Well, Netflix still isn't available to most of the world (even with its recent international expansions), so I wouldn't say that everyone is happy just yet. And I'm sure it's not technical issues that make going truly global so difficult for them - it's the machinations of old-guard media companies.
And, at least for the foreseeable future, there are going to be people for whom it is very difficult to pay for the content rather than pirate it (e.g. kids, teenagers, folks in countries without an online payments infrastructure etc.).
Agreed. As a New Zealander I guess I would technically fall into 'Asia/Pacific', but I can't bring myself to choose that because NZ has next to nothing in common with any Asian nation. Consider providing the regional option of 'Australasia' or, better yet, 'Oceania' instead of just the single-country 'Australia'.
But how are those log messages, transcripts and large tables all that much better off under the current system? If a console is only 80 characters wide, they're still going to either disappear off the right edge or (as with most consoles I can think of) get soft-wrapped by the console anyway.
please do proper word-wrap and keep columns shorter than about 74 characters or so
How come word-wrapping is left as a task for humans here? Is there a technical/stylistic/cultural reason why lines can't be wrapped automatically to any desired width by the log presentation layer?
I think the big deal is supposed to be the incredible level of detail apparently achieved without being all that taxing on the hardware (though the jury is out on whether it's some sort of trickery - it sounds too good to be true).
Edit: They claim in the article to have devised an approach that no-one else has come up with, and they give this as the reason why no-one else is doing something similar.
I can see how animations might be difficult, depending on what sort of data structure one uses to store the voxel data. But why would you not be able to see the same object from different angles?
I'm surprised at the piracy entitlement too, and as a content creator, I don't condone it myself. But please understand that this kind of situation - new Arrested Development only available to US citizens - is incredibly frustrating for the rest of us precisely because we, as HNers, know there's zero technical reason why we couldn't be paying for and watching Netflix from anywhere in the internet connected world.
We're just across the Tasman from you, and have experienced the exact same thing with our games startup. When my (admittedly modest, even by Kiwi standards) co-founder was over at E3, he reportedly initally caused great confusion amongst Californians by describing our games as 'merely' "pretty good".
For the first three or so I could de-select by clicking elsewhere, but then it no longer worked. My Google Chrome version string is "14.0.835.202 (Official Build 103287) m". I'm currently on a Windows machine.
The original Words With Friends app was, of course, developed before Newtoy were acquired by Zynga. Fortunately, the social DNA (and polish) of the game has remained intact.
But isn't that a much more active way of enjoying music than just sitting listening to it? Rock Band, Guitar Hero and their ilk have imparted an active sense of rhythm, at the very least, to millions of players. And in the case of the Pro Expert mode in Rock Band 3, you actually do play using real guitar chords and drum patterns.
Glasgow may have a self-deprecating culture similar to that here in New Zealand. We've had to learn the hard way to be -- by our local standards -- incredibly pushy. Hopefully my business partner won't mind me quoting an article he wrote for Ars Technica [1]:
Then come the cultural differences (or perhaps they're just personality differences.) Whether it’s a New Zealand-wide trait or not, we tend to talk ourselves, and our products, down. To boast about how great you think you are seems arrogant and obnoxious, but when you’re trying to get people excited about your games, underselling it (and yourself) can backfire horribly.
I’ve seen the same confused facial expression from many overseas visitors when I modestly described my game as “alright." If the creator doesn’t think his game is totally super awesome, they seem to be thinking, then why on earth should I check it out? We've had to learn to talk our games up. Even if it makes you cringe inside, developers have to show others why they're spending their life making these things!
True, although my impression is that in most startups the folks putting in long hours actually own company stock and are hoping for a huge pay-off eventually.
Don't underestimate the power games have to give a platform staying power. The prevailing sentiment in past discussions here has often been that games are interchangeable distractions, but there's a big portion of the public that is incredible passionate about their favourites and thus the platform on which they run. (We've been taken aback at the fan loyalty shown to some of our games, and this is stuff that's barely even troubled the lower reaches of the charts.)
Xcode has taken a big step forward with version 4. It still has some teething troubles (it seems to get sluggish after about six hours of being open, at least on my machine), but features like code completion actually work now. Most of the time, anyway. :)