Unlike you (I assume), I play Starcraft II fairly avidly, and I have no idea what you're talking about. You seem to be implying that Blizzard has some sort of consumer hostile activation system that ties your account to a specific PC. This is not true; you can install the Starcraft II client on as many computers as you want*, and play on as many computers as you want, all with the same account.
The Activation system is fine, for a system that should be entirely unnecessary. It's like adding spikes to the door handles of my car, they work perfectly but only serve to make getting into my car more painful than it should be.
However their installer is completely consumer hostile. Instead of installing from the disk and then downloading patches it downloads the entire fucking thing, then it downloads more patches. Finally I made the mistake of changing the language from the default En_US to the En_GB and it downloaded another 3.2 GB. What the hell is the point in having a disc I cant install from?
So Blizzard assumes everyone has unlimited downloads (in Australia, people who have to use mobile broadband for internet pay through the nose for it) and assumes everyone speaks US English.
Surface to air missile? Like a stinger... costs around $40k??
Question is could it hit a drone? Military doing a strike...or surveillance? Hard to say.
Border patrol tailing civilians and cars... yeah I think maybe.
And given the height at which drones fly, you'll need something bigger than a Stinger (or a much cheaper SA-7). An SA 7 has a flight ceiling of 2,500 m and max range of 5 KM.
You could probably get some SA 2's relatively cheap (not sure how cheap, my black market contacts aren't what they used to be) but good luck hiding an SA2 launch site and accompanying RADAR array.
For US residents/citizens, there is no outgoing immigration form to fill out, nor a desk you have to line up at and be let through, like in Australia (where you have both the green and yellow forms, one of incoming, one for outgoing).
Surrendering your I-94 or other temporary document upon leaving the US is not the same as a proper, compulsory immigration check upon departure.
BTW I'm Australian but live in the US and have done so for the last decade. I travel between the two regularly. So I do have some experience in this area.
They do still check passports. They're doing an immigration check, just not collecting a outgoing passenger card.
I didn't have to fill out an outgoing form leaving the US, but still had to submit to a passport check. As for the information that they collect, that was all submitted electronically. If you book a ticket into or out of the United States, the airline is required by law to give all the details of that ticket to the US govt, so they already knew where I was going.
The Australian govt really needs to take the outgoing passenger card online, it would be great if I could fill it out before going to the airport, link it to my passport and just scan my passport through an autogate (similar to the ones you can use when entering Australia). This would help kill long immigration lines.
(unlike the US, Australia has both incoming AND outgoing immigration checks, so we have very accurate statistics on this stuff).
To be fair, the US has both incoming and outgoing immigration checks. I went through them twice last year.
With people are giving crap to Californians, the only time I've ever met anyone who knows where Perth (Western Australia) is was a TSA agent who checked my passport on the way out of LAX. He even mentioned Freemantle, I was absolutely flabbergasted that news of Perth's existence had reached outside of Perth.
Ever considered spending $20 on a surge protecting power bar that includes RJ11 plugs? They're designed specifically for this, and go between the wall outlet and the ADSL modem.
Coupled with surge protectors on ask the AC adapters, you'd be set.
Oh for the love of Thor, this.
I've set up server rooms in remote locations that get very dirty power on any interface, everything was surge protected. It's easy to get inline filters for ADSL modems that will also handle surges.
and i mean the ones that sell the same device over many years like a game console. PS3, xbox 360, wii u, nintendo 3ds, etc
and then you have something like printers. sure it's only $100 or $250 but no one wants to buy a new printer just to buy a new wifi router
Most routers do both 802.11G and N these days. Unless your ancient devices are operating on the A or B protocols you should be fine.
If they are, the simple solution is to get the new router and keep the old one as a dumb AP for the old device to connect to until you retire that device.
You say NASCAR is easy but the only top driver from another series to ever do well in NASCAR was Andretti, every other driver to come over has been in the bottom 20% or so. With the money available in NASCAR you'd think that more than a few top to mid pack drivers from other top series would be tempted to cross over for the 'easy' driving.
Citation.
One thing fanboys never take into account is the fact a lot of sportsmen love the sport their in. I think people like Sebastian Vettel are making enough in F1 that they have the ability to pick and choose which motorsport they want to participate in, so they may not want to race in a more boring sport.
Also you're forgetting Juan Pablo Montoya, who went from the Williams F1 team to NASCAR. For the most part, F1 drivers go to other disciplines when they get too old for F1.
Now how many NASCAR drivers went into F1 and did as well as Andretti? I cant even find one.
Also, if you think NASCAR is hard, you need to get out and do a real race. Stock cars are amongst the easiest to drive, for the most part your chances of winning are decided by your qualifying position, if you're at the back you pretty much have to wait for everyone in front to stuff up and yes, I've raced stock cars (boring as batshit to race as well as watch).
Not to mention the possibility of self designed cosmetic bodykits (although I admit how garish a huge wing on the back of a Toyota Yaris looks).
You realize the idea of every teenager out there having the ability to 'custom design' a bodykit for their rice rocket does not make me feel any better about this, right?
Have you ever seen what a 17-year-old considers tasteful?
As a fan of JDM cars, I assure you I've seen greater horrors than you in that regard:)
Go drive one and tell me how easy it is to control at 180mph+. (actually, they won't let you (us) go that fast, but 140-160mph will certainly change your perspective)
I'm someone who does race (my CAMS license allows me to enter events at the state level in Australia) that's exactly why I don't like them.NASCAR cars suffer from the same problems as the Australian V8 supercars, they are too heavy, too unwieldy and as a result don't take to corners very well at low speeds, let alone high speeds. The difference is the V8 Supercars race on proper circuits, not ovals.
I've raced Nissan GT-R's and even had a track day in a 600 HP McLaren MP4-12C (and have a fax machine with the same name). So yep, driven at over 250 KPH, even my Honda Integra could manage a NASCAR track at 140 MPH (225 KPH) in its stock form because there's no corners. The big problem is going to be your tyre's heating up too much (which means they'll need to be changed at a pit stop) as friction increases a lot on light bends. There's a reason GT, F1, and rally cars are made as light as possible, it's so you can take the bends as fast as you can. As I said, the V8 Supercars race on proper circuits and whilst they can easily push 300 KPH (a bit over 180 of your archaic miles) on the straights, they do about 40 KPH on the corners. GT and rally cars go a lot faster in the bends.
In NASCAR, because you're racing on an oval with no real corners to speak of, they aren't hard to control. you just have to keep the wheel steady, you don't have to think about corners, speed or gearing. Racing on a street circuit is the hardest IMHO because you've got no room for error (walls everywhere, no grass/sand on the corners to slide off into, leave the track, meet a wall). Compared to GT, NASCAR at NASCAR speeds is dead easy and rallying makes Grand Touring look simple.
You'll get no disagreement from me. It's boring as shit to watch. That's why I prefer to be the driver. *grin* 24hrs of LeMons wouldn't let us on the oval at Charlotte -- wise choice as some of those crapcans wouldn't be able to stay on it. Chumpcar runs the whole "roval" (infield plus oval.) Plus, there's the lemons moto: any idiot can drive around in a circle. The first race is at Barber this weekend; and that is most definitely not a circle.
Theres an old saying, straights are for cars, corners are for drivers.
It will also kill off the entire replacement parts industry. Cars, washing machines, fridges, etc, etc.
Riiiiiiight... because when I need a new tie-rod end in my truck, a shitty plastic one will be just as good as the cast metal part it's replacing.
How about replacing the bumper or any other part of the plastic bodywork?
Self repair of small dings and scrapes could become a real possibility. Not to mention the possibility of self designed cosmetic bodykits (although I admit how garish a huge wing on the back of a Toyota Yaris looks).
Maybe, but 400hp is nothing to F1 and NASCAR. And both series have almost molecular requirements for their engines.
F1 and NASCAR aren't really races. F1 was a race long ago but the drivers are more machine than man now. Everything is computer controlled from acceleration to braking and cornering. The driver is mostly excess weight these days. But this makes NASCAR look good, the steering wheel is almost superfluous there.
I find rally cross and GT more interesting these days.
What sort of car racing is this for? Is there a motor race for hybrids?
LeMans is an endurance race, making it to the end is a lot more important than going fast and in a race like LeMan's going fast is achieved by light weight rather than big engines.
Endurance races are about managing resources, fuel and brake usage, managing the driver (ensuring they are fed and watered) and so forth.
For those of us who don't have billions of dollars, check out the 24 hours of LeMons, an endurance race for cars under $500.
Should be fine for the home printing in colour, I'd probably spend a little bit more if it were a business or I expected to to a fair bit of printing (around $150-250 depending on expected usage).
You can do a lot more with the PC, however (that said, you can also get infected with a virus and suffer a good deal more frustration).
Still, I can play multiplayer without paying for a subscription, and have plenty of affordable games via Steam/GoG.
You can do more, but for more money, than a dedicated games console. Seems that you've missed the point of the games console completely.
Count on having to upgrade your games PC over the years though to keep games running at a decent level. You need to factor those costs in as well. The console will keep going, and games will probably get better as the toolsets mature. In the PC world the developers can assume that their users will upgrade to maintain relative performance.
In 5 years I made two upgrades to my PC, a mid range graphics card and and SSD.
Neither of these were particularly needed either. If I hadn't of upgraded it, I'd still be playing the latest releases with no problems.
Now PC's can easily cost more than consoles at the outset, this is because console manufacturers subsidise their hardware and you get less.
Consider the total cost of ownership, with a PC you will probably have spent more than the PS4, but with the PS4 you'll need to buy another controller, EBGames has one for $99 so you might be able to get one for $70. Then there are the games, games cost $10-20 more expensive than their PC variants (I said MS and Sony subsidise the hardware, this is how they do it). Above this, both Sony and MS have a "premium" online service and it wont be long before you pretty much have to pay for that to get anything useful (like online multilayer) so that's more money you pay after you buy the console.
So if you buy 12 games a year, that's an extra $120 plus about $60 for the online component. So at least $180 per year in extra costs and the more games you buy the more this cost goes up. This assumes that the hardware doesn't have horrible faults like the Xbox 360 did (and we're already hearing rumours of a yellow light of death on the PS4) where you'll pretty much have to buy an entirely new console in the next 3 years.
Beyond this we have the fact that PC games drop in price a lot faster than console games. In 3-6 months down the track PC games usually halve in price and then we have things like steam sales where you pick up games for a fraction of their original price (last year I picked up Saints Row The Third for $4).
Finally, when the PS4/XBone are no more, you'll have to buy a new console where your old games wont work. PC's dont have this issue. Every game I have bought since my first 286 still works on my gaming machine.
Does anyone else see this as an unholy alliance in the tech war? Google and Samsung just called a truce. Each has huge patent portfolios, and not only that the agreement is binding on future technology for the next 10 years.
Unholy, no.
Both Samsung and Google aren't particularly evil.
This alliance was pretty much forced on them by the likes of Apple and Microsoft who have been extremely aggressive on the patent front.
Their main competitors being Apple and Microsoft, I am fairly certain hell would freeze over before those two unite...
They have a lot more in common than you think and this would be a true unholy alliance.
I can see an Apple/Microsoft alliance easily happening, with both sides thinking that they are using the other. In fact this has happened before when Microsoft bailed them out in the 90's. Apple and Microsoft have been firing their patent guns blindly at Android and Android manufacturers like there is no tomorrow but haven't even said so much as a harsh word to each other. It's almost as if they're already co-operating.
The dark horse in all of this isn't Samsung or Google, their motivations are clear. The dark horse is IBM and it's huge patent trove.
That the AK47 and 74 rifles that the Russians would sell to others would have a chamber that was slightly too small so that if they picked up rounds from dead Russian soldiers they would not work in the foreign soldiers rifles.
I dont know if that was true, but it could easily be the same story here. India is potentially a rising power and with their experience with China, the Russians may be uneasy about providing the Indians with a powerful weapon. In this case the Indians are smart enough to realise it and powerful enough to confront the Russians.
Of course there's still the old adage, never blame malice for what can easily be explained by stupidity. The stealth fighter had very difficult requirements and rather than admit they couldn't produce the goods, it was easier to present the Indians with a fighter that clearly didn't meet the specifications.
In either case, I dont blame the Indians for being upset.
The same as my hypothetical date with Seychelles Gabriel?
Hypothetically I could have one... want to guess about reality.
There's a lot of myths about laws like this. Automatic charges. A lot of it is taken out of context, I.E. in Australia whenever a person is killed in a motor vehicle accident it is investigated with manslaughter being one of the possibilities. This has evolved to be the common myth that if you kill anyone in an accident you're automatically sent to jail for manslaughter. In reality when there is an accident where there is a fatality it's investigated and if the police can find no wrong doing (horrible coincidental accidents do happen), there isn't even a charge laid.
that's like saying people who own $1M+ homes also spend more on cars. duh? apple sells high-end devices, and it's users spend for money on add-ons such, peripherals, and cases.
Its more like saying people who dont know much about cars, spend more on cars.
Someone who doesn't bother to learn about how their car works will pay $500 for a oil change and brake check, someone who does and just cant be arsed doing it themselves will pay $100.
The person who doesn't know much about cars pays full list price for an Infiniti G37, a person who knows the Infiniti is just a Nissan Skyline 370GT with a different badge and bigger price tag gets the Nissan with a few thousand off the asking price.
This. I think Samsung was waiting to see how well Amazons and others did. The biggest threat to Android was never Apple & iOS, but Samsung.
What you call a threat, most of us call a thriving ecosystem. This is exactly what Android was designed for.
The question in my mind has always been, what happens if Samsung forks and derives their own OS without google...
I doubt that will happen. Why? Bada Tizen
Samsung has tried and failed. I expect them to try again though, but breaking app compatibility with the existing catalogue and forcing new developers to choose between Android and Samsung would be suicide for them.
Can you backup your claim and list a few of the problem apps?
Of course he cant, it's the truthiness of it. How dare you doubt his completely unsupported supposition when the truthiness is clearly there.
But in reality, the number of compromised applications is incredibly low. Fake banking apps are removed almost as soon as they're added. For the most part you have crappy applications disguising adware and personal data collection (which Apple permits anyway), even these are very low in number. But the Anti-Android crowd would like you to believe you will get pwned as soon as you even breathe near the power button of an Android phone and have all kinds of whimsical arguments to prove it.
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Yeah I know someone who had a whole bunch of them and their house got hit. Needless to say pretty much all of their electronics had to be replaced.
Hit by what, a truck? Surge protectors wont help you there.
A proper surge protector will be able to handle a lot of voltage/amperage. If it failed, they need to buy proper equipment.
Unlike you (I assume), I play Starcraft II fairly avidly, and I have no idea what you're talking about. You seem to be implying that Blizzard has some sort of consumer hostile activation system that ties your account to a specific PC. This is not true; you can install the Starcraft II client on as many computers as you want*, and play on as many computers as you want, all with the same account.
The Activation system is fine, for a system that should be entirely unnecessary. It's like adding spikes to the door handles of my car, they work perfectly but only serve to make getting into my car more painful than it should be.
However their installer is completely consumer hostile. Instead of installing from the disk and then downloading patches it downloads the entire fucking thing, then it downloads more patches. Finally I made the mistake of changing the language from the default En_US to the En_GB and it downloaded another 3.2 GB. What the hell is the point in having a disc I cant install from?
So Blizzard assumes everyone has unlimited downloads (in Australia, people who have to use mobile broadband for internet pay through the nose for it) and assumes everyone speaks US English.
If $10,000 buys an anti-drone drone,
Surface to air missile? Like a stinger... costs around $40k??
Question is could it hit a drone? Military doing a strike...or surveillance? Hard to say.
Border patrol tailing civilians and cars... yeah I think maybe.
And given the height at which drones fly, you'll need something bigger than a Stinger (or a much cheaper SA-7). An SA 7 has a flight ceiling of 2,500 m and max range of 5 KM.
You could probably get some SA 2's relatively cheap (not sure how cheap, my black market contacts aren't what they used to be) but good luck hiding an SA2 launch site and accompanying RADAR array.
For US residents/citizens, there is no outgoing immigration form to fill out, nor a desk you have to line up at and be let through, like in Australia (where you have both the green and yellow forms, one of incoming, one for outgoing).
Surrendering your I-94 or other temporary document upon leaving the US is not the same as a proper, compulsory immigration check upon departure.
BTW I'm Australian but live in the US and have done so for the last decade. I travel between the two regularly. So I do have some experience in this area.
They do still check passports. They're doing an immigration check, just not collecting a outgoing passenger card.
I didn't have to fill out an outgoing form leaving the US, but still had to submit to a passport check. As for the information that they collect, that was all submitted electronically. If you book a ticket into or out of the United States, the airline is required by law to give all the details of that ticket to the US govt, so they already knew where I was going.
The Australian govt really needs to take the outgoing passenger card online, it would be great if I could fill it out before going to the airport, link it to my passport and just scan my passport through an autogate (similar to the ones you can use when entering Australia). This would help kill long immigration lines.
Just you fucking wait.
We're half way to printing a Gallardo.
To be fair, the US has both incoming and outgoing immigration checks. I went through them twice last year.
With people are giving crap to Californians, the only time I've ever met anyone who knows where Perth (Western Australia) is was a TSA agent who checked my passport on the way out of LAX. He even mentioned Freemantle, I was absolutely flabbergasted that news of Perth's existence had reached outside of Perth.
Ever considered spending $20 on a surge protecting power bar that includes RJ11 plugs? They're designed specifically for this, and go between the wall outlet and the ADSL modem.
Coupled with surge protectors on ask the AC adapters, you'd be set.
Oh for the love of Thor, this.
I've set up server rooms in remote locations that get very dirty power on any interface, everything was surge protected. It's easy to get inline filters for ADSL modems that will also handle surges.
and i mean the ones that sell the same device over many years like a game console. PS3, xbox 360, wii u, nintendo 3ds, etc
and then you have something like printers. sure it's only $100 or $250 but no one wants to buy a new printer just to buy a new wifi router
Most routers do both 802.11G and N these days. Unless your ancient devices are operating on the A or B protocols you should be fine.
If they are, the simple solution is to get the new router and keep the old one as a dumb AP for the old device to connect to until you retire that device.
You say NASCAR is easy but the only top driver from another series to ever do well in NASCAR was Andretti, every other driver to come over has been in the bottom 20% or so. With the money available in NASCAR you'd think that more than a few top to mid pack drivers from other top series would be tempted to cross over for the 'easy' driving.
Citation.
One thing fanboys never take into account is the fact a lot of sportsmen love the sport their in. I think people like Sebastian Vettel are making enough in F1 that they have the ability to pick and choose which motorsport they want to participate in, so they may not want to race in a more boring sport.
Also you're forgetting Juan Pablo Montoya, who went from the Williams F1 team to NASCAR. For the most part, F1 drivers go to other disciplines when they get too old for F1.
Now how many NASCAR drivers went into F1 and did as well as Andretti? I cant even find one.
Also, if you think NASCAR is hard, you need to get out and do a real race. Stock cars are amongst the easiest to drive, for the most part your chances of winning are decided by your qualifying position, if you're at the back you pretty much have to wait for everyone in front to stuff up and yes, I've raced stock cars (boring as batshit to race as well as watch).
Not to mention the possibility of self designed cosmetic bodykits (although I admit how garish a huge wing on the back of a Toyota Yaris looks).
You realize the idea of every teenager out there having the ability to 'custom design' a bodykit for their rice rocket does not make me feel any better about this, right?
Have you ever seen what a 17-year-old considers tasteful?
As a fan of JDM cars, I assure you I've seen greater horrors than you in that regard :)
Go drive one and tell me how easy it is to control at 180mph+. (actually, they won't let you (us) go that fast, but 140-160mph will certainly change your perspective)
I'm someone who does race (my CAMS license allows me to enter events at the state level in Australia) that's exactly why I don't like them.NASCAR cars suffer from the same problems as the Australian V8 supercars, they are too heavy, too unwieldy and as a result don't take to corners very well at low speeds, let alone high speeds. The difference is the V8 Supercars race on proper circuits, not ovals.
I've raced Nissan GT-R's and even had a track day in a 600 HP McLaren MP4-12C (and have a fax machine with the same name). So yep, driven at over 250 KPH, even my Honda Integra could manage a NASCAR track at 140 MPH (225 KPH) in its stock form because there's no corners. The big problem is going to be your tyre's heating up too much (which means they'll need to be changed at a pit stop) as friction increases a lot on light bends. There's a reason GT, F1, and rally cars are made as light as possible, it's so you can take the bends as fast as you can. As I said, the V8 Supercars race on proper circuits and whilst they can easily push 300 KPH (a bit over 180 of your archaic miles) on the straights, they do about 40 KPH on the corners. GT and rally cars go a lot faster in the bends.
In NASCAR, because you're racing on an oval with no real corners to speak of, they aren't hard to control. you just have to keep the wheel steady, you don't have to think about corners, speed or gearing. Racing on a street circuit is the hardest IMHO because you've got no room for error (walls everywhere, no grass/sand on the corners to slide off into, leave the track, meet a wall). Compared to GT, NASCAR at NASCAR speeds is dead easy and rallying makes Grand Touring look simple.
You'll get no disagreement from me. It's boring as shit to watch. That's why I prefer to be the driver. *grin* 24hrs of LeMons wouldn't let us on the oval at Charlotte -- wise choice as some of those crapcans wouldn't be able to stay on it. Chumpcar runs the whole "roval" (infield plus oval.) Plus, there's the lemons moto: any idiot can drive around in a circle. The first race is at Barber this weekend; and that is most definitely not a circle.
Theres an old saying, straights are for cars, corners are for drivers.
Yep no computers, but no real turns either. IIRC the car has the camber and steering adjusted to one side because right hand turns are never done.
And it's batshit boring, cars are basically going around in a circle.
It will also kill off the entire replacement parts industry. Cars, washing machines, fridges, etc, etc.
Riiiiiiight... because when I need a new tie-rod end in my truck, a shitty plastic one will be just as good as the cast metal part it's replacing.
How about replacing the bumper or any other part of the plastic bodywork?
Self repair of small dings and scrapes could become a real possibility. Not to mention the possibility of self designed cosmetic bodykits (although I admit how garish a huge wing on the back of a Toyota Yaris looks).
Maybe, but 400hp is nothing to F1 and NASCAR. And both series have almost molecular requirements for their engines.
F1 and NASCAR aren't really races. F1 was a race long ago but the drivers are more machine than man now. Everything is computer controlled from acceleration to braking and cornering. The driver is mostly excess weight these days. But this makes NASCAR look good, the steering wheel is almost superfluous there.
I find rally cross and GT more interesting these days.
What sort of car racing is this for? Is there a motor race for hybrids?
LeMans is an endurance race, making it to the end is a lot more important than going fast and in a race like LeMan's going fast is achieved by light weight rather than big engines.
Endurance races are about managing resources, fuel and brake usage, managing the driver (ensuring they are fed and watered) and so forth.
For those of us who don't have billions of dollars, check out the 24 hours of LeMons, an endurance race for cars under $500.
"Due to miscalibration of the 4th axis, your object was printed 255 years ago."
Be grateful that the programmer declared that variable as char and not int, then your object could have been printed 65535 years ago.
Except cheap laser printers are roughly the same cost as cheap ink-jet printers at about $50.
"Cheap" colour laser printers are a bit more than $50.
They don't cost that much more. You can pick one up in Australia for A$80.
Should be fine for the home printing in colour, I'd probably spend a little bit more if it were a business or I expected to to a fair bit of printing (around $150-250 depending on expected usage).
You can do a lot more with the PC, however (that said, you can also get infected with a virus and suffer a good deal more frustration).
Still, I can play multiplayer without paying for a subscription, and have plenty of affordable games via Steam/GoG.
You can do more, but for more money, than a dedicated games console. Seems that you've missed the point of the games console completely.
Count on having to upgrade your games PC over the years though to keep games running at a decent level. You need to factor those costs in as well. The console will keep going, and games will probably get better as the toolsets mature. In the PC world the developers can assume that their users will upgrade to maintain relative performance.
In 5 years I made two upgrades to my PC, a mid range graphics card and and SSD.
Neither of these were particularly needed either. If I hadn't of upgraded it, I'd still be playing the latest releases with no problems.
Now PC's can easily cost more than consoles at the outset, this is because console manufacturers subsidise their hardware and you get less.
Consider the total cost of ownership, with a PC you will probably have spent more than the PS4, but with the PS4 you'll need to buy another controller, EBGames has one for $99 so you might be able to get one for $70. Then there are the games, games cost $10-20 more expensive than their PC variants (I said MS and Sony subsidise the hardware, this is how they do it). Above this, both Sony and MS have a "premium" online service and it wont be long before you pretty much have to pay for that to get anything useful (like online multilayer) so that's more money you pay after you buy the console.
So if you buy 12 games a year, that's an extra $120 plus about $60 for the online component. So at least $180 per year in extra costs and the more games you buy the more this cost goes up. This assumes that the hardware doesn't have horrible faults like the Xbox 360 did (and we're already hearing rumours of a yellow light of death on the PS4) where you'll pretty much have to buy an entirely new console in the next 3 years.
Beyond this we have the fact that PC games drop in price a lot faster than console games. In 3-6 months down the track PC games usually halve in price and then we have things like steam sales where you pick up games for a fraction of their original price (last year I picked up Saints Row The Third for $4).
Finally, when the PS4/XBone are no more, you'll have to buy a new console where your old games wont work. PC's dont have this issue. Every game I have bought since my first 286 still works on my gaming machine.
TL;DR
PC gaming over the long run is cheaper.
Does anyone else see this as an unholy alliance in the tech war? Google and Samsung just called a truce. Each has huge patent portfolios, and not only that the agreement is binding on future technology for the next 10 years.
Unholy, no.
Both Samsung and Google aren't particularly evil.
This alliance was pretty much forced on them by the likes of Apple and Microsoft who have been extremely aggressive on the patent front.
Their main competitors being Apple and Microsoft, I am fairly certain hell would freeze over before those two unite...
They have a lot more in common than you think and this would be a true unholy alliance.
I can see an Apple/Microsoft alliance easily happening, with both sides thinking that they are using the other. In fact this has happened before when Microsoft bailed them out in the 90's. Apple and Microsoft have been firing their patent guns blindly at Android and Android manufacturers like there is no tomorrow but haven't even said so much as a harsh word to each other. It's almost as if they're already co-operating.
The dark horse in all of this isn't Samsung or Google, their motivations are clear. The dark horse is IBM and it's huge patent trove.
That the AK47 and 74 rifles that the Russians would sell to others would have a chamber that was slightly too small so that if they picked up rounds from dead Russian soldiers they would not work in the foreign soldiers rifles.
I dont know if that was true, but it could easily be the same story here. India is potentially a rising power and with their experience with China, the Russians may be uneasy about providing the Indians with a powerful weapon. In this case the Indians are smart enough to realise it and powerful enough to confront the Russians.
Of course there's still the old adage, never blame malice for what can easily be explained by stupidity. The stealth fighter had very difficult requirements and rather than admit they couldn't produce the goods, it was easier to present the Indians with a fighter that clearly didn't meet the specifications.
In either case, I dont blame the Indians for being upset.
Hypothetical; could happen.
The same as my hypothetical date with Seychelles Gabriel?
Hypothetically I could have one... want to guess about reality.
There's a lot of myths about laws like this. Automatic charges. A lot of it is taken out of context, I.E. in Australia whenever a person is killed in a motor vehicle accident it is investigated with manslaughter being one of the possibilities. This has evolved to be the common myth that if you kill anyone in an accident you're automatically sent to jail for manslaughter. In reality when there is an accident where there is a fatality it's investigated and if the police can find no wrong doing (horrible coincidental accidents do happen), there isn't even a charge laid.
that's like saying people who own $1M+ homes also spend more on cars. duh? apple sells high-end devices, and it's users spend for money on add-ons such, peripherals, and cases.
Its more like saying people who dont know much about cars, spend more on cars.
Someone who doesn't bother to learn about how their car works will pay $500 for a oil change and brake check, someone who does and just cant be arsed doing it themselves will pay $100.
The person who doesn't know much about cars pays full list price for an Infiniti G37, a person who knows the Infiniti is just a Nissan Skyline 370GT with a different badge and bigger price tag gets the Nissan with a few thousand off the asking price.
This. I think Samsung was waiting to see how well Amazons and others did. The biggest threat to Android was never Apple & iOS, but Samsung.
What you call a threat, most of us call a thriving ecosystem. This is exactly what Android was designed for.
The question in my mind has always been, what happens if Samsung forks and derives their own OS without google...
I doubt that will happen. Why?
Bada
Tizen
Samsung has tried and failed. I expect them to try again though, but breaking app compatibility with the existing catalogue and forcing new developers to choose between Android and Samsung would be suicide for them.
Can you backup your claim and list a few of the problem apps?
Of course he cant, it's the truthiness of it. How dare you doubt his completely unsupported supposition when the truthiness is clearly there.
But in reality, the number of compromised applications is incredibly low. Fake banking apps are removed almost as soon as they're added. For the most part you have crappy applications disguising adware and personal data collection (which Apple permits anyway), even these are very low in number. But the Anti-Android crowd would like you to believe you will get pwned as soon as you even breathe near the power button of an Android phone and have all kinds of whimsical arguments to prove it.
It's all y'all's fault.
Y'all == singular
All y'all == plural
Y'all's == y'all need to go back to grammar school.