I was wondering why I couldn't find it at any retail stores and your explanation makes sense. However, it is this very process that is killing the chances of the Surface having any success - most people want to play with the device before they commit their hard-earned money on it. It's a shame: for once Microsoft puts a lot of thought into the design and usability of a device and then uses a distribution method that guarantees it won't gain any traction.
The Surface: two and half years late, limited app availability, high-end pricing, and virtually impossible to try before you buy. That's a formula for success!
Years from now, 225 million devices will almost certainly be seen as the point at which the console business peaked.
That is quite possibly true. The current generation of game consoles has lasted longer than any other generation and thanks to Nintendo, there have been many consoles sold to non-gamers in this generation that are likely to defect to other devices in future console generations.
Gamers are going elsewhere for their fix.
Now you're starting to lose me. Maybe casual gamers are going elsewhere, but that is because their Wii has gotten stale and right now people are choosing to buy tablets, not necessarily as gaming devices, but as multipurpose devices that happen to allow them to game. But the hardcore gamers, the ones that play XBox and PS, will likely buy a new console once MS and Sony get around to releasing new consoles.
The console’s time at the top of the heap is drawing to an end, and these machines won’t survive without radical change.
Now you're going way over the top and providing little to no evidence. The article does not cite console sales, but if it did it would show that sales are down. It would also show that PC game sales are up. This always happens near of the end of each console generation. And each successive generation of consoles usually outsells the last. While that might not happen for the next gen of consoles, they will be far from dead.
Consoles used to do everything best
No they didn't. They were nice because they provided a single platform of uniform specs, but PC games have often offered similar or better graphics and are usually better at providing fans with methods of creating custom content.
Unlike PC games, which may require finicky custom settings, consoles 'just work,' fans have long pointed out. Well, so does the iPad.
Are you seriously suggesting that the millions of fans of FPS suddenly switch over to playing on an iPad? This proves that you know absolutely nothing about makeup of the gaming market and everyone can stop listening to you right here.
Well, if you want Nintendo- or Sony-exclusive games, you’ll need to buy their hardware. But for many gamers, Angry Birds is becoming more attractive than Mario.
The thing with this is that I never considered fans of Angry Birds gamers. Tablet games can be fun, but they are in a completely different league from PC or console gaming.
Since the author of this article is a fool, let me provide some perspective on this subject. Gamers can be divided into at least three categories. First, there are hardcore gamers. They buy consoles as soon as they come out - the hardware is fresh and there are usually a bunch of exclusive titles that are worth owning. As the consoles age, this group upgrades the video card in their PC and uses that for gaming until the next console is released. Next, there are average gamers. This group likes playing video games on a fairly frequent basis but doesn't want to be bothered with the hassle of fine-tuning their video card and game settings. They will buy the consoles within the first year of their release and will continue playing them even though the same games they are playing are available on the PC with better graphics. Finally, you have the casual gamer. These people are likely to be playing games on smartphones, tablets, or in their browser. These people never bothered with consoles until the Wii came out. Nintendo was very successful at selling consoles to these people, but many of these consoles collected dust in people's living rooms only a few months after they were purchased. These people will likely realize that they didn't use their Wii console that much and they will not be likely to buy a console again, substituting tablets and internet games in place of
I can't think of a better way to diminish the popularity of Apple products, especially among their youthful followers, than by posting a quote from a middle-aged bureaucrat stating that they think Apple products are "cool". To paraphrase an old saying, "when all of the adults are getting in, it's time for the kids to get out"
their job is to stop any meaningful discussion online about the government.
So they are the Chinese equivalent of Fox News. I'm not just trying to make a joke, that is absolutely one of the effects of Fox News. They troll every story with a partisan angle and push their base ridiculously far to the right. Then everyone in the left and center responds by ridiculing them and offering counterpoints to their ridiculous arguments. But that doesn't matter because the effect of Fox News making their ridiculous arguments is that they keep both sides at war with each other so that there is no chance that we find common ground and fix the one problem that we can all agree on: reforming campaign finance and eliminating lobbying. By keeping us preoccupied by arguing over divisive yet relatively inconsequential matters, they are perpetuating our current system that heavily favors the rich. This has been going on for years and has been highly effective, so it's no wonder the Chinese are doing the same thing. People will always find ways around censorship, but keeping the people constantly distracted is the most effective way to fight unwanted changes.
Good catch! To my credit, I'm just some random shithead posting a quick comment between work tasks and not a member of the editorial staff responsible for posting stories on the front page.:)
I have been reading Slashdot for fourteen years and I have never once complained about the grammar in a summary before (usually there are enough pedants out there to do more than enough complaining), but this summary is horrible. I do not blame the submitter because I realize that English may not be his or her first language, but I though Slashdot was supposed to have some sort of editors who at least read the summary once before posting it to the front page. I had to read the second sentence several times to confirm that it meant what I thought it did and in the rest of the summary the article "the" is missing at least two times. I really do love this site, but if you want to call yourself an editor, then please do the job or turn it over to someone who will.
Already did that. While the value of my portfolio may not have been near the top, if enough people did this there would be a measurable effect. The funny thing is that HFT rips off everyone non-discriminately - I am not aware of any service offered to rich investors to avoid the skimming it causes. That means that all traders are losing money from this process and only the trading companies are gaining. It will be interesting to see how the rich investors react as this situation continues to play out and the "regulators" sit on the sidelines with their dicks in their hands.
Apparently the author is not familiar with the F-35. The estimated total cost of that project is $1 trillion dollars, or 142 NIF Controlled Fusion projects. But we can't cut the budget on military pet projects because that would just be evil.
And this is why I heavily oppose leaving matters of security, safety, or health completely in the hands of one or more private companies. These three areas are rarely ever cost-effective and they're not meant to be. The reason we have these services in the first place is because people feel that they are valuable to the well-being of individuals as well as society as a whole, not because there is necessarily an economic benefit. I'm not opposed to having private companies involved in these three areas, but I believe there needs to be strict standards on the quality of service they provide, strong government oversight to make sure they're operating up to those standards, and repercussions for failing to meet the standards.
I don't even know where to begin. My point was that your original claim of all gun control laws being unconstitutional was nonsense. The constitution clearly allows for SOME gun control. As long as people are capable of bearing SOME arms, then the government is meeting the requirement of "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
I'm perfectly willing to let people like you, who believe that you are incapable of understanding the Constitution, live among each other on your own territory as long as people like me can sit on our own territory, pull up a chair at the border with a big case of popcorn and see how well that works out for you.
Wow. Never did I claim I was incapable of understanding the Constitution, so you can get that straw man argument out of here. If anything, I've proven that my interpretation of it is consistent with the Supreme Court since they have not overturned any of the gun control laws that have been in place for decades. But that doesn't matter since you're so emotionally committed to believing that your own interpretation of the Constitution is correct despite the fact that people much more qualified than yourself (basically, all judges on all of the appeals courts for the past several decades) say that you are wrong.
On the other hand, if you, like the old theocrats, insist that we're incapable of understanding basic principles of law, choose to impose your quasi-theocracy on us, you'll have a real mess on your hands -- sort of like the 30 years war. Remember how that turned out?
Again, I never stated such a thing nor do I believe any of that for a moment. You are simply trotting out straw man arguments because you are incapable of defending your original point that laws regulating gun manufacturing are unconstitutional. The funny thing is that I'm actually NOT HEAVILY opposed to gun ownership. But I am heavily against people making arguments that are utterly insane and completely false and your claim of gun manufacturing regulation being unconstitutional easily falls into those categories.
The Second Amendment to the US Constitution clearly specifies that "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." It is clearly an "infringement" on the right of the people to keep and bear Arms for there to be Federal limits on the right to manufacture Arms.
The second amendment you quoted states that it is illegal for the government to prevent people from keeping and bearing arms. Nowhere does it state that the government can not set limits on the types of guns people can own nor the manufacturing process of those guns.
Since unconstitutional legislation is not law, there is no law against manufacture of Arms.
Given that there have been many regulations placed on gun ownership and manufacturing over the past several decades and none of them have been overturned by the courts (who know the constitution better than you do), I respectfully disagree with your statement.
The real question is: What to do about an outlaw government?
This isn't an outlaw government (at least not for the reasons you state), but I'm intrigued by this question. It almost seems like you're trying to incite people against the government. If so, please let me know when and where - I would love to bring a big case of popcorn and see how well that works out for you.
As a result Apple was forced to seek other sources in order to obtain this feature.
Apple was not forced to do anything. They chose to seek other sources because they wanted full control.
From the article:
Requiring iPhone users to look directly at handsets for directions and manually move through each step — while Android users enjoyed native voice-guided instructions — put Apple at a clear disadvantage in the mobile space.
Apple had plenty of opportunities to improve their navigation app without Google's help. For starters, they could have made it so that the phone wouldn't lock itself when in navigation mode. I can't count the number of seconds I had to take my eyes off of the road to enter my password. Apple: people use this app while operating a vehicle that weighs thousands of pounds - I thought you were the guys that put thought into the user experience of your software. I hope for everyone's safety that this "feature" has been fixed.
And finally, I'm not trying to troll here, but I can't help but wonder how all of this would be playing out if Google had patented every trivial feature of their map and navigation software like Apple does for all of its apps. That would certainly have made this scenario a hell of a lot more interesting.
Those were the days - an install process that went on forever by asking questions such as the horizontal and vertical sync ranges of the monitor and the baud rate of the serial mouse. After Red Hat I moved on to Mandrake for a while, then OpenSuse, Knoppix, Damn Small Linux, Ubuntu, and thanks to Gnome 3 I'm about to try Xubuntu or Mint.
I initially started using Linux because I wanted to play with all of the different Window Managers such as KDE, AfterStep, and Enlightenment. I grew to love not only the ability to customize the interface, but also the stability, especially during the times of Windows 98 and NT. At the same time, I grew to hate the package management since many common software packages were released via RPMs that could only be downloaded via web sites and required you to satisfy all of the dependencies on your own (and you'd better make sure that each dependent library you used had the exact version number).
Fast forward 14 years and now three of my four home computers run Linux, all of my workstations and servers at work run Linux, and many of my friends have used it at some point. I don't care if it never takes over the desktop, it always has a place on my machines.
It depends on how pretty she is. If she's really pretty, I like to stand directly behind her, almost touching her. It's not creepy, though, because I make sure she knows I'm there by breathing heavily. Then I usually whisper a compliment into her ear, like how her hair reminds me of my momma's wig. So yeah, I'm definitely worried about pretty ladies stealing my credentials over NFC.
Of course he was stupid - he was 19! Your tone of smug superiority is sickening and I'm sure people who know you well would be happy to point out the stupid things you did at that age. You were just lucky enough that none of those things happened to kill you. Try gaining a sense of empathy - it'll help you appear like you're a human being.
My feelings about Slashdot can be summed up in the words of a great philosopher: "I've never felt so accepted in all my life. These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
Thanks for providing one of the best internet forums for intelligent discussions. Some people will claim that this site isn't what it once was, but many other sites have come up and none of them provide a better format for progressive discussions. Don't ever lose that, Slashdot!
You are correct up to the point that app developers start ditching support for iOS 5. I'm not sure how long that will take, but I remember not being able to download new apps onto my iPhone 3G because I refused to load a new version of iOS which would have crippled the performance of the phone. After a while, I was unable to download new apps because most of those apps required the new OS. What's worse is that I could have sworn those apps once supported my version of iOS, but the App Store didn't appear to be serving those older versions anymore which meant that if I didn't download the app while it was available, I didn't get it at all. But I could be wrong about that last point.
Not to mention that the instant Straight Talk starts taking significant market share from AT&T, AT&T will raise the price of Straight Talk's contract significantly and Straight Talk will promptly pass that price hike on to their customers.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't realize Netflix stock could get any lower. Btw, count another $0.00000001 deduction for me.
I can't tell if you're being serious or not, but either way it's damn funny!
I was wondering why I couldn't find it at any retail stores and your explanation makes sense. However, it is this very process that is killing the chances of the Surface having any success - most people want to play with the device before they commit their hard-earned money on it. It's a shame: for once Microsoft puts a lot of thought into the design and usability of a device and then uses a distribution method that guarantees it won't gain any traction.
The Surface: two and half years late, limited app availability, high-end pricing, and virtually impossible to try before you buy. That's a formula for success!
It's a shame it doesn't work on pictures - I want my Don Burleson Bobblehead!
That is quite possibly true. The current generation of game consoles has lasted longer than any other generation and thanks to Nintendo, there have been many consoles sold to non-gamers in this generation that are likely to defect to other devices in future console generations.
Now you're starting to lose me. Maybe casual gamers are going elsewhere, but that is because their Wii has gotten stale and right now people are choosing to buy tablets, not necessarily as gaming devices, but as multipurpose devices that happen to allow them to game. But the hardcore gamers, the ones that play XBox and PS, will likely buy a new console once MS and Sony get around to releasing new consoles.
Now you're going way over the top and providing little to no evidence. The article does not cite console sales, but if it did it would show that sales are down. It would also show that PC game sales are up. This always happens near of the end of each console generation. And each successive generation of consoles usually outsells the last. While that might not happen for the next gen of consoles, they will be far from dead.
No they didn't. They were nice because they provided a single platform of uniform specs, but PC games have often offered similar or better graphics and are usually better at providing fans with methods of creating custom content.
Are you seriously suggesting that the millions of fans of FPS suddenly switch over to playing on an iPad? This proves that you know absolutely nothing about makeup of the gaming market and everyone can stop listening to you right here.
The thing with this is that I never considered fans of Angry Birds gamers. Tablet games can be fun, but they are in a completely different league from PC or console gaming.
Since the author of this article is a fool, let me provide some perspective on this subject. Gamers can be divided into at least three categories. First, there are hardcore gamers. They buy consoles as soon as they come out - the hardware is fresh and there are usually a bunch of exclusive titles that are worth owning. As the consoles age, this group upgrades the video card in their PC and uses that for gaming until the next console is released. Next, there are average gamers. This group likes playing video games on a fairly frequent basis but doesn't want to be bothered with the hassle of fine-tuning their video card and game settings. They will buy the consoles within the first year of their release and will continue playing them even though the same games they are playing are available on the PC with better graphics. Finally, you have the casual gamer. These people are likely to be playing games on smartphones, tablets, or in their browser. These people never bothered with consoles until the Wii came out. Nintendo was very successful at selling consoles to these people, but many of these consoles collected dust in people's living rooms only a few months after they were purchased. These people will likely realize that they didn't use their Wii console that much and they will not be likely to buy a console again, substituting tablets and internet games in place of
I can't think of a better way to diminish the popularity of Apple products, especially among their youthful followers, than by posting a quote from a middle-aged bureaucrat stating that they think Apple products are "cool". To paraphrase an old saying, "when all of the adults are getting in, it's time for the kids to get out"
So they are the Chinese equivalent of Fox News. I'm not just trying to make a joke, that is absolutely one of the effects of Fox News. They troll every story with a partisan angle and push their base ridiculously far to the right. Then everyone in the left and center responds by ridiculing them and offering counterpoints to their ridiculous arguments. But that doesn't matter because the effect of Fox News making their ridiculous arguments is that they keep both sides at war with each other so that there is no chance that we find common ground and fix the one problem that we can all agree on: reforming campaign finance and eliminating lobbying. By keeping us preoccupied by arguing over divisive yet relatively inconsequential matters, they are perpetuating our current system that heavily favors the rich. This has been going on for years and has been highly effective, so it's no wonder the Chinese are doing the same thing. People will always find ways around censorship, but keeping the people constantly distracted is the most effective way to fight unwanted changes.
Good catch! To my credit, I'm just some random shithead posting a quick comment between work tasks and not a member of the editorial staff responsible for posting stories on the front page. :)
I have been reading Slashdot for fourteen years and I have never once complained about the grammar in a summary before (usually there are enough pedants out there to do more than enough complaining), but this summary is horrible. I do not blame the submitter because I realize that English may not be his or her first language, but I though Slashdot was supposed to have some sort of editors who at least read the summary once before posting it to the front page. I had to read the second sentence several times to confirm that it meant what I thought it did and in the rest of the summary the article "the" is missing at least two times. I really do love this site, but if you want to call yourself an editor, then please do the job or turn it over to someone who will.
Already did that. While the value of my portfolio may not have been near the top, if enough people did this there would be a measurable effect. The funny thing is that HFT rips off everyone non-discriminately - I am not aware of any service offered to rich investors to avoid the skimming it causes. That means that all traders are losing money from this process and only the trading companies are gaining. It will be interesting to see how the rich investors react as this situation continues to play out and the "regulators" sit on the sidelines with their dicks in their hands.
That sounds awesome! As a solitary private investor, how can I leverage HFT to make money?
Apparently the author is not familiar with the F-35. The estimated total cost of that project is $1 trillion dollars, or 142 NIF Controlled Fusion projects. But we can't cut the budget on military pet projects because that would just be evil.
And this is why I heavily oppose leaving matters of security, safety, or health completely in the hands of one or more private companies. These three areas are rarely ever cost-effective and they're not meant to be. The reason we have these services in the first place is because people feel that they are valuable to the well-being of individuals as well as society as a whole, not because there is necessarily an economic benefit. I'm not opposed to having private companies involved in these three areas, but I believe there needs to be strict standards on the quality of service they provide, strong government oversight to make sure they're operating up to those standards, and repercussions for failing to meet the standards.
Wow. Never did I claim I was incapable of understanding the Constitution, so you can get that straw man argument out of here. If anything, I've proven that my interpretation of it is consistent with the Supreme Court since they have not overturned any of the gun control laws that have been in place for decades. But that doesn't matter since you're so emotionally committed to believing that your own interpretation of the Constitution is correct despite the fact that people much more qualified than yourself (basically, all judges on all of the appeals courts for the past several decades) say that you are wrong.
Again, I never stated such a thing nor do I believe any of that for a moment. You are simply trotting out straw man arguments because you are incapable of defending your original point that laws regulating gun manufacturing are unconstitutional. The funny thing is that I'm actually NOT HEAVILY opposed to gun ownership. But I am heavily against people making arguments that are utterly insane and completely false and your claim of gun manufacturing regulation being unconstitutional easily falls into those categories.
The second amendment you quoted states that it is illegal for the government to prevent people from keeping and bearing arms. Nowhere does it state that the government can not set limits on the types of guns people can own nor the manufacturing process of those guns.
Given that there have been many regulations placed on gun ownership and manufacturing over the past several decades and none of them have been overturned by the courts (who know the constitution better than you do), I respectfully disagree with your statement.
This isn't an outlaw government (at least not for the reasons you state), but I'm intrigued by this question. It almost seems like you're trying to incite people against the government. If so, please let me know when and where - I would love to bring a big case of popcorn and see how well that works out for you.
click the Submit button on Slashdot before crashing?
Apple was not forced to do anything. They chose to seek other sources because they wanted full control.
From the article:
Apple had plenty of opportunities to improve their navigation app without Google's help. For starters, they could have made it so that the phone wouldn't lock itself when in navigation mode. I can't count the number of seconds I had to take my eyes off of the road to enter my password. Apple: people use this app while operating a vehicle that weighs thousands of pounds - I thought you were the guys that put thought into the user experience of your software. I hope for everyone's safety that this "feature" has been fixed.
And finally, I'm not trying to troll here, but I can't help but wonder how all of this would be playing out if Google had patented every trivial feature of their map and navigation software like Apple does for all of its apps. That would certainly have made this scenario a hell of a lot more interesting.
Those were the days - an install process that went on forever by asking questions such as the horizontal and vertical sync ranges of the monitor and the baud rate of the serial mouse. After Red Hat I moved on to Mandrake for a while, then OpenSuse, Knoppix, Damn Small Linux, Ubuntu, and thanks to Gnome 3 I'm about to try Xubuntu or Mint.
I initially started using Linux because I wanted to play with all of the different Window Managers such as KDE, AfterStep, and Enlightenment. I grew to love not only the ability to customize the interface, but also the stability, especially during the times of Windows 98 and NT. At the same time, I grew to hate the package management since many common software packages were released via RPMs that could only be downloaded via web sites and required you to satisfy all of the dependencies on your own (and you'd better make sure that each dependent library you used had the exact version number).
Fast forward 14 years and now three of my four home computers run Linux, all of my workstations and servers at work run Linux, and many of my friends have used it at some point. I don't care if it never takes over the desktop, it always has a place on my machines.
It depends on how pretty she is. If she's really pretty, I like to stand directly behind her, almost touching her. It's not creepy, though, because I make sure she knows I'm there by breathing heavily. Then I usually whisper a compliment into her ear, like how her hair reminds me of my momma's wig. So yeah, I'm definitely worried about pretty ladies stealing my credentials over NFC.
How do you like them Apples?
Of course he was stupid - he was 19! Your tone of smug superiority is sickening and I'm sure people who know you well would be happy to point out the stupid things you did at that age. You were just lucky enough that none of those things happened to kill you. Try gaining a sense of empathy - it'll help you appear like you're a human being.
That's what someone says when they forgot to buy the present!
My feelings about Slashdot can be summed up in the words of a great philosopher: "I've never felt so accepted in all my life. These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
Thanks for providing one of the best internet forums for intelligent discussions. Some people will claim that this site isn't what it once was, but many other sites have come up and none of them provide a better format for progressive discussions. Don't ever lose that, Slashdot!
You are correct up to the point that app developers start ditching support for iOS 5. I'm not sure how long that will take, but I remember not being able to download new apps onto my iPhone 3G because I refused to load a new version of iOS which would have crippled the performance of the phone. After a while, I was unable to download new apps because most of those apps required the new OS. What's worse is that I could have sworn those apps once supported my version of iOS, but the App Store didn't appear to be serving those older versions anymore which meant that if I didn't download the app while it was available, I didn't get it at all. But I could be wrong about that last point.
Not to mention that the instant Straight Talk starts taking significant market share from AT&T, AT&T will raise the price of Straight Talk's contract significantly and Straight Talk will promptly pass that price hike on to their customers.