Looking at his username, I'm suspecting he wanted to post some shoe site spam along with his incomprehensible message but managed to break something along the way. I won't make a judgement about whether he's on IE or not...
Nothing says "irrelevent everywhere in the world except the USA" quite like a presidential naming scheme. Besides, you're going to struggle for some of the letters of the alphabet when you get into later releases...
Plus, I've read stories about screens with amazing resolutions you can roll up like paper at least every three or four months for the past decade. At this point, stop telling us it's possible and actually focus on getting one to market; it's starting to sound awfully like vapourware.
This is the key factor - Amazon et al only really care about the illusion of community reviews, they won't go too far out of their way to allow you to drill down to the real reviewers because, as you say, it might cost them a sale (it's certainly going to cost them money to implement). For now there is confidence in the system amongst regular users, people who are suspicious can generally get a feel for what the real reviews are by reading around, we might see more useful tools in the future as confidence in the system wanes and they need a new draw. I tend to find the approach that works for me is to use the scores to do some initial filtering, then to ignore the glowing reviews - read the negative reviews (with a pinch of salt) and see if the issues others are encountering are something that would bother me or not. People writing glowing reviews tend to skip over the deficiencies of a product they're enjoying, at the same time you can't just take negative reviews at face value as everyone's needs are different.
It depends what that product is, what you're planning to use it for and how easy it is to replace - I probably spent longer than I usually would reading reviews for camera equipment I planned to take abroad because it would have been a pain to try and replace it in a foreign country. Things that you need to take on a trip, or that you might need to rely on at short notice and/or during an emergency it certainly can pay to read the reviews.
If on 9-12 we had wiped out two middle eastern cities... and DEMANDED that everyone involved with 9-11 be turned over to us or else...
Terrorisim would not be an issue today.
It wouldn't be an issue because you would have made yourself the terrorists, and we all know terrorists believe just about anything is justified in pursuit of their cause; once you feel it's justified to wipe out innocents to get what you want, you've already become them. If we're going to claim any kind of moral high ground this is exactly the kind of thing we can't engage in. Besides, I'm a little dubious about putting the people who went after Iraq for an atrocity perpetrated by an Afghani in charge of such an operation. They'd probably nuke Wales or something.
The real crime is that such blatant and obvious patents make it through the process at all. I suspect most companies, if handed such a ridiculously broad patent that could effectively be put to use against 90% of what's out there right now, would struggle not to use it. That doesn't excuse Apple's behaviour, or the behaviour of any big company that exploits these things, but let's not forget the gloriously broken patent system that made it all possible
The irony is that it wasn't long ago that the Red Cross was complaining about the use of red crosses on health packs and such in games because it demeaned the real life work that they do and could be seen as devaluing their impartiality in some way. Now they're actively wading into the gaming debate and suggesting that there is a place for the Red Cross in a virtual world. This really does just sound like headline grabbing nonsense; every such story makes me lose a little more respect for them. Focus on doing good works, not wasting donations discussing rubbish like this.
The problem is that the media seem to be in the pocket of big corporations, so when Anonymous inevitably find one of these exploits and steal a bunch of data, the media never seem to hold the businesses who left the door open to account. The lack of security should be a massive topic of debate right now, but instead, outside of certain circles, it's a complete non-issue. During the coverage over here of the various exploits of Anonymous, I don't think I once heard any searching questions asked of the global corporations who allowed a bunch of teenagers to make their security look like the equivalent of a balsa wood door on Fort Knox (and that includes the BBC, who should be the least biased since they're not privately owned, but still either don't want to offend the PR departments of companies who feed them half of their content or just believe the company line and don't bother digging deeper for the real stories).
That, or people will find alternative forms of entertainment. It sounds like a greedy CEO's dream to charge per usage when some users are consuming lots, but the reason people watch so much is at least partly because it becomes more economical the more you watch (versus going to the movies, for instance). Mess around with that balance and you're as likely to find people counting the pennies and turning off the TV (or web based medium of choice) more often as you are to find people willing to put up and shut up.
Nokia enjoyed the same position in the market for a decade. Ultimately they learned two valuable lessons to their detriment: 1) don't ingnore the competition and 2) don't ignore the customers.
Some are. Some are more expensive. Some are more powerful, some have hardware keyboards, some have stylus input, some come bundled with suites of useful apps, some are unbranded and give the user more control. As a customer, choice is good.
The hardware vendors really don't give a shit about trying to maintain a consistent user experience from Android device to Android device, and any software targeted for 4 isn't going to work on any older devices. If I target the iPhone, it runs on all of them.
There are plenty of Apps in the marketplace that don't run on older model iPhones, either because there is some missing hardware component or the phone simply isn't quick enough. Whether it's the more profitable platform for you depends more on you than the platform - if you're writing very simplistic applications there's no reason they won't work on older Android devices, in which case you might find that the advertising driven payment model of Android is better for you. On the other hand, if you have lots of ideas for high quality apps that will attract paying users and you want to focus on writing those and not supporting multiple platforms, there's almost certainly more margin with the iPhone. In between that there are people who don't have lots of great ideas, they have one or two and they want to maximise the profit in them, they'll provide the app in both places. Ultimately what makes the platform attractive to you as a developer is meaningless, because no two developers are alike, and there are more than enough people developing for both platforms that the users aren't going to suffer a lack of applications.
You seem to be confused about Google's business model. It's not irrelevant to them if 200 companies can outsell the iPhone - that's a hell of a lot of phone users looking at Google ads. They are more than happy for those 200 companies to fight it out with each other, producing better phones or shaving costs - if one or another manufacturer emerges as the dominant force for a time it doesn't impact Google's bottom line at all. Apple are on the top of the pile at the moment but their place in the market is tied entirely to their hardware - if people decide they don't want the next iPhone then that's a real problem for them (good news for us, of course, because it means plenty of healthy competition and UI advances, etc). Essentially Google has spread their risk much more thinly. If you think Apple are the unassailable hardware giant of the phone industry and have no need to fear these emerging upstarts, just go ask Nokia how tenuous that position can be.
I hate to break the news to you, but this is the world you live in now. Contracts are binding unless found all or in part ( under specific circumstances ) to be invalid by prior legislation or precedent.
They might want you to believe that, but any contract still has to be able to withstand a test of reasonableness in court. Some might say a weasel worded contract by a multi-national company enabling them to spy on what you as a customer believed were encrypted transmissions potentially beyond the life of the contract is a tad one sided and might just possibly be deemed not worth the paper it's written on. Companies rely on most people not knowing their rights to be able to continually get away with this garbage.
Interviewing new recruits, the biggest problem I've seen IS that specific languages are taught over and above a sound understanding of the mechanics. If you teach programming well then the differences between languages are just semantics - a good programmer can move from one language to another with little more than Google to support them through the differences. The key thing is they'll be writing good quality, maintainable, re-usable code. A lot of university courses seem happy to pass people who can kludge together an application in the language of choice (or at least that's the impression I get, having to then do a lot of work in the real world to get people up to speed working on best practice collaborative projects). You could teach someone to be a great programmer using technology from a decade ago, if you're chasing the latest fad language then the chances are you're focusing more on the specific nuances of the language than the underlying understanding, which might well result in someone who is great at writing apps in that specific language but has no transferable skills.
No, the teachers we have now are in two groups. Either they're people who have a passion for the subject and want to pass that on to enquiring young minds or they're the best of who will work for such a small salary. One of these result in excellent teachers, the other results in wage slaves who only care about doing their hours and collecting their pay. Almost everyone has memories of great teachers and then average/terrible teachers - the great ones are probably the ones who want to be there, the average/terrible ones are probably the ones who are there because it's the best they can do. If you pay more, you reward the great teachers and you at least raise the standards of the not so great ones by being able to hire the better candidates who otherwise would have gone into a different career (or at least you begin to, once the incumbent terrible ones begin to retire), but it's a very long term strategy that won't pay off for several generations, which is why we'll never see it implemented by any government.
Evidenced by the fact that almost every game that's released these days is patched shortly afterwards. Several games I've bought on release day (most recently Skyrim) already had a patch waiting when I got them home. We've pretty much come to accept that games are going to be buggy when we buy them and, if we're lucky, there will be patches later to fix some of the worst bugs.
One of the reasons games pay less is that many people go into it for the love of it (how long that love lasts once the months of crunch time, non-existent social life, poor money etc kick in is another matter). While you're right that students shouldn't be pushed into the wrong careers for the wrong reasons, schools should still absolutely be encouraging students in the areas of their chosen subject that they feel passionately about. Even if it comes with some real life advice about the prospects in the gaming sector, it's still a way of engaging them and teaching them useful skills (that don't need to be used solely for gaming) in the process. There's nothing worse than having a love for a subject - any subject - only to have that passion drained by a curriculum that's to heavily focused on the drudgery.
The real difference is money. In the early to mid 90's gaming was seen as something a few geeks did to let off steam, and generally gaming in the classroom was viewed as goofing around. Today, everyone and their grandma games, it's a multi billion dollar industry that easily rivals Hollywood or the music industry. Suddenly governments are realising this is a service industry they want in their countries and so are encouraging grass roots take-up.
Life jackets by the door. You float up to the top and then, when you get there, the glass roof has a little hammer attached with a sign saying "In case of emergency, break glass":)
Not to mention mine shafts frequently collapse. Small movements in the earth which Skyscrapers deal with by building up and allowing for some sway are a much bigger deal underground. Build in too much room for movement and you start to lose the benefits of being underground. I'm also not sure about the green credentials - I'm guessing you'd need to pump air down there, you'd probably need a lot more lighting (especially for the outer rooms), and I'm guessing A/C (it's going to get warm down there). With glass over the top, there's a risk of frying people, if it's tinted then you lose a lot of the light benefits. And I hope they've accounted for anyone not being able to accidentally drop a truck down the shaft (how strong is the glass roof?) - I see the concept is pretty open sided, it would be easy to back over it.
Slashdot Mirror
Looking at his username, I'm suspecting he wanted to post some shoe site spam along with his incomprehensible message but managed to break something along the way. I won't make a judgement about whether he's on IE or not...
Nothing says "irrelevent everywhere in the world except the USA" quite like a presidential naming scheme. Besides, you're going to struggle for some of the letters of the alphabet when you get into later releases...
Plus, I've read stories about screens with amazing resolutions you can roll up like paper at least every three or four months for the past decade. At this point, stop telling us it's possible and actually focus on getting one to market; it's starting to sound awfully like vapourware.
This is the key factor - Amazon et al only really care about the illusion of community reviews, they won't go too far out of their way to allow you to drill down to the real reviewers because, as you say, it might cost them a sale (it's certainly going to cost them money to implement). For now there is confidence in the system amongst regular users, people who are suspicious can generally get a feel for what the real reviews are by reading around, we might see more useful tools in the future as confidence in the system wanes and they need a new draw. I tend to find the approach that works for me is to use the scores to do some initial filtering, then to ignore the glowing reviews - read the negative reviews (with a pinch of salt) and see if the issues others are encountering are something that would bother me or not. People writing glowing reviews tend to skip over the deficiencies of a product they're enjoying, at the same time you can't just take negative reviews at face value as everyone's needs are different.
It depends what that product is, what you're planning to use it for and how easy it is to replace - I probably spent longer than I usually would reading reviews for camera equipment I planned to take abroad because it would have been a pain to try and replace it in a foreign country. Things that you need to take on a trip, or that you might need to rely on at short notice and/or during an emergency it certainly can pay to read the reviews.
If on 9-12 we had wiped out two middle eastern cities... and DEMANDED that everyone involved with 9-11 be turned over to us or else...
Terrorisim would not be an issue today.
It wouldn't be an issue because you would have made yourself the terrorists, and we all know terrorists believe just about anything is justified in pursuit of their cause; once you feel it's justified to wipe out innocents to get what you want, you've already become them. If we're going to claim any kind of moral high ground this is exactly the kind of thing we can't engage in. Besides, I'm a little dubious about putting the people who went after Iraq for an atrocity perpetrated by an Afghani in charge of such an operation. They'd probably nuke Wales or something.
The real crime is that such blatant and obvious patents make it through the process at all. I suspect most companies, if handed such a ridiculously broad patent that could effectively be put to use against 90% of what's out there right now, would struggle not to use it. That doesn't excuse Apple's behaviour, or the behaviour of any big company that exploits these things, but let's not forget the gloriously broken patent system that made it all possible
The irony is that it wasn't long ago that the Red Cross was complaining about the use of red crosses on health packs and such in games because it demeaned the real life work that they do and could be seen as devaluing their impartiality in some way. Now they're actively wading into the gaming debate and suggesting that there is a place for the Red Cross in a virtual world. This really does just sound like headline grabbing nonsense; every such story makes me lose a little more respect for them. Focus on doing good works, not wasting donations discussing rubbish like this.
The problem is that the media seem to be in the pocket of big corporations, so when Anonymous inevitably find one of these exploits and steal a bunch of data, the media never seem to hold the businesses who left the door open to account. The lack of security should be a massive topic of debate right now, but instead, outside of certain circles, it's a complete non-issue. During the coverage over here of the various exploits of Anonymous, I don't think I once heard any searching questions asked of the global corporations who allowed a bunch of teenagers to make their security look like the equivalent of a balsa wood door on Fort Knox (and that includes the BBC, who should be the least biased since they're not privately owned, but still either don't want to offend the PR departments of companies who feed them half of their content or just believe the company line and don't bother digging deeper for the real stories).
When you say it like that... maybe we need another episode of Mythbusters to test the journey of the canonball in this episode.
It's called: "baby asleep in the crib, Parents having nookie very quietly in the bed."
"Wow, I don't know what you just did differently but the earth really moved that time..."
Fortunately for the homeowner it also probably means they're insured to the gills.
That, or people will find alternative forms of entertainment. It sounds like a greedy CEO's dream to charge per usage when some users are consuming lots, but the reason people watch so much is at least partly because it becomes more economical the more you watch (versus going to the movies, for instance). Mess around with that balance and you're as likely to find people counting the pennies and turning off the TV (or web based medium of choice) more often as you are to find people willing to put up and shut up.
Nokia enjoyed the same position in the market for a decade. Ultimately they learned two valuable lessons to their detriment: 1) don't ingnore the competition and 2) don't ignore the customers.
Could it be that Android phones are cheap?
Some are. Some are more expensive. Some are more powerful, some have hardware keyboards, some have stylus input, some come bundled with suites of useful apps, some are unbranded and give the user more control. As a customer, choice is good.
The hardware vendors really don't give a shit about trying to maintain a consistent user experience from Android device to Android device, and any software targeted for 4 isn't going to work on any older devices. If I target the iPhone, it runs on all of them.
There are plenty of Apps in the marketplace that don't run on older model iPhones, either because there is some missing hardware component or the phone simply isn't quick enough. Whether it's the more profitable platform for you depends more on you than the platform - if you're writing very simplistic applications there's no reason they won't work on older Android devices, in which case you might find that the advertising driven payment model of Android is better for you. On the other hand, if you have lots of ideas for high quality apps that will attract paying users and you want to focus on writing those and not supporting multiple platforms, there's almost certainly more margin with the iPhone. In between that there are people who don't have lots of great ideas, they have one or two and they want to maximise the profit in them, they'll provide the app in both places. Ultimately what makes the platform attractive to you as a developer is meaningless, because no two developers are alike, and there are more than enough people developing for both platforms that the users aren't going to suffer a lack of applications.
You seem to be confused about Google's business model. It's not irrelevant to them if 200 companies can outsell the iPhone - that's a hell of a lot of phone users looking at Google ads. They are more than happy for those 200 companies to fight it out with each other, producing better phones or shaving costs - if one or another manufacturer emerges as the dominant force for a time it doesn't impact Google's bottom line at all. Apple are on the top of the pile at the moment but their place in the market is tied entirely to their hardware - if people decide they don't want the next iPhone then that's a real problem for them (good news for us, of course, because it means plenty of healthy competition and UI advances, etc). Essentially Google has spread their risk much more thinly. If you think Apple are the unassailable hardware giant of the phone industry and have no need to fear these emerging upstarts, just go ask Nokia how tenuous that position can be.
I hate to break the news to you, but this is the world you live in now. Contracts are binding unless found all or in part ( under specific circumstances ) to be invalid by prior legislation or precedent.
They might want you to believe that, but any contract still has to be able to withstand a test of reasonableness in court. Some might say a weasel worded contract by a multi-national company enabling them to spy on what you as a customer believed were encrypted transmissions potentially beyond the life of the contract is a tad one sided and might just possibly be deemed not worth the paper it's written on. Companies rely on most people not knowing their rights to be able to continually get away with this garbage.
Interviewing new recruits, the biggest problem I've seen IS that specific languages are taught over and above a sound understanding of the mechanics. If you teach programming well then the differences between languages are just semantics - a good programmer can move from one language to another with little more than Google to support them through the differences. The key thing is they'll be writing good quality, maintainable, re-usable code. A lot of university courses seem happy to pass people who can kludge together an application in the language of choice (or at least that's the impression I get, having to then do a lot of work in the real world to get people up to speed working on best practice collaborative projects). You could teach someone to be a great programmer using technology from a decade ago, if you're chasing the latest fad language then the chances are you're focusing more on the specific nuances of the language than the underlying understanding, which might well result in someone who is great at writing apps in that specific language but has no transferable skills.
No, the teachers we have now are in two groups. Either they're people who have a passion for the subject and want to pass that on to enquiring young minds or they're the best of who will work for such a small salary. One of these result in excellent teachers, the other results in wage slaves who only care about doing their hours and collecting their pay. Almost everyone has memories of great teachers and then average/terrible teachers - the great ones are probably the ones who want to be there, the average/terrible ones are probably the ones who are there because it's the best they can do. If you pay more, you reward the great teachers and you at least raise the standards of the not so great ones by being able to hire the better candidates who otherwise would have gone into a different career (or at least you begin to, once the incumbent terrible ones begin to retire), but it's a very long term strategy that won't pay off for several generations, which is why we'll never see it implemented by any government.
Evidenced by the fact that almost every game that's released these days is patched shortly afterwards. Several games I've bought on release day (most recently Skyrim) already had a patch waiting when I got them home. We've pretty much come to accept that games are going to be buggy when we buy them and, if we're lucky, there will be patches later to fix some of the worst bugs.
One of the reasons games pay less is that many people go into it for the love of it (how long that love lasts once the months of crunch time, non-existent social life, poor money etc kick in is another matter). While you're right that students shouldn't be pushed into the wrong careers for the wrong reasons, schools should still absolutely be encouraging students in the areas of their chosen subject that they feel passionately about. Even if it comes with some real life advice about the prospects in the gaming sector, it's still a way of engaging them and teaching them useful skills (that don't need to be used solely for gaming) in the process. There's nothing worse than having a love for a subject - any subject - only to have that passion drained by a curriculum that's to heavily focused on the drudgery.
The real difference is money. In the early to mid 90's gaming was seen as something a few geeks did to let off steam, and generally gaming in the classroom was viewed as goofing around. Today, everyone and their grandma games, it's a multi billion dollar industry that easily rivals Hollywood or the music industry. Suddenly governments are realising this is a service industry they want in their countries and so are encouraging grass roots take-up.
Life jackets by the door. You float up to the top and then, when you get there, the glass roof has a little hammer attached with a sign saying "In case of emergency, break glass" :)
Not to mention mine shafts frequently collapse. Small movements in the earth which Skyscrapers deal with by building up and allowing for some sway are a much bigger deal underground. Build in too much room for movement and you start to lose the benefits of being underground. I'm also not sure about the green credentials - I'm guessing you'd need to pump air down there, you'd probably need a lot more lighting (especially for the outer rooms), and I'm guessing A/C (it's going to get warm down there). With glass over the top, there's a risk of frying people, if it's tinted then you lose a lot of the light benefits. And I hope they've accounted for anyone not being able to accidentally drop a truck down the shaft (how strong is the glass roof?) - I see the concept is pretty open sided, it would be easy to back over it.