4 ms·

I don't know. I had my little shareware programs up for download in 1998. Software thrived on the PC since its original inception. I remember swapping sharewar

I don't know. I had my little shareware programs up for download in 1998. Software thrived on the PC since its original inception. I remember swapping shareware diskettes with my friends back when we had no reasonable access to the internet. Hell, even DOOM was released as shareware. A lack of infrastructure is not the same as a bunch of gatekeepers you have to pay for the possibility to distribute your software. Today distributing mobile apps would be highly trivial as every smartphone is connected to the internet. But there are artificial limitations put in place by platform "owners" so they can "curate" the software. Call me dumb but from a freedom perspective I would prefer the 1998 situation to what we have now with mobile.

Ntrails 10y ago
>Call me dumb but from a freedom perspective I would prefer the 1998 situation to what we have now with mobile. The price of the Apple store comes in against the risk of malware downloads as I google for "speedfan.net" and end up with 2 new shopping toolbars and a mitm ad inserter for my browser. (I imagine there's a similar possibility when Sideloading android apks vs getting from the play store) Sure, freedom is great and all - but there are some gnarly consequences (especially for non expert users) which often result in less security.
- kybernetyk 10y ago
  >Sure, freedom is great and all - but there are some gnarly consequences (especially for non expert users) which often result in less security. So because some people don't know better and download suspicious-file.exe all our freedoms should be limited?
  - mc32 10y ago
    It's a problem. Not only tech illiterate people get tricked. People who know better get tricked. Now, it's worthwhile asking whether one favors one over the other, but to say one choice is pro freedom and the other anti freedom is hyperbole and does not advance the issue either way.
  - fixermark 10y ago
    Because some people don't know better and download suspicious-file.exe, the market will tend to grow curated solutions, and those solutions will draw the finite resources in the ecosystem away from alternatives. That's not really "your freedoms limited" except for opportunity cost---though in the large, the difference between "It could be that way, but nobody really wants to put the effort in besides some hardcore hobbyists" and "It is license / legally banned from being that way" may end up indistinguishable in result.
  - 72deluxe 10y ago
    No. But it is a difficult balance to keep. I am sure we have all had to clean up multiple relatives' computers from spyware and dodgy "Internet toolbars" and viruses. I have lost count how many times I had to do this. As an alternative, my mum now has an iPad and I have never had to do any of this. And yes, I did attempt to educate my mum on dodgy software etc. as she has been using computers since Windows 98 yet still fell foul.
fixermark 10y ago
VR is a fundamentally different animal from little shareware programs. Unless the graphics library is putting hard constraints on the output generated by the device (and I'm not actually sure how one would go about designing that), you can easily make a person very sick with badly-tuned VR. I think there will be a significant market for curated VR experiences. In fact, my prediction is that market will win---the people who cannot experience bad VR without a physically bad reaction will need someone pre-filtering the content for them. It doesn't necessarily need to be a single-entity-owned market (organized crowdsharing model could in theory do it), but I don't see much future in a "Try some of my cobbled-together hobby VR experiences!" ecosystem for mainstream adoption.
- dismantlethesun 10y ago
  What happens when you close your eyes during VR? Does the expereince stop or does it linger?

Ntrails 10y ago

>Call me dumb but from a freedom perspective I would prefer the 1998 situation to what we have now with mobile. The price of the Apple store comes in against the risk of malware downloads as I google for "speedfan.net" and end up with 2 new shopping toolbars and a mitm ad inserter for my browser. (I imagine there's a similar possibility when Sideloading android apks vs getting from the play store) Sure, freedom is great and all - but there are some gnarly consequences (especially for non expert users) which often result in less security.

kybernetyk 10y ago
>Sure, freedom is great and all - but there are some gnarly consequences (especially for non expert users) which often result in less security. So because some people don't know better and download suspicious-file.exe all our freedoms should be limited?
- mc32 10y ago
  It's a problem. Not only tech illiterate people get tricked. People who know better get tricked. Now, it's worthwhile asking whether one favors one over the other, but to say one choice is pro freedom and the other anti freedom is hyperbole and does not advance the issue either way.
- fixermark 10y ago
  Because some people don't know better and download suspicious-file.exe, the market will tend to grow curated solutions, and those solutions will draw the finite resources in the ecosystem away from alternatives. That's not really "your freedoms limited" except for opportunity cost---though in the large, the difference between "It could be that way, but nobody really wants to put the effort in besides some hardcore hobbyists" and "It is license / legally banned from being that way" may end up indistinguishable in result.
- 72deluxe 10y ago
  No. But it is a difficult balance to keep. I am sure we have all had to clean up multiple relatives' computers from spyware and dodgy "Internet toolbars" and viruses. I have lost count how many times I had to do this. As an alternative, my mum now has an iPad and I have never had to do any of this. And yes, I did attempt to educate my mum on dodgy software etc. as she has been using computers since Windows 98 yet still fell foul.

fixermark 10y ago

VR is a fundamentally different animal from little shareware programs. Unless the graphics library is putting hard constraints on the output generated by the device (and I'm not actually sure how one would go about designing that), you can easily make a person very sick with badly-tuned VR. I think there will be a significant market for curated VR experiences. In fact, my prediction is that market will win---the people who cannot experience bad VR without a physically bad reaction will need someone pre-filtering the content for them. It doesn't necessarily need to be a single-entity-owned market (organized crowdsharing model could in theory do it), but I don't see much future in a "Try some of my cobbled-together hobby VR experiences!" ecosystem for mainstream adoption.

dismantlethesun 10y ago
What happens when you close your eyes during VR? Does the expereince stop or does it linger?