Because if you're creating a 2d game, it can be rendered reasonably fast in your browser.
Full 3d is a different problem.
However, a game like Monaco, with super simple controls but really interesting game play, could absolutely be built in the browser. This gives an easier distribution medium, more control over who is using the game, and if you're already a webdev it fits in nicely with your pre-existing skill set.
The bar is significantly lowered for a lot of weekend warrior game makers if you're going the 2d route.
As a recently graduated student... ohmygod I wish I had this in college (only because I don't use matlab daily). The tutorials are lovely and I don't have to haul myself to a lab to run it.
I would have paid out of my own pocket in college to have that convenience.
My mom still has no problem using QuickBooks and doing all the required web stuff at work with a Pentium 4 and 512mb ram. She literally just bought a new desktop because quickbooks requires it.
In an office environment, she really doesn't need more.
PC sales may be mostly done. A desktop that was bought 10 years ago can still run fine today - and many still are.
We reached a point in computing where upgrading doesn't make that big of a difference. You can use the same machine for a decade or more without problem if you're an end user, especially given so many rich web apps that don't require high processing power.
Why don't they fix Facebook on android before releasing a new product? It frequently "shooooops" for me - crashes, lags, hogs resources, and otherwise does unexpected things.
I'm very wary to install any software from Facebook on Android.
Your current banking transactions aren't anonymous either. It's a nice additional security layer for people that want it, but by no means is it required.
> How is the non-tech user ever going to be able to use this with anywhere near level of trust/safety they do with current traditional currencies.
Near everyone I know, regardless of age, does their banking online. I don't see how this is any different than a username/password being stored on some banking server, and getting stolen.
Best case? You boot to a clean ISO, make a wallet, generate an address, write down the public/private key, transfer all your btc to it, and call it a day. There is no digital trace, and you have a paper wallet.
You sell something for bitcoins, and you give them your private key address in your wallet.
You receive bitcoins.
You buy something with bitcoins else where, and you just hit send and specify an address.
Simple as an account # + routing number.
Now funding your wallet with fiat currency is a little harder, but Coinbase has mostly taken care of that. It's as hard as paying a credit card off - link your current bank account, press buy or sell.
It totally stands within reason that until it has wide spread adoption and regular people stop caring about what the exact exchange rate is that we will see large runs like that. As I stated, we have several people (myself included) invested to make money and take care of an investment, not to use a daily currency.
The hash rates are order of magnitude faster than what's currently out there for the price, and most importantly they'll drive up the difficulty quite a bit.
Source, on the whole, is http://bitcoincharts.com/ You can break down all the numbers yourself. You can also get a giant history table of all buy/sells with times from either bitcoinity or bitcoin charts, I forget which.
Someone sold off 5k bitcoins (~USD $450k at the time).
That's exactly what happened. Big sell off from 95 to 80ish, and then it sprang back to ~$90 today.
There's low confidence in it right now, but that's because most players are actual players. They aren't using bitcoins for groceries, like a bank reserve (yet). They're playing them like stocks.
Volatile, sure. Depends if you want to invest long term with it, and you understand the risk.
> As a currency it's too impractical and there are serious hurdles involved with turning central bank currency into Bitcoin and vice versa.
I found it pretty easy. Coinbase was lovely; getting verified on Mt Gox was a bit of a pain.
> We think Wall Street plays a rigged game.
Yeah, because it does. On a personal level I find the finance industry as a whole too difficult to gain any insight in to. I wouldn't know if my bank was collapsing or not, or if the housing market was in a true bubble. I can fully understand bitcoin. Maybe it's a false sense of safety, but I don't think it is.
> worry a Government or a big bank they'll simply manipulate the market.
Possible. We'll see how it plays out.
Most importantly though,
>I just don't understand the purpose it serves.
Very low fee, near-instant, world-wide monetary transfers. It serves a purpose.
Full 3d is a different problem.
However, a game like Monaco, with super simple controls but really interesting game play, could absolutely be built in the browser. This gives an easier distribution medium, more control over who is using the game, and if you're already a webdev it fits in nicely with your pre-existing skill set.
The bar is significantly lowered for a lot of weekend warrior game makers if you're going the 2d route.