It isn't exactly obscure information that Google is limiting the market app to devices linked to a cellular plan.
Not obscure, perhaps, but false nonetheless. My Galaxy Tab 10.1 uses the Android Market, and it's Wi-Fi only.
That's a feature specific to Honeycomb.
Whilst there is not as much demand for an Android powered media player as the whingers would make out, Google honestly did not anticipate any demand for one what so ever. Google thought most people would just use their phone for media purposes and for the most part they are right, however there is a small demand for them.
In any case, except that particular Honeycomb feature to make it's way to Ice Cream Sandwich.
Also, how is it not monopoly abuse that Google Maps,
This has to be one of the mist uninformed posts I've read in a while.
Google Maps is nowhere near a mapping monopoly. I've worked in GIS companies and still have good friends in the field. Yahoo has always been a complete joke, you cant blame Google for that. Bing Maps has several deals with high profile web sites (facebook) despite also being a joke in terms of accuracy.
But Google is also a minor player in GIS. they've done nothing to unseat the incumbent IMS/WMS(Internet Mapping Service/Web Mapping Service) monopoly ESRI, ArcGIS is still the dominant mapping platform. MapInfo has a higher market share then Google.
Also, Finance, a drop in the bucket to MYOB, Qicken et al. Finance competes on the same level as Microsoft Excel does.
That's not how I remember it. Vista took so long because it was badly managed.
That and the fact that XP was good enough for everyone's needs.
OS X has never been and still isn't a competitor to Windows. To this day the main competitor to Windows Vista/7 is Windows XP. MS doesn't give a crap about OS X, it's XP they are intent on killing.
...I really hope HTC doesn't become tomorrow's patent troll.
I think of patent trolls as those who don't produce anything (or anything of perceptible market value), yet sue over the fact that they hold a patent. HTC is actually producing products.
As a fan of HTC (I've owned two HTC Android phones and would buy another if they release one with a physical KB) but am wary HTC becoming a patent troll.
However producing something does not prevent someone from being a patent troll. Apple produces something but it's no longer able to compete effectively, so they are suing in an attempt to hinder their competition. I dont think HTC will do the same, but I wont ignore the possibility.
I get 1% cashback on my purchases, have to pay $25 / year for the credit card, but I put recurring bills totallying well over $2500 per month on the credit card,
Each CC transaciton attracts a higher fee paid by the merchant (that's who you're paying) to be paid to the bank. This can be as high as 3%. The cost of this is passed back on to you, the customer in the form of higher prices. The net effect is to increase the cost of whatever you're trying to purchase without increasing revenue to the company you're purchasing from.
Please dont tell me that you're naive enough to think the bank was giving you free money, they paid you back out of the % the bank got from the merchant.
Paying by direct debit or bank transfer does not attract such high fees.
but I just can't comprehend that sort of lack of self-control.
Oh, so that's why credit card debt is spiralling out of control.
Credit has its uses, as I said for investments that are expected to grow over time, but it's positively idiotic to use credit for consumption.
Also, if you must know, I have a credit card and a gold debit card with banks in Oz. The CC is basically collecting dust as the gold card has far lower fees and charges. I've used in once in the last year to buy flights.
If I pay for something with a card, my creditor provides additional protections in case what I bought is not as advertised,
Really, when I use my credit card, my creditor only charges me extra fees.
What protects me from being sold a product that is not as advertised is the Australian consumer protection laws that will, if the product is defective or different to what was advertised from an Australian retailer entitles me to a refund or exchange regardless of how I paid for it as long as I can provide a genuine receipt.
Credit is only useful for an investment that is expected to earn you more money over time. Home and business loans are the best examples as these are for assets which are expected to increase value over time, exceeding the cost of the loan and it's interest.
Only idiots use credit for consumption, as this just increases the cost of whatever you're consuming. This is foolhardy as it decreases the value of whatever you are buying. One should not not to use credit are for things that will only lose value over time, the most obvious examples are car loans and holidays because you're simply taking the capital and adding on additional cost (fee's and interest) and risk with no benefit.
Dont buy into the bollocks that credit is good. Banks say this because credit is profitable. Credit is a risk, when used properly it can be beneficial, when used improperly it will be dangerous.
the Mac Pro struggles to compile an app with thousands of source files spread over several frameworks. Can you imagine how complex something like Final Cut Pro, or Aperture are
You make it sound like Apple care.
People using Final Cut Pro or Aperture are a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of Apples total customer base. Design studios have been moving to PC for years because everyone on the web uses Windows and they need compatibility with their client and customer base.
Given that over 50% of Apples income is from the Iphone alone, not counting the Ipad or Ipod (which I wouldn't be at all surprised if those made up another 40%) why do you think Apple actually cares about professionals?
Apple's concern is seeing how many iDevices they can sell to bored housewives and teens who know little about technology. Welcome to your iFuture, every Machead I know is telling me Lion is more like IOS, which is why I've been saying that Apple is slowly killing x86-64 OS X, slowly turning OS X into IOS is simply boiling the frog.
The reported numbers are all shipping share, not market share. The number of Android tablets being sold is pretty dramatically less....
Like Apple doesn't report the "shipping share".
As much as you'd like to pretend Android tablets aren't selling, they are. Just like you said Android phones weren't selling, they did. Now the same is happening with Tablets.
Actually, it's not terribly hard to remove the batteries on the 2011 Macbook pros. Not something you could do easily on a plane, or in the car, but you can definitely do so with just two screwdrivers. Or one screwdriver with a replaceable bit.
You've missed the point.
It's harder then it should be. Dell, Lenovo and HP sell more laptops to enterprises in a day then Apple do in a year because they have better support and are better designed.
If a Dell breaks at my workplace, all I do is move the HDD into a similar model, it's literally a two minute operation because Dell know the HDD is one of the parts that is more readily changed/serviced by the user. RAM and batteries also fall into this category.
If my boss takes a 12 hour flight to Europe, he takes three fully charged batteries with him. Would it be possible to change a Macbook battery on the plane? Try getting 2 screwdrivers past security.
Apple has never been relevant enough on the desktop to kill any desktop technology. PC CD-Rs and then the internet killed floppy drives.
So in other words, Netflix is not killing the DVD.
Which is entirely accurate seeing as most of the world including the most stable first world economies cannot get Netflix.
The idea that Apple killed floppies is the ridiculous delusion of fanboys, cheap USB drives replaced floppy drives. Unfortunately this is not the only ridiculous delusion they cling to.
What stupidity? All but the new guy agreed to do it. The new guy needs a bit of time to study the issue. It's likely to be a done deal by October or November.
Either that or state governments will legislate it of their own accord, QLD and ACT has already indicated they will.
Then the A-G's will understand the true meaning of failure, when state government has gotten more done then you.
Now we all know you're tragic fanboy and have trouble admitting this but Apple and Jobs himself are experts at lying through statistics. I know every company does it to a degree, it's called PR but Apple turn it up to 11.
The statistic that "Apple is 10% in the US" is including Ipads and ignores the fact that the US is a very small market. It also disguises the fact that Apple isn't doing so well in the rest of the world. Now the US PC market is shrinking whilst the PC market in Asia is growing but Apple's share in the Asian market is practically non-existent.
Lying through statistics is easy when you cherry pick what statistics to show. 78% of people know that.
Actually, Apple specifically points out in their review process that apps that ask for location data without an obvious legit reason are rejected.
Given the fact that Apple has given permission via the EULA to allow applications to send information back to their own servers (after which they can do what they wish with it) and their lack of ability to keep out non-legit data miners I dont have a lot of faith in the walled garden approach.
another piece of common knowledge about armor that's wrong is that it's mostly pointless. In fact, 10 plate armored knights against a force of 100 chain and leather clad soldiers would be an even match. Plate armor was incredibly effective.
What you're forgetting is that the point of swords in medieval times was not to slash or pierce but to break bones. The Scottish Claymore is a great example, it was blunt as a butter knife, the Scots used it to great effect to break arms, leg, ribs, backs and skulls. Plate was somewhat more effective at distributing that force over a larger part of the body then mail but once you'd been knocked down in plate you've got no chance. Almost all swords in the middle ages were designed to crush rather then slash or pierce, the sharp gleaming sword was an invention of Hollywood.
Now there were a few peasant weapons designed to pierce plate armour, the halberd, goedendag and Swiss degen not to mention the damage that longbows would cause. But as firearm technology progressed plate armour became obsolete because a peasant with an afternoons training in a musket could massacre a fully armoured knight, You could field hundreds of peasants with little training compared to a handful of knights which required years of rigorous training. By the Napoleonic times, full plate armour had reduced to a single breast plate on heavier cavalry.
The other part of the solution is to run a closed market, and be picky about what apps you allow. If the developers of security software have nothing to sell on your platform, they won't go blabbing about the security holes to try to sell their product.
Yeah, because a vulnerability in the inbuilt PDF reader will never be exploited...
So lets all stick our heads in the wondrous sand of a walled garden and pretend that security holes dont exist because we aren't allowing security experts to say anything.
says that they have studied around 10,000 Android apps and have found that 800 of them are leaking private information of the user to an unauthorized server
Why wait? Just today, I finally broke down and joined the tablet craze by ordering an Acer Iconia 32GB tablet. Nvidia Tegra 2 1GHz dual-core processor, 1GB DDR2 RAM, 32GB flash storage, USB, HDMI, micro-SD slot, bluetooth, WiFi, 1280x800 10.1" display, Capacitive Ten-point Touchscreen, 2MP front camera, 5MP rear camera with flash Android Honeycomb.
BONUS? Available now for $450
Better late than never? Not so sure in this case. Lenovo has a lot of catching up to do to play in the same market as Asus, Motorola, Acer...
The Iconia is a good tablet. I bought the 16GB version on sale for A$421 (yeah, we get shafted on price over here) and the only thing I've found wrong with it is the lack of 3G (but I accepted that when I bought it).
Despite being made by Acer, it's actually well built.
Seriously? You thought I was being serious? PS: The iPad may be lightweight and thin, but it certainly is not of "poor quality construction".
Despite the fact you tried to make a joke, you did point out the truth. I know a company that put Ipads into cars in lieu of the semi-ruggedised laptops they were previously using, this lasted a month as the laptops had a life of about 18 months where as the Ipads had a life of about 2 weeks.
They spent over $80K AUD putting them in, then another $30K pulling them out and re-installing the laptops. At least they didn't listen to the idiot consultant when they told them to take out the standalone GPS units as well, Ipads couldn't track the vehicles within 10 metres of their actual position when standing still.
Also, dont get me started on what I've seen field Geologists do to Panasonic Toughbooks. When a sales manager suggested we give them Ipads I nearly collapsed in laughter.
Here's the ultimate problem I think. The game market has grown tremendously in the last couple of decades. But the market for smart games and games with depth has not grown.
I dont think this is true, the highest selling and grossing games of this console generation have been on the Wii, Modern Warfare does not come close despite being multiplatform.
Intelligent games are still being made, they are just drowned out by the massive amounts of media attention directed at the latest generic shooter or boob fest that the industry has created. In the mean time, games like Minecraft go from success to success for far less then the last COD.
There are more gamers that dont play generic shooters then do play them.
That should be only literally... If people are able to metaphorically pass by your home computer and authenticate by password you have a problem.
I meant metaphorically as in a drive by attack (which would certainly be looking for a password-less account to get in with). A lot of Viruses and Trojans get stopped by the mere presence of a password.
I agree that if you dont have a password, it's a problem but I think you took the word metaphorically a little to literally.
Personally, I like long games that have time to build a decent plot and develop the characters.
Yes I agree...
But the last AAA game I played that did this was Fallout New Vegas, the one before that was Fallout 3 (OK, I'll make an exception for StarCraft 2 although the characters were quite cliched). Recent story based, character heavy games like Bioshock and Mafia 2 have only disappointed me with their 1 dimensional design and tired, overused storyline (Bioshock was basically System Shock 2's story set underwater, they had 10 years to come up with something semi-original).
For the most part publishers are scared to actually give their characters enough character that they might accidentally offend 0.5% of the people who may happen to be around when someone is playing the game. Ever since BJ Blackowitz crawled his way into 3D to silently serve it the Angriest Austrian protagonists have been bland, faceless, nameless mutes (the big exception is Gordon Freeman who has a name, a face and a real personality despite no voice). Whilst this was fine for BJ and the Doom Marine it persists into the modern gaming world because publishers dont want to dare differ from the the American muscle-bound meat head cliche out of the risk of their audience actually needing to understand a real human personality.
I'll grant some great personalities have been built into RPG's but they are different from FPS's because you really have to set the tone more solidly then you would in KOTOR or Mass Effect. In fact it should be easier in FPS's to create a protagonist with some actual human qualities yet few publishers do it, they want to keep the character as characterless as possible to prevent their audience from not being able to associate with it, the problem we have here is that this always creates weak characters that no one really relates to.
Lets compare two characters from popular FPS's. Soap McTavish (the dude from COD IV in case you've forgotten), has a name but no face, no voice, no past and no personality, does the guy like his fish battered or crumbed? Does he drink Stout or Larger, enjoy short walks along the beach? Feck knows, we know nothing about this guy. Gordon Freeman has a name and a face, we know he's a talented theoretical physicist, well respected by his colleges, his enemies despise his intelligence. This was what I gathered from listening to the dialogue of the original Half Life. Since then his character has expanded a lot and all without saying a single word.
Looking at most of the AAA games and they are way too short. COD with a 5 hour campaign and no re-playability.
The problem with so called AAA games is not that they are too short or too long is that they are simply too boring, same-y well, just plain unoriginal. Why bother improving COD 117 when you're getting ready to can sell COD 118 next month (and 3 DLC hats in the mean time).
In larger games (LA Noire) the problem is not so much making things for the player to do but making interesting things for the player to do. Here is where a much hyped about concept is creating problems, procedural generation. Now to game developers and publishers this seems like a good thing(TM) because dynamically creating things to do rather then manually frees up developer time for other things such as cut scene rendering or DRM implementation, they consider it a godsend but to the player it results in something quite horrible. You end up doing the same thing over and over again in the same looking places.
I'm going to use two games that use procedural generation for examples. Far Cry 2 and Fallout 3. Fallout 3 is a game that had a lot of reuse (how many times did we see the same textures in the tunnels/subways) and randomly (procedural) generated both combat encounters (the odd goul, merc or super mutant) but also scripted encounters Fallout 3 by and large was considered a very good game. Far Cry 2 was a game that would randomly spawn enemies almost everywhere without any consideration for the player, in effect the player had to stop what they were doing, kill some random dudes, fix your radiator and move on. Far Cry 2 was by and large considered a very bad game.
So what is the difference, Fallout 3, for all the texture reuse was a game that had a lot of original sequences (mostly scripted) but had a lot of replayability due to several factors not the least of which was the fact that the scripted sequences could be played differently each time. In Far Cry 2, the procedural generation basically was the game, you would do four things, 1) kill enemies (on the road or in guard posts), 2) fix your radiator 3) fix your health/malaria 4) get told to do 1 by guys with baad saaf ifrican iccents china. Once you did 1 and 2 for an hour or so, you got sick of it.
TL:DR huh?
The idea that game content for a AAA game can be generated, rather then created is absurd and only results in the all the missions/levels being minor variations of the same level. Thus it becomes an exercise in tedious repetition to the player as opposed to the relaxing entertainment that they hoped for.
So Dev's and Publishers, pull some people off the DRM infestation and e-peen shining teams to work on some actual scripting and level design. Thank you and goodnight.
Slashdot Mirror
It isn't exactly obscure information that Google is limiting the market app to devices linked to a cellular plan.
Not obscure, perhaps, but false nonetheless. My Galaxy Tab 10.1 uses the Android Market, and it's Wi-Fi only.
That's a feature specific to Honeycomb.
Whilst there is not as much demand for an Android powered media player as the whingers would make out, Google honestly did not anticipate any demand for one what so ever. Google thought most people would just use their phone for media purposes and for the most part they are right, however there is a small demand for them.
In any case, except that particular Honeycomb feature to make it's way to Ice Cream Sandwich.
Also, how is it not monopoly abuse that Google Maps,
This has to be one of the mist uninformed posts I've read in a while.
Google Maps is nowhere near a mapping monopoly. I've worked in GIS companies and still have good friends in the field. Yahoo has always been a complete joke, you cant blame Google for that. Bing Maps has several deals with high profile web sites (facebook) despite also being a joke in terms of accuracy.
But Google is also a minor player in GIS. they've done nothing to unseat the incumbent IMS/WMS(Internet Mapping Service/Web Mapping Service) monopoly ESRI, ArcGIS is still the dominant mapping platform. MapInfo has a higher market share then Google.
Also, Finance, a drop in the bucket to MYOB, Qicken et al. Finance competes on the same level as Microsoft Excel does.
That and the fact that XP was good enough for everyone's needs.
OS X has never been and still isn't a competitor to Windows. To this day the main competitor to Windows Vista/7 is Windows XP. MS doesn't give a crap about OS X, it's XP they are intent on killing.
I think of patent trolls as those who don't produce anything (or anything of perceptible market value), yet sue over the fact that they hold a patent. HTC is actually producing products.
As a fan of HTC (I've owned two HTC Android phones and would buy another if they release one with a physical KB) but am wary HTC becoming a patent troll. However producing something does not prevent someone from being a patent troll. Apple produces something but it's no longer able to compete effectively, so they are suing in an attempt to hinder their competition. I dont think HTC will do the same, but I wont ignore the possibility.
I get 1% cashback on my purchases, have to pay $25 / year for the credit card, but I put recurring bills totallying well over $2500 per month on the credit card,
Each CC transaciton attracts a higher fee paid by the merchant (that's who you're paying) to be paid to the bank. This can be as high as 3%. The cost of this is passed back on to you, the customer in the form of higher prices. The net effect is to increase the cost of whatever you're trying to purchase without increasing revenue to the company you're purchasing from.
Please dont tell me that you're naive enough to think the bank was giving you free money, they paid you back out of the % the bank got from the merchant.
Paying by direct debit or bank transfer does not attract such high fees.
but I just can't comprehend that sort of lack of self-control.
Oh, so that's why credit card debt is spiralling out of control.
Credit has its uses, as I said for investments that are expected to grow over time, but it's positively idiotic to use credit for consumption.
Also, if you must know, I have a credit card and a gold debit card with banks in Oz. The CC is basically collecting dust as the gold card has far lower fees and charges. I've used in once in the last year to buy flights.
I've been locked in Google+ for a week now....please send help...running low on air...heeeellllllppppp!
I would but the can contains DRM (Desperate Respiration Management) and will not work for an unauthorised user.
Really, when I use my credit card, my creditor only charges me extra fees.
What protects me from being sold a product that is not as advertised is the Australian consumer protection laws that will, if the product is defective or different to what was advertised from an Australian retailer entitles me to a refund or exchange regardless of how I paid for it as long as I can provide a genuine receipt.
Credit is only useful for an investment that is expected to earn you more money over time. Home and business loans are the best examples as these are for assets which are expected to increase value over time, exceeding the cost of the loan and it's interest.
Only idiots use credit for consumption, as this just increases the cost of whatever you're consuming. This is foolhardy as it decreases the value of whatever you are buying. One should not not to use credit are for things that will only lose value over time, the most obvious examples are car loans and holidays because you're simply taking the capital and adding on additional cost (fee's and interest) and risk with no benefit.
Dont buy into the bollocks that credit is good. Banks say this because credit is profitable. Credit is a risk, when used properly it can be beneficial, when used improperly it will be dangerous.
You make it sound like Apple care.
People using Final Cut Pro or Aperture are a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of Apples total customer base. Design studios have been moving to PC for years because everyone on the web uses Windows and they need compatibility with their client and customer base.
Given that over 50% of Apples income is from the Iphone alone, not counting the Ipad or Ipod (which I wouldn't be at all surprised if those made up another 40%) why do you think Apple actually cares about professionals?
Apple's concern is seeing how many iDevices they can sell to bored housewives and teens who know little about technology. Welcome to your iFuture, every Machead I know is telling me Lion is more like IOS, which is why I've been saying that Apple is slowly killing x86-64 OS X, slowly turning OS X into IOS is simply boiling the frog.
The reported numbers are all shipping share, not market share. The number of Android tablets being sold is pretty dramatically less....
Like Apple doesn't report the "shipping share".
As much as you'd like to pretend Android tablets aren't selling, they are. Just like you said Android phones weren't selling, they did. Now the same is happening with Tablets.
Now Apple has to compete.
Actually, it's not terribly hard to remove the batteries on the 2011 Macbook pros. Not something you could do easily on a plane, or in the car, but you can definitely do so with just two screwdrivers. Or one screwdriver with a replaceable bit.
You've missed the point.
It's harder then it should be. Dell, Lenovo and HP sell more laptops to enterprises in a day then Apple do in a year because they have better support and are better designed. If a Dell breaks at my workplace, all I do is move the HDD into a similar model, it's literally a two minute operation because Dell know the HDD is one of the parts that is more readily changed/serviced by the user. RAM and batteries also fall into this category.
If my boss takes a 12 hour flight to Europe, he takes three fully charged batteries with him. Would it be possible to change a Macbook battery on the plane? Try getting 2 screwdrivers past security.
Apple has never been relevant enough on the desktop to kill any desktop technology. PC CD-Rs and then the internet killed floppy drives.
So in other words, Netflix is not killing the DVD.
Which is entirely accurate seeing as most of the world including the most stable first world economies cannot get Netflix.
The idea that Apple killed floppies is the ridiculous delusion of fanboys, cheap USB drives replaced floppy drives. Unfortunately this is not the only ridiculous delusion they cling to.
What stupidity? All but the new guy agreed to do it. The new guy needs a bit of time to study the issue. It's likely to be a done deal by October or November.
Either that or state governments will legislate it of their own accord, QLD and ACT has already indicated they will.
Then the A-G's will understand the true meaning of failure, when state government has gotten more done then you.
And here comes the 30th centuary!
Century...
I'll just download the source on my 9 G phone running Android 50.0.
I suppose it goes without saying that this post goes to 11.
Except that they are.
Now we all know you're tragic fanboy and have trouble admitting this but Apple and Jobs himself are experts at lying through statistics. I know every company does it to a degree, it's called PR but Apple turn it up to 11.
The statistic that "Apple is 10% in the US" is including Ipads and ignores the fact that the US is a very small market. It also disguises the fact that Apple isn't doing so well in the rest of the world. Now the US PC market is shrinking whilst the PC market in Asia is growing but Apple's share in the Asian market is practically non-existent.
Lying through statistics is easy when you cherry pick what statistics to show. 78% of people know that.
Actually, Apple specifically points out in their review process that apps that ask for location data without an obvious legit reason are rejected.
Given the fact that Apple has given permission via the EULA to allow applications to send information back to their own servers (after which they can do what they wish with it) and their lack of ability to keep out non-legit data miners I dont have a lot of faith in the walled garden approach.
What you're forgetting is that the point of swords in medieval times was not to slash or pierce but to break bones. The Scottish Claymore is a great example, it was blunt as a butter knife, the Scots used it to great effect to break arms, leg, ribs, backs and skulls. Plate was somewhat more effective at distributing that force over a larger part of the body then mail but once you'd been knocked down in plate you've got no chance. Almost all swords in the middle ages were designed to crush rather then slash or pierce, the sharp gleaming sword was an invention of Hollywood.
Now there were a few peasant weapons designed to pierce plate armour, the halberd, goedendag and Swiss degen not to mention the damage that longbows would cause. But as firearm technology progressed plate armour became obsolete because a peasant with an afternoons training in a musket could massacre a fully armoured knight, You could field hundreds of peasants with little training compared to a handful of knights which required years of rigorous training. By the Napoleonic times, full plate armour had reduced to a single breast plate on heavier cavalry.
The other part of the solution is to run a closed market, and be picky about what apps you allow. If the developers of security software have nothing to sell on your platform, they won't go blabbing about the security holes to try to sell their product.
Yeah, because a vulnerability in the inbuilt PDF reader will never be exploited...
So lets all stick our heads in the wondrous sand of a walled garden and pretend that security holes dont exist because we aren't allowing security experts to say anything.
Perhaps Google should follow Apple's lead here and simply change the EULA to give permission for application writers to access personal information and location.
That would certainly get rid of the "unauthorised" part of that statement.
Why wait? Just today, I finally broke down and joined the tablet craze by ordering an Acer Iconia 32GB tablet. Nvidia Tegra 2 1GHz dual-core processor, 1GB DDR2 RAM, 32GB flash storage, USB, HDMI, micro-SD slot, bluetooth, WiFi, 1280x800 10.1" display, Capacitive Ten-point Touchscreen, 2MP front camera, 5MP rear camera with flash Android Honeycomb.
BONUS? Available now for $450
Better late than never? Not so sure in this case. Lenovo has a lot of catching up to do to play in the same market as Asus, Motorola, Acer ...
The Iconia is a good tablet. I bought the 16GB version on sale for A$421 (yeah, we get shafted on price over here) and the only thing I've found wrong with it is the lack of 3G (but I accepted that when I bought it).
Despite being made by Acer, it's actually well built.
Also, $150 less then the cheapest Ipad (A$580)
They have, I beleive its called USB.
Seriously? You thought I was being serious? PS: The iPad may be lightweight and thin, but it certainly is not of "poor quality construction".
Despite the fact you tried to make a joke, you did point out the truth. I know a company that put Ipads into cars in lieu of the semi-ruggedised laptops they were previously using, this lasted a month as the laptops had a life of about 18 months where as the Ipads had a life of about 2 weeks.
They spent over $80K AUD putting them in, then another $30K pulling them out and re-installing the laptops. At least they didn't listen to the idiot consultant when they told them to take out the standalone GPS units as well, Ipads couldn't track the vehicles within 10 metres of their actual position when standing still.
Also, dont get me started on what I've seen field Geologists do to Panasonic Toughbooks. When a sales manager suggested we give them Ipads I nearly collapsed in laughter.
I dont think this is true, the highest selling and grossing games of this console generation have been on the Wii, Modern Warfare does not come close despite being multiplatform.
Intelligent games are still being made, they are just drowned out by the massive amounts of media attention directed at the latest generic shooter or boob fest that the industry has created. In the mean time, games like Minecraft go from success to success for far less then the last COD.
There are more gamers that dont play generic shooters then do play them.
That should be only literally... If people are able to metaphorically pass by your home computer and authenticate by password you have a problem.
I meant metaphorically as in a drive by attack (which would certainly be looking for a password-less account to get in with). A lot of Viruses and Trojans get stopped by the mere presence of a password.
I agree that if you dont have a password, it's a problem but I think you took the word metaphorically a little to literally.
Yes I agree...
But the last AAA game I played that did this was Fallout New Vegas, the one before that was Fallout 3 (OK, I'll make an exception for StarCraft 2 although the characters were quite cliched). Recent story based, character heavy games like Bioshock and Mafia 2 have only disappointed me with their 1 dimensional design and tired, overused storyline (Bioshock was basically System Shock 2's story set underwater, they had 10 years to come up with something semi-original).
For the most part publishers are scared to actually give their characters enough character that they might accidentally offend 0.5% of the people who may happen to be around when someone is playing the game. Ever since BJ Blackowitz crawled his way into 3D to silently serve it the Angriest Austrian protagonists have been bland, faceless, nameless mutes (the big exception is Gordon Freeman who has a name, a face and a real personality despite no voice). Whilst this was fine for BJ and the Doom Marine it persists into the modern gaming world because publishers dont want to dare differ from the the American muscle-bound meat head cliche out of the risk of their audience actually needing to understand a real human personality.
I'll grant some great personalities have been built into RPG's but they are different from FPS's because you really have to set the tone more solidly then you would in KOTOR or Mass Effect. In fact it should be easier in FPS's to create a protagonist with some actual human qualities yet few publishers do it, they want to keep the character as characterless as possible to prevent their audience from not being able to associate with it, the problem we have here is that this always creates weak characters that no one really relates to.
Lets compare two characters from popular FPS's.
Soap McTavish (the dude from COD IV in case you've forgotten), has a name but no face, no voice, no past and no personality, does the guy like his fish battered or crumbed? Does he drink Stout or Larger, enjoy short walks along the beach? Feck knows, we know nothing about this guy.
Gordon Freeman has a name and a face, we know he's a talented theoretical physicist, well respected by his colleges, his enemies despise his intelligence. This was what I gathered from listening to the dialogue of the original Half Life. Since then his character has expanded a lot and all without saying a single word.
Too Short?
Are they mad?
Looking at most of the AAA games and they are way too short. COD with a 5 hour campaign and no re-playability.
The problem with so called AAA games is not that they are too short or too long is that they are simply too boring, same-y well, just plain unoriginal. Why bother improving COD 117 when you're getting ready to can sell COD 118 next month (and 3 DLC hats in the mean time).
In larger games (LA Noire) the problem is not so much making things for the player to do but making interesting things for the player to do. Here is where a much hyped about concept is creating problems, procedural generation. Now to game developers and publishers this seems like a good thing(TM) because dynamically creating things to do rather then manually frees up developer time for other things such as cut scene rendering or DRM implementation, they consider it a godsend but to the player it results in something quite horrible. You end up doing the same thing over and over again in the same looking places.
I'm going to use two games that use procedural generation for examples. Far Cry 2 and Fallout 3. Fallout 3 is a game that had a lot of reuse (how many times did we see the same textures in the tunnels/subways) and randomly (procedural) generated both combat encounters (the odd goul, merc or super mutant) but also scripted encounters Fallout 3 by and large was considered a very good game. Far Cry 2 was a game that would randomly spawn enemies almost everywhere without any consideration for the player, in effect the player had to stop what they were doing, kill some random dudes, fix your radiator and move on. Far Cry 2 was by and large considered a very bad game.
So what is the difference, Fallout 3, for all the texture reuse was a game that had a lot of original sequences (mostly scripted) but had a lot of replayability due to several factors not the least of which was the fact that the scripted sequences could be played differently each time. In Far Cry 2, the procedural generation basically was the game, you would do four things, 1) kill enemies (on the road or in guard posts), 2) fix your radiator 3) fix your health/malaria 4) get told to do 1 by guys with baad saaf ifrican iccents china. Once you did 1 and 2 for an hour or so, you got sick of it.
TL:DR huh?
The idea that game content for a AAA game can be generated, rather then created is absurd and only results in the all the missions/levels being minor variations of the same level. Thus it becomes an exercise in tedious repetition to the player as opposed to the relaxing entertainment that they hoped for.
So Dev's and Publishers, pull some people off the DRM infestation and e-peen shining teams to work on some actual scripting and level design. Thank you and goodnight.