Hopefully EA will be gone for good when the next gen comes around. While I share your sentiment, I'm highly doubtful that will happen. They're already second in sales percentage on the most popular system, and that while they're still trying to switch over to developing for that system. Nope, I don't think EA is going anywhere.
No actually I believe he has it right. EA is too attached to their own preconceptions of what their userbase wants, and too detached from the actual users to see what they really want. Take the BF series for instance. People that I know who have been avid BF2 and BF2142 players that managed to get in on the Quake Wars beta like it much better than BF. It's exactly what they wanted from BF that they didn't get - because EA is too detached from their actual users.
In fairness, I don't think anyone saw the Wii coming or could have planned on the fact that simpler game play, with less intense graphics, that actually involved moving around would have captivated so many people. Really? I suppose you're referring mainly to game developers. Because I'm fairly sure a lot of us saw this coming when we first heard/read about the Wii.
No. My company does use mostly D-Link, so that's what I usually end up replacing bad Linksys parts with. And I have seen my fair share of D-Link parts fail, but nowhere near the percentage of Linksys.
Yes, this includes the WRT54G. And I can't tell you exactly what the point of failure is, as it's never worth the customer's dollar to spend that kind of time troubleshooting a $60 part. The most common failures I've had with Linksys routers include routers that simply drop connection several times a day, routers that will not connect to a broad-band router no matter how you configure them, and routers where the wireless simply stops working and can't be turned on no matter what you do.
How many of those were people who try to flash their firmware to try to install custom Linux software on there, and ended up messing up the router? Linksys routers are about the only ones I've commonly heard of being used for this purpose, also I'm sure it can be done with other routers. Linksys is well known for this. I'm wondering how many people screw it up. Since most of my clients are residential customers who don't even have a clue how to access their router, I'd have to say probably none of them.
I have to agree with you 100%. GP apparently hasn't had a lot of experience with many models of many brands of consumer-level networking equipment. I after testing/installing/configuring hundreds (probably thousands, I really haven't kept track) of consumer networking equipment parts, no brand in my experience has had nearly as a high a failure rate as Linksys. And I know this next bit is going to seem an exaggeration or a troll, but it's not. In the dozens of Linksys routers and switches I've worked with, I've actually had over a 50% failure rate. Admittedly, with my job I generally only get called in only to solve problems. But the fact is, when I get called to a job where a Linksys part is involved, more than half the time that part must be replaced. When other brands of networking equipment are in use, it's rarely a defective part.
Lots of games don't run on it. If I want a nice, lean system that doesn't run games, I'll use Linux:) Wow, I can't believe how many people subscribe to this misconception. "Lots of games don't run on Win2K"?? I can only assume the last time you used Win2K was at least 5 years ago. In all my years of gaming, and all my old games (yes, including DOS games) I found exactly one game that ran more or less "properly" on XP that did not run on 2K. That's right: one. And that one required a number of special tweaks to work on XP, and mostly worked on 2K as well with those same tweaks. (For the curious, this was the PC version of FFVII.) If you're talking about games like AOE3 that make the BS claim "requires winXP or newer" that's exactly what it is. Bullshit. The games work every bit as well on 2K as XP once you download a "patch" that stops them from looking for XP. Yes, even for online play. Once you have them installed, they really don't care whether they're on 2K or XP.
Ah, but what about compatibility mode? Well, it's true - with WinXP they included this fancy new "Compatibility Mode" feature that Win2K didn't come with, that let you (so the story goes) run programs just like they ran in the version of Windows they were originally programmed for. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But wait! That exact same compatibility mode was also made available in Win2K. That's right. It was a part of SP4 that was obviously not much publicized, due to that same "compatibility mode" being a selling point for XP. (Hey look kids, a new version of the NT OS that supports DOS and Win95 programs!!)
So please, I beg you start listing your "lots of games" that work in XP but not 2K. I assure you when actually check them all out on a Win2K install with SP4 and the latest updates, your list will end up pretty short or outright non-existent.
That's great. And I'm not arguing or debating that. My point is that until all this actually results in mainstream software (particularly PC games) being widely available for Linux, it's all a moot argument. I'm just trying to guess why such software is not currently available for Linux, and the only real reason I can see is that the myriad distros of Linux are just too much hassle for mainstream developers. If you can give a more plausible explanation, by all means please do so.
That's all well and good, except it doesn't really apply in this debate. Home PCs are all about interoperability - no typical home user wants to have to buy 10 different home PCs to do 10 different things. To run with your beverage analogy, it's like your type of refrigerator determines what beverages you can use. So then the beverage manufacturers have to try to weigh the costs of manufacturing for this or that refrigerator company, and try to decide which is most likely to be the most profitable for them. Most of the ones who care about profit will choose the refrigerator brand with the biggest installed user-base because it offers the biggest potential market, regardless of how much competition already exists in that sector. And remember, just because someone drinks Budweiser and Coke doesn't mean they won't also drink Coors and Pepsi. There's always room for another kid in the block, and with 75% of the potential market in that block, it's just waiting for you to step in and claim it.
But regardless, your whole post is moot because you're talking to the wrong person. I'm not the developer. I'm the consumer. And right now, the developers are not offering what I'd like to buy so I'm just trying to postulate why that might be. You can disagree with me all you like, but until the software I want/need is available for Linux, your argument means nothing.
I'm all for supporting the small guy in the niche market (I'll always take the local pizza over Pizza Hut) but when the niche market offers only sushi and I'm looking for hot dogs, then I begrudgingly have to take the hot dogs from the big guys.
If all the various Linux distros merged into one single distro, Windows XP would still have 75% of the market, so by your reasoning still nobody would write software for Linux. Except that's what this whole debate is about: if there was a "one-size-fits-all" Linux distro, then more software developers would develop for it, it would become more popular, and it would gain more market-share leaving Windows XP with considerably less than 75% of the market. Also, adapting your software for one other OS that gains you another 8% of the PC market as potential customers is a lot more cost efficient than additionally having to specially tweak (and test!) it for a dozen or more variations of that OS.
As others have pointed out, creating a.rpm and.deb will get you 99% of the Linux desktop market. And most of those same people have admitted that having a.rpm and.deb is not user-friendly enough for the average home PC user, meaning any software intended for a typical user that's currently on Windows will still have to be packaged specially for each distro and sub-distro. If you're a software developer targeting that "average user" demographic (such as most PC game developers) then you either A.) package your software for every remotely popular distro or B.) leave that up to the developers of those distros and run the risk that your software will only be packaged for a few distros, and therefore not usable enough by enough people to make it worth your time to develop it for Linux in the first place.
Don't get me wrong, I like choice as much as the next guy. But this is one of those situations where all the choices are hurting, not helping. Until you can literally package your software into a self-extracting archive that works like an.exe and works on all current distros and versions of linux as well as all GUIs this fragmentation is a problem.
But as for Ubuntu - do not worry about other *ubuntu flavors. As long as you have Ubuntu covered, you have everything else covered AFAIK. Yeah, you and I see it that way, but do the developers*? So far I'm going to have to say apparently not.
Another thing I forgot to bring up that's a huge problem resulting from the vast number of Linux distros. And that is, when a new user wants to try Linux, what distro should he get? You'll hear Mandriva, Fedora, Ubuntu, and lots of others given as answers. Even with 5 versions of Windows Vista it's not nearly so difficult to choose which you need: the name itself describes exactly which demographic the version is intended for. Windows Vista Home Basic vs. Windows Vista Business tells you a lot more than Mandriva vs. Ubuntu. And your basic GUI will be the same across all versions of Vista. And what's more, the Vista desktop is more similar to the WinNT 4.0 and Win95 desktops than KDE is to Gnome. So if you've had any real amount of experience with any version of windows since 3.11, it won't take long to sit down and pick up a different version. But you can be using Kubuntu at home, and if you go over to your friend who's using Ubuntu unless you're familiar with Linux in general you might well be left scratching your head trying to figure out how to do what you want to do.
So I guess for now I'll sit on WinXP and wait and see how things shake down. I really really do not want to use Vista ever.:(
*Just to clarify, when I'm loosely using "the developers" here I'm referring of course to developers of popular softwares that are not represented well on Linux, primarily productivity softwares such as Photoshop and CAD programs, and particularly PC games.
Umm...no. Home users also generally are going to use one of the main distros. And again, they use the same libraries and packages. If you properly package your software and specify dependencies and such, it should just work on any distro (with a few minor niggles here and there, of course, but it's the same as making sure it works between win2k and winxp). If you are using a distro beyond the big 3 (SuSE, RedHat, Ubuntu), then you are probably already smart enough to deal with any issues from installing 3rd party software...or you are too stupid to realize that starting with Linux From Scratch was a bad idea. That's not the point. The point is, all Linux distros together are only a small percentage of OSes in use, while XP is up to about 75% by itself. That means you can develop your software for only XP (without worrying about any other versions of Windows, including Vista) and still have millions of potential customers who already have the systems to run your software. With Linux, even if your software "should just work on any distro (with a few minor niggles here and there, of course, but it's the same as making sure it works between win2k and winxp)" it's those minor niggles here and there that are the problem. So you develop your software for one major distro of Linux (which nets you what, about 2% of total PC marketshare?) and then deal with the "minor niggles here and there" for another 1% here,.5% there,.01% for another distro, etc. It's not nearly as cost effective as just designing your software for Windows XP. All of which makes me increasingly frustrated, because I don't want to use Windows of any flavor, but I keep finding myself stuck with it simply because the software I want/need isn't available for Linux because no one wants to develop for Linux because it's just not worth the extra time and money. If there was one version of Linux with one GUI and one package system for all the homePC users to use you'd see a lot more developers programming for "Linux". I keep hoping Ubuntu will step up to the plate (but wait... do we want Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, or Edubuntu?) and fill that need, but obviously it's not happened yet.
The problem with your comment here is that 90% of it is simply your personal preference - and unfortunately for you, most of the FF series fans do not share your preference.
You're kind of touching on my one issue I still had after reading through the whole thing. (He answered the rest by the end.) That being, he keeps making the assumption that the black market exists only because MS isn't buying up the security exploits found. Not so. The black market for such exploits will exist as long as they can be used for any malicious purpose whatsoever (not necessarily even just ones that are profitable). If MS were to offer a cash prize for turning in exploits discovered it would likely reduce the number sold on the black market, but it would certainly not eliminate that market. Even if MS were to offer extreme amounts of cash (say perhaps $100M US) there would still be a small number of exploits that would be used for malicious purposes before MS was notified of them. So in reality, the higher the cash prize MS were to offer, the lower the percentage of exploits released in the wild - but that percentage curve is currently unknown to anyone, so MS can't know for sure if it would be more profitable to offer cash prizes or not. Thus far it looks like they've rolled the dice and chosen not to offer that prize, and given their current monopoly status it would appear that decision has not adversely affected their market-share.
...and I have to say, the quality of service has never sucked so long as my Internet connection is working right. Which just demonstrates why owning the lines (and therefore being able to provide a bit more QA) really cuts both ways: if you put in the extra money and resources to keep your lines and service in working condition, everyone else using those lines to deliver their own service also reaps the benefits.
...and can only be played on one single device that isn't selling particularly well. I have no particular love for Sony (I own a DS not a PSP) but I can't see why people keep claiming that the PSP isn't selling well. In the game console world, it's outselling everything but the Wii and the DS according to the last sales figures I saw. That sounds to me like it's selling alright.
I wouldn't call the P4 a serious increase in capabilities - Netburst was pretty awful.
Untrue. It started off poorly, but quickly ramped up. Despite the arguments of fanbois, P4s were quite competitive in absolute terms, just not on a per-Mhz basis. There was also hyperthreading.
Further, the knowledge gained by Intel with the P4 has allowed them to very quickly take the Core architecture to 3Ghz (and it clearly has a lot of headroom yet), while AMD is languishing at lower clock speeds.
There was a reason they completely dropped Netburst and went back to P6 when they designed the Core architecture. Netburst-based processors were faster than the P3 line, but not quite as capable of delivering performance.
But they were, they just needed high clock speeds. Netburst was "dropped" (not completely accurate) because it hit clock speed ceilings, not because it delivered no value. I'm not going to go into great detail here since this whole thread is offtopic anyway. Suffice it to say, you clearly don't have much of a concept of how poorly the Netburst architecture really performed. (For example, the first several P4 parts released were actually out-performed by their older and slower cousin, the P3 1.0GHz.) Throughout the whole netburst generation the Intel CPUs were outperformed by AMD CPUs running at lower clock speeds -- in some cases by AMD CPUs running a mere 50% the speed of a netburst CPU. And you have a really nice contradiction there at the end. If they "dropped" the netburst because it hit a clock speed ceiling, then clearly the one "missing element" (in your words, high clock speeds) that was needed to make it capable of performance was impossible -- which obviously leads to the logical conclusion that the Netburst was not as capable of performance as the previous technology, just as the GP stated.
No I'm not an AMD fanboi. I'll buy whichever delivers the best performance at the price that suits my budget. That hasn't been Intel for going on 7 years now. When they can deliver a price/performance ratio that tops AMD in my price range, I'll buy Intel again.
Well, that's the problem. There's really only two alternatives, the first of which is to offer enough real unique content to keep players busy without making them replay the same content over and over. It's easy to see why most MMO developers go with the grind over this first alternative - you get a lot more play time (and therefore more months of subscriptions) for the same amount of effort in designing content. The second alternative is to allow lots of freedom for player-made content, (think player-built and controlled towns for example) which introduces its own set of problems and is really an entirely different type of game from the standard MMO fare.
Personally, I think I'd be willing to pay a higher monthly fee for more unique content to do away with the grind entirely.
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No actually I believe he has it right. EA is too attached to their own preconceptions of what their userbase wants, and too detached from the actual users to see what they really want. Take the BF series for instance. People that I know who have been avid BF2 and BF2142 players that managed to get in on the Quake Wars beta like it much better than BF. It's exactly what they wanted from BF that they didn't get - because EA is too detached from their actual users.
No. My company does use mostly D-Link, so that's what I usually end up replacing bad Linksys parts with. And I have seen my fair share of D-Link parts fail, but nowhere near the percentage of Linksys.
Yes, this includes the WRT54G. And I can't tell you exactly what the point of failure is, as it's never worth the customer's dollar to spend that kind of time troubleshooting a $60 part. The most common failures I've had with Linksys routers include routers that simply drop connection several times a day, routers that will not connect to a broad-band router no matter how you configure them, and routers where the wireless simply stops working and can't be turned on no matter what you do.
I have to agree with you 100%. GP apparently hasn't had a lot of experience with many models of many brands of consumer-level networking equipment. I after testing/installing/configuring hundreds (probably thousands, I really haven't kept track) of consumer networking equipment parts, no brand in my experience has had nearly as a high a failure rate as Linksys. And I know this next bit is going to seem an exaggeration or a troll, but it's not. In the dozens of Linksys routers and switches I've worked with, I've actually had over a 50% failure rate. Admittedly, with my job I generally only get called in only to solve problems. But the fact is, when I get called to a job where a Linksys part is involved, more than half the time that part must be replaced. When other brands of networking equipment are in use, it's rarely a defective part.
Ah, but what about compatibility mode? Well, it's true - with WinXP they included this fancy new "Compatibility Mode" feature that Win2K didn't come with, that let you (so the story goes) run programs just like they ran in the version of Windows they were originally programmed for. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But wait! That exact same compatibility mode was also made available in Win2K. That's right. It was a part of SP4 that was obviously not much publicized, due to that same "compatibility mode" being a selling point for XP. (Hey look kids, a new version of the NT OS that supports DOS and Win95 programs!!)
So please, I beg you start listing your "lots of games" that work in XP but not 2K. I assure you when actually check them all out on a Win2K install with SP4 and the latest updates, your list will end up pretty short or outright non-existent.
That's great. And I'm not arguing or debating that. My point is that until all this actually results in mainstream software (particularly PC games) being widely available for Linux, it's all a moot argument. I'm just trying to guess why such software is not currently available for Linux, and the only real reason I can see is that the myriad distros of Linux are just too much hassle for mainstream developers. If you can give a more plausible explanation, by all means please do so.
That's all well and good, except it doesn't really apply in this debate. Home PCs are all about interoperability - no typical home user wants to have to buy 10 different home PCs to do 10 different things. To run with your beverage analogy, it's like your type of refrigerator determines what beverages you can use. So then the beverage manufacturers have to try to weigh the costs of manufacturing for this or that refrigerator company, and try to decide which is most likely to be the most profitable for them. Most of the ones who care about profit will choose the refrigerator brand with the biggest installed user-base because it offers the biggest potential market, regardless of how much competition already exists in that sector. And remember, just because someone drinks Budweiser and Coke doesn't mean they won't also drink Coors and Pepsi. There's always room for another kid in the block, and with 75% of the potential market in that block, it's just waiting for you to step in and claim it.
But regardless, your whole post is moot because you're talking to the wrong person. I'm not the developer. I'm the consumer. And right now, the developers are not offering what I'd like to buy so I'm just trying to postulate why that might be. You can disagree with me all you like, but until the software I want/need is available for Linux, your argument means nothing.
I'm all for supporting the small guy in the niche market (I'll always take the local pizza over Pizza Hut) but when the niche market offers only sushi and I'm looking for hot dogs, then I begrudgingly have to take the hot dogs from the big guys.
Don't get me wrong, I like choice as much as the next guy. But this is one of those situations where all the choices are hurting, not helping. Until you can literally package your software into a self-extracting archive that works like an
Another thing I forgot to bring up that's a huge problem resulting from the vast number of Linux distros. And that is, when a new user wants to try Linux, what distro should he get? You'll hear Mandriva, Fedora, Ubuntu, and lots of others given as answers. Even with 5 versions of Windows Vista it's not nearly so difficult to choose which you need: the name itself describes exactly which demographic the version is intended for. Windows Vista Home Basic vs. Windows Vista Business tells you a lot more than Mandriva vs. Ubuntu. And your basic GUI will be the same across all versions of Vista. And what's more, the Vista desktop is more similar to the WinNT 4.0 and Win95 desktops than KDE is to Gnome. So if you've had any real amount of experience with any version of windows since 3.11, it won't take long to sit down and pick up a different version. But you can be using Kubuntu at home, and if you go over to your friend who's using Ubuntu unless you're familiar with Linux in general you might well be left scratching your head trying to figure out how to do what you want to do.
So I guess for now I'll sit on WinXP and wait and see how things shake down. I really really do not want to use Vista ever.
*Just to clarify, when I'm loosely using "the developers" here I'm referring of course to developers of popular softwares that are not represented well on Linux, primarily productivity softwares such as Photoshop and CAD programs, and particularly PC games.
The problem with your comment here is that 90% of it is simply your personal preference - and unfortunately for you, most of the FF series fans do not share your preference.
You're kind of touching on my one issue I still had after reading through the whole thing. (He answered the rest by the end.) That being, he keeps making the assumption that the black market exists only because MS isn't buying up the security exploits found. Not so. The black market for such exploits will exist as long as they can be used for any malicious purpose whatsoever (not necessarily even just ones that are profitable). If MS were to offer a cash prize for turning in exploits discovered it would likely reduce the number sold on the black market, but it would certainly not eliminate that market. Even if MS were to offer extreme amounts of cash (say perhaps $100M US) there would still be a small number of exploits that would be used for malicious purposes before MS was notified of them. So in reality, the higher the cash prize MS were to offer, the lower the percentage of exploits released in the wild - but that percentage curve is currently unknown to anyone, so MS can't know for sure if it would be more profitable to offer cash prizes or not. Thus far it looks like they've rolled the dice and chosen not to offer that prize, and given their current monopoly status it would appear that decision has not adversely affected their market-share.
Could not agree more. That's the single game release they could do that might influence me to buy a PS3
...and I have to say, the quality of service has never sucked so long as my Internet connection is working right. Which just demonstrates why owning the lines (and therefore being able to provide a bit more QA) really cuts both ways: if you put in the extra money and resources to keep your lines and service in working condition, everyone else using those lines to deliver their own service also reaps the benefits....but I'm afraid to try it.
You mean like most game manufacturers "downgrade" games to work on PCs with less than the best hardware?
Oh, wait...
Actually for the "brute force" hacking I'm thinking more of things like a 10-pound maul, a chainsaw, or your mother-in-law's car.
...and can only be played on one single device that isn't selling particularly well. I have no particular love for Sony (I own a DS not a PSP) but I can't see why people keep claiming that the PSP isn't selling well. In the game console world, it's outselling everything but the Wii and the DS according to the last sales figures I saw. That sounds to me like it's selling alright.I have three letters for you:
NPO.
Untrue. It started off poorly, but quickly ramped up. Despite the arguments of fanbois, P4s were quite competitive in absolute terms, just not on a per-Mhz basis. There was also hyperthreading.
Further, the knowledge gained by Intel with the P4 has allowed them to very quickly take the Core architecture to 3Ghz (and it clearly has a lot of headroom yet), while AMD is languishing at lower clock speeds.
There was a reason they completely dropped Netburst and went back to P6 when they designed the Core architecture. Netburst-based processors were faster than the P3 line, but not quite as capable of delivering performance.
But they were, they just needed high clock speeds. Netburst was "dropped" (not completely accurate) because it hit clock speed ceilings, not because it delivered no value. I'm not going to go into great detail here since this whole thread is offtopic anyway. Suffice it to say, you clearly don't have much of a concept of how poorly the Netburst architecture really performed. (For example, the first several P4 parts released were actually out-performed by their older and slower cousin, the P3 1.0GHz.) Throughout the whole netburst generation the Intel CPUs were outperformed by AMD CPUs running at lower clock speeds -- in some cases by AMD CPUs running a mere 50% the speed of a netburst CPU. And you have a really nice contradiction there at the end. If they "dropped" the netburst because it hit a clock speed ceiling, then clearly the one "missing element" (in your words, high clock speeds) that was needed to make it capable of performance was impossible -- which obviously leads to the logical conclusion that the Netburst was not as capable of performance as the previous technology, just as the GP stated.
No I'm not an AMD fanboi. I'll buy whichever delivers the best performance at the price that suits my budget. That hasn't been Intel for going on 7 years now. When they can deliver a price/performance ratio that tops AMD in my price range, I'll buy Intel again.
Well, that's the problem. There's really only two alternatives, the first of which is to offer enough real unique content to keep players busy without making them replay the same content over and over. It's easy to see why most MMO developers go with the grind over this first alternative - you get a lot more play time (and therefore more months of subscriptions) for the same amount of effort in designing content. The second alternative is to allow lots of freedom for player-made content, (think player-built and controlled towns for example) which introduces its own set of problems and is really an entirely different type of game from the standard MMO fare.
Personally, I think I'd be willing to pay a higher monthly fee for more unique content to do away with the grind entirely.