Scoble, Alex Scoble › Comments

Or none of the above, it looks like http://oxforddictionaries.com/us... - Victor Ganata

Huh. I always assumed 'console' as well, even figuring that it was nautical in origin. - Jennifer Dittrich

I always assumed it had something to do with the conning tower on ships or submarines. - Mark H

So not conch? hrmm. - Micah from FFHound(roid)!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... I think Wikipedia's explanation is a bit better...Conning is the act of directing the ship, so whoever is directing the ship has the conn - Scoble, Alex Scoble

I guess what I'm getting at is that it's not really short for anything, it's actually its own word. - Victor Ganata

Yep. Engage! - Scoble, Alex Scoble

Hello Carotene Bunny :) - Pete #TeamMonique

'Good Morning ''Steven!..................:-) - Nispell

Good morning. - John (bird whisperer)

Good morning, Pete. :) - Steven Perez

Good morning, Nispell. :) - Steven Perez

Good morning, John. :) - Steven Perez

That's just about the cutest bunny pic yet, Steven. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

Good morning, Alex. I agree. Mostly because of the ears. :) - Steven Perez

Good morning, Bunneh. :) - Anne Bouey

The ears, the color, the muzzle, the nose, the eyes and those little feet. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

"Orange you glad I didn't say 'banana'?" G'morning, Mr. Perez. - c.a.j.

YO! - imabonehead

Good morning. :) - Kelli H. from Android

Good morning, FF :) - Eivind from Android

Good morning, Anne. :) - Steven Perez

Good morning, CAJ. :) - Steven Perez

HOLA, IMA! :) - Steven Perez

Good morning, Kelli. :) - Steven Perez

Good morning, Eivind. :) - Steven Perez

hey Mr. Bunneh looking pretty perky for a hump day! - VALZ/TEAM TRAVIS

Well, consider that the iPhone went from the 1st generation to the 3G and the iPad went from 2 to "New", and that Mac OS has been stuck at version 10 for more than a decade, and it's clear that innumeracy is rampant in the tech sector :) - Victor Ganata

They were to call it the Last One, but the marketing team nixed that. - Tinfoil 2.0

I am surprised it's not XBox Ultimate Edition, to be honest. - Victor Ganata

It looks like it's about as big as the old ones, and so. many. ports. I wonder how much longer this antiquated form factor will hang on. - Tinfoil 2.0

To get smaller, they'd probably need to invent a revolutionary, new cooling system, or figure out how to make GPUs that don't generate oven-like temperatures. Or try to force people to accept that you really don't need that many polygons. - Victor Ganata

They said it'd be quiet, which further constrains cooling. - Andrew C (✓) from Android

They'd also probably have to do away with the optical drive, which would then probably reintroduce the issue of requiring an always-on Internet connection (which they've confirmed is not required with the XboxOne - it will require an Internet connection, but will still work if the net connection is out-of-commission for a while) - DAMMIT, MR. NOODLE

Also sounds like they didn't bother with backwards compatibility for DVD based Xbox 360 games. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

Or online games you have purchased - Shevonne

Yeah, Shevonne, I think you are right, but I also think that with the online stuff they can possibly translate ownership from old platform to new for any online titles that get rewritten. Not that they will do this, just that it's possible. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

I was thinking that it could be possible as well, but it seems due to the new hardware architecture...maybe the online games were created using the old one so it won't transfer? Someone know? - Shevonne

I assume that the PS4 will have the same issue. - Shevonne

They could always recompile the old games if a software emulation system isn't possible. But it's still noticeable how they didn't even mention it. Used to be backwards compatibility was a key feature (at least at console launches), or if it was left out, they at least had to address it. - Andrew C (✓)

Yeah, I'm certain Microsoft (and Sony) would rather that developers port their games to the new platform. - Victor Ganata

Yep, and it would still be possible for Microsoft to swing the licenses to the ports. Unfortunately, for the bean counters, there's little financial reason to do so. The number of sales that good will creates is much harder to count. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

IMHO cross compiling always has, and always will, suck big time - Jeff (Team マクダジ )

It's got to be better than emulation, though, performance wise, even if the XBox One is way more powerful than the XBox 360. - Victor Ganata

That depends on the game, but yes, in general that's true, Victor. Jeff, I believe that a lot of modern games are developed chiefly for one console (I think EA mostly develops first for PS3) and then ported to the Xbox. It seems to work well. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

should be interesting to watch now that both platforms will be x86 based, instead of totally different core architectures - Jeff (Team マクダジ )

These days they're usually not ported after the fact, they're usually developed on the dev team's own abstraction layer (or sometimes licensed middleware) over PS3 and 360. - Andrew C (✓)

Yeah, I know that Square Enix uses Crystal Tools to develop games for PS3, XBox 360, Windows, and the Wii. - Victor Ganata

Yes, Sony is doing the same thing with PS4. Regarding MS transferring the licenses, if Windows Phone 7-> Windows Phone 8 is any indication, some games will, but others won't (I was able to download new version of Fruit Ninja when I switched phones, but had to buy new copies of my Angry Birds games) - DAMMIT, MR. NOODLE

This is a rule I won't break after years of experience buying game systems too soon. No point in throwing away money on a system or systems that are poorly supported. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

Yeah, Jennifer, I feel you on that. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

I'm the same way. I wait a year or so - Shevonne from iPhone

I watched one of my roommates deal with the endless RRoD, so I'm a bit shy on initial console purchases as well. Truthfully, most first generation complex technology. - Jennifer Dittrich

Yeah, I feel like I just got my PS3. I usually don't upgrade until there's a game that I feel like I have to have, and those are really few and far between these days. - Victor Ganata

Consoles get cheaper to make over time, though. Sony and MS have always lost money at each launch. - Andrew C (✓) from Android

That's pretty much been how every console has been done, they're loss leaders and make up for it on the cut on the game. It's a razor-blade business. And like Andrew said, the tech gets cheaper over time. - Gimminy

Alex, no they don't... but they also can't be "OMGWTFBBQ HOW IS THIS HAPPENING???!??!?1?" - Johnny

Well, they can, it just won't gain them much traction unless it is a significant percentage of them. - Jennifer Dittrich

Actually, it would be a big push on Microsoft if a lot of prospective One buyers were vocal like that. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

A more relevant modern example are iOS devices. If you bought Angry Birds on the original iPhone, you still get to play it on your iPhone 3GS, iPhone 5, iPad 2, etc. And that's really going to be the competition to consoles from here on out. If they can do it with smartphones, why can't they do it with consoles? - Scoble, Alex Scoble

Because smartphones are upgraded every year and therefore use relatively small revisions of ARM architecture each time. Both Sony and MS completely switched architectures. - Andrew C (✓)

Last time they used custom CPUs - the CELL and a somewhat customized PowerPC. Now both are using x86 derived architecture. - Andrew C (✓)

Who knows, if the PC falls behind the smartphone in driving chips, maybe the next consoles will be ARM-based. - Andrew C (✓)

Yeah, incremental change in hardware, incremental change in OS/API. But the only reason why you can still play Angry Birds is because upgrades are free from the App Store. I don't think you could actually run a copy of Angry Birds compiled for iPhone OS 2 on an iPhone running iOS 5 or 6. - Victor Ganata

It would be nice if MS (or Sony) offered a free upgrade to the XBox One (or PS4) version of a downloadable game, but we'll see if that really happens. - Victor Ganata

Yes, the key point that I made was that you buy a game from Apple Store once, you have it on all your devices for a long time. The mechanism they use to do this is of little relevance. Most users don't care about how it's done, but only that it is done. To many users the valid question is if Apple can do it, why can't Microsoft? - Scoble, Alex Scoble

Heh, maybe it's a sign that MS and Sony just don't have the clout that Apple does in being able to strongarm their developers into providing free upgrades forever. (I'm sure that some developers aren't happy about this, but are willing to tolerate it for the flood of money coming their way.) - Victor Ganata

It's not forever on Apple's side even, and that's with a stable architecture and APIs. For example, GLU withdrew some of their earlier games from the App Store because I guess it was too expensive to update them, esp since they predated the company's new freemium business model. - Andrew C (✓) from Android

Yep, Andrew. That's why I said "for a long time". Anyhow, it will be a year and a half at least until I decide to get the One. I don't buy game systems until they've been out for at least a year. You can't tell how viable they will be until then and I've wasted enough money on that industry in my life already. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

I don't think they've done a very good job of communicating about all of the changes. - Katy S

The fact that they are getting rid of Pro accounts and the pricing structure of the new accounts. Not to mention the fact that they still don't have an iPad app. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

And yeah, Tumblr users should view the purchase of that service through the lens of what Yahoo is doing to Flickr. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

Wait - they're getting rid of Pro accounts? I totally missed that. - Brian Johns

Are you talking about an app that's *only* for iPad? Because they have an iOS app. http://www.google.com/url... - Spidra Webster

Yes, an app specifically for the iPad. The iPhone app is horrible on an iPad. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

I would have thought that Thomas Hawk would have been negative about the changes, but he loves them http://thomashawk.com/2013... - Scoble, Alex Scoble

I don't think they are getting rid of pro accounts, but I'm hardly qualified to speak. - Mary B: #TeamMonique

They're getting rid of it but current Pro acct people who opt to be grandfathered in at $25 a year, will be. - Spidra Webster

$50/yr to get rid of ads is a bit tough to take but I guess they are giving you 1TB of space for free. Majority of users won't come close to maxing that out I'd think. It would've been nice if they had kept it at the old Pro price though. - ronin

Existing pro accounts still get ads. For double the price you can get the ad-free experience. Now I'm understanding the option to downgrade to free, you're being encouraged to go that route. - Stephan Planken from iPhone

Hmm, that doesn't seem right. I don't think existing Pro accounts will see ads. - Stephan Planken

And, of course, money money money money money. - Jennifer Dittrich

Lots of Brands do that. You have to market to the lowest common idiot denominator. - Jeff (Team マクダジ ) from iPhone

Active ingredients doesn't equal same product. We sell two products with the same active ingredients but one has a surfactant which helps with leaf stick. The other has one the accelerates the penetration. That's not registered cause its not part of the Mode Of Action. The migraine version may have other ingredients not required for listing that could effect translocation - Johnny from iPhone

Johnny, medications, at least in the US, are required to list all ingredients and active ingredients especially. If an ingredient has anything to do with the efficacy of a medication it needs to be listed. Since all of the ingredients are the same they are charging more money for the same medication until proven otherwise. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

Does one have caffeine and one not? - Headless Gnad Kicker

Both have caffeine and both are a mix of aspirin and acetaminophen. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

I guess they're hoping people with migraines will read the product name and not the ingredient list and happily pay the extra $2! - Headless Gnad Kicker

In general, take a product and make it sound especially for your situation. It makes you feel like someone made a product just for your needs, and you pay more. Or make them just slightly different, so that you'll want all of them: a lime squeezer and a lemon squeezer and also an orange squeezer. - Amit Patel

Sorry, I didn't catch that since I was zesting my Bergamots with my Bergamot zester. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

Okay. Marginhancers branding, web dev and photo/video. Now for migraines. - Mary B: #TeamMonique

Actually, niche-ing a product does build exclusivity. That tells folks who it's for and will increase sales. - Mary B: #TeamMonique

Re Excedrin: if you really have migraines, Excedrin won't begin to help. Assuming you can get scripts, Vicodin generic is about five bucks for a 55-gallon drum. Course, if you REALLY have migraines, Vicodin just makes them worse after a while. - Mary B: #TeamMonique

Yeah, that's what I said. :D - Scoble, Alex Scoble

Let me restate, when doing development for Linux don't use Windows. ;P - Gimminy

Yeah, that's what I said. :D Although an SSH session from Windows to a Linux terminal is ok. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

What's Windows? Oh, you guys are talking about that legacy system that people run from VMWare. But why would you ssh from it when it should be native on your computer? - Cristo

Cristo, if you step outside of the bay area a lot of people still use Windows PCs and workstations to do their work. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

Sad isn't it? It's like those late night videos of starving children in Africa. - Cristo

I don't think it's sad or not sad. It is what it is. Windows is a perfectly acceptable GUI. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

It's complete crap. But yes, McDonald's is perfectly acceptable food. - Cristo

And a lot of enterprise tools require IE. Like Trend Micro OfficeScan. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

Good thing that I'm wearing my flame resistant underwear today. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

That's why we have VMWare Fusion, so we can use primitive software tools written by extinct programmers. - Cristo

You must hate life everytime you use online banking, hehe. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

As in "OMG, I'm using a service built on .NET, the horror! The horror!" - Scoble, Alex Scoble

I can't say that online banking has been the better of my Internet experiences. - Cristo

"Strength: 3D printed parts are not as strong as traditionally-manufactured parts. [...] In 3D printing, you are building it in layers -- this means that it has laminate weaknesses as the layers don't bond as well in the Z axis as they do in the X and Y plane. This is comparable to a Lego wall -- you place all the bricks on top of each other, and press down: feels strong, but push the wall from the side and it breaks really easily." - Andrew C (✓)

"Speed: Many people say that 3D printing is quick -- this is another omission of a suffix -- this time 'for manufacturing processes'. [...] The notion of 'but it'll get faster in the future' is not necessarily true, as we are limited by the chemical properties of materials such as ABS and PLA -- these materials can only be extruded so fast, and at such a rate before you start to destroy the properties of the part. This is happening with the top-end machines right now for FDM (Fluid Deposition Modelling)." - Andrew C (✓)

"Materials: Generally speaking, you can only print in one material, and this is generally a plastic. Now look around you...how many items are in your room that are made up of a single piece of plastic -- just plastic, nothing else? [...] Most items in the house are made up from multiple materials, and most of them are both metal and plastic. Those two cannot be made together as their melting temperatures are hundreds, if not thousands of degrees apart. I'd not like to smelt in my living room either." - Andrew C (✓)

"A great analogy I once read was the comparison of 3D printers to the bread machine." - Andrew C (✓)

I'm guessing that this is from a consumer 3D printing point of view. They are using 3d printers to build large parts of the next generation of heavy lifting rocket engines using metal based processes. But yes, as they point out, modern manufacturing processes are complex and can't be replicated through a single system such as a plastic 3D printer. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

I've always imagined that the primary benefit of 3D printing (for quantities of more than a handful) would be in producing and accurate prototype (or set of prototypes) which could then be used to create more traditional molding forms for mass production (using more durable materials.) I suppose direct-from-CAD milling machines can do this as well, but producing a 3D prototype... more... - Jkram|ɯɐɹʞſ

My brother Rob bought one. He's still calibrating it. His first project is a replacement lid holder for a saucepan where the knob on top broke. For all the hours he's put into it so far (researching and buying a printer and supplies, assembling and installing it, calibrating -- probably six more hours to go, I'd say, given how warped the current pieces are -- and learning the modeling... more... - Stephen Mack #TeamMomo from iPhone

Don't think I'd want a 3D printer, except maybe for printing objects in chocolate. - April Russo

^ !!! :D - A. T.

At a Maker Faire a few years ago, I saw a Makerbot modified to print either chocolate frosting or ganache. - Andrew C (✓) from Android

The things that I knew would irritate me still irritated me though. - Victor Ganata from iPhone

As long as there's no unobtainium, right? - Scoble, Alex Scoble

I was appreciative though somewhat disturbed by how Shatneresque Chris Pine appeared - Victor Ganata from iPhone

I don't know about the whole Deus ex Real Spock thing. - Victor Ganata from iPhone

OK and now I hope that Deus ex Real Spock enters into the general lexicon. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

I was never disturbed by unobtainium. They could've called it macguffinium and that still wouldn't have been the thing that broke my suspension of disbelief #wrongmovie #OldSchoolSFShoutOuts - Victor Ganata from iPhone

But now I really want to see Elysium. Just the visuals of a reconstruction of a terrestrial world on the inner surface of a space station look pretty cool. - Victor Ganata from iPhone

maybe if J.J. does Star Wars up the pooper then Neil Blomkamp can have a whack at saving Trek? - Hieronymous Boosh

Actually, googling "deus ex Spockina" will yield relevant results. - Victor Ganata from iPhone

I honestly can't imagine JJ Abrams possibly ruining Star Wars worse that George Lucas already has. I already know I'll enjoy those movies more, because my expectations are already so low. - Victor Ganata from iPhone

Like, if he literally turned it into a Star Wars/Star Trek crossover based on a fanfic he found on the Internet, that would actually be an improvement. - Victor Ganata from iPhone

Uh oh. - Cristo

Cristo's a fan of Mercurial, I bet. ;) Not that there's anything wrong with that. :D - Scoble, Alex Scoble

Either that or he's cryptically poo-pooing Puppet because he's more of a Chef fan. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

No, I think git is great, I'm just afraid of you programming. :) - Cristo

I'm just using it for devops. You don't have to worry about me ever making an iPhone or Android app. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

devops? that's so buzzwordy :P - imabonehead

Heh, it's my favorite buzzword. :D - Scoble, Alex Scoble

I used that word this week. - Julian

It's no fun arguing with you when you're expecting it ;) - Johnny from iPhone

And now I have a picture of you wearing a red cowl and jumping out at me at inopportune times saying "NO ONE EVER EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!" - Scoble, Alex Scoble

Exactly - Johnny from iPhone

By the way, Google Glass will be...TEH...BEST...THING...EVAR!! - Scoble, Alex Scoble

We're just racking up Monty Python sketches aren't we... - Johnny from iPhone

For taking pictures of Scobles in the shower. ;P - Gimminy

How about shoes for hats? - Scoble, Alex Scoble

Don't be all mad just cuz you've got a huge noggin. - Marie

In my family, we're evenly divided. Half of us are pinheads, the other half are fatheads. - Betsy #TeamMonique

Nagios. It's pretty much the industry standard. :D - Scoble, Alex Scoble

The enterprise edition, or the community edition? - Julian

I prefer to integrate data from Nagios agents in to Splunk. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

I think you must have blocked him for a while. He's been doing pretty well. - Gimminy

I prefer Rite-Aid over CVS. *blank stare* - c.a.j.

Of course, the big downer of SVN is that it isn't distributed and doesn't handle merges and branches nearly as well, from what I've read. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

Heh, CAJ, sorry, CVS in this case is a code versioning system. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

<sigh> Couldn't just go with the joke, could ya? :) - c.a.j.

The things unsaid are just as important as what's said, Akiva. :D - Scoble, Alex Scoble

That's what has my eyebrow in a permanent raised position. - Akiva

I'm sure you understand what I said, but that's not as fun as misunderstanding what I said for comedic purposes. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

You're the guy who feels he has to explain the joke he just told, aren't you. - Akiva

Sadly, a lot of people don't get my references. :D Of course, if you have to explain a joke... - Scoble, Alex Scoble

Then again, after knowing me for over 5 years, I'm pretty sure you knew the answer to that question before you asked it, heh. - Scoble, Alex Scoble