since I posted my above response, I have already had 2 past customers call me concerning this issue, knowledgeable ones that keep relatively up to date with technology (slashdot lurkers), even tho they themselves are not propeller heads. They were both calling me to ask how smart tags would impact their website. They weren't worried about how it would look to them, but rather how it would look to everyone else that agrees to turn on smart tags during setup. I almost dropped my coffee, the timing was so bizarre. They were not pleased that links would be added to their sites, and rightfully so. These particular site are very stylized, and random links strewn throughout would ugly them up quite a bit. As for your comments, altering the user interface to make smart links obvious might work. Or possibly someone could create a plug-in, which will suck all the smart tag info off of a page, and render just the links in a seperate window or something, leaving the original content untouched. As for educating people, not sure how to do that for the average user. The truth is we wont know how big a can of worms this will really be until it is widely released and more real people are using the tech. Maybe none of my past customers will even upgrade to XP, and will never know. It is just hard to tell exactly what affect this will have. btw, thanks for the intelligent comments/responses. Conversation is not dead after all!
well, I will agree. That is a useful idea. But I still have trouble getting past the fact that with this plan, you wouldn't be altering your content, but the content of other sites. As a content creator, this makes me really uneasy. Unfortunately, many times the person hiring you to design their webpage has very little technical knowledge. So lets say uninformed CEO Bob calls you wanting a website. You whip up a prototype, take it on your laptop to their office, and tailor it to their liking and style. A few days later when you publish the completed site, you tell uninformed CEO Bob to go check his site. When he does, all the sudden there are a bunch of links, to outside sites, which he never approved of, nor wanted. What is his first thought? CEO Bob doesn't think 'wow, what a nice feature of IE', he thinks 'what a crappy web designer. Why did he do this to my site?!?!?!!' If you are lucky, they will call you asking about it, and you can explain to him what happened. If you are not lucky, then when he calls, he is too angry to even listen, says you screwed him, and he is cancelling the check, and hangs up. So you say to add the meta tag that turns off smart linking to the page. Ok, simple enough. Even tho I don't feel like I should HAVE to do anything to disable them, if that's what I have to do, then that's what I have to do. What happens tho, when the over 100 customers you have had in the past start calling, and asking angrily why you went and edited their pages without permission to add links to outside sites. Suddenly your stuck in the position of explaining again, except this time, it isn't for your new customer, it is for everyone you have ever done a site for that still has the site up. Sound fun to you? Not me. I have enough to do day to day without having to go re-edit a thousand or so pages on over a hundred different sites. Not to mention the fact that all your past customers may be as clueless as CEO Bob and just blame you for the whole thing. Instead of a cancelled check tho, you might end up with court time and lawyer's fees. Sorry if you feel like I'm taking this all too far, but these are the kinds of people you deal with in the business, and I don't appreciate being put into this situation by MS.
Erm, why would I want to provide my own smart tag entries? If I wanted something linked, dont you think I would just hyperlink it instead of futzing with making a special tag for it that only IE will see????? I already provided my own smart tag entries. They are called hyperlinks. please leave them alone
Students pay to use the computers through various student fees. No, they dont have to pay hourly charges or pay everytime they use them. Usually schools charge what is called a student services fee, this basically is a charge for everything else you use at a school besides actual classes. So even if you never used the computers, you are still paying for them. just wanted to clear that small point. please move along
i have read it, and i appreciate what you are saying... but look at these plot points the 2 movies share, and tell me how many of these we in plato's version? did he have a sandy-haired hero with round, oversized eyeglasses and a red bow tie like both these movies have? did plato have a high-tech submarine with an international crew like these both do? These are just a few things these movies share. The list is much longer. I dont think that anyone is questioning that if someone sticks to plato's source, there will be similarity between movies about Atlantis. That is different than letting someone else write your movie, and you just redrawing it.
Disney has been doing this for a couple of decades, and no one has bothered to complain before now. Most of their movies have always been based off of other works, or more recently, from history. Pocahontas, The Hunchback, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and countless others are all based on history, popular fiction, or fairy tales. Disney seems to have long ago lost the ability to produce original story content. It seems surprising that people are just now picking up on it
Many schools have a lawyer available for their students. Maybe he could consult the lawyer for students to give the story an even more interesting twist. Use the own school's resources against it. The lawyer may not be willing to risk his job over it though.
They knew what he was doing though. They knew it was going to be some type of forum for students from what I can tell. They even bought him a server for it apparently. I think that would imply that he has the authority to give others permission to speak freely... wouldn't you?
Your comment would make sense, IF katz paid slashdot to write for them, not the other way around. This guy has given tens of thousands of dollars to the school I'm sure, whereas katz gets paid whatever he makes by slashdot. Plus, the school agreed to let him do this, and even sponsored it. They had to have some kind of clue what they were getting into. I can't argue with them shutting down the site, and it doesn't surprise me that they claimed ownership of content, since it was on their server. I think that is all that should have happened tho. Going back to your analogy, this is more like if they fired katz, and then took him into the parking lot and beat him up in addition.
You have just stated the most important point, as far as graphic design is concerned... Linux needs colorsync, and gimp does too. I seriously doubt you will ever see apple branded colorsync software on any other os, but this would be a great oppurtunity for OSS development, if they could make a colorsync compatible solution. I think this just isnt something that most OSS programmers give thought to yet. most people coding for OSS seem to be hardcore coders at this point, but this will change as time goes on, and popularity grows. Hopefully (soon) the need for a colorsync type solution will be realized, and a solution will be implemented. Until there is this, or something similar on *nix, I dont see graphic designers flooding to switch. As trivial as it sounds, the tech makes a huge difference
Re:the video side of things is similar
on
GIMP And OS X
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· Score: 2
This is a problem that Apple is going to unfortunately run into with many production settings where Macs are already used. "our systems work perfectly, why would we change?" There will probably be many organizations with the same feeling. Apple's best hope as far as this is concerned, is to keep optimizing osx, which they have been doing good at so far, tho it still has a ways to go. They need to make it so if an app is running native in OSX, it will perform better than it's os9 counterpart. They also need to stress the SMP abilities more, along with offering more choices of MP machines at their web store (come on!!! where are the dual 733s apple???) If apple continues to upgrade and optimize OSX like they have been, and keep offering nice machines, and nice machines with 2 processors, then they could possibly sway the 'if it aint broke dont fix it' people. If Apple can make it so OSX on a new machine runs their solutions significantly faster than anything OS9 ever thought about doing it, then they can convince the 'if it aint broke' people, and that is just what they need to do.
i see what your saying about the feature creep thing, but for me, im glad it is going to be the most recent version of PS ported to osx, not some old version that is lacking features I use. You may think of it as bloat, for me, the last version got rid of bloat for me. I was able to get rid of 2 different programs, which i had been using for their vector drawing capabilities. At version 3, photoshop became irreplaceable for me, and each version since has added new features i use. sorry if you think it is bloat, but I would like to lick the adobe programmers for the ways they make my life easier with each version of photoshop:)
Re:Cross-platform thanks to Apple...
on
GIMP And OS X
·
· Score: 3
Not quite. OS9 is a pretty big mess of an os, still containing a bit of 68k code, along with its ppc code. (for those that say os9 is ppc only, yes, I know this. It will only run on ppc, but Im sorry, it still has 68k code in it) The old mac os is such a unique beast, that porting anything to it has traditionally been a pain. Think of it this way, developers, mac developers, got gimp running on OSX in a few months. after years, it is not running on OS9, altho it runs on Win32, as you stated. There is a good reason for this. I will admit it openly, im a major machead, but i have written code for mac OS8+, Win 95-98, and for *nix. If you are making a console/terminal app, it is easy as pie regardless of the system. But if you are going for anything dealing with graphics/interface, then the mac version will probably be your stumbling block, unless you are well versed in the MacOS Toolbox.. And if you are dealing with a graphics oriented app like the gimp, then you would basically have to rewrite everything from scratch anyway, which defeats a lot of its purpose. End rant I guess.... anyway, my point, after all that is, win is not as far from *nix as you can get.... pre mac osx has it beat by many painful miles
the gpl does apply between the copyright holder and the end user, because the end user is guaranteed a right to the source code. whether they do anything with it is totally irrelevant, they still have a guarantee to it. The part where it says you dont have to accept the license... well, they expect you to delete the program if you dont accept... not just say 'naw, i dont agree to that' and keep using it anyway...
Just a random thought... but could this be some sort of hype possibly...? Their way of subtlely "saying this game will kick the ass of all other games!" If you look at it in that light, and if the programmers are actually credited somehow when the game ships, then you could really think of it as a stroke of brilliance. If this is truly the case (pure speculation of course)then the programmers probably even agreed to it willingly, enjoying the joke. /me notes marketing strategies for his future gaming company
If you need to find your area's NPR station that carries Fresh Air, you can go to this link. And if you have already missed it (the show has already aired today in most areas) then you can visit the archive to listen to a copy. Enjoy!
Remember how many quarters you spent on video games in arcades when you were a kid? I know I lost countless quarters to joust, defender etc. Well, heads up... with they way they are pushing this kind of technology, within a year or two, computer games will probably be on a pay per play scenario, and if you have no internet access, then you will probably miss out on the vast majority of games. And if you do have internet access, then you can expect to pay $1 and up a pop for a game. Just wait and see. As horrible as this sounds, I bet it becomes all too regular.
This isn't the government doing it. It is the big telecommunications companies and the railroads. If it was the government implementing this we wouldn't have heard a peep about it. Apparently we still have a few rights when big corps. try to run over us, at least if you are a property owner. Hopefully this will help set a precedence. Hopefully next time big telcos will think twice before purchasing land rights from someone that has no rights to them. If they don't learn, then hey... I have a bridge they might want to buy also...
Many software installers will leave an installer log when they are done, but by then it can be too late. It seems rare that a software installer actually tells you what it is going to do before it does it. It is things like this that lead to unneeded tedium for the end user, such as backing up your configs before an install, 'just in case.' I just don't think we should be forced to go through this hassle, and I will make sure to clue the user in during/before the install in any software I write in the future. It had previously never occurred to me to do this, and I think it is the same way with most developers, be they commercial, open source, shareware, or whatever..
I wondered about that myself. As AOL becomes more global, it might want to distance itself from the America in America On Line. After the recent incident with the spy plane, I can't see a great demand for something their with America in the name. I personally think AOL should at least consider changing the name. Phone companies do it all the time with mergers etc. Who knows.. maybe it will help improve their reputation after a while too.
Maybe they will at least let you maim him a bit, or kick him around... even if you cant kill him. He can always 'recover' from a solid beating, thus keeping the continuity of the universe. Maybe they could have jar jar wrestling as a mini game or something even. Of course, then you would have an empty universe because everyone would be camping the jar jar wrestling facility....
you are right in that you do have to expect a certain amount of wankerism in online play. As you mentioned, there is no real authority, and no easy way to police it. That's understood. And im not asking for any kind of verification thru credit ard system o anything like that. Thats just silly imho. I just don't really think hardware manufacturers should be building the cheats in. Even an honest gamer might be tempted once he finds out what the drivers for his new card can do, even if he never considered cheating before. And the fact still remains, if you want to play with more than a handful of people, your going to have to play with strangers. Like I said, the whole idea of internet gaming is playing with people from all over the world.
removing the drivers doesnt stop cheating...the dedicated cheaters can still do it. However, Most cheaters seem to stop cheating if it becomes a chore to get the new cheat/driver/etc. Most of the people that keep cheating at that point seem to have some sort of vendetta against the game/community they are cheating in. Yes, the serious cheater has his tools, but most cheaters just seem to be script kiddies anyway, not anyone with a real idea of what is happening behind the scenes to let them cheat. I think Asus just thought they could corner the market on 'lamers' if they introduced drivers which negated the need to hunt down he latest cheat, and now they are paying the PR price for it.
getting some good responses here... I think that hiring an open source game programmer could be great, providing the right agreements are met. As far as the company is concerned, like it says in the article, they will probably get someone who is truly interested in games, and knows the meaning of dedication. The thing the programmer has to realize, is that he is being hired to work on what will most likely be a closed source project, and although his open source work opened this opportunity for him, he shouldn't let open source politics stand in his way if he really wants to make games. Just think of it as a chance to get into game making, and once you are in, try to bring some open source flavor into it. It is hard to change an industry from the outside. It could be really nice publicity for the open source community if a prominent OSS developer is hired to work on a major game. It just has to be looked at in the proper context
Slashdot Mirror
since I posted my above response, I have already had 2 past customers call me concerning this issue, knowledgeable ones that keep relatively up to date with technology (slashdot lurkers), even tho they themselves are not propeller heads. They were both calling me to ask how smart tags would impact their website. They weren't worried about how it would look to them, but rather how it would look to everyone else that agrees to turn on smart tags during setup. I almost dropped my coffee, the timing was so bizarre. They were not pleased that links would be added to their sites, and rightfully so. These particular site are very stylized, and random links strewn throughout would ugly them up quite a bit.
As for your comments, altering the user interface to make smart links obvious might work. Or possibly someone could create a plug-in, which will suck all the smart tag info off of a page, and render just the links in a seperate window or something, leaving the original content untouched. As for educating people, not sure how to do that for the average user.
The truth is we wont know how big a can of worms this will really be until it is widely released and more real people are using the tech. Maybe none of my past customers will even upgrade to XP, and will never know. It is just hard to tell exactly what affect this will have.
btw, thanks for the intelligent comments/responses. Conversation is not dead after all!
well, I will agree. That is a useful idea. But I still have trouble getting past the fact that with this plan, you wouldn't be altering your content, but the content of other sites. As a content creator, this makes me really uneasy. Unfortunately, many times the person hiring you to design their webpage has very little technical knowledge. So lets say uninformed CEO Bob calls you wanting a website. You whip up a prototype, take it on your laptop to their office, and tailor it to their liking and style. A few days later when you publish the completed site, you tell uninformed CEO Bob to go check his site. When he does, all the sudden there are a bunch of links, to outside sites, which he never approved of, nor wanted. What is his first thought? CEO Bob doesn't think 'wow, what a nice feature of IE', he thinks 'what a crappy web designer. Why did he do this to my site?!?!?!!' If you are lucky, they will call you asking about it, and you can explain to him what happened. If you are not lucky, then when he calls, he is too angry to even listen, says you screwed him, and he is cancelling the check, and hangs up.
So you say to add the meta tag that turns off smart linking to the page. Ok, simple enough. Even tho I don't feel like I should HAVE to do anything to disable them, if that's what I have to do, then that's what I have to do. What happens tho, when the over 100 customers you have had in the past start calling, and asking angrily why you went and edited their pages without permission to add links to outside sites. Suddenly your stuck in the position of explaining again, except this time, it isn't for your new customer, it is for everyone you have ever done a site for that still has the site up. Sound fun to you? Not me. I have enough to do day to day without having to go re-edit a thousand or so pages on over a hundred different sites. Not to mention the fact that all your past customers may be as clueless as CEO Bob and just blame you for the whole thing. Instead of a cancelled check tho, you might end up with court time and lawyer's fees.
Sorry if you feel like I'm taking this all too far, but these are the kinds of people you deal with in the business, and I don't appreciate being put into this situation by MS.
Erm, why would I want to provide my own smart tag entries? If I wanted something linked, dont you think I would just hyperlink it instead of futzing with making a special tag for it that only IE will see????? I already provided my own smart tag entries. They are called hyperlinks. please leave them alone
Students pay to use the computers through various student fees. No, they dont have to pay hourly charges or pay everytime they use them. Usually schools charge what is called a student services fee, this basically is a charge for everything else you use at a school besides actual classes. So even if you never used the computers, you are still paying for them. just wanted to clear that small point. please move along
i have read it, and i appreciate what you are saying... but look at these plot points the 2 movies share, and tell me how many of these we in plato's version? did he have a sandy-haired hero with round, oversized eyeglasses and a red bow tie like both these movies have? did plato have a high-tech submarine with an international crew like these both do? These are just a few things these movies share. The list is much longer. I dont think that anyone is questioning that if someone sticks to plato's source, there will be similarity between movies about Atlantis. That is different than letting someone else write your movie, and you just redrawing it.
Disney has been doing this for a couple of decades, and no one has bothered to complain before now. Most of their movies have always been based off of other works, or more recently, from history. Pocahontas, The Hunchback, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and countless others are all based on history, popular fiction, or fairy tales. Disney seems to have long ago lost the ability to produce original story content. It seems surprising that people are just now picking up on it
Many schools have a lawyer available for their students. Maybe he could consult the lawyer for students to give the story an even more interesting twist. Use the own school's resources against it. The lawyer may not be willing to risk his job over it though.
They knew what he was doing though. They knew it was going to be some type of forum for students from what I can tell. They even bought him a server for it apparently. I think that would imply that he has the authority to give others permission to speak freely... wouldn't you?
Your comment would make sense, IF katz paid slashdot to write for them, not the other way around. This guy has given tens of thousands of dollars to the school I'm sure, whereas katz gets paid whatever he makes by slashdot. Plus, the school agreed to let him do this, and even sponsored it. They had to have some kind of clue what they were getting into. I can't argue with them shutting down the site, and it doesn't surprise me that they claimed ownership of content, since it was on their server. I think that is all that should have happened tho. Going back to your analogy, this is more like if they fired katz, and then took him into the parking lot and beat him up in addition.
You have just stated the most important point, as far as graphic design is concerned... Linux needs colorsync, and gimp does too. I seriously doubt you will ever see apple branded colorsync software on any other os, but this would be a great oppurtunity for OSS development, if they could make a colorsync compatible solution. I think this just isnt something that most OSS programmers give thought to yet. most people coding for OSS seem to be hardcore coders at this point, but this will change as time goes on, and popularity grows. Hopefully (soon) the need for a colorsync type solution will be realized, and a solution will be implemented. Until there is this, or something similar on *nix, I dont see graphic designers flooding to switch. As trivial as it sounds, the tech makes a huge difference
This is a problem that Apple is going to unfortunately run into with many production settings where Macs are already used. "our systems work perfectly, why would we change?" There will probably be many organizations with the same feeling. Apple's best hope as far as this is concerned, is to keep optimizing osx, which they have been doing good at so far, tho it still has a ways to go. They need to make it so if an app is running native in OSX, it will perform better than it's os9 counterpart. They also need to stress the SMP abilities more, along with offering more choices of MP machines at their web store (come on!!! where are the dual 733s apple???)
If apple continues to upgrade and optimize OSX like they have been, and keep offering nice machines, and nice machines with 2 processors, then they could possibly sway the 'if it aint broke dont fix it' people. If Apple can make it so OSX on a new machine runs their solutions significantly faster than anything OS9 ever thought about doing it, then they can convince the 'if it aint broke' people, and that is just what they need to do.
i see what your saying about the feature creep thing, but for me, im glad it is going to be the most recent version of PS ported to osx, not some old version that is lacking features I use. You may think of it as bloat, for me, the last version got rid of bloat for me. I was able to get rid of 2 different programs, which i had been using for their vector drawing capabilities. :)
At version 3, photoshop became irreplaceable for me, and each version since has added new features i use. sorry if you think it is bloat, but I would like to lick the adobe programmers for the ways they make my life easier with each version of photoshop
Not quite. OS9 is a pretty big mess of an os, still containing a bit of 68k code, along with its ppc code. (for those that say os9 is ppc only, yes, I know this. It will only run on ppc, but Im sorry, it still has 68k code in it) The old mac os is such a unique beast, that porting anything to it has traditionally been a pain.
Think of it this way, developers, mac developers, got gimp running on OSX in a few months. after years, it is not running on OS9, altho it runs on Win32, as you stated. There is a good reason for this.
I will admit it openly, im a major machead, but i have written code for mac OS8+, Win 95-98, and for *nix. If you are making a console/terminal app, it is easy as pie regardless of the system. But if you are going for anything dealing with graphics/interface, then the mac version will probably be your stumbling block, unless you are well versed in the MacOS Toolbox.. And if you are dealing with a graphics oriented app like the gimp, then you would basically have to rewrite everything from scratch anyway, which defeats a lot of its purpose.
End rant I guess.... anyway, my point, after all that is, win is not as far from *nix as you can get.... pre mac osx has it beat by many painful miles
the gpl does apply between the copyright holder and the end user, because the end user is guaranteed a right to the source code. whether they do anything with it is totally irrelevant, they still have a guarantee to it. The part where it says you dont have to accept the license... well, they expect you to delete the program if you dont accept... not just say 'naw, i dont agree to that' and keep using it anyway...
Just a random thought... but could this be some sort of hype possibly...? Their way of subtlely "saying this game will kick the ass of all other games!" If you look at it in that light, and if the programmers are actually credited somehow when the game ships, then you could really think of it as a stroke of brilliance.
If this is truly the case (pure speculation of course)then the programmers probably even agreed to it willingly, enjoying the joke.
/me notes marketing strategies for his future gaming company
If you need to find your area's NPR station that carries Fresh Air, you can go to this link. And if you have already missed it (the show has already aired today in most areas) then you can visit the archive to listen to a copy. Enjoy!
Remember how many quarters you spent on video games in arcades when you were a kid? I know I lost countless quarters to joust, defender etc. Well, heads up... with they way they are pushing this kind of technology, within a year or two, computer games will probably be on a pay per play scenario, and if you have no internet access, then you will probably miss out on the vast majority of games. And if you do have internet access, then you can expect to pay $1 and up a pop for a game. Just wait and see. As horrible as this sounds, I bet it becomes all too regular.
This isn't the government doing it. It is the big telecommunications companies and the railroads. If it was the government implementing this we wouldn't have heard a peep about it. Apparently we still have a few rights when big corps. try to run over us, at least if you are a property owner. Hopefully this will help set a precedence. Hopefully next time big telcos will think twice before purchasing land rights from someone that has no rights to them. If they don't learn, then hey... I have a bridge they might want to buy also...
Many software installers will leave an installer log when they are done, but by then it can be too late. It seems rare that a software installer actually tells you what it is going to do before it does it. It is things like this that lead to unneeded tedium for the end user, such as backing up your configs before an install, 'just in case.' I just don't think we should be forced to go through this hassle, and I will make sure to clue the user in during/before the install in any software I write in the future. It had previously never occurred to me to do this, and I think it is the same way with most developers, be they commercial, open source, shareware, or whatever..
you just described my life.....
I wondered about that myself. As AOL becomes more global, it might want to distance itself from the America in America On Line. After the recent incident with the spy plane, I can't see a great demand for something their with America in the name. I personally think AOL should at least consider changing the name. Phone companies do it all the time with mergers etc. Who knows.. maybe it will help improve their reputation after a while too.
Maybe they will at least let you maim him a bit, or kick him around... even if you cant kill him. He can always 'recover' from a solid beating, thus keeping the continuity of the universe. Maybe they could have jar jar wrestling as a mini game or something even. Of course, then you would have an empty universe because everyone would be camping the jar jar wrestling facility....
you are right in that you do have to expect a certain amount of wankerism in online play. As you mentioned, there is no real authority, and no easy way to police it. That's understood. And im not asking for any kind of verification thru credit ard system o anything like that. Thats just silly imho. I just don't really think hardware manufacturers should be building the cheats in. Even an honest gamer might be tempted once he finds out what the drivers for his new card can do, even if he never considered cheating before.
And the fact still remains, if you want to play with more than a handful of people, your going to have to play with strangers. Like I said, the whole idea of internet gaming is playing with people from all over the world.
removing the drivers doesnt stop cheating...the dedicated cheaters can still do it. However, Most cheaters seem to stop cheating if it becomes a chore to get the new cheat/driver/etc. Most of the people that keep cheating at that point seem to have some sort of vendetta against the game/community they are cheating in.
Yes, the serious cheater has his tools, but most cheaters just seem to be script kiddies anyway, not anyone with a real idea of what is happening behind the scenes to let them cheat.
I think Asus just thought they could corner the market on 'lamers' if they introduced drivers which negated the need to hunt down he latest cheat, and now they are paying the PR price for it.
getting some good responses here...
I think that hiring an open source game programmer could be great, providing the right agreements are met. As far as the company is concerned, like it says in the article, they will probably get someone who is truly interested in games, and knows the meaning of dedication. The thing the programmer has to realize, is that he is being hired to work on what will most likely be a closed source project, and although his open source work opened this opportunity for him, he shouldn't let open source politics stand in his way if he really wants to make games. Just think of it as a chance to get into game making, and once you are in, try to bring some open source flavor into it. It is hard to change an industry from the outside.
It could be really nice publicity for the open source community if a prominent OSS developer is hired to work on a major game. It just has to be looked at in the proper context