Problem:
The application is too slow!
Hacker:
This random piece of code looks poor.
I'll put in some uber-tricky stuff that is highly optimized to make the compiler do what I want and destroy all chances of reading the code.
Release
Engineer:
In what way is the application slow?
Show me how to reproduce.
Profile
Examine
Optimize hotspots.
Test
Release
The possibilities are endless.
Why not just tax fuel like everyone else? This messing about with GPS seems ridiculous to achieve such a simple aim.
Taxing fuel is pretty obvious. The GPS solution seems a little nefarious and a lot flawed, because they don't achieve anything that a petrol tax doesn't achieve and there is a wealth of other information they could take from it about my habits.
Anything they fit to your car can be modified to report incorrect data, or disabled. When the devices are common because they're mandated it won't take long for someone to figure out how. The same thing happened here with the 100kph limiters for heavy trucks and buses. They are a good idea in theory, but once they were common owners/operators began tampering with them in order to exceed the limit. They do this despite it being illegal.
But it's in Google, it must exist: http://www.google.com/search?q=outside
And if the app I'm working on needs to be full-screen in order to work reasonably, there's something wrong with the app and its UI needs to be redesigned.
So you never wrote a media player with a full-screen option or a game then?
But your cellphone is not broadcast. The signal travels over RF as a broadcast, but each individual packet is intended only for one recipient. Encryption and signalling ensures that the data/call is decipherable only by you. There are pretty specific laws about when it's legal to receive telephone data that is not intended for you. A cellphone is, in effect, narrowcast.
The same could be said for anything travelling over secured wireless network. Unsecured wireless is another kettle of fish and I will not speculate on what sending broadcast packets to an unsecured WiFi router would be considered as.
*grr* I sooo moderated in this, but I couldn't let your comment go to waste.
Sony will get nothing of what I so dearly wish they had coming to them without a huge smack-down from the courts.
A lot of these so-called "techies" have kids, partners or both, who will beg and nag and want PS4 for $LATEST_SHINY_REHASH_OF_GAME.
Have you ever tried to tell your wife she can't have something? Go out and get a wife (or husband, but it's not quite the same) if you don't have one and then try tell them that they can't have something they want. Now imagine that they want it because the kids are dead-set on it. "No! Dear, I run the tech in this house and you are not buying Sony! The foot is down!". Tell me how that works out for you!
And a cat in both states is better: Zombie cat!
It wasn't my cat, but Schrödinger might be a bit miffed since he preferred it both alive and dead at the same time.
The fundamental difference is that I didn't outlay $600 for the console then another $100 for a game when I was playing in the arcade. I just shoveled "quarters" into the machine.
The WoW model works well - you buy the game disc (albeit at a fairly discounted rate) or download for free and then pay a monthly subscription to play. Seems a lot of people shovel money at that model. I don't get why the
"People I am not: Brian D. Foy, Assistant Professor, Department of Microbiology, College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, Colorado State University"
Hmmmmm
If I choose to ride a car, motorcycle, subway, do I pay different costs of I get hurt because of who is at fault?
Yes. Your health insurance (assuming you have it) will pick up the bill and it will sue (on your behalf) the insurance of the party at fault. If you don't have insurance you're welcome to bring action against the party that was responsible for your injury.
However, these weren't my biggest addictions in the slightest, but I wasn't quite ready to give up on facebook and similar social networking things. It didn't seem like much at the time. Afterall, I was still being "social" and wasn't becoming reclusive. It was essentially a substitute for hanging out with real people in real life. And besides - a lot of us got together on Fridays for movie night. Thing was - even during these movie nights I'd still be checking facebook despite everyone close to me was right in front of me.
What is amusing is that you've hit the nail right on the head. I am sitting here writing this post and looking at my Facebook chat list. Most of the people who I used to be out with on a Wed night are online on Facebook. More to the point, things like MSN and ICQ that used to be busy aren't. All those people moved over to Facebook as soon as it had chat because it has "games". I bet if I actually bring up the page I'll see dozens of game updates and other nonsense from them.
Another point is that the Internet brings easy (free!) access to content. You can download a movie in under an hour and queue up 2 or 3 more while you're watching the first. I have friends who literally have piles of terabyte hard disks with all the crap they've downloaded. They invest countless hours into devising cataloging schemes so they can know they have something and not download it again (not so they can find it and access it).
These were the very same friends who used to go out instead of sitting home watching downloaded crap.
And yes, I'm aware the irony of pointing out online that everyone is online and not going out anymore.
The sum of the Universe is zero.
