For most modern software, you are not buying a product, you are buying a window of service. You are entering into an agreement that the software will be supported for a reasonable amount of time. Bugs will be fixed, you might get some additional 'free' content. Games got to the point of being so large and expensive, they crossed this threshold long ago. A single player offline game like The Witcher 3 has had what, about 30 updates? And those games are constantly being dwarfed by seasonal, micro-transation games. The single release game was an endangered species a long time ago.
I had a co-worker at the Navy Yard that said he was an Anti-Aircraft tech during the Korean War. When he said they used 'mechanical computers' I had to stair up into space for a minute to figure out what that meant.
You are sort of getting into "we would be better off without the internet" territory, which is a very difficult argument to make for either side. Tesla and Space X engineers would not have been able to achieve what they have without Google. The Arab Spring might not have happened without Twitter. But yeah we can just throw FB in the trash...
I know my post was very cynical. I agree open and free markets are very valuable and need to be protected. But in this case, anti-NN policies are so hugely unpopular, I can't see how anyone would think that they will be good for business as a whole.
The US at least, has been in an economic boom since the Subprime Mortgage Crisis in 2010, which was partly caused by deregulation of banks and lenders. Can you provide some examples of why this world wide boom is credited to deregulation?
Republicans aren't pushing deregulation of the internet to make swing states happy. They are pushing for deregulation because that's what several billionaire campaign contributors want them to do.
I once had a business trip (TDY) to Aviano Air Base, Italy. The office building we were in had an Espresso vending machine that for 0.5 Euro made a legit Espresso or Americana. We need these in the US and I can't help but think they would be a big hit in certain places. (Looking at you, Costco)
Also, all the operational overhead in that US dentist office will cost more than the Indian side. The secretary, the assistant, the building lease, etc. (I'm not saying that we can't fix the problem of overpriced healthcare, I'm just saying it's a contributing factor)
Strangely though, the US enjoys lower prices for consumer goods like fashion brands, and consumer electronics. Nike shoes and a Sony TV will be more expensive in India than the US.
Yeah, but like in the case of online multiplayer, I believe they had every intention of making that a release day feature, but it just wasn't ready. I just think calling the guy a liar is a bit harsh. All marketing is lying in some form or fashion. :P
In the lead up, when they were touting 6.84 * 10^23 planets or whatever, my thought was, how is that fun? If it will take all of humanity 10,000 years to see your entire game, what good does that do players now?
I don't envy software developers under immense pressure to deliver a AAA title on time. Having to predict whether or not you can get that feature working flawlessly in 30 days isn't easy in a vacuum. Much less with your Marketing dept being overly optimistic with your prediction.
I remember a demonstration from my childhood where water is released into 2 similar models. One model is dry, one model is wet. The water quickly overtakes the dry model and splashes on the other side (as in a flash flood). On the wet model, water takes longer to make it to the other side. Sort of how a wet sponge is far more absorbent than a dry sponge.
I know I didn't really answer your question, but these models were made to represent fields and swamps. So yes, I believe there are lots of studies on large scale effects.
Actually the Intercept should have known. Margaret Thatcher used water marking to find which Ministry was leaking stories in the 80s. It's standard practice to retype documents before sharing, set up well thought out, secure amnesty boxes, etc.
Seems like -400 ft was the number they picked to account for all the airports that are slightly below Sea Level (Amsterdam, etc), not taking into account this one geographical anomaly of a landing strip 1200 ft below sea level.
If I remember correctly, the hospital did not bill for him, he billed us separately, but the Hospital condoned this. I'm sure we agreed to it somewhere in the fine print. I'm not trying to vilify student doctors here, I understand 99% of the time they are not billing. But after this experience, we ask.
It wasn't just his doctor it is the whole system which is somewhat unavoidable.
We are lucky to have good health insurance, and a simple ER visit to get stitches or an X-Ray will invoke 5 pieces of mail from 3 different entities. You have to watch out for student Doctors who will send you a bill for being in the room. It's too much to think about when you should be focused on taking care of your health issue.
There's only so much of the hardware rat race worth keeping up with anymore
My personal data point of Moore's Law slowing down: my 8 year old Core 2 Quad is still half as fast as a modern i5. For it to still be usable would have been impossible in previous decades. With an SSD and modern video card I still game on it.
This app is just a fine publicity gimmick on the part of the developers. This happens a lot! Will get loads of news stories, Facebook shares and likes but make not a joy of difference to anything.
This is my thought as well. Don't think of Nintendo as a technology company, think of them as an Intellectual Property company. With Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, Pokemon, Metroid, etc, as their commodities. These will be money makers for decades, regardless of where the platforms go.
Let's say you are a desktop admin updating 500 Windows 10 machines. Maybe some of these machines are terminals for customers. This bug is a significant attack vector to gain admin on those machines being updated.
Yeah, but we were a bit spoiled for the past 6 years where Apple was actually very competitive on price in the $1k - $1500 range. Apple was no longer behind in CPU / RAM generosity, and when other vendors tried to match them on build quality, they would fall short somewhere usually with a shitty track pad or battery life.
Not sure if this is a reliable Apple perk, but I recently took a failing power supply into the store, expecting to pay $50-75 for a new one (because I did not trust the shady looking wares Amazon had to offer), and they replaced my 6 year old Magsafe T style with a sleek L style for free.
I'm pretty sure they are incentivized to do this because of all the shady knockoffs.