why create something if your competitors are free to copy it immediately and glut the market?
This is something I noticed in the article. Especially when they talked about pharmaceuticals. One company develops a drug, and it costs tons of money. Then another company copies the drug and sells it for much much less money. This causes the developing company to lose.
The first thing that came to mind, that they didn't address, was why doesn't the developing company glut the market? I mean nowadays the generic drugs are cheap and the brand name drugs cost a fortune. The brand name supposedly is the inventor of the drug, and thus should know how to make more of it faster and cheaper. I mean they invented it after all. If bigdrugco makes a cure for eldiseaso, they should make a shitload of it and sell it for less than anyone else. Pure old capitalistic price competition. The result will be that other companies wont profit if they undercut bigdrugco's prices. If a vaccine for eldiseaso comes along, the company developed that will become profitable and bigdrugco better have something new, unless of course they made the vaccine themselves.
If someone comes along who can manufacture the drug cheaper than biddrugco, then bigdrugco loses. The company which can produce the drug in the greatest ratio of quantity/quality/price will win in the end. The advantage of developing a drug is that you have the first and best opportunity to be that company.
But it didn't. Instead someone pointed out about:mozilla which has been in there since like Netscape 2 I believe, maybe even before. I can't believe it got modded up and people didn't know about it. Anyway, if you want the kitchen sink and only the kitchen sink, use phoenix. ^_^
Severity of bugs is more important that number of bugs. I could have a program with one bug, doesn't work. And you can have two bugs, feature broken and memory leak, but it works. Who is better?
I also like the assumption in the title that because linux was found to have fewer bugs than some other OS's that open software in general has fewer bugs. Take a look at some of the bug lists on sourceforge projects and tell me that again. Number of bugs varies by project, not by open-ness.
Not only that, but have a really nice build script. If something in the code fails to compile check out the previous version of that part of the code and try to compile again. You'll be alerted to what's not working, but you are also guaranteed to most up to date buildable version of your code, without losing anything.
w00t! Sound Blaster Support is KEY for DOS gaming. I've been trying to get that to go on my SBLive! Value forever. I gotta get me a copy of this Virtual PC, is it free? Does the DOS part recognize all CD-ROMS? Thanks god its PC-DOS, it was so much better than MS-DOS.
Who cares if the vms run other operating systems besides windows. I mean sure, if it ran linux/unix/os2 or somethign like that it would be pretty awesome. Bit if they put one in that can run DOS reliably and effectively I'm down. It's tough to play dos games since they usually require a seperate dos gaming box. If they do it right, with win 3.1/dos vms it will totally rock. Adding other stuff like linux is just icing. I mean I've already got Cygwin, DOS is what I want.
The best thing I got out of this article was the in-depth war room description. It's good to know exactly how so many bugs get into Microsoft Software, and don't get taken out. It's also cool to know that there are indeed nightly builds of Windows. This means that in the event Microsoft decides to be nice, they can publicize the bug database and the nightly build iso files along with the source code to people, and they can fix windows bugs. Especially the really big ones that this Wanke(r) guy doesn't think need fixing until the next version. Of course, this will only happen when Lucifer soars upon a winged hog in the snowy August winds. But its nice to know that the same thing that OSS people do via bugzilla and cvs are the same things that MS does in its big ol' proprietary house.
Its got the top 40 every day. Doing it some other way would only catch memes sooner. And if the system doesn't catch it until its popular, it really doesn't help. What we need is a large and complete database of all meme type things.
While I use a pre-fab desk from office max, because it has a nice cd rack on the left side. But my friend uses quite a cheap effective home-made desk. It consists of two two-drawer filing cabinets with a standard sized door across the top of both of them. Big, flat. You can add more cabinets and doors/wood planks of various sizes to create any arrangement you want.
Yeah, they made good burners. But any tech geek worth his salt knows Plextor is besto. I have an old plextor 8/4/32a. It burns a cdr in about 10 minutes. It can get by any sort of copy protection with the appropriate software. And I've never had buffer underrun. Ever. The newer Plextors are even faster and even more high quality. No burner is better. So, even though Yamaha burners don't suck, cause they don't, they aren't the best. And I probably would never have bought one. So, who cares.
I use phoenix, and I use tabbed browsing. But it has definitely not eliminated the need for a back button. I still use it quite often. Given, not as often as I used to, but saying tabs eliminate the need for the back button is silly. I open a link in a new tab, when it makes sense to. I mean, sure you can emulate this new back button by opening everything in a new tab, and never closing them, but that's rather silly. I also use my bookmarks very effectively. According to these guys I am in the minority. I have 7 folders of bookmarks, each with 4 to 10 pages in them. Every day I go down one by one and open the folders in tabs, one at a time, until I've visited all my sites. Saves lots of time. But, if I'm browsing around I might keep google in one tab, and then when I click a search result, open it in a new tab. But I'm not going to put every page of a 10 page article in a new tab. And if I'm in a forum, I'm not going to open everything in a new tab either. I'll end up having un-updated threads, post windows, and a big mess. So, I use the back button less, but not that much less. And I use tabbed browsing and bookmarks about as efficiently as you can. Can I get this new better back button as a phoenix plugin?
No not everything can succeed. But if you are a company like Blizzard. I don't think I can name a game they made that wasn't a hit. Warcraft, 1, 2, 3, Starcraft, Diablo I, II. All hits. They've never made a game that wasn't a winner. They were about to make a crappy game once, then they cancelled it. They know what the people want, and they provide.
The logical conclusion is that species that change location more often thrive more often and are therefore "more fit". So when some new weed comes in and starts killing all the grass, let it do so. It's the darwin way.
Not that I'm a fan of either of the 2 major parties. But I'm beginning to see what people mean when they say that a third party is throwing your vote away. The likelyhood of a third party taking the presidency is small. And usually I'd say that you should vote for the candidate you feel is best. But I look at history, and I say to myself, "If Adolf Hitler returns from the grave and is the democratic candidate, he's got my vote". The last Bush started a war, then slick willy come and fixed it all. If we vote out this bush I'm sure we will have another fixin'. After that just keep anyone with the name bush out of office.
The first answer is simple. Ease of use and power are inversely proportional. If you increase ease of use you decrease power. A CLI with toos like grep is powerful, but harder to use than F3 in windows. You can sometimes get more power without losing ease of use, but only to a certain extent.
The second answer is that people fear computers. The tech industry on purpose or by accident has created the illusion in people's minds that computers are difficult to master, extremely complicated, and hard to learn. This is not the case. I tell people every day to build their own computers, and they have this fear they will mess it up, or that its difficult. In fact it is no more difficult that putting together a set of legos. Square peg and square hole. If people stop fearing computers and begin to believe they are simple, then people will have an easier time learning them.
The third problem is trainers. The method of teaching computers sucks. People learn processes, click this, click that, then click this. They don't know the meaing behind what they are doing. To use the old car analogy, they've reduced the number of controls in a car to steering wheel, two pedals, and stick. The driver doesn't have to know how the car works, because they can memorize what all the controls do, since there are few. In a computer it is impossible to reduce the number of controls to so few. So in order to make use of it, you have to know at least a little about how it works. The biggest thing people need to learn is file systems. We all know about the metaphors of desktops, files and folders. But common folk just don't get it. Because of this "easy to use" programs like MS Office become difficult. Trainers should teach people the parts of a computer, how they work, how their operating system works, and all the basic things that apply to everything they do on a computer. Once they comprehend this much, picking up a new system is not so difficult. Instead the trainers just say "click on the OK button in this box". If they don't know the meaning of this, they don't know what to do when something weird happens.
Summary A)power or ease, can't have both B)don't fear the reaper C)learn the basics then the specifics
ah, the truness. But why do people always pick on the Lynx? I mean there's also the Game Gear, which was the least sucky of the sucky portable systems. But people always forget the portable Turbo GrafX 16. I forget what it was called, but it blew. Heck, barely anyone even remembers the Turbo Grafx, let alone its handheld version. I like the handheld games, but the biggest gripe with cell-phone/pda games is the interface. I like snake, but not with a 9 button phone pad.
You're right on every count, except that it wont keep aol in business. AOL's business model depends on the fact that they will always be getting more subscribers. Even in AOL managed to keep everyone from leaving they would begin to lose money. The fact that people are leaving means big trouble for AOL. Mainly because they have a giant useless dial up ISP infrastructure. That infrastructure costs money, and if nobody uses it that's all loss. Sure there are a lot of idiots who keep paying for AOL after they get broadband. But unless AOL has a constant increase in membership they will have diminishing returns and eventually go bankrupt. They're still huge, so it wont happen soon, and they've still got a chance to save themselves.
I don't mind if they put ads IN the game. If I'm driving on the highway in a new racing game I'd rather see McDonalds bulleting boards that "burger co." It makes the game feel more like I'm on earth and not in a weird video game world. It's a different story if the ads effect gameplay negatively. Like if I have to stop, watch an ad, then return to play. As for games that ARE advertisements themselves. Like that Ford racing game. If the games are good, then it will be a good ad, and I wont mind. As long as it doesn't have ads that effect gameplay. If coke makes a coke game that sucks, they're just paying for negative advertising against themselves. It's the same as movies. If you buy product placement in a shitty movie it sucks for you. Imagine a really crappy movie about a guy who works in a Coke factory. Not going to go well for the soda man.
I use Phoenix now, so why do I care? Besides, I'm not stupid enough to leave my security at the default level in IE. Which I use when I'm in windows and there's a weird page.
If I had a lawyer, and I was a business, and this thing automatically installed itself on my computer without my permission, obviously it is doing something to get by my security. Which means it's hacking into my computer. Any company with a laywer and a computer can sue these guys and get a nice sum with almost no effort.
Slashdot Mirror
why create something if your competitors are free to copy it immediately and glut the market?
This is something I noticed in the article. Especially when they talked about pharmaceuticals. One company develops a drug, and it costs tons of money. Then another company copies the drug and sells it for much much less money. This causes the developing company to lose.
The first thing that came to mind, that they didn't address, was why doesn't the developing company glut the market? I mean nowadays the generic drugs are cheap and the brand name drugs cost a fortune. The brand name supposedly is the inventor of the drug, and thus should know how to make more of it faster and cheaper. I mean they invented it after all. If bigdrugco makes a cure for eldiseaso, they should make a shitload of it and sell it for less than anyone else. Pure old capitalistic price competition. The result will be that other companies wont profit if they undercut bigdrugco's prices. If a vaccine for eldiseaso comes along, the company developed that will become profitable and bigdrugco better have something new, unless of course they made the vaccine themselves.
If someone comes along who can manufacture the drug cheaper than biddrugco, then bigdrugco loses. The company which can produce the drug in the greatest ratio of quantity/quality/price will win in the end. The advantage of developing a drug is that you have the first and best opportunity to be that company.
I figured the first post would say
"if you don't like the bloat, use phoenix!"
But it didn't. Instead someone pointed out about:mozilla which has been in there since like Netscape 2 I believe, maybe even before. I can't believe it got modded up and people didn't know about it. Anyway, if you want the kitchen sink and only the kitchen sink, use phoenix. ^_^
Severity of bugs is more important that number of bugs. I could have a program with one bug, doesn't work. And you can have two bugs, feature broken and memory leak, but it works. Who is better?
I also like the assumption in the title that because linux was found to have fewer bugs than some other OS's that open software in general has fewer bugs. Take a look at some of the bug lists on sourceforge projects and tell me that again. Number of bugs varies by project, not by open-ness.
Not only that, but have a really nice build script. If something in the code fails to compile check out the previous version of that part of the code and try to compile again. You'll be alerted to what's not working, but you are also guaranteed to most up to date buildable version of your code, without losing anything.
w00t! Sound Blaster Support is KEY for DOS gaming. I've been trying to get that to go on my SBLive! Value forever. I gotta get me a copy of this Virtual PC, is it free? Does the DOS part recognize all CD-ROMS? Thanks god its PC-DOS, it was so much better than MS-DOS.
Who cares if the vms run other operating systems besides windows. I mean sure, if it ran linux/unix/os2 or somethign like that it would be pretty awesome. Bit if they put one in that can run DOS reliably and effectively I'm down. It's tough to play dos games since they usually require a seperate dos gaming box. If they do it right, with win 3.1/dos vms it will totally rock. Adding other stuff like linux is just icing. I mean I've already got Cygwin, DOS is what I want.
The best thing I got out of this article was the in-depth war room description. It's good to know exactly how so many bugs get into Microsoft Software, and don't get taken out. It's also cool to know that there are indeed nightly builds of Windows.
This means that in the event Microsoft decides to be nice, they can publicize the bug database and the nightly build iso files along with the source code to people, and they can fix windows bugs. Especially the really big ones that this Wanke(r) guy doesn't think need fixing until the next version.
Of course, this will only happen when Lucifer soars upon a winged hog in the snowy August winds. But its nice to know that the same thing that OSS people do via bugzilla and cvs are the same things that MS does in its big ol' proprietary house.
http://www.daypop.com
Its got the top 40 every day. Doing it some other way would only catch memes sooner. And if the system doesn't catch it until its popular, it really doesn't help. What we need is a large and complete database of all meme type things.
While I use a pre-fab desk from office max, because it has a nice cd rack on the left side. But my friend uses quite a cheap effective home-made desk. It consists of two two-drawer filing cabinets with a standard sized door across the top of both of them. Big, flat. You can add more cabinets and doors/wood planks of various sizes to create any arrangement you want.
Yeah, they made good burners. But any tech geek worth his salt knows Plextor is besto. I have an old plextor 8/4/32a. It burns a cdr in about 10 minutes. It can get by any sort of copy protection with the appropriate software. And I've never had buffer underrun. Ever. The newer Plextors are even faster and even more high quality. No burner is better. So, even though Yamaha burners don't suck, cause they don't, they aren't the best. And I probably would never have bought one. So, who cares.
I use phoenix, and I use tabbed browsing. But it has definitely not eliminated the need for a back button. I still use it quite often. Given, not as often as I used to, but saying tabs eliminate the need for the back button is silly. I open a link in a new tab, when it makes sense to. I mean, sure you can emulate this new back button by opening everything in a new tab, and never closing them, but that's rather silly. I also use my bookmarks very effectively. According to these guys I am in the minority. I have 7 folders of bookmarks, each with 4 to 10 pages in them. Every day I go down one by one and open the folders in tabs, one at a time, until I've visited all my sites. Saves lots of time.
But, if I'm browsing around I might keep google in one tab, and then when I click a search result, open it in a new tab. But I'm not going to put every page of a 10 page article in a new tab. And if I'm in a forum, I'm not going to open everything in a new tab either. I'll end up having un-updated threads, post windows, and a big mess.
So, I use the back button less, but not that much less. And I use tabbed browsing and bookmarks about as efficiently as you can. Can I get this new better back button as a phoenix plugin?
No not everything can succeed. But if you are a company like Blizzard. I don't think I can name a game they made that wasn't a hit.
Warcraft, 1, 2, 3, Starcraft, Diablo I, II. All hits. They've never made a game that wasn't a winner. They were about to make a crappy game once, then they cancelled it. They know what the people want, and they provide.
C:\> DOS
C:\> DOS RUN
RUN DOS RUN
it's old, but I still smile at it.
police style walkie talkies are an equivalent option.
The logical conclusion is that species that change location more often thrive more often and are therefore "more fit". So when some new weed comes in and starts killing all the grass, let it do so. It's the darwin way.
Not that I'm a fan of either of the 2 major parties. But I'm beginning to see what people mean when they say that a third party is throwing your vote away. The likelyhood of a third party taking the presidency is small. And usually I'd say that you should vote for the candidate you feel is best. But I look at history, and I say to myself, "If Adolf Hitler returns from the grave and is the democratic candidate, he's got my vote".
The last Bush started a war, then slick willy come and fixed it all. If we vote out this bush I'm sure we will have another fixin'. After that just keep anyone with the name bush out of office.
The first answer is simple. Ease of use and power are inversely proportional. If you increase ease of use you decrease power. A CLI with toos like grep is powerful, but harder to use than F3 in windows. You can sometimes get more power without losing ease of use, but only to a certain extent.
The second answer is that people fear computers. The tech industry on purpose or by accident has created the illusion in people's minds that computers are difficult to master, extremely complicated, and hard to learn. This is not the case. I tell people every day to build their own computers, and they have this fear they will mess it up, or that its difficult. In fact it is no more difficult that putting together a set of legos. Square peg and square hole. If people stop fearing computers and begin to believe they are simple, then people will have an easier time learning them.
The third problem is trainers. The method of teaching computers sucks. People learn processes, click this, click that, then click this. They don't know the meaing behind what they are doing. To use the old car analogy, they've reduced the number of controls in a car to steering wheel, two pedals, and stick. The driver doesn't have to know how the car works, because they can memorize what all the controls do, since there are few. In a computer it is impossible to reduce the number of controls to so few. So in order to make use of it, you have to know at least a little about how it works. The biggest thing people need to learn is file systems. We all know about the metaphors of desktops, files and folders. But common folk just don't get it. Because of this "easy to use" programs like MS Office become difficult. Trainers should teach people the parts of a computer, how they work, how their operating system works, and all the basic things that apply to everything they do on a computer. Once they comprehend this much, picking up a new system is not so difficult. Instead the trainers just say "click on the OK button in this box". If they don't know the meaning of this, they don't know what to do when something weird happens.
Summary
A)power or ease, can't have both
B)don't fear the reaper
C)learn the basics then the specifics
I haven't looked at their picks yet, but I know the best episode ever.
The halloween special with the shinning. It's got 3 super hilarious quotes and is overall the best episode ever.
"no beer no tv make homer something something"
"shhhh, you wanna get suuuued?"
"that's willy's time!"
ah, the truness. But why do people always pick on the Lynx? I mean there's also the Game Gear, which was the least sucky of the sucky portable systems. But people always forget the portable Turbo GrafX 16. I forget what it was called, but it blew. Heck, barely anyone even remembers the Turbo Grafx, let alone its handheld version.
I like the handheld games, but the biggest gripe with cell-phone/pda games is the interface. I like snake, but not with a 9 button phone pad.
or I take a paint scraper to his CD-R collection...
Precisely. See my previous post because I don't want to do all kinds of typing again.
Haven't you ever played Mega Man? Without a hard hat they are totally vulnerable to the mega buster.
You're right on every count, except that it wont keep aol in business. AOL's business model depends on the fact that they will always be getting more subscribers. Even in AOL managed to keep everyone from leaving they would begin to lose money. The fact that people are leaving means big trouble for AOL. Mainly because they have a giant useless dial up ISP infrastructure. That infrastructure costs money, and if nobody uses it that's all loss. Sure there are a lot of idiots who keep paying for AOL after they get broadband. But unless AOL has a constant increase in membership they will have diminishing returns and eventually go bankrupt. They're still huge, so it wont happen soon, and they've still got a chance to save themselves.
I don't mind if they put ads IN the game. If I'm driving on the highway in a new racing game I'd rather see McDonalds bulleting boards that "burger co." It makes the game feel more like I'm on earth and not in a weird video game world.
It's a different story if the ads effect gameplay negatively. Like if I have to stop, watch an ad, then return to play.
As for games that ARE advertisements themselves. Like that Ford racing game. If the games are good, then it will be a good ad, and I wont mind. As long as it doesn't have ads that effect gameplay. If coke makes a coke game that sucks, they're just paying for negative advertising against themselves.
It's the same as movies. If you buy product placement in a shitty movie it sucks for you. Imagine a really crappy movie about a guy who works in a Coke factory. Not going to go well for the soda man.
I use Phoenix now, so why do I care? Besides, I'm not stupid enough to leave my security at the default level in IE. Which I use when I'm in windows and there's a weird page.
If I had a lawyer, and I was a business, and this thing automatically installed itself on my computer without my permission, obviously it is doing something to get by my security. Which means it's hacking into my computer. Any company with a laywer and a computer can sue these guys and get a nice sum with almost no effort.