Why is any mention of windows being usable considered trolling?
I am simply referring to the fact that people like to reference features of Desktop Linux that are not nearly done yet in comparison with features in Windows or Mac that are done. The difference is professional organized development teams. I would hate to have to remind people what life was like before Ubuntu *shudder*.
I am not an OS loyalist- I am a realist. I dual-boot Fedora 7 and Windows Vista. At one point, I used Ubuntu to play games and vista for everyday multimedia *cue laughter*. I am not kidding.
I recommend Mac OS X to my mother, Ubuntu to my girlfriend's sister (100% computer illiterate) and Windows Vista to my professional illustrator friend. Does this sound backwards? It really shouldn't. Ubuntu is as good as it gets for the modern casual internet user- but professionals still demand a massive overhead of backwards compatibility and professional support. And if you're a developer, I'm sorry but- visual studio can be excellent.
The point is, I try to give Ubuntu a shot every single generation, and something critical always keeps me from wiping windows. I am as hopeful as anyone else that the time of Linux is at hand, but partially because I think it'll spur beautiful competition from Sun and Microsoft.
For all these reasons, I do not tolerate people saying that unfinished features are considerable flack against gold windows features- I'm sorry if people view windows as being in constant beta, but it's just plain more stable. And don't tell me gnome is lightweight- i tried to run Ubuntu on a 1 Ghz P3 w/ 256 mb of ram, and it felt like Vista RC2 on a pc with 512 mb of ram.
Maybe 7.10 will let me add a tv to my desktop without skipping a heartbeat, but 7.04 did not. Why do I only mention Ubuntu? Because it's the only distro worth a damn to the masses.
I'd have to disagree. Vista is much quicker and easier and more stable than Fedora 7 and Ubuntu... I've seen both of these fail and crash doing the simplest task, but we give it special ed sort of failure space and forgiveness because it's community developed.
Try to imagine you're running Ubuntu, perhaps you're a regular user who's just switched from Windows, and you add a new monitor.
Wait. Where's my second desktop? I have to do WHAT? Home users are not unix geeks. Apple knows this WHY DON'T YOU? How often do you need to open a conf file in OS X?
And we talk about Vista consuming speed and power- but 10.5 Leopard can't run on an 800 mhz G4, and Ubuntu 7.10 runs Compiz and Gnome OUT OF THE BOX- have you ever tried to run gnome on a PC with 256 mb of RAM? I will give you a hint- Vista runs faster and XP waaay faster.
Companies like google have made things even easier. Someone can buy a brand new PC with Vista Home Basic and go to pack.google.com and voila!-- you've got an easy to use open distro that does way more than Ubuntu out of the box. A stable, working window manager- handler for every which device- an a media player that makes even Amarok look like an always beta piece of crap.
You want people to compile commercial software for Linux? Talk to Sun about binary compatibility. It's a lot easier for developers when they don't have to support their commercial product for 5 different OS's and compile it anew every generation or two.
The point is- when linux is done, we can talk about Microsoft giving up and disappearing. Until then, their market is clear and strong. WORKING BUDGET OS THAT IS ALSO FINISHED. Stop talking about how great linux will be when it's done. It's been around for 15 years.
In my experience developing games on the playstation 3, Linux is fine for gaming.;) Eventually, companies will invest in better opengl implementations for linux- such as the one used by... you know... Linux Gaming Machines. Sony has some sweet libraries for it.
The Japanese, Brazilians and Ukrainians have started fielding nuclear tipped ICBMs? All those nations are nuclear-enabled. Ukraine has Russian nuclear weapons, and even Brazil had a missile program at one point- although I believe it might be defunct now.
I specifically mentioned Japan as an exception, since they're very anti-nuke- but they don't need our missile technology.
Yay! The only thing that can adequately combat Microsoft FUD- Apple FUD!
Can we go do something else now?
No one is just "anti-microsoft"- they're either pro-mac, or pro-linux. Anti-FUD is also FUD. It's just as stupid to read. And none of those Microsoft statements were even FUD- just marketing talk from a large corporation. Apple does this kind of crap all the time- as does Novell, or Sun.
Any nation that has anything to contribute to the scientific space movement already has the ballistic technology necessary to do so.
Don't you ever find it odd that the only nations that are space-based are also nuclear-missile equipped?
This isn't about terrorists, its about maniac leaders. No matter how liberal you are, the Iranians are still dangerous in their current state. North Korea is run by a madman. This isn't about keeping technology from Russia or the UK or Japan... Iraqi insurgents won't build ICBM's- Venezuela or Iran will.
Having nuclear ICBM capabilities is always set before having scientific space rockets in nations' priorities- give me an example (other than Japan) where this isn't the case.
You're certainly right. I believe building a unique and proprietary window system on Mac was a design decision against using X. Like Unix, X is another abstract thing. I mean, X.org is sort of a kludge in and of itself- it's almost a unique window system also running an X compatibility layer. Supporting X11 in its true form is simply not important, since it's merely a protocol. X.org is more or less a collection of drivers.
One of OS X's strengths is that they dropped the X legacy/weight from a sort of traditional unix system.
I'm not sure whether Aqua is more DPS or X11. Perhaps an Apple employee can pop in and give us a quick clarification.:p
Apple clearly uses their BSD subsystem as a license-free compatibility layer- it's clear to me that proper POSIX compliance was not the most important factor in the system design. Then again, Linux isn't really POSIX compliant either- but that's another tale for another time.
I call Mac OS X a 'specialized' desktop unix. Not a better unix, per se- but unix is an abstract thing. For the purposes of running a desktop workstation, it's hard to beat the performance and capability you get out of OS X. The interface goes a really long way in making it a practical system.
X11 in OS X is simply a compatibility layer- it just connects the X calls to Aqua's draw functions. I consider it to be a bit of a temporary solution until all relevant open source projects write an aqua interface. I'm sure Apple feels similarly.
Actually, StarOffice costs $75, I think- so 85 for MS Office 2007 (for those of you who have not used it, it's an amazing product) is actually quite a steal.
What you're getting for free is just the bones of a comparable office product. Students can do far more with the more professional Microsoft suite- plus, I don't know if any of you have tried to get a clerical job with OOo on your resume- they don't bite.
If you think rocket-science is all about space, you're utterly naive.
Of course they're censoring the Saturn V- it's an extremely complex ICBM (Inter-continental Ballistic Missile). Believe it or not, there are few countries out there with that level of rocketry available- notice that Iran and North Korea do not have ICBM's.
They have every right to censor this- and they should. The fewer nations have the ability to use this, the better.
Our enemies are still 50+ years behind us in ballistics. Recognize that the longer we keep this out of their hands, the better.
There's a good reason the space race was restricted to the cold war, and did not continue afterwards.
Let's see- you take your unix kernel, build a fully rewritten, GL-optimized X Windows system... solidify your GNUStep libraries until they're fully compatible with cocoa-
Then be certain you're only running systems with SSE3 or above, since all the intel binaries are optimized for that.
Whoops- also gotta build a compatible CoreAudio system.
Oh no, looks like you're now Apple.
If you're using Mac OS X, you're already using a NeXT compatibility layer on top of a streamlined X and a really high end specialized desktop unix. The question is- why are you trying to run linux? You're using a much higher end unix system that supports X11 and has a full BSD layer, with package managers available. Why don't you just run linux apps in OS X?
Making an OS X "compatibility layer" would essentially just require you to create a shoddy set of OS X libraries- something Apple's already done better.
Take advantage of your resources.
Let me repeat this - OS X is a "mac compatibility layer" running on top of a unix kernel already- it's a totally insane waste of time to re-implement it. If you're that interested in making OS X, you should work for Apple.
We have two open standards. The Microsoft (a big company) open standard is setup to be backwards compatible with all the weird crap imposed by their prior formats (which makes sense, since documents tend to be stored in these formats), whereas as ODF is completely new format pushed by another massive software company... Sun (and sometimes IBM, another friendly open source lollipop factory).
What does this have to do with anything? Last I checked, OpenOffice can save in xml and Microsoft Word can save in ODF (with a plugin). This is like a cock-flexing match between the FSF and Microsoft and it's basically irrelevant to 99.99% of users and government employees.
If ODF, as it stands, were released by Microsoft and called Microsoft ODF, we'd have the same level of FSF, GNU, etc pushback.
Isn't mainstream software development about adaptation and matching and supporting standards- not massive legal battles for complete control?
For those of you who are idealistically challenged- Comcast is AT&T- it is the beast. It's the company that championed the decimation of Net Neutrality while Microsoft and Google fed lawyers and experts into congress to fight them.
Microsoft is a friendly and well meaning company (even to F/OSS) compared to AT&T. Companies like Comcast bought up all the cable startups across the country during the fiber boom of 2000 and kept the fiber dark, so that the only broadband available to them would be Comcast when it came around- this kept many large areas in narrow-band for years (those of you from the Far Western Suburbs of Chicago (for instance) would remember this.
The CEO of AT&T publically bragged about being able to get any law he wanted changed or created by congress, which he made out to be in his pocket. The Chairman of Microsoft (Bill Gates), on the other hand, is one of the world's greatest philanthropists. The last time he spoke to congress, it was about improving our nation's schools.
The point is- the rivalry between F/OSS and Microsoft is (believe it or not) a friendly rivalry with little damage and few hostages. Ubuntu's latest window manager is a direct send-off to Vista. We all love and hate Microsoft. The rivalry between The People and AT&T is truly the epic battle of Good Vs. Evil.
If you're so worried about Comcast requiring IE to install, why don't you use Opera or Firefox and simply mask as IE? This sort of LAZY (not evil-- cheap. lazy.) development was long considered by Opera ASA and the Mozilla Foundation. This is why Masking is available.
Hmm... uncensored free image hosting?... now child pornography?
I wonder where that could have came from...
HOLD ON- There might be a connection here. Maybe this isn't some sort of evil corporate fascism conspiracy of the RIAA and Santa Claus and actually a case of... the pirate bay being full of child porn since they opened up bayimg.
I knew it was a bad idea from the start. The only thing people want to post on the internet that they can't use photobucket for is child porn.
This statement by MS amuses me to no end, actually. It betrays how afraid they are of the growing power of Linux (in terms of both consumer acceptability and legal power). I don't know about that. Most people stare at me blankly when I suggest maybe using Ubuntu for basic computing instead of a pirated Windows.
I think Microsoft still makes the most accessible consumer operating system.
They're adapting to niches quite nicely, as well.
I'm yet to a see a GPL-related lawsuit actually cost Microsoft any damage as opposed to merely stopping one of their assaults on the linux codebase. Linux is fanboyism.
How much was the first high-end iPod? $499, right? Now, today the most expensive fifth-generation model is down to $349, while the cheapest models are $79 (shuffle) and $149 (nano).
Translation: don't assume that there's only going to be one model and one price point forever.
Secondarily, Apple may, like they do with Mac, be happy to simply dominate the high-end market. One set of numbers I've seen indicates that while Apple may only have 2-3% of the worldwide market for personal computers, they have %6 of the total US market and 26% of the high-end market.
Translation: define "dominate". Has anyone considered for a moment that the iPhone might fail? It's the only phone to hit the market at an enterprise/business pricepoint without offering any of the relevance of the enterprise market. The market is not the high-end smartphone market; it seems to only be gunning for the disposable income and must-have-gadget OCD market.
I think they're selling this device to the wealthy, non-technical, and/or "Apple people".
Apple just unveiled an extremely glitchy KHTML-based browser to the Windows market with a bloated interface that counteracts all the visual perks of Windows and claimed they would take IE's market.
They might just be "wrong". You know. Wrong. Like as in Apple might go the direction of... Apple in the past? They're continuously making non-essential, non-interoperable, and non-accessible technology. Apple could easily get eaten alive by the green computing movement. No one else seems to be worried- because a $150 cell phone with the same functionality will always sell better.
For those of you who haven't driven through the WHOLE country; 3G has not arrived yet in the US- the market is bigger than New York and San Fransisco.
Even Adobe complains that Apple doesn't help them with speed issues when developing their software. So I can see why gaming on the Mac never really takes off. And Adobe helped Apple stay afloat in the 90's.
However, there's one exception; Macs are now on Intel processors, and OpenGL is still relevant. BUT, most affordable Macs have weak video cards.:/
Excellent Point. I'd like to say as someone who has worked in Xbox 360/ Windows game development, that Microsoft has excellent developer support. Considering the flakiness of most game studio types, this sort of warm, helpful reception to your partners can make a huge difference in who you make your ties with.
From a purely HR perspective, a full 360/GFW development studio is generally happier and less stressed out because of this support.:p
The activist community is really not that large, guys. Most marketers know better than this, and they call the shots when it comes to dealing with the open source community.
How can people cite OpenOffice as a sign that "Microsoft should be worried"? Microsoft should be more worried about AppleWorks or Corel's office suite- I'm sure they're more distributed.
The most accurate statement that can be made in response to OOO in this case is that "there is now a less popular and supported alternative available free of charge". LOOK OUT, MS!
Besides, Office 2007 was spectacularly innovative. If anything, OOo should be looking at this as a sign that they need to redesign and push the envelope if they want to even kiss Microsoft's heels.
The dev-kits cost 10k each, you half-wit- every programmer, artist, designer, and tester has one.
Our game cost ~$14 million to produce. I suppose you've never met pirates that use it as a means to avoid purchasing things? This is another long legitimization of illegal and cheap activity. If you can't afford it, don't buy it.
And if you really want to *try* before you buy, try RENTING the game. The rental companies are at least licensed to do so. You have no right to 'try' things you steal off bit torrent. The DMCA is pretty draconian for the most part, but that argument doesn't apply- this is a situation where you really are nothing but thieves.
We are selling a product for a fair price in terms of what it costs to produce it, if you want to use the product, it's only fair to pay for it.
Wanting to operate your computer without licensing fees is one thing, or to be able to record off your tv, etc.- but this is way outside of fair use. This is an expensive entertainment product we need to sell to make back our investment capital. Media content is very expensive- see a lot of major open source games out there?
I don't either.
This product was never broadcast to your home or given to you. You simply took it. It's identical to breaking into an electronics store in order to "try" some of their products out at home to consider if you need to buy them.
And this business model didn't "fail"- we still pulled in millions in profit. The point is you're hurting the content producters a lot more than the fat cats that get the corporate bonuses.
Chances are a team in Microsoft Research or something has been working on this product for a while and they demoed it as soon as was possible and convenient. Microsoft is a pretty large company.
I think the Apple credit lately has been almost a shame, since Microsoft has a long history of making future computing technology available on commodity hardware/ for the masses.
Lately, Apple gets lauded with every single innovation, whether or not they were first. It's like how Apple is celebrating their 'brand new, innovative' Resolution-Independent interface for Leopard, while no one mentions that Vista was already resolution-independent.
I am surprised the open source community is more focused on being anti-Microsoft, so they tend to want to credit Apple with things. Apple represents the direct polar opposite to open source- they are the ultimate home of DRM, proprietary everything, etc.- their only use for open source has been stealing code bases.
The point is- I could see Microsoft trying to remind people that they're responsible for quite a bit of innovation as being a completely credible practice. In recent history, I think Apple has not been innovating but merely polishing old ideas- they represent the super-stable with a 'new' look. Look at their 'New' virtual desktops.
Unfortunately you're making an assumption that all of the people that want to do other things with the hardware that they now own are stealing something from you. It's that kind of thinking that has people allowing the government to slowly remove our freedoms from us at the behest of corporations. Once I've purchased something it's mine to screw with as I please. I'm yet to see someone earnestly back up games with a modded 360. It's a fair call. I'd say the massive majority are burning their games off of BT. I may work for "the man", but I am not an idiot. This is more like saying "just because I'm carrying a gun into that liquor store doesn't mean I was going to rob it"- what the hell else are you going to do with it?- it's a fair assumption on my part, since there's no positive benefit to a modified 360 on the part of the content and service providers. We rely on a consistent consumer experience- if you want an open platform, use PC- don't bring your modder's woes to our support networks.
Do you own a VCR? You're logic then dictates that you are a criminal. A VCR can be used to pirate movies so therefore that is the ONLY thing you could possibly be doing with it. What someone does with the hardware they purchased is their business not yours.
LIVE of course is a totally different story. LIVE is a service and they have every right to deny service to people that have modified their consoles including tech support. That's the tradeoff that you make for modding. Are your games streamed to you over the airwaves?- what's the legitimate use for game backups again? Your media is insured by your retailer (if defective) and by the publisher (if destroyed). I never said their consoles should explode- I'm simply stating that those who are stealing their experience should not get the same benefit as those who do not- any inconvenience is appreciated.
Microsoft is fleecing you. The sooner developers figure that out the better. Sadly however it won't happen. You will go on thinking that paying for the privilege of putting a game on their hardware is A-OK and that money that should be in YOUR pocket, being used to ramp up your next hot title, is now in theirs. You're paying for a right you already had and sadly our technologically inept government is paid very well to ignore the artificial restrictions that enable these companies to do what in other areas of business are called extortion. The development platform is valuable and extremely easy to use. In terms of platform costs, it's well worth $10,000. It's not just hardware- it comes with an excellent XDK also- most modern console developers would agree with me here. We easily make the money back by releasing on their console instead of on a less stable market like PC- I was simply trying to make the point that we all spend money and it's an expensive process that relies on the consumers to do their part to participate.
That was your mistake. You should have simply had a phone menu option "If you are experiencing problem XXX with the patch", you know whatever it was that made the pirated copy break, "please press 3" which directed them to the a clip of Jim Carrey from Liar Liar "STOP BREAKING THE LAW ASSHOLE"
We had to figure out which problems were actually caused by pirated games first- and that takes time and money. Believe it or not, we do not have any modded 360's lying around the studio.
The point is that we, in software development studios, pay a lot of money to get the rights to develop on a console- we spend ~$10,000 a devkit- and Microsoft gets a certain percent of the profit from games. It's what pays for the system. It's about piracy-
Everyone gets screwed when you steal a game. Let me give you a real world example:
First off, it's not just suits that you're stealing from- everyone in the company, from the programmers to the testers get bonuses- and that's based on the amount of time they put in. They all profit off of the sales. So yes, you are stealing from the developers as well as the producers.
Second- an example with our game was when a European review magazine put a (slightly) pre-release build on bittorrent. It had the same title-ID so it worked, but it was slightly different than the final releases. When we released a patch, it destroyed a bunch of peoples' games (binary difference)- because the BT copy was wrong- but still technically worked until then. Our troubleshooting system gets flooded with complaints- and we soon find out its all people who stole our game that demanded we waste our time (and we did- we put in long hours figuring it out) to help them fix it.
My thoughts: If you modify your console to steal games, you can go to hell. MS has every right to kick you off- when you buy the hardware, you buy the hardware- but if you're going to *use* the system, play by the rules. Games are expensive to make and we work really hard on them. You are welcome to put linux on it- but let's not kid ourselves- You're not 'backing up' games.
Now you almost make sense. Wouldn't it be nicer if you could just compile it yourself to whatever platform fit your needs? So that YOU could make hardware choices and do all of the above when it was in YOUR best interest? of course, of course-
Well played. Because every business user and their mother needs to know about compiler flags. If you want to make your own operating system, just don't use windows- it's a complete desktop solution. It's not what you want.
For you and the 10's of thousands of users who are interested in recompiling everything from the ground up, we have linux. For the rest of people who prefer to have an out-of-the-box useful system, we have Windows, Mac, and (increasingly) Ubuntu (I know this is Linux, shut up).
By 2009, x86-64 should be well distributed- I think even EM64T works in 64-bit vista. It's not a big deal. Windows will be ready for it, Mac will (really easy to upgrade their platform) and Linux will. Why is this such a big deal? You can build all sorts of goofy desktop systems that run Windows, anyway- if you want to run PPC or Sparc, you can enjoy the wonderful experience of linux without binary support (no flash!:( ). You people should be hatin' on mac.
I heard talk from Rockstar employees about how they already hit the limit of the medium with GTASA, due to the slow layer switching (no idea if the 360 still has that issue) only one layer of the disc could be used to keep the load times lower (with streaming it'd be fatal if the loading took too long). Even without the layer switching overhead a "next-gen" GTA game is going to hit the limit of DVD9 very quickly so this report is very likely true.
From what I heard Microsoft requires that all games are basically playable (i.e. it doesn't matter that you can't feasibly finish the game without saving, it just has to be theoretically possible) on a 360 Core system OOTB, this would make HDDVD-only games not allowed. Actually, the 360 has excellent streaming performance since it doesn't have the obscene memory constraints the PS3 has (the 360 has more bandwidth, more efficient pipeline, high performance DRAM on die, and its got that 512 mb of shared RAM for added flexibility.)
Honestly, when developing an open-world 360 game (I've worked on one), the biggest problem is the lack of an HDD- which means we need to disc stream all our data. It causes some major issues.
It's sort of a toss- the 360 is conventionally more powerful in a lot of cases, but the PS3 has that standard HDD. It's ridiculous, really, since Core systems are far more scarce than Premium. Microsoft should let us use the HDD to a greater extent, when available.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is any mention of windows being usable considered trolling?
I am simply referring to the fact that people like to reference features of Desktop Linux that are not nearly done yet in comparison with features in Windows or Mac that are done. The difference is professional organized development teams. I would hate to have to remind people what life was like before Ubuntu *shudder*.
I am not an OS loyalist- I am a realist. I dual-boot Fedora 7 and Windows Vista. At one point, I used Ubuntu to play games and vista for everyday multimedia *cue laughter*. I am not kidding.
I recommend Mac OS X to my mother, Ubuntu to my girlfriend's sister (100% computer illiterate) and Windows Vista to my professional illustrator friend. Does this sound backwards? It really shouldn't. Ubuntu is as good as it gets for the modern casual internet user- but professionals still demand a massive overhead of backwards compatibility and professional support. And if you're a developer, I'm sorry but- visual studio can be excellent.
The point is, I try to give Ubuntu a shot every single generation, and something critical always keeps me from wiping windows. I am as hopeful as anyone else that the time of Linux is at hand, but partially because I think it'll spur beautiful competition from Sun and Microsoft.
For all these reasons, I do not tolerate people saying that unfinished features are considerable flack against gold windows features- I'm sorry if people view windows as being in constant beta, but it's just plain more stable. And don't tell me gnome is lightweight- i tried to run Ubuntu on a 1 Ghz P3 w/ 256 mb of ram, and it felt like Vista RC2 on a pc with 512 mb of ram.
Maybe 7.10 will let me add a tv to my desktop without skipping a heartbeat, but 7.04 did not. Why do I only mention Ubuntu? Because it's the only distro worth a damn to the masses.
I'd have to disagree. Vista is much quicker and easier and more stable than Fedora 7 and Ubuntu... I've seen both of these fail and crash doing the simplest task, but we give it special ed sort of failure space and forgiveness because it's community developed.
Try to imagine you're running Ubuntu, perhaps you're a regular user who's just switched from Windows, and you add a new monitor.
Wait. Where's my second desktop? I have to do WHAT? Home users are not unix geeks. Apple knows this WHY DON'T YOU? How often do you need to open a conf file in OS X?
And we talk about Vista consuming speed and power- but 10.5 Leopard can't run on an 800 mhz G4, and Ubuntu 7.10 runs Compiz and Gnome OUT OF THE BOX- have you ever tried to run gnome on a PC with 256 mb of RAM? I will give you a hint- Vista runs faster and XP waaay faster.
Companies like google have made things even easier. Someone can buy a brand new PC with Vista Home Basic and go to pack.google.com and voila!-- you've got an easy to use open distro that does way more than Ubuntu out of the box. A stable, working window manager- handler for every which device- an a media player that makes even Amarok look like an always beta piece of crap.
You want people to compile commercial software for Linux? Talk to Sun about binary compatibility. It's a lot easier for developers when they don't have to support their commercial product for 5 different OS's and compile it anew every generation or two.
The point is- when linux is done, we can talk about Microsoft giving up and disappearing. Until then, their market is clear and strong. WORKING BUDGET OS THAT IS ALSO FINISHED. Stop talking about how great linux will be when it's done. It's been around for 15 years.
In my experience developing games on the playstation 3, Linux is fine for gaming. ;) Eventually, companies will invest in better opengl implementations for linux- such as the one used by ... you know... Linux Gaming Machines. Sony has some sweet libraries for it.
I specifically mentioned Japan as an exception, since they're very anti-nuke- but they don't need our missile technology.
Yay! The only thing that can adequately combat Microsoft FUD- Apple FUD!
Can we go do something else now?
No one is just "anti-microsoft"- they're either pro-mac, or pro-linux. Anti-FUD is also FUD. It's just as stupid to read. And none of those Microsoft statements were even FUD- just marketing talk from a large corporation. Apple does this kind of crap all the time- as does Novell, or Sun.
Any nation that has anything to contribute to the scientific space movement already has the ballistic technology necessary to do so.
Don't you ever find it odd that the only nations that are space-based are also nuclear-missile equipped?
This isn't about terrorists, its about maniac leaders. No matter how liberal you are, the Iranians are still dangerous in their current state. North Korea is run by a madman. This isn't about keeping technology from Russia or the UK or Japan... Iraqi insurgents won't build ICBM's- Venezuela or Iran will.
Having nuclear ICBM capabilities is always set before having scientific space rockets in nations' priorities- give me an example (other than Japan) where this isn't the case.
You're certainly right. I believe building a unique and proprietary window system on Mac was a design decision against using X. Like Unix, X is another abstract thing. I mean, X.org is sort of a kludge in and of itself- it's almost a unique window system also running an X compatibility layer. Supporting X11 in its true form is simply not important, since it's merely a protocol. X.org is more or less a collection of drivers.
:p
One of OS X's strengths is that they dropped the X legacy/weight from a sort of traditional unix system.
I'm not sure whether Aqua is more DPS or X11. Perhaps an Apple employee can pop in and give us a quick clarification.
I agree, to an extent.
Apple clearly uses their BSD subsystem as a license-free compatibility layer- it's clear to me that proper POSIX compliance was not the most important factor in the system design. Then again, Linux isn't really POSIX compliant either- but that's another tale for another time.
I call Mac OS X a 'specialized' desktop unix. Not a better unix, per se- but unix is an abstract thing. For the purposes of running a desktop workstation, it's hard to beat the performance and capability you get out of OS X. The interface goes a really long way in making it a practical system.
X11 in OS X is simply a compatibility layer- it just connects the X calls to Aqua's draw functions. I consider it to be a bit of a temporary solution until all relevant open source projects write an aqua interface. I'm sure Apple feels similarly.
Actually, StarOffice costs $75, I think- so 85 for MS Office 2007 (for those of you who have not used it, it's an amazing product) is actually quite a steal.
What you're getting for free is just the bones of a comparable office product. Students can do far more with the more professional Microsoft suite- plus, I don't know if any of you have tried to get a clerical job with OOo on your resume- they don't bite.
Plus... GO BULLDOGS! Wooo!
If you think rocket-science is all about space, you're utterly naive.
Of course they're censoring the Saturn V- it's an extremely complex ICBM (Inter-continental Ballistic Missile). Believe it or not, there are few countries out there with that level of rocketry available- notice that Iran and North Korea do not have ICBM's.
They have every right to censor this- and they should. The fewer nations have the ability to use this, the better.
Our enemies are still 50+ years behind us in ballistics. Recognize that the longer we keep this out of their hands, the better.
There's a good reason the space race was restricted to the cold war, and did not continue afterwards.
Let's see- you take your unix kernel, build a fully rewritten, GL-optimized X Windows system... solidify your GNUStep libraries until they're fully compatible with cocoa-
Then be certain you're only running systems with SSE3 or above, since all the intel binaries are optimized for that.
Whoops- also gotta build a compatible CoreAudio system.
Oh no, looks like you're now Apple.
If you're using Mac OS X, you're already using a NeXT compatibility layer on top of a streamlined X and a really high end specialized desktop unix. The question is- why are you trying to run linux? You're using a much higher end unix system that supports X11 and has a full BSD layer, with package managers available. Why don't you just run linux apps in OS X?
Making an OS X "compatibility layer" would essentially just require you to create a shoddy set of OS X libraries- something Apple's already done better.
Take advantage of your resources.
Let me repeat this - OS X is a "mac compatibility layer" running on top of a unix kernel already- it's a totally insane waste of time to re-implement it. If you're that interested in making OS X, you should work for Apple.
We have two open standards. The Microsoft (a big company) open standard is setup to be backwards compatible with all the weird crap imposed by their prior formats (which makes sense, since documents tend to be stored in these formats), whereas as ODF is completely new format pushed by another massive software company... Sun (and sometimes IBM, another friendly open source lollipop factory).
What does this have to do with anything? Last I checked, OpenOffice can save in xml and Microsoft Word can save in ODF (with a plugin). This is like a cock-flexing match between the FSF and Microsoft and it's basically irrelevant to 99.99% of users and government employees.
If ODF, as it stands, were released by Microsoft and called Microsoft ODF, we'd have the same level of FSF, GNU, etc pushback.
Isn't mainstream software development about adaptation and matching and supporting standards- not massive legal battles for complete control?
For those of you who are idealistically challenged- Comcast is AT&T- it is the beast. It's the company that championed the decimation of Net Neutrality while Microsoft and Google fed lawyers and experts into congress to fight them.
Microsoft is a friendly and well meaning company (even to F/OSS) compared to AT&T. Companies like Comcast bought up all the cable startups across the country during the fiber boom of 2000 and kept the fiber dark, so that the only broadband available to them would be Comcast when it came around- this kept many large areas in narrow-band for years (those of you from the Far Western Suburbs of Chicago (for instance) would remember this.
The CEO of AT&T publically bragged about being able to get any law he wanted changed or created by congress, which he made out to be in his pocket. The Chairman of Microsoft (Bill Gates), on the other hand, is one of the world's greatest philanthropists. The last time he spoke to congress, it was about improving our nation's schools.
The point is- the rivalry between F/OSS and Microsoft is (believe it or not) a friendly rivalry with little damage and few hostages. Ubuntu's latest window manager is a direct send-off to Vista. We all love and hate Microsoft. The rivalry between The People and AT&T is truly the epic battle of Good Vs. Evil.
If you're so worried about Comcast requiring IE to install, why don't you use Opera or Firefox and simply mask as IE? This sort of LAZY (not evil-- cheap. lazy.) development was long considered by Opera ASA and the Mozilla Foundation. This is why Masking is available.
Hmm... uncensored free image hosting? ... now child pornography?
I wonder where that could have came from...
HOLD ON- There might be a connection here. Maybe this isn't some sort of evil corporate fascism conspiracy of the RIAA and Santa Claus and actually a case of... the pirate bay being full of child porn since they opened up bayimg.
I knew it was a bad idea from the start. The only thing people want to post on the internet that they can't use photobucket for is child porn.
GO INTERNET!
I think Microsoft still makes the most accessible consumer operating system.
They're adapting to niches quite nicely, as well.
I'm yet to a see a GPL-related lawsuit actually cost Microsoft any damage as opposed to merely stopping one of their assaults on the linux codebase. Linux is fanboyism.
Translation: don't assume that there's only going to be one model and one price point forever.
Secondarily, Apple may, like they do with Mac, be happy to simply dominate the high-end market. One set of numbers I've seen indicates that while Apple may only have 2-3% of the worldwide market for personal computers, they have %6 of the total US market and 26% of the high-end market.
Translation: define "dominate". Has anyone considered for a moment that the iPhone might fail? It's the only phone to hit the market at an enterprise/business pricepoint without offering any of the relevance of the enterprise market. The market is not the high-end smartphone market; it seems to only be gunning for the disposable income and must-have-gadget OCD market.
I think they're selling this device to the wealthy, non-technical, and/or "Apple people".
Apple just unveiled an extremely glitchy KHTML-based browser to the Windows market with a bloated interface that counteracts all the visual perks of Windows and claimed they would take IE's market.
They might just be "wrong". You know. Wrong. Like as in Apple might go the direction of... Apple in the past? They're continuously making non-essential, non-interoperable, and non-accessible technology. Apple could easily get eaten alive by the green computing movement. No one else seems to be worried- because a $150 cell phone with the same functionality will always sell better.
For those of you who haven't driven through the WHOLE country; 3G has not arrived yet in the US- the market is bigger than New York and San Fransisco.
However, there's one exception; Macs are now on Intel processors, and OpenGL is still relevant. BUT, most affordable Macs have weak video cards.
Excellent Point. I'd like to say as someone who has worked in Xbox 360/ Windows game development, that Microsoft has excellent developer support. Considering the flakiness of most game studio types, this sort of warm, helpful reception to your partners can make a huge difference in who you make your ties with.
From a purely HR perspective, a full 360/GFW development studio is generally happier and less stressed out because of this support.
Seconded.
The activist community is really not that large, guys. Most marketers know better than this, and they call the shots when it comes to dealing with the open source community.
How can people cite OpenOffice as a sign that "Microsoft should be worried"? Microsoft should be more worried about AppleWorks or Corel's office suite- I'm sure they're more distributed.
The most accurate statement that can be made in response to OOO in this case is that "there is now a less popular and supported alternative available free of charge". LOOK OUT, MS!
Besides, Office 2007 was spectacularly innovative. If anything, OOo should be looking at this as a sign that they need to redesign and push the envelope if they want to even kiss Microsoft's heels.
The dev-kits cost 10k each, you half-wit- every programmer, artist, designer, and tester has one.
Our game cost ~$14 million to produce. I suppose you've never met pirates that use it as a means to avoid purchasing things? This is another long legitimization of illegal and cheap activity. If you can't afford it, don't buy it.
And if you really want to *try* before you buy, try RENTING the game. The rental companies are at least licensed to do so. You have no right to 'try' things you steal off bit torrent. The DMCA is pretty draconian for the most part, but that argument doesn't apply- this is a situation where you really are nothing but thieves.
We are selling a product for a fair price in terms of what it costs to produce it, if you want to use the product, it's only fair to pay for it.
Wanting to operate your computer without licensing fees is one thing, or to be able to record off your tv, etc.- but this is way outside of fair use. This is an expensive entertainment product we need to sell to make back our investment capital. Media content is very expensive- see a lot of major open source games out there?
I don't either.
This product was never broadcast to your home or given to you. You simply took it. It's identical to breaking into an electronics store in order to "try" some of their products out at home to consider if you need to buy them.
And this business model didn't "fail"- we still pulled in millions in profit. The point is you're hurting the content producters a lot more than the fat cats that get the corporate bonuses.
Chances are a team in Microsoft Research or something has been working on this product for a while and they demoed it as soon as was possible and convenient. Microsoft is a pretty large company.
I think the Apple credit lately has been almost a shame, since Microsoft has a long history of making future computing technology available on commodity hardware/ for the masses.
Lately, Apple gets lauded with every single innovation, whether or not they were first. It's like how Apple is celebrating their 'brand new, innovative' Resolution-Independent interface for Leopard, while no one mentions that Vista was already resolution-independent.
I am surprised the open source community is more focused on being anti-Microsoft, so they tend to want to credit Apple with things. Apple represents the direct polar opposite to open source- they are the ultimate home of DRM, proprietary everything, etc.- their only use for open source has been stealing code bases.
The point is- I could see Microsoft trying to remind people that they're responsible for quite a bit of innovation as being a completely credible practice. In recent history, I think Apple has not been innovating but merely polishing old ideas- they represent the super-stable with a 'new' look. Look at their 'New' virtual desktops.
Anyone else feeling ripped off?
LIVE of course is a totally different story. LIVE is a service and they have every right to deny service to people that have modified their consoles including tech support. That's the tradeoff that you make for modding. Are your games streamed to you over the airwaves?- what's the legitimate use for game backups again? Your media is insured by your retailer (if defective) and by the publisher (if destroyed). I never said their consoles should explode- I'm simply stating that those who are stealing their experience should not get the same benefit as those who do not- any inconvenience is appreciated. Microsoft is fleecing you. The sooner developers figure that out the better. Sadly however it won't happen. You will go on thinking that paying for the privilege of putting a game on their hardware is A-OK and that money that should be in YOUR pocket, being used to ramp up your next hot title, is now in theirs. You're paying for a right you already had and sadly our technologically inept government is paid very well to ignore the artificial restrictions that enable these companies to do what in other areas of business are called extortion. The development platform is valuable and extremely easy to use. In terms of platform costs, it's well worth $10,000. It's not just hardware- it comes with an excellent XDK also- most modern console developers would agree with me here. We easily make the money back by releasing on their console instead of on a less stable market like PC- I was simply trying to make the point that we all spend money and it's an expensive process that relies on the consumers to do their part to participate. That was your mistake. You should have simply had a phone menu option "If you are experiencing problem XXX with the patch", you know whatever it was that made the pirated copy break, "please press 3" which directed them to the a clip of Jim Carrey from Liar Liar "STOP BREAKING THE LAW ASSHOLE"
We had to figure out which problems were actually caused by pirated games first- and that takes time and money. Believe it or not, we do not have any modded 360's lying around the studio.
The point is that we, in software development studios, pay a lot of money to get the rights to develop on a console- we spend ~$10,000 a devkit- and Microsoft gets a certain percent of the profit from games. It's what pays for the system. It's about piracy-
Everyone gets screwed when you steal a game. Let me give you a real world example:
First off, it's not just suits that you're stealing from- everyone in the company, from the programmers to the testers get bonuses- and that's based on the amount of time they put in. They all profit off of the sales. So yes, you are stealing from the developers as well as the producers.
Second- an example with our game was when a European review magazine put a (slightly) pre-release build on bittorrent. It had the same title-ID so it worked, but it was slightly different than the final releases. When we released a patch, it destroyed a bunch of peoples' games (binary difference)- because the BT copy was wrong- but still technically worked until then. Our troubleshooting system gets flooded with complaints- and we soon find out its all people who stole our game that demanded we waste our time (and we did- we put in long hours figuring it out) to help them fix it.
My thoughts: If you modify your console to steal games, you can go to hell. MS has every right to kick you off- when you buy the hardware, you buy the hardware- but if you're going to *use* the system, play by the rules. Games are expensive to make and we work really hard on them. You are welcome to put linux on it- but let's not kid ourselves- You're not 'backing up' games.
Well played. Because every business user and their mother needs to know about compiler flags. If you want to make your own operating system, just don't use windows- it's a complete desktop solution. It's not what you want.
For you and the 10's of thousands of users who are interested in recompiling everything from the ground up, we have linux. For the rest of people who prefer to have an out-of-the-box useful system, we have Windows, Mac, and (increasingly) Ubuntu (I know this is Linux, shut up).
By 2009, x86-64 should be well distributed- I think even EM64T works in 64-bit vista. It's not a big deal. Windows will be ready for it, Mac will (really easy to upgrade their platform) and Linux will. Why is this such a big deal? You can build all sorts of goofy desktop systems that run Windows, anyway- if you want to run PPC or Sparc, you can enjoy the wonderful experience of linux without binary support (no flash!
From what I heard Microsoft requires that all games are basically playable (i.e. it doesn't matter that you can't feasibly finish the game without saving, it just has to be theoretically possible) on a 360 Core system OOTB, this would make HDDVD-only games not allowed. Actually, the 360 has excellent streaming performance since it doesn't have the obscene memory constraints the PS3 has (the 360 has more bandwidth, more efficient pipeline, high performance DRAM on die, and its got that 512 mb of shared RAM for added flexibility.)
Honestly, when developing an open-world 360 game (I've worked on one), the biggest problem is the lack of an HDD- which means we need to disc stream all our data. It causes some major issues.
It's sort of a toss- the 360 is conventionally more powerful in a lot of cases, but the PS3 has that standard HDD. It's ridiculous, really, since Core systems are far more scarce than Premium. Microsoft should let us use the HDD to a greater extent, when available.