It would have been nuked ostensibly to "STOP TEH PIRATES", but realistically because it's not in the console vendors' interests to open up avenues for free content when they have paid for content to push.
There have always been buggy games, but we're talking major bugs (and not bugs that are buried away and hard to find, serious bugs that are apparent while playing the basic game as intended) in what should be the year's A-list games. Fable III and Fallout New Vegas are huge games with budgets that reflect that and yet both were released with blatant issues and promises of patches almost immediately. That's not a few bugs slipping through the net, that to me is evidence of companies knowingly releasing broken games because they know they can patch them post release and still meet their pre-order deadlines/the Christmas rush. It's greed trumping quality assurance, plain and simple. Now 10 years ago you certainly saw buggy games, but they felt like bugs that were missed during the development/QA process, today many of the bugs are so obvious they simply couldn't have been missed and must point to the release-then-patch culture in action.
I think the whole idea of "year of the linux desktop" needs clarification. Do we mean the year Linux wins a sufficient share of the desktop from other operating systems that we consider it a key player, or do we mean the year desktop linux becomes viable for the everyday uses of its core market. If it's the former, I think you're right, it's likely never to happen unless MS and Apple somehow destroy each other fighting for market share (and that's probably never going to happen because they cater to different markets mostly). If it's the latter, then arguably it's already happened - Linux has been a pretty nice desktop OS for anyone who mostly just wants to work on their system but isn't afraid to occasionally get their hands dirty (i.e. it's core audience) for at least a few years, now.
And on the subject of Apple, I don't see them obsessing about being the desktop OS. They know they cater to a (relatively) niche market, they also know that they're offering a distinct product which does things its own way, and they and their users seem largely happy with this. That should be the approach Linux takes - ensure your core users are happy and build on solid growth. Nobody who is already using Linux wants to see "WOW LOOKEE!!" gimmick features added if that's at the cost of improvements to real functionality, meanwhile people who are attracted by those kind of features are likely to find the rest of Linux a frustrating experience, so all it achieves is disappointing two lots of users.
You don't think that maybe the fees and charges are what helps to pay for the exceptional service? I suspect the reason most people have a miserable experience with banks, or any business for that matter, is because they value cheap over all else, and you pretty much get what you pay for (and let's face it, there's little to distinguish a bank until something goes wrong, so for most people they'll avoid the bank with the higher fees even though they might be glad of the higher level of service one day).
It's not exactly THE SKY IS FALLING scenario, but it does mean that the idea of putting a "Do you want to continue" here to prevent accidental clickage isn't a bad idea.
I don't know if you remember being a kid, but most kids seeing a "This content is not for kids, click here if you're definitely not a kid" link will click it purely out of curiosity. It's the same reason we have to have child proof containers for household chemicals or medication. Do you honestly think this page is any kind of barrier to a kid seeing the content, and if not then what purpose does it serve?
It's pretty sad when we get to the point where we honestly believe the only way we could possibly "protect" our children from content we don't want them to see is with a white-list. Yet again the technological solution that means we don't have to spend time, oh, I don't know, sitting with them and supervising them in person and even explaining why some things are right or wrong. I suspect that all the negative content in the world wouldn't have as much impact as the fact that they're being dumped in front of a machine in lieu of real social interaction with other people.
I'm not sure how much difference that makes, considering it was a manifesto promise of the Liberal Democrats to scrap first-degree university tuition fees, and instead they're now part of a coalition that is tripling said fees. It doesn't even seem to matter that the grass roots members of the party are still opposed to tuition fees - the handful at the top seem more intent on having their little bit of power and going against their major promises. I can't see why their stance on copyright shouldn't similarly alter (particularly since, for most people in the party, this is a lesser issue anyway and one they might be more willing to give ground on to win concessions elsewhere).
The usual practice by both parties is to screw the electorate for 4 years, then spend 6 months making unsustainable tax cuts and vage, underliverable promises for the future to try and say, hey you know we're bad, but we're still not as bad as the other guys - better the devil you know and all that. The really depressing thing is not even that the parties engage in this sort of behaviour, but that it largely seems to work.
Considering we have a government elected by back-room dealings rather than by majority vote, I'm not at all sure about the "input" you talk about (not to mention the people who have voted LibDem for years being pretty much betrayed by a party greedy for some power throwing away their ideals in a coalition with a diametrically opposed party). When a few percent of people refuse to vote, I agree it just looks like they're lazy or apathetic, but GP is right, if the entire country refused to vote, we could force some real change in the way the country is managed - even governments are intelligent enough to spot a threat to their existence.
The main aims here are likely to be closing down any loopholes that might currently exist in common law to allow copying in circumstances they don't want, rather than to introduce legitimate reasons for copying that the people do - that or it's just to give schools and governmental organisations a way of avoiding ever more stringent prosecution of copying (i.e. they're just making sure the government doesn't stand to get sued, at which point they'll green light the labels to go on a sue frenzy). I just can't get worked up about this kind of news any more, it almost always ends up being implemented in such a way as to make things worse for regular people.
Agreed, this is a fantastic feature for reading on such a small screen, being able to hold the phone in one hand and scroll through a whole article with the thumb of the same hand without any messy left to right scrolling perfect, especially if you're trying to follow some technical details on a build and need a free hand, but even for holding a hot coffee while you scan the news on the train. The best part is I've yet to see it break a site, it's very cleverly implemented.
It can invade your privacy without doing anything to prevent a determined terrorist attack. Since the primary purpose of the machine is not to invade privacy, there is no conflict here.
Actually I doubt that do have better information than Google does. Not that many nations have the resources to spend on that type of tool that the US, NATO, Russia, China, Japan, Brazil, and so on do.
This is not about having some kind of advanced mapping and GPS capabilities, it's about having a note about where the borders of your own country are and someone who can read a bearing. I would have thought they'd have at least that. At the point when their military were taking down neighbouring nation flags and dumping waste over the border it might have been a good idea to ask HQ to check that their co-ordinates were the right side of the big red line drawn around the map on the General's wall. I smell a FUD excuse for an illegal military excursion (maybe they were hoping not to get caught, hence the weak excuse).
At least when that happens the speed gains and efficiencies become the domain of the browser developer and not some abitrary third party. If HTML5 animations are a drain, I'm sure someone will find ways to optimise them in their browser, and if they don't one of the others will and we can just switch. At the moment, no matter which browser we use we're dependent upon one company to make all the improvements (or not, as the case may be).
Those extra batteries can be expensive whereas the adapter comes for free. Not to mention you then have to remember to charge up two batteries when you get home, and the disruption when it's time to change batteries and you're in the middle of something important (I know you can just hibernate what you're doing, but it still breaks the flow). Give me battery life that's so long it's practically redundant on any given work day (assuming reasonable cost, of course).
Anyone who has ever worked as a contractor, when you get "hot desked" around a lot and never know if you're going to be stuck in a meeting room for the day with 9 other developers sharing 4 plugs, instantly understands the benefit of a ridiculously long charge time.
We won't know anything until they shift more units and games start appearing. To me it seems like a stupid idea (and I am a 360 owner, and had the original XBOX before that), but I understand it's trying to sell to a market that I'm simply not interested in. The proof will be whether they manage to capture much, if any, of that market. Again, my instinct is no (the reason Wii is so successful in the casual gamer market is not just because of what it does, but how much it costs - £180 for a console and £150 for a camera is a lot for a casual gamer to drop to see if they like a system), but I stand to be corrected if this does take off.
I think that's the point - not only that the two things have different levels of complexity, but that they're meant for entirely different tasks (hence the different levels of complexity).
I also wonder if they've even thought about the logistics. In all the adverts people are using it in massive open plan living spaces, that's just not a realistic representation of most people's homes (especially in countries where housing prices are high and living space has to be maximised, the UK, Japan, other parts of Europe, I can't speak for typical US homes as I only see fictional representations of them on TV and they're all either huge empty white spaces or cluttered messes). Personally the only way I could make this work is to throw away my coffee table - the Wii balance board just about works because the sensor can look over the table at the control and doesn't need to know what I'm doing with my legs, but the Kinect seems to need a massive open space just to get a decent field of view. I think people are going to either be put off by that (if they bother to think about it) or else they'll buy this, realise it's not practical and leave it in the box after the novelty wears off.
Beyond simple games for kids and stuff like video chat, I can't see a practical use for this, and if that's all you're using it for MS could have done it with a £15 webcam instead of a £150 sensor array. That doesn't mean it won't sell by the bucket-load, of course - I couldn't and still can't see a real use for the balance board but it didn't stop it selling millions and me spending the best part of a month hunting one down for my girlfriend the year after it was released.
That requires at least some technical know-how that most people lack. For most people, the Netflix service will be "good enough", warts and all, the majority will go with it or something similar.
It's hardly surprising that the way people use the internet would change over the course of 20 years, especially considering the state of technological advancements along that timeline.
Slashdot Mirror
It would have been nuked ostensibly to "STOP TEH PIRATES", but realistically because it's not in the console vendors' interests to open up avenues for free content when they have paid for content to push.
There have always been buggy games, but we're talking major bugs (and not bugs that are buried away and hard to find, serious bugs that are apparent while playing the basic game as intended) in what should be the year's A-list games. Fable III and Fallout New Vegas are huge games with budgets that reflect that and yet both were released with blatant issues and promises of patches almost immediately. That's not a few bugs slipping through the net, that to me is evidence of companies knowingly releasing broken games because they know they can patch them post release and still meet their pre-order deadlines/the Christmas rush. It's greed trumping quality assurance, plain and simple. Now 10 years ago you certainly saw buggy games, but they felt like bugs that were missed during the development/QA process, today many of the bugs are so obvious they simply couldn't have been missed and must point to the release-then-patch culture in action.
I think the whole idea of "year of the linux desktop" needs clarification. Do we mean the year Linux wins a sufficient share of the desktop from other operating systems that we consider it a key player, or do we mean the year desktop linux becomes viable for the everyday uses of its core market. If it's the former, I think you're right, it's likely never to happen unless MS and Apple somehow destroy each other fighting for market share (and that's probably never going to happen because they cater to different markets mostly). If it's the latter, then arguably it's already happened - Linux has been a pretty nice desktop OS for anyone who mostly just wants to work on their system but isn't afraid to occasionally get their hands dirty (i.e. it's core audience) for at least a few years, now.
And on the subject of Apple, I don't see them obsessing about being the desktop OS. They know they cater to a (relatively) niche market, they also know that they're offering a distinct product which does things its own way, and they and their users seem largely happy with this. That should be the approach Linux takes - ensure your core users are happy and build on solid growth. Nobody who is already using Linux wants to see "WOW LOOKEE!!" gimmick features added if that's at the cost of improvements to real functionality, meanwhile people who are attracted by those kind of features are likely to find the rest of Linux a frustrating experience, so all it achieves is disappointing two lots of users.
You don't think that maybe the fees and charges are what helps to pay for the exceptional service? I suspect the reason most people have a miserable experience with banks, or any business for that matter, is because they value cheap over all else, and you pretty much get what you pay for (and let's face it, there's little to distinguish a bank until something goes wrong, so for most people they'll avoid the bank with the higher fees even though they might be glad of the higher level of service one day).
It's not exactly THE SKY IS FALLING scenario, but it does mean that the idea of putting a "Do you want to continue" here to prevent accidental clickage isn't a bad idea.
I don't know if you remember being a kid, but most kids seeing a "This content is not for kids, click here if you're definitely not a kid" link will click it purely out of curiosity. It's the same reason we have to have child proof containers for household chemicals or medication. Do you honestly think this page is any kind of barrier to a kid seeing the content, and if not then what purpose does it serve?
It's pretty sad when we get to the point where we honestly believe the only way we could possibly "protect" our children from content we don't want them to see is with a white-list. Yet again the technological solution that means we don't have to spend time, oh, I don't know, sitting with them and supervising them in person and even explaining why some things are right or wrong. I suspect that all the negative content in the world wouldn't have as much impact as the fact that they're being dumped in front of a machine in lieu of real social interaction with other people.
I'm not sure how much difference that makes, considering it was a manifesto promise of the Liberal Democrats to scrap first-degree university tuition fees, and instead they're now part of a coalition that is tripling said fees. It doesn't even seem to matter that the grass roots members of the party are still opposed to tuition fees - the handful at the top seem more intent on having their little bit of power and going against their major promises. I can't see why their stance on copyright shouldn't similarly alter (particularly since, for most people in the party, this is a lesser issue anyway and one they might be more willing to give ground on to win concessions elsewhere).
The usual practice by both parties is to screw the electorate for 4 years, then spend 6 months making unsustainable tax cuts and vage, underliverable promises for the future to try and say, hey you know we're bad, but we're still not as bad as the other guys - better the devil you know and all that. The really depressing thing is not even that the parties engage in this sort of behaviour, but that it largely seems to work.
Considering we have a government elected by back-room dealings rather than by majority vote, I'm not at all sure about the "input" you talk about (not to mention the people who have voted LibDem for years being pretty much betrayed by a party greedy for some power throwing away their ideals in a coalition with a diametrically opposed party). When a few percent of people refuse to vote, I agree it just looks like they're lazy or apathetic, but GP is right, if the entire country refused to vote, we could force some real change in the way the country is managed - even governments are intelligent enough to spot a threat to their existence.
The main aims here are likely to be closing down any loopholes that might currently exist in common law to allow copying in circumstances they don't want, rather than to introduce legitimate reasons for copying that the people do - that or it's just to give schools and governmental organisations a way of avoiding ever more stringent prosecution of copying (i.e. they're just making sure the government doesn't stand to get sued, at which point they'll green light the labels to go on a sue frenzy). I just can't get worked up about this kind of news any more, it almost always ends up being implemented in such a way as to make things worse for regular people.
I just call all of them 'synecdoche'.
Agreed, this is a fantastic feature for reading on such a small screen, being able to hold the phone in one hand and scroll through a whole article with the thumb of the same hand without any messy left to right scrolling perfect, especially if you're trying to follow some technical details on a build and need a free hand, but even for holding a hot coffee while you scan the news on the train. The best part is I've yet to see it break a site, it's very cleverly implemented.
It can invade your privacy without doing anything to prevent a determined terrorist attack. Since the primary purpose of the machine is not to invade privacy, there is no conflict here.
He also went over his 140 character limit. It's really not his week.
The Nicaraguans just decided they'd take, rather than give, in this instance.
Actually I doubt that do have better information than Google does. Not that many nations have the resources to spend on that type of tool that the US, NATO, Russia, China, Japan, Brazil, and so on do.
This is not about having some kind of advanced mapping and GPS capabilities, it's about having a note about where the borders of your own country are and someone who can read a bearing. I would have thought they'd have at least that. At the point when their military were taking down neighbouring nation flags and dumping waste over the border it might have been a good idea to ask HQ to check that their co-ordinates were the right side of the big red line drawn around the map on the General's wall. I smell a FUD excuse for an illegal military excursion (maybe they were hoping not to get caught, hence the weak excuse).
At least when that happens the speed gains and efficiencies become the domain of the browser developer and not some abitrary third party. If HTML5 animations are a drain, I'm sure someone will find ways to optimise them in their browser, and if they don't one of the others will and we can just switch. At the moment, no matter which browser we use we're dependent upon one company to make all the improvements (or not, as the case may be).
Those extra batteries can be expensive whereas the adapter comes for free. Not to mention you then have to remember to charge up two batteries when you get home, and the disruption when it's time to change batteries and you're in the middle of something important (I know you can just hibernate what you're doing, but it still breaks the flow). Give me battery life that's so long it's practically redundant on any given work day (assuming reasonable cost, of course).
Anyone who has ever worked as a contractor, when you get "hot desked" around a lot and never know if you're going to be stuck in a meeting room for the day with 9 other developers sharing 4 plugs, instantly understands the benefit of a ridiculously long charge time.
I can't possibly imagine why getting the same amount of run time as the standard working day would ever be useful, can you? </sarcasm>
We won't know anything until they shift more units and games start appearing. To me it seems like a stupid idea (and I am a 360 owner, and had the original XBOX before that), but I understand it's trying to sell to a market that I'm simply not interested in. The proof will be whether they manage to capture much, if any, of that market. Again, my instinct is no (the reason Wii is so successful in the casual gamer market is not just because of what it does, but how much it costs - £180 for a console and £150 for a camera is a lot for a casual gamer to drop to see if they like a system), but I stand to be corrected if this does take off.
I think that's the point - not only that the two things have different levels of complexity, but that they're meant for entirely different tasks (hence the different levels of complexity).
I also wonder if they've even thought about the logistics. In all the adverts people are using it in massive open plan living spaces, that's just not a realistic representation of most people's homes (especially in countries where housing prices are high and living space has to be maximised, the UK, Japan, other parts of Europe, I can't speak for typical US homes as I only see fictional representations of them on TV and they're all either huge empty white spaces or cluttered messes). Personally the only way I could make this work is to throw away my coffee table - the Wii balance board just about works because the sensor can look over the table at the control and doesn't need to know what I'm doing with my legs, but the Kinect seems to need a massive open space just to get a decent field of view. I think people are going to either be put off by that (if they bother to think about it) or else they'll buy this, realise it's not practical and leave it in the box after the novelty wears off.
Beyond simple games for kids and stuff like video chat, I can't see a practical use for this, and if that's all you're using it for MS could have done it with a £15 webcam instead of a £150 sensor array. That doesn't mean it won't sell by the bucket-load, of course - I couldn't and still can't see a real use for the balance board but it didn't stop it selling millions and me spending the best part of a month hunting one down for my girlfriend the year after it was released.
That requires at least some technical know-how that most people lack. For most people, the Netflix service will be "good enough", warts and all, the majority will go with it or something similar.
It's hardly surprising that the way people use the internet would change over the course of 20 years, especially considering the state of technological advancements along that timeline.