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Exactly. They have absolutely no reason to even give this a moment's consideration. This letter is an example of the US government overreaching its powers and m

Exactly. They have absolutely no reason to even give this a moment's consideration. This letter is an example of the US government overreaching its powers and meddling with an organization that's doing nothing wrong.

jeremy_wiebe 10y ago
What would make more sense to me is that the mobile OS vendors take on some initiative to accurately report data usage for a bulling period and warn when nearing the cap.
- mikeevans 10y ago
  Android has this built into the OS already. It will even turn off cellular data once a cap has been hit.
  - lettergram 10y ago
    That is by default set to 1.5 GB, but you can change it or even turn it off. I have unlimited, but still have a warning set at 3Gb
    - ajmurmann 10y ago
      That's the user's fault then.
xntrk 10y ago
either overreaching or possibly doing some work for lobbyists for the telecoms?
- tzs 10y ago
  The telecoms make more money when people use more data. Why would they lobby Congress to do something that could result in less data usage?
KirinDave 10y ago
This is far more likely a move precipitated by wireless carriers attempting to pull some sort of ripcord rather than a House committee noting the existence of a fad game.
loup-vaillant 10y ago
Overreaching perhaps. Probably. Doing nothing wrong however… If this game is consuming more bandwidth than is necessary to deliver its experience, then they are doing something wrong. Both in the technical sense and the moral sense. Developers have a moral obligation to not waste their user's resources, dammit.
- Bjartr 10y ago
  There is always another thing to optimize, so no matter how well they do they are still doing something wrong by your point of view.
- seanp2k2 10y ago
  I whole-heartedly agree, but the reality is that it depends on your perspective. We could have uni kernel apps to run spreadsheets, but instead we now use Google Sheets, inside a JS VM inside of a sandboxed browser on top of an OS which maintains a separate copy of tons of configuration files for each separate piece of software which runs in a sandboxed environment and uses other layers of translation to do things on the hardware. We've shown over the past 40 years that we value developer productivity much more than user resources. Most relevantly, consider the average size of a webpage: http://www.yottaa.com/company/blog/application-optimization/a-brief-history-of-web-page-size/ http://www.yottaa.com/company/blog/application-optimization/...
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    This state of affairs is utterly ridiculous and bad engineering. Sure it's driven by the market, and most of us have to operate within those constraints because of our jobs - but I think it is a responsibility of a developer to push back at least a little bit when the market pressures promote bad engineering. Think of it as sending feedback to the system. That's the only way to price quality in - users won't do it, because in most cases, users have zero real choice except to use the product. Only those making it can make it work well. And then we can also support those working on changing the platform-level stuff.
  - loup-vaillant 10y ago

jeremy_wiebe 10y ago

What would make more sense to me is that the mobile OS vendors take on some initiative to accurately report data usage for a bulling period and warn when nearing the cap.

mikeevans 10y ago
Android has this built into the OS already. It will even turn off cellular data once a cap has been hit.
- lettergram 10y ago
  That is by default set to 1.5 GB, but you can change it or even turn it off. I have unlimited, but still have a warning set at 3Gb
  - ajmurmann 10y ago
    That's the user's fault then.

xntrk 10y ago

either overreaching or possibly doing some work for lobbyists for the telecoms?

tzs 10y ago
The telecoms make more money when people use more data. Why would they lobby Congress to do something that could result in less data usage?

KirinDave 10y ago

This is far more likely a move precipitated by wireless carriers attempting to pull some sort of ripcord rather than a House committee noting the existence of a fad game.

loup-vaillant 10y ago

Overreaching perhaps. Probably. Doing nothing wrong however… If this game is consuming more bandwidth than is necessary to deliver its experience, then they are doing something wrong. Both in the technical sense and the moral sense. Developers have a moral obligation to not waste their user's resources, dammit.

Bjartr 10y ago
There is always another thing to optimize, so no matter how well they do they are still doing something wrong by your point of view.
seanp2k2 10y ago
I whole-heartedly agree, but the reality is that it depends on your perspective. We could have uni kernel apps to run spreadsheets, but instead we now use Google Sheets, inside a JS VM inside of a sandboxed browser on top of an OS which maintains a separate copy of tons of configuration files for each separate piece of software which runs in a sandboxed environment and uses other layers of translation to do things on the hardware. We've shown over the past 40 years that we value developer productivity much more than user resources. Most relevantly, consider the average size of a webpage: http://www.yottaa.com/company/blog/application-optimization/a-brief-history-of-web-page-size/ http://www.yottaa.com/company/blog/application-optimization/...
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  This state of affairs is utterly ridiculous and bad engineering. Sure it's driven by the market, and most of us have to operate within those constraints because of our jobs - but I think it is a responsibility of a developer to push back at least a little bit when the market pressures promote bad engineering. Think of it as sending feedback to the system. That's the only way to price quality in - users won't do it, because in most cases, users have zero real choice except to use the product. Only those making it can make it work well. And then we can also support those working on changing the platform-level stuff.
- loup-vaillant 10y ago