What is going on here is people paid for access to a service, and are being refused access to it without being given a refund No, it is not like that. No PERSON is being refused service - the XBL account is still there. They just have to use a different console to access it.
To take your hotel analogy to the limit, it's like you booked the room and prepaid, but also signed a contract promising that you'd only arrive in a green car, because only green cars are allowed at that hotel. Then you turn up in a red car, and they point to the contract and ask you to go away until you have the right color car. Plain and simple breach of contract, you don't have a leg to stand on.
However, this time the ban does not just kick you off online multiplayer, it also disables functionality to install games on the included HDD! Games already installed on that HDD will not be accessible anymore So what? The HD install feature only exists to speed up load times, you still need the original disc in the drive to play. That is, if you haven't modded the box. See where they're going with this? If you modded your box you're still perfectly able to play any legitimate game discs you happen to have.
Also: it is rumored that it is possible for MS to band your console through future (mandatory) updates on game discs, even if you never played online. The technical capabilites are there, but if they ever start doing that their XBL-TOS-argument will be seriously flawed.
That makes no sense. If you don't connect to live they've got nothing to ban you from.
No, they haven't terminated any agreement. The accounts are still live and valid, and if the modders want to log in from an unmodded console they're still welcome. Remember: it's the CONSOLE that's banned, not the user.
I pay the "percentage of income" version, because it comes out to a tiny amount compared to actual sales tax on all the stuff I buy online (I basically never use b&m stores anymore). Yes I could just declare nothing, but I don't feel like dealing with accusations of tax evasion. The only time I ever actually declared for Use Tax was when I had a single item over the $5k limit.
Agreed. I'm also tech support for our house, and although we only have 2 people it's still a network of 25+ devices and at least 7 computers. My wife doesn't get admin rights on anything, and she actually likes it that way (less chance of her breaking something and having to ask me for help!). I also lock down IE and make Firefox the only allowed browser, setup automatic updates and run a free AV. To be honest in the last few years I can only think of one malware incident and that was my fault ironically - testing out whether my firefox install was vulnerable to a drive by (it was!).
Web servers are stateless and sit in front of app servers, which are stateful but which have their sessions propagated to at least one other instance. When a web server dies no-one cares, if an app server dies you just need to have some logic that allows the box which gets the next request in the session to either (a) redirect the request to the app server which was the back up for that session or (b) pull the session into it's own cache from the backup.
I noticed exactly this the other day when I was downloading a bunch of big ISOs from Technet. My typical d/l speed when maxed out is around 1.5mbyte/s. After the first few files it dropped right down to 200kbyte/s and stayed there until those files were done (which took quite a while!). So in my case it went from ~12mpbs to ~1.6mbps. Now I know it's policy and not just a glitch, I'll be calling FIOS in the morning.
"Real" netbooks? I think most people associate Netbook with the Eee, which has always been x86 based. Something like the Q5 is more of a MID. I have a $250 Netbook with 2GB/16GB SSD and it runs Win 7 just peachy, I'd take that over a $170 ARM device to be honest, particularly with those specs. My phone has more storage...
1) The browser is not a "key feature" - it's barely useable and not an advertised/supported feature anyway. 2) Calling the Amazon explanation a "confession" seems a little biased...sounds quite reasonable to me to charge more if their costs are higher.
COD4 sold 14 million copies, so 88k is around half a percent. Given that I'm sure (a) some people who signed will buy it anyway and (b) not everyone who signed it was ever going to buy it in the first place, I think the potential losses from this hover somewhere between "vanishingly small" and "insignificant".
The article isn't complaining about price disparity between regions - it's pointing out that different items from the store are more/less expensive by different amounts, so it's not just a straight currency adjustment, there's per-title regional pricing variance going on as well. That's something unique to Sony (vs MS/Nintendo) AFAIK.
Or you could have bought 2000 points in the first place and still have points "automatically stored and used on the next game". You can't buy a $4.99 game for $4.99 from Sony (you end up with cash stored in your account) and you can't buy a 400 point game from MS for 400 points (you end up with points stored in your account). I completely fail to see any difference whatsoever.
You could even say that Sony is worse because their minimum charge is $10 whilst MS will let you buy 250 points which is less than that, but to be honest I don't care. What's the big deal about running a few dollars balance? I have some odd amount of cash sitting at Sony and some odd number of points at MS.
I can believe it's better than XCode (I've never used it) and I could even believe it's the best overall C/C++ IDE. It's just not very good compared to the Java IDEs - and therefore doesn't make sense to me as a reason to not use Java.
I have no idea about the Android JVM, but in a regular Java JVM object creation is actually significantly faster than malloc. This article is quite old, but shows that even back in 1.4.2 days it was nothing to be scared of.
1) That paper is 5 years old. Things change. 2) They actually say that GC (from 5 years ago) is just as fast as manual malloc/free if you have plenty of RAM. Not true on a cellphone, sure, but true in many cases. 3) They didn't look at the Android GC impl, for obvious reasons.
Game developers that want to transition to phones are likely to prefer to stay with C++ where they can use their tools of choice, such as Visual Studio.
I can see wanting to stick with C++ because it's what you're used to or what you like. But Visual Studio? Seriously? I have to use that POS every day and to be honest it's only made even remotely usable by adding ReSharper, which gives you some of the features from IntelliJ. The best Java IDEs are leagues ahead of VS.
Which actions? I fail to see anything MS has done wrong here. You have a gamerscore, it's public. That's what it's for. What I don't get is why an account with a higher GS is more "valuable" in the first place.
And if you have my Amazon password you can order real stuff with my CC, and if you have my banking CC you can steal all my money. That's why we protect our passwords children:)
Why is a PS3 better at streaming to a large screen than an Xbox? Oh right, it's not. XBox will be doing instant-start 1080p streaming soon, and does HD Netflix now...unlike the PS3. The PS3 is quieter, and obviously the blu-ray is good if you want to play discs, but I'd pick the 360 for streaming. Well actually I use Tivos, more family-friendly interface.
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What is going on here is people paid for access to a service, and are being refused access to it without being given a refund
No, it is not like that. No PERSON is being refused service - the XBL account is still there. They just have to use a different console to access it.
To take your hotel analogy to the limit, it's like you booked the room and prepaid, but also signed a contract promising that you'd only arrive in a green car, because only green cars are allowed at that hotel. Then you turn up in a red car, and they point to the contract and ask you to go away until you have the right color car. Plain and simple breach of contract, you don't have a leg to stand on.
However, this time the ban does not just kick you off online multiplayer, it also disables functionality to install games on the included HDD! Games already installed on that HDD will not be accessible anymore
So what? The HD install feature only exists to speed up load times, you still need the original disc in the drive to play. That is, if you haven't modded the box. See where they're going with this? If you modded your box you're still perfectly able to play any legitimate game discs you happen to have.
Also: it is rumored that it is possible for MS to band your console through future (mandatory) updates on game discs, even if you never played online. The technical capabilites are there, but if they ever start doing that their XBL-TOS-argument will be seriously flawed.
That makes no sense. If you don't connect to live they've got nothing to ban you from.
No, they haven't terminated any agreement. The accounts are still live and valid, and if the modders want to log in from an unmodded console they're still welcome. Remember: it's the CONSOLE that's banned, not the user.
No, Second Life makes them both worse. A diet fixes both.
I pay the "percentage of income" version, because it comes out to a tiny amount compared to actual sales tax on all the stuff I buy online (I basically never use b&m stores anymore). Yes I could just declare nothing, but I don't feel like dealing with accusations of tax evasion. The only time I ever actually declared for Use Tax was when I had a single item over the $5k limit.
Agreed. I'm also tech support for our house, and although we only have 2 people it's still a network of 25+ devices and at least 7 computers. My wife doesn't get admin rights on anything, and she actually likes it that way (less chance of her breaking something and having to ask me for help!). I also lock down IE and make Firefox the only allowed browser, setup automatic updates and run a free AV. To be honest in the last few years I can only think of one malware incident and that was my fault ironically - testing out whether my firefox install was vulnerable to a drive by (it was!).
Web servers are stateless and sit in front of app servers, which are stateful but which have their sessions propagated to at least one other instance. When a web server dies no-one cares, if an app server dies you just need to have some logic that allows the box which gets the next request in the session to either (a) redirect the request to the app server which was the back up for that session or (b) pull the session into it's own cache from the backup.
Ummm...Google Maps and Street View are AJAX, not flash. As far as I know Google don't use flash for anything.
I noticed exactly this the other day when I was downloading a bunch of big ISOs from Technet. My typical d/l speed when maxed out is around 1.5mbyte/s. After the first few files it dropped right down to 200kbyte/s and stayed there until those files were done (which took quite a while!). So in my case it went from ~12mpbs to ~1.6mbps. Now I know it's policy and not just a glitch, I'll be calling FIOS in the morning.
"Real" netbooks? I think most people associate Netbook with the Eee, which has always been x86 based. Something like the Q5 is more of a MID. I have a $250 Netbook with 2GB/16GB SSD and it runs Win 7 just peachy, I'd take that over a $170 ARM device to be honest, particularly with those specs. My phone has more storage...
1) The browser is not a "key feature" - it's barely useable and not an advertised/supported feature anyway.
2) Calling the Amazon explanation a "confession" seems a little biased...sounds quite reasonable to me to charge more if their costs are higher.
COD4 sold 14 million copies, so 88k is around half a percent. Given that I'm sure (a) some people who signed will buy it anyway and (b) not everyone who signed it was ever going to buy it in the first place, I think the potential losses from this hover somewhere between "vanishingly small" and "insignificant".
The article isn't complaining about price disparity between regions - it's pointing out that different items from the store are more/less expensive by different amounts, so it's not just a straight currency adjustment, there's per-title regional pricing variance going on as well. That's something unique to Sony (vs MS/Nintendo) AFAIK.
Or you could have bought 2000 points in the first place and still have points "automatically stored and used on the next game". You can't buy a $4.99 game for $4.99 from Sony (you end up with cash stored in your account) and you can't buy a 400 point game from MS for 400 points (you end up with points stored in your account). I completely fail to see any difference whatsoever.
You could even say that Sony is worse because their minimum charge is $10 whilst MS will let you buy 250 points which is less than that, but to be honest I don't care. What's the big deal about running a few dollars balance? I have some odd amount of cash sitting at Sony and some odd number of points at MS.
I can believe it's better than XCode (I've never used it) and I could even believe it's the best overall C/C++ IDE. It's just not very good compared to the Java IDEs - and therefore doesn't make sense to me as a reason to not use Java.
I have no idea about the Android JVM, but in a regular Java JVM object creation is actually significantly faster than malloc. This article is quite old, but shows that even back in 1.4.2 days it was nothing to be scared of.
1) That paper is 5 years old. Things change.
2) They actually say that GC (from 5 years ago) is just as fast as manual malloc/free if you have plenty of RAM. Not true on a cellphone, sure, but true in many cases.
3) They didn't look at the Android GC impl, for obvious reasons.
I can see wanting to stick with C++ because it's what you're used to or what you like. But Visual Studio? Seriously? I have to use that POS every day and to be honest it's only made even remotely usable by adding ReSharper, which gives you some of the features from IntelliJ. The best Java IDEs are leagues ahead of VS.
Online market share? XBL, no doubt. They have in the region of 17 million users. Consoles sold? Obviously Wii.
What are you talking about? CC information certainly isn't public anywhere on XBL.
Which actions? I fail to see anything MS has done wrong here. You have a gamerscore, it's public. That's what it's for. What I don't get is why an account with a higher GS is more "valuable" in the first place.
And if you have my Amazon password you can order real stuff with my CC, and if you have my banking CC you can steal all my money. That's why we protect our passwords children :)
Why is a PS3 better at streaming to a large screen than an Xbox? Oh right, it's not. XBox will be doing instant-start 1080p streaming soon, and does HD Netflix now...unlike the PS3. The PS3 is quieter, and obviously the blu-ray is good if you want to play discs, but I'd pick the 360 for streaming. Well actually I use Tivos, more family-friendly interface.
Well seeing as you're logged into slashdot to post the comment, you probably broke rule 1 :)
(Sure - maybe there's an https login page for slashdot I don't know about but you get the point).
Err...no. There are tons of negative reviews on NewEgg.