gobs of references to Star Trek and Star Wars.
The most underwhelming use of the word explode ever.
First, it is still SIGNIFICANTLY easier to get a real gun versus printing your own gun.
Second, even if it is impossible to buy real guns and everyone resorts to printing their own guns, people will ALWAYS find a way to kill each other. Ban all guns and all ways to make a gun, people are going to sharpen down their toothbrushes to do the trick.
There is a fundamental failing in society that results in people not valuing other people's lives.
The ways people kill each other is moot and yet so much energy is spent debating and complaining about the availability of weapons. The WHYS people kill each other is more important and should be the focal point of effort to correct.
The hand of God needs to smack down telecommunication monopolies, regardless if you call your god Apple or Google
Apple shunned other 3rd party app platforms like Flash because they wanted to lock down their walled garden, so I don't really think Apple wants Java on their platform.
Java for web is dead, period. Any website that requires Java to view is a failure, on any platform, period.
Java as a platform has been pretty much shunned by almost every other platform due to Oracle, Apple isn't going to let Java touch iOS and have them bastards hard on there case.
Java the language can live on, but Java the platform has to die.
In spite of the UI of Windows 8 that takes some getting used to and my verdict is till in deciding if I like it, Windows 8 is Windows as usual.
The desktop still exists in the background, which can run Steam and install any of the "closed ecosystem" provided by Valve. I mean, isn't this at the heart of what Valve does these days? Valve stopped making video games (I mean really one new game every 5 years is not a game development company), and instead promoted a platform which largely whores the Valve gaming engine. Really Gabe, seriously, what is your definition of a closed ecosystem?
Gabe doesn't like the idea of other people selling games on other closed ecosystems, that is all he is shooting his mouth off about. He dissed the PS3 and Xbox 360 because of their game stores and didn't want to ship Valve games using some other companies licensing scheme. The idea of Microsoft selling games on the App Store goes against Gabe's business plan of selling Windows games on the Valve platform. But why no outrage over Apple and their walled garden approach to iOS and OS X? Because its an easy win to bitch about Windows and not about Apple these days.
So fine Gabe, if you want to port Steam to Linux because its the last platform you can't dominate, go ahead. Sony fucked you, Nintendo fucked you, Google fucked you, Apple fucked you, Microsoft fucked you, so why not go to Linux. Just don't be surprised when the banks run dry because people on Linux don't actually like to PAY for anything. A game store on Linux is like asking people to pay for air.
And before you go running off your mouth again take a good hard look at your own company and realize you are doing NOTHING different then everyone else, you are just as much as a greedy schmuck as every other CEO, just too smug to accept it.
Humans will always find new an innovating ways to die. Looking forward to the pending "Destroyed in Seconds" episode on Discovery Channel.
After a disastrous attempt at installing Lion on its release, will will gladly wait for one maybe even two patches before I even attempt to touch Mountain Lion (including buying it). Also I hope that I can simply upgrade to Mountain Lion and not be forced to buy the Server package just because I previously had the server package installed (Lion Server added VERY little value BTW). I was charged twice by the Mac Store in addition to the Server update for something that didn't work out of the proverbial box (it bricked my Mac Mini Server). Lion was pretty much Apple's version of Vista, hopefully Mountain Lion their Windows 7.
My Dad is interested in Netflix, but the problem is what to get for him. Apple TV ties him to a walled garden, Boxee is too complicated for him (seriously). Then you are stuck with a bunch of middling boxes that never rate very well.
There are a slew of people that probably have heard of Netflix streaming but just do not have any idea how to get it on their TV. older folks tend to think of TV's as requiring some component attached to them to get content.
So why doesn't Netflix just market a TV box or HDMI dongle to access their service, period.
I guarantee that the 50+ crowd would flock to their local big box electronics stores, see a "Netflix" product and snap them up.
Yeah, there are tons of solutions for Netflix on TV's, but there is a large slew of people out there that don't have the time, inclination or desire to investigate one of the 100's of possible ways to get Netflix on their TV, they just want to buy something and plug it in without it being too complicated or convoluted in presentation to use.
Netflix subscription rates are not increasing, this suggest they have tapped the market of technically savvy enough people that can and will find a way to connect Netflix to their TV. What Netflix needs to realize is that to grow their market they need to find even easier ways to access their services. As incredible as that might seem to us Slashdotters, the flat line subscription numbers are speaking volumes of the need fore easier to use electronics as the "Baby Boomers" start retiring with limited pensions and gobs of free time.
How does Windows malware get into an iOS app package? You can generally only develop iOS apps on OS X, so someone either purposely put it there, or has some retarded app development setup that managed to suck a windows virus into an iOS package..
Then it got deployed by Apple.
Then in order for it to infect a target PC, you got to screw around with the iOS package file on WIndows and then purposely run content (and ignore ALL the Windows warnings). Also the malware is generally already covered by most Windows anti-virus, so it would only be deployed if you didn't have anything installed, or not up-to-date in the last few years.
So I consider this an epic fail for all involved, Apple, Microsoft, the developer, the hacker, and anyone this infects because they are all being retarded.
Why? What would the benefit be in an ultra fast speed port on a mobile device?
A lot of people scream for USB ports and stuff on tablets and phones, but why? The whole point of these things is to be mobile, not tied down married to a bunch of dangling attachments. Why do I want to connect my phone to a terrabyte server when there are a SLEW of wireless data streaming options available? Why do I need to connect to a printer by a wire when wireless solutions have existed for 10 years. Whats the point of "the cloud" if you are still tied to a PC/Mac for data transfer and updates.
A thunderbolt port would be about the most useless thing to add to a "modern" phone.
Seriously, the only thing worse then a constant barrage of Apple iPhone speculation and rumors is REPETITIVE Apple iPhone speculation and rumors.
iPhone 5 is the worst kept secret in the industry these days. Apple has forgotten how to write (or enforce) an NDA, and they wonder why every competitor copies their product before its even released.
End of discussion, I mean, really.
Google's been a software company for 99.99% of its history. Even though it entered the tablet/phone market, it doesn't actually make anything.
While Google has made some commercial sever products in the past, the Nexus 7 is the first piece of consumer electronic equipment Google has ever made, and so it is obvious they no nothing about packaging.
What I find absolutely hilarious is that Google measures software performance in terms of people's lifespans. If it takes 2 seconds to access GMail, and a billion people access GMail, they consider that to be X number of lives wasted accessing GMail, so they strive to make accessing GMail faster to "save" lives..
Seems like all the time Google has saved you with their software just got wasted trying unboxing their hardware.
Of course, I am sure most of the people in the Nexus unboxing video are tools anyways.
Bottom line is that content "creators" have adopted a business model where cloning shit that has a proven track record of success is preferred over venturing into new territories to build a new franchise or even just create that one-off masterpiece.
Of course the biggest issue is that society (or mostly teenagers) gobbles up this shit and makes it profitable.
This is why 9 out of 10 movies are pure derivative garbage
This is why every game is a sequel to a previous game
This is why every book is about vampires, werewolves or has dragons.
This is why every TV show is about crime scene investigation
There is a general lack of creativity in Hollywood, and by extension, ALL entertainment industries. When you can produce cookie-cuter products that make gobs of money because their is a market of addled minds craving nothing new, why even bother attempting at something that might fail just to have integrity?
Any writer, director or producer of and entertainment that wants to maintain any sort of creative integrity should never work on a sequel or prequel or take on a project that involves similar IP to other franchises. I don't care who you are in the industry, produce a sequel, prequel, remake, or copying someone else's IP is just lazy and overtly greedy.
Um, if you think that isn't happening now you are completely out of touch with reality.
The biggest problem with conspiracy theorists is the misguided assumption that they think their lives are worth monitoring.
Because Internet regulations are currently full of shit.
Like Linux on the desktop, major player means, its exists.
At least someone is trying to bring Linux to the mobile world and not just complaining about the size of its code base.
As opposed to the silent pollutants emitted from gas engines that will eventually kill people from cancer and emphysema.
Also its a myth that electric cars are silent. They tend to whine loudly and once up to speed the wheels and wind noise still make quite a racket. Its only when the vehicle is moving slowly in parking lots that the noise level is nearly imperceptible. Low speed impact with a pedestrian might suck for the pedestrian, but in most cases they are going to get up, brush themselves off, and maybe next time LOOK before they cross the F*CKING ROAD.
If your going to use some crazy scheme to rate games, then perhaps those websites should provide some kind of a translation value so that Metacritic can correctly identify the intention of the crazy review schemes.
But ultimately if you are getting reviews from 100's of websites, the aggregate value should be fairly accurate. I think a game that is rated 50% is bad compared to a game rated 90%, but I don't think people really care about the perceived quality between two games if their ratings are like 85% and 88%.
Of course, "professional" reviewers are among the most useless professions on the planet due to the sheer amount of online public opinion that come with every game or movie release.