It's not really the same thing, because Apple wasn't using one product(Logic)to try and kill an only tangentially related competitor's project. Whether Apple was just trying to sell more macs or avoid having to maintain multiple versions of the software (it was probably a mix of both factors), I don't think you can reasonably argue that Apple stopped developing Logic for windows in order to drive Windows under.
If the Mac version of Office ceased to exist, it would have a significant effect on the viability of Mac OS X. Apple would have to very quickly establish a legitimate contender in a market in which they currently have no real presence, in order to keep the entire mac platform healthy. Tough to do when you're going against a monopoly product that totally dominates the market. The situation is less dire now as there are some reasonably well developed alternatives (There have been consistent rumors that Apple might even keeps one under development just in case it becomes necessary), but a few years back, during Apple's rougher days, it's not unreasonable to think that it would've killed Apple.
But still, your point about open source software being less susceptible to similar issues is valid.
It's news because it's more evidence of the monopoly abuse that MS was obviously guilty of. Although the current administration in the US has basically given MS a free pass, Europe is at least trying to hold them accountable for the damage they've done to the computing industry. Even with all the evidence against them, MS continues to whine and appeal and pretend like they're victims in all of this. Every time some more solid info comes out proving their intentions, their complaining becomes more tiresome, and they lose a little momentum.
While I don't expect or even want MS to completely die out, just about everyone except their shareholders (and maybe MSCE's doing tech support) stand to benefit from a more diverse computing environment. Having one company dominating the OS and office software markets so heavily is not ideal for the industry or consumers.
Even if the government, for some reason, threw everything they had at helping the RIAA...it'd only delay the inevitable. People want music, musicians want to provide it. Right now most people are still happy getting their music from the labels, and enough of the artists are willing to work the the labels to fill that demand. But that is slowly changing, and the process will accelerate as it proves itself to be a valid way of doing business.
The only way the RIAA and/or government could begin to control it is through stricter DRM and stricter laws. And that will just drive people away faster. The government spends billions per year trying to stop the movement of drugs in this country, and they can hardly dent it. What chance do they have against a product that is trivial to mass produce copies of, and which can be transmitted across the globe practically instantly.
Exactly. If Sony had just said no comment, they still might have had their big announcement slightly ruined, but then at least we'd all be talking about these new features instead of talking about how Sony threatened and then blacklisted a video game website.
I guess they bet on Kotaku folding, but I'm not sure what made Sony think the odds were in their favor.
Who is Sony to tell a website what not to publish? Kotaku wasn't breaking any NDA, they weren't even shown this stuff by Sony under some sort of verbal agreement to secrecy. They heard a rumor through unofficial channels, and when they called Sony to ask about it, they were threatened. Sony didn't politely ask them not to publish it, they placed demands on them. They were dicks about it.
Was this "Evil" for Sony? I don't know if I'd go that far. But it was most certainly stupid. Kotaku isn't the end all of video games, but it is a popular site, and is a potential source of lots of good free PR. They don't have to kiss Kotaku's ass if they don't want to, but going out of your way to piss them off isn't smart either.
And so now instead of a discussion about the PS3's new features, we're discussing how Sony treated a random website. No matter which side of this debate you fall on, how is it in Sony's interest to have the discussion derailed like that? I don't buy the "any publicity is good publicity line". When you're dealing with a market that's knowledgeable about your product (I have no doubts that 95% of the hardcore gamers out there keep up with video game news on the internet to some degree), then bad press is not what you want.
Sony just keeps making their own lives harder. If I was a Nintendo or MS Xbox division exec, I'd constantly be laughing my ass off at Sony.
This story isn't about some exciting new program, or some cool technology, or even an updated version of a popular piece of software. This is a report about a non-critical bug for a web browser. A web browser with limited market share and a number of good alternatives. Oh, and the developer has already acknowledged it, explained it, and described some of the progress being made to fix it. This isn't about technology, it's about a minor decision in the production of a web browser not being the optimal solution.
Slashdot covers a huge range of topics, a lot of information goes through it each day. It's constantly bring in new editors, and they get craploads of submissions each day. Keeping all of that in mind, I just fail to see how anything in this article was worthy of a front page spot on the site. I'm not calling for the firing of the editors or anything, just making fun of them a little bit for posting something silly.
Hey wow, a piece of software isn't perfect, and the developers are trying to fix it. This is an exciting new paradigm for programming. Thanks for keeping me updated!
As far as I know, there's still an AASP called the Computer Shoppe on Vets, closer to Bonnabel. I haven't been there in a couple of years, so my memory of it is a little hazy, but if they're not mac only they're at least 75% mac in terms of floor space. It's a small operation, the guy who owned the place was the repair technician. It was a little expensive as I remember it, although I was a broke college student at the time so everything seemed extra pricey to me.
I find the Metarie CompUSA to be far more pleasant to go to than Best Buy, Circuit City or any other computer place I can think of. Compared to its alternatives it's quiet inside, parking is much easier, and the sales people have never been pushy with me. While I don't have anything against ordering online, sometimes I decide I want something, and I want it today, and saving a few bucks is not worth it to me if it means I have to wait three days to get it.
I wish we could get an Apple Store. Apple is just the kind of trendy retailer that New Orleans should be trying to get to open up shop on Canal Street, if they ever want to make good on their grand plans to turn that back into a decent strip. Maybe one day...
There won't be an HD capable Wii in the sense that it'll be the same old console just with higher resolution output. While I don't doubt that Nintendo will release another console in the future, it will be an all new platform, just like each of their previous home consoles have "replaced" their predecessors. This new console will likely support HD, but it will not just be an upgraded Wii. It will be an entirely new system. Games created for it will not work on the Wii.
If Nintendo does release an upgraded Wii, it'll include incidental features, like the ability to play DVD movies. Nintendo knows better than to fracture their marketshare.
Yeah, I know that iTunes is going to be a big part of it, and things like syncing contacts and whatnot aren't terribly complicated, but could still stand to be made easier and prettier. And while I'm sure they'll find a decent way to do it, part of me is uncomfortable with the continuously increasing amount of responsibility Apple is dumping on iTunes. They've been so good about cramming only what is needed into their hardware, it'd be a shame to see them bloat the software to a point where it really starts to suffer.
I think most people with enough familiarity with digital devices to be interested in the iPhone will probably expect it to settle out along similar lines as the iPod. An initial expensive model or two, which will gradually branch out to a range of options that vary in size, functionality, appearance, and of course...price.
There will likely always be a $600 model, it'll just steadily improve in capabilities while the abilities of the previous $600 model finds their way into the new cheaper versions.
Although I will say that one reason that this strategy has worked so well with the iPod is that all version tied in very well with iTunes, which is an excellent piece of software. I don't know what sort of computer software Apple might have that will augment the use of the iPhone, but I think that that could be a big piece of the puzzle.
I think when some real details, or at least some meaty rumors of the next round of consoles starts showing up, that's when the switch will happen. When someone uses the term next-gen, you're unlikely to think they're talking about the PS4, because nobody knows anything worth talking about it. When that becomes a problem, the semantics will change, probably rather quickly, and except for a couple wandering slashdot posts, nobody will really notice.
Yup. Like I said, I'm not heavily involved in the decisions that my corp/alliance makes at the higher levels, but those who make the decisions are reasonably open about what choices have been made, what options were considered, and why they took the path that they did. The leadership is good about listening to our comments, answering our questions, and letting us argue with them and each other over what we're doing/didn't do/should've done. It's all quite entertaining, and even when I don't have much time to spend in game, I still generally keep up on the current events via our corp's forums. The game is definitely much larger than just flying around in a spaceship blowing up random stuff.
Indeed, I'm involved in a major alliance, and while I'm basically just a rank and file member, I do get to see much of the competition that goes on. It's very entertaining. I'm getting close to a year in game, but have never made any significant isk, mostly due to spending the majority of my limited time in game fighting in cheap ships. But I still have fun:)
No kidding. The first time I had 4 people here to play, I put excite truck in and spent like 10 minutes trying to figure out how to get to 4 player mode. It took me that long to actually look at the packaging to see that it didn't actually support 4 people, because I never would've guessed that that was the case. Lame.
Wait...are you saying that there are federal statistics that show that over 1/4 of the people in prison in this country are illegal aliens who came to the US for the sole purpose of committing violent crimes?
I find that incredibly hard to believe, and would love to see some sort of citation for where you got that info.
Mine veldpar in high sec for 14 hours per day, or run crappy courier missions until your eyes glaze over. Both of those exciting jobs can be yours in EVE-Online!
The game also tends to be pretty good about ramping up the risk as you progress in the game. 30% of the value of a ship gets to be more significant as your ship costs increase of course, and many of the rarer and more valuable ships insure much more poorly in relation to their average sale value. Also, after you've spent a lot on an expensive ship, you're likely going to want to fill it with the more expensive modules, further increasing your risk. The loot drop system saves some modules, but in PVP, you shouldn't count on being the one that gets the loot from your wreck.
While I think it's kind of silly that you suggest that they should stop making changes/fixes/improvements to the game because you don't like change, I do think that they need to be much more open about the specifics of some of their changes, and how certain parts of the gameplay work in general. There is plenty of confusion about how things like log-off timers and such work, and it often has to be figured out by trial and error. Sometimes it makes me wonder if anyone at CCP really knows how it works, or whether it was actually designed to work that way or it's just sort of what happened.
As for having to log-on to switch skill training, most other games don't let you progress at all while you're not logged in, EVE is already way ahead in that respect. Also, many people have alts that they train up in order to sell for in game currency, and anything that makes them work even a little harder to convert their real life wealth into in-game wealth is ok by me.
Yeah, but I sort of expected this to happen. Try looking at it a year ago from a publisher's point of view. Nintendo (who's had dropping marketshare for a couple generations) is releasing a new console with significantly inferior graphics capabilities, and an entirely new control mechanism that is not only untested, but will also make cross-platform games more difficult... you have no idea how this console is going to do in the marketplace. It'll either sell like hotcakes, or it'll totally bomb. Committing a lot of resources to develop for it is a risk. Maybe it's safer to just sit tight for a little bit, and see how it shakes out.
Nintendo was already all-in on this bet, so they of course have lots of games in the works, and Ubisoft saw a chance to get in early if it went well, so they put a lot of effort in. And it's worked out well for both of them. For other big publishers, they may have passed over a chance to make some good money at the beginning, but they didn't really lose anything either. Now that the Wii has been well received and is shipping tons of units, they can feel confident about committing some resources to development for it, and they won't have much trouble getting their games noticed either.
It takes a while to make a game. Seeing as the Wii has only had a few months to prove itself so far, we shouldn't be surprised that we haven't heard that much as of yet. In a few more months, when some of the newly convinced publishers have enough material ready that they can start making announcements and sending out screen shots, hopefully there will be plenty of games to choose from.
If Microsoft, or Apple, or anyone else wants to take a sucky sucky system that's sucked as much as anything can suck for years, and make it better then I'm all for it.
It's not like "voice mail" is some sort of open standard that anyone can implement and achieve interoperability with everyone else. That's what pissed off people when MS did it. They were poisoning something good. Current mobile voice mail systems are entirely crap, and Apple has convinced Cingular to help them build a better system.
MS changed the way video game consoles work (Xbox Live, Harddrives) in order to make a better product. That's completely different from when they leave their CSS rendering buggy and screwed up for years in order to break cross-browser compatibility.
Sure it is. It doesn't matter how long you live, 300 years is still a lot of time. When I'm riding in a car, sometimes it takes me all of five minutes to get restlessly bored. And five minutes is not a substantial portion of my lifetime.
That's true I guess, except that I don't see how any extra terrestrial species capable of making "casual" contact with us would have much to fear from us in terms of galactic war. I guess if we had a few months warning of their ship entering low earth orbit, we could set up a mission to have a shuttle suicide into it, but I'm not sure that would work too well.
Unless maybe Earth is a bargaining chip in some treaty between two other space powers, maybe arguing over who gets to rebroadcast our TV shows to the rest of the universe. I can see contact screwing that all up.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not really the same thing, because Apple wasn't using one product(Logic)to try and kill an only tangentially related competitor's project. Whether Apple was just trying to sell more macs or avoid having to maintain multiple versions of the software (it was probably a mix of both factors), I don't think you can reasonably argue that Apple stopped developing Logic for windows in order to drive Windows under.
If the Mac version of Office ceased to exist, it would have a significant effect on the viability of Mac OS X. Apple would have to very quickly establish a legitimate contender in a market in which they currently have no real presence, in order to keep the entire mac platform healthy. Tough to do when you're going against a monopoly product that totally dominates the market. The situation is less dire now as there are some reasonably well developed alternatives (There have been consistent rumors that Apple might even keeps one under development just in case it becomes necessary), but a few years back, during Apple's rougher days, it's not unreasonable to think that it would've killed Apple.
But still, your point about open source software being less susceptible to similar issues is valid.
It's news because it's more evidence of the monopoly abuse that MS was obviously guilty of. Although the current administration in the US has basically given MS a free pass, Europe is at least trying to hold them accountable for the damage they've done to the computing industry. Even with all the evidence against them, MS continues to whine and appeal and pretend like they're victims in all of this. Every time some more solid info comes out proving their intentions, their complaining becomes more tiresome, and they lose a little momentum.
While I don't expect or even want MS to completely die out, just about everyone except their shareholders (and maybe MSCE's doing tech support) stand to benefit from a more diverse computing environment. Having one company dominating the OS and office software markets so heavily is not ideal for the industry or consumers.
Even if the government, for some reason, threw everything they had at helping the RIAA...it'd only delay the inevitable. People want music, musicians want to provide it. Right now most people are still happy getting their music from the labels, and enough of the artists are willing to work the the labels to fill that demand. But that is slowly changing, and the process will accelerate as it proves itself to be a valid way of doing business.
The only way the RIAA and/or government could begin to control it is through stricter DRM and stricter laws. And that will just drive people away faster. The government spends billions per year trying to stop the movement of drugs in this country, and they can hardly dent it. What chance do they have against a product that is trivial to mass produce copies of, and which can be transmitted across the globe practically instantly.
I think we can all agree that the proper compromise is to have intelligent robots enforcing the laws.
Exactly. If Sony had just said no comment, they still might have had their big announcement slightly ruined, but then at least we'd all be talking about these new features instead of talking about how Sony threatened and then blacklisted a video game website.
I guess they bet on Kotaku folding, but I'm not sure what made Sony think the odds were in their favor.
Who is Sony to tell a website what not to publish? Kotaku wasn't breaking any NDA, they weren't even shown this stuff by Sony under some sort of verbal agreement to secrecy. They heard a rumor through unofficial channels, and when they called Sony to ask about it, they were threatened. Sony didn't politely ask them not to publish it, they placed demands on them. They were dicks about it.
Was this "Evil" for Sony? I don't know if I'd go that far. But it was most certainly stupid. Kotaku isn't the end all of video games, but it is a popular site, and is a potential source of lots of good free PR. They don't have to kiss Kotaku's ass if they don't want to, but going out of your way to piss them off isn't smart either.
And so now instead of a discussion about the PS3's new features, we're discussing how Sony treated a random website. No matter which side of this debate you fall on, how is it in Sony's interest to have the discussion derailed like that? I don't buy the "any publicity is good publicity line". When you're dealing with a market that's knowledgeable about your product (I have no doubts that 95% of the hardcore gamers out there keep up with video game news on the internet to some degree), then bad press is not what you want.
Sony just keeps making their own lives harder. If I was a Nintendo or MS Xbox division exec, I'd constantly be laughing my ass off at Sony.
This story isn't about some exciting new program, or some cool technology, or even an updated version of a popular piece of software. This is a report about a non-critical bug for a web browser. A web browser with limited market share and a number of good alternatives. Oh, and the developer has already acknowledged it, explained it, and described some of the progress being made to fix it. This isn't about technology, it's about a minor decision in the production of a web browser not being the optimal solution.
Slashdot covers a huge range of topics, a lot of information goes through it each day. It's constantly bring in new editors, and they get craploads of submissions each day. Keeping all of that in mind, I just fail to see how anything in this article was worthy of a front page spot on the site. I'm not calling for the firing of the editors or anything, just making fun of them a little bit for posting something silly.
Hey wow, a piece of software isn't perfect, and the developers are trying to fix it. This is an exciting new paradigm for programming. Thanks for keeping me updated!
As far as I know, there's still an AASP called the Computer Shoppe on Vets, closer to Bonnabel. I haven't been there in a couple of years, so my memory of it is a little hazy, but if they're not mac only they're at least 75% mac in terms of floor space. It's a small operation, the guy who owned the place was the repair technician. It was a little expensive as I remember it, although I was a broke college student at the time so everything seemed extra pricey to me.
But yeah, give us an Apple Store!
I find the Metarie CompUSA to be far more pleasant to go to than Best Buy, Circuit City or any other computer place I can think of. Compared to its alternatives it's quiet inside, parking is much easier, and the sales people have never been pushy with me. While I don't have anything against ordering online, sometimes I decide I want something, and I want it today, and saving a few bucks is not worth it to me if it means I have to wait three days to get it.
I wish we could get an Apple Store. Apple is just the kind of trendy retailer that New Orleans should be trying to get to open up shop on Canal Street, if they ever want to make good on their grand plans to turn that back into a decent strip. Maybe one day...
There won't be an HD capable Wii in the sense that it'll be the same old console just with higher resolution output. While I don't doubt that Nintendo will release another console in the future, it will be an all new platform, just like each of their previous home consoles have "replaced" their predecessors. This new console will likely support HD, but it will not just be an upgraded Wii. It will be an entirely new system. Games created for it will not work on the Wii.
If Nintendo does release an upgraded Wii, it'll include incidental features, like the ability to play DVD movies. Nintendo knows better than to fracture their marketshare.
Yeah, I know that iTunes is going to be a big part of it, and things like syncing contacts and whatnot aren't terribly complicated, but could still stand to be made easier and prettier. And while I'm sure they'll find a decent way to do it, part of me is uncomfortable with the continuously increasing amount of responsibility Apple is dumping on iTunes. They've been so good about cramming only what is needed into their hardware, it'd be a shame to see them bloat the software to a point where it really starts to suffer.
I think most people with enough familiarity with digital devices to be interested in the iPhone will probably expect it to settle out along similar lines as the iPod. An initial expensive model or two, which will gradually branch out to a range of options that vary in size, functionality, appearance, and of course...price.
There will likely always be a $600 model, it'll just steadily improve in capabilities while the abilities of the previous $600 model finds their way into the new cheaper versions.
Although I will say that one reason that this strategy has worked so well with the iPod is that all version tied in very well with iTunes, which is an excellent piece of software. I don't know what sort of computer software Apple might have that will augment the use of the iPhone, but I think that that could be a big piece of the puzzle.
I think when some real details, or at least some meaty rumors of the next round of consoles starts showing up, that's when the switch will happen. When someone uses the term next-gen, you're unlikely to think they're talking about the PS4, because nobody knows anything worth talking about it. When that becomes a problem, the semantics will change, probably rather quickly, and except for a couple wandering slashdot posts, nobody will really notice.
Yup. Like I said, I'm not heavily involved in the decisions that my corp/alliance makes at the higher levels, but those who make the decisions are reasonably open about what choices have been made, what options were considered, and why they took the path that they did. The leadership is good about listening to our comments, answering our questions, and letting us argue with them and each other over what we're doing/didn't do/should've done. It's all quite entertaining, and even when I don't have much time to spend in game, I still generally keep up on the current events via our corp's forums. The game is definitely much larger than just flying around in a spaceship blowing up random stuff.
Indeed, I'm involved in a major alliance, and while I'm basically just a rank and file member, I do get to see much of the competition that goes on. It's very entertaining. I'm getting close to a year in game, but have never made any significant isk, mostly due to spending the majority of my limited time in game fighting in cheap ships. But I still have fun :)
No kidding. The first time I had 4 people here to play, I put excite truck in and spent like 10 minutes trying to figure out how to get to 4 player mode. It took me that long to actually look at the packaging to see that it didn't actually support 4 people, because I never would've guessed that that was the case. Lame.
Wait...are you saying that there are federal statistics that show that over 1/4 of the people in prison in this country are illegal aliens who came to the US for the sole purpose of committing violent crimes?
I find that incredibly hard to believe, and would love to see some sort of citation for where you got that info.
Mine veldpar in high sec for 14 hours per day, or run crappy courier missions until your eyes glaze over. Both of those exciting jobs can be yours in EVE-Online!
The game also tends to be pretty good about ramping up the risk as you progress in the game. 30% of the value of a ship gets to be more significant as your ship costs increase of course, and many of the rarer and more valuable ships insure much more poorly in relation to their average sale value. Also, after you've spent a lot on an expensive ship, you're likely going to want to fill it with the more expensive modules, further increasing your risk. The loot drop system saves some modules, but in PVP, you shouldn't count on being the one that gets the loot from your wreck.
While I think it's kind of silly that you suggest that they should stop making changes/fixes/improvements to the game because you don't like change, I do think that they need to be much more open about the specifics of some of their changes, and how certain parts of the gameplay work in general. There is plenty of confusion about how things like log-off timers and such work, and it often has to be figured out by trial and error. Sometimes it makes me wonder if anyone at CCP really knows how it works, or whether it was actually designed to work that way or it's just sort of what happened.
As for having to log-on to switch skill training, most other games don't let you progress at all while you're not logged in, EVE is already way ahead in that respect. Also, many people have alts that they train up in order to sell for in game currency, and anything that makes them work even a little harder to convert their real life wealth into in-game wealth is ok by me.
Yeah, but I sort of expected this to happen. Try looking at it a year ago from a publisher's point of view. Nintendo (who's had dropping marketshare for a couple generations) is releasing a new console with significantly inferior graphics capabilities, and an entirely new control mechanism that is not only untested, but will also make cross-platform games more difficult... you have no idea how this console is going to do in the marketplace. It'll either sell like hotcakes, or it'll totally bomb. Committing a lot of resources to develop for it is a risk. Maybe it's safer to just sit tight for a little bit, and see how it shakes out.
Nintendo was already all-in on this bet, so they of course have lots of games in the works, and Ubisoft saw a chance to get in early if it went well, so they put a lot of effort in. And it's worked out well for both of them. For other big publishers, they may have passed over a chance to make some good money at the beginning, but they didn't really lose anything either. Now that the Wii has been well received and is shipping tons of units, they can feel confident about committing some resources to development for it, and they won't have much trouble getting their games noticed either.
It takes a while to make a game. Seeing as the Wii has only had a few months to prove itself so far, we shouldn't be surprised that we haven't heard that much as of yet. In a few more months, when some of the newly convinced publishers have enough material ready that they can start making announcements and sending out screen shots, hopefully there will be plenty of games to choose from.
If Microsoft, or Apple, or anyone else wants to take a sucky sucky system that's sucked as much as anything can suck for years, and make it better then I'm all for it.
It's not like "voice mail" is some sort of open standard that anyone can implement and achieve interoperability with everyone else. That's what pissed off people when MS did it. They were poisoning something good. Current mobile voice mail systems are entirely crap, and Apple has convinced Cingular to help them build a better system.
MS changed the way video game consoles work (Xbox Live, Harddrives) in order to make a better product. That's completely different from when they leave their CSS rendering buggy and screwed up for years in order to break cross-browser compatibility.
Sure it is. It doesn't matter how long you live, 300 years is still a lot of time. When I'm riding in a car, sometimes it takes me all of five minutes to get restlessly bored. And five minutes is not a substantial portion of my lifetime.
That's true I guess, except that I don't see how any extra terrestrial species capable of making "casual" contact with us would have much to fear from us in terms of galactic war. I guess if we had a few months warning of their ship entering low earth orbit, we could set up a mission to have a shuttle suicide into it, but I'm not sure that would work too well.
Unless maybe Earth is a bargaining chip in some treaty between two other space powers, maybe arguing over who gets to rebroadcast our TV shows to the rest of the universe. I can see contact screwing that all up.