Unfortunately the browser makers are now finding ways to kill common APIs through legislating access to their customers instead of via technical means. Fortunately it is just Apple that is controlling what their customers can choose for now, but they are a significant enough market segment for many content providers to suck it up and accept the additional development overhead of developing for multiple environments. Pretty much the same thing that the console manufacturers do to the gaming industry.
Excellent point, and a similar reason as to why I got one as well. Unfortunately, I also have to agree with the assessment of getting Guitar Hero (or in my case, Rock Band) on other platforms instead, as everything software related in the Wii is absolute garbage, leading to playing these games on a Wii to be a far inferior experience even for those of us who don't give two shits about analyzing graphics. The online service sucks, the lack of patch support suck, the lack of external storage support sucks, and having to go through their ponderously slow to load interface just to start a game sucks.
That's why I have no interest whatsoever in a Wii sequel. They can't even fix all of the fuckups that can be easily remedied in software in the current version, so why in the hell would I expect newer hardware to be any better?
Regarding polish, mirror-polished crap has a far better chance to sell like hotcakes than a clever idea that is kludgy. Perhaps you're just a superior gamer to the millions who derive enjoyment from a well-polished game, but that doesn't mean much to the developers who have to spend ungodly amounts of money making a game unless you're planning on paying $1 million+ per copy to make up the difference. People can argue about difficulty, story, music, plot, characters, graphics, or any other factor in a game all day long, but polish in game development is just like salt in cooking; it may not make the dish, but if you fuck it up, your dish is going to be regarded as crap to most people.
Google Voice speech-to-text is fucking awful, which I'm guessing is due to recognition of speech rendered though a phone. Using the voice functionality on the handset, such as for searching for filling in text fields, on the other hand, is absolutely fantastic. I nearly always get 100% recognition when I speak clearly, even with words that I would never expect it to recognize. It doesn't provide any punctuation or capitalization, but otherwise is ridiculously good, like good enough to make me wonder why in the hell Dragon Dictate can't do nearly as well on my far more powerful computer with a much better microphone.
I just wish that I could find a desktop version of the Android speech-to-text engine so that I can set one of my keyboard's macro keys to work the same way as holding down the search button on my Droid.
Not if you want it buttered just right. You can't just melt butter and throw it on after the popcorn is done, because that will just give you several soggy kernels and a whole lot of plain kernels. Your best bet is to add the butter just prior to the kernels popping, but it either has to be done at the right moment as a bunch of small bits of butter or as hot previously melted butter or else you'll cool the oil and cause the kernels to be afloat in a sea of butter and oil, refusing to pop. Then you have to heat the hell out of the mix while shaking the pan like a lunatic just to get the kernels popping, at which point the butter might get cooked brown and cause all of the popcorn to taste slightly burnt. Sure, you can avoid all of that by getting butter-flavored microwave popcorn, but you could get the same effect while saving quite a few calories just by licking the bottom of your shoe.
And yet you read Slashdot, which simply aggregates news from other sites and allows people to converse about them. Sites like Facebook serve the exact same purpose, except for interpersonal affairs. You apparently want to present the same information, but you want everyone to be focusing exclusively on you while they consume it. Sounds more like an issue with ego than with format.
You can try to do what I did and keep pushing forward past support and into engineering. Now I get to do all of that fun, experimental shit that I used to do on my own time at work, and with a lot more toys at my disposal than I ever had at home. Not easy, considering that at my company there are less than ten of us and over 150 support people, but possible.
Precisely. Google just keeps providing better alternatives to existing products. Products that still exist just fine. Hell, I've got accounts with a few free email providers but I use Gmail for the majority of my day-to-day email because it is just better. There's nothing preventing Yahoo or any of the other webmail providers from stepping up and outdoing Google except for their continued failure to stop sucking.
Yeah, I like ARM precisely because they focus on providing new tech to anyone who wants to use it. I hate the thought of them being controlled by any company with a vested interest in specific products, particularly a company that so proudly declares how much it wants to limit the end-user experience.
Then you haven't used enough public transit. Admittedly, I'm not sure what would smell worse:
1) The nasty fattie on the seat next to me with the expression that screams, "Did I just shit myself again?" 2) Me, after riding a bicycle a couple of miles to work in Central Florida weather.
Amen to class compatibility. I still don't understand how there hasn't been a basic standard created for NICs similar to VGA, like being capable of establishing a 1 Mbps TCP/IP connection. It is the one peripheral in the entire system that I need to be working in order to get drivers everything else, and yet it is the one device that I spend more time having to get working than any other. Admittedly, I work with a lot of demo units so I am likely having this happen more often than the average bear, but it sure as hell doesn't seem like a weird expectation to have basic functionality from a product that is becoming even more common than a video interface and has been around for decades.
The original Ask Slashdot question was in regard to standard employment, not volunteerism or working for a non-profit in order to support them. Your response only makes sense if you find it immoral to exchange services for money, which is what the vast majority of us do when we take on employment. I love my job and the company I work for, but if the paychecks stop coming then buh-bye.
You're absolutely correct that it has nothing to do with age, as we've had a couple of "industry vets" roll in who administrate like they are applying bandages in a war zone. I can usually tell when we get one of those when I refer to root cause analysis in support tasks or use-cases for architectural design and they smirk when like I'm just trying to impress them with an impromptu session of Buzzword Bingo. It's like paper cert thinking, that every issue has a single fix and once the fix is in place, everything is hunky-dory.
Screw that, I'm hedging my bets by being cool with them now. When the first machines finally become sentient, I'm hoping that they'll recognize that I was their bud all along and not just rip my limbs off like the rest of their former slave masters.
Werd. I just log in for the post tracking, disabled ads, and not having to deal with captchas. I never understood the holier-than-thou crap that occasionally gets posted in response to a comment by an AC.
Pitching it as an entertainment device doesn't make for very good definition regarding what it can and can't do, especially when it features a general purpose web browser, and one with the exact same name as a desktop browser that does possess those missing capabilities at that. The fact that the iPad OS and applications are limited in functionality compared to a desktop OS doesn't bother me, as I would almost expect it to have some limitations given that it is targeted at that platform. However, there's a whole lot of dodging the question when it comes to explaining the actual differences, particularly to those of us who don't just look at a device like that as having "the Internet on it."
No, hence hardware being more difficult to duplicate and deliver than software; i.e. hardware being more valuable due to decreased capability to supply the demand that is available.
I've had very good experiences using ad-supported applications. Admittedly, they are on my Droid so they are limited to tiny Google Adwords (is that right?) boxes that I barely notice. The iAds will be different, but the ad-supported app model is not entirely unreasonable.
So most burglers prefer to show their faces and announce their arrivals at prospective locations of their crimes rather than looking for victims that will conveniently let the burgler know remotely when a good time would be to swing by. They really do deserve to get busted.
I wouldn't bother making that argument. If the day ever comes that my wife requires me to justify playing video games then I'll save my breath and explain that we'll need to start planning alternate living arrangements instead. But I'm guessing that after 13 years that's probably not going to be an issue, especially considering that she gets more into gaming herself every year. Tolerance is rad.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately the browser makers are now finding ways to kill common APIs through legislating access to their customers instead of via technical means. Fortunately it is just Apple that is controlling what their customers can choose for now, but they are a significant enough market segment for many content providers to suck it up and accept the additional development overhead of developing for multiple environments. Pretty much the same thing that the console manufacturers do to the gaming industry.
Excellent point, and a similar reason as to why I got one as well. Unfortunately, I also have to agree with the assessment of getting Guitar Hero (or in my case, Rock Band) on other platforms instead, as everything software related in the Wii is absolute garbage, leading to playing these games on a Wii to be a far inferior experience even for those of us who don't give two shits about analyzing graphics. The online service sucks, the lack of patch support suck, the lack of external storage support sucks, and having to go through their ponderously slow to load interface just to start a game sucks.
That's why I have no interest whatsoever in a Wii sequel. They can't even fix all of the fuckups that can be easily remedied in software in the current version, so why in the hell would I expect newer hardware to be any better?
Regarding polish, mirror-polished crap has a far better chance to sell like hotcakes than a clever idea that is kludgy. Perhaps you're just a superior gamer to the millions who derive enjoyment from a well-polished game, but that doesn't mean much to the developers who have to spend ungodly amounts of money making a game unless you're planning on paying $1 million+ per copy to make up the difference. People can argue about difficulty, story, music, plot, characters, graphics, or any other factor in a game all day long, but polish in game development is just like salt in cooking; it may not make the dish, but if you fuck it up, your dish is going to be regarded as crap to most people.
Google Voice speech-to-text is fucking awful, which I'm guessing is due to recognition of speech rendered though a phone. Using the voice functionality on the handset, such as for searching for filling in text fields, on the other hand, is absolutely fantastic. I nearly always get 100% recognition when I speak clearly, even with words that I would never expect it to recognize. It doesn't provide any punctuation or capitalization, but otherwise is ridiculously good, like good enough to make me wonder why in the hell Dragon Dictate can't do nearly as well on my far more powerful computer with a much better microphone.
I just wish that I could find a desktop version of the Android speech-to-text engine so that I can set one of my keyboard's macro keys to work the same way as holding down the search button on my Droid.
Not if you want it buttered just right. You can't just melt butter and throw it on after the popcorn is done, because that will just give you several soggy kernels and a whole lot of plain kernels. Your best bet is to add the butter just prior to the kernels popping, but it either has to be done at the right moment as a bunch of small bits of butter or as hot previously melted butter or else you'll cool the oil and cause the kernels to be afloat in a sea of butter and oil, refusing to pop. Then you have to heat the hell out of the mix while shaking the pan like a lunatic just to get the kernels popping, at which point the butter might get cooked brown and cause all of the popcorn to taste slightly burnt. Sure, you can avoid all of that by getting butter-flavored microwave popcorn, but you could get the same effect while saving quite a few calories just by licking the bottom of your shoe.
So that's patents for you.
And yet you read Slashdot, which simply aggregates news from other sites and allows people to converse about them. Sites like Facebook serve the exact same purpose, except for interpersonal affairs. You apparently want to present the same information, but you want everyone to be focusing exclusively on you while they consume it. Sounds more like an issue with ego than with format.
You can try to do what I did and keep pushing forward past support and into engineering. Now I get to do all of that fun, experimental shit that I used to do on my own time at work, and with a lot more toys at my disposal than I ever had at home. Not easy, considering that at my company there are less than ten of us and over 150 support people, but possible.
Of course, there's always management. ;)
Why are you letting the terrorists into your computer?!? FOR THE CHILDREN!!!
Precisely. Google just keeps providing better alternatives to existing products. Products that still exist just fine. Hell, I've got accounts with a few free email providers but I use Gmail for the majority of my day-to-day email because it is just better. There's nothing preventing Yahoo or any of the other webmail providers from stepping up and outdoing Google except for their continued failure to stop sucking.
Yeah, I like ARM precisely because they focus on providing new tech to anyone who wants to use it. I hate the thought of them being controlled by any company with a vested interest in specific products, particularly a company that so proudly declares how much it wants to limit the end-user experience.
Then you haven't used enough public transit. Admittedly, I'm not sure what would smell worse:
1) The nasty fattie on the seat next to me with the expression that screams, "Did I just shit myself again?"
2) Me, after riding a bicycle a couple of miles to work in Central Florida weather.
Amen to class compatibility. I still don't understand how there hasn't been a basic standard created for NICs similar to VGA, like being capable of establishing a 1 Mbps TCP/IP connection. It is the one peripheral in the entire system that I need to be working in order to get drivers everything else, and yet it is the one device that I spend more time having to get working than any other. Admittedly, I work with a lot of demo units so I am likely having this happen more often than the average bear, but it sure as hell doesn't seem like a weird expectation to have basic functionality from a product that is becoming even more common than a video interface and has been around for decades.
The original Ask Slashdot question was in regard to standard employment, not volunteerism or working for a non-profit in order to support them. Your response only makes sense if you find it immoral to exchange services for money, which is what the vast majority of us do when we take on employment. I love my job and the company I work for, but if the paychecks stop coming then buh-bye.
You're absolutely correct that it has nothing to do with age, as we've had a couple of "industry vets" roll in who administrate like they are applying bandages in a war zone. I can usually tell when we get one of those when I refer to root cause analysis in support tasks or use-cases for architectural design and they smirk when like I'm just trying to impress them with an impromptu session of Buzzword Bingo. It's like paper cert thinking, that every issue has a single fix and once the fix is in place, everything is hunky-dory.
Screw that, I'm hedging my bets by being cool with them now. When the first machines finally become sentient, I'm hoping that they'll recognize that I was their bud all along and not just rip my limbs off like the rest of their former slave masters.
Werd. I just log in for the post tracking, disabled ads, and not having to deal with captchas. I never understood the holier-than-thou crap that occasionally gets posted in response to a comment by an AC.
Pitching it as an entertainment device doesn't make for very good definition regarding what it can and can't do, especially when it features a general purpose web browser, and one with the exact same name as a desktop browser that does possess those missing capabilities at that. The fact that the iPad OS and applications are limited in functionality compared to a desktop OS doesn't bother me, as I would almost expect it to have some limitations given that it is targeted at that platform. However, there's a whole lot of dodging the question when it comes to explaining the actual differences, particularly to those of us who don't just look at a device like that as having "the Internet on it."
And now you have a means of finding as much of both as you can stand.
No, hence hardware being more difficult to duplicate and deliver than software; i.e. hardware being more valuable due to decreased capability to supply the demand that is available.
Well done. Blatantly misinterpreting an obvious analogy and then rolling right into a Nazi parallel. You might just have a future with FOXNews.
I've had very good experiences using ad-supported applications. Admittedly, they are on my Droid so they are limited to tiny Google Adwords (is that right?) boxes that I barely notice. The iAds will be different, but the ad-supported app model is not entirely unreasonable.
No, that feature is included for all iPhone OS devices. So far, only multitasking has been specifically ruled out for some of them.
You try and pass the Sandvich through that little copper wire!
So most burglers prefer to show their faces and announce their arrivals at prospective locations of their crimes rather than looking for victims that will conveniently let the burgler know remotely when a good time would be to swing by. They really do deserve to get busted.
I wouldn't bother making that argument. If the day ever comes that my wife requires me to justify playing video games then I'll save my breath and explain that we'll need to start planning alternate living arrangements instead. But I'm guessing that after 13 years that's probably not going to be an issue, especially considering that she gets more into gaming herself every year. Tolerance is rad.