When I see a corporation taking a public stance on any issue, I make a mental note NOT to buy their products.
So, you never buy anything? Because all corporations take public stances and they do it constantly. They employ huge teams of publicists to broadcast their views. It's just that most of it passes under your radar.
As an OS with a wide range of applications, Linux is very much alive. But we're talking about a specific use case: competing with Windows and OS X as the system you keep on your desk. When 15 years of struggle produces only 1% market share, it's reasonable to ask for strong evidence that the horse isn't dead.
The core of this whole issue is the following quote:
I think we are inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say 'we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage' and I pray God's mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is about.
That's pretty extreme. I think even if I weren't for gay marriage, I'd be offended by his theocratic tone. "You can't pass any laws that disagree with my religion!" What's next? Banning divorce and birth control?
I agree (reluctantly) that it's not fair to hold the whole company accountable for the CEO's opinion, but that doesn't mean the opinion isn't something to get pissed off about.
And if that most talented person happens to be gay, MS has a better chance at recruiting them. It's not any different from catering to the needs iof any other group (people with children get help with childcare, etc.).
I think you're kind of minimizing the issue. Some of Day's remarks definitely struck me as being in the "Heaven shall smite them!" category. And a lot of gay people consider those "charities" hate groups.
That said, I'm dubious that it makes sense to start a boycott every time a CEO expresses an opinion you don't like. There are better ways of educating people.
OK, you're making two different arguments here. One, you're telling me that Valve needs to create a Linux-based console and port all their games to it. I'm dubious that the marketplace has room for another console, but what do I know?
The other issue you raise is more relevant to my argument: that Valve needs to maintain a big share of the PC market. No argument there, but exactly how does porting all their games to Linux help them do that? Even if it somehow motivated people to switch from Windows to Linux, they wouldn't gain any new users.
How can you have an article on LGBT issues without trolling?
The post actually presents an interesting issue (via the time.com link): why do corporations feel they have to take sides on the gay marriage issue? The problem is that the poster gave into the temptation to make his headline and post cute and snarky.
It's worth pointing out that whole "appreciation day" thing happened because Chick-Fil-A has a rather affectionate relationship with its customers. Hard to see the same thing happening at McDonalds, never mind Microsoft.
What you're really saying is that Steam should come out with competing hardware. If you believe that's a good idea, I have a Dreamcast you can have real cheap.
I resisted moving to Chrome for years. I was used to the user interface, and I had a lot of plugins that I didn't want to give up. This did gradually become less of an issue over the years, as more Chrome plugins appeared and Firefox started copying Chrome features (even when they didn't work with the rest of Firefox's design!). But what finally did it was the nasty resource leaks that I could never seem to get rid of, no matter how much I culled my plugin set. After multiple lockups in just a few hours, I realized it was time to bite the bullet.
I still don't care for Google's UI paradigm, and I desperately want a Chrome version of Google Toolbar Lite. But always getting my web pages in a reasonable time has made my life much less tense.
They do force upgrades, by withdrawing support for old versions. Corporate IT departments need to be able to work with Mozilla to deal with bugs and feature requests. They can't do that if they're running an old version.
Also, suppose an upgrade contains an important security fix? Not upgrading is simply not an option.
When a new version comes out, IT has to be ready to support it. Doing so every couple of months costs. Mozilla's attitude has been "if you can't keep up with us, we don't need you as users." Not a good way to maintain browser market share.
So, you think somebody should spend a huge amount of money to port games to Linux because they might create a new gaming marketplace? What's their incentive for risking their dough? Even if they succeed (despite many previous failure in the Linux market), they won't grow their user base at all.
Huh? Why was it not a viable market? Millions of people buying smart phones so they could browse the web, share pictures of their cats, check their email, tweet, geocache, listen to music, and even make the odd phone call, and you think that it's all driven by a desire to play angry birds?
People would be buying smart phones even if there were no games at all. But nobody's been buying Linux-based PCs.
Enough with the personal attacks on Carmack. He's not the issue, the marketplace is. 15 years after it first appeared, desktop Linux has shown no sign of grabbing more than a tiny fraction of the market. Catering to that tiny fraction is not a sound business model, for game companies or anybody else.
Indeed, and I used to own a Motion Computing Windows tablet. But MSs tablet technology has never been properly supported by the rest of the company. You can see this in OneNote (which I first started using because it was bundled with the tablet), which is superficially a tablet application, but turns out to have a lot of features that don't work well if you don't have a keyboard.
By contrast, Apple has had a handwriting engine since 1987. OK, the platform they built it for didn't last, but they still include it in OS X. With this software and the Wacom digitizer tech that my tablet used, a Mac tablet would seem to be an obvious product, one that fits in nicely with Apple's strategy of offering simple, human-centric products. But no, they never bothered, and the less creative MS ended up picking up the ball. I find that weird.
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When I see a corporation taking a public stance on any issue, I make a mental note NOT to buy their products.
So, you never buy anything? Because all corporations take public stances and they do it constantly. They employ huge teams of publicists to broadcast their views. It's just that most of it passes under your radar.
One more time: Linux users are 1% of the market. Catering to them does not significantly increase Valve's user base.
As an OS with a wide range of applications, Linux is very much alive. But we're talking about a specific use case: competing with Windows and OS X as the system you keep on your desk. When 15 years of struggle produces only 1% market share, it's reasonable to ask for strong evidence that the horse isn't dead.
The statements you quoted were made last week.
The core of this whole issue is the following quote:
I think we are inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say 'we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage' and I pray God's mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is about.
That's pretty extreme. I think even if I weren't for gay marriage, I'd be offended by his theocratic tone. "You can't pass any laws that disagree with my religion!" What's next? Banning divorce and birth control?
I agree (reluctantly) that it's not fair to hold the whole company accountable for the CEO's opinion, but that doesn't mean the opinion isn't something to get pissed off about.
I wish people would read a little more carefully. I wasn't looking for an answer to a question. I was describing the issue raised by a linked article.
And if that most talented person happens to be gay, MS has a better chance at recruiting them. It's not any different from catering to the needs iof any other group (people with children get help with childcare, etc.).
I think you're kind of minimizing the issue. Some of Day's remarks definitely struck me as being in the "Heaven shall smite them!" category. And a lot of gay people consider those "charities" hate groups.
That said, I'm dubious that it makes sense to start a boycott every time a CEO expresses an opinion you don't like. There are better ways of educating people.
I've often heard people say, "Ronald McDonald is so gay" but I'm not sure that's what they meant.
Uh, because they issue the marriage licenses?
OK, you're making two different arguments here. One, you're telling me that Valve needs to create a Linux-based console and port all their games to it. I'm dubious that the marketplace has room for another console, but what do I know?
The other issue you raise is more relevant to my argument: that Valve needs to maintain a big share of the PC market. No argument there, but exactly how does porting all their games to Linux help them do that? Even if it somehow motivated people to switch from Windows to Linux, they wouldn't gain any new users.
You're mostly right. But recall that FF still has a lot of compliance issues, so "coding to the spec" is not always possible.
And even if it were, any large piece of software has bugs, so you're wrong to assume that all FF bugs are the fault of sloppy web code.
So, if you keep beating the dead horse, eventually it will get up and go back to work?
How can you have an article on LGBT issues without trolling?
The post actually presents an interesting issue (via the time.com link): why do corporations feel they have to take sides on the gay marriage issue? The problem is that the poster gave into the temptation to make his headline and post cute and snarky.
It's worth pointing out that whole "appreciation day" thing happened because Chick-Fil-A has a rather affectionate relationship with its customers. Hard to see the same thing happening at McDonalds, never mind Microsoft.
What you're really saying is that Steam should come out with competing hardware. If you believe that's a good idea, I have a Dreamcast you can have real cheap.
And exactly how does breaking the Windows monopoly prevent MS from creating an XBOX monopoly?
Yeah, I miss a lot of FF features too. But I'm surprised to hear you report that Chrome is slower. For me, FF slowdowns were the big dealbreaker.
I wish technology journalists would cover actual events instead of playing "If I were CEO" games.
I resisted moving to Chrome for years. I was used to the user interface, and I had a lot of plugins that I didn't want to give up. This did gradually become less of an issue over the years, as more Chrome plugins appeared and Firefox started copying Chrome features (even when they didn't work with the rest of Firefox's design!). But what finally did it was the nasty resource leaks that I could never seem to get rid of, no matter how much I culled my plugin set. After multiple lockups in just a few hours, I realized it was time to bite the bullet.
I still don't care for Google's UI paradigm, and I desperately want a Chrome version of Google Toolbar Lite. But always getting my web pages in a reasonable time has made my life much less tense.
They do force upgrades, by withdrawing support for old versions. Corporate IT departments need to be able to work with Mozilla to deal with bugs and feature requests. They can't do that if they're running an old version.
Also, suppose an upgrade contains an important security fix? Not upgrading is simply not an option.
When a new version comes out, IT has to be ready to support it. Doing so every couple of months costs. Mozilla's attitude has been "if you can't keep up with us, we don't need you as users." Not a good way to maintain browser market share.
So, you think somebody should spend a huge amount of money to port games to Linux because they might create a new gaming marketplace? What's their incentive for risking their dough? Even if they succeed (despite many previous failure in the Linux market), they won't grow their user base at all.
Huh? Why was it not a viable market? Millions of people buying smart phones so they could browse the web, share pictures of their cats, check their email, tweet, geocache, listen to music, and even make the odd phone call, and you think that it's all driven by a desire to play angry birds?
People would be buying smart phones even if there were no games at all. But nobody's been buying Linux-based PCs.
Enough with the personal attacks on Carmack. He's not the issue, the marketplace is. 15 years after it first appeared, desktop Linux has shown no sign of grabbing more than a tiny fraction of the market. Catering to that tiny fraction is not a sound business model, for game companies or anybody else.
Indeed, and I used to own a Motion Computing Windows tablet. But MSs tablet technology has never been properly supported by the rest of the company. You can see this in OneNote (which I first started using because it was bundled with the tablet), which is superficially a tablet application, but turns out to have a lot of features that don't work well if you don't have a keyboard.
By contrast, Apple has had a handwriting engine since 1987. OK, the platform they built it for didn't last, but they still include it in OS X. With this software and the Wacom digitizer tech that my tablet used, a Mac tablet would seem to be an obvious product, one that fits in nicely with Apple's strategy of offering simple, human-centric products. But no, they never bothered, and the less creative MS ended up picking up the ball. I find that weird.
Less name-calling, more facts. Point me at something he said that casts doubt on his skeptichood.I don';t mean the recent stuff you quoted previously.