Tanenbaum argued for greater modularity and really that's no bad thing, his arguments were pretty solid theoretically. But as we all know, just as the most beautiful, maintainable, stable software designs are sacrificed in business for something that works now even if it has it's flaws, Linux was available, easy to use and just worked the way people wanted, that didn't mean it was inherently better in theory or that Tanenbaum is wrong anymore than it means Windows is a vastly superior OS to Linux and MacOS X simply because it has such a massively larger user base.
Basing your view on Tanenbaum's one comment towards Torvalds is also rather ignorant, throughout the discussion you're referring to, Tanenbaum was well composed and formed coherent arguments, whilst Torvalds at times acted like your average troll.
You see, the very fact Windows is far and away the most popular OS followed by MacOS X followed by Linux is evidence enough that popularity means nothing in terms of the actual quality of an OS, it merely shows which played the business game better.
Tanenbaum is worth listening to, his ideas and justifications included in that 17 year old discussion you mention aren't wrong even if his predictions on the future of computing were. This is a man who understands the theory of how to make a better OS more so than most people do, and yes possibly even more so than Torvalds. The problem is that he's a theoretical guy, so whilst his proposals may be better, they may not be practical at the time they're announced or he simply may not have the time to dedicate to proving their practicality. If they're not practical at the time he proposes them though that doesn't mean they'll never be practical as changes in computing architecture or even raw computing power may make them practical.
Hopefully he'll put this funding to good use and it'll help provide him the time and resources he needs to take his ideas beyond mere theory and he'll be able to backup his theories with actual working demonstrations rather than just arguments now. You can be a Torvalds fanboy all you want but Tanenbaum and Torvalds are two different people - Tanenbaum is someone who comes up with theoretical new concepts, Torvalds is someone who takes existing concepts and implements them well. Both have their strengths, but writing one or the other off is foolish when both have a lot to offer.
No, in recent months the majority of the population has woken up.
Labour have zero support now, we're not in an irreversible spiral but we are in a spiral, people aren't happy letting it happen.
The question is what do we do? The election is less than a year away and then Labour will be banished from power likely for at least a decade, but they'll be banished from power for a while at least, that's certain now.
At the last local elections last year Labour got obliterated, they lost countless councils, people did vote to make a point.
Groups and prominent people are making their opinions known, NO2ID, the original creator of the DNA database, the previous head of MI5, Tim Berners-Lee and so on. The problem is Labour just ignore it.
The fact is the only option we have other than resorting to violence is to just wait until the next elections, and if you feel violence is a suitable option then feel free to go and be the first to attack Jacqui Smith or whoever but for most rational people, waiting for the elections is the only option. It's also worth pointing out that Labour almost certainly wont be able to implement this sort of thing and get the ID cards scheme or their new copyright quango properly in place by the next elections anyway and any remnants will be abolished by the Tories or the Lib Dems.
Right now the Tories are showing a lot more respect to civil liberties stating publicly they'll do away with the ID card scheme and wouldn't implement this sort of monitoring. A lot of people still hate the Tories, but at least on a civil liberties front they state they have more respect. If you don't like the Tories, vote Lib Dem and further decrease any power Labour and the Tories have to create a better balance- as we know, the Lib Dems are even more pro-freedom than the Tories so strengthening their power is good too.
Only when democracy fails, and if we find the Tories just as bad should other options be considered, with less than a year to go to get rid of Labour democracy seems the best option worth waiting for in the face of a government that will not listen to anyone whether it's the citizens, their allies or their opponents.
"If your new version is borked; if your long anticipated new feature turns out to be vapor, if your own customer service folks are crap - in short, if those evangelic users get to a point where they feel betrayed by the manufacturer - it's going to be exactly those highly visible, spotlit users with audiences of their own that are going to tell it like it is."
Really? What you've described in your full post sounds a lot like fanboyism, and most fanboys wont accept that a product is a load of crap even if it is. Fanboy zealots will praise a product to the very end.
I don't disagree these people are a double edged sword however just not for the reasons you state. There's certain companies I will avoid because the community that comes with them have a disturbingly warped view of reality when it comes to discussing the product such that if for example you have a problem with it they'll go as far as telling you it's you at fault and not the product even if it really is the product all because they don't want anyone else reading to hear that *gasp* the product has flaws. If your product's community is a little too extreme in it's worship then it probably does as much harm as it does good because to an outsider, worshipping a product which you're not even paid to worship and praise can look a little, well, odd.
Personally, the whole H5N1 thing wasn't something I was going to get too worried about despite the news telling us day in and day out for months how it was the end of the world. But this one I am concerned about, why?
The whole bird flu thing was primarily theoretical, whilst some people died from flu they caught from contact with birds it never actually evolved into a strain that could easily be spread between humans. Whilst we should always be prepared for the theoretical, there seems little point the average person caring or worrying about it beyond having a breif awareness of the possibility of it happening.
This time, it's different, it's clearly not theoretical, this thing exists, it's in the field and it's affecting people.
I don't know why such a fuss was made about H5N1 for so long, whilst this thing went un-reported until it had already killed a ton of people. I can't help but feel the original H5N1 bird flu scare was somewhat of a manufactured scare, because whilst it was theoretically worrying, so are many other things, like nuclear war, but that doesn't mean we need to spend months on end reiterating to everyone why the should be worried. In a way it's good that the H5N1 scare educated people on the danger of pandemics but I still think it was overstated and took up a massively disproportionate amount of news coverage at the time and for the duration.
So the whole H5N1 scare was a blessing and a curse, a blessing because it raised awareness of pandemics and possibly assisted preparation for this (The UK government spent £500m on Tamiflu for the H5N1 scare - seemed a stupid move at the time, perhaps not so now) but it was also a curse in that it got many people worried for many months and took up a disproportionate amount of media coverage such that arguably more important events at the time were missed or poorly reported.
I agree, I think Cell still has potential, however I think to use it in a console was rather idiotic. If perhaps you gave developers the same kind of support that Microsoft does then you could possibly pull it off, but you'd still need a decent graphics card of course which the PS3 sadly lacks.
I think the GP's point would've been better stated that Cell is dead for many of the purposes it was originally claimed to be amazing for. That doesn't of course mean it's dead in plenty of other areas as you rightly point out.
It has it's place for sure, I'm just not sure that generic processing for desktop or even many generic server systems or possibly even gaming is it.
I'm not really sure what I was supposed to be seeing there. At best I could find the excuse that it's the telcos providing the underlying infrastructure and bandwidth that are the problem. As pointed out in the thread though, why aren't they attempting to go their own way on this then? Why are providers with their own infrastructure such as Virgin in the UK still heavy on caps? Why aren't they lobbying the government or telcos for cheaper bandwidth?
The fact is they're happy with the status quo, because there is plenty of profit in continuously decreasing the amount of bandwidth available to customers and then charging them again for what they already paid for when they signed up to an unlimited package, no real effort and no investment is required.
This is why ISPs are also quick to hand over customer details without challenging the authenticity of it in court, because even though we've seen the music industry etc. get these requests wrong, the ISP simply doesn't care - all they care about is profit, not how happy customers are with the service, they aren't going anywhere because other ISPs are all just as bad.
ISPs tell us they're on our side, they tell us it's the telcos even though they do nothing about it, they tell us they have no choice but to accept the court ruling even though they could legitimately and fairly trivially protect customer privacy in court.
ISPs can pretend all they want, they're not the white knights of businesses, they are just as evil as all other big corporations and their only goal is profit, not serving the customer. Some might argue that's fine because that's what businesses exist for and I agree to an extent, what I don't agree with is their shifting of the blame when customers do start complaining.
But that's just it, they've already told all these users they can have that bandwidth by selling them unlimited packages and only charging as much as £5 or even giving away connections free if they sign up to phone packages in the UK.
In their rush to grab as many users as possible they've created a problem themselves and are now trying to charge those who already pay a decent amount (£20 - £30) even more.
All this cutting off, severe capping etc. has been common practice by UK ISPs in the UK for about 2 or 3 years now such that pretty much all of them do it.
If you're lucky you'll start paying about 50 times above cost for extra bandwidth per-GB on top of your "unlimited" subscription next.
The problem is, I think the internet rush has finished, that is, pretty much everyone that was ever going to be a potential internet customer is already one nowadays, so ISPs are struggling to figure out how to further increase profits. Pretty much all businesses wont ever be happy with a fixed profit margin, they'll always want to increase it and this is what's happening both here in the UK and now seemingly in the US - they're doing away with users who actually use what they're paying for, they're cutting the amount of bandwidth available to everyone else, and then charging more with a massive markup if you want more.
I'm not really sure how else ISPs can increase their profit margins though to be fair, content is the obvious one, ISPs in the UK like BT are going for Phorm, but that's most certainly not the answer. Content seems to have failed so far because it's generally meant working with the music and movie industry who are still clueless about the internet and hence impose unrealistic licensing and DRM restrictions on the content. I think ISPs would need to become content producers if they want to get anywhere, but I guess that requires thought, effort and investment and apparently they feel it's better to simply screw your users for more profit instead. Time Warner though should at least have less trouble moving into the content bundling business than most but again, it would require more effort than simply screwing the users.
I understand that bandwidth isn't an infinite resource and some heavy users are a problem in that respect, but I do think that excuse is severely over-used, I'm not convinced there is as much of a bandwidth shortage as ISPs would have us believe, it's just an easy and convenient way to justify fucking the user over for more money.
I was going to respond along similar lines as the parent, but I hate idiocy very much and this article displayed a massive amount of it from the author. I simply couldn't put together anything other than a rant at how bad this article was. The parent post however gives me a nice springboard to make some additional points without ranting.
When he says Sony and Microsoft are looking to get into casual games, I don't think he was talking about first party titles, just that they were pushing that route and perhaps even helping fund 3rd party developers down that route on their consoles, I suppose a game like Lips on the 360 is a good example.
Microsoft and Sony are doing this not because they in any way want to do away with hardcore games on their title, but because they want to expand their market. Ironically, he is suggesting that Nintendo is going to do extremely well because they're pushing the casual games market. Unfortunately, this is why Nintendo will actually fall behind if they don't take action - Microsoft and Sony are moving into casual games whilst also strongly supporting hardcore games, whilt Nintendo isn't diversifying in this way. Effectively, Microsoft and Sony are holding ground in the hardcore market whilst pushing to gain ground in the casual market whilst Nintendo are sat purely in the casual market seemingly refusing to budge into hardcore whilst simultaneously risking having their market share chewed away by Microsoft and Sony.
You see, it's not as simplistic as casual vs. hardcore, as the parent quite rightly points out. Both types of game make money and both have a place, one will not eliminate the other and the only thing that is happening now is that casual gaming was previously neglected and since this generation of consoles there has been a realisation that it deserves equal treatment, and that's now what it's beginning to get. This does not mean it will continue expanding, again as the parent says and if anything I'd say it has limited scope due to the fact casual games tend to cut away the storyline element, and there's only so many games of the same genre you'll want to buy if there's not even a story differentiating them from each other which is a common difference between a lot of casual and hardcore games. I would say though that casual gaming has a bigger userbase which will make up for the lower attach rate of casual games. To give an example in numbers, what I'm saying is that the hardcore section of the market makes it's profits by selling 10 different games to each of 10 different users, whilst the casual market makes it's profits by selling 1 game to 100 users - both shift as many units, but in a different manner.
One final point about TFA is that I'm a little dubious on his definition of hardcore, in fact, I'm convinced some of his examples can't even be defined as one or the other - Rock Band appeals as much to hardcore gamers as it does casual gamers, you can't simply call it a casual game and hold it up as a pinnacle of success in the casual gaming world when I'd wager a bet, many of the people who bought it are in fact hardcore gamers who are also still buying the Call of Duty, Killzones and Halos of the world as well.
When you can make something like Halo 3, sell it at an average of £35 a peice and sell it to 9 million users, netting you probably in the region of £250 million or more in pure profit you're not going to just give that up or even give the chance of that up. That's why many companies will still keep developing hardcore games. Oh, and also because some companies probably don't even want to make hardcore games, certainly companies like id Software for example seem to actually enjoy developing hardcore games.
The prosecution got a guilty verdict without actually managing to prove any wrongdoing due to severe incompetence and lack of knowledge.
It was pretty clear something was odd about the decision, whether the TPB guys were right or wrong is irrelevant when the prosecution are unable to actually prove any wrongdoing.
You can't legitimately get a guilty verdict if you haven't proven that they're guilty of doing something illegal, accusations alone aren't enough.
The interesting thing now will be to see what happens as a result of this revelation. It's probably worth pointing out that this conspiracy almost certainly goes deeper - the first judge due to judge their trial was removed due to conflict of interest IIRC and this is his replacement, so the real question has to be who is responsible for repeatedly ensuring the judges presiding over this case have strong music industry/pro-copyright lobby links? Who in Sweden determines which judge should oversee a particular case?
I think damages really need to be decided based on the financial gain of the infringer.
For someone downloading MP3s illegaly, that should indeed be fuck all. For a company making a profit off someone elses work, that should be all the profits they made.
From the policy: "Orange, O2, T-Mobile, Virgin Mobile, Vodafone and 3"
I'd wager a bet the only reason you can is either because you've already opted out of the filter previously, because they haven't implemented it on your connection yet or because your phone provider has opted you out automatically for some reason - perhaps because they have reason to believe already that you're over 18 or something.
"They already have. The ISP I work for have been dropping any packets destined for sites on the IWF's blacklist for several years now."
I understand landline ISPs already implement the IWF's child porn blacklist, my concern now is that they will try and implement this more general blacklist on those connections.
"Fallout != Oblivion stop making the comparison. So what if they borrowed the codebase (if they did) doing so does not mean much of it was left."
Quest system, physics system, inventory system, general gameplay feel, terrain/graphics engine. They're all fairly major parts of a game that have been kept from Oblivion. As you start state yourself, Fallout 3 is a somewhat different genre to Oblivion due to the action element. This is where my issue was with it, they'd used an engine perfectly purpose built for one genre, in a game of a fairly different genre and many things just didn't feel right.
Whilst they'd done a fantastic job on the storyline and an amazing job on art, it felt like they'd put very, very little effort in on the code side of things. I think for the most part Fallout 3 could even in fact largely have been created as an Oblivion mod.
It's hard not to draw comparisons when the games feel so similar and for the most part, all that's different is the art and text.
My issue is not with what genre I was looking for in Fallout either particularly, just that even the genre it was didn't feel too great. There were some poor game design choices too - the weapon breaking system was horifically bad and the main storyline was far too short. The game world was fantastic there's no doubting that, it was just the gameplay within the world that fell short of expectations for me. It could certainly have been much better with just a little work on the code side of things.
With the Wikipedia block and Internet archive blocks in recent months I couldn't help but think the IWF was testing the water for a general power grab, trying to move far beyond their remit of producing a black list of child porn sites.
I like FPS', in fact, I love FPS' but I thought Fallout 3 was a little crap.
I did however love Oblivion. Fallout 3 just felt like a really poor attempt to mangle an FPS into Oblivion and the end result wasn't IMO all that good.
FPS' still seem better if they focus on being FPS' - see Bioshock and Deadspace for excellent examples. All that said though I did enjoy Mass Effect which was I suppose also a mangling of the FPS and RPG genre.
I think Fallout 3's biggest fault really was just that they'd borrowed too much of the codebase from Oblivion such that it was effectively just Oblivion with different art and story and guns instead of magic/bows. It just didn't feel quite right IMO, presumably because the engine was built for the fantasy RPG genre and not the FPS genre.
I'd definitely prefer another Oblivion over another Fallout even though I'm a big FPS fan because Bethesda just don't seem to be any good at making FPS' at leat nowadays - they should stick with what they truly excel at, RPGs.
In some countries i.e. here in the UK it's because royalty collection agencies spread a lot of FUD on the subject but also because they collect royalties for playinng radio at work citing it as a public performance.
Because of the general FUD and the valid (although still idiotic) royalties that they can demand some companies prefer to just play it safe and avoid any harassment and legal wrangling and ban music at work altogether.
Of course, some companies also see people sat with headphones on as appearing anti-social or not the best image to display towards customers, others don't want employees to hear them if they're sat next to them and try and ask them something or shout across the office to them.
It's not as clear cut as you say, but I do agree generally with your point, that many employers would do well to cater to their employees preferred working methods and styles more because it does boost morale, motivation and of course output.
I live in the UK and it's well beyond threat. Carter (and I wont refer to him by his full title of Lord because he's undeserving of it) has already given the green light for companies to do whatever the fuck they want and totally disregard net neutrality despite OFCOM previously announcing that they would protect it.
I guess it depends where you are in Europe, but certainly in the UK the Labour government has already outright written off the idea of net neutrality.
A lot of ISPs here have been using DPI to manage tiered access to services such that you have to pay more for a higher rate subscription to get better speeds on certain services (e.g. P2P, FTP, Gaming, VOIP) for a while now. The only thing they haven't done yet is do it on a per site basis, only on a per service basis.
I suppose this news might suck for the rest of Europe, but for the UK, well, it's a bit late for threats when the threat has already long been carried out.
Slashdot Mirror
That's a rather ignorant viewpoint.
Tanenbaum argued for greater modularity and really that's no bad thing, his arguments were pretty solid theoretically. But as we all know, just as the most beautiful, maintainable, stable software designs are sacrificed in business for something that works now even if it has it's flaws, Linux was available, easy to use and just worked the way people wanted, that didn't mean it was inherently better in theory or that Tanenbaum is wrong anymore than it means Windows is a vastly superior OS to Linux and MacOS X simply because it has such a massively larger user base.
Basing your view on Tanenbaum's one comment towards Torvalds is also rather ignorant, throughout the discussion you're referring to, Tanenbaum was well composed and formed coherent arguments, whilst Torvalds at times acted like your average troll.
You see, the very fact Windows is far and away the most popular OS followed by MacOS X followed by Linux is evidence enough that popularity means nothing in terms of the actual quality of an OS, it merely shows which played the business game better.
Tanenbaum is worth listening to, his ideas and justifications included in that 17 year old discussion you mention aren't wrong even if his predictions on the future of computing were. This is a man who understands the theory of how to make a better OS more so than most people do, and yes possibly even more so than Torvalds. The problem is that he's a theoretical guy, so whilst his proposals may be better, they may not be practical at the time they're announced or he simply may not have the time to dedicate to proving their practicality. If they're not practical at the time he proposes them though that doesn't mean they'll never be practical as changes in computing architecture or even raw computing power may make them practical.
Hopefully he'll put this funding to good use and it'll help provide him the time and resources he needs to take his ideas beyond mere theory and he'll be able to backup his theories with actual working demonstrations rather than just arguments now. You can be a Torvalds fanboy all you want but Tanenbaum and Torvalds are two different people - Tanenbaum is someone who comes up with theoretical new concepts, Torvalds is someone who takes existing concepts and implements them well. Both have their strengths, but writing one or the other off is foolish when both have a lot to offer.
No, in recent months the majority of the population has woken up.
Labour have zero support now, we're not in an irreversible spiral but we are in a spiral, people aren't happy letting it happen.
The question is what do we do? The election is less than a year away and then Labour will be banished from power likely for at least a decade, but they'll be banished from power for a while at least, that's certain now.
At the last local elections last year Labour got obliterated, they lost countless councils, people did vote to make a point.
Groups and prominent people are making their opinions known, NO2ID, the original creator of the DNA database, the previous head of MI5, Tim Berners-Lee and so on. The problem is Labour just ignore it.
The fact is the only option we have other than resorting to violence is to just wait until the next elections, and if you feel violence is a suitable option then feel free to go and be the first to attack Jacqui Smith or whoever but for most rational people, waiting for the elections is the only option. It's also worth pointing out that Labour almost certainly wont be able to implement this sort of thing and get the ID cards scheme or their new copyright quango properly in place by the next elections anyway and any remnants will be abolished by the Tories or the Lib Dems.
Right now the Tories are showing a lot more respect to civil liberties stating publicly they'll do away with the ID card scheme and wouldn't implement this sort of monitoring. A lot of people still hate the Tories, but at least on a civil liberties front they state they have more respect. If you don't like the Tories, vote Lib Dem and further decrease any power Labour and the Tories have to create a better balance- as we know, the Lib Dems are even more pro-freedom than the Tories so strengthening their power is good too.
Only when democracy fails, and if we find the Tories just as bad should other options be considered, with less than a year to go to get rid of Labour democracy seems the best option worth waiting for in the face of a government that will not listen to anyone whether it's the citizens, their allies or their opponents.
"If your new version is borked; if your long anticipated new feature turns out to be vapor, if your own customer service folks are crap - in short, if those evangelic users get to a point where they feel betrayed by the manufacturer - it's going to be exactly those highly visible, spotlit users with audiences of their own that are going to tell it like it is."
Really? What you've described in your full post sounds a lot like fanboyism, and most fanboys wont accept that a product is a load of crap even if it is. Fanboy zealots will praise a product to the very end.
I don't disagree these people are a double edged sword however just not for the reasons you state. There's certain companies I will avoid because the community that comes with them have a disturbingly warped view of reality when it comes to discussing the product such that if for example you have a problem with it they'll go as far as telling you it's you at fault and not the product even if it really is the product all because they don't want anyone else reading to hear that *gasp* the product has flaws. If your product's community is a little too extreme in it's worship then it probably does as much harm as it does good because to an outsider, worshipping a product which you're not even paid to worship and praise can look a little, well, odd.
I was wondering the same.
Installing reg files to stream to my XBox 360 is not something I've ever had to do, it has always just worked.
"So far it seems to have a 5% mortality rate, which is above normal. Usually mortality is 5% of those hospitalized, rather than 5% of all."
So surely all we need to do is just send everyone to hospital to make it drop to a normal mortality rate?
Sorry, couldn't resist :) Percentages - fun for all the family.
Personally, the whole H5N1 thing wasn't something I was going to get too worried about despite the news telling us day in and day out for months how it was the end of the world. But this one I am concerned about, why?
The whole bird flu thing was primarily theoretical, whilst some people died from flu they caught from contact with birds it never actually evolved into a strain that could easily be spread between humans. Whilst we should always be prepared for the theoretical, there seems little point the average person caring or worrying about it beyond having a breif awareness of the possibility of it happening.
This time, it's different, it's clearly not theoretical, this thing exists, it's in the field and it's affecting people.
I don't know why such a fuss was made about H5N1 for so long, whilst this thing went un-reported until it had already killed a ton of people. I can't help but feel the original H5N1 bird flu scare was somewhat of a manufactured scare, because whilst it was theoretically worrying, so are many other things, like nuclear war, but that doesn't mean we need to spend months on end reiterating to everyone why the should be worried. In a way it's good that the H5N1 scare educated people on the danger of pandemics but I still think it was overstated and took up a massively disproportionate amount of news coverage at the time and for the duration.
So the whole H5N1 scare was a blessing and a curse, a blessing because it raised awareness of pandemics and possibly assisted preparation for this (The UK government spent £500m on Tamiflu for the H5N1 scare - seemed a stupid move at the time, perhaps not so now) but it was also a curse in that it got many people worried for many months and took up a disproportionate amount of media coverage such that arguably more important events at the time were missed or poorly reported.
Fish flu would seem the next logical step.
Just wait until you catch a fatal flu next time you go swimming in the ocean!
I agree, I think Cell still has potential, however I think to use it in a console was rather idiotic. If perhaps you gave developers the same kind of support that Microsoft does then you could possibly pull it off, but you'd still need a decent graphics card of course which the PS3 sadly lacks.
I think the GP's point would've been better stated that Cell is dead for many of the purposes it was originally claimed to be amazing for. That doesn't of course mean it's dead in plenty of other areas as you rightly point out.
It has it's place for sure, I'm just not sure that generic processing for desktop or even many generic server systems or possibly even gaming is it.
I'm not really sure what I was supposed to be seeing there. At best I could find the excuse that it's the telcos providing the underlying infrastructure and bandwidth that are the problem. As pointed out in the thread though, why aren't they attempting to go their own way on this then? Why are providers with their own infrastructure such as Virgin in the UK still heavy on caps? Why aren't they lobbying the government or telcos for cheaper bandwidth?
The fact is they're happy with the status quo, because there is plenty of profit in continuously decreasing the amount of bandwidth available to customers and then charging them again for what they already paid for when they signed up to an unlimited package, no real effort and no investment is required.
This is why ISPs are also quick to hand over customer details without challenging the authenticity of it in court, because even though we've seen the music industry etc. get these requests wrong, the ISP simply doesn't care - all they care about is profit, not how happy customers are with the service, they aren't going anywhere because other ISPs are all just as bad.
ISPs tell us they're on our side, they tell us it's the telcos even though they do nothing about it, they tell us they have no choice but to accept the court ruling even though they could legitimately and fairly trivially protect customer privacy in court.
ISPs can pretend all they want, they're not the white knights of businesses, they are just as evil as all other big corporations and their only goal is profit, not serving the customer. Some might argue that's fine because that's what businesses exist for and I agree to an extent, what I don't agree with is their shifting of the blame when customers do start complaining.
But that's just it, they've already told all these users they can have that bandwidth by selling them unlimited packages and only charging as much as £5 or even giving away connections free if they sign up to phone packages in the UK.
In their rush to grab as many users as possible they've created a problem themselves and are now trying to charge those who already pay a decent amount (£20 - £30) even more.
All this cutting off, severe capping etc. has been common practice by UK ISPs in the UK for about 2 or 3 years now such that pretty much all of them do it.
If you're lucky you'll start paying about 50 times above cost for extra bandwidth per-GB on top of your "unlimited" subscription next.
The problem is, I think the internet rush has finished, that is, pretty much everyone that was ever going to be a potential internet customer is already one nowadays, so ISPs are struggling to figure out how to further increase profits. Pretty much all businesses wont ever be happy with a fixed profit margin, they'll always want to increase it and this is what's happening both here in the UK and now seemingly in the US - they're doing away with users who actually use what they're paying for, they're cutting the amount of bandwidth available to everyone else, and then charging more with a massive markup if you want more.
I'm not really sure how else ISPs can increase their profit margins though to be fair, content is the obvious one, ISPs in the UK like BT are going for Phorm, but that's most certainly not the answer. Content seems to have failed so far because it's generally meant working with the music and movie industry who are still clueless about the internet and hence impose unrealistic licensing and DRM restrictions on the content. I think ISPs would need to become content producers if they want to get anywhere, but I guess that requires thought, effort and investment and apparently they feel it's better to simply screw your users for more profit instead. Time Warner though should at least have less trouble moving into the content bundling business than most but again, it would require more effort than simply screwing the users.
I understand that bandwidth isn't an infinite resource and some heavy users are a problem in that respect, but I do think that excuse is severely over-used, I'm not convinced there is as much of a bandwidth shortage as ISPs would have us believe, it's just an easy and convenient way to justify fucking the user over for more money.
Spot the obvious typo at the end - I meant to say don't even want to make casual games, not hardcore games ;)
I was going to respond along similar lines as the parent, but I hate idiocy very much and this article displayed a massive amount of it from the author. I simply couldn't put together anything other than a rant at how bad this article was. The parent post however gives me a nice springboard to make some additional points without ranting.
When he says Sony and Microsoft are looking to get into casual games, I don't think he was talking about first party titles, just that they were pushing that route and perhaps even helping fund 3rd party developers down that route on their consoles, I suppose a game like Lips on the 360 is a good example.
Microsoft and Sony are doing this not because they in any way want to do away with hardcore games on their title, but because they want to expand their market. Ironically, he is suggesting that Nintendo is going to do extremely well because they're pushing the casual games market. Unfortunately, this is why Nintendo will actually fall behind if they don't take action - Microsoft and Sony are moving into casual games whilst also strongly supporting hardcore games, whilt Nintendo isn't diversifying in this way. Effectively, Microsoft and Sony are holding ground in the hardcore market whilst pushing to gain ground in the casual market whilst Nintendo are sat purely in the casual market seemingly refusing to budge into hardcore whilst simultaneously risking having their market share chewed away by Microsoft and Sony.
You see, it's not as simplistic as casual vs. hardcore, as the parent quite rightly points out. Both types of game make money and both have a place, one will not eliminate the other and the only thing that is happening now is that casual gaming was previously neglected and since this generation of consoles there has been a realisation that it deserves equal treatment, and that's now what it's beginning to get. This does not mean it will continue expanding, again as the parent says and if anything I'd say it has limited scope due to the fact casual games tend to cut away the storyline element, and there's only so many games of the same genre you'll want to buy if there's not even a story differentiating them from each other which is a common difference between a lot of casual and hardcore games. I would say though that casual gaming has a bigger userbase which will make up for the lower attach rate of casual games. To give an example in numbers, what I'm saying is that the hardcore section of the market makes it's profits by selling 10 different games to each of 10 different users, whilst the casual market makes it's profits by selling 1 game to 100 users - both shift as many units, but in a different manner.
One final point about TFA is that I'm a little dubious on his definition of hardcore, in fact, I'm convinced some of his examples can't even be defined as one or the other - Rock Band appeals as much to hardcore gamers as it does casual gamers, you can't simply call it a casual game and hold it up as a pinnacle of success in the casual gaming world when I'd wager a bet, many of the people who bought it are in fact hardcore gamers who are also still buying the Call of Duty, Killzones and Halos of the world as well.
When you can make something like Halo 3, sell it at an average of £35 a peice and sell it to 9 million users, netting you probably in the region of £250 million or more in pure profit you're not going to just give that up or even give the chance of that up. That's why many companies will still keep developing hardcore games. Oh, and also because some companies probably don't even want to make hardcore games, certainly companies like id Software for example seem to actually enjoy developing hardcore games.
The prosecution got a guilty verdict without actually managing to prove any wrongdoing due to severe incompetence and lack of knowledge.
It was pretty clear something was odd about the decision, whether the TPB guys were right or wrong is irrelevant when the prosecution are unable to actually prove any wrongdoing.
You can't legitimately get a guilty verdict if you haven't proven that they're guilty of doing something illegal, accusations alone aren't enough.
The interesting thing now will be to see what happens as a result of this revelation. It's probably worth pointing out that this conspiracy almost certainly goes deeper - the first judge due to judge their trial was removed due to conflict of interest IIRC and this is his replacement, so the real question has to be who is responsible for repeatedly ensuring the judges presiding over this case have strong music industry/pro-copyright lobby links? Who in Sweden determines which judge should oversee a particular case?
I think damages really need to be decided based on the financial gain of the infringer.
For someone downloading MP3s illegaly, that should indeed be fuck all. For a company making a profit off someone elses work, that should be all the profits they made.
But for how long? T-Mobile is listed as an implementer of this policy also:
http://www.iwf.org.uk/public/page.113.243.htm
From the policy: "Orange, O2, T-Mobile, Virgin Mobile, Vodafone and 3"
I'd wager a bet the only reason you can is either because you've already opted out of the filter previously, because they haven't implemented it on your connection yet or because your phone provider has opted you out automatically for some reason - perhaps because they have reason to believe already that you're over 18 or something.
It's probably because most of our enemies are using kit we sold them in the first place.
That or they're flying around in what are effectively lumps of turd that we can't learn anything from anyway.
It's not just BT. It's Vodafone, Orange, O2, BT, 3. In fact, basically all British mobile providers.
It's also the IWF's fault.
The upside is, you can request the block be removed for your connection.
Heh, that's a fair point ;) I suppose I should've just used the term shooter! FWIW, Fallout 3 can also be played 3rd person.
"They already have. The ISP I work for have been dropping any packets destined for sites on the IWF's blacklist for several years now."
I understand landline ISPs already implement the IWF's child porn blacklist, my concern now is that they will try and implement this more general blacklist on those connections.
"Fallout != Oblivion stop making the comparison. So what if they borrowed the codebase (if they did) doing so does not mean much of it was left."
Quest system, physics system, inventory system, general gameplay feel, terrain/graphics engine. They're all fairly major parts of a game that have been kept from Oblivion. As you start state yourself, Fallout 3 is a somewhat different genre to Oblivion due to the action element. This is where my issue was with it, they'd used an engine perfectly purpose built for one genre, in a game of a fairly different genre and many things just didn't feel right.
Whilst they'd done a fantastic job on the storyline and an amazing job on art, it felt like they'd put very, very little effort in on the code side of things. I think for the most part Fallout 3 could even in fact largely have been created as an Oblivion mod.
It's hard not to draw comparisons when the games feel so similar and for the most part, all that's different is the art and text.
My issue is not with what genre I was looking for in Fallout either particularly, just that even the genre it was didn't feel too great. There were some poor game design choices too - the weapon breaking system was horifically bad and the main storyline was far too short. The game world was fantastic there's no doubting that, it was just the gameplay within the world that fell short of expectations for me. It could certainly have been much better with just a little work on the code side of things.
With the Wikipedia block and Internet archive blocks in recent months I couldn't help but think the IWF was testing the water for a general power grab, trying to move far beyond their remit of producing a black list of child porn sites.
I just found this FTA:
http://www.iwf.org.uk/public/page.113.243.htm
So it's true, the IWF has decided it has to be the moral crusader of society and should now start censoring all that it feels like.
Bets on how long they try to extend this voluntary code which covers all the UK's main mobile providers to hardwired, static internet connections?
The problem here isn't BT, it's not The Pirate Bay. It's the fucking IWF again.
Time they're disbanded, the problems they cause now go far, far beyond any benefit they can ever provide.
No idea why that would be.
I like FPS', in fact, I love FPS' but I thought Fallout 3 was a little crap.
I did however love Oblivion. Fallout 3 just felt like a really poor attempt to mangle an FPS into Oblivion and the end result wasn't IMO all that good.
FPS' still seem better if they focus on being FPS' - see Bioshock and Deadspace for excellent examples. All that said though I did enjoy Mass Effect which was I suppose also a mangling of the FPS and RPG genre.
I think Fallout 3's biggest fault really was just that they'd borrowed too much of the codebase from Oblivion such that it was effectively just Oblivion with different art and story and guns instead of magic/bows. It just didn't feel quite right IMO, presumably because the engine was built for the fantasy RPG genre and not the FPS genre.
I'd definitely prefer another Oblivion over another Fallout even though I'm a big FPS fan because Bethesda just don't seem to be any good at making FPS' at leat nowadays - they should stick with what they truly excel at, RPGs.
In some countries i.e. here in the UK it's because royalty collection agencies spread a lot of FUD on the subject but also because they collect royalties for playinng radio at work citing it as a public performance.
Because of the general FUD and the valid (although still idiotic) royalties that they can demand some companies prefer to just play it safe and avoid any harassment and legal wrangling and ban music at work altogether.
Of course, some companies also see people sat with headphones on as appearing anti-social or not the best image to display towards customers, others don't want employees to hear them if they're sat next to them and try and ask them something or shout across the office to them.
It's not as clear cut as you say, but I do agree generally with your point, that many employers would do well to cater to their employees preferred working methods and styles more because it does boost morale, motivation and of course output.
I live in the UK and it's well beyond threat. Carter (and I wont refer to him by his full title of Lord because he's undeserving of it) has already given the green light for companies to do whatever the fuck they want and totally disregard net neutrality despite OFCOM previously announcing that they would protect it.
I guess it depends where you are in Europe, but certainly in the UK the Labour government has already outright written off the idea of net neutrality.
A lot of ISPs here have been using DPI to manage tiered access to services such that you have to pay more for a higher rate subscription to get better speeds on certain services (e.g. P2P, FTP, Gaming, VOIP) for a while now. The only thing they haven't done yet is do it on a per site basis, only on a per service basis.
I suppose this news might suck for the rest of Europe, but for the UK, well, it's a bit late for threats when the threat has already long been carried out.