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Comment: It was a pretty bad choice (Score 1) 73

by Sycraft-fu (#46495257) Attached to: Steam Controller Drops Touchscreen

Not the lower res/graphical fanciness, but the controller. It isn't that much fun to use as a controller because, well, it is fucking huge. It is a tablet. Thing is, if people wanted to play games on a tablet they'd probably do so and on one that could travel around with them.

Also it is pretty expensive. The screen, wireless interface, processor, all that jazz costs quite a bit and pushed up the cost of the Wii U. Part of what made the Wii successful was that it was really cheap compared to the "big 2" consoles. So people got it for kids or got it as an "and a" console along with their favoured of the bigger ones. This time though, the price advantage is not as much. It is still cheaper but not by as much.

So since the gimmick isn't something people are that interested in, and it drives up the price, it really hasn't been a good move. Despite being out a good bit longer than the Xboner and the PS4 it hasn't sold more.

Actually similar issue on the Xboner's side with the Kinect. That is the primary reason is costs more than the PS4, and that cost has been putting a damper on its sales. People just have no fucks to give about the controller gimmick, they wanna play games.

Comment: Also for phones it is 100% fine (Score 1) 349

by Sycraft-fu (#46488741) Attached to: EU Votes For Universal Phone Charger

You can get 10 watts over it, no issue. All the new high end Samsung phones come with a 5v 2a charger that is nothing special. 10 watts is more than plenty for phone devices. That is enough to run the device at full bore and to still have power left over to charge. You wouldn't want a cellphone that could draw more than that, it would have next to no battery life.

I'd be fine with a connector that is better, if someone wants to work up and introduce a standard, meaning an open standard the whole industry can use (like USB). But I'm not buying the bullshit of needing proprietary connectors because of power requirements. No, not for handheld devices. USB is fine. Use it, or introduce a better standard.

Comment: Go find another thread to whine in (Score 4, Insightful) 303

by Sycraft-fu (#46480475) Attached to: Russia Blocks Internet Sites of Putin Critics

There a topic that isn't about America? Well can't have that! Spin it to be about America! Redirect all topics to be on America, particularly whining about America!

Seriously, this American-centric bitching is really annoying. People need to knock it off. This is about Russia. That things are happening in America doesn't mean things aren't happening elsewhere. It also doesn't mean those things aren't of interest to the wider world. What is happening in Russia right now is of quite a bit of interest not just to Russians, but to Ukrainians, and to the whole of Europe. Also some people from the US might like to know too because hey, it is nice to be informed about the wider world.

So quit. Quit trying to make every thread about the US. There are lots and lots of those on Slashdot. When something comes up on a foreign country, let it be on that topic. The topic at hand is Russian media/internet censorship not NSA spying. That one is a little further down the front page.

Comment: Re:Serious question (Score 1) 496

by Sycraft-fu (#46450329) Attached to: Ukraine May Have To Rearm With Nuclear Weapons Says Ukrainian MP

Ideally the people of Ukraine. It really should be for foreign powers to say. I mean you realize many government have provisions to handle ousting members and reforming, right? Particularly many parliamentary systems, but others as well. Even the US has something via the 25th amendment. The vice president and either a majority of the cabinet or congress can declare the president unable to discharge his duties and oust him (go read it if you want more specifics). It isn't a situation of "Well they were elected, now they are there and there's nothing you can do until the next election!" There are processes for removal/recall in pretty much all political systems.

I don't know anything about Ukrainian law, but really, it is for them to decide internally. Their courts need to rule on their law. It is really up to the US or Russia to come and say "No we don't think you should have done it that way, you do it our way instead."

Comment: Presuming you are just uneducated (Score 1) 496

by Sycraft-fu (#46450267) Attached to: Ukraine May Have To Rearm With Nuclear Weapons Says Ukrainian MP

And not shilling, go educate yourself. Vice News has some good coverage, split in 5 pieces, on it:


The most important things to note:

1) The Russian forces are not wearing insignias, or identifying themselves as Russian military. They either refuse to identify themselves at all, or identify themselves as being from the non-existent "Ukrainian Self Defense Force."

2) They Russian units are surrounding and/or capturing Ukrainian military installations. They are not moving to their bases, they are taking over Ukrainian bases. The Ukrainian commanders have been keeping things very cool, to avoid Russia being able to say they were provoked, so there hasn't been any violence, but it is a military attack on military targets, make no mistake.

3) Speaking of provocation, the Russian military has been trying it. They've been moving in and taking over Ukrainian bases, then withdrawing, only to do it again later. They are trying to goad the Ukrainian military in to firing on them.

4) Russia has been importing other non-governmental groups like Serbian Paramilitary forces to do, well who knows, but it isn't likely anything good.

So no, it is nothing like the US in Japan. Now if suddenly troops showed up in Maizuru and blocked off the military port there, troops wearing American uniforms, speaking English, armed with American weapons but wearing no insignias, no identifiers, and refusing to answer questions. If they blockaded the base, and then later went in and took it over, well ya, I'd be saying that the US was invading Japan and that it was clearly underhanded and illegit.

Having bases in a country doesn't mean free run to do as you please.

Comment: That's fine... (Score 1) 496

by Sycraft-fu (#46450037) Attached to: Ukraine May Have To Rearm With Nuclear Weapons Says Ukrainian MP

But then you can't really complain about their goal to have more powerful weapons.

The thing is we come back to the question of what really is a country, what makes a nation a nation? Well there can be two situations:

The first and oldest is just the ability to act as one, the strength such that nobody can realistically question your status. This is what you see with something like the US. Even if another nation doesn't like the US, or doesn't think it should be valid, they can't question that it is because they can't do anything about it. They can't attack or threaten the US's status in any way, the US is in control of its territory because nobody can say otherwise. Obviously this is the kind of thing that changes sometimes, and countries have indeed been conquered, reformed, etc, etc.

The other is international recognition and protection. There are a number of countries with little to no military, they couldn't hold off an attack from even a fairly small force, yet they are secure as countries. The reason is that they are recognized by international treaties, and thus the big boys, as being countries. They agree they are sovereign and won't interfere, and further often agree to defend them if someone does. Iceland is like that. They have no real military, but they are a NATO member, due to their strategic location. So they have some NATO bases, and the commitment of all NATO members to defend them if they are attacked.

Now, as this applies to Ukraine. They've been invaded by Russia. Russia has sent in troops, who are not wearing any identification, to take over Ukrainian military bases in Crimea. They really can't do much about it. If they fire on the Russian soldiers. Russia will just use that as an excuse to go all out on an invasion (Russian soldiers have been trying to provoke them in to firing) and Ukraine lacks the troops to push that back.

So they have two choices for independence: Either the international community steps in and helps, or they get more powerful weapons, the kind Russia doesn't want to fuck with.

Thus regardless of if you think the US or other countries have any specific obligation to them, that is the general state of things.

Comment: Also with a phone size is an issue (Score 3, Interesting) 191

by Sycraft-fu (#46436105) Attached to: The Tangled Tale of Mt. Gox's Missing Millions

The blockchain is currently about 15GB, and grows every time there's a transaction. That's a problem. Most phones don't have 15GB of free space. You'd have to get an SD card, just to hold it and that is only a temporary solution, since it'll keep growing.

Also this would be a real problem if BTC was actually used like a major currency and not just played with by speculators as the number of transactions would be orders of magnitude higher, and thus so would the growth.

So it would be totally unrealistic to just store it on mobile devices, which is something you'd probably want to do if you were going to use it as a general purpose kind of payment system, security issues aside and those are not minor.

Comment: Also there's more leeway (Score 1) 235

by Sycraft-fu (#46433387) Attached to: Facebook To Pay City $200K-a-Year For a Neighborhood Cop

In general, a citizen and only make an arrest if they witness a felony being committed. Also the same sort of idea with drawing a gun. A good way I heard it put is "If you pull a weapon on someone, one of you committed a felony so you'd better be sure ti was them."

Police have a more relaxed standard. They can arrest based on the suspicion of a crime, and can arrest for misdemeanors. Also they have wider latitude as to when they can draw a weapon.

Stuff like this is why universities have police forces. I work on a campus and we have both security (we call them police aides) and police. The security guards are cheaper, yet we have police offers too. There are good reasons, and the university has clear guidelines for who does what. The security guys more or less just lock buildings and call in problems. The police actually deal with the problems.

Comment: Also (Score 2) 390

by Sycraft-fu (#46423387) Attached to: Bitcoin Inventor Satoshi Nakamoto Outed By Newsweek

If the answer is "Well his life is in danger because he has lots of money in Bitcoins that can be stolen!" well, then there's another flaw in Bitcoins, or at least in keeping Bitcoins on your own hardware, which is what BTCheads have been advocating since the Mt. Gox 'asploded.

This isn't an issue for a normal rich people, because they don't keep their money in something like paper currency that can be easily stolen. It is in banks. So you break in to their house and kill them... well you don't get any of their money. The bank doesn't say "Oh hey you killed the guy, so by RPG loot rules you get his money!" If that's a concern with Bitcoin because it is like keeping lots of cash on hand, well that's another disadvantage now isn't it?

Comment: Me either (Score 1) 111

by Sycraft-fu (#46365621) Attached to: Intel's New Desktop SSD Is an Overclocked Server Drive

I think maybe because it is something that can be easily shown off, or because it can be done cheaper, or because they have a misguided belief that it makes everything fast.

Personally if I can't afford an SSD big enough to stick all the apps I normally want on there, I don't bother with an SSD in a system.

Comment: No kidding (Score 5, Insightful) 111

by Sycraft-fu (#46365609) Attached to: Intel's New Desktop SSD Is an Overclocked Server Drive

What you discover with SSDs is that for desktop usage pretty much any drive is "fast enough" and that faster doesn't much matter. I went from a SATA-2 SSD that was fairly slow even for that generation (WD Siliconedge) to a SATA-3 SSD that is fairly fast for this generation (Samsung 840 Pro) and I don't notice any difference. I can benchmark a difference, but I don't see any difference in load times and so on. SSDs are fast enough that they are making themselves not the bottleneck.

That's also why there isn't a ton of interest in the PCIe SSDs. You can get way more performance, but it is a somewhat limited set of scenarios (on the desktop at least) where that would matter.

Comment: The problem with that is (Score 1) 631

by Sycraft-fu (#46354865) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Do You Still Trust Bitcoin?

The fact that Bitcoin goes backwards with regards to monetary policy is a feature, not a bug, according to its proponents. It seems that most people who are Bitcoin advocates do not have a very good knowledge of financial history. There is this belief that back in the day when we had currency that was backed by, or composed of, precious metals that we never had any financial problems. They believe that all our financial woes are a new thing, and that by moving back to an older monetary policy things would be better.

This is just typical âoenever wasâ syndrome. You see it from various people for all kinds of things: they look back to a glorious past where everything was better, in other words a past that never was. You frequently see this in relation to crime, schools, and social things like that, this is just the financial version.

Then of course there are people who the lack of regulation is a bonus for because theyâ(TM)re criminals, con artists, and things like that. A currency with no government regulation, no tracking, and no way to reverse transactions is an absolute boon for those that wish to rip others off. So they quite like Bitcoin as it is.

People who actually like new monetary policy? Well weâ(TM)ve all avoided using Bitcoin because we recognized it for the problem it is. So donâ(TM)t expect to see any changes. The problems with it that you quite rightly see his major flaws, the proponents see is a good things.

Comment: That is something many miss (Score 1) 221

by Sycraft-fu (#46339007) Attached to: South Park Game Censored On Consoles Outside North America

Most censorship in the US you see is self censorship of one variety or another. Like on TV, the only thing the government steps in on is over-the-air channels. The airwaves, belonging to the public, are regulated by the government. On cable? Do what you like.

So why then do cable channels censor/regulate various things? Well they internally decide what they want to show, what they are ok with. Usually this is based around what advertisers want and what kind of audience they target. But they are welcome to change it as they wish. Some do vary rules by time of day or things like that.

Same deal with game ratings. Publishers tend to avoid AO ratings because a number of retailers, like Walmart, refuse to carry AO games. So they shoot for M, or below. However the government isn't involved. You are free to make AO games, and you are free to sell games that are unrated at all. This is different from some places where a game gets refused classification by a government body and then cannot be legally sold.

Though the government has rumbled about more mandatory ratings/censorship in the US so far it has been nothing but rumblings. The government is fairly hands off.
