[sudont]

Indeed. I preordered the DK2, but I'm not sure if I should try to get a refund.

I'm not on Facebook, and I don't want to develop for their platform. Although, one of the ideas was to replicate DFW's "samizdat" as an art project. Something tells me Facebook wouldn't look kindly on it pulling all your friend data to entertain you to death.

[thisisrobv]

I think this is what makes me hate this purchase. The most interesting part of Oculus to me was the "open-ness" of the platform. They were seemingly doing an amazing job of getting developers interested in the platform. I'd argue that Facebook does a pretty terrible job on both fronts.

[venomsnake]

I have tried to develop app for facebook. Just terrible experience.

[72deluxe]

I wrote one for allowing an external site to automatically post info to a wall. It wasn't too bad, with oauth and all that.

But that's the only reason I have a Facebook account.

[1qaz2wsx3edc]

I'm in the same boat, I'm going to wait a couple days, but I'm very tempted to cancel my preorder.

[serge2k]

I already sent an emailing asking how to cancel.

If it turns out to be good I'll get one. Not bothering to preorder though. No need to risk money supporting the company now.

[olouv]

Same here, I've already sent an email regarding a refund. I had big dreams for this company, it just feels wrong. I'm not happy to see theses conglomerates grow uncontrolled, sucking up the spirit of innovation and openness that are so critical to our future.

[72deluxe]

Not trying to be argumentative, but is a VR helmet really critical to our future?

Is it on the same level as food and poverty and peace?

[thenomad]

Technological advancements have a funny way of producing important side-benefits.

A change as massive as VR - we simply don't know how big a deal it is.

For example, as one of the smaller potential side-effects, imagine VR became good enough that there was no practical reason to have people travel for face-to-face meetings. That would have a significant knock-on effect (closing on single-digit percentile worldwide) on carbon emissions, global warming, and potentially catastrophic climate change.

[72deluxe]

Teleconferencing is currently very possible, including video to video or voice to voice, but this hasn't stopped people travelling around. I am not so sure that VR will suddenly be the thing to take off in this regard; if people aren't happy sat in front of a camera for a meeting, will they be happy wearing a headset?

[nailer]

Can you explain Shamzidat more? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Jest doesn't have much. Thanks!

[sudont]

"The Entertainment" was a video tape in the book that "so entertaining to its viewers that they lose all interest in anything other than viewing it and thus eventually die."

Depending on your scholarly beliefs, it's either just a metaphor for addiction, or in addition, a critique on media and media consumption. I chose to believe the latter, in that it could stand to be a critique on how our pastimes are intentionally becoming more engaging and addicting.

I'm not sure on the visual representation, but the thing would have been a Rauchenberg-ian collage of video, text and audio, layered together and becoming more "recommended" for the user, based on physical cues from the physical input devices, as well as choices. The actual recommendation algorithm would have been relatively primitive, most likely a decision tree, or if I could figure it out, an ensemble algorithm that would have created better media recommendations in real time to show to the viewer from trending topics, imgur, youtube, that type of junk.

[necubi]

The samizdat refers to a film (after which Infinite Jest is named). This film is so entertaining that, once seen, a viewer will want to do nothing but continue watching it, endlessly.

(Also, IJ is a great novel.)

[jobigoud]

Ditto. I just preordered the DK2 yesterday and don't have a facebook account. Don't want to have to do anything with them. Shit.