A lot of people dislike Stallman and his positions, but even his biggest detractors have to admit that he's a principled man. You know where RMS stands on issues before he even comments on them because he's had a consistent message for a few decades now.
Principled perhaps, but that does not mean he is right, or that his views are realistic. You only have to look at Hurd vs Linux to see that pragmatism can get you a lot farther along than the intransigence that RMS pushes. Perhaps he wants to live in a world of open source and closed source and never the twain shall meet. Most other people just want to do stuff, preferably using open source, but closed or with restrictions if they have to.
Personally I think Mono / Moonlight is a waste of time for many reasons but there is no denying that the project has come a long way. I am glad not everyone in the open source movement is a zealot because the reality is that if they were, that the state of software would be MUCH WORSE than it is now.
I'd actually like a PSP Go since my PSP 1000 is a bit chunky. Fundamentally the device is cute, compact and technically sound. But I see no reason to upgrade while it costs so much and offers no upgrade path. It's no good buying a PSP if it can't play my PSP games. I'm certainly not buying them over again and don't particularly relish being locked into PSN for future purchases either.
The whole launch is a trainwreck with Sony simultaneously managing to piss off retailers and consumers. Maybe they'll address some of these faults when the PSP2 inevitably appears. My guess is PSP Go will be regarded in the same breath as the NGage and similar devices. This is in contrast the the enormous success they're having with the relaunched PS3.
Actually it's your logic is flawed. If Nintendo had produced a DSi which arbitrarily used a different physical format for playing games and offered no backwards compatibility, or exchange / transfer program people would be annoyed. They would vote with their wallets and the thing would gather dust on the shelves. This is exactly what will happen with the PSP Go.
The simple fact is that Sony have produced a handheld PSP, an iteration of an existing design but chosen to leave 50 million or however many existing PSP owners out in the cold. It wouldn't have killed Sony to provide a UMD peripheral. Indeed it would have removed a major upgrade hurdle for users and even made Sony money from sales of the device. As it stands, there is practically no incentive to "upgrade" to the PSP Go. Aside from bluetooth the old PSP offers virtually a superset of the functionality for a much lower price. Hell, you could even buy an older PSP and a 16Gb memory stick (to store your CFW iso rips if you were so inclined) and you'd still have change left over.
... why did Sony not provide a UMD peripheral? Something that people could sync their existing UMD collection over to the new PSP device. Such a device (built into a charging dock for example) could copy the contents of an inserted game/movie disk over to the PSP which would be good to play for a few days before requiring a shorter validation resync.
It's madness no such device exists since without it (or a robust universal exchange program) Sony has just pissed off millions of potential customers. Who exactly is going to pay more money for a device that is essentially crippled? The only other way I can see a UMD-less working in the short term is if it were packed with phone functionality (and camera) and its cost was then subsidized by the phone networks.
The sad part is OLPC could have cornered the netbook market before any of the competition knew it existed. It is so obvious that OLPC should have released a consumer version (say in black with slighty modified specs and form factor). It would have sold by the shit ton and helped fund the educational arm.
Instead OLPC twiddled its thumbs and Asus, Acer and others stole the market from right under them. I still think OLPC could salvage something by doing a commercial variant. After all, it still has some advantages over the competition, not least of which its designed for kids. Lots of parents would buy an OLPC for their kid if they could walk into Toys R Us and buy one off the shelf.
There is a good reason for the 4Gb limit in Vista. Most drivers are not large memory aware so if Microsoft did enable PAE in Vista then it would incur a substantial performance overhead because something in the kernel would have to marshal data between the legacy drivers and the large memory they reference. Not to mention that it represents a crap load of additional QA testing to do for every driver in existence. They only opened it up in Windows Server because they have tighter control of the drivers and only a subset hardware configurations to worry about. Clearly for consumers it was easier to offer people the choice of one or the other. I don't see any conspiracy in this since Vista and Windows 7 bundle both versions so its not like MS are profitting.
I use 64-bit Windows 7 (upgraded from Vista x64) and there are minor issues (e.g. 32-bit & 64-bit apps reside in different folders and some other disconnects) but generally the user experience is just fine. It isn't as seamless as OS X but it isn't bad either. And performance absolutely screams. If you have a desktop system or a processor that can benefit from 64-bit processing and greater memory there really is no reason to hold back.
Eclipse isn't an exact match for Visual Studio but it is an excellent free IDE. I use it day in day for Java / HTML development.
I do agree in general that open source projects suck from a usability point of view. The problem is most developers can't produce a decent consistent, usable UI for shit and it really requires a UI designer to come onto a project and be listened to. I'm glad that the likes of Firefox, Ubuntu, GNOME and other major projects are making an effort to address a traditional shortcoming.
...the fact that the battery is not 'user serviceable', which means they took away the battery door, put a warranty sticker over the battery and will charge you to replace the battery. Fun, eh?
I wish someone like the EU would put the smackdown on companies that do this. The only reason to seal a battery into a device is to motivate people to buy a new device when it dies. Excuses about form factor or whatever are bullshit as most handphones demonstrate all too readily.
First off the new hardware is undoubtedly sexier and better than the old hardware. The form factor is smaller, it's lighter. It is a desirable piece of kit. Or it would be if Sony hadn't fucked up in so many other ways.
The major problem is that the old PSP has a UMD drive and the new one doesn't. The millions of existing PSP owners are not going to upgrade if they can't take their games with them. If Sony had sold a peripheral that let people sync their collections (with occasional ownership checks), they could have solved this problem easily. They'd even make money from it. Perhaps syncing is a rights issue, but seriously Sony should have thought this shit out before hand. Instead they implemented an half-assed "honour" program which works with about 6 games.
Then there is the price. The PSP Go has to be marked up because stores can't sell games for it. Its expensive even compared to buying a normal PSP and a 16Gb memory stick. Again Sony might have curried favour if they'd worked out a scheme to share a cut of profits with stores. Or if they packed in a $50 PSN gift card into the box to make it more attractive to consumers. But they didn't do that either.
Then there is the price of PSN games. PSN games sell at MSRP when the physical copy is substantially discounted. Digital copies should be cheaper, not more expensive. If owners can't sell or rent games, they had damned well be cheaper.
The hardware is fine but the whole implementation is fucked up. I really don't understand why Sony didn't go the extra mile and stick phone functionality into the thing. Then the phone networks would have subsidized its price and sales would be brisk. As it is, the thing is a lame duck. Wait for version 2 which addresses some of these obvious shortcomings.
The only reason I might want to add an meta X-UA-Compatible='chrome=1' (or whatever it is) is if I wanted to (a). allow IE users with CF installed a snappier browsing experience, or (b). I wanted to make use of features that only exist in modern browsers such as canvas or SVG or something.
Then why not just test the capabilities of the browser and just stick up a box saying your browser does not support feature X, but here are links to browsers that do. The key point is test the browser's capabilities, rather than test for the browser. Test for the browser should be an absolute last resort, and cleanly separated so they don't pollute the site with browser dependencies. The more sites that coded to the standards, the better everyone is in the long term.
Google Frame is a terrible idea, and it isn't hard to see how it might be abused either. We all know how broken IE is, so let Microsoft fix it or suffer as their market share continues to dive.
Running two browsers in the same memory footprint with their own bugs, their own security issues, their own quirks & inconsistencies, their own files & settings, is just a bad idea. Full stop.
If Google want to promote people to switch browsers, then they have ample means to do so. Trying to shoehorn their own browser into somebody else's is just a recipe for disaster.
It's a terrible workaround, one even worse than the problem. If a site needs or benefits Google Chrome, then why not just popup a window and offer the user the chance to install it? This is after all, what Google Frame would require anyway. Installing another browser inside their first browser, one which has its own set of security issues, it's own incompatibilities and bugs, it's own footprint on top of the first browser, a plugin which introduces inconsistency into the user experience is an awful idea. IE may be a horrible browser but it is a known quantity.
If Google want to promote their browser, they can start by leveraging their search page to promote it. If Mozilla can get 20% or whatever market share without a search engine, then Google should be quite capable of doing better.
But seriously, what are Microsoft getting at? This is looking more and more like a cult thing than ever. Inviting friends over to preach to them about the virtues of Windows 7 so the unrepentant soul might offer sacrifices and money to the Microsoft god? I found the advert really eerie and unsettling...
Perhaps they hope to foster the same kind of blind, unquestioning obedience that Apple enjoys. An army of zealots who will slavishly buy the next device they shove out, react with hostility to any criticism of their beloved company, and defend it against all manner of attacks. It would be sad if people do become that way but clearly some people do. Linux has its fair share of zealots too.
Personally I see Windows launches as just a great time to pick up some free stuff. I'm going to have to buy Windows 7 anyway so I'm not going to complaining if Microsoft give it to me for free. How hard is this? Not very. Microsoft love handing out operating systems like candy to computer professionals. I got Windows Vista for playing a few videos. I'll get Windows 7 for attending a launch event (not a party).
Does it make me more loyal to Microsoft? Not really. I develop Java 90% of the time at the moment split 50/50 between Unix and Windows. Does it make me defend Microsoft? Only so far as it makes me use their product and therefore I can defend it from experience. More usually as with any product there will be plenty to criticize and plenty to defend and I'm sure Windows 7 will be no different.
I can also watch video on the go, listen to music or even put useful apps on the device. The DS or PSP can't.
Wrong. You can play video and music content just fine on a PSP. It still doesn't explain either why you think a 300 dollar XBox 360 is too expensive but an iPhone costing WAY more isn't.
It's not a dumb container. It's a custom built container in much the same way as Firefox is for Gecko. Trying to shoehorn some other browser into the content area incurs the bugs and footprint of two browsers.
Sure it promotes piracy, but it also promotes Video on Demand, digital downloads, IPTV, VOIP, MMOs, and Web 2.0 style apps many of which are distinctly commercial in nature and require lots of broadband. So I really don't see what the hell the point of singling out piracy is.
From the sounds of it Chrome Frame is just a web browser wrapped as an ActiveX control which can be hosted inside IE. In other words, you aren't using IE in the content area. While this is cool and all, the reality is that IE is just transformed into a dumb container for somebody else's browser so you're incurring the memory footprint and instability of two browsers, plus all the quirks that come from running two browsers, one inside the other. For example you probably can't use it in a whole raft of situations such as scripting with iframes & framesets, the cookies will be different, etc.
I'd add that this isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened some later versions of the Netscape (version 8?) browser implemented a compatibility mode that ran IE inside the content area of the browser instead of Gecko for certain sites. A fat lot of good it did them too.
I don't see any shame in saying if Linux is underneath. Chances are that if you have a set top box, router, media enabled TV, blu ray player, or some other sophisticated modern device that one or more of them is running Linux. On the other hand I don't see why consumers really care one way or the other. The only thing that matters is the frigging thing is fit for purpose.
If you argue that consumers should be dictated to by the government, aren't you really arguing in favor of a sort of totalitarianism. Who gave you or any other Fed the right to say what is responsible and what is not. That is not among the enumerated powers we have granted to the Congress in our Constitution.
Nope. It's called recognition that every government of every political persuasion needs to enact laws that promote the common good. Such things such as protection of the environment, pollution limits, national defence, roads, schools, law enforcement etc. People are selfish as a rule and its no good to expect them to voluntarily provide these things because it won't happen.
There be other places to buy yer electronics matey. This law will create markets blacker than the old man's beard and five times the size! By me whiskers this is the worst idea since they made grandma's medicine illegal!
Why will it? Are there really people THAT STUPID that they will seek out less energy efficient consumer electronics that offer no tangible benefits from other states?
Jesus christ, it's not like alcohol or tobacco here. People are not going to be driving across state lines to purchase illicit incandescent light bulbs or energy guzzling plasmas. And if a tiny percentage do then more fool them, but it won't negate the energy savings enjoyed by the vast majority.
I think Lotus Note's problems can never be entirely fixed. It carries too much legacy baggage to be anything but a bloated, monolithic, proprietary client to an equally bloated, monolithic, proprietary server. Fundamentally support for open protocols and standards are afterthoughts so the app is cluttered with concepts and tools which are foreign and primitive to anyone raised on open standards. On top of that, IBM being IBM, usability takes a backseat so you end up with a cluttered, confusing UI comprising of many components which feel like they were independently developed and shoved together.
I can't help feeling the suite would have been a lot more successful and better regarded if they'd spent half as much time on making it pleasant and usable as they did cramming it with obscure / proprietary features. Strangely enough that was OS/2's problem too.
Nethack isn't multi-user, but there are plenty of multi-player games both graphical and otherwise going back YEARS. Various versions of MUD would fit the bill, as would games like Netrek, Ultima Online, etc. Even many Amiga / ST games let people connect 2 or more systems with serial cables for primitive network gaming.
The concept of the WPS may have been amazing but the execution most certainly wasn't. OS/2 2.x and 3.x had absolutely awful user experiences with a surfeit of pages within tabs within tabs, common settings mixed in with complex ones, an ugly visual design, BonusPak software which destabilized the WPS to the point of unusability, unintuitive and bizarre drag & drop behaviour (anyone remember right mouse dragging colours and dropping them on windows elements?), ugly as sin appearance and a complete lack of consistency between WPS applications.
It's too bad IBM only got a clue about usability when it was too late. OS/2 Warp 4 looks reasonably pleasant for example, but by then who cared? Windows 95 may have had an incredibly shitty (from a technical standpoint) desktop but it did more or less function in a sane manner.
I know full well that the 2W bulbs output the same light as the 50W halogens because I tested them side by side. If anything the LEDs were marginally brighter. I realise of course that a halogen bulb may be outputting invisible UV / IR light but as I don't see it I really don't care/
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Principled perhaps, but that does not mean he is right, or that his views are realistic. You only have to look at Hurd vs Linux to see that pragmatism can get you a lot farther along than the intransigence that RMS pushes. Perhaps he wants to live in a world of open source and closed source and never the twain shall meet. Most other people just want to do stuff, preferably using open source, but closed or with restrictions if they have to.
Personally I think Mono / Moonlight is a waste of time for many reasons but there is no denying that the project has come a long way. I am glad not everyone in the open source movement is a zealot because the reality is that if they were, that the state of software would be MUCH WORSE than it is now.
The whole launch is a trainwreck with Sony simultaneously managing to piss off retailers and consumers. Maybe they'll address some of these faults when the PSP2 inevitably appears. My guess is PSP Go will be regarded in the same breath as the NGage and similar devices. This is in contrast the the enormous success they're having with the relaunched PS3.
The simple fact is that Sony have produced a handheld PSP, an iteration of an existing design but chosen to leave 50 million or however many existing PSP owners out in the cold. It wouldn't have killed Sony to provide a UMD peripheral. Indeed it would have removed a major upgrade hurdle for users and even made Sony money from sales of the device. As it stands, there is practically no incentive to "upgrade" to the PSP Go. Aside from bluetooth the old PSP offers virtually a superset of the functionality for a much lower price. Hell, you could even buy an older PSP and a 16Gb memory stick (to store your CFW iso rips if you were so inclined) and you'd still have change left over.
It's madness no such device exists since without it (or a robust universal exchange program) Sony has just pissed off millions of potential customers. Who exactly is going to pay more money for a device that is essentially crippled? The only other way I can see a UMD-less working in the short term is if it were packed with phone functionality (and camera) and its cost was then subsidized by the phone networks.
Instead OLPC twiddled its thumbs and Asus, Acer and others stole the market from right under them. I still think OLPC could salvage something by doing a commercial variant. After all, it still has some advantages over the competition, not least of which its designed for kids. Lots of parents would buy an OLPC for their kid if they could walk into Toys R Us and buy one off the shelf.
I use 64-bit Windows 7 (upgraded from Vista x64) and there are minor issues (e.g. 32-bit & 64-bit apps reside in different folders and some other disconnects) but generally the user experience is just fine. It isn't as seamless as OS X but it isn't bad either. And performance absolutely screams. If you have a desktop system or a processor that can benefit from 64-bit processing and greater memory there really is no reason to hold back.
I do agree in general that open source projects suck from a usability point of view. The problem is most developers can't produce a decent consistent, usable UI for shit and it really requires a UI designer to come onto a project and be listened to. I'm glad that the likes of Firefox, Ubuntu, GNOME and other major projects are making an effort to address a traditional shortcoming.
I wish someone like the EU would put the smackdown on companies that do this. The only reason to seal a battery into a device is to motivate people to buy a new device when it dies. Excuses about form factor or whatever are bullshit as most handphones demonstrate all too readily.
The major problem is that the old PSP has a UMD drive and the new one doesn't. The millions of existing PSP owners are not going to upgrade if they can't take their games with them. If Sony had sold a peripheral that let people sync their collections (with occasional ownership checks), they could have solved this problem easily. They'd even make money from it. Perhaps syncing is a rights issue, but seriously Sony should have thought this shit out before hand. Instead they implemented an half-assed "honour" program which works with about 6 games.
Then there is the price. The PSP Go has to be marked up because stores can't sell games for it. Its expensive even compared to buying a normal PSP and a 16Gb memory stick. Again Sony might have curried favour if they'd worked out a scheme to share a cut of profits with stores. Or if they packed in a $50 PSN gift card into the box to make it more attractive to consumers. But they didn't do that either.
Then there is the price of PSN games. PSN games sell at MSRP when the physical copy is substantially discounted. Digital copies should be cheaper, not more expensive. If owners can't sell or rent games, they had damned well be cheaper.
The hardware is fine but the whole implementation is fucked up. I really don't understand why Sony didn't go the extra mile and stick phone functionality into the thing. Then the phone networks would have subsidized its price and sales would be brisk. As it is, the thing is a lame duck. Wait for version 2 which addresses some of these obvious shortcomings.
Then why not just test the capabilities of the browser and just stick up a box saying your browser does not support feature X, but here are links to browsers that do. The key point is test the browser's capabilities, rather than test for the browser. Test for the browser should be an absolute last resort, and cleanly separated so they don't pollute the site with browser dependencies. The more sites that coded to the standards, the better everyone is in the long term.
Google Frame is a terrible idea, and it isn't hard to see how it might be abused either. We all know how broken IE is, so let Microsoft fix it or suffer as their market share continues to dive.
If Google want to promote people to switch browsers, then they have ample means to do so. Trying to shoehorn their own browser into somebody else's is just a recipe for disaster.
If Google want to promote their browser, they can start by leveraging their search page to promote it. If Mozilla can get 20% or whatever market share without a search engine, then Google should be quite capable of doing better.
No they're the new Ann Summers.
Perhaps they hope to foster the same kind of blind, unquestioning obedience that Apple enjoys. An army of zealots who will slavishly buy the next device they shove out, react with hostility to any criticism of their beloved company, and defend it against all manner of attacks. It would be sad if people do become that way but clearly some people do. Linux has its fair share of zealots too.
Personally I see Windows launches as just a great time to pick up some free stuff. I'm going to have to buy Windows 7 anyway so I'm not going to complaining if Microsoft give it to me for free. How hard is this? Not very. Microsoft love handing out operating systems like candy to computer professionals. I got Windows Vista for playing a few videos. I'll get Windows 7 for attending a launch event (not a party).
Does it make me more loyal to Microsoft? Not really. I develop Java 90% of the time at the moment split 50/50 between Unix and Windows. Does it make me defend Microsoft? Only so far as it makes me use their product and therefore I can defend it from experience. More usually as with any product there will be plenty to criticize and plenty to defend and I'm sure Windows 7 will be no different.
Wrong. You can play video and music content just fine on a PSP. It still doesn't explain either why you think a 300 dollar XBox 360 is too expensive but an iPhone costing WAY more isn't.
It's not a dumb container. It's a custom built container in much the same way as Firefox is for Gecko. Trying to shoehorn some other browser into the content area incurs the bugs and footprint of two browsers.
Sure it promotes piracy, but it also promotes Video on Demand, digital downloads, IPTV, VOIP, MMOs, and Web 2.0 style apps many of which are distinctly commercial in nature and require lots of broadband. So I really don't see what the hell the point of singling out piracy is.
I'd add that this isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened some later versions of the Netscape (version 8?) browser implemented a compatibility mode that ran IE inside the content area of the browser instead of Gecko for certain sites. A fat lot of good it did them too.
I don't see any shame in saying if Linux is underneath. Chances are that if you have a set top box, router, media enabled TV, blu ray player, or some other sophisticated modern device that one or more of them is running Linux. On the other hand I don't see why consumers really care one way or the other. The only thing that matters is the frigging thing is fit for purpose.
Nope. It's called recognition that every government of every political persuasion needs to enact laws that promote the common good. Such things such as protection of the environment, pollution limits, national defence, roads, schools, law enforcement etc. People are selfish as a rule and its no good to expect them to voluntarily provide these things because it won't happen.
Why will it? Are there really people THAT STUPID that they will seek out less energy efficient consumer electronics that offer no tangible benefits from other states?
Jesus christ, it's not like alcohol or tobacco here. People are not going to be driving across state lines to purchase illicit incandescent light bulbs or energy guzzling plasmas. And if a tiny percentage do then more fool them, but it won't negate the energy savings enjoyed by the vast majority.
I can't help feeling the suite would have been a lot more successful and better regarded if they'd spent half as much time on making it pleasant and usable as they did cramming it with obscure / proprietary features. Strangely enough that was OS/2's problem too.
Nethack isn't multi-user, but there are plenty of multi-player games both graphical and otherwise going back YEARS. Various versions of MUD would fit the bill, as would games like Netrek, Ultima Online, etc. Even many Amiga / ST games let people connect 2 or more systems with serial cables for primitive network gaming.
It's too bad IBM only got a clue about usability when it was too late. OS/2 Warp 4 looks reasonably pleasant for example, but by then who cared? Windows 95 may have had an incredibly shitty (from a technical standpoint) desktop but it did more or less function in a sane manner.
I know full well that the 2W bulbs output the same light as the 50W halogens because I tested them side by side. If anything the LEDs were marginally brighter. I realise of course that a halogen bulb may be outputting invisible UV / IR light but as I don't see it I really don't care/