Sure, it requires some of the same mindset and attention to detail - no question about that. But I can code with almost no knowledge of any advanced math. The fact that I taught myself to program at age 10 when I had no appreciable advanced math skills tells me that advanced math is simply not a prerequisite for programming. Rather, it's a tool that allows a programmer to solve math-related problems using programming techniques - nothing more than that.
I'm not sure why programmers have such a hard time with this concept. I think it's because CS and engineering (and therefore math and engineering) are so closely tied together in the education system that most programmers simply never question it.
I think it's an easier concept for me for two reasons: 1) I learned how to program LONG before I learned any advanced math, and 2) I'm not very good at advanced math, so it's fairly clear to me that you don't need to be a math whiz to be a (hopefully) good programmer.
Math has almost nothing to do with CS or programming beyond a few rudimentary topics, like expressing big-O notation for algorithm complexity or understanding basic Boolean logic. It typically is only involved in whatever you happen to solving with your programming. The amount of math you'll need as a programmer is completely dependent on what sort of applications you'll be working on, and just gives you another tool to work with if needed.
In my line of work, which is videogame programming, at least a basic understanding linear algebra is crucial, as it's the foundation for 2D and 3D drawing and transformations. I can't imagine how linear algebra would be at all useful in a typical line of business application - probably a knowledge of accounting and statistical math would be more useful.
I'd recommend you watch the little promo video created by Google embedded in TFA. It's hilarious in sort of an eye-rolling way.
They try to show traditional payments as some horrible, inconvenient nightmare that people somehow can't manage without creating great stress for themselves and everyone around them. Who exactly are they trying to kid here? Sure, if that were the level of the bar being raised, they might have something here, but it's not. Where the bar is now: I hand my card to the employee and they swipe it, or I swipe it myself (no one seems to be using the chip yet) and either enter a pin or sign on a little display terminal. Done.
It's a bad sign when you feel that you have to set up a ridiculous straw-man argument to sell your own product. What's more, most of the ad was showing how horrible traditional payment processing is, which I've NEVER felt was a burden, rather than trying to sell me on the merits of their new system. I'd have much rather seen what's involved in actually setting up this system for use - but I suspect showing that might have distracted from the "narrative" that it's easier than traditional payments.
Your idea of micro-payments has already been implemented in one form: Google Contributor. Instead of ads, you see images of your choice displayed (like kittens), and a small equivalent payment goes to the site in question instead of ad revenue. The problem with that particular solution is that you have to stop blocking Google's ads to make it work. And of course, you're paying an ad company as a middle-man to do this, which some people may object to.
I've been thinking about the use of specially pre-designed HTML tags for advertising that allows only a limited subset of safe content - that is, no general-purpose scripting, no flash, no animation, no interactive content, only static images and text, and some additional functions to allow things that advertisers want, such as unique visitor counts, click-through rates, etc.
I'm no web expert, so I'm not sure about the feasibility of such an idea, but the general notion is to give advertisers a way to present their content in a guaranteed safe manner to as to discourage people from blocking ads based on a fear of getting infected by malware. We could even enforce maximum rendering sizes and total percentage of allowed ad space on a page on a per-user basis. If there was such an "ad" tag that had strict content requirements such that it could be safely validated by the browser, I'd be a lot more inclined to allow exceptions rather than the all or nothing hammer-like approach I feel I'm forced to take now. I understand that many sites I enjoy need ad-revenue to survive, but to be blunt, my computer's safety comes first, no matter what.
Malware is almost exclusively why I use an adblocker. I've never checked the box on Slashdot that allows them to show me ads - I'm totally fine with those, or others that are reasonably non-intrusive and safe.
I used to use NoScript, which functioned almost like an adblocker in many cases just by accident, but too much of the web these days simply breaks when I try to use it. Moreover, pure Javascript-based exploits seem to be much rarer these day, with plugins like Flash and Java the seeming to be the more popular vector of choice. Of course, I stay far the hell away from the Java plugin, and I reinstalled Flash now that it has click-to-play functionality. So, now I use ublock-origin. It also comes with a built-in blocker of known malware-serving sites, and I've just left the default options on.
Whatever the small risk of malware from an ad is, it's not zero. I don't see any reason to whitelist a site when there's a chance doing so might serve me malware. Whatever the reputation of the site is, I have no way of trusting the safety of those ads based on the reputation of the site. There's almost no correlation there.
Further to identifying imminent threats, the Little Ripper is also designed to serve as a rescue tool. Each will carry life-saving pods packed with defibrillators, floatation devices, shark repellent and survival kits that can be dropped off to people in danger.
Those flotation devices might help to keep that device above water if it went down, but the article didn't really specify. I'd surely hope someone at least considered this.
I hope you're not implying that, because of this one data point, wind turbines aren't a viable form of energy production. The lesson I'd tend to take home is that, as with anything else, buying junk from the lowest bidder may end up costing you more in the long run.
Yeesh, what's the world coming to when a Republican is defending green / alternative energy production?
That's because early elevators tended plummet to the ground when their cables snapped, crashing and killing people. It took Elisha Otis to invent a reliable failsafe mechanism in 1852, paving the way for the modern skyscraper.
These days we don't even question that modern elevators are, statistically speaking, much safer than using the stairs.
I think a lot of tech people are jaded or skeptical because of the shitty quality of software they see where they work or that they experience in person. It's important to remember that not all software is like that - you're surrounded by mission critical software in many situations, but you probably don't think much about it. My prediction is that eventually these cars will reduce vehicular injuries and deaths by one to two orders of magnitude, but it's going to take some time and serious effort to reach that level of quality.
Naturally, it's also going to take some time for these car companies to earn the average consumer's trust - I think that's only natural and reasonable, especially that "trust" for them is in somewhat short supply right now. Sure, there are going to be some brave souls willing to buy the first fully autonomous vehicles out there. I'm perfectly willing to let them validate that the cars are safe and reliable, but I'm not going to be against them getting there.
Apparently, drivers aged 64-69 are statistically the safest drivers on the road. My guess is that they're in the sweet spot between reaction times, experience, and a reasonable awareness of their own mortality. Given that, you can likely infer that lightning fast reaction times are actually not hugely important in being a safe driver. My guess is that not rushing everywhere in such a damned hurry (why rush when you're retired?) and simply paying attention are the most important factors.
Yeah, I probably should have used "has", not "had" - don't read anything into it. Personally, I tend to want my PC to sit under the desk and out of sight. I don't really care what it looks like. And I don't want it some bizarre shape that won't fit where a PC is normally supposed to fit.
There are definitely some people who are looking more for aesthetic appeal or more radically engineering solutions. Quite a few notable examples tend to come from Apple - I can think of several other examples as well. For instance, the current iMacs look like just a simple display and nothing else. The original iMac had a unique form factor as well. It shouldn't be too surprising, as this is what Apple is known for - solid engineering with a lot of attention paid to aesthetics, but at a premium price.
There's also real innovation over on the PC side too. There are a lot of really cool small form factor PCs on the market, ranging from reasonably powerful mini-PCs to Intel's tiny Compute Stick. Microsoft recently released their new Surface Book, which looks like a pretty cool piece of hardware - a very nice laptop with detachable monitor that transforms into a tablet.
I'd argue a rectangular box is still the most practical form factor for a PC and most other hardware (consoles, appliances, etc). The Mac Pro had a bizarre cylindrical shape which was pretty cool from a design standpoint, but ultimately didn't have much success in the marketplace. The PC ecosystem is designed around standardized, commodity parts that generally fit into a rectangular chassis. That's partly why PCs have such an amazing price-performance ratio.
The only thing a non-rectangular box would do for me is to prevent me from fitting it under the desk in the slot designed for a rectangular box-shaped PC.
Some companies have already declared that they'll assume liability for their autonomous vehicles. They do this knowing full well that autonomous vehicles are going to be an order of magnitude or two safer than human drivers, mainly because human drivers, on average, are pretty terrible drivers.
Quite frankly, I'm much concerned about sharing the road with other humans who get distracted, don't pay attention, or drive impaired / recklessly around me, and I'm very much looking forward to the day when vehicular-related deaths are a much more rare occurrence than they are today.
BTW, one more thing humans are notoriously bad at is risk assessment.
Agreed. This doesn't surprise me one bit. Maybe the name gives it away... you know... that these Things communicate over the Internet?
I'm going to take a potentially contrary position, though, and argue that if a device is internet enabled, it absolutely should be phoning home on a regular basis, and for very good reasons. The recent glibc library vulnerability only helps to validate my opinion, in fact, which is that it's absolutely inevitable that serious vulnerabilities will be found in ANY internet-facing device, and so these devices MUST be able to automatically update themselves. What's more, manufacturers should be responsible for providing security updates for a reasonable product lifetime - otherwise, they're no longer fit to stay connected, and essentially must be discarded in order to keep your network secure.
I'm sure there are those who would argue against such a policy, but these are *consumer* devices, and we damn well know by now that a typical consumer will never update the firmware on their own device. We now accept that browsers must self-update in order to remain secure, and we're just now grappling with the notion that OSes must do it too. Frankly, anything that's internet-facing needs to be treated the same way. The manufacturer must take responsibility for this. Otherwise, we're going to have billions of tiny infection vectors that will last as long as the devices do, which could be decades. Look at how much of a problem this is for old desktops, servers, and routers sitting on the internet, spewing botnet-controlled traffic because they've never been updated. Granted, this has to be done in a secure manner, so that MITM attacks are not possible, but it's absolutely possible to do it right.
Of course, we all know what's really going to happen, which is that these companies with absolutely no clue how to do internet security are going to get many thousands of people infected through these crappy little internet-enabled gizmos, and the people who get infected with the Zeus banking trojan or crypto-ransomware will be outraged, and articles will be written, and eventually things *may* improve slightly. I'm sure as hell not going to be one of the early-adoption suckers.
While I can't speak for other game developers, I'm betting adoption is low because:
a) It's new, and b) Windows 10 only.
Microsoft pulled the same stunt with DX10, and games simply held onto DX9 compatibility for many years after we should have moved past it, thanks to Windows XP and ports from our last-gen consoles.
Keep in mind that games also spend a very long time in the pipeline, and game engines spend even longer than that. While occasionally you'll see someone rush support out in a game out in the market, or add support to one only shipped, its very often nothing much more than a publicity stunt which really doesn't take full advantage of the latest features. It's going to be another year or two before we see mass adoption and games really taking advantage of these newer low-overhead APIs.
Remember DIVX (no, not the codec), the failed attempt at rented content on physical media that required a physical connection to the internet to play? Welcome to DivX 2.0, still Hollywood's wet dream of never letting you actually own any of your own content.
Well, physical media is going to eventually die out anyhow, and increasingly stringent DRM is going go help the process along. Honestly, I don't think Hollywood will mourn its death that much, as streaming video falls right in line with its "perpetual rental" model.
Lot's of Li-powered cars already have. I don't understand why you Republicans hide the truth about how dangerous they are. Your kind puts profit ahead of people.
Okay, as a Republican, I'm sort of torn on this. Yes, I want the environment to be destroyed and for the world to choke in smog, but I also want to lovingly protect our billionaire businessmen and cartels who are producing these ultra-dangerous battery powered cars that may catch on fire. (nice!) The probably is that these things might inadvertently save the environment. (noooooooo!)
Maybe we can figure out a way for these electric cars to burn oil in some secondary capacity... Then they'd be perfect!
The problem with isolating your computer from all other networks is that you tend to lose the advantages of having computers on a shared network, which are obviously rather significant. Military secrets don't exist in a vacuum. They need to be shared with selected other people to be useful. Projects are collaborated and worked on... orders are carried out... data must be analyzed. It's all well and good to say "lock up your secrets where no one can get to them", but remember, that includes the people that actually need access to that data to do their job as well. Suggesting that all state secrets be air-gapped is sort of like the old joke about building an entire airplane out of whatever (supposedly) indestructible materials are used to create the plane's black box. A great idea until you start thinking about the practicality of it.
I'd agree with your suggestion if you're talking only about the ultra-level military secrets that only a handful of people need to know about. It's likely those are on completely isolated systems, but I don't think that's what we're talking about here.
You could very well be right. Speaking of oddball heights, the first 500 *MB* drive I bought (back when the main network drive was 120MB) cost $1000, and it was actually a 3 1/2" double-height size, meaning the bay next to it had to be clear before I could install it. It wasn't a problem since I was simply installing it in a workstation. This obviously wouldn't work for Google, since I'm certain they use computers with front-mounted hot-swappable 3 1/2" drive bays all neatly packed together - I've seen how nicely these work with my Synology 5-bay NAS. Unless a new form factor becomes standardized, you can't really hack in a solution... at least not on the scale Google is dealing with.
I don't think Google is going to get its way here with a new standardized size, at least at mass adoption scales. Inertia is pretty damn hard to overcome, even if potentially superior solutions exist. I mean, the US is still using imperial measurements, for heaven's sake. The fact that we measure them as 3 1/2" inch drives should tell you something about how hard it is to change standards.
A mod of -1 Overrated can generally be translated into "I disagree with what you're saying and wish to silence you like the little dictator I wish I could be in real life." So, either someone who works in the online advertising industry or who earns money thanks to online advertising, most likely.
Or someone is jealous of your butt-licking savvy. It's tough to call.
I care about the environment. I just think hysterical headlines like this one tend to do more harm than good by damaging credibility.
A serious issue, and one that needs investigation? Yes, absolutely. One of the worst disasters - even environmental disasters - in US history? Please. Not even close. Notice how this topic was completely derailed by reactions to the ridiculous hyperbole? In this case, yes, I absolutely am blaming the messenger.
If Windows Mobile was in a dominant position like iOS and Android, sure, they might not bother with cross-platform compatibility. That's just not the reality of the market, so I don't see their commitment to cross-platform development going away anytime soon either. Make no mistake, you should never trust a company to continue policies that work against their own financial self-interest - but keep in mind that doesn't necessarily have to work *against* their customers' interests either.
Well, I gave a pretty ridiculous example with CueCat. Yeah, it was obvious to most people right from the start that it was a lame-o gimmick. Most of the DotCom 1.0 bubble companies has almost NO idea how they were going to monetize their product or services, and so were doomed to fail almost from the start unless they became ridiculously popular (e.g. Twitter).
But not everything is so easy to predict. I distinctly remember thinking cameras on cellphones were ridiculous and gimmicky, and probably wouldn't last. Also, would anyone really have predicted the demise of traditional expert-curated encyclopedias in favor of an online version that *anyone* could actually edit? I certainly wouldn't have. Wikipedia is a killer app for the web which we didn't even know we wanted. Or for programmers, perhaps Stack Overflow.
It's fair to say that MOST of the IoT attempts are going to be lame and probably fail, because that happens with just about everything - including biological evolution. But a few things will find success. If it was so easy to pick winners and losers, you wouldn't see these Silicon Valley millionaires and billionaires being created because they happened to create something cool that no one else either thought of or could bring to market. And picking stocks to invest in would be a hell of a lot easier.
Because that worked so well for DX10 and DX11, right? Yeesh, how long were we stuck with DX9 (and 32-bit support) simply because of how long XP and the last generation of consoles hung around? Trust me, videogame developers are a pragmatic bunch. We'll be seeing DX11 games for a long time to come simply because plenty of people are sticking with Windows 7.
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Sure, it requires some of the same mindset and attention to detail - no question about that. But I can code with almost no knowledge of any advanced math. The fact that I taught myself to program at age 10 when I had no appreciable advanced math skills tells me that advanced math is simply not a prerequisite for programming. Rather, it's a tool that allows a programmer to solve math-related problems using programming techniques - nothing more than that.
I'm not sure why programmers have such a hard time with this concept. I think it's because CS and engineering (and therefore math and engineering) are so closely tied together in the education system that most programmers simply never question it.
I think it's an easier concept for me for two reasons: 1) I learned how to program LONG before I learned any advanced math, and 2) I'm not very good at advanced math, so it's fairly clear to me that you don't need to be a math whiz to be a (hopefully) good programmer.
Math has almost nothing to do with CS or programming beyond a few rudimentary topics, like expressing big-O notation for algorithm complexity or understanding basic Boolean logic. It typically is only involved in whatever you happen to solving with your programming. The amount of math you'll need as a programmer is completely dependent on what sort of applications you'll be working on, and just gives you another tool to work with if needed.
In my line of work, which is videogame programming, at least a basic understanding linear algebra is crucial, as it's the foundation for 2D and 3D drawing and transformations. I can't imagine how linear algebra would be at all useful in a typical line of business application - probably a knowledge of accounting and statistical math would be more useful.
I'd recommend you watch the little promo video created by Google embedded in TFA. It's hilarious in sort of an eye-rolling way.
They try to show traditional payments as some horrible, inconvenient nightmare that people somehow can't manage without creating great stress for themselves and everyone around them. Who exactly are they trying to kid here? Sure, if that were the level of the bar being raised, they might have something here, but it's not. Where the bar is now: I hand my card to the employee and they swipe it, or I swipe it myself (no one seems to be using the chip yet) and either enter a pin or sign on a little display terminal. Done.
It's a bad sign when you feel that you have to set up a ridiculous straw-man argument to sell your own product. What's more, most of the ad was showing how horrible traditional payment processing is, which I've NEVER felt was a burden, rather than trying to sell me on the merits of their new system. I'd have much rather seen what's involved in actually setting up this system for use - but I suspect showing that might have distracted from the "narrative" that it's easier than traditional payments.
Your idea of micro-payments has already been implemented in one form: Google Contributor. Instead of ads, you see images of your choice displayed (like kittens), and a small equivalent payment goes to the site in question instead of ad revenue. The problem with that particular solution is that you have to stop blocking Google's ads to make it work. And of course, you're paying an ad company as a middle-man to do this, which some people may object to.
I've been thinking about the use of specially pre-designed HTML tags for advertising that allows only a limited subset of safe content - that is, no general-purpose scripting, no flash, no animation, no interactive content, only static images and text, and some additional functions to allow things that advertisers want, such as unique visitor counts, click-through rates, etc.
I'm no web expert, so I'm not sure about the feasibility of such an idea, but the general notion is to give advertisers a way to present their content in a guaranteed safe manner to as to discourage people from blocking ads based on a fear of getting infected by malware. We could even enforce maximum rendering sizes and total percentage of allowed ad space on a page on a per-user basis. If there was such an "ad" tag that had strict content requirements such that it could be safely validated by the browser, I'd be a lot more inclined to allow exceptions rather than the all or nothing hammer-like approach I feel I'm forced to take now. I understand that many sites I enjoy need ad-revenue to survive, but to be blunt, my computer's safety comes first, no matter what.
Look, I don't need these excuses about "malware"
Malware is almost exclusively why I use an adblocker. I've never checked the box on Slashdot that allows them to show me ads - I'm totally fine with those, or others that are reasonably non-intrusive and safe.
I used to use NoScript, which functioned almost like an adblocker in many cases just by accident, but too much of the web these days simply breaks when I try to use it. Moreover, pure Javascript-based exploits seem to be much rarer these day, with plugins like Flash and Java the seeming to be the more popular vector of choice. Of course, I stay far the hell away from the Java plugin, and I reinstalled Flash now that it has click-to-play functionality. So, now I use ublock-origin. It also comes with a built-in blocker of known malware-serving sites, and I've just left the default options on.
Whatever the small risk of malware from an ad is, it's not zero. I don't see any reason to whitelist a site when there's a chance doing so might serve me malware. Whatever the reputation of the site is, I have no way of trusting the safety of those ads based on the reputation of the site. There's almost no correlation there.
From TFA:
Further to identifying imminent threats, the Little Ripper is also designed to serve as a rescue tool. Each will carry life-saving pods packed with defibrillators, floatation devices, shark repellent and survival kits that can be dropped off to people in danger.
Those flotation devices might help to keep that device above water if it went down, but the article didn't really specify. I'd surely hope someone at least considered this.
I hope you're not implying that, because of this one data point, wind turbines aren't a viable form of energy production. The lesson I'd tend to take home is that, as with anything else, buying junk from the lowest bidder may end up costing you more in the long run.
Yeesh, what's the world coming to when a Republican is defending green / alternative energy production?
That's because early elevators tended plummet to the ground when their cables snapped, crashing and killing people. It took Elisha Otis to invent a reliable failsafe mechanism in 1852, paving the way for the modern skyscraper.
These days we don't even question that modern elevators are, statistically speaking, much safer than using the stairs.
I think a lot of tech people are jaded or skeptical because of the shitty quality of software they see where they work or that they experience in person. It's important to remember that not all software is like that - you're surrounded by mission critical software in many situations, but you probably don't think much about it. My prediction is that eventually these cars will reduce vehicular injuries and deaths by one to two orders of magnitude, but it's going to take some time and serious effort to reach that level of quality.
Naturally, it's also going to take some time for these car companies to earn the average consumer's trust - I think that's only natural and reasonable, especially that "trust" for them is in somewhat short supply right now. Sure, there are going to be some brave souls willing to buy the first fully autonomous vehicles out there. I'm perfectly willing to let them validate that the cars are safe and reliable, but I'm not going to be against them getting there.
Apparently, drivers aged 64-69 are statistically the safest drivers on the road. My guess is that they're in the sweet spot between reaction times, experience, and a reasonable awareness of their own mortality. Given that, you can likely infer that lightning fast reaction times are actually not hugely important in being a safe driver. My guess is that not rushing everywhere in such a damned hurry (why rush when you're retired?) and simply paying attention are the most important factors.
What you say?
Take off every jet!
Yeah, I probably should have used "has", not "had" - don't read anything into it. Personally, I tend to want my PC to sit under the desk and out of sight. I don't really care what it looks like. And I don't want it some bizarre shape that won't fit where a PC is normally supposed to fit.
There are definitely some people who are looking more for aesthetic appeal or more radically engineering solutions. Quite a few notable examples tend to come from Apple - I can think of several other examples as well. For instance, the current iMacs look like just a simple display and nothing else. The original iMac had a unique form factor as well. It shouldn't be too surprising, as this is what Apple is known for - solid engineering with a lot of attention paid to aesthetics, but at a premium price.
There's also real innovation over on the PC side too. There are a lot of really cool small form factor PCs on the market, ranging from reasonably powerful mini-PCs to Intel's tiny Compute Stick. Microsoft recently released their new Surface Book, which looks like a pretty cool piece of hardware - a very nice laptop with detachable monitor that transforms into a tablet.
I'd argue a rectangular box is still the most practical form factor for a PC and most other hardware (consoles, appliances, etc). The Mac Pro had a bizarre cylindrical shape which was pretty cool from a design standpoint, but ultimately didn't have much success in the marketplace. The PC ecosystem is designed around standardized, commodity parts that generally fit into a rectangular chassis. That's partly why PCs have such an amazing price-performance ratio.
The only thing a non-rectangular box would do for me is to prevent me from fitting it under the desk in the slot designed for a rectangular box-shaped PC.
Some companies have already declared that they'll assume liability for their autonomous vehicles. They do this knowing full well that autonomous vehicles are going to be an order of magnitude or two safer than human drivers, mainly because human drivers, on average, are pretty terrible drivers.
Quite frankly, I'm much concerned about sharing the road with other humans who get distracted, don't pay attention, or drive impaired / recklessly around me, and I'm very much looking forward to the day when vehicular-related deaths are a much more rare occurrence than they are today.
BTW, one more thing humans are notoriously bad at is risk assessment.
Agreed. This doesn't surprise me one bit. Maybe the name gives it away... you know... that these Things communicate over the Internet?
I'm going to take a potentially contrary position, though, and argue that if a device is internet enabled, it absolutely should be phoning home on a regular basis, and for very good reasons. The recent glibc library vulnerability only helps to validate my opinion, in fact, which is that it's absolutely inevitable that serious vulnerabilities will be found in ANY internet-facing device, and so these devices MUST be able to automatically update themselves. What's more, manufacturers should be responsible for providing security updates for a reasonable product lifetime - otherwise, they're no longer fit to stay connected, and essentially must be discarded in order to keep your network secure.
I'm sure there are those who would argue against such a policy, but these are *consumer* devices, and we damn well know by now that a typical consumer will never update the firmware on their own device. We now accept that browsers must self-update in order to remain secure, and we're just now grappling with the notion that OSes must do it too. Frankly, anything that's internet-facing needs to be treated the same way. The manufacturer must take responsibility for this. Otherwise, we're going to have billions of tiny infection vectors that will last as long as the devices do, which could be decades. Look at how much of a problem this is for old desktops, servers, and routers sitting on the internet, spewing botnet-controlled traffic because they've never been updated. Granted, this has to be done in a secure manner, so that MITM attacks are not possible, but it's absolutely possible to do it right.
Of course, we all know what's really going to happen, which is that these companies with absolutely no clue how to do internet security are going to get many thousands of people infected through these crappy little internet-enabled gizmos, and the people who get infected with the Zeus banking trojan or crypto-ransomware will be outraged, and articles will be written, and eventually things *may* improve slightly. I'm sure as hell not going to be one of the early-adoption suckers.
While I can't speak for other game developers, I'm betting adoption is low because:
a) It's new, and
b) Windows 10 only.
Microsoft pulled the same stunt with DX10, and games simply held onto DX9 compatibility for many years after we should have moved past it, thanks to Windows XP and ports from our last-gen consoles.
Keep in mind that games also spend a very long time in the pipeline, and game engines spend even longer than that. While occasionally you'll see someone rush support out in a game out in the market, or add support to one only shipped, its very often nothing much more than a publicity stunt which really doesn't take full advantage of the latest features. It's going to be another year or two before we see mass adoption and games really taking advantage of these newer low-overhead APIs.
Remember DIVX (no, not the codec), the failed attempt at rented content on physical media that required a physical connection to the internet to play? Welcome to DivX 2.0, still Hollywood's wet dream of never letting you actually own any of your own content.
Well, physical media is going to eventually die out anyhow, and increasingly stringent DRM is going go help the process along. Honestly, I don't think Hollywood will mourn its death that much, as streaming video falls right in line with its "perpetual rental" model.
Lot's of Li-powered cars already have. I don't understand why you Republicans hide the truth about how dangerous they are. Your kind puts profit ahead of people.
Okay, as a Republican, I'm sort of torn on this. Yes, I want the environment to be destroyed and for the world to choke in smog, but I also want to lovingly protect our billionaire businessmen and cartels who are producing these ultra-dangerous battery powered cars that may catch on fire. (nice!) The probably is that these things might inadvertently save the environment. (noooooooo!)
Maybe we can figure out a way for these electric cars to burn oil in some secondary capacity... Then they'd be perfect!
The problem with isolating your computer from all other networks is that you tend to lose the advantages of having computers on a shared network, which are obviously rather significant. Military secrets don't exist in a vacuum. They need to be shared with selected other people to be useful. Projects are collaborated and worked on... orders are carried out... data must be analyzed. It's all well and good to say "lock up your secrets where no one can get to them", but remember, that includes the people that actually need access to that data to do their job as well. Suggesting that all state secrets be air-gapped is sort of like the old joke about building an entire airplane out of whatever (supposedly) indestructible materials are used to create the plane's black box. A great idea until you start thinking about the practicality of it.
I'd agree with your suggestion if you're talking only about the ultra-level military secrets that only a handful of people need to know about. It's likely those are on completely isolated systems, but I don't think that's what we're talking about here.
You could very well be right. Speaking of oddball heights, the first 500 *MB* drive I bought (back when the main network drive was 120MB) cost $1000, and it was actually a 3 1/2" double-height size, meaning the bay next to it had to be clear before I could install it. It wasn't a problem since I was simply installing it in a workstation. This obviously wouldn't work for Google, since I'm certain they use computers with front-mounted hot-swappable 3 1/2" drive bays all neatly packed together - I've seen how nicely these work with my Synology 5-bay NAS. Unless a new form factor becomes standardized, you can't really hack in a solution... at least not on the scale Google is dealing with.
I don't think Google is going to get its way here with a new standardized size, at least at mass adoption scales. Inertia is pretty damn hard to overcome, even if potentially superior solutions exist. I mean, the US is still using imperial measurements, for heaven's sake. The fact that we measure them as 3 1/2" inch drives should tell you something about how hard it is to change standards.
A mod of -1 Overrated can generally be translated into "I disagree with what you're saying and wish to silence you like the little dictator I wish I could be in real life." So, either someone who works in the online advertising industry or who earns money thanks to online advertising, most likely.
Or someone is jealous of your butt-licking savvy. It's tough to call.
I care about the environment. I just think hysterical headlines like this one tend to do more harm than good by damaging credibility.
A serious issue, and one that needs investigation? Yes, absolutely. One of the worst disasters - even environmental disasters - in US history? Please. Not even close. Notice how this topic was completely derailed by reactions to the ridiculous hyperbole? In this case, yes, I absolutely am blaming the messenger.
If Windows Mobile was in a dominant position like iOS and Android, sure, they might not bother with cross-platform compatibility. That's just not the reality of the market, so I don't see their commitment to cross-platform development going away anytime soon either. Make no mistake, you should never trust a company to continue policies that work against their own financial self-interest - but keep in mind that doesn't necessarily have to work *against* their customers' interests either.
Well, I gave a pretty ridiculous example with CueCat. Yeah, it was obvious to most people right from the start that it was a lame-o gimmick. Most of the DotCom 1.0 bubble companies has almost NO idea how they were going to monetize their product or services, and so were doomed to fail almost from the start unless they became ridiculously popular (e.g. Twitter).
But not everything is so easy to predict. I distinctly remember thinking cameras on cellphones were ridiculous and gimmicky, and probably wouldn't last. Also, would anyone really have predicted the demise of traditional expert-curated encyclopedias in favor of an online version that *anyone* could actually edit? I certainly wouldn't have. Wikipedia is a killer app for the web which we didn't even know we wanted. Or for programmers, perhaps Stack Overflow.
It's fair to say that MOST of the IoT attempts are going to be lame and probably fail, because that happens with just about everything - including biological evolution. But a few things will find success. If it was so easy to pick winners and losers, you wouldn't see these Silicon Valley millionaires and billionaires being created because they happened to create something cool that no one else either thought of or could bring to market. And picking stocks to invest in would be a hell of a lot easier.
Because that worked so well for DX10 and DX11, right? Yeesh, how long were we stuck with DX9 (and 32-bit support) simply because of how long XP and the last generation of consoles hung around? Trust me, videogame developers are a pragmatic bunch. We'll be seeing DX11 games for a long time to come simply because plenty of people are sticking with Windows 7.