zerohm

I think you could argue that people are going to be less "well rounded". In the past, you were pretty much stuck with the people in your school / town. It was probably pretty common to feel like the only person that cared about incredibly specific nerdy hobby X. But also, maybe you made friends with someone that cared about completely different things. Now a days, it's really easy to find other people that also care about incredibly specific nerdy hobby X and make friends with them. Whether that's good or bad (possibly missing out on other experiences) is yet to be seen.

Off the top of my head I can think of many other 'types' of NES games that break the side scroll paradigm. For example:

Top down action RPG (Zelda)

Decision based RPG (Dragon Warrior)

Picture games (Anticipation)

Game show games (Family Fued)

Sports / Racing games (Punch Out, Rad Racer)

ETC.

Yes, I'm sure companies want to maximize sales, that is their job. And yes, people were very vocal about shitty DRM (and rightly so).

The old way of doing business was proprietary everything. (See Sony in the 80s and 90s) I'm just glad manufactures finally saw that locking things down so much increased customer anger and frustration more than it increased sales. Being a child of the 80s, I'm still surprised at stuff like using a generic USB thumb drive in an Xbox 360 and things of that nature.

I don't know any players that are in favor of DRM per se. Players are willing to accept DRM, IF it is transparent, and even more willing if it enables some perks.

There was a time when DRM was only visible when it broke your legitimately purchased game (e.g. SimCity, Diablo 3)

Now at least gamers are getting some decent perks from DRM (e.g. digital loaning, play anywhere, cross platform licensing) so it's a bit easier to stomach.

It's not the age of the tech, it's the amount of space it takes up. Getting rid of the 3.5mm jack gives them 3 or so square cm on a preciously tiny motherboard. They can use this space for more battery or components on the mobo. One less port also means one less place water can get in.

These are things Apple pursues relentlessly.

I saw a TV segment / interview about Icahn years ago and that was impression I got. His M.O. is to buy a stock, create some attention, and sell, based mostly on the attention he brings, more so than the improvements he makes.

I completely disagree.

1. Visual cues are littered throughout the entire game. Sometimes it'a camera flash, sometimes it's the opponent blinking, to give you a warning.

2. The game play design is pretty consistent. Each fight gets progressively more difficult, but there is almost always a critical weakness of each opponent. Exploiting (or even finding) the critical weakness gets harder and harder as you progress.

The most obvious example of this design was King Hippo. Using traditional fighting style made it seem like he was impossible to beat. The only way to beat him was to stun him and punch him in the stomach. If you punched left, right, left, right, repeatedly, you could knock him out in one stun cycle. Learning this as a 10 year kid was great fun and made you feel like a genius/gaming god.

I'm pretty sure I heard the phrase, "there's no way you can beat Contra without the cheat code" in college as well.

I thought the same thing from the opposite direction. My understanding of jpg compression is that the algorithm says, "I see you have a lot of color X, X+1, and X+2 in this area. Let's just call all of that region color X+1." Now you only have the ability to hide a bit in that whole region, instead of for every pixel within.

I think he got down voted because SJW is a dismissive and meaningless trope. It's like Hipster, except not fun.

jp makes a valid point.

Just going to throw out some rough numbers (in the U.S.) assuming $50 for your data plan, for 3 years.

3 year iphoneSE experience ($400 + 36 months * $50) = $2200

3 year cheap Android experience ($250 + 36 months * $50) = $2050

Now compare the camera, frame rate, screen quality, security, stability, and support of an iphone 5 vs a $250 Android. When looking at the 3 year cost, you are paying a 10% premium for a far superior experience.

This. The computer that by far gets the most use in my house is a 2009 Mac Book Pro. I've upgraded the hard drive to an SSD so it's still quite snappy. The monitor is still bright and colorful. All the keyboard keys still have good action. The mouse pad physical click is the only thing that has fizzled out and I could fix that for $100.

So yeah, it doesn't look great when Apple says "replace your 5 year old computer" but as a whole, they do a great job of making products that last. Also, news flash, they are in the business of making money.

The irony here is that we are arguing about encryption options being included (not enabled) by default. Any criminal with half a brain will be able to find a wide selection of free 3rd party encryption tools. Undermining default encryption mostly just weakens the security of average, every day, law abiding citizens.

We are veering off topic here, but I agree with your perspective.

"The US spends more than $500 million per victim on anti-terrorism efforts. However, cancer research spending is only $10,000 per victim."

http://thinkbynumbers.org/government-spending/anti-terrorism...

Agreed, but also I think expectation, confidence, ambition are as important as opportunity. We have some relatives, from the outside they look like a totally normal middle class loving family. But we saw time and again the parents talk like, daughter is the smart one, son is the not-so-smart one. Telling him his teachers are idiots etc. They just set that kid up for failure and it was difficult to watch.

Having money does not make a good parent.

Also, where we are Montessori was no more expensive than a Catholic private school. But to my eyes, the Catholic school just looked like public school, but obviously more upscale (and also teachers have more freedom, small classrooms).

But I was attracted to to Montessori because of the methods. For example, if a child is focused on an activity, the teacher will not interrupt them just because 'geography hour is over' or some arbitrary boundary. Letting the kids develop focus and concentration at an early age was a big selling point for me.

also unique to Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon, all SEOs...

Not exactly like Apple.

Google and Facebook's core competency is using your personal data to sell ads.

Apple's core competency is selling you appliances. Yes, they wind up with some personal data because of the services they also provide, but it's far less valuable to them than Google or Facebook.

There is also a pretty fascinating story about the effort to save and restore the photo mapping of the moon from an abandoned McDonald's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Orbiter_Image_Recovery_P...

I would also consider the NSA meddling with Bitlocker and RSA behind the curtain to be conceptually equivalent.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/03/can_the_nsa_b...

http://gizmodo.com/nsa-paid-security-firm-10-million-bribe-t...

I shudder to think what this Police Spokesman would do to a kid that made a full adder in Minecraft!

Apple is dominating the high end mobile market, where profits and the most desired customers are. (People who pay for apps and spend money within apps)

http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/14/revenue-gap-between-ios-and...

The "free with contract" or sub $400 market is a cut throat race to the bottom between Samsung and Xiaomi. Apple chooses not to enter that race (despite several journalists claiming they NEED a cheap phone to survive).

Agreed. Apple and MS have completely different strategies. Apple chose to go the multiple OS route. MS is going with one OS to rule them all. (Also Apple ultimately wants to sell complete gadgets, whereas MS wants to sell software and services)

Yes, they are playing catch up in the cover keyboard and stylus categories. However, they are still dominating mobile, revamping their TV line, and growing in a shrinking PC market. Oh and also they just released a pretty successful watch.

Just saying, I think Apple is still a pretty innovative company.

This might just be semantics, but you get Lagrange points with the simplest Kepler example, 1 body around the sun, or in other words, a 2 body interaction.

I like the way you found a new way to say "this never would have happened under Steve Jobs!" Nice work.

The Federal Government can make tech firms hand over any data they request. However, they can't stop tech firms from designing their products so that the tech firm never sees your personal data.

The point is to recycle parts, not to make another great micro PC.

Try getting all those old parts to a facility, test them, assemble a consistent product, and get it out the door. Their efficiency in doing that is their value proposition.

Azure Mobile has been a sponsor. I guess at that point it becomes difficult to even extrapolate the impact of the sponsorship...