I thought they already did this - I certainly know the disk platter in my cable DVR always spins up when I switch on the news in the morning, I'd assumed it was detecting connectivity from the HDMI.
I suspect GP is from the UK, not the USA (he mentions Sky+ and "leccy" is UK slang for electricity). On the other point, annoying as it may be, that's how most humans behave. Make it convenient and in their interests and they'll do it, make it hard and they won't bother. Manufacturers need to be working this stuff out because you just won't change human nature.
Boot up time is the issue for me with my cable DVR, too. Even just switching out of standby can take 20-30 seconds. If I physically power it off at the wall (the only way to turn it off) it takes about 3 minutes to reboot. This is a huge flaw - it just seems like so many of these devices are just designed to never be turned off (well, not without inconvenience to the user) and this is where we should begin. It's all well and good asking the end user to turn things off, but if the company that sells the device is making this painful, it's not going to happen - you can't force users to turn devices off but surely you can work with manufacturers to make this more feasible.
That argument in itself assumes extinction is bad, when in fact extinction is nature's way too. There have been plenty of apocalytpic events in the earth's history that doubtless wiped out many species, yet life goes on and many new species (maybe even our own) exist not despite, but because of these events. Maybe humans are responsible for massive climate change, but then maybe we're just this cycle's equivalent of an asteroid or mega volcano and our actions, while apparently damaging, will trigger the emergence of new species. Who really knows or can even begin to guess? The real question is are we, as a species, really arrogant enough to believe we understand how something as complex as nature works to the degree that we can preserve a specific point in time, let alone that we have the expertise to jump in there and start trying to fix it.
Secret questions are one of my biggest bug bears - especially when so many sites use them as a way to, for instance, reset your account email address. 99% of the questions seem to be the same across multiple sites. In a very few occasions I've seen the option to create your own challenge and response, this seems to be a much more sane option as you can literally create a unique question (or set of questions) for every site, and you can tailor them to be far more difficult to guess (mother's maiden name must be relatively trivial to track down for most folks these days).
Not to mention Bioware, who put out Dragon Age 2 - the game in which they literally use the same five dungeons, but pretend they're different dungeons, repeatedly (gee, isn't it odd how this noble's house is exactly the same as this NPC's house which is exactly the same as that brothel...). Maybe they made quality back in the day, but the latest offerings are definitely a case of phoning it in. I'm almost dreading to see what they're going to do with ME:3.
I would have far preferred them to have demonstrated an "abundance of caution" before they got hacked. Locking the stable door after the horse has bolted much? That's assuming they're actually even being more cautious (and not just covering their arses) since it didn't seem to prevent SOE getting hacked weeks after the PSN fiasco - how much trust can we put in their caution?
More likely it was some related game or game forum he signed up to. I got the email but my account was set up for DA:O and Dead Space 2, I've never played NWN. Seems like they're emailing everyone who has signed up for anything to do with their games, I don't know if that's just being cautious or if it's indicative that the leak might be wider than NWN players.
Well annoyingly for me I never had an account with NWN but I did create one for Dragon Age (required for DLC) and I still received the email. I'm not sure where that leaves me - if it was the NWN servers that were hacked does that mean my data is safe, or is this an admission that the hack is more widespread, or do they have no way to distinguish who signed up for what, or is it just cheaper and easier for them to spam everyone? Way to add a bucket load of ambiguity to the situation.
Far too expensive. If you want to remotely detonate a moving vehicle you can already set up a remote control system and a camera to achieve the same effect for very little cost with far more precise control (if you're going after a moving target in traffic for instance).
Not to mention there are already enough stories of people driving into ditches because they blindly follow the sat nav, let alone having cars automatically do so. If we're ever going to have inner city automated driving there will need to be a far better system than satellite, or at least than satellite alone.
Not the case on Android. In fact I regularly see people give out grossly unfair 1 star ratings. The number of times I've seen an app explicitly state "Does not work with handset X", only to receive a slew of 1 star ratings from handset X owners who didn't bother to read the description - even in cases where the app has cost them nothing to try! - is beyond ridiculous. However, I do think when people have paid for a product they are more likely to rate it higher, either because they've tried a free demo first and know they'll like it before they buy or else because they are trying to justify the purchase to themselves, so that could be the skewing factor here.
The biggest disappointment with Android though is search. Sure both market places have their share of good and bad apps, but I would have hoped Google of all people would be able to help me sort the wheat from the chaff - it's what they do.
You're missing the point - 4.8 and 4.5 are both great scores, and this guy's just managed to tell thousands of people about it online. The story is incidental to the outrageous self promotion.
I was thinking more "Developer figures out way to get plenty of eyeballs on his press release (by mentioning Android and iOS) which just happens to mention how highly his game is rated on the two systems", but I guess that was too long and not nearly inflammatory enough. Seriously, though, blatant slashvertisement wrapped up in flamebait language to generate lots of clicks - pretty much par for the course.
You're not incompetent if you want a community where you can keep your door unlocked, but yes, you are incompetent if you keep your door unlocked in the real world and expect it to adjust to your romanticised version of how things should be. We'd all love to live in a world where security isn't necessary, but we don't. Anyone who doesn't secure the data of other people that they have been entrusted with, and in many cases who are paying customers, to at least an agreed minimum standard, should be held criminally liable - and if they use the excuse that they were helping to create a free and open internet by allowing anyone to pry on customer data, they should be certified insane. By the way, you're confusing an open internet with an insecure internet (just because people want to be able to share data and content with open formats, doesn't follow that they don't want to be able to protect their bank accounts), but that's another matter entirely.
Focusing on Lulsec is taking the heat away from massively insecure, multi billion dollar global corporations. I made exactly this point when the Sony PSN attacks first happened - we will see very little in the way of recriminations against the companies who play fast and loose with our data to save a few dollars but the hackers will be demonised all over the media and by politicians. Lo, it came to pass - is anyone surprised?
I believe the shutting down businesses is a reference to Sony's practice of going after people selling modchips, or imported consoles and the like - the most prominent of these probably being Lik Sang.
I don't know - it reminds me of police press conferences on the news here in the UK. Generally if the case is proceeding well and they have a good trail of evidence/witnesses to follow they don't give press conferences (why risk spooking the criminals into hiding, let alone waste police time?). When they have nothing they'll often do a conference saying that they believe the net is closing and whoever is sheltering the criminal should give them up - this is pretty standard operating procedure when they have nothing and either want to scare the criminal into making a mistake or scare someone who knows their identity into turning them in.
Or patched dial up. Or assuming you haven't faked the details you used to get the credit card to pay for a broadband connection. We keep seeing these articles that say "all privacy is gone" but the truth is the privacy was never there. Anonymity isn't something everyone is busy nurturing because for most people it's not something they see a value in (it's only when your identity is "stolen" or you get stalked or whatever that this suddenly becomes valuable). The truth is people could trivially maintain their anonymity online if they cared enough to do so. We're not yet at the point where you can't buy food unless you're plugged into the web - aside from banking (and then it's only an issue if you're in a small town with no local banks and no transport) there are no essential services you need to give your real details to online.
What, they couldn't video those "extensive constrained flight tests in a specially prepared laboratory" and stick them online? Nobody had even so much as a camera phone that could do some crappy low res video? I agree with the others - until we see this in action, colour me highly skeptical. We've been promised cheap, effective personal flight many times before and we're still waiting:)
I don't understand why a game developer would want to tailor games to a single sex, male of female. The broader the appeal the larger the audience. Why target only half your potential audience? Games are an art form, and every artist wants as many people as possible to enjoy their works.
Well, one reason is that games which are designed to target everyone tend to be watered down, "design by committee" type mindless pap. Look at the vast majority of party games for consoles. They're designed for all ages and both sexes and they tend to be incredibly formulaic and dull, play once or twice then forget affairs. By turning your focus on one particular part of the market (and in the case of games, males have traditionally always been the biggest spenders) you can deliver a much more satisfying experience much more reliably and you'll sell a lot more product.
The number of games that successfully target any audience are pretty tiny, it either requires massive upfront investment to get them right or else you have to be incredibly lucky (not a good business model), the Nintendos of the world can pull this off most of the time, but most of the other stuff ends up in the bargain bin at the local store within a couple of weeks of release. That being the case, it makes sense as a developer to focus on your traditional market and see a much better or more guaranteed return on investment. It's the same reason Ferrari don't make regular road going cars - sure the potential market is huge, but the risk is similarly huge (massive competition, brand devaluation, etc) and they already have a guaranteed market doing what they've always done, so there's little reason to change.
I suspect if we ever do see a rise in games specifically for women, it will be driven by indie developers who have far less to lose - and systems like XBL and the various mobile app stores have made it much simpler to deliver content to a large audience for minimal cost. The difficulty, based on what I've seen in the past, is delivering an experience that is not patronising to women - they don't spend all day dreaming about horse riding or playing dress up, but looking at "games for girls" in the past you'd be forgiven for thinking that was the case.
That, or they think a judge would see through the evidence more quickly than a jury of "peers" who would be more easily flim-flammed by a fancy lawyer.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought they already did this - I certainly know the disk platter in my cable DVR always spins up when I switch on the news in the morning, I'd assumed it was detecting connectivity from the HDMI.
I suspect GP is from the UK, not the USA (he mentions Sky+ and "leccy" is UK slang for electricity). On the other point, annoying as it may be, that's how most humans behave. Make it convenient and in their interests and they'll do it, make it hard and they won't bother. Manufacturers need to be working this stuff out because you just won't change human nature.
Boot up time is the issue for me with my cable DVR, too. Even just switching out of standby can take 20-30 seconds. If I physically power it off at the wall (the only way to turn it off) it takes about 3 minutes to reboot. This is a huge flaw - it just seems like so many of these devices are just designed to never be turned off (well, not without inconvenience to the user) and this is where we should begin. It's all well and good asking the end user to turn things off, but if the company that sells the device is making this painful, it's not going to happen - you can't force users to turn devices off but surely you can work with manufacturers to make this more feasible.
Maybe the research boats were equipped with gaydar?
That argument in itself assumes extinction is bad, when in fact extinction is nature's way too. There have been plenty of apocalytpic events in the earth's history that doubtless wiped out many species, yet life goes on and many new species (maybe even our own) exist not despite, but because of these events. Maybe humans are responsible for massive climate change, but then maybe we're just this cycle's equivalent of an asteroid or mega volcano and our actions, while apparently damaging, will trigger the emergence of new species. Who really knows or can even begin to guess? The real question is are we, as a species, really arrogant enough to believe we understand how something as complex as nature works to the degree that we can preserve a specific point in time, let alone that we have the expertise to jump in there and start trying to fix it.
Secret questions are one of my biggest bug bears - especially when so many sites use them as a way to, for instance, reset your account email address. 99% of the questions seem to be the same across multiple sites. In a very few occasions I've seen the option to create your own challenge and response, this seems to be a much more sane option as you can literally create a unique question (or set of questions) for every site, and you can tailor them to be far more difficult to guess (mother's maiden name must be relatively trivial to track down for most folks these days).
Not to mention Bioware, who put out Dragon Age 2 - the game in which they literally use the same five dungeons, but pretend they're different dungeons, repeatedly (gee, isn't it odd how this noble's house is exactly the same as this NPC's house which is exactly the same as that brothel...). Maybe they made quality back in the day, but the latest offerings are definitely a case of phoning it in. I'm almost dreading to see what they're going to do with ME:3.
I would have far preferred them to have demonstrated an "abundance of caution" before they got hacked. Locking the stable door after the horse has bolted much? That's assuming they're actually even being more cautious (and not just covering their arses) since it didn't seem to prevent SOE getting hacked weeks after the PSN fiasco - how much trust can we put in their caution?
More likely it was some related game or game forum he signed up to. I got the email but my account was set up for DA:O and Dead Space 2, I've never played NWN. Seems like they're emailing everyone who has signed up for anything to do with their games, I don't know if that's just being cautious or if it's indicative that the leak might be wider than NWN players.
Well annoyingly for me I never had an account with NWN but I did create one for Dragon Age (required for DLC) and I still received the email. I'm not sure where that leaves me - if it was the NWN servers that were hacked does that mean my data is safe, or is this an admission that the hack is more widespread, or do they have no way to distinguish who signed up for what, or is it just cheaper and easier for them to spam everyone? Way to add a bucket load of ambiguity to the situation.
Far too expensive. If you want to remotely detonate a moving vehicle you can already set up a remote control system and a camera to achieve the same effect for very little cost with far more precise control (if you're going after a moving target in traffic for instance).
Not to mention there are already enough stories of people driving into ditches because they blindly follow the sat nav, let alone having cars automatically do so. If we're ever going to have inner city automated driving there will need to be a far better system than satellite, or at least than satellite alone.
That depends, perhaps violent people prefer violent games, so non-violent games don't hold their interest so long.
Not the case on Android. In fact I regularly see people give out grossly unfair 1 star ratings. The number of times I've seen an app explicitly state "Does not work with handset X", only to receive a slew of 1 star ratings from handset X owners who didn't bother to read the description - even in cases where the app has cost them nothing to try! - is beyond ridiculous. However, I do think when people have paid for a product they are more likely to rate it higher, either because they've tried a free demo first and know they'll like it before they buy or else because they are trying to justify the purchase to themselves, so that could be the skewing factor here.
The biggest disappointment with Android though is search. Sure both market places have their share of good and bad apps, but I would have hoped Google of all people would be able to help me sort the wheat from the chaff - it's what they do.
You're missing the point - 4.8 and 4.5 are both great scores, and this guy's just managed to tell thousands of people about it online. The story is incidental to the outrageous self promotion.
I was thinking more "Developer figures out way to get plenty of eyeballs on his press release (by mentioning Android and iOS) which just happens to mention how highly his game is rated on the two systems", but I guess that was too long and not nearly inflammatory enough. Seriously, though, blatant slashvertisement wrapped up in flamebait language to generate lots of clicks - pretty much par for the course.
You're not incompetent if you want a community where you can keep your door unlocked, but yes, you are incompetent if you keep your door unlocked in the real world and expect it to adjust to your romanticised version of how things should be. We'd all love to live in a world where security isn't necessary, but we don't. Anyone who doesn't secure the data of other people that they have been entrusted with, and in many cases who are paying customers, to at least an agreed minimum standard, should be held criminally liable - and if they use the excuse that they were helping to create a free and open internet by allowing anyone to pry on customer data, they should be certified insane. By the way, you're confusing an open internet with an insecure internet (just because people want to be able to share data and content with open formats, doesn't follow that they don't want to be able to protect their bank accounts), but that's another matter entirely.
Focusing on Lulsec is taking the heat away from massively insecure, multi billion dollar global corporations. I made exactly this point when the Sony PSN attacks first happened - we will see very little in the way of recriminations against the companies who play fast and loose with our data to save a few dollars but the hackers will be demonised all over the media and by politicians. Lo, it came to pass - is anyone surprised?
I believe the shutting down businesses is a reference to Sony's practice of going after people selling modchips, or imported consoles and the like - the most prominent of these probably being Lik Sang.
I don't know - it reminds me of police press conferences on the news here in the UK. Generally if the case is proceeding well and they have a good trail of evidence/witnesses to follow they don't give press conferences (why risk spooking the criminals into hiding, let alone waste police time?). When they have nothing they'll often do a conference saying that they believe the net is closing and whoever is sheltering the criminal should give them up - this is pretty standard operating procedure when they have nothing and either want to scare the criminal into making a mistake or scare someone who knows their identity into turning them in.
Or patched dial up. Or assuming you haven't faked the details you used to get the credit card to pay for a broadband connection. We keep seeing these articles that say "all privacy is gone" but the truth is the privacy was never there. Anonymity isn't something everyone is busy nurturing because for most people it's not something they see a value in (it's only when your identity is "stolen" or you get stalked or whatever that this suddenly becomes valuable). The truth is people could trivially maintain their anonymity online if they cared enough to do so. We're not yet at the point where you can't buy food unless you're plugged into the web - aside from banking (and then it's only an issue if you're in a small town with no local banks and no transport) there are no essential services you need to give your real details to online.
What, they couldn't video those "extensive constrained flight tests in a specially prepared laboratory" and stick them online? Nobody had even so much as a camera phone that could do some crappy low res video? I agree with the others - until we see this in action, colour me highly skeptical. We've been promised cheap, effective personal flight many times before and we're still waiting :)
I don't understand why a game developer would want to tailor games to a single sex, male of female. The broader the appeal the larger the audience. Why target only half your potential audience? Games are an art form, and every artist wants as many people as possible to enjoy their works.
Well, one reason is that games which are designed to target everyone tend to be watered down, "design by committee" type mindless pap. Look at the vast majority of party games for consoles. They're designed for all ages and both sexes and they tend to be incredibly formulaic and dull, play once or twice then forget affairs. By turning your focus on one particular part of the market (and in the case of games, males have traditionally always been the biggest spenders) you can deliver a much more satisfying experience much more reliably and you'll sell a lot more product.
The number of games that successfully target any audience are pretty tiny, it either requires massive upfront investment to get them right or else you have to be incredibly lucky (not a good business model), the Nintendos of the world can pull this off most of the time, but most of the other stuff ends up in the bargain bin at the local store within a couple of weeks of release. That being the case, it makes sense as a developer to focus on your traditional market and see a much better or more guaranteed return on investment. It's the same reason Ferrari don't make regular road going cars - sure the potential market is huge, but the risk is similarly huge (massive competition, brand devaluation, etc) and they already have a guaranteed market doing what they've always done, so there's little reason to change.
I suspect if we ever do see a rise in games specifically for women, it will be driven by indie developers who have far less to lose - and systems like XBL and the various mobile app stores have made it much simpler to deliver content to a large audience for minimal cost. The difficulty, based on what I've seen in the past, is delivering an experience that is not patronising to women - they don't spend all day dreaming about horse riding or playing dress up, but looking at "games for girls" in the past you'd be forgiven for thinking that was the case.
That, or they think a judge would see through the evidence more quickly than a jury of "peers" who would be more easily flim-flammed by a fancy lawyer.