Back in the day when I had an Amiga and played lots of games on it, the ones I kept returning to were the ones I could play for an hour or two then leave again. There were a few good traditional shoot-em-ups, a few simple driving games (Lotus Esprit 2!), Moria, etc. These days I'd appreciate something similar a lot more than a more involved game as I simply don't have the time for anything overly involved - blame two jobs, a wife & baby for that.
* Download size. Firefox is under 5meg for Windows, OOo is approaching 100meg. Someone on a modem would download Firefox but most likely not OOo.
* "If it ain't broke". People visible see problems in IE thanks to popups, spyware, etc. MSOffice doesn't have the same problem.
* Piracy. IMHO most (home) users of MSOffice get their copy from friends or work, I've not known of too many people to buy it for themselves, even the educational version. With MSOffice perceived to be "free", why bother with something else?
* File formats. MS Office is considered the defacto standard therefore for interoperability reasons a replacement must offer perfect import/export support for its file formats. Public perception also plays a part in this, while OOo's importers have improved these past few years people may still think of what it was like two years ago and not consider re-investigating it.
* Laziness. People are lazy. If they perceive no improvement with changing then why should they put out the effort?
* "Oh-Oh-what?" How many people even *know* about there being alternatives to MSOffice?
Why would Microsoft want Macromedia? Lets run through Macromedia's product line for a second:
* ColdFusion, Flex, Breeze, etc. - Server side scripting and application servers. Microsoft has IIS and their.NET platform, why would they need these?
* Flash and related client-side technologies - Microsoft is bringing out Avalon, a graphical engine for developing Internet applications without needing a web browser, so they don't need this.
* Dreamweaver and other editors - Microsoft focuses its development platform solely behind Visual Studio.NET, why on earth would it need yet more?
So, to put it simply, Microsoft had no reason to buy Macromedia.
However, it is well known that Macromedia have had financial difficulties over the past few years. With many excellent technologies and applications they have IMHO suffered from a lack of focus and direction which has ultimately hit their bottom line. I do think that they would have been bought out sooner or later, either that or gone through some major internal reshuffling (and firings) to fix the situation - I guess we now know which they opted for.
The ironic thing is that shoes can cause health problems, mainly muscle problems (cramping, aching) from the feet to the back. But of course the OSHA would prefer you to wear shoes to work incase a wall falls down and damages your pinkie incase you might sue. Bah.
I tried it and it seems all of the shows are pre-packaged, you can't directly choose what you want it just queues them all up for you.
What I'd be willing to pay say $5-$10 per month for is access to say 5 hours of TV per week. One key show I'm craving is The Daily Show, but I don't want to pay $30/m for one show.
It seems to be a fairly standard business practice these days. Make suggestions that your product could go up in price and people subconsciously start preparing to pay more. That's also why new technologies are always expensive ("it'll be expensive to start because of economics of scale but will come down in price soon", then end up with $50 games and $30+ DVDs). It works, so why shouldn't they push it a bit more?
yeah, there's nothing better than eating icecream when its below freezing:-)
Damien
Voice work an expansion or beggin' for cash?
on
Ask mc chris
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· Score: 1
Hesh^H^H^H^HChris, do you consider your voice work for Sealab 2021, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, yadda, to be an expansion of your creative interests or just something to tide you over while you work on more music?
Just let Star Trek die, preferably until anyone currently working on it is too old to try again. TNG was pretty good most of the time, Voyager was Lost In Space and DS9 was a B5 ripoff. Just let it rest.
OK. Let me get this straight. You have one of the country's most secretive organizations, one that deals with vast quantities of highly secretive data, and they hired an outside company to manage their public email? Um, duh!! Surely they could have hired one or two geeks to do this for them instead?
Slashdot Mirror
The ID folks forgot the following line of their instructions:
/dev/life
cat
Damien
Back in the day when I had an Amiga and played lots of games on it, the ones I kept returning to were the ones I could play for an hour or two then leave again. There were a few good traditional shoot-em-ups, a few simple driving games (Lotus Esprit 2!), Moria, etc. These days I'd appreciate something similar a lot more than a more involved game as I simply don't have the time for anything overly involved - blame two jobs, a wife & baby for that.
Damien
Meetup.com<cough>
You obviously haven't looked very hard, they are all released in binary format on their mirror sites.
Damien
I just about spewed my lunch across my lovely dual monitors... don't do that!
Damien
OOo 2 is 88meg-or-so for Windows, the other platforms are larger.
Damien
Here are a few reasons off the top of my head:
* Download size. Firefox is under 5meg for Windows, OOo is approaching 100meg. Someone on a modem would download Firefox but most likely not OOo.
* "If it ain't broke". People visible see problems in IE thanks to popups, spyware, etc. MSOffice doesn't have the same problem.
* Piracy. IMHO most (home) users of MSOffice get their copy from friends or work, I've not known of too many people to buy it for themselves, even the educational version. With MSOffice perceived to be "free", why bother with something else?
* File formats. MS Office is considered the defacto standard therefore for interoperability reasons a replacement must offer perfect import/export support for its file formats. Public perception also plays a part in this, while OOo's importers have improved these past few years people may still think of what it was like two years ago and not consider re-investigating it.
* Laziness. People are lazy. If they perceive no improvement with changing then why should they put out the effort?
* "Oh-Oh-what?" How many people even *know* about there being alternatives to MSOffice?
Damien
Why would Microsoft want Macromedia? Lets run through Macromedia's product line for a second:
.NET platform, why would they need these?
.NET, why on earth would it need yet more?
* ColdFusion, Flex, Breeze, etc. - Server side scripting and application servers. Microsoft has IIS and their
* Flash and related client-side technologies - Microsoft is bringing out Avalon, a graphical engine for developing Internet applications without needing a web browser, so they don't need this.
* Dreamweaver and other editors - Microsoft focuses its development platform solely behind Visual Studio
So, to put it simply, Microsoft had no reason to buy Macromedia.
However, it is well known that Macromedia have had financial difficulties over the past few years. With many excellent technologies and applications they have IMHO suffered from a lack of focus and direction which has ultimately hit their bottom line. I do think that they would have been bought out sooner or later, either that or gone through some major internal reshuffling (and firings) to fix the situation - I guess we now know which they opted for.
Damien
You've obviously not tried Dreamweaver MX 2004 and set a document to XHTML mode then - it does all styling in CSS. What more could you want?
One idea would be to protect yourself.
Check out the Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI board which has SATA-150 RAID-5 via an extra chip.
Damien
The ironic thing is that shoes can cause health problems, mainly muscle problems (cramping, aching) from the feet to the back. But of course the OSHA would prefer you to wear shoes to work incase a wall falls down and damages your pinkie incase you might sue. Bah.
Damien
I tried it and it seems all of the shows are pre-packaged, you can't directly choose what you want it just queues them all up for you.
What I'd be willing to pay say $5-$10 per month for is access to say 5 hours of TV per week. One key show I'm craving is The Daily Show, but I don't want to pay $30/m for one show.
Damien
Sounds like an unfortunate joke. Anyone can string cables together, license or not.
Or gain the licensing yourself and start doing some side work.
Damien
Why don't they also blame gangsta rap? There's as much talk of guns in much of it.
Damien
It seems to be a fairly standard business practice these days. Make suggestions that your product could go up in price and people subconsciously start preparing to pay more. That's also why new technologies are always expensive ("it'll be expensive to start because of economics of scale but will come down in price soon", then end up with $50 games and $30+ DVDs). It works, so why shouldn't they push it a bit more?
Damien
Given that the SciFi channel isn't showing it, it can only help the interest within the USA.
What about Frogger 3D? My wife and I love that and we're in our late 20's (almost 30, eek).
Damien
yeah, there's nothing better than eating icecream when its below freezing :-)
Damien
Hesh^H^H^H^HChris, do you consider your voice work for Sealab 2021, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, yadda, to be an expansion of your creative interests or just something to tide you over while you work on more music?
Damien
I didn't keep my spam, besides that I've kept almost everything I've ever received or sent.
Damien
Doh!
The earth would have suddenly come into existance a tad over five millenia ago.
And there I was thinking that the earth was only 6000 years old!
Fuckwits.
Damien
Just let Star Trek die, preferably until anyone currently working on it is too old to try again. TNG was pretty good most of the time, Voyager was Lost In Space and DS9 was a B5 ripoff. Just let it rest.
Damien
OK. Let me get this straight. You have one of the country's most secretive organizations, one that deals with vast quantities of highly secretive data, and they hired an outside company to manage their public email? Um, duh!! Surely they could have hired one or two geeks to do this for them instead?
Damien