A large part of the issue with pricing on Google App Engine (which is the one that still stings for many people) - was that they were building on a relatively proprietary platform.
The advantage of Docker based compute engines is that your lock-in is a lot lower - providers have to compete on price and features without locking customers in.
Where I work, we're always balancing using new AWS features against how hard it would be to migrate out to another provider or take our solutions on-premises.
There's no way to easily verify how companies are actually calculatign the displayed ratings, and I doubt the average user would care or be savvy enough to find out. I assume it's a given most services see the input ratings as a personal indicator modulated by how reliable/benevolant/... each user is. Reddit votes, for example, are fairly nonlinear and visibility priority is even more complicated.
I recently went on holidays and was merrily tethered away on 4G to Telstra. Hit the cap limit on my plan - 3GB - called Telstra to get a datapack add-on - "I'm sorry, but you are on the highest plan, we can't add on any more data".
Basically I would have had to sign onto a completely new contract to get more data for the 5 days to end of month. Ridiculous.
I guess the main issue is that the timeline of events has gone like this:
Snowden/Guardian: NSA is doing X
Govt/NSA: We are not doing X
Snowden/Guardian: Here are some slide/proof
Govt/NSA: Ok we are doing X, but it's for your own good.
Rinse and repeat each fortnight.
So each denial means less and less, and tips believability towards Snowden even where the proof is inconclusive in some cases.
I was just reading about this yesterday actually. Wiki mentions the tricks learnt from GTAIV were exploited to their full extent to make the best use of the hardware for GTAV.
> While both games were developed for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, the team were able to render the world of Grand Theft Auto V with greater detail than in Grand Theft Auto IV because they had become familiar with the hardware over time. Art director Aaron Garbut opined that while the aging hardware of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 were tiring to work with, "I think one of the most amazing features is the way we handle lighting in the game to maintain a consistent look despite the constraints on realistic lighting and shadows on current hardware", he explained.[28] Vice president Dan Houser agreed with this sentiment, explaining that working on Grand Theft Auto IV with relatively new hardware was difficult, but "now we know what the hardware's capable of, so it's become a lot easier to move things along and a lot more fun, too".
I picked up my 360 in the launch month, and it's still running eight years later. Have to give them credit for that as I've put a lot of miles on the system.
>I picked up my 360 in the launch month, and it's still running eight years later.
Wow, I have had like 4 consoles, 2 original, elite and finally the slim. All but the slim RROD, to still have your launch edition is mighty impressive!
The earlier years of the 360 were plagued by RROD problems. I bought a second (original) console a few years in and had no problems.
My experience was that the RROD issues were sorted out well before the elite and slim 360s (worked in GameStop), so it's surprising you had problems with those versions.
I can confirm that the elite can RROD. I had two originals RROD and finally got a slim, my roommate had one elite and had to get a slim after his RROD'd.
Only problem I had was in 2007, I got the red ring of death, which Microsoft fixed. I picked up a 360 for my brother at the same time, and his is also still running perfectly (he managed to avoid the ring of death). I've never done anything particularly special for the care of the system, I keep it elevated off the floor, and it has always rested flat (for better or worse).
The advantage of Docker based compute engines is that your lock-in is a lot lower - providers have to compete on price and features without locking customers in.
Where I work, we're always balancing using new AWS features against how hard it would be to migrate out to another provider or take our solutions on-premises.