That, or they would decide it's too risky developing for a minority platform with an approval system which might mean they pour millions into development and arbitrarily get their application rejected.
Well by that yardstick, we should all be rid of our computers and replace them with iPads. Of course more freedom gives less security, that's just as true in the world of computers as it is in the real world, but that's no reason not to give people the choice. Have a locked down default setting for regular users and an advanced mode with more freedom (and copious disclaimers about the dangers when you activate it) for everyone else. Is that so hard?
You're saying the reason the hardware is so good is because of the restrictions on the software? It's possible to have stringent controls on the quality of the hardware and the OS without having to restrict how people use it, you know.
It seems a little strange to compare battery life anyway - the Desire has a faster processor and allows more Apps running at once, of course that's going to drain battery faster and in a 1:1 comparison with the iPhone it would have to be a lot better if it's not to appear worse. The same would be true if I compared either phone to my first ever Nokia which would quite happily go for a week without charging, simply because it was a monotone screen with a tiny processor meant for calls, texts and, at a push, Snake. The only fair test would be if we could somehow hook the Desire's battery up to the iPhone and see how long it lasts. The bigger question is how easy is the battery situation to manage - here the Desire seems to have the edge, not only can you carry a spare battery, I think (well, I read in the reviews, so forgive me if this is wrong) that it can be charged from a standard mini-USB cable, meaning you have a lot more chance of finding a cable in the IT department at work if you forgot your charger.
Oh, and as an aside, I'm not sure if the iPhone is indicative of Apple's user experience in general, but I was having some issues with a file in WMP that I couldn't remove so I thought I'd try iTunes to manage my music, since everyone tells me how great it is. Unfortunately it wouldn't let me access any of the "great" features without providing my credit card details. Even though I had no intention of buying anything, I just wanted it to manage my existing music, they still wanted my card details before I could do things like grab track titles and album art. In the end I went back and found a solution for the WMP issue. Having to fight with a Microsoft application because it's preferable to Apple's alternative is not what I'd describe as a good user experience.
I simply pointed out that "the iPhone still rules the 'total experience dept'" is a subjective opinion a lot of people would disagree with. Me included.
Case in point, my gf has the iPhone and finds it really easy to use. She uses the same handful of apps regularly and never has to switch between them extensively in a short time or find anything that's not one of her core apps in a hurry. She likes the UI and the experience. For me, it's absolutely horrible, having several pages of apps all jumbled together with no clear way to sort them (okay, I think they can be re-ordered but I didn't see any way to group or categorise them, etc), going between them in a session is a hideous experience, even just finding them is a chore, which is a shame because there are things about the phone I like, and it would be nice if we had the same phone so we could share peripherals, but for me this is definitely not a good example of a "total experience dept" product.
Reading some reviews of the HTC Desire (With HTC's Sense UI), it seems much more to my tastes, even going so far as allowing you to create different work and leisure profiles and grouping the Apps you use for each accodingly.
I see what you did there, but what google are doing in this case is saying "object X was associated with location Y when we happened to drive by 6 months ago". It would be about as useful as the Dutch government compiling a list of which couches they spotted in which houses - couches will move as people move house, or give them away to buy upgrades, or throw them out, and there's nothing to tie the couch to a person or reveal anything about that person (stains notwithstanding).
It's not really the same thing, though. One is recording my actions, the other is recording some relatively static piece of information which isn't really permanently tied to me. I don't want Google following me around with cameras all day long, but I'm more than happy for them to take a photo of my house for their street view service (especially given the amount of usage I got from the service when buying a house last year) - it sounds like what they're doing is closer to the second than the first.
I wonder how many German and Portuguese people have GMail accounts? If they're not concerned that Google have access to their private correspondence (okay I know email's not technically private but that's the way a lot of folk use it) then they're unlikely to be bothered about this.
If we're going on a trip to Paranoiaville, you might also ask what's to stop Google selling that information on to other browser developers. If you're going to distrust/refuse to use Chrome on such a tenuous basis then you can't realistically use any browser you've not written yourself.
Oh, find the DRM restrictive? Don't buy it. Problem solved. I fail to see why that's worth an article
It's worth the article because I'm pretty sure Sony won't be trumpeting this new "feature" from the rooftops, and if it's not discussed, how will people even know it's happening (until they run up against the restriction, which might not be for a while if they're usually connected). I'm sure you read every last term and condition of every product or service you purchase so that nothing escapes your knowledge, but the average user who has bought games before will just click through the boilerplate (if, indeed, they even include some boilerplate, it doesn't sound like they do from TFA) without realising the terms have changed.
I'm not sure that's necessarily true - I've been able to easily find Doom and Monkey Island "free" for many years, and even downloaded and played the first Monkey Island through again about five years ago, but that hasn't stopped me playing these again on the 360 (admittedly ME has updated graphics, but it's essentially the same game). The key thing is pricing, people don't want to pay a fortune for such old games, but offer them at a pocket money price and plenty of people will re-buy them. Of course if they do polish the original a little they give an added reason to buy.
It wouldn't be so bad if they then went on to explain the massive flaws in their testing and that the test was therefore not conclusive (and they do this occasionally, but not nearly enough). More often than not they'll gloss over some variant that hugely affects the outcome and then declare the myth proven/busted on that basis. Even as a non-experimentalist that drives me crazy, what's wrong with just saying, "hey we didn't find out anything conclusive but we got to blow a bunch of crap up in the process"?
As with most government department contracts, the key thing is marketing. Once you've sold them your product, you don't care if it breaks or someone abuses it - in fact, that's a bonus because then you sell them very expensive consultancy time to fix the issues. It's not much fun seeing this happen as an employee on the other side of that relationship, or as a taxpayer.
I have the unfortunate honour to drive on the stretch of the M1 between Nottingham and Sheffield about once a month, where they've had roadworks and average speed cameras now ongoing for several years, over a huge stretch of the motorway. I'm convinced this is as much about measuring the revenue generating prospect of having these cameras all along every single motorway as it is about lane widening. if this story is anything to go by, the revenue prospects are seemingly very good.
Maybe because speed limits tend to be completely arbitrary on many roads and bear little relation to the actual driving conditions, thus it's easy when you're on a long, straight, multi-carriageway road with a ridiculously low limit to accidentally stray over that limit, especially if you're matching your speed to the other traffic. The problem with cameras is that they are completely objective, they fail to take into account whether you are driving safely, which is meant to be their primary purpose - they're called "safety cameras" rather than "speed cameras" for a reason, supposedly! Likewise, someone doing 30MPH on a 60MPH road is likely to cause an accident if people doing the legal speed limit come upon them at a bend, but a camera would just assume their driving was fine.
Actually, the first recorded use of the word was, I believe, in the 1870s and it's endured pretty consistently since that time. I wonder at what point it becomes a real word, despite the redundancy. More interestingly, the term "mash" doesn't seem to mean what you think it does, it means to pulp something, not to mix two things together, so I'm guessing you either mean "mashup", which itself is a made up word with far less heritage than the one you're complaining about, or you are shortening the term "mish-mash", which itself comes from an old word which is literally a repetition of two words for "mash" (mysse-masche), hence also guilty of the redundancy you're complaining about:)
When was that ever a requirement for fair use? If a kid makes a photocopy of a newspaper front page for a school project, that's fair use, the kid doesn't have to set up their own printing press in the garage and reproduce the type-setting, etc.
I would argue that it is exactly the powerful nature of that scene in the original movie, juxtaposed against some ridiculous dialogue (either because it's not "of the time" - Hitler discussion iPads, etc, or because he's discussing something stupidly trivial) that gives rise to the humour, and therein is the parody. Of course, now the scene has been repeated so many times, that in itself is almost becoming the parody - how very post-modern!
Not only that, if we say the litmus test is, "will the existence of this derivitive piece of work in any way detract from people wanting to enjoy the original", the answer is a clear no. If anything, quite the reverse, you can't buy the kind of publicity that Youtube users have gifted to this movie (well, you can but it would cost a hell of a lot more money than the producers would ever recoup).
Well the options are either a) generate very high quality content that will keep users coming back, use the higher user numbers to employ developers who can pre-empt issues which would spoil the user experience, or b) just serve up your regular copy with unsupported ads and suppress talk of ad blocking. Of course b) isn't sustainable in any way, if for no other reason than users will eventually hear about ad blocking from somewhere else and the best you can hope for is that they've not already given up on your site, but there are still going to be sites who prefer to take the short term view, minimse costs and bleed users.
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That, or they would decide it's too risky developing for a minority platform with an approval system which might mean they pour millions into development and arbitrarily get their application rejected.
Well by that yardstick, we should all be rid of our computers and replace them with iPads. Of course more freedom gives less security, that's just as true in the world of computers as it is in the real world, but that's no reason not to give people the choice. Have a locked down default setting for regular users and an advanced mode with more freedom (and copious disclaimers about the dangers when you activate it) for everyone else. Is that so hard?
You're saying the reason the hardware is so good is because of the restrictions on the software? It's possible to have stringent controls on the quality of the hardware and the OS without having to restrict how people use it, you know.
It seems a little strange to compare battery life anyway - the Desire has a faster processor and allows more Apps running at once, of course that's going to drain battery faster and in a 1:1 comparison with the iPhone it would have to be a lot better if it's not to appear worse. The same would be true if I compared either phone to my first ever Nokia which would quite happily go for a week without charging, simply because it was a monotone screen with a tiny processor meant for calls, texts and, at a push, Snake. The only fair test would be if we could somehow hook the Desire's battery up to the iPhone and see how long it lasts. The bigger question is how easy is the battery situation to manage - here the Desire seems to have the edge, not only can you carry a spare battery, I think (well, I read in the reviews, so forgive me if this is wrong) that it can be charged from a standard mini-USB cable, meaning you have a lot more chance of finding a cable in the IT department at work if you forgot your charger.
Oh, and as an aside, I'm not sure if the iPhone is indicative of Apple's user experience in general, but I was having some issues with a file in WMP that I couldn't remove so I thought I'd try iTunes to manage my music, since everyone tells me how great it is. Unfortunately it wouldn't let me access any of the "great" features without providing my credit card details. Even though I had no intention of buying anything, I just wanted it to manage my existing music, they still wanted my card details before I could do things like grab track titles and album art. In the end I went back and found a solution for the WMP issue. Having to fight with a Microsoft application because it's preferable to Apple's alternative is not what I'd describe as a good user experience.
I simply pointed out that "the iPhone still rules the 'total experience dept'" is a subjective opinion a lot of people would disagree with. Me included.
Case in point, my gf has the iPhone and finds it really easy to use. She uses the same handful of apps regularly and never has to switch between them extensively in a short time or find anything that's not one of her core apps in a hurry. She likes the UI and the experience. For me, it's absolutely horrible, having several pages of apps all jumbled together with no clear way to sort them (okay, I think they can be re-ordered but I didn't see any way to group or categorise them, etc), going between them in a session is a hideous experience, even just finding them is a chore, which is a shame because there are things about the phone I like, and it would be nice if we had the same phone so we could share peripherals, but for me this is definitely not a good example of a "total experience dept" product.
Reading some reviews of the HTC Desire (With HTC's Sense UI), it seems much more to my tastes, even going so far as allowing you to create different work and leisure profiles and grouping the Apps you use for each accodingly.
I see what you did there, but what google are doing in this case is saying "object X was associated with location Y when we happened to drive by 6 months ago". It would be about as useful as the Dutch government compiling a list of which couches they spotted in which houses - couches will move as people move house, or give them away to buy upgrades, or throw them out, and there's nothing to tie the couch to a person or reveal anything about that person (stains notwithstanding).
It's not really the same thing, though. One is recording my actions, the other is recording some relatively static piece of information which isn't really permanently tied to me. I don't want Google following me around with cameras all day long, but I'm more than happy for them to take a photo of my house for their street view service (especially given the amount of usage I got from the service when buying a house last year) - it sounds like what they're doing is closer to the second than the first.
I wonder how many German and Portuguese people have GMail accounts? If they're not concerned that Google have access to their private correspondence (okay I know email's not technically private but that's the way a lot of folk use it) then they're unlikely to be bothered about this.
If we're going on a trip to Paranoiaville, you might also ask what's to stop Google selling that information on to other browser developers. If you're going to distrust/refuse to use Chrome on such a tenuous basis then you can't realistically use any browser you've not written yourself.
Oh, find the DRM restrictive? Don't buy it. Problem solved. I fail to see why that's worth an article
It's worth the article because I'm pretty sure Sony won't be trumpeting this new "feature" from the rooftops, and if it's not discussed, how will people even know it's happening (until they run up against the restriction, which might not be for a while if they're usually connected). I'm sure you read every last term and condition of every product or service you purchase so that nothing escapes your knowledge, but the average user who has bought games before will just click through the boilerplate (if, indeed, they even include some boilerplate, it doesn't sound like they do from TFA) without realising the terms have changed.
I'm not sure that's necessarily true - I've been able to easily find Doom and Monkey Island "free" for many years, and even downloaded and played the first Monkey Island through again about five years ago, but that hasn't stopped me playing these again on the 360 (admittedly ME has updated graphics, but it's essentially the same game). The key thing is pricing, people don't want to pay a fortune for such old games, but offer them at a pocket money price and plenty of people will re-buy them. Of course if they do polish the original a little they give an added reason to buy.
It wouldn't be so bad if they then went on to explain the massive flaws in their testing and that the test was therefore not conclusive (and they do this occasionally, but not nearly enough). More often than not they'll gloss over some variant that hugely affects the outcome and then declare the myth proven/busted on that basis. Even as a non-experimentalist that drives me crazy, what's wrong with just saying, "hey we didn't find out anything conclusive but we got to blow a bunch of crap up in the process"?
Plus it's awfully British to fight the oppresive government with tin foil, cling film, expanding foam and pluck.
As with most government department contracts, the key thing is marketing. Once you've sold them your product, you don't care if it breaks or someone abuses it - in fact, that's a bonus because then you sell them very expensive consultancy time to fix the issues. It's not much fun seeing this happen as an employee on the other side of that relationship, or as a taxpayer.
They get around this by installing ten times the number of cameras.
I have the unfortunate honour to drive on the stretch of the M1 between Nottingham and Sheffield about once a month, where they've had roadworks and average speed cameras now ongoing for several years, over a huge stretch of the motorway. I'm convinced this is as much about measuring the revenue generating prospect of having these cameras all along every single motorway as it is about lane widening. if this story is anything to go by, the revenue prospects are seemingly very good.
Maybe because speed limits tend to be completely arbitrary on many roads and bear little relation to the actual driving conditions, thus it's easy when you're on a long, straight, multi-carriageway road with a ridiculously low limit to accidentally stray over that limit, especially if you're matching your speed to the other traffic. The problem with cameras is that they are completely objective, they fail to take into account whether you are driving safely, which is meant to be their primary purpose - they're called "safety cameras" rather than "speed cameras" for a reason, supposedly! Likewise, someone doing 30MPH on a 60MPH road is likely to cause an accident if people doing the legal speed limit come upon them at a bend, but a camera would just assume their driving was fine.
Sounds like a perfectly cromulent word to me!
Actually, the first recorded use of the word was, I believe, in the 1870s and it's endured pretty consistently since that time. I wonder at what point it becomes a real word, despite the redundancy. More interestingly, the term "mash" doesn't seem to mean what you think it does, it means to pulp something, not to mix two things together, so I'm guessing you either mean "mashup", which itself is a made up word with far less heritage than the one you're complaining about, or you are shortening the term "mish-mash", which itself comes from an old word which is literally a repetition of two words for "mash" (mysse-masche), hence also guilty of the redundancy you're complaining about :)
What I need is a real-life OS X trash can or the Windows Recycle Bin, so I can recover things right after I trash them.
I have one of those, only the other half prefers to refer to it as a "garage". Mind you, when it fills up the seek times are horrendous.
First they came for the "First they came for" meme quoters, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't a "First they came for" meme quoter... oh, bugger.
When was that ever a requirement for fair use? If a kid makes a photocopy of a newspaper front page for a school project, that's fair use, the kid doesn't have to set up their own printing press in the garage and reproduce the type-setting, etc.
I would argue that it is exactly the powerful nature of that scene in the original movie, juxtaposed against some ridiculous dialogue (either because it's not "of the time" - Hitler discussion iPads, etc, or because he's discussing something stupidly trivial) that gives rise to the humour, and therein is the parody. Of course, now the scene has been repeated so many times, that in itself is almost becoming the parody - how very post-modern!
That's technically four letters, or one acronym.
Not only that, if we say the litmus test is, "will the existence of this derivitive piece of work in any way detract from people wanting to enjoy the original", the answer is a clear no. If anything, quite the reverse, you can't buy the kind of publicity that Youtube users have gifted to this movie (well, you can but it would cost a hell of a lot more money than the producers would ever recoup).
Well the options are either a) generate very high quality content that will keep users coming back, use the higher user numbers to employ developers who can pre-empt issues which would spoil the user experience, or b) just serve up your regular copy with unsupported ads and suppress talk of ad blocking. Of course b) isn't sustainable in any way, if for no other reason than users will eventually hear about ad blocking from somewhere else and the best you can hope for is that they've not already given up on your site, but there are still going to be sites who prefer to take the short term view, minimse costs and bleed users.