No, that can't explain it. The annoyance with StartsWithABang started far before that happened. People gave him a lot of grief when he was simply linking to his own blog.
I'll admit I tend to dislike seeing a member that does NOTHING but post submissions to the site, never even engaging in the discussion that follows. To me, that smacks of "I'm trying to get my visitor count up, but I don't give a shit about what the members have to say." Maybe others don't agree, but I probably wouldn't mind if an author regularly engaged with the community after posting summaries and links to their own articles, so long as they were interesting and relevant to this demographic. If you check out StartsWithABang's history, it was almost 100% submissions. He never appeared interested in discussing the articles he wrote, so it's not hard to understand why he didn't exactly endear himself to the community.
Contrast that to our new overlords, who have shown to be actually willing to talk to people here, and importantly, to listen to what they have to say in return. That's the essence of slashdot. The news and articles are just a way to get the discussions rolling.
Shockingly, authorities arrest activists instead of people responsible for the Aliso Canyon methane gas leak
No, it's not "shocking" that authorities would arrest someone who knowingly committed a minor crime rather than investigate one who caused a large-scale industrial accident, even if negligence was involved. Because, you know, that would require some bureaucrat to get off their ass and do some work rather than rubber-stamping forms and collecting fees. And it might just inadvertently highlight some systemic corruption or incompetence within the department, and that could just get plain messy. No one wants that. The protesters are low-hanging fruit. I sometimes wonder why it is some people put so much faith in their government when they're every bit has corrupt and/or incompetent as these corporations that are vilified so much?
But unbelievably, the activists are now the ones going to jail.
This writer is quite easily flabbergasted, isn't he? Or he loves faux-outrage. Either way, it makes him sound ridiculous and juvenile. Don't misunderstand... I'm sympathetic to what happened to these poor people who had to move out of their homes because of this gas leak, but the "article" is laughably bad. Yellow journalism is apparently back with a vengeance.
the CSP arrested two protesters who draped banners on the headquarters of the California Public Utilities Commission
Oho... I think I spotted the problem here. They went and pissed off government officials. That's why the hammer came down on them. And when you piss off the government, they can send police after you to arrest you and cart you off to jail.
P.S. If I get modded down as flamebait, I'm going to blame government officials with mod points for trying to silence me.
I've love to hear how you're blaming Islamic terrorist attacks against Parisians on the US. I mean, I know the USA is all that, but isn't it a little arrogant of us to try to claim credit for ALL the problems in the world?
It amazes me that most American still believe their government's official story of 9/11. Elsewhere in the world, people generally accepted the US government blew up their own buildings.
Yeah, it's not like we saw terrorists fly planes into buildings on almost-live TV or anything. And it's not like we saw the government drop a collective load when it happened, generally looking like idiots for not being able to sniff out the plot or stop them despite plenty of warning signs. It's not like we heard first-hand from very brave eyewitnesses that tried to commandeer a fourth plane that was likely destined to hit the white house or capitol building. And it's not like any terrorists organizations claimed credit for the attack.
I think the most damning bit of counter-evidence is the fact that it would require some crazy level of competence and cunning to successfully pull off the most audacious false flag operation in the history of humankind. That doesn't remotely begin to describe the federal government I know.
I mean, hell, they can't even hack into a locked iPhone.
I think Google is really talking about third-party stores in China, India, etc. I'm not sure if the Google presentation didn't mention those countries by name, though TFA does. Apparently, lots of people use them over there, and subsequently get viruses or malware. It probably causes Android malware vs iOS to be badly skewed. Google is rightly pointing out that you're more likely to get hit with malware from some sketchy Chinese app store than from Google Play. It's not really all that shocking a revelation. Think about CNet's Download.com and all the crap you get on your system if you use that site, and you get the basic idea.
People are implying that Google is singling out Amazon here. While I don't think Google would shed tears if people somehow got that impression, I'd bet that Amazon's store is almost as safe as Google's. Besides, Amazon is a big boy and doesn't need defending from us, the peanut gallery. If they want to release a study demonstrating how safe their own store is, they're perfectly capable of doing so.
What the FBI is really saying is that they don't believe Apple. They're so used to spying that they probably find it inconceivable (yes it means what I think it means) that a big corporation would not also have a backdoor for spying.
Either that or they really want to punish Apple for not providing a back door. Think about Apple's position here. A judge orders them to "try" to break it, and if they don't put some reasonable resources into this, they're now in contempt of court. Every time a high profile case comes up, the same nonsense happens.
True, Apple has billions, but this still has to be a bit of a PITA for them.
Why are people assuming I'm some "denialist"? I've already been modded down a couple of times as "overrated", which is shorthand for "I disagree with you and wish to silence you". It's hilarious... the slightest hint of wishing to validate claims with actual evidence and the pitchforks come out. And really... you must have a rather low opinion of my faculties if you seriously felt the need to point out that burning fossil fuels create the excess CO2, not the humans themselves. Sheesh.
I sincerely try to look at the science objectively, and right now, the evidence looks pretty good that we're in a warming trend, and a lot of of scientists seem to think human activity has something to do with it. I have no qualms with that. But again, we're really not going to know if their predictive models are accurate or not until we match their predictions up with future data. That's all I'm saying.
I have no problem with taking reasonable action to curb pollutants and emissions. I think that's a worthwhile goal in itself, regardless of what's happening with the climate. Moreover, it's common sense that we also need to start moving away from oil-based energy since there's a finite supply available to us - and that means investments in renewable energy sources. But let's not destroy or unnecessarily destabilize our economy in the process - that will simply derail efforts. No one gives a shit about the environment when they're about to get kicked out of their home since they can't get a job. Yes, I know... how dare I be pragmatic about human nature, right?
It's important to get accurate models because a more accurate model will tell us how much time we have to implement necessary change. People who want us to go to take immediate extreme corrective measures are, in my opinion, doing more harm than good by generating massive political opposition needlessly. Early wolf-crying predictions were utterly disproved a few decades later. Thanks to that, many people don't believe the current round of worrisome predictions, even if this round turns out to be correct.
It will take future analysis and records. If the trends continue, it's not an anomaly. If the temperature trends drop, then we know it was a temporary blip in the record. Only time will really tell.
Geologically speaking, we've only been recording temperatures for an infinitesimally small amount of time. Moreover, there's obviously no experimental control possible - i.e., we can't tell what the temperature would be without humans with any certainty - it's all theoretical models that are describing the trends we're seeing.
I'm not saying the models are necessarily incorrect. I'm just pointing out that they are, in fact, only predictions and models. The only way to judge their validity is to measure their ability to predict trends over time.
Fashion is fickle. If augmented reality takes off, future fashion might dictate that eyewear is now the new cool/sexy, especially if it's built into nice-looking headgear that also functions as sunglasses when outdoors - lots of people don't mind wearing those. Agreed that it's a very big if, though.
Also, since when the hell do we listen to Goldman-Sachs as a purveyor of future tech trends? It's not like Wall Street is known for it's far-sightedness (no pun on corrective eyewear intended).
Heh, was just coming to say the same thing. VR is cool enough, but I think it's just too gimmicky to catch on as a mainstream thing. Maybe for console games it would work, since you can sit down and play relatively hands-free.
Honestly, I think augmented reality has a much better chance at going mainstream, eventually when it gets to the point that they can hide the electronics and projected viewports in normal-sized glasses reasonably cheaply - because you know they'll eventually get there. At that point, we have a chance at moving away from physical user interfaces. And consider how useful digital information overlaid on top of the real world could be in many situations. Think about how much better computer-based navigation would work with an actual heads-up display, and if you're walking, actual cues embedded in the real world.
And entertainment: How fun would it be to play a game of Star Wars-style holo battlechess with a friend? Thanks to the internet, you wouldn't even have to be in the same physical location. For kids: what about a ghost-hunting game that turns your own house into the playfield, or perhaps a laser-tag style wargame that takes place in the back yard? Computer games wouldn't have to exclude exercise.
I'm not claiming it's a clusterfuck. All I'm saying is that each time I've tried to use it, I've hit a roadblock serious enough to be a complete showstopper. I'm pretty sure I've gotten unlucky, but it's not like I've got strange hardware to deal with or anything. My laptop from a few years back was a older model Dell XPS 13. My current Linux experiment was running in a VirtualBox VM, so there are unlikely to be hardware issues there. I'm trying to connect to a Synology NAS's SMB share across a standard wired ethernet LAN at home. It's very basic stuff that an OS should have no troubles with.
Still, in case you missed my point, the main reason I use Windows is because I have no trouble getting the thing to actually work, and it's been incredibly reliable over the past decade. Time is money, and the time I've spent tinkering with Linux simply trying to get it operational has far exceeded what I paid for my last copy of Windows.
Look, I don't hate Linux. I was trying to get it working in order to port my game to Linux, because I LIKE the concept of a free alternative OS that people can use. Unless I can figure out this most recent networking issue, that's unlikely to happen in the near future, which I think is a shame.
It's pretty easy to block out the absence of something - black bars don't bother me. Keep in mind that many of these images I've seen are pretty bright. I probably wouldn't mind so much if it was more like an actual watermark (grey, translucent, and unobtrusive) which typically don't bother me and not a fully opaque logo. Yes, I eventually manage to block them out as well after a few minutes, but as soon as the screen darkens, my eye is immediately drawn to it again.
It's like a small grain of sand in your shoe. No, it's not a big deal, but it's an irritant. The TV watching experience, at least for me, would be improved without it. Some people can probably also block out a crying baby when they watch a movie. Me... not so much.
I'm tempted not to answer a rude AC, but I'll go ahead and bite. I happen to be a professional game developer, and have worked on several different game engines at the companies I've worked for. I'm just telling you what I've seen. Or if you don't believe me, just grab a cross platform open source engine like Unreal or Unity and inspect the code yourself, and it will validate what I'm telling you.
Let me dispense with two myths: First, a very large portion of the work involved in a game engine isn't directly involved in rendering. That's just one aspect, albeit the most visible one, for obvious reasons. Most laypersons think of "rendering" when they think of "game engine", but there's a lot more that goes on under the hood.
Second, even a very large portion of rendering code is completely API/platform-agnostic if properly designed. You need a very thin layer to the D3D/OpenGL/Proprietary APIs for rendering, but in general, since pretty much all the hardware works very similarly, the APIs tend to have roughly equivalent functionality. In my own engine's graphics code, for instance, there's about 20 different modules, handling everything from primitives, line rendering, texture loading and management, particle effects, streaks, lightning, text rendering, lighting, post-proc management, and so on. Everything is communicated through a very thin API that translates the calls to native functions for the platform in question. Things get more complicated as you start optimizing, especially with consoles and the bizarre hardware of last generation, but it still generally holds true.
In general, both among professional game engines I've worked on, as well as my own engine, I'd guess that platform agnostic code accounts for no less than 95% of the code, and is completely portable across platforms, although I haven't really measured precisely.
Personally, I've never actually used my copy of AnyDVD to pirate anything. I've used it to rip my legally purchased copies of DVDs and Blurays to my media server. I'm not doing anything wrong by using the content I bought and paid for how I wish. I'm sure they'd likely disagree, but they can piss off.
Nowadays, I actually use streaming services more often than not, since they're convenient and reasonably priced. Do you know what makes me want to actually switch to pirated content instead?
1) Insane prices for watching previous seasons of a show (either rentals or purchase), when Hulu is only showing the latest season. 2) The bright, distracting network logo Hulu pastes in the corner of the picture for the entire duration of the show.
Can you imagine going to a movie theater and being subjected to an image of the movie company's logo in the corner of the screen for the duration of the show? Why does anyone believe this is acceptable for television? When the pirated content is superior to the paid-for content, that's not a good sign.
That sounds great in theory. In reality, it's not quite that simple. Many game engines are already cross platform. We already know how to do this from a technical perspective.
The real work is in mapping controls and tuning gameplay, design, interfaces, etc, to work with those different control schemes and form factors (if you're talking about different sizes). PCs also require much more work to scale properly than console games, since they can work with a very wide variety of hardware - and this tends to come with some greater QA costs for simple compatibility testing, although honestly, it's much better than it used to be.
You know, every time I try to seriously use Linux, I end up hitting a brick wall of some sort. A few years ago, it was a driver issue that accelerated my laptop's pointer to about 10x faster than I could control, and this was on the lowest setting. Could never figure it out after half a day's research and tinkering, and that was enough for me. Off it went.
My latest attempt was with Linux Mint (which I really like, btw) in a VM. The most up-to-date version w/ Cinnamon crashes immediately on startup, so I have to use an older version (not a confidence-inspiring start). Initially, my machine connected to my NAS share fine using Samba. Unfortunately, Mercurial can't actually seem to lock files (Windows and Mac have no issues), so I can't push patches to the NAS shared repository, which I use to sync my development machines. Setting up an actual web-based repository - the recommended approach - doesn't look trivial for a Linux noob. Then, my network connection to my NAS disappeared (maybe after an update? not sure), and it won't come back for anything. It's just gone, and a few hours of research and tinkering hasn't brought it back. I looked at trying an alternative protocol (NFS), but had no luck figuring out how to get that to work either. Very frustrating.
This is how my experience with Linux goes. Every few years I get a hankering to try it, get beaten back by glitches, and think "ok, maybe I'll try again in a few years."
You know, even as a Windows user, I'm happy Linux is getting more games, but let's please not kid ourselves. A Linux-only blockbuster exclusive is right up there with "year of the desktop" wishful thinking. Windows still has 95% of the desktop market, or something thereabouts. Its only real competition is other platforms which are eating up previously desktop-exclusive functions. The closest we'll get to a Linux-exclusive AAA game in the near future is if it's released exclusively on Android.
Anyhow, the notion of different platforms competing against each other ignores a pretty obvious issue that gamers and most game designers have known forever. It's not a technical limitation that restricts PC games and console gamers from playing together. It's a difference in control hardware, which ends up making console and PC games very different games with respect to control schemes, and thus game design. For instance, pit a PC FPS player against a console player, and everyone knows who's going to generally have a huge advantage. Same thing with a RTS. It's not a knock against consoles - it's just a reality that a mouse and keyboard is a far more precise and flexible input device, so has a massive advantage in most cross-platform play that's geared to those devices.
And as far as making cross-platform games... again, the biggest hurdle is not really technical, assuming you're working with a decently designed game engine. It's one of adapting the game design to different form factors and control schemes. My game engine is written in *very* portable C++, with just a very thin layer for OS-specific stuff. It's actually pretty straightforward to port it to new platforms, so long as they have comparable APIs for rendering video and audio, etc.
Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of cross-buying games across platforms. Many Steam games already do this, so I'm glad they're joining the party.
Or... they could just call back with their mobile phone? Surely it would actually be quite difficult in a country as tiny as Holland to find a location that isn't covered by cell tower reception.
According to one study, only 5% of British bombers setting out bombed within 5 miles of their intended target. Yeah, it was probably about as safe standing right on the target as anywhere else.
I'd imagine the US Army Air Corp had somewhat higher accuracy rates, bombing during daylight and using the Norden bombsight, although I'd guess it was still rather dismal by modern standards.
I live close to the real-life episode that likely inspired that. Or else it was a case of life imitating art. Either way, we had a pretty good chuckle at those women's expense since no one was hurt.
Yep, agreed. I don't think there have been too many blatant examples of actually removing functionality through updates, though - at least that I can recall offhand. While US consumer protection laws aren't quite as strong as in some European countries, a company that altered a product post-sale so radically would quickly find itself at the receiving end of a class-action lawsuit.
One could argue that Sony did this with the PS3 when they removed the "other OS" functionality, but I think they got away with it* because: a) It was a feature that very few of it's customers used, and b) It can easily be argued that that functionality wasn't central to the functionality for which most consumers purchased their device.
* A class-action lawsuit was filed, but was eventually dismissed.
I made the same argument in another thread (and using the same example of the Qwerty keyboard, oddly enough) related to how changing a widely known user interface paradigm (a car's shifter) can actually be deadly. Sometimes ubiquity trumps "efficiency".
Devices updating is both a good thing and a bad thing from a customer perspective. You can get new features, bugfixes, and security updates, of course. But what happens if functional changes are made and you aren't happy with it? That's sort of a tough one. Almost any functional change you make is going to make a small percentage of people unhappy, because people don't like change, or it may genuinely be a worse experience for them for whatever reason.
Does that mean a company shouldn't try to genuinely improve their product? People might also complain about the opposite - that a device has been "abandoned" if nothing ever happens with it. We see the exact opposite problem with many Android phones today - especially the lower-end models. The manufacturers have a sell-it-and-forget-it mentality, and that simply isn't acceptable nowadays from a security standpoint.
I think one good example of changes negatively affecting customer experience is all the Xbox 360 UI updates. At some point in time during the console's lifecycle, MS decided they wanted to push a bunch of advertisements out to their paying customers, and so radically changed the console's UI. Moreover, the new UI felt like it was a lot less information dense, with a good deal of space reserved exclusively for advertising. That was a change made solely for the benefit of Microsoft's bottom line at the expense of their customers.
Slashdot Mirror
No, that can't explain it. The annoyance with StartsWithABang started far before that happened. People gave him a lot of grief when he was simply linking to his own blog.
I'll admit I tend to dislike seeing a member that does NOTHING but post submissions to the site, never even engaging in the discussion that follows. To me, that smacks of "I'm trying to get my visitor count up, but I don't give a shit about what the members have to say." Maybe others don't agree, but I probably wouldn't mind if an author regularly engaged with the community after posting summaries and links to their own articles, so long as they were interesting and relevant to this demographic. If you check out StartsWithABang's history, it was almost 100% submissions. He never appeared interested in discussing the articles he wrote, so it's not hard to understand why he didn't exactly endear himself to the community.
Contrast that to our new overlords, who have shown to be actually willing to talk to people here, and importantly, to listen to what they have to say in return. That's the essence of slashdot. The news and articles are just a way to get the discussions rolling.
From the article: Headline (emphasis mine):
Shockingly, authorities arrest activists instead of people responsible for the Aliso Canyon methane gas leak
No, it's not "shocking" that authorities would arrest someone who knowingly committed a minor crime rather than investigate one who caused a large-scale industrial accident, even if negligence was involved. Because, you know, that would require some bureaucrat to get off their ass and do some work rather than rubber-stamping forms and collecting fees. And it might just inadvertently highlight some systemic corruption or incompetence within the department, and that could just get plain messy. No one wants that. The protesters are low-hanging fruit. I sometimes wonder why it is some people put so much faith in their government when they're every bit has corrupt and/or incompetent as these corporations that are vilified so much?
But unbelievably, the activists are now the ones going to jail.
This writer is quite easily flabbergasted, isn't he? Or he loves faux-outrage. Either way, it makes him sound ridiculous and juvenile. Don't misunderstand... I'm sympathetic to what happened to these poor people who had to move out of their homes because of this gas leak, but the "article" is laughably bad. Yellow journalism is apparently back with a vengeance.
the CSP arrested two protesters who draped banners on the headquarters of the California Public Utilities Commission
Oho... I think I spotted the problem here. They went and pissed off government officials. That's why the hammer came down on them. And when you piss off the government, they can send police after you to arrest you and cart you off to jail.
P.S. If I get modded down as flamebait, I'm going to blame government officials with mod points for trying to silence me.
I've love to hear how you're blaming Islamic terrorist attacks against Parisians on the US. I mean, I know the USA is all that, but isn't it a little arrogant of us to try to claim credit for ALL the problems in the world?
It amazes me that most American still believe their government's official story of 9/11. Elsewhere in the world, people generally accepted the US government blew up their own buildings.
Yeah, it's not like we saw terrorists fly planes into buildings on almost-live TV or anything. And it's not like we saw the government drop a collective load when it happened, generally looking like idiots for not being able to sniff out the plot or stop them despite plenty of warning signs. It's not like we heard first-hand from very brave eyewitnesses that tried to commandeer a fourth plane that was likely destined to hit the white house or capitol building. And it's not like any terrorists organizations claimed credit for the attack.
I think the most damning bit of counter-evidence is the fact that it would require some crazy level of competence and cunning to successfully pull off the most audacious false flag operation in the history of humankind. That doesn't remotely begin to describe the federal government I know.
I mean, hell, they can't even hack into a locked iPhone.
Apparently, Apple is the only company in the world that doesn't have some idiotic hard-coded master password embedded in their firmware.
Or... that's what they want us to think...
I think Google is really talking about third-party stores in China, India, etc. I'm not sure if the Google presentation didn't mention those countries by name, though TFA does. Apparently, lots of people use them over there, and subsequently get viruses or malware. It probably causes Android malware vs iOS to be badly skewed. Google is rightly pointing out that you're more likely to get hit with malware from some sketchy Chinese app store than from Google Play. It's not really all that shocking a revelation. Think about CNet's Download.com and all the crap you get on your system if you use that site, and you get the basic idea.
People are implying that Google is singling out Amazon here. While I don't think Google would shed tears if people somehow got that impression, I'd bet that Amazon's store is almost as safe as Google's. Besides, Amazon is a big boy and doesn't need defending from us, the peanut gallery. If they want to release a study demonstrating how safe their own store is, they're perfectly capable of doing so.
Everything is easy when you're a "big picture" guy. Like the judge: "I hereby order you to crack your unbreakable encryption."
Hell, why not order Apple to end all wars, crime, hunger, and disease here on earth? He's thinking too small if he's going to make wishes.
What the FBI is really saying is that they don't believe Apple. They're so used to spying that they probably find it inconceivable (yes it means what I think it means) that a big corporation would not also have a backdoor for spying.
Either that or they really want to punish Apple for not providing a back door. Think about Apple's position here. A judge orders them to "try" to break it, and if they don't put some reasonable resources into this, they're now in contempt of court. Every time a high profile case comes up, the same nonsense happens.
True, Apple has billions, but this still has to be a bit of a PITA for them.
Why are people assuming I'm some "denialist"? I've already been modded down a couple of times as "overrated", which is shorthand for "I disagree with you and wish to silence you". It's hilarious... the slightest hint of wishing to validate claims with actual evidence and the pitchforks come out. And really... you must have a rather low opinion of my faculties if you seriously felt the need to point out that burning fossil fuels create the excess CO2, not the humans themselves. Sheesh.
I sincerely try to look at the science objectively, and right now, the evidence looks pretty good that we're in a warming trend, and a lot of of scientists seem to think human activity has something to do with it. I have no qualms with that. But again, we're really not going to know if their predictive models are accurate or not until we match their predictions up with future data. That's all I'm saying.
I have no problem with taking reasonable action to curb pollutants and emissions. I think that's a worthwhile goal in itself, regardless of what's happening with the climate. Moreover, it's common sense that we also need to start moving away from oil-based energy since there's a finite supply available to us - and that means investments in renewable energy sources. But let's not destroy or unnecessarily destabilize our economy in the process - that will simply derail efforts. No one gives a shit about the environment when they're about to get kicked out of their home since they can't get a job. Yes, I know... how dare I be pragmatic about human nature, right?
It's important to get accurate models because a more accurate model will tell us how much time we have to implement necessary change. People who want us to go to take immediate extreme corrective measures are, in my opinion, doing more harm than good by generating massive political opposition needlessly. Early wolf-crying predictions were utterly disproved a few decades later. Thanks to that, many people don't believe the current round of worrisome predictions, even if this round turns out to be correct.
It will take future analysis and records. If the trends continue, it's not an anomaly. If the temperature trends drop, then we know it was a temporary blip in the record. Only time will really tell.
Geologically speaking, we've only been recording temperatures for an infinitesimally small amount of time. Moreover, there's obviously no experimental control possible - i.e., we can't tell what the temperature would be without humans with any certainty - it's all theoretical models that are describing the trends we're seeing.
I'm not saying the models are necessarily incorrect. I'm just pointing out that they are, in fact, only predictions and models. The only way to judge their validity is to measure their ability to predict trends over time.
Fashion is fickle. If augmented reality takes off, future fashion might dictate that eyewear is now the new cool/sexy, especially if it's built into nice-looking headgear that also functions as sunglasses when outdoors - lots of people don't mind wearing those. Agreed that it's a very big if, though.
Also, since when the hell do we listen to Goldman-Sachs as a purveyor of future tech trends? It's not like Wall Street is known for it's far-sightedness (no pun on corrective eyewear intended).
Heh, was just coming to say the same thing. VR is cool enough, but I think it's just too gimmicky to catch on as a mainstream thing. Maybe for console games it would work, since you can sit down and play relatively hands-free.
Honestly, I think augmented reality has a much better chance at going mainstream, eventually when it gets to the point that they can hide the electronics and projected viewports in normal-sized glasses reasonably cheaply - because you know they'll eventually get there. At that point, we have a chance at moving away from physical user interfaces. And consider how useful digital information overlaid on top of the real world could be in many situations. Think about how much better computer-based navigation would work with an actual heads-up display, and if you're walking, actual cues embedded in the real world.
And entertainment: How fun would it be to play a game of Star Wars-style holo battlechess with a friend? Thanks to the internet, you wouldn't even have to be in the same physical location. For kids: what about a ghost-hunting game that turns your own house into the playfield, or perhaps a laser-tag style wargame that takes place in the back yard? Computer games wouldn't have to exclude exercise.
I'm not claiming it's a clusterfuck. All I'm saying is that each time I've tried to use it, I've hit a roadblock serious enough to be a complete showstopper. I'm pretty sure I've gotten unlucky, but it's not like I've got strange hardware to deal with or anything. My laptop from a few years back was a older model Dell XPS 13. My current Linux experiment was running in a VirtualBox VM, so there are unlikely to be hardware issues there. I'm trying to connect to a Synology NAS's SMB share across a standard wired ethernet LAN at home. It's very basic stuff that an OS should have no troubles with.
Still, in case you missed my point, the main reason I use Windows is because I have no trouble getting the thing to actually work, and it's been incredibly reliable over the past decade. Time is money, and the time I've spent tinkering with Linux simply trying to get it operational has far exceeded what I paid for my last copy of Windows.
Look, I don't hate Linux. I was trying to get it working in order to port my game to Linux, because I LIKE the concept of a free alternative OS that people can use. Unless I can figure out this most recent networking issue, that's unlikely to happen in the near future, which I think is a shame.
P.S. The word your looking for is "fathom" ;)
It's pretty easy to block out the absence of something - black bars don't bother me. Keep in mind that many of these images I've seen are pretty bright. I probably wouldn't mind so much if it was more like an actual watermark (grey, translucent, and unobtrusive) which typically don't bother me and not a fully opaque logo. Yes, I eventually manage to block them out as well after a few minutes, but as soon as the screen darkens, my eye is immediately drawn to it again.
It's like a small grain of sand in your shoe. No, it's not a big deal, but it's an irritant. The TV watching experience, at least for me, would be improved without it. Some people can probably also block out a crying baby when they watch a movie. Me... not so much.
I'm tempted not to answer a rude AC, but I'll go ahead and bite. I happen to be a professional game developer, and have worked on several different game engines at the companies I've worked for. I'm just telling you what I've seen. Or if you don't believe me, just grab a cross platform open source engine like Unreal or Unity and inspect the code yourself, and it will validate what I'm telling you.
Let me dispense with two myths: First, a very large portion of the work involved in a game engine isn't directly involved in rendering. That's just one aspect, albeit the most visible one, for obvious reasons. Most laypersons think of "rendering" when they think of "game engine", but there's a lot more that goes on under the hood.
Second, even a very large portion of rendering code is completely API/platform-agnostic if properly designed. You need a very thin layer to the D3D/OpenGL/Proprietary APIs for rendering, but in general, since pretty much all the hardware works very similarly, the APIs tend to have roughly equivalent functionality. In my own engine's graphics code, for instance, there's about 20 different modules, handling everything from primitives, line rendering, texture loading and management, particle effects, streaks, lightning, text rendering, lighting, post-proc management, and so on. Everything is communicated through a very thin API that translates the calls to native functions for the platform in question. Things get more complicated as you start optimizing, especially with consoles and the bizarre hardware of last generation, but it still generally holds true.
In general, both among professional game engines I've worked on, as well as my own engine, I'd guess that platform agnostic code accounts for no less than 95% of the code, and is completely portable across platforms, although I haven't really measured precisely.
Personally, I've never actually used my copy of AnyDVD to pirate anything. I've used it to rip my legally purchased copies of DVDs and Blurays to my media server. I'm not doing anything wrong by using the content I bought and paid for how I wish. I'm sure they'd likely disagree, but they can piss off.
Nowadays, I actually use streaming services more often than not, since they're convenient and reasonably priced. Do you know what makes me want to actually switch to pirated content instead?
1) Insane prices for watching previous seasons of a show (either rentals or purchase), when Hulu is only showing the latest season.
2) The bright, distracting network logo Hulu pastes in the corner of the picture for the entire duration of the show.
Can you imagine going to a movie theater and being subjected to an image of the movie company's logo in the corner of the screen for the duration of the show? Why does anyone believe this is acceptable for television? When the pirated content is superior to the paid-for content, that's not a good sign.
That sounds great in theory. In reality, it's not quite that simple. Many game engines are already cross platform. We already know how to do this from a technical perspective.
The real work is in mapping controls and tuning gameplay, design, interfaces, etc, to work with those different control schemes and form factors (if you're talking about different sizes). PCs also require much more work to scale properly than console games, since they can work with a very wide variety of hardware - and this tends to come with some greater QA costs for simple compatibility testing, although honestly, it's much better than it used to be.
You know, every time I try to seriously use Linux, I end up hitting a brick wall of some sort. A few years ago, it was a driver issue that accelerated my laptop's pointer to about 10x faster than I could control, and this was on the lowest setting. Could never figure it out after half a day's research and tinkering, and that was enough for me. Off it went.
My latest attempt was with Linux Mint (which I really like, btw) in a VM. The most up-to-date version w/ Cinnamon crashes immediately on startup, so I have to use an older version (not a confidence-inspiring start). Initially, my machine connected to my NAS share fine using Samba. Unfortunately, Mercurial can't actually seem to lock files (Windows and Mac have no issues), so I can't push patches to the NAS shared repository, which I use to sync my development machines. Setting up an actual web-based repository - the recommended approach - doesn't look trivial for a Linux noob. Then, my network connection to my NAS disappeared (maybe after an update? not sure), and it won't come back for anything. It's just gone, and a few hours of research and tinkering hasn't brought it back. I looked at trying an alternative protocol (NFS), but had no luck figuring out how to get that to work either. Very frustrating.
This is how my experience with Linux goes. Every few years I get a hankering to try it, get beaten back by glitches, and think "ok, maybe I'll try again in a few years."
You know, even as a Windows user, I'm happy Linux is getting more games, but let's please not kid ourselves. A Linux-only blockbuster exclusive is right up there with "year of the desktop" wishful thinking. Windows still has 95% of the desktop market, or something thereabouts. Its only real competition is other platforms which are eating up previously desktop-exclusive functions. The closest we'll get to a Linux-exclusive AAA game in the near future is if it's released exclusively on Android.
Anyhow, the notion of different platforms competing against each other ignores a pretty obvious issue that gamers and most game designers have known forever. It's not a technical limitation that restricts PC games and console gamers from playing together. It's a difference in control hardware, which ends up making console and PC games very different games with respect to control schemes, and thus game design. For instance, pit a PC FPS player against a console player, and everyone knows who's going to generally have a huge advantage. Same thing with a RTS. It's not a knock against consoles - it's just a reality that a mouse and keyboard is a far more precise and flexible input device, so has a massive advantage in most cross-platform play that's geared to those devices.
And as far as making cross-platform games... again, the biggest hurdle is not really technical, assuming you're working with a decently designed game engine. It's one of adapting the game design to different form factors and control schemes. My game engine is written in *very* portable C++, with just a very thin layer for OS-specific stuff. It's actually pretty straightforward to port it to new platforms, so long as they have comparable APIs for rendering video and audio, etc.
Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of cross-buying games across platforms. Many Steam games already do this, so I'm glad they're joining the party.
Or... they could just call back with their mobile phone? Surely it would actually be quite difficult in a country as tiny as Holland to find a location that isn't covered by cell tower reception.
According to one study, only 5% of British bombers setting out bombed within 5 miles of their intended target. Yeah, it was probably about as safe standing right on the target as anywhere else.
I'd imagine the US Army Air Corp had somewhat higher accuracy rates, bombing during daylight and using the Norden bombsight, although I'd guess it was still rather dismal by modern standards.
I live close to the real-life episode that likely inspired that. Or else it was a case of life imitating art. Either way, we had a pretty good chuckle at those women's expense since no one was hurt.
Yep, agreed. I don't think there have been too many blatant examples of actually removing functionality through updates, though - at least that I can recall offhand. While US consumer protection laws aren't quite as strong as in some European countries, a company that altered a product post-sale so radically would quickly find itself at the receiving end of a class-action lawsuit.
One could argue that Sony did this with the PS3 when they removed the "other OS" functionality, but I think they got away with it* because:
a) It was a feature that very few of it's customers used, and
b) It can easily be argued that that functionality wasn't central to the functionality for which most consumers purchased their device.
* A class-action lawsuit was filed, but was eventually dismissed.
I made the same argument in another thread (and using the same example of the Qwerty keyboard, oddly enough) related to how changing a widely known user interface paradigm (a car's shifter) can actually be deadly. Sometimes ubiquity trumps "efficiency".
Devices updating is both a good thing and a bad thing from a customer perspective. You can get new features, bugfixes, and security updates, of course. But what happens if functional changes are made and you aren't happy with it? That's sort of a tough one. Almost any functional change you make is going to make a small percentage of people unhappy, because people don't like change, or it may genuinely be a worse experience for them for whatever reason.
Does that mean a company shouldn't try to genuinely improve their product? People might also complain about the opposite - that a device has been "abandoned" if nothing ever happens with it. We see the exact opposite problem with many Android phones today - especially the lower-end models. The manufacturers have a sell-it-and-forget-it mentality, and that simply isn't acceptable nowadays from a security standpoint.
I think one good example of changes negatively affecting customer experience is all the Xbox 360 UI updates. At some point in time during the console's lifecycle, MS decided they wanted to push a bunch of advertisements out to their paying customers, and so radically changed the console's UI. Moreover, the new UI felt like it was a lot less information dense, with a good deal of space reserved exclusively for advertising. That was a change made solely for the benefit of Microsoft's bottom line at the expense of their customers.