How about when my mom called me while I was at my job ( I don't even work with computers, I renovate houses), and asked me why her laptop wouldn't turn on. I told her I didn't know, since she lives in New Jersey and I live in New Orleans, and I had never even seen that laptop before. After a few questions, she admitted that she had spilled iced tea into it. Then her line of questioning turned towards whether or not the techies at her office would be able to tell how she broke it (her job had given her that laptop).
She kills computers faster by accident then I could with a shotgun.
The other big change is that a lot of blogs are written by non-techies, as the automation of all the geeky stuff has allowed just about anyone to publish easily. Sure, anyone could get a geocities website before, but that doesn't mean they could throw together a useable website.
And now that these people don't have to spend time figuring out webpages, they can spend their time figuring out politics, or video games, or popcorn, or whatever their blog was about.
I remember teaching myself HTML back in the day, and I just wrote about myself because after all the futzing with making my website look decent, I didn't feel like doing anything more intelligent than talking about myself.
No, nintendo went for exactly the right market when they first started making video games. The NES became what it is because of kids. Over time, the demographics have shifted, and a lot of those kids have become teenagers/young adults.
But you have to remember a couple things. First off, there's still plenty of kids being born every day. Which means that that market that Nintendo still has a grasp on is just as lucrative now as it was in the late 80's. Probalby more so.
Also, the teenager demographic that's so big now is going to continue to get older. And they'll still want to play games as the become more mature. I'm 24, and I don't find mario games to be insultingly childish. I don't find them childish at all really. I do feel some nostalgic connection with mario and link and whanot, but that's hardly a negative thing.
And let me also mention that I've got friends my age who are having kids of their own now. If I currently had children, I can think of a lot more nintendo games that I'd sit them down in front of than PS2 or Xbox games. When the day comes, I'll be happy to give Nintendo some more money in exchange for some fun games to play with my kids.
And your whole argument loses a lot of ground when you consider the fact that Nintendo's games aren't all aimed at the youth market. There's stuff like metroid (which came with your DS) and resident evil and whatnot. Plus if you pick up a controller and play most of their other games for more than a minute, you'll find some pretty deep and cool gameplay. Mario Tennis for example. Do you honestly think there are many seven year old gamers that understand the difference between top spin and back spin?
I like to think of it less as diluting and more as expanding. I guess I just see it as a positive thing. Each Mario game isn't as big a deal now as in the past because there's just more of them. How is that a bad thing?
Are we really worse off now that nintendo is no longer releasing just a mario platformer every few years? Do you miss all the hype they put into it? Sure, no one's going to make a movie like The Wizard to give us all a sneak preview of Mario Baseball, but I think I'm ok with that.
Ok, so Mario Sunshine isn't your thing. Go try Mario Kart, or Mario Golf, or Mario Tennis. They're all good, solid games in their own right, and they also build upon this imaginary world that Nintendo has been cultivating for decades.
This world that they have created has such power to create opportunities for gameplay. Mario Kart has pirahna plants that bite you, little walking bombs running all over the courses, and all other sorts of weird ass stuff. Stuff that doesn't really make any sense at all except within the history of the Mario franchise.
For any game to be sucessful, it's going to have to help the player suspend some disbelief (except maybe for some puzzle games). Placing a game within a fantasy world that we're already familiar with makes that so much easier.
I would think that they're probably a little depressed and maybe sympathetic for American engineers, when they observe all the beaurocracy nonsense that keeps a wealthy and hi-tech nation from fulfilling its potential in something as fascinating as space exploration.
I'm not a fellow scientist, and I sure do find it sad.
Well, there's nothing wrong with being innovative, my point was that I don't that innovation should be the most important criteria in deciding the quality of a game.
I don't mind paying monthly for a game as long as new content is constantly being added. I do hate the fact that WoW requires you to spend $50 up front just to have the right to send them $15 per month. That's why I haven't bought the game yet, despite having a blast during the open beta.
And I hear ya on the lucas arts adventure stuff. Day of the Tentacle is definately one of my all time favorites.
Amen to that. I thank Counter Strike for a lot of my time management skills. Fitting in 3 hours a day of CS while at the same time trying to earn an architecture degree really taught me how to get things done efficiently.
I'm all for innovation, but really, "breaking new ground" is not the most important part of making a fun game. Not to take away from HL2, cause I know lots of people are having lots of fun playing with it, but even if you think it has more new ideas than WOW, that doesn't mean it has to be a better game.
I could design an new, innovative racing game that you control with your computer's microphone by yelling TURN LEFT when you want to go left, or BRAKES! BRAKES BRAKES! when you want to stop. I doubt anyone's done that before. Of course, no one's done it before because it's a stupid idea.
Innovation is vital to the game industry, but gameplay is even more important. And gameplay can sometimes take a lot of iterations to get right. WoW is an impressive example of learning from previous attempts and really getting a lot of it right. And that's what makes a fun game. The word "polish" I don't think helps, because gameplay is more fundamental then all the details.
I don't think it's that as much as trying to keep the playing field level. Being able to trade items in general is pretty important to the game, especially the social aspect, which is the sort of the whole point to a game like this.
Keeping it fair is part of keeping the social interactions civil. Allowing people to further their in the game character by actions outside of the game can be unfair, because the developers don't have any control over individual's resources outside of the game.
An example is if I go around being a dick to everyone, my character should suffer in the game, because noone will be interested in helping me, and parts of the game are designed to require teamwork. So I can't progress as well as the more sociable people, and therefore the amount of damage I can do to the game is lessened. But if I can just go onto ebay and buy all the powerful weapons because my dad is a rich brain surgeon and I have a $200 per week allowance, I can gain a bunch of stuff in world that I didn't earn.
The more freedom you give the players, the more potentials for abuse there will be. Too much freedom can create an environment that's complete chaos, and might not be as much fun. There's definitely a balance to be reached.
It's not like real life, where you have basic rights that the developer should just cope with. You're not forced into the game, so if you don't like it, cancel your subscription. If you think the developers are blaming you for the game's problems, then tell them to get bent. A lot of the rest of us think they made a heck of a game, and we appreciate that they're trying to keep it as fun as possible for as many people as possible.
Is it really possible for the GPL to say something that broad and still be enforceable? Can it say that by violating part of the GPL, your right to use BSD licensed stuff is terminated? It seems a bit too arbitrary, legally at least.
Why stop there? How about, if you enforce a patent against something GPL'd, you give up your right to buy strawberry milkshake at mcdonalds? If you improperly distribute this code, your rights to use indoor plumbing terminate. That'll show those corporate punks!
Alright, I hear ya, but in response to your point number 2, here's how it's all been going down according to what I've read and understood.
Apple doesn't actually know the exact person responsible for this particular leak. They want to find out who it was, and think that some of these rumor sites might have info useful for tracking the guy down. The legal system provides ways to get at that information. Sure, Apple could've called up O'grady's powerpage and offered a shiny new G5 as a trade for the guy's name, but that way is open to many different types of abuse, and I'd imagine has some other legal ramifications that Apple wants to avoid.
In many cases, negotiation and settlement is the goal of these lawsuits. The fact that a lawsuit gets put in place first just provides a little extra motivation to bring the other party to the table and talk. It's sort of sad that you need to threaten people to get them to own up to their mistakes, but that's the result of a culture that doesn't demand responsibility often enough.
If you're tired of hearing about lawsuits, then just stop reading about them. They're a fact of life and business. You can not run any business any reasonable amount of time without running into them. They aren't an inherently evil or wrong thing, they're just a way of making sure that people do things or don't do things according to contracts and legal precedents and whatnot.
Sure jackasses like SCO are a destructive abuse of the system, but that doesn't mean anytime a company files a lawsuit against someone that they're making the world a worse place.
Your statement about the execs duking it out behind a woodshed doesn't even make sense in the Apple case that the article is about. They've filed a lawsuit against an individual who violated an NDA. You'd rather they send some goons to track him down and beat the snot out of him?
Six Flags! Their theme parks have had great sucess using looney toons and nickelodeon characters. Imagine what they could do with a brand as recognizable as Apple!
Just to disagre, I think Geodesic domes are extremely ugly. Fascinating things they are, sure, but they do not make an attractive house.
More importantly, with a different emphisis on design, I'm guessing you could probably make these Cal-earth structures look significantly different than what that website showed. A geodesic dome has to look like a geodesic dome. Unless you completely cover it with other stuff, in which case, why bother with the dome anyways?
But still, any attempts to create more sustainable, efficient homes is good by me.
This isn't a criminal court case, it's a civil court. It's different.
Sometimes two parties have a disagreement, and this civil court is the last place for the issue to be settled. That's it purpose. That purpose could be seriously hindered if by participating in the court, you lose all rights to privacy.
Think of it on a more personal level. If we agreed that you'd send me $1000 to purchase adorable pictures of my cat, but I didn't send the goods after I got the money. You might take me to court to try and get your money back. And you'd be in the right. But what if somehow during that court case the fact that a year earlier, you sent me $2000 to purchase some nasty pictures of my roommate naked. That transaction might have some relevance to the cat pictures issue, but you might not want your mom to know about all those pictures of Doug that you bought. Should you have to just accept the loss of the $1000 in exchange for a right to your privacy? I don't think so.
Now, that's just a quick example I made up off of the top of my head, and this SCO/IBM case is probably a lot more complicated, but I think the general point stands. A fear of a loss of privacy/confidentiality should not stop someone from using the courts.
because back in the day, when Windows 3.1 was the fanciest thing in the PC world, Mac OS trounced all over it in almost every way imaginable. Microsoft fanboys just needed something to criticize. And that's what they found.
It's an interesting concept though. If you don't think much about it at all, just say, ok, dragging to the trash ejects a disk, then you can go about your life with no problem. If you ponder it for a long time you'll come up with some of the rationales that other posters have shared. But if you think about it just superficially, it sort of sounds like a dumb idea. I think that's why it's still complained about.
I may spend $50 on Doom 3, and not find it all that fun, but it's still a better investment than an MMOG. Maybe the game wasn't that great, but a month later, I can still run it, I'll be able to play around with whatever mods have been created for it, I can even hack at some mods myself if I want to. Or I can sell it or trade it with a friend or something.
If I get bored of World of Warcraft after a couple weeks, then what am I stuck with? A game that'll be useless in a month. If a year from now I'm bored on a rainy day and I find it while cleaning out my desk, I can't even throw it into the CD tray and play with it for a couple hours without subscribing again. There aren't going to be any mods to it, because only Blizzard hosts the servers (as well as other reasons). I'm not sure what their policy is in regards to me selling/trading/giving away my copy of the game. Is that possible?
Overall, an MMOG with a subscription isn't a bad idea. $15 per month is an excellent deal if you get a lot of enjoyment out of it. But a $50 retail price with a "free month" really just means that you're paying fifty buck for the first month. I don't care about an instruction booklet, or some physical CDs. I downloaded the WoW beta, it went through a bittorrent client. Blizzard didn't even pay for the bandwidth. Why can't I get the actual game like that? I'm not paying them that much money up front just for the right to give them another 50 cents each day.
mature doesn't necessarily mean "true to life" or even involving humans. It just means the humor could be more crass, the stories could be more complicated, etc. Adults are probably more eager to escape from reality than little kids are, because working all day to pay the bills sucks.
The Simpsons may appeal to kids, but not beyond the level of little catch phrases. I appreciate it way more now than I did when I was in middle school. It is targeted towards adults, it's just mostly acceptable for kids because it's on broadcast TV.
Yeah, but it's not always as simple as looking at the potential market. While the total Mac market is much smaller than the windows market, the amount of competition is generally much less, making it easier for a small developer to get recognized and make a name for themselves.
The Mac shareware market has stayed fairly active and seems to be reasonably successful, for a couple of other reasons I think. While not as bad anymore, macs cost a premium over a windows box, so they're often owned by people with a little more spending money, and who are more likely to cough up $15-20 to register a cool little app. I'm also going to make the bold claim that mac users are a little more appreciative of quality in their software, so a well designed application will be rewarded. Third, the smaller market share means a lot less support calls/emails, which could easily eat up all the time of one guy writing a nifty utility in his basement over the weekends.
Not to mention that for all their similarities, there are still some substantial differences between OSX and Windows. Perhaps implementing something like konfabulator was a lot easier on a mac.
Re:Open Beta is going to be awefully short then!
on
WoW Street Date Announced
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Yeah, this open beta isn't really a beta in that it's not meant to test anything. It's really like a demo. A few weeks to get us hooked so we'll all go buy it when it hits the shelves. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
That's not what he said, jackass. He wasn't saying we should just take free speech away from people we don't like. Laws tend to take away rights in exchange for safety/order/efficiency/whatever. And hopefully the trade-off is worth it. Your parent post was implying dismay that a similar trade-off is almost looking appealing as people find more destructive ways to utilize the anonymity that the internet can provide.
Yeah, but the way these things tend to work, when a new system comes out, developers generally have to work their way through a few games before they can really push a system to its limits, as they learn its strengths and weaknesses, and master its capabilities. So to some degree, the first round of games is already handicapped in regards to its ability to exploit the hardware. And now Sony is asking developers to intentionally go even easier on it?
With laptops and whatnot, different power levels to the cpu makes a lot of sense, because most of what is done on a computer is easy stuff like email or word processing. Games have always been one area that faithfully pushes whatever hardware is available to the limit. I wouldn't think many developers would appreciate being told to hold back.
Slashdot Mirror
She kills computers faster by accident then I could with a shotgun.
The other big change is that a lot of blogs are written by non-techies, as the automation of all the geeky stuff has allowed just about anyone to publish easily. Sure, anyone could get a geocities website before, but that doesn't mean they could throw together a useable website.
And now that these people don't have to spend time figuring out webpages, they can spend their time figuring out politics, or video games, or popcorn, or whatever their blog was about.
I remember teaching myself HTML back in the day, and I just wrote about myself because after all the futzing with making my website look decent, I didn't feel like doing anything more intelligent than talking about myself.
No, nintendo went for exactly the right market when they first started making video games. The NES became what it is because of kids. Over time, the demographics have shifted, and a lot of those kids have become teenagers/young adults.
But you have to remember a couple things. First off, there's still plenty of kids being born every day. Which means that that market that Nintendo still has a grasp on is just as lucrative now as it was in the late 80's. Probalby more so.
Also, the teenager demographic that's so big now is going to continue to get older. And they'll still want to play games as the become more mature. I'm 24, and I don't find mario games to be insultingly childish. I don't find them childish at all really. I do feel some nostalgic connection with mario and link and whanot, but that's hardly a negative thing.
And let me also mention that I've got friends my age who are having kids of their own now. If I currently had children, I can think of a lot more nintendo games that I'd sit them down in front of than PS2 or Xbox games. When the day comes, I'll be happy to give Nintendo some more money in exchange for some fun games to play with my kids.
And your whole argument loses a lot of ground when you consider the fact that Nintendo's games aren't all aimed at the youth market. There's stuff like metroid (which came with your DS) and resident evil and whatnot. Plus if you pick up a controller and play most of their other games for more than a minute, you'll find some pretty deep and cool gameplay. Mario Tennis for example. Do you honestly think there are many seven year old gamers that understand the difference between top spin and back spin?
I like to think of it less as diluting and more as expanding. I guess I just see it as a positive thing. Each Mario game isn't as big a deal now as in the past because there's just more of them. How is that a bad thing?
Are we really worse off now that nintendo is no longer releasing just a mario platformer every few years? Do you miss all the hype they put into it? Sure, no one's going to make a movie like The Wizard to give us all a sneak preview of Mario Baseball, but I think I'm ok with that.
Ok, so Mario Sunshine isn't your thing. Go try Mario Kart, or Mario Golf, or Mario Tennis. They're all good, solid games in their own right, and they also build upon this imaginary world that Nintendo has been cultivating for decades.
This world that they have created has such power to create opportunities for gameplay. Mario Kart has pirahna plants that bite you, little walking bombs running all over the courses, and all other sorts of weird ass stuff. Stuff that doesn't really make any sense at all except within the history of the Mario franchise.
For any game to be sucessful, it's going to have to help the player suspend some disbelief (except maybe for some puzzle games). Placing a game within a fantasy world that we're already familiar with makes that so much easier.
I would think that they're probably a little depressed and maybe sympathetic for American engineers, when they observe all the beaurocracy nonsense that keeps a wealthy and hi-tech nation from fulfilling its potential in something as fascinating as space exploration.
I'm not a fellow scientist, and I sure do find it sad.
Does it get the wireless multiplayer games job done? Yeah, mine doesn't either.
Well, there's nothing wrong with being innovative, my point was that I don't that innovation should be the most important criteria in deciding the quality of a game.
I don't mind paying monthly for a game as long as new content is constantly being added. I do hate the fact that WoW requires you to spend $50 up front just to have the right to send them $15 per month. That's why I haven't bought the game yet, despite having a blast during the open beta.
And I hear ya on the lucas arts adventure stuff. Day of the Tentacle is definately one of my all time favorites.
Amen to that. I thank Counter Strike for a lot of my time management skills. Fitting in 3 hours a day of CS while at the same time trying to earn an architecture degree really taught me how to get things done efficiently.
I'm all for innovation, but really, "breaking new ground" is not the most important part of making a fun game. Not to take away from HL2, cause I know lots of people are having lots of fun playing with it, but even if you think it has more new ideas than WOW, that doesn't mean it has to be a better game.
I could design an new, innovative racing game that you control with your computer's microphone by yelling TURN LEFT when you want to go left, or BRAKES! BRAKES BRAKES! when you want to stop. I doubt anyone's done that before. Of course, no one's done it before because it's a stupid idea.
Innovation is vital to the game industry, but gameplay is even more important. And gameplay can sometimes take a lot of iterations to get right. WoW is an impressive example of learning from previous attempts and really getting a lot of it right. And that's what makes a fun game. The word "polish" I don't think helps, because gameplay is more fundamental then all the details.
I don't think it's that as much as trying to keep the playing field level. Being able to trade items in general is pretty important to the game, especially the social aspect, which is the sort of the whole point to a game like this.
Keeping it fair is part of keeping the social interactions civil. Allowing people to further their in the game character by actions outside of the game can be unfair, because the developers don't have any control over individual's resources outside of the game.
An example is if I go around being a dick to everyone, my character should suffer in the game, because noone will be interested in helping me, and parts of the game are designed to require teamwork. So I can't progress as well as the more sociable people, and therefore the amount of damage I can do to the game is lessened. But if I can just go onto ebay and buy all the powerful weapons because my dad is a rich brain surgeon and I have a $200 per week allowance, I can gain a bunch of stuff in world that I didn't earn.
The more freedom you give the players, the more potentials for abuse there will be. Too much freedom can create an environment that's complete chaos, and might not be as much fun. There's definitely a balance to be reached.
It's not like real life, where you have basic rights that the developer should just cope with. You're not forced into the game, so if you don't like it, cancel your subscription. If you think the developers are blaming you for the game's problems, then tell them to get bent. A lot of the rest of us think they made a heck of a game, and we appreciate that they're trying to keep it as fun as possible for as many people as possible.
Is it really possible for the GPL to say something that broad and still be enforceable? Can it say that by violating part of the GPL, your right to use BSD licensed stuff is terminated? It seems a bit too arbitrary, legally at least.
Why stop there? How about, if you enforce a patent against something GPL'd, you give up your right to buy strawberry milkshake at mcdonalds? If you improperly distribute this code, your rights to use indoor plumbing terminate. That'll show those corporate punks!
Alright, I hear ya, but in response to your point number 2, here's how it's all been going down according to what I've read and understood.
Apple doesn't actually know the exact person responsible for this particular leak. They want to find out who it was, and think that some of these rumor sites might have info useful for tracking the guy down. The legal system provides ways to get at that information. Sure, Apple could've called up O'grady's powerpage and offered a shiny new G5 as a trade for the guy's name, but that way is open to many different types of abuse, and I'd imagine has some other legal ramifications that Apple wants to avoid.
In many cases, negotiation and settlement is the goal of these lawsuits. The fact that a lawsuit gets put in place first just provides a little extra motivation to bring the other party to the table and talk. It's sort of sad that you need to threaten people to get them to own up to their mistakes, but that's the result of a culture that doesn't demand responsibility often enough.
If you're tired of hearing about lawsuits, then just stop reading about them. They're a fact of life and business. You can not run any business any reasonable amount of time without running into them. They aren't an inherently evil or wrong thing, they're just a way of making sure that people do things or don't do things according to contracts and legal precedents and whatnot.
Sure jackasses like SCO are a destructive abuse of the system, but that doesn't mean anytime a company files a lawsuit against someone that they're making the world a worse place.
Your statement about the execs duking it out behind a woodshed doesn't even make sense in the Apple case that the article is about. They've filed a lawsuit against an individual who violated an NDA. You'd rather they send some goons to track him down and beat the snot out of him?
Six Flags! Their theme parks have had great sucess using looney toons and nickelodeon characters. Imagine what they could do with a brand as recognizable as Apple!
Just to disagre, I think Geodesic domes are extremely ugly. Fascinating things they are, sure, but they do not make an attractive house.
More importantly, with a different emphisis on design, I'm guessing you could probably make these Cal-earth structures look significantly different than what that website showed. A geodesic dome has to look like a geodesic dome. Unless you completely cover it with other stuff, in which case, why bother with the dome anyways?
But still, any attempts to create more sustainable, efficient homes is good by me.
This isn't a criminal court case, it's a civil court. It's different.
Sometimes two parties have a disagreement, and this civil court is the last place for the issue to be settled. That's it purpose. That purpose could be seriously hindered if by participating in the court, you lose all rights to privacy.
Think of it on a more personal level. If we agreed that you'd send me $1000 to purchase adorable pictures of my cat, but I didn't send the goods after I got the money. You might take me to court to try and get your money back. And you'd be in the right. But what if somehow during that court case the fact that a year earlier, you sent me $2000 to purchase some nasty pictures of my roommate naked. That transaction might have some relevance to the cat pictures issue, but you might not want your mom to know about all those pictures of Doug that you bought. Should you have to just accept the loss of the $1000 in exchange for a right to your privacy? I don't think so.
Now, that's just a quick example I made up off of the top of my head, and this SCO/IBM case is probably a lot more complicated, but I think the general point stands. A fear of a loss of privacy/confidentiality should not stop someone from using the courts.
because back in the day, when Windows 3.1 was the fanciest thing in the PC world, Mac OS trounced all over it in almost every way imaginable. Microsoft fanboys just needed something to criticize. And that's what they found.
It's an interesting concept though. If you don't think much about it at all, just say, ok, dragging to the trash ejects a disk, then you can go about your life with no problem. If you ponder it for a long time you'll come up with some of the rationales that other posters have shared. But if you think about it just superficially, it sort of sounds like a dumb idea. I think that's why it's still complained about.
I may spend $50 on Doom 3, and not find it all that fun, but it's still a better investment than an MMOG. Maybe the game wasn't that great, but a month later, I can still run it, I'll be able to play around with whatever mods have been created for it, I can even hack at some mods myself if I want to. Or I can sell it or trade it with a friend or something.
If I get bored of World of Warcraft after a couple weeks, then what am I stuck with? A game that'll be useless in a month. If a year from now I'm bored on a rainy day and I find it while cleaning out my desk, I can't even throw it into the CD tray and play with it for a couple hours without subscribing again. There aren't going to be any mods to it, because only Blizzard hosts the servers (as well as other reasons). I'm not sure what their policy is in regards to me selling/trading/giving away my copy of the game. Is that possible?
Overall, an MMOG with a subscription isn't a bad idea. $15 per month is an excellent deal if you get a lot of enjoyment out of it. But a $50 retail price with a "free month" really just means that you're paying fifty buck for the first month. I don't care about an instruction booklet, or some physical CDs. I downloaded the WoW beta, it went through a bittorrent client. Blizzard didn't even pay for the bandwidth. Why can't I get the actual game like that? I'm not paying them that much money up front just for the right to give them another 50 cents each day.
mature doesn't necessarily mean "true to life" or even involving humans. It just means the humor could be more crass, the stories could be more complicated, etc. Adults are probably more eager to escape from reality than little kids are, because working all day to pay the bills sucks.
The Simpsons may appeal to kids, but not beyond the level of little catch phrases. I appreciate it way more now than I did when I was in middle school. It is targeted towards adults, it's just mostly acceptable for kids because it's on broadcast TV.
woo! you can be my new best friend.
Yeah, but it's not always as simple as looking at the potential market. While the total Mac market is much smaller than the windows market, the amount of competition is generally much less, making it easier for a small developer to get recognized and make a name for themselves.
The Mac shareware market has stayed fairly active and seems to be reasonably successful, for a couple of other reasons I think. While not as bad anymore, macs cost a premium over a windows box, so they're often owned by people with a little more spending money, and who are more likely to cough up $15-20 to register a cool little app. I'm also going to make the bold claim that mac users are a little more appreciative of quality in their software, so a well designed application will be rewarded. Third, the smaller market share means a lot less support calls/emails, which could easily eat up all the time of one guy writing a nifty utility in his basement over the weekends.
Not to mention that for all their similarities, there are still some substantial differences between OSX and Windows. Perhaps implementing something like konfabulator was a lot easier on a mac.
Yeah, this open beta isn't really a beta in that it's not meant to test anything. It's really like a demo. A few weeks to get us hooked so we'll all go buy it when it hits the shelves. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
That's not what he said, jackass. He wasn't saying we should just take free speech away from people we don't like. Laws tend to take away rights in exchange for safety/order/efficiency/whatever. And hopefully the trade-off is worth it. Your parent post was implying dismay that a similar trade-off is almost looking appealing as people find more destructive ways to utilize the anonymity that the internet can provide.
Hell yeah! Spongebob kicks ass. I wish I had a friend like Patrick.
Yeah, but the way these things tend to work, when a new system comes out, developers generally have to work their way through a few games before they can really push a system to its limits, as they learn its strengths and weaknesses, and master its capabilities. So to some degree, the first round of games is already handicapped in regards to its ability to exploit the hardware. And now Sony is asking developers to intentionally go even easier on it?
With laptops and whatnot, different power levels to the cpu makes a lot of sense, because most of what is done on a computer is easy stuff like email or word processing. Games have always been one area that faithfully pushes whatever hardware is available to the limit. I wouldn't think many developers would appreciate being told to hold back.