Well, you also have to make sure your competing OS doesn't completely suck from both a UI and a technical standpoint, and that you're not hated and/or distrusted by every hardware manufacturer who might want to ship it.
There's probably an interesting story behind why that one library is C++ when practically everything else is C or Objective-C, including its predecessor...
iPhone is nice even for all it's shortcomings, but Apple's total control fixation is going to hurt it in the long run and leave it as a niche device only for the cult of steve fanboys
The sad thing is, Apple is repeating exactly the same mistakes it made in 1984/85.
Back then, Philips and Sony came to Apple and asked about licensing MacOS. Jean-Louis Gassee told Jobs that Apple was so far ahead, the others would never catch up. So they kept an ironclad control over the Mac OS. And the entire rest of the industry went with DOS, and then Windows... and even though both were inferior, with Apple vs the entire rest of the industry, the end result was inevitable, and Mac OS became a tiny niche product.
Apple may be able to beat RIM at the smartphone game, but they'll never beat RIM, Nokia, Motorola, HTC, Samsung and Sony together, not in the long run. The iPhone will become the niche, and Android will become the 90%.
I don't mind progress, and new standards and all that, and the idea of a "user-friendly scheduler" is really nice, but how hard would it be to make this work with just generic callable objects? it's not that hard to implement a closure in C, and it's been done for years for things like boost and libsigc++ (any signal/callback system that doesn't have upvalues is useless to me at this point).
Well, boost and libsigc++ are C++, not C, and Apple doesn't use C++.
And implementing closures in C is exactly what they've done.
If Chrome ever gets the necessary add-ons, such as AdBlock Plus, I'm guessing that people will abandon Firefox.
Yes. I'm sick of Firefox's crashing and periodically hanging for 30 seconds while it garbage collects or something.
I'm willing to switch to the first browser that gives me the equivalent of Firefox + CS Lite + NoScript + AdBlock. Personally, I'd have thought that a simple UI for allowing the current site to use cookies and scripts would be a basic feature of any browser, but it seems the browser makers are more interested in not annoying site owners who want to track users and show them ads.
How hard would it be to get evince running in such a way that you could still go back to the regular Kindle OS? Or even to build an evince binary for the regular OS...
To see things go the other way, compare "U.F.O." (early 70s) to "The X-Files". In "U.F.O.", the heroes are the organization set up to keep the alien invasion secret from the general public...
We already have an open VoIP protocol. Just switch to a provider like Gizmo and use whatever VoIP client you like--Ekiga, Twinkle, Gizmo's own client, whatever.
What Skype needs to do is die. The world doesn't need a closed proprietary phone network.
If you only have $10 in your Internet postage account, there's no way a spammer can drain $10,000. Just like nobody can spam my cell phone and run up $10,000 in SMS fees.
I set up DHCP with static addresses for the known computers, and dynamic for the guests. So much easier to ssh between machines with proper ip addresses and names.
I just use zeroconf, and have DNS names for all machines, whether they're known computers or guests, without having to do any configuration at all.
Fat chance. Just don't write anything on the goddamn internet.
And then when people search for you, you can be sure that all they'll find will be inaccurate information published about you by other people--who probably dislike you, or else why would they be motivated enough to write about you--and information published by corporations and government bodies.
Yeah, TF2 on PS3 is plagued by glitchers, because none of the maps have been updated with fixes. It's particularly bad with Dustbowl and Gravel Pit.
The server situation has stabilized a bit. For a while, the US East servers went down, and many of us were unable to get connected--US West and Europe servers were too laggy, when they weren't going down because of load. I spent a couple of months pestering EA (and arguing back when they told me it was Valve's problem) until my support call reached someone who was able to reboot the affected machine(s). US East servers are back now.
But yeah, the limit of 16 players per server is still there, which sucks because some of the maps are just too big to work well with only 8 players per team.
Oh, and the sound bugs are still there. Headsets randomly stop working, sound from the game has crackling.
I've probably gotten my $20 worth, but I'd buy it again if Valve actually did a proper port and fixed the bugs. As it is, I've sworn off of buying anything from EA. (Downloaded the Battlefield 1943 demo, saw it was from EA, and deleted it. Really.)
There's a similar pattern with controllers. The PS2 had a mouse and keyboard, but they were never used. The PS3 has mouse and keyboard support, but they're almost never used. (I guess some people use the keyboard for Home.) The PlayStation Eye has been used by maybe a dozen games, pretty much only as a way to upload a static JPEG of the player. (Exception: Eye of Judgement.)
I confidently predict that the amazing new motion capture wand will soon be forgotten too.
Then there are all the expansion ports that the engineers build into the first version of the console, that never get used, and are removed from later revisions. e.g. PS2 Firewire port, hard drive port.
I can tell you that PS2 games played on a PS3 instead of a PS2 look a hell of a lot better. It's like night and day.
Funny, my experience is that the PS2 signal upscaled by my TV is more pleasing than the PS3 emulation of the PS2, at least for the WipEout games, Rez, and Katamari Damacy...
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Well, you also have to make sure your competing OS doesn't completely suck from both a UI and a technical standpoint, and that you're not hated and/or distrusted by every hardware manufacturer who might want to ship it.
What, they finally found a more appropriate venue for Ballmer's monkey dancing and chair flinging?
Send me an e-mail and I'll point you at the intranet standards that say ODF is the preferred format.
A subset of Embedded-C++.
There's probably an interesting story behind why that one library is C++ when practically everything else is C or Objective-C, including its predecessor...
The sad thing is, Apple is repeating exactly the same mistakes it made in 1984/85.
Back then, Philips and Sony came to Apple and asked about licensing MacOS. Jean-Louis Gassee told Jobs that Apple was so far ahead, the others would never catch up. So they kept an ironclad control over the Mac OS. And the entire rest of the industry went with DOS, and then Windows... and even though both were inferior, with Apple vs the entire rest of the industry, the end result was inevitable, and Mac OS became a tiny niche product.
Apple may be able to beat RIM at the smartphone game, but they'll never beat RIM, Nokia, Motorola, HTC, Samsung and Sony together, not in the long run. The iPhone will become the niche, and Android will become the 90%.
Well, boost and libsigc++ are C++, not C, and Apple doesn't use C++.
And implementing closures in C is exactly what they've done.
Co I'm not really sure what your complaint is.
The point is, it was Microsoft's first attempt to extend their monopoly to the console games market. So I wanted it to fail.
I avoid PCs that come bundled with Windows operating systems, yes.
I saw the Microsoft logo on the Dreamcast and steered clear. Was glad it failed for the same reason.
Yeah, but the interface is a PITA compared to CS-Lite + AdBlock + NoScript.
Site preferences in Opera is a complete pain to use.
Firstly, there's no toolbar button to bring it up, it's buried under 3 levels of menu selection.
Secondly, the browser doesn't tell you which domains are trying to set cookies or run scripts, so you have to guess.
Thirdly, it's only simple to set preferences for the current domain. You can't set preferences for other domains that the current domain accesses.
Compare to CS Lite + NoScript and you'll see how badly designed and functionality-poor Opera's site preferences feature is.
Yes. I'm sick of Firefox's crashing and periodically hanging for 30 seconds while it garbage collects or something.
I'm willing to switch to the first browser that gives me the equivalent of Firefox + CS Lite + NoScript + AdBlock. Personally, I'd have thought that a simple UI for allowing the current site to use cookies and scripts would be a basic feature of any browser, but it seems the browser makers are more interested in not annoying site owners who want to track users and show them ads.
How hard would it be to get evince running in such a way that you could still go back to the regular Kindle OS? Or even to build an evince binary for the regular OS...
To see things go the other way, compare "U.F.O." (early 70s) to "The X-Files". In "U.F.O.", the heroes are the organization set up to keep the alien invasion secret from the general public...
You can point a video camera at an LCD screen to record a Blu-ray movie, but that doesn't make it open.
Skype is closed because only they know their protocol and can make clients for it.
We already have an open VoIP protocol. Just switch to a provider like Gizmo and use whatever VoIP client you like--Ekiga, Twinkle, Gizmo's own client, whatever.
What Skype needs to do is die. The world doesn't need a closed proprietary phone network.
Simple solution: make it prepaid postage.
If you only have $10 in your Internet postage account, there's no way a spammer can drain $10,000. Just like nobody can spam my cell phone and run up $10,000 in SMS fees.
I just use zeroconf, and have DNS names for all machines, whether they're known computers or guests, without having to do any configuration at all.
Apparently you missed the part where I used the word "inaccurate".
And then when people search for you, you can be sure that all they'll find will be inaccurate information published about you by other people--who probably dislike you, or else why would they be motivated enough to write about you--and information published by corporations and government bodies.
Yeah, that'll show them.
The other games in the Orange Box are built on the same Source engine, so they suffer from the same problems as TF2.
For example, Portal on PS3 has horrible glitchy sound and terrible loading times. Still a great game, but I hope Portal 2 has a decent PS3 version.
Yeah, TF2 on PS3 is plagued by glitchers, because none of the maps have been updated with fixes. It's particularly bad with Dustbowl and Gravel Pit.
The server situation has stabilized a bit. For a while, the US East servers went down, and many of us were unable to get connected--US West and Europe servers were too laggy, when they weren't going down because of load. I spent a couple of months pestering EA (and arguing back when they told me it was Valve's problem) until my support call reached someone who was able to reboot the affected machine(s). US East servers are back now.
But yeah, the limit of 16 players per server is still there, which sucks because some of the maps are just too big to work well with only 8 players per team.
Oh, and the sound bugs are still there. Headsets randomly stop working, sound from the game has crackling.
I've probably gotten my $20 worth, but I'd buy it again if Valve actually did a proper port and fixed the bugs. As it is, I've sworn off of buying anything from EA. (Downloaded the Battlefield 1943 demo, saw it was from EA, and deleted it. Really.)
There's a similar pattern with controllers. The PS2 had a mouse and keyboard, but they were never used. The PS3 has mouse and keyboard support, but they're almost never used. (I guess some people use the keyboard for Home.) The PlayStation Eye has been used by maybe a dozen games, pretty much only as a way to upload a static JPEG of the player. (Exception: Eye of Judgement.)
I confidently predict that the amazing new motion capture wand will soon be forgotten too.
Then there are all the expansion ports that the engineers build into the first version of the console, that never get used, and are removed from later revisions. e.g. PS2 Firewire port, hard drive port.
Funny, my experience is that the PS2 signal upscaled by my TV is more pleasing than the PS3 emulation of the PS2, at least for the WipEout games, Rez, and Katamari Damacy...
Well, the "cell phones cause cancer" folks claim that the bursty nature of GSM EM radiation exposure is exactly what makes it dangerous.