2,454 karma · joined March 31, 2009
Oh, and if Mathematica is the basis of the "Wolfram language", and this is the universal computing language of our new "interconnected brain", I'm leaving for another universe. Unless the boy who cried wolf really has cornered one this time.
The 10% use cases I was referring to are the "I want to find generic type of business in this area" case, and the "I need a street view of this" case, both of which are (for me) comparatively rare versus searching for a post-code or known address.
It still has a pretty useless database of locations. The listings for many shops/venues in my area are literally years (sometimes decades) out of date, even after I reported them back when iOS 6 was a beta. This is slowly improving, seemingly starting with locations that are commonly visited, but it's still not there. However, given that most of my use cases are "Enter post (ZIP) code, go there", this doesn't really matter. 90% of the time, Apple maps works fine, and there's no reason to use something else, especially when it's ad-laden.
Given that maps are not a core concern for Apple, I've always been surprised they've not just thrown money at improving open street maps. A few hundred million to setup an "OSM foundation" (or fund an existing one) could seriously help them (decent free mapping database to use), and hurt Google (major commercial advantage limited/eliminated). They could probably get MS onboard as well.
Until we have Star Trek style technology for these free ham sandwiches, I don't see how Star Trek style economics will actually work.
Of course, Windows users are pretty screwed.
My "highbrow" comment then, is that this is a big mistake. They had the advantage of being the last next-gen console reveal - they can answer every point of Sony and Nintendo, plus add their own spin. And they basically gave us less information than was already public in the gaming press, probably pissed off a large proportion of the hardcore gaming public, are unlikely to have attracted the non-gaming groups, and picked a rather daft name. It was an open goal, and this went so far wide, I think they'd have been better not saying anything until they had something to say.
Oh, and it looks like a shiny VCR. Bleh.
Edit: Ah, at 31 minutes, we have a games developer. Pity it's EA, but c'est la vie.
Now, in Asheron's Call, the world is huge. There are hundreds, if not thousands of vendors. And three of these vendors were set to sell their goods in stacks of up to 1000. Unfortunately, Cost of Pyreal Scrab * 1000 > 2^31, which wrapped. I can't remember if you either just got the goods for free (which you then sold back for huge profit), or if you actually got paid to take these things. Either way, overnight, the economy was destroyed. The entire game state had to be reset from backups; a dreaded rollback. Worse, the developer took a few days to do this.
Trust me, out of all the customers whose data you don't want to muss with, it's hardcore MMORPG players. Even though I was just a player, I can still remember the outrage all these years later. It taught me to always use appropriate types for objects with "value", and I've never accidentally used signed or floating point storage for currency again.
I mean, what alternative do people suggest for these companies? That they ignore it, thus tacitly approve it, until everyone uses and doesn't bother with legal avenues? I hear a lot about "Well, find a new business model!", without explaining why a company should be forced to change based on clearly illegal activity. Even accepting the pragmatic argument that "It's going to happen anyway", I'm curious as to what business model people are suggesting?
Edit: Ah, just misread the console. It's still "copying" my empty drives, at the advertised rate. So dividing your disks by the 40ish MBps is a good estimate of migration time.
"Marley was dead: to begin with"
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way"