If someone finds a bug or flaw, it doesn't take someone else very long to fix it. Now when it comes to corporations, they have to wait to bill you for the next release, and you pay it too because the fix of bugs alone justifies buying the new version.
The problem with Open Office is that someone could check the fix in tonight but you wouldn't necessarily see a 2.04 until whenever they felt like releasing it which could be months or more. So really it's irrelevant in that situation that you're dealing with open source or closed source.
What OOo should do is implement some form of patching mechanism, similar to Firefox. Then they can have their firedrills and dump out a small, precision patch and innoculate much of their userbase before any harm can be done.
If I were OpenOffice, I'd also be questioning the need to support StarBasic AND Python AND Java AND BeanShell AND JavaScript (two versions) for the same product. While it's understandable there are certainly legacy reasons for doing so, I wonder if all these languages shouldn't be reined in a bit. My understanding is that JS, Basic & BeanShell can be embedded in documents, so if I were looking to break OO I'd be looking to see what objects had been exposed in these scripting languages.
I played EVE online for a while and I really liked it. I eventually quit because like most games it requires a time investment which increases as you play longer. One thing I did like is the way that you could train without being online. This was a great idea. Also amazing is the in-game economy which is almost complex enough that you could use it to learn real life trading.
Where it is a bit dull is that first play. I think the vastness of space and the dense information on the screen could be off putting for many. Perhaps the intro could do with a revamp, possibly hiding more complex controls and screens until the user has gotten the basics in hand.
I'd agree the voice acting is pretty stinky, but I disagree about the depth of gameplay. Oblivion has one of the richest game environments of any game ever, online or not. Dozens and dozens of dungeons to explore, major towns, unique graphics throughout (rather than cookie cutter graphic repetition found in some games), countless quests, an excellent combat system, rich detail in everything. Free roaming means you don't even have to follow the plot if you want and just go off and do your own thing. I've played something like 100 hours I'm still doing peripheral quests. The leveling system is far more interesting that online games since it's not kills, but your skill proficiency that dictate your levels.
It isn't a perfect game. As you say the voice acting is pretty boring, and the character daily routines are a bit dull, but there is just so much to do that it is breathtaking. I suspect that if there were an Elder Scrolls MMPORG that it might lose lots of things that make Oblivion so great.
I thought the point of MMPORGs was for people to have fun, not to spend every waking hour performing menial, repetitive tasks over and over again to nudge an exp bar a few pixels. That is what WOW & EQ do. The locations might change but the game is ultra repetitive slog. It starts off easy, but then begins to take, hours, days and then weeks to progress. The only way to progress is to play for longer and longer periods. Why do people put up with it? Because the game conditions them to expect random rewards from persistent play. And the longer they play, the more they invest emotionally in the game and the harder it is to stop. That's not fun, that's an addiction.
I went through all this shit with EQ. I wouldn't say I was hardcore, but I did feel like I had to play 2 hours a day just to feel like I was making any progress. Once you got beyond level 18 or so, the game was almost impossible to play without extensive periods of camping in groups. Fortunately Verant snapped me out of it during the Shadows of Luclin launch debacle when the game crashed on an almost nightly basis. Thanks to their own ineptitude I canceled my account and I'm so glad I did.
I've played MMPORGs since and I enjoy some. But in general I think for anyone thinking of playing an MMPORG, they should play the free trial period or the initial 30 days included with the retail box and realise that that's as good as it's probably going to get. Give me something like Oblivion any day.
The thing is, Google can probably infer who you are in a lot of cases even if you went to the trouble of deleting your cookies. They might still be able to re-associate with you through your ip address (even a block), your user agent, and your search criteria. A large ISP might be a tough nut to crack since it contains invisible proxies and other nonsense but other ISPs might allow them to reassociate in a lot of cases. And of course if you use any google services that require you to log in, then you're totally screwed. The same goes for any other portals that feature sign-in with search and other services, e.g. Yahoo, MSN etc.
While VMWare is a good product, it stinks if you want to play games or do anything even remotely demanding in your VM environment. Don't assume that the situation would be any better on the Mac.
Give it a few years and I'm sure Apple and Windows apps will run totally side by side through some hypervisor architecture.
You can say what you like about AOL but do you think Google or whoever doesn't maintain similar data about you?
In all probability they could pull up a full list of all search criteria you've done in the last 30 days. Now you can of course delete your Google cookie, but if you have a Google Ad Sense / GMail / Site Builder / Groups / Toolbar / Desktop etc. account then you're screwed since you can't be anonymous for part of their site and signed in for another. I expect Google cookies are site wide and "self-healing". Same with Yahoo! Same with MSN. And even if you did use a fresh browser session for Googling, who's to say they couldn't reestablish who you are through fuzzy means? If they logged your ip address (or block), browser, operating system, search criteria and browsing habits, it is feasible that they could reestablish a lock even if you deleted your cookies after each session.
The big screw up here (for AOL) is that this data was released in an uncontrolled way and without thinking of the consequences. I bet that list contains credit card numbers, ssns, real people's names, and compromising search terms mixed with personally identifiable terns that could seriously ruin somebody's life.
I think that that a more ambitious and useful plan would be if GNUStep project were rebooted to implement Cocoa / OS X rather than a dead operating system (NextStep 3.3). That might actually invigorate the project to the point that it becomes more mainstream and useful. It wouldn't hurt either if it adopted the GTK theme engine and other modern UI guidelines so at least it looked and felt like just another application rather than some weirdo UI with its own window manager.
Underestimating the intelligence of their audience. Yes, their audience is clueless, but they're getting a clue. The AOL client is still stuck in a world where they believe users can't deal with more than 6 bookmarks
Dumping Mozilla / Gecko. AOL had a chance to free itself from the decrepit browser made by their main competitor and they blew it for a set of golden handcuffs.
Arrogance. Hey we have 30 million customers, so squeal piggy! Oh wait, 29 million, 28 million...
Risk averse. See Gecko for big example. Scared of changing anything for fear of negative press when the VBScript and MIDI attachments on some retard's homepage no longer works.
Adverts, adverts, adverts. All over the place. Why are people paying for this shit again? It's like adware but you pay for it.
Expense and hassle. Costs more than a regular ISP service, insists on loading your machine with shitty software to make the service work.
Treat your customers like shit. Under no circumstances should customers be allowed to unsubscribe. If they dare to try, lead them through a barrage of questions designed to confuse, stall, waiver or otherwise keep them paying.
Golden cage mentality. Try escaping from the AOL world by following links. It's hard than you think!
La, la, la, I can't hear you! The rest of the web builds up its own content models that are far richer and far more flexible than anything in AOL
Marketing morons. Every technical feature in the product is dictated / vetoed by marketing. Innovation sits in the corner weeping.
Sack the talent. Anyone who is capable of innovating, e.g. Netscape, Nullsoft etc. should be sacked. Any talent that remains should have all individuality sucked out of them. Force them all to adopt indecipherable aol.com addresses, e.g. sbob0345@aol.com and sap their will by forcing them to do all their business through the shitty Thunderbird-esque "AOL communicator".
Punching a gift horse in the mouth. What to do when you have THE Windows music player in your portfolio, capable of streaming, videos, online content? Nothing. Nothing at all. Finally and belatedly throw some half-assed music store into it, a mere 5 years after it no longer matters.
Synergy or lack thereof. What to do when merged with a massive multimedia conglom? Why very little of course. Pay lip service to synergy but don't bother to do anything to generate revenue such as sell video on demand, music, skins for WinAmp / Netscape etc..
Like many I downloaded beta 2 expecting something which was feature complete and a good representation of what the final product would be. What a piece of shit beta 2 turned out to be. The broad strokes were okay (the theme is nice, some of the new apps are nice) but it just felt so flakey in every detail. UAC made life unbearable. The classic mode looks horrible with the new explorer. The new explorer looks horrible period (great idea to stick the menus *under* the toolbar btw). While not a bug, I also felt totally disappointed that MS *still* don't see fit to fix paintbrush, notepad, calc or any of the other basic apps to improve them to the point of usability. I don't think much of KDE, but I was yearning for it after the monstrosity that was Vista beta 2.
I am not sure how Microsoft had the balls to call it a beta. I've used lots of MS betas and in the main they're quality products with a few bugs to iron out. Not this time around, this was alpha country. I've never seen such a lamentable effort. I knew within 30 minutes of playing around with it that there would be no release this year.
You claim low powered and lousy screens, but the screens are designed to be visible from all angles in all kinds of light. The screen doesn't even have to draw power in some circumstances. As for low power (and assuming you meant CPU power)... How much power do you actually need to type some notes or browse the web? For that these devices will be plenty powerful enough, and still more powerful than pocket pcs and cost less. It is a perverse law of laptop design that the smaller you want it, the more it costs. Yet here is one that is positively svelte and costs a fraction of a Vaio. Even if it cost 3x manufacturing cost in commercial form, that's only $300-350.
People doing some browsing, email and writing a few documents don't NEED a high powered device. The OLPC thing is almost perfect for casual use - fast startup, low power consumption, rugged, has a keyboard and touchpad and is cheap. It's simply more practical for those kinds of uses. I would never, ever lug my laptop off on holiday because it's too expensive, too bulky and too tempting for thieves.
And I believe they'll be just as usable than Origami in these roles. More so in fact. Origami mandates XP which mandates harddrives which mandates high power consumption and hibernates and resumes. That makes them clumsy to use, fragile and power hungry. And have you ever used pen entry on a pocket pc to do any serious work? It's a hopeless system. You need a keyboard and you need a mouse, or at least a thumbpad to punch out letters. I've been stuck on holiday with a PocketPC and browsing / email is a wretched experience. It might be slightly easier with a larger Origami device but not much.
That's not to say Origami isn't useful - a small form factor PC obviously has compelling uses, but not for the situations I cited. This is the reason that Bill Gates hates these things. In one fell swoop millions of these things are going to descend on the world. Not only will kids get them, but if they were ever commercialised then they would become a familiar site all over the place.
Every person who sits in a coffee shop browsing the web, or in a lecture hall taking notes, or in cramped economy class with just a clip tray, or is on a weekend away with hand luggage would give their right arm for an ultra cheap, ultra rugged and ultra usable laptop for 200-300 dollars. That is why Microsoft & Bill Gates hates these things - they cost a fraction of his Origami concept boxes and just as usable. In fact I would say they are more usable since they are proper laptops and not some crappy pen computing device shoehorned into working with XP. These things are proper laptops with a mouse, keyboard and screen in a small form factor. You could give them a beating because they are designed to be kid proof. Their solid state design means you sling them into a backpack, drop them, or toss them onto a bed and they would still work. There would be a huge market for a commercial version of these things. If OLPC were too busy producing a kids version, I am sure their OEM partners would love to give it a shot.
As I said, you can do it the both ways - either a swap partition or swap files. Linux even allows you to mix and match, such as use multiple swap (files) on multiple drives if you like. This might be too much flexibility for some but its a perfectly adequate solution.
I don't have a problem with the way Windows does things, but I do think Linux is more flexible. And as mentioned, my pagefile literally disintegrated. I'd be tempted to turn off VM, reboot and delete the pagefile.sys and turn VM back on if I thought I could guarantee it worked afterwards, but it's a company machine so it is a risk I don't feel comfortable taking.
Linux (the kernel) is just one part of the puzzle. There is nothing to say that Motorola or whoever has to open up their user interface or anything else that sits on top of it. I'd be surprised if they had in fact.
Generally I get away with one troll / flamebait per 2 or 3 insightfuls:) I think I did lay it on thick with this post, but sometimes the moderation really sucks so I thought I'd get it all out. I've said things which were quite innocuous in the past but been modded down by fanboys for being contrary to what they wanted to hear. Funnily enough, creationists have done it to me too, which suggests fanboys reside somewhere on that end of the scale.
I think the Wii is going to be a good machine. I just question those who worship at Nintendo's feet when they have a consistent track record of producing gaming systems which have some obvious inadequacies which are subsequently "fixed" in a revamped model that suffers from other obvious inadequacies. The entire Gameboy series for example with one lousy screen after another. Why the loyalty? Why the loyalty to one Japanese conglomerate?
For all the hype, I think the Wii & Wii-mote exactly fits that bill. The controller will be fine for some games but clumsy for others. Even with a strip over or under your tv (won't that look pretty?), the thing is going to require calibration and more calibration. And it will be tiring because of the way you must hold it and wave it around. Finally all that arm / wrist action is going to lead to smashed vases, black eyes and broken hands / fingers aplenty. So I question all the hype around it. I'm sure it will be excellent for certain kinds of games, but I see it as much an impediment as an innovation to the system.
Then there is the Wii system itself. The performance, the resolution, the lack of features outside of gaming are way below other next gen consoles. It means that titles making their way from either the 360 or PS3 will have to be hacked down to the bone. Or more likely, Wii owners get enhanced versions of GC / XBox / PS2 titles, until they start to dry up in a few years.
Now the Wii is going to be a good system and has price and immediacy on its side. But beyond the hype the reality is pretty underwhelming. Games like Red Steel (which people rave about) wouldn't raise an eyebrow on a PC. I thought it had some impressive effects for a console, such as reflection & bump mapping, but the game itself felt very pedestrian.
I can write and install my own applications anyway, using something called Java. Practically every phone offers it these days, supporting the CLDC & MIDP configurations. For example, look at all the emulators available. Obviously Java is not the fastest platform for but its perfectly sufficient to write games and small utilities that run over a wide range of devices.
Now obviously you could do the same with natively compiled code if all phones used the same hardware but they don't. So I'm not sure how using Linux is any guarantee against fragmentation. There are lots of embedded Linux solutions that run on lots of embedded processors with lots of embedded GUIs. Unless every Linux based phone maker happened to pick (and licence) the exact solution used by Motorola, there is no possibility that apps would run on one system to the next.
I don't know about anyone else, but I really, really do not care what OS my phone uses, just as long as it works as advertised. It should be navigable, have good sound quality, good battery life, have shortcuts, good predictive texting and other features. In other words it should just work.
If there is some kind of Linux at the bottom of it - great, but running Linux is not much of a selling point if the UI is junk. I have an ADSL modem & wireless router which uses Linux. Fortunately it's an excellent bit of kit because I would curse it everyday no matter what OS was underneath if it wasn't.
MS's job isn't to make you, the geek happy. MS's job is to make as many people as they can as happy as possible. So let's say they develop a new awesome feature that they think nromal users will really like. However, they know normal users aren't smart enough to turn it on by themselves (this is easy to prove).
The problem with MS making people happy (or rather letting their marketing department dictate what features are enabled by default) is that some of them have serious consequences. There are very, very serious consequences from leaving files lying around and all these happy people will be blissfully unaware of them until they're bitten in the ass by them. There are going to be a great many lawsuits and criminal cases over this feature. Laptop thefts and compromises aimed at stealing data may rise because of this feature.
Because MS is an everyman based OS, they need to have the useful stuff turned on by default because normal users won't do it. It's like automatic updates.
Microsoft have been trumpeting that Vista is the "most secure Windows ever" etc. Keeping hidden copies of your documents around doesn't seem very secure at all. It should at least be off by default. If it really needs to be visible then Microsoft should popup a helpful box the first time someone saves in MS Word or whatever explaining the pros and cons of the feature and offering to turn it on then.
Besides, OS X can most plausibly claim to be an OS designed for computer incompetents (or everymen). I would hope that even they would not be stupid enough to enable the feature without at least asking first.
It isn't Microsoft's idea either. Vax VMS had versioned files, way back when. It was confusing as hell for someone used to a *normal* file system.
Anyway, I think there is enormous potential for built-in versioning under an fs. I don't like the idea of versioning built into the fs, but something that sat over a conventional scs like subversion would be great.
Windows' swapfile usage is pretty similar to the way Linux does swap, except that Windows uses a file instead of a partition. By default it's 1.5 times the amount of RAM installed in the system and is made all at once to ensure a contiguous file.
Sadly, it isn't always contiguous since it has an initial size and a maximum size. If you run too many apps or an app goes crazy and consumes all your memory, your pagefile goes through the roof.. I was horrified to discover the pagefile.sys on my laptop was split into 3000+ pieces. I had to page defrag over it (a SysInternals tool). After running it a bunch of times, it's still at 800 pieces even now.
I I prefer the Linux method since you can choose a swapfile or a swap partition. A partition guarantees no fragmentation (and optimal performance since there is no underlying fs), but you have the flexibility of a swap file if you need it.
Why are schools not providing their pupils with healthy food to begin with? If the halls are filled with vending machines, and you serve burgers, pizza & fries everyday, is it a wonder that some kids turn out to be fat fucks?
Personally I think parents have the right to restrict what foods their kids eat (through this system if need be), but I believe the system is the best of a bad situation. In fact, I bet the Coca-Cola's of this world would endorse the system since it means they can still sell their crap to the majority.
If you feel the need to control what your kid eats in high school through a system like this, you've allready failed as a parent.
That's a very bold statement, but if you can control what your kid eats at home through your supermarket purchases, why can't you do the same when they are at school?
Don't I know it. Mention any potential issues with the controller such as the potential for injury or its unsuitability for certain game genres and you'll feel the heat of outraged fanboys. It's not like Microsoft or Sony consoles don't have their own fanboys but have thus far they've stayed away from Slashdot. Nintendo fanboys are like fleas on a dog on this site.
The psychology of the fanboy is interesting. My guess is that it requires someone to invest totally in a platform. Not just financially but emotionally too. It also helps that the platform is the underdog, either because it is inferior or because it has a small fraction of the market. Once that happens, any competition to that platform is perceived as a personal threat to the fanboy. Rationality flies out the window and you get all kinds of silly rants that platform X is better than platform Y. I've seen it all before with the ZX Spectrum, Commodore Amiga, OS/2, Linux and now Nintendo. It is almost worth provoking the ire of fanboys to hear the little squeaks they make.
Personally I reckon the Wii will be a fine console, but I don't think it will hold a candle to either the 360 or PS3.
Which is why I wouldn't be using the GPL3 for any kind of client / server game. No matter what the intentions of the GPL are, it is obviously unreasonable that a server can't discriminate against modified clients which might give an unfair advantage to a player.
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The problem with Open Office is that someone could check the fix in tonight but you wouldn't necessarily see a 2.04 until whenever they felt like releasing it which could be months or more. So really it's irrelevant in that situation that you're dealing with open source or closed source.
What OOo should do is implement some form of patching mechanism, similar to Firefox. Then they can have their firedrills and dump out a small, precision patch and innoculate much of their userbase before any harm can be done.
If I were OpenOffice, I'd also be questioning the need to support StarBasic AND Python AND Java AND BeanShell AND JavaScript (two versions) for the same product. While it's understandable there are certainly legacy reasons for doing so, I wonder if all these languages shouldn't be reined in a bit. My understanding is that JS, Basic & BeanShell can be embedded in documents, so if I were looking to break OO I'd be looking to see what objects had been exposed in these scripting languages.
Where it is a bit dull is that first play. I think the vastness of space and the dense information on the screen could be off putting for many. Perhaps the intro could do with a revamp, possibly hiding more complex controls and screens until the user has gotten the basics in hand.
It isn't a perfect game. As you say the voice acting is pretty boring, and the character daily routines are a bit dull, but there is just so much to do that it is breathtaking. I suspect that if there were an Elder Scrolls MMPORG that it might lose lots of things that make Oblivion so great.
I went through all this shit with EQ. I wouldn't say I was hardcore, but I did feel like I had to play 2 hours a day just to feel like I was making any progress. Once you got beyond level 18 or so, the game was almost impossible to play without extensive periods of camping in groups. Fortunately Verant snapped me out of it during the Shadows of Luclin launch debacle when the game crashed on an almost nightly basis. Thanks to their own ineptitude I canceled my account and I'm so glad I did.
I've played MMPORGs since and I enjoy some. But in general I think for anyone thinking of playing an MMPORG, they should play the free trial period or the initial 30 days included with the retail box and realise that that's as good as it's probably going to get. Give me something like Oblivion any day.
The thing is, Google can probably infer who you are in a lot of cases even if you went to the trouble of deleting your cookies. They might still be able to re-associate with you through your ip address (even a block), your user agent, and your search criteria. A large ISP might be a tough nut to crack since it contains invisible proxies and other nonsense but other ISPs might allow them to reassociate in a lot of cases. And of course if you use any google services that require you to log in, then you're totally screwed. The same goes for any other portals that feature sign-in with search and other services, e.g. Yahoo, MSN etc.
Give it a few years and I'm sure Apple and Windows apps will run totally side by side through some hypervisor architecture.
In all probability they could pull up a full list of all search criteria you've done in the last 30 days. Now you can of course delete your Google cookie, but if you have a Google Ad Sense / GMail / Site Builder / Groups / Toolbar / Desktop etc. account then you're screwed since you can't be anonymous for part of their site and signed in for another. I expect Google cookies are site wide and "self-healing". Same with Yahoo! Same with MSN. And even if you did use a fresh browser session for Googling, who's to say they couldn't reestablish who you are through fuzzy means? If they logged your ip address (or block), browser, operating system, search criteria and browsing habits, it is feasible that they could reestablish a lock even if you deleted your cookies after each session.
The big screw up here (for AOL) is that this data was released in an uncontrolled way and without thinking of the consequences. I bet that list contains credit card numbers, ssns, real people's names, and compromising search terms mixed with personally identifiable terns that could seriously ruin somebody's life.
I think that that a more ambitious and useful plan would be if GNUStep project were rebooted to implement Cocoa / OS X rather than a dead operating system (NextStep 3.3). That might actually invigorate the project to the point that it becomes more mainstream and useful. It wouldn't hurt either if it adopted the GTK theme engine and other modern UI guidelines so at least it looked and felt like just another application rather than some weirdo UI with its own window manager.
I am not sure how Microsoft had the balls to call it a beta. I've used lots of MS betas and in the main they're quality products with a few bugs to iron out. Not this time around, this was alpha country. I've never seen such a lamentable effort. I knew within 30 minutes of playing around with it that there would be no release this year.
People doing some browsing, email and writing a few documents don't NEED a high powered device. The OLPC thing is almost perfect for casual use - fast startup, low power consumption, rugged, has a keyboard and touchpad and is cheap. It's simply more practical for those kinds of uses. I would never, ever lug my laptop off on holiday because it's too expensive, too bulky and too tempting for thieves.
And I believe they'll be just as usable than Origami in these roles. More so in fact. Origami mandates XP which mandates harddrives which mandates high power consumption and hibernates and resumes. That makes them clumsy to use, fragile and power hungry. And have you ever used pen entry on a pocket pc to do any serious work? It's a hopeless system. You need a keyboard and you need a mouse, or at least a thumbpad to punch out letters. I've been stuck on holiday with a PocketPC and browsing / email is a wretched experience. It might be slightly easier with a larger Origami device but not much.
That's not to say Origami isn't useful - a small form factor PC obviously has compelling uses, but not for the situations I cited. This is the reason that Bill Gates hates these things. In one fell swoop millions of these things are going to descend on the world. Not only will kids get them, but if they were ever commercialised then they would become a familiar site all over the place.
Every person who sits in a coffee shop browsing the web, or in a lecture hall taking notes, or in cramped economy class with just a clip tray, or is on a weekend away with hand luggage would give their right arm for an ultra cheap, ultra rugged and ultra usable laptop for 200-300 dollars. That is why Microsoft & Bill Gates hates these things - they cost a fraction of his Origami concept boxes and just as usable. In fact I would say they are more usable since they are proper laptops and not some crappy pen computing device shoehorned into working with XP. These things are proper laptops with a mouse, keyboard and screen in a small form factor. You could give them a beating because they are designed to be kid proof. Their solid state design means you sling them into a backpack, drop them, or toss them onto a bed and they would still work. There would be a huge market for a commercial version of these things. If OLPC were too busy producing a kids version, I am sure their OEM partners would love to give it a shot.
I don't have a problem with the way Windows does things, but I do think Linux is more flexible. And as mentioned, my pagefile literally disintegrated. I'd be tempted to turn off VM, reboot and delete the pagefile.sys and turn VM back on if I thought I could guarantee it worked afterwards, but it's a company machine so it is a risk I don't feel comfortable taking.
Linux (the kernel) is just one part of the puzzle. There is nothing to say that Motorola or whoever has to open up their user interface or anything else that sits on top of it. I'd be surprised if they had in fact.
Generally I get away with one troll / flamebait per 2 or 3 insightfuls :) I think I did lay it on thick with this post, but sometimes the moderation really sucks so I thought I'd get it all out. I've said things which were quite innocuous in the past but been modded down by fanboys for being contrary to what they wanted to hear. Funnily enough, creationists have done it to me too, which suggests fanboys reside somewhere on that end of the scale.
For all the hype, I think the Wii & Wii-mote exactly fits that bill. The controller will be fine for some games but clumsy for others. Even with a strip over or under your tv (won't that look pretty?), the thing is going to require calibration and more calibration. And it will be tiring because of the way you must hold it and wave it around. Finally all that arm / wrist action is going to lead to smashed vases, black eyes and broken hands / fingers aplenty. So I question all the hype around it. I'm sure it will be excellent for certain kinds of games, but I see it as much an impediment as an innovation to the system.
Then there is the Wii system itself. The performance, the resolution, the lack of features outside of gaming are way below other next gen consoles. It means that titles making their way from either the 360 or PS3 will have to be hacked down to the bone. Or more likely, Wii owners get enhanced versions of GC / XBox / PS2 titles, until they start to dry up in a few years.
Now the Wii is going to be a good system and has price and immediacy on its side. But beyond the hype the reality is pretty underwhelming. Games like Red Steel (which people rave about) wouldn't raise an eyebrow on a PC. I thought it had some impressive effects for a console, such as reflection & bump mapping, but the game itself felt very pedestrian.
Now obviously you could do the same with natively compiled code if all phones used the same hardware but they don't. So I'm not sure how using Linux is any guarantee against fragmentation. There are lots of embedded Linux solutions that run on lots of embedded processors with lots of embedded GUIs. Unless every Linux based phone maker happened to pick (and licence) the exact solution used by Motorola, there is no possibility that apps would run on one system to the next.
If there is some kind of Linux at the bottom of it - great, but running Linux is not much of a selling point if the UI is junk. I have an ADSL modem & wireless router which uses Linux. Fortunately it's an excellent bit of kit because I would curse it everyday no matter what OS was underneath if it wasn't.
The problem with MS making people happy (or rather letting their marketing department dictate what features are enabled by default) is that some of them have serious consequences. There are very, very serious consequences from leaving files lying around and all these happy people will be blissfully unaware of them until they're bitten in the ass by them. There are going to be a great many lawsuits and criminal cases over this feature. Laptop thefts and compromises aimed at stealing data may rise because of this feature.
Because MS is an everyman based OS, they need to have the useful stuff turned on by default because normal users won't do it. It's like automatic updates.
Microsoft have been trumpeting that Vista is the "most secure Windows ever" etc. Keeping hidden copies of your documents around doesn't seem very secure at all. It should at least be off by default. If it really needs to be visible then Microsoft should popup a helpful box the first time someone saves in MS Word or whatever explaining the pros and cons of the feature and offering to turn it on then.
Besides, OS X can most plausibly claim to be an OS designed for computer incompetents (or everymen). I would hope that even they would not be stupid enough to enable the feature without at least asking first.
Anyway, I think there is enormous potential for built-in versioning under an fs. I don't like the idea of versioning built into the fs, but something that sat over a conventional scs like subversion would be great.
Sadly, it isn't always contiguous since it has an initial size and a maximum size. If you run too many apps or an app goes crazy and consumes all your memory, your pagefile goes through the roof.. I was horrified to discover the pagefile.sys on my laptop was split into 3000+ pieces. I had to page defrag over it (a SysInternals tool). After running it a bunch of times, it's still at 800 pieces even now.
I I prefer the Linux method since you can choose a swapfile or a swap partition. A partition guarantees no fragmentation (and optimal performance since there is no underlying fs), but you have the flexibility of a swap file if you need it.
Personally I think parents have the right to restrict what foods their kids eat (through this system if need be), but I believe the system is the best of a bad situation. In fact, I bet the Coca-Cola's of this world would endorse the system since it means they can still sell their crap to the majority.
That's a very bold statement, but if you can control what your kid eats at home through your supermarket purchases, why can't you do the same when they are at school?
The psychology of the fanboy is interesting. My guess is that it requires someone to invest totally in a platform. Not just financially but emotionally too. It also helps that the platform is the underdog, either because it is inferior or because it has a small fraction of the market. Once that happens, any competition to that platform is perceived as a personal threat to the fanboy. Rationality flies out the window and you get all kinds of silly rants that platform X is better than platform Y. I've seen it all before with the ZX Spectrum, Commodore Amiga, OS/2, Linux and now Nintendo. It is almost worth provoking the ire of fanboys to hear the little squeaks they make.
Personally I reckon the Wii will be a fine console, but I don't think it will hold a candle to either the 360 or PS3.
Which is why I wouldn't be using the GPL3 for any kind of client / server game. No matter what the intentions of the GPL are, it is obviously unreasonable that a server can't discriminate against modified clients which might give an unfair advantage to a player.