Some Senator's kid maxed out their data plan in a few days and now they're writing an angry customer service letter.
I really hope the outcome is that cell companies are forced to get rid of caps but we all know how much money telecom companies donate to prevent this kind of regulation.
I think the potential for a game to provoke some new legislation is very real. The quantity of people changing their use of time, space and infrastructure so suddenly is unprecedented, and even if it fades over time, the chances of more like this one are high.
Another short video by the BBC about the same incident with an interview with Sasha Lazutkin, one of the Cosmonauts on the station at the time but not the one controlling the cargo ship: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p028l07k
The article seems to ignore why many people buy a console over a pc (aside from price). When you buy an xbox or playstation you know that it should play all of the games released for the next 5 years or so.
Coming out with an xbox 1.5 or xbox 10 that obsoletes current gen consoles midway through a generation would be the biggest change ever to the game console business. Probably the worst thing they could do would be to make a new "low-cost" xbox that can't run games that are already out.
I can see Microsoft experimenting with doing small hardware improvements in a mid-cycle revision but I doubt they will make drastic changes.
My recent experience with reloading my gaming PC from Win7 to Win10 reminds me of the other reason even my technically-inclined friends have consoles: all the messing around with drivers and software and uPlay and Steam (Steam is probably the least troublesome but still has problems sometimes, like requiring me to run Rocket League with admin privs...probably not Steam's fault) and the Windows Store giving 0xError codes trying to download the Xbox Accessories app to use the wireless adapter for the Xbox One controller I wanted to use with my PC.
With a console, the idea is supposed to be that you put the game in, power it on, and enjoy the game. But these days, consoles aren't quite living up to that either. IMO, the first Xbox and PS2-generation of consoles were the best, since they had online play sometimes (anyone remember playing Halo with that Windows app that tricked it into thinking other users were on your LAN? A neighbor and I had tons of fun with that) and JUST WORKED (except in cases of overheating / PS2 disc read errors).
I'm currently enjoying my WiiU quite a bit, since most of the time when it doesn't need to update, I can just start it and have fun instead of spending 5-60 minutes each session messing with making things work like I need to do with Windows 10.
I think what the author poorly articulated was that with UWP, Microsoft has the opportunity to create new hardware tiers developers can target. If, instead of creating a tier above the Xbox, Microsoft created one below it then I see tremendous opportunity.
Imagine if Microsoft had devices at the Amazon Dash, Android TV, and Xbox One tiers that all supported UWP and Cortana. That would be a boon for developers.
Microsoft could also introduce a beefed up Xbox One with more powerful CPU/GPU if it did so without creating a new tier. It could do something along the lines of the High-def packs that we see in PC games where everything functionally remains the same but the newer model receives higher resolution texture, models with more triangles, and can render out in 1080p:60fps or 4k.
The Independent Games Festival gives awards out to plenty of games no one has ever heard of.
Even the Game Awards, the most Oscar-like award show that video games have, gives awards to smaller, more "artsy" titles. For instance "Her Story" won best narrative for 2015 over more mainstream blockbuster titles like "The Witcher 3".
The Witcher 3 can hardly be categorized as a "mainstream blockbuster." It's more akin to a cult classic that was finally accepted by a larger audience.
Beyond that the original comment was lamenting the lack of a central cultural authority on gaming, which there is none (and I don't think there necessarily needs to be one given the lack of marketable personalities or reasons to watch one beyond ad space). "Her Story" was recognized last year because of its approachable, non-linear play mixed with FMV, but there dozens of other titles released that would be easier to argue for as "art" that aren't going be recognized in any notable manner. Does something need to have recognition to designated as art? No. Neither sculptures nor paintings have award shows, so I think it's fair to say that artistic merit goes beyond gaming having an Oscars.
A simple trick: For 11 x a 2-digit number you can simply take the first digit of the 2-digit number then the 2 digits of the number added together then the last digit of the 2-digit number.
Ex: 11 * 12 = 132 or 1, 1+2, 2. 11 * 45 = 495 or 4, 4+5, 5. For numbers which sum to more than 10 add the carry to the first number ex: 11 * 59 = 649 or 5, 5+9 = 14 so add 1 to the initial 5 and keep the 4, 9.
Take a number, say 142857. Prepend a 0 on the left. Underneath each digit write the sum of the digit above and the one to the right. If you work from the right, it's easier to keep track of the carries.
Perhaps a better question would be "What is the median forfeiture amount?". Without additional data points or underlying explanation, this article is nothing but click-bait.
I agree that it would be nice to have more data. It might be hard to get "big picture" data for this. I would imagine that police deptments are not incentivized to publish details in a convenient, highly visible, summarized form.
Forbes says $1250 was avg. seized property value in MN.
Wild guess: Only because the data shown (in the article) goes back 10 years. As Civil Forfeitures started as part of the War on Drugs, I suspect it's been rising since the 1980's.
The revenue from Civil Forfeitures are used to offset the recent (decade+?) decline in funding that local governments have.
A recent segment on Last Week Tonite[1] on Civil Forfeiture highlighted local police using it as a way to shore up their coffers.
Imagine there's a place you want to get to along with a lot of other people.
It starts as a nice queue and is pretty orderly but then some people start pushing in and trying to jump ahead in the line. Other people see this and try the same thing. If there's no good exit or crowd control then the back of the crowd slowly pushes against the front until disaster occurs.
People in the back have no idea that there is nowhere to go but they've been standing for hours and want to keep moving forward.
Yeah except for me, the sheer existence of the crowd makes my brain go "avoid avoid avoid at all costs".
I even go shopping in the middle of the night or very early morning when stores first open. I don't mind a few people but a crowd will make me turn around immediately. It is some kind of primal fear to me that shouts danger.
Apparently a great many people don't seem to have that survival instinct.
It's not necessarily a survival instinct, crowds aren't inherently bad, and they rarely result in death or injury -- what if the crowd you're avoiding is the big line for fresh water after a disaster, waiting around until the crowd dissipates may mean that supplies run out.
I really hope the outcome is that cell companies are forced to get rid of caps but we all know how much money telecom companies donate to prevent this kind of regulation.