True. I wasn't talking about today, though. Let's say 5 years down the road, or 10. I'd be very surprised if there *wasn't* a market for repair shops with some linux background. Which is still not to say that a shop couldn't continue to do better by sticking to what they're good at and specializing in Windows.
Like you said, some users just don't want to be bothered with servicing their own machines, nothing wrong with that. I'm guessing that as time goes on there's going to be less to stop someone like that from picking up an eeePC. I could be wrong about that, I'm just guessing.
Most repair shops I've been to also build. If they're buying the computer assembled from you to begin with, then you could avoid using incompatible hardware. And there's even something of a bonus there. Windows OEMs have enough in common that if you built a PC for someone, they could take it somewhere else for service. But if the OS is really custom then they're better off taking it back to you:)
In either case, the hardware situation for linux is only going to improve. And Lexmark is going to go bankrupt (maybe not but a guy can dream).
I think the article was talking specifically about Mega Man 9 and Contra 4. Not just about simple games or 2D games, of which there are plenty on the online stores for each console. But actually reviving old franchises and making games in a specific style, down to the palettes and music composition, etc.
What they did with Mega Man 9 was probably more sophisticated than it would have been had they not been trying to artificially recreate an NES-style environment. They went even beyond that, by setting out to make a game resembling, say, Mega Man 2, rather than Mega Man 6 (which has some pretty amazing artwork).
I feel about the same way. I am a big fan of the more recent 2D Mega Man games, like X4. There's a 2.5D remake of Mega Man X for PSP that's decent.
On the other hand, there's something charming about the limitations themselves, and how developers worked with and against them to make art. Chip tunes, for instance. Some people don't like it but I love the style of the original Mega Man serious music, or Castlevania, etc. Granted, I don't drive around listening to it, but when I play the games it definitely adds a lot.
I get the feeling that if someone really loves FPS-style games, they're going to want the latest, because the better engines allow for more fluid play and better immersion. X-Com doesn't fit into that, I guess.
The games you mention just aren't that old. Still, I think we've all had the experience you mention...I used to love playing Duke Nukem II, but when I fired it up recently I realized that while it has a certain charm, it's pretty annoying as far as platformers go. Pretty much every Genesis/MegaDrive platformer is better than DN2 in terms of gameplay.
Myst was probably the most fun I've ever had playing a game. But it's hard for me to take it seriously now since those renders are so bad by today's standards:D
Some games will always stand out for me. I think of games like Out of this World, Future Wars, and Mindshadow. You'll notice that these are more adventure-style games, though. Maybe they just age better.
Can't say I agree. River City Ransom is on there! But you're going to be waiting a long time for FF or DW games. As others have said, Square would rather sell you remake upon remake. Just grab the ROMs.
Yes and no. While they have been at work improving their products (and really, when aren't they?), they're also not above things like rigging ISO votes and asking to be shepherds of ODF.
I think a large amount of the slashdot crowd's specific gripes stem from the so-called Halloween Documents". Also there evidence that MS was involved in SCO's case against IBM.
Simply put, they never really stopped doing despicable things. So on one hand, I like their products and am not afraid to admit that. On the other, I'm actually surprised that they find time to work on them in between all of the evil shit they pull.
Now that I'm on a MacBook most of the time, the only thing I really miss is foobar2000.
And really, would it kill Apple to add vorbis support to the ipods? I picked up a 5.5 right after the classics came out so that I could use it with Rockbox. Which was OK but then for whatever reason I felt like trying the regular firmware for a while, so now I'm without my oggs. For no good reason. I haven't had time to switch back yet, but it's stupid that I should have to.
And the sorting on iPods is ridiculous. For instance, I have a Band box set. Technically it's a compilation, but 90% of it is The Band and that's where I want it to go. But not at the cost of making the tags wrong on purpose. "Ah, 'Sort Artist', that must be it", I thought, as I started changing those tags.
Anybody who's been down this dark road knew what horrors were waiting for me when I next checked the artist listing on my iPod.
So many of my sorting gripes would be solved if I had a way of saying: keep X in the regular tags, but treat it like Y when I'm looking for it on the iPod.
I'm very sorry for your loss. There's a good book I've read that has a lot of answers, and it just may help you gain some perspective on this tough time in your life. I'd like to share it with you -- it's called The UNIX-HATERS Handbook.
Registry repair hasn't been part of the Windows experience since Windows 2000 came out; do try and keep up.
I've had to repair registry permissions or talk people through doing it themselves in more than a few cases.
I don't know for sure but I think it's Norton, if so then it's screwing up permissions on some important ones.
I don't know if you mean stright up registry file corruption, and obviously System Restore works wonders in a lot of cases, but the registry is pretty important so cosmic forces will always conspire to screw it up, even on XP and Vista.
I don't think there's much about a fairly stable distro that prevents a repair shop, help line, or techie relative from knowing the ins and outs well enough to help. And there's variation between distros but it's not *crazy*, that is, if you felt comfortable working on a Debian box, you could handle one with Ubuntu, etc. Those two would cover most of the customers.
Yeah, all the software comes from different places, but that's not unique to linux. Assuming someone sticks to a reasonable set of software and it's all from the Canonical repositories, you could easily have a setup that's capable of being worked on by someone who didn't do the actual installation.
If things seem to be FUBAR you could always wipe & reinstall whatever distro, and say they had one of those pesky linux viruses:D
Isn't that's sort of what they tried to do with ActiveX, Active Channels, MSJVM, etc? You say you were at the conference so maybe you can point out some of the differences in approach.
My 2c: I think they might be underestimating the pressure on content creators to reach the common denominator, technology-wise. Obviously you're going to consider using newer or proprietary technologies if it outweighs the downside of losing potential eyeballs. But how often is that worth it? I think Microsoft.com is still the only website that I'm regularly at that can use Silverlight. I'm sure it's growing, but if it was IE-only people might have just laughed it away.
Web devs were willing to code/design for a specific stack when there wasn't any other option. ECMAScript is getting to the point now where I really have to wonder what serious value an all-MS approach can offer vs. the usual LAMP + PHP + JS stew. Maybe it can speed things up on the development side (big maybe, considering the newer options: Django, RoR...), but again, isn't losing eyeballs too much to pay for quicker development?
The stuff you can do with.NET and IE in terms of publishing networked apps is pretty slick, but I just can't see anyone lining up to do those sorts of things when the target audience is the internet at large rather than an office building.
Maybe they do get it, but they're too big of a company to fundamentally change their strategy on this. I always hesitate to call Microsoft dumb. I'm sure there's no shortage of talent there. So I'm wondering what specifically is different this time around. What's in the pipeline that's so enticing that people won't flinch at tying themselves to a specific vendor?
I agree with you, but don't forget that Apple does not have monopoly status in the OS space. I would hope that once they did, people would watch them just as closely as they do MS.
Your original post made a very broad assumption, namely that since there is less Apple hardware out there than PC hardware, Apple developers can exploit hardware tricks or in general work closer to the metal. I don't know if you think they're making extensive use of assembly languages or non-portable C code, but I can tell you that that's just not the case.
Part of the reason that the hardware switch went relatively smoothly for Apple is because their kernel is portable and is not full of CPU-specific hacks (PPC and x86 are different enough that they wouldn't have gotten away with that, plus, it's not 1980 anymore). And as far as console OSes go...they haven't had to include things like multitasking, memory allocation, or paging until very recently. Again, simply not comparable to OS X.
Forget that there's less Apple hardware out there. It's hardware that's changed greatly over the years, and OS X is a modern OS with a lot of features that game consoles can do with out. It's simply not a good analogy. The idea can be true on a very broad level (more portable code can't run as lean) but it's certainly not always true and in this case it doesn't apply for many reasons.
Just let it go at this point, rather than challenge people for benchmarks when you haven't offered anything in the way of proof for your own argument (there really isn't any, since game consoles are as different from Macs as they are from PCs, OS-wise. Or at least they were until very recently).
You know, I love the Daily Show, I lean fairly liberal, and I love Bill Maher's standup.
But I take issue with lumping in the flamebait that is Real Time with Stewart and Colbert's shows. All I ever see him doing is interviewing people simply because they have an opinion--musicians, comedians, etc--and they're always one breath away from a huge circle jerk. Or he invites on a capital-c conservative to see how quickly they can make him cry.
That said, he's a smart guy and I have seen good Real Time segments. But that's always something cherry-picked on a website. Whenever I tune I get to witness him saying things that rely on huge assumptions or plain bad reasoning.
Example: last month he let Janeane Garofalo say that Democrats are literally better human beings. I was in PA for "Deadheads for Obama" and I still wanted to puke when I heard that. The left does not need any Bill O'Reilly style programming, but sadly, from what I have seen of Maher he is more than deserving of the comparison.
You seem to be implying that someone who voted for Obama must have done so because he's a symbol for something, as opposed to his record on the campaign trail, or his stance on any of the issues. I'm glad you voted for the person you thought was most qualified but I wish you'd afford others the same respect instead of merely accusing them of being swayed by skin color, etc.
Some athletes have comedic timing. Even if none of them did, Phelps is in a league of his own. He can't even get through a commercial. When he endorses things I feel like I'm watching Rocky 2 made real.
Don't watch much SNL, do you? They always parody the candidates as well as the current administration. Often, they nail it. Bush can't even say "nuclear", but he got re-elected despite how easy he his to parody.
Most of us vote based on issues, not comedy sketches. If you're an American, then I'd advise you to do the same.
Slashdot Mirror
Step 1: Find out if there is a "Jose Cuervo heiress"
Step 2: If so, propose to her with a big diamond ring.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Vomit!
True. I wasn't talking about today, though. Let's say 5 years down the road, or 10. I'd be very surprised if there *wasn't* a market for repair shops with some linux background. Which is still not to say that a shop couldn't continue to do better by sticking to what they're good at and specializing in Windows.
Like you said, some users just don't want to be bothered with servicing their own machines, nothing wrong with that. I'm guessing that as time goes on there's going to be less to stop someone like that from picking up an eeePC. I could be wrong about that, I'm just guessing.
Most repair shops I've been to also build. If they're buying the computer assembled from you to begin with, then you could avoid using incompatible hardware. And there's even something of a bonus there. Windows OEMs have enough in common that if you built a PC for someone, they could take it somewhere else for service. But if the OS is really custom then they're better off taking it back to you :)
In either case, the hardware situation for linux is only going to improve. And Lexmark is going to go bankrupt (maybe not but a guy can dream).
Ask for Chris!
I think the article was talking specifically about Mega Man 9 and Contra 4. Not just about simple games or 2D games, of which there are plenty on the online stores for each console. But actually reviving old franchises and making games in a specific style, down to the palettes and music composition, etc.
What they did with Mega Man 9 was probably more sophisticated than it would have been had they not been trying to artificially recreate an NES-style environment. They went even beyond that, by setting out to make a game resembling, say, Mega Man 2, rather than Mega Man 6 (which has some pretty amazing artwork).
I feel about the same way. I am a big fan of the more recent 2D Mega Man games, like X4. There's a 2.5D remake of Mega Man X for PSP that's decent.
On the other hand, there's something charming about the limitations themselves, and how developers worked with and against them to make art. Chip tunes, for instance. Some people don't like it but I love the style of the original Mega Man serious music, or Castlevania, etc. Granted, I don't drive around listening to it, but when I play the games it definitely adds a lot.
I get the feeling that if someone really loves FPS-style games, they're going to want the latest, because the better engines allow for more fluid play and better immersion. X-Com doesn't fit into that, I guess.
The games you mention just aren't that old. Still, I think we've all had the experience you mention...I used to love playing Duke Nukem II, but when I fired it up recently I realized that while it has a certain charm, it's pretty annoying as far as platformers go. Pretty much every Genesis/MegaDrive platformer is better than DN2 in terms of gameplay.
Myst was probably the most fun I've ever had playing a game. But it's hard for me to take it seriously now since those renders are so bad by today's standards :D
Some games will always stand out for me. I think of games like Out of this World, Future Wars, and Mindshadow. You'll notice that these are more adventure-style games, though. Maybe they just age better.
IWBTG looks pretty funny. But here's a serious one that may or may not blow your mind: Cave Story.
Can't say I agree. River City Ransom is on there! But you're going to be waiting a long time for FF or DW games. As others have said, Square would rather sell you remake upon remake. Just grab the ROMs.
Yes and no. While they have been at work improving their products (and really, when aren't they?), they're also not above things like rigging ISO votes and asking to be shepherds of ODF.
I think a large amount of the slashdot crowd's specific gripes stem from the so-called Halloween Documents". Also there evidence that MS was involved in SCO's case against IBM.
Simply put, they never really stopped doing despicable things. So on one hand, I like their products and am not afraid to admit that. On the other, I'm actually surprised that they find time to work on them in between all of the evil shit they pull.
Now that I'm on a MacBook most of the time, the only thing I really miss is foobar2000.
And really, would it kill Apple to add vorbis support to the ipods? I picked up a 5.5 right after the classics came out so that I could use it with Rockbox. Which was OK but then for whatever reason I felt like trying the regular firmware for a while, so now I'm without my oggs. For no good reason. I haven't had time to switch back yet, but it's stupid that I should have to.
And the sorting on iPods is ridiculous. For instance, I have a Band box set. Technically it's a compilation, but 90% of it is The Band and that's where I want it to go. But not at the cost of making the tags wrong on purpose. "Ah, 'Sort Artist', that must be it", I thought, as I started changing those tags.
Anybody who's been down this dark road knew what horrors were waiting for me when I next checked the artist listing on my iPod.
So many of my sorting gripes would be solved if I had a way of saying: keep X in the regular tags, but treat it like Y when I'm looking for it on the iPod.
JavaScript, JScript, VBScript, straight COM.
http://dougscripts.com/itunes/itinfo/windowshelp.php
Yeah, what an ass that guy must be. Like anyone buys brand-name headphones. MIDIs of Final Fantasy music sound the same on everything!
I'm very sorry for your loss. There's a good book I've read that has a lot of answers, and it just may help you gain some perspective on this tough time in your life. I'd like to share it with you -- it's called The UNIX-HATERS Handbook.
Registry repair hasn't been part of the Windows experience since Windows 2000 came out; do try and keep up.
I've had to repair registry permissions or talk people through doing it themselves in more than a few cases.
I don't know for sure but I think it's Norton, if so then it's screwing up permissions on some important ones.
I don't know if you mean stright up registry file corruption, and obviously System Restore works wonders in a lot of cases, but the registry is pretty important so cosmic forces will always conspire to screw it up, even on XP and Vista.
I don't think there's much about a fairly stable distro that prevents a repair shop, help line, or techie relative from knowing the ins and outs well enough to help. And there's variation between distros but it's not *crazy*, that is, if you felt comfortable working on a Debian box, you could handle one with Ubuntu, etc. Those two would cover most of the customers.
Yeah, all the software comes from different places, but that's not unique to linux. Assuming someone sticks to a reasonable set of software and it's all from the Canonical repositories, you could easily have a setup that's capable of being worked on by someone who didn't do the actual installation.
If things seem to be FUBAR you could always wipe & reinstall whatever distro, and say they had one of those pesky linux viruses :D
Isn't that's sort of what they tried to do with ActiveX, Active Channels, MSJVM, etc? You say you were at the conference so maybe you can point out some of the differences in approach.
My 2c: I think they might be underestimating the pressure on content creators to reach the common denominator, technology-wise. Obviously you're going to consider using newer or proprietary technologies if it outweighs the downside of losing potential eyeballs. But how often is that worth it? I think Microsoft.com is still the only website that I'm regularly at that can use Silverlight. I'm sure it's growing, but if it was IE-only people might have just laughed it away.
Web devs were willing to code/design for a specific stack when there wasn't any other option. ECMAScript is getting to the point now where I really have to wonder what serious value an all-MS approach can offer vs. the usual LAMP + PHP + JS stew. Maybe it can speed things up on the development side (big maybe, considering the newer options: Django, RoR...), but again, isn't losing eyeballs too much to pay for quicker development?
The stuff you can do with .NET and IE in terms of publishing networked apps is pretty slick, but I just can't see anyone lining up to do those sorts of things when the target audience is the internet at large rather than an office building.
Maybe they do get it, but they're too big of a company to fundamentally change their strategy on this. I always hesitate to call Microsoft dumb. I'm sure there's no shortage of talent there. So I'm wondering what specifically is different this time around. What's in the pipeline that's so enticing that people won't flinch at tying themselves to a specific vendor?
"reading the outlook and checking the $SITENAME in the explorer/internet"
That's more like how they'd say it, I think. You always know how a call is gonna go if "the Google" makes its way in here.
I agree with you, but don't forget that Apple does not have monopoly status in the OS space. I would hope that once they did, people would watch them just as closely as they do MS.
I think this was the first comment that really accounted for some of the differences rather than rely on conjecture. Wish I had modpoints.
Your original post made a very broad assumption, namely that since there is less Apple hardware out there than PC hardware, Apple developers can exploit hardware tricks or in general work closer to the metal. I don't know if you think they're making extensive use of assembly languages or non-portable C code, but I can tell you that that's just not the case.
Part of the reason that the hardware switch went relatively smoothly for Apple is because their kernel is portable and is not full of CPU-specific hacks (PPC and x86 are different enough that they wouldn't have gotten away with that, plus, it's not 1980 anymore). And as far as console OSes go...they haven't had to include things like multitasking, memory allocation, or paging until very recently. Again, simply not comparable to OS X.
Forget that there's less Apple hardware out there. It's hardware that's changed greatly over the years, and OS X is a modern OS with a lot of features that game consoles can do with out. It's simply not a good analogy. The idea can be true on a very broad level (more portable code can't run as lean) but it's certainly not always true and in this case it doesn't apply for many reasons.
Just let it go at this point, rather than challenge people for benchmarks when you haven't offered anything in the way of proof for your own argument (there really isn't any, since game consoles are as different from Macs as they are from PCs, OS-wise. Or at least they were until very recently).
You know, I love the Daily Show, I lean fairly liberal, and I love Bill Maher's standup.
But I take issue with lumping in the flamebait that is Real Time with Stewart and Colbert's shows. All I ever see him doing is interviewing people simply because they have an opinion--musicians, comedians, etc--and they're always one breath away from a huge circle jerk. Or he invites on a capital-c conservative to see how quickly they can make him cry.
That said, he's a smart guy and I have seen good Real Time segments. But that's always something cherry-picked on a website. Whenever I tune I get to witness him saying things that rely on huge assumptions or plain bad reasoning.
Example: last month he let Janeane Garofalo say that Democrats are literally better human beings. I was in PA for "Deadheads for Obama" and I still wanted to puke when I heard that. The left does not need any Bill O'Reilly style programming, but sadly, from what I have seen of Maher he is more than deserving of the comparison.
whooosh
(sound of airplane flying overhead)
You seem to be implying that someone who voted for Obama must have done so because he's a symbol for something, as opposed to his record on the campaign trail, or his stance on any of the issues. I'm glad you voted for the person you thought was most qualified but I wish you'd afford others the same respect instead of merely accusing them of being swayed by skin color, etc.
Some athletes have comedic timing. Even if none of them did, Phelps is in a league of his own. He can't even get through a commercial. When he endorses things I feel like I'm watching Rocky 2 made real.
Don't watch much SNL, do you? They always parody the candidates as well as the current administration. Often, they nail it. Bush can't even say "nuclear", but he got re-elected despite how easy he his to parody.
Most of us vote based on issues, not comedy sketches. If you're an American, then I'd advise you to do the same.