Which ones? I've got Mario 64 and Ocaria of Time and both have audio, framerate, and REALLY NASTY clipping problems on the wii Virtual Console. These issues don't exist in my PC emulator (which is the same one I use on the original XBOX).
Have you ever played N64 games in a PC emulator? I thought not.
You do realize that most open source emulators and such compile on non-Intel platforms just fine, right?
Actually, no. This is a myth. I've done significant embedded development on Linux (MIPS, PowerPC) and it's a MAJOR PITA to port many apps to non-x86 architectures in large part because the compilers suck. If you don't feel like re-wiriting large chunks of source code your x86 app is unlikely to work in PowerPC. Running a VM is cheating. Spend some time working on Gentoo, you'll notice there is a LOT more software for x86 than PowerPC. Look at the capabilities of PS3 Linux vs. original XBOX Linux. There is a very wide gulf.
And finally, some of the emulators I'm talking about are Windows-based. I wasn't clear before, but the original XBOX runs Windows 2000 so with relatively minimal changes you can run Windows apps just fine on the original XBOX.
How many console games require a new graphic card, new processor, more memory, DirectX/drivers updates or OS upgrades?
The NES, Sega Genesis, Neo Geo, N64, and probably other consoles I can't remember have required memory upgrades to play certain games. The Dreamcast, PS2, Original XBOX, XBOX 360, and PS3 have OS updates and game patches. I can't think of any console that offered a processor upgrade off the top of my head (the Jaguar maybe?).
No half hour installations, needles restarts, patches that take several hours to download and install.
Except the PS3 which requires large hard drive installs for many games. Or Last Remnant, which requires a hard drive install on the 360. I don't know about the giant patches you're talking about. You're probably talking about MMO client updates. There ARE no MMOs on the console except Final Fantasy XI which distributes such client updates on discs.
Only game niches where PC still keeps the crowd entertained with greater efficiency are RTS, FPS and MMORPG games.
The reality is more that genres change. PC gaming used to be dominated by point and click adventure games and flight sims. These genres didn't transition to the consoles, they faded in popularity. "Devil May Cry" style action-adventure games were big last generation, in this generation, not so much. And speaking of RPGs, console RPGs are widely incorporating elements from PC games, particularly MMOs (see FFXII) not the other way around.
Facts: PC game sales have been going up dramatically every year. Certain genres, and even certain games, have dominated PC gaming since it's inception. Those genres change over time.
People have been predicting the death of PC gaming since before it even started. It's not going to happen unless people stop using PCs or manufacturers refuse to make gaming hardware for PCs.
1) People don't seem to grasp that MS uses these 25-character alphanumeric keys for EVERYTHING. Look at the back of Zune marketplace prepaid cards or XBOX live cards, same kind of code. They've got something that works for generating unique keys and don't feel like re-inventing the wheel.
2) MS' keygen probably got overloaded and they instead decided just to give everyone keys from the same pool of 25. Or maybe that was the plan from the beginning. They clearly underestimated the public interest in Windows 7 (how this is a bad thing, I don't know).
3) MS has been REALLY clear for a REALLY long time that it's a REALLY bad idea to run beta MS software on production systems. This is common sense.
4) Release date was probably pushed back because everyone wasn't back from the holiday. Not everything is sinister.
5) Considering Apple doesn't release betas for MacOS upgrades to the public, I wonder why you think users will think MacOS is superior in THIS regard. Linux, sure. Linux distributions are usually released and distributed quickly through bittorrent which helps avoid these problems.
Currently, 8 GB of ram costs about $80. Well within the budget of most users. If you do anything even slightly memory-intensive on your Windows system, like encoding video or using large Java apps, you could use the extra memory. Another example of something I do every day is compressing and decompressing archives (ZIPs, tarballs, etc.).
If the applications a built for 64bitness, and nowadays apps like video encoders and compressors and the JVM takes advantage of 64bitness so there's more out there that you think.
Saying "nobody will use 64-bit" is akin to saying "640K should be enough for anybody".
How does Vista "remove more control of your machine"?
UAC? It's just an approval. It gives you MORE control. Do personal firewalls like ZoneAlarm "remove control" when they ask you to whitelist outgoing traffic?
DRM? The only new DRM in Vista is the protected video path for playing HD video off BD-ROM (and HD-DVD) players. That's it. This functionality simply DID NOT EXIST in earlier operating systems, so they didn't take anything away. And it's not like this was MS' idea.
TPM? Unless you work for a business that is using the TPM for security purposes this will have no negative effect on you. Nor is it new in Vista. Nor is the TPM "issue" specific to Windows, both Linux and MacOS can use TPM.
Can we have any specific examples not covered above?
Some of the Control Panels have changed such that some functionality isn't exposed through the GUI anymore and you have to set it with MMCs or registry keys. I can't think of anything major off the top of my head.
The only really major loss of control I can think of is the fact that you can't directly edit certain sections of the registry anymore as a "security" feature against malware. You have to use the API which can be a PITA.
You don't mention (or don't know, most Vista critics are just ignorant) that the command-line shell and scripting engine have been dramatically improved in Vista. Most people would consider this "more control".
Vista 64-bit does not require 64-bit drivers to be signed. It just doesn't. I'm running it right now and loading an unsigned driver.
What you CAN'T do is load the unsigned drivers automagically. You have to manually load the drivers because that allows Vista to give you the "You're loading an unsigned driver you crazy bastard!" dialog. And you have to be an Admin to do it.
Yeah, having DRM on your system allows you to play DRM'd media, but only if the providers of that media think you paid for it.
How does having the ABILITY to play DRM media on Vista REMOVE the ABILITY to play NON-DRM Media?
IT DOES NOT.
I do not use DRM'ed media except DVD movies, and those I usually rip. I mostly use Xvid, which works just fine on Vista. For audio I mostly use FLAC, which again works just fine in Vista.
Your argument is that a portable media player that supports MP3, Ogg, and FLAC has MORE features than a portable media player that supports MP3, Protected AAC, Ogg, WMA, and FLAC.
Virtual desktops have been available as first-party and third-party add-ons since Windows 95. Most Windows users use tools provided by video card vendors like NView.
I'm getting a little tired of this "damned if you do, damned if you don't" crap about Microsoft. Back in the 90s Microsoft was the devil for "bundling" in all kinds of apps with Windows like Internet Explorer (and they STILL get crap for it in Europe). MS was recently threated with anti-trust for trying to do their own anti-virus application. But Linux bundles in dozens of apps and has a fixed software repository where you are supposed to download all your software built-in.
You can't criticize MS for being a "monopoly" and then criticize them for not including features that would further their "monopoly".
And if you work for a small company, the boss is probably so hard-set in his entrepreneurial control-everything mindset that you spend more time cleaning up messes than you do actually making progress.
This is where you sit down the boss and lay down the law. Working in a startup/small company means you are likely poorly paid and you're not getting any prestige out of the job because nobody has heard of the company. Explain to him that the only reason you're WILLING to work for his company is because you expect great, essentially absolute, freedom do do as you see fit within your budget.
If he can't deal with that, move on.
Think about this, "Is this guy going to give me a great reference for my NEXT job?"
Because if he's not going to tell your next boss you cured cancer, AND you're being overworked, AND you get no prestige out of the job because you're not working for a "name" company like Google or Microsoft or Apple, AND you're poorly paid, you have absolutely no reason to stay. It's actually costing you in the long term because you're wasting time at a job that won't look good on your resume.
He won't ask you what he should do, he'll make some spontaneous, completely uninformed decision and order you to do it -- trying to be circumspect, like you must in this line of work, is considered insubordination.
You might notice, I'm not circumspect. This can cause great conflict with about 70% of manager and "boss" types.
That's a good thing.
I've learned from long experience that 70% of people are assholes and that maps pretty well to the 70% who don't like my "style" (speaking plainly). That 70% of assholes WILL eventually screw you or make the job unbearable so it's good to identify the conflict quickly and move on before you get too invested in the position.
Ironically, most of the work I do is product support in one way or another. In this line of work my attitude brings the differences between bosses into sharp focus. Customers love me. Whether the bosses love me or not depends on whether they're "please the customer at all costs" types or "CYA" types (that 70% are mostly CYA types). The CYA people hate my guts because I won't tell outrageous lies to customers. This is why I can't work in sales.
Wow, is this model stupid. Allowing people to self-sign the security certificate for their applications completely defeats the purpose, unless they have a setting for users to disable allowing self-signed certificates (which means that most users WOULD be limited to the Android store). I don't understand why they won't allow unsigned apps given that they've completely defeated the purpose of having certificates. Blackberry does they same thing for Java apps, they just don't allow self-sign.
Once again, this is what happened in California when lots of people in favor of proposition 8 cared enough about it to go call their neighbors and reason with them why it was a good idea.
Not really, the Pro Prop 8 campaign was notable for being very deceptive. Proponents would talk about anything BUT gay marriage. It was originally the "Defending Families and Children Act" but the AG made them name it something sensible. They still continued to market it as something other than a ban on gay marriage. Exit polls revealed that some voters didn't know what they were voting for.
These are some of the reasons Prop 8 is likely to be overturned. That and the fact Prop 8 is a big "fuck you" to the CA Supreme Court. If you start by insulting them don't expect them to be sympathetic to your side.
Police take a lot of training and talent to *not* act like thugs.
I think it's pretty insulting to police officers to imply they need special training or "talent" to exhibit basic human decency. Police work is basically a customer service job. The lion's share of your work involves smoothing out ruffled feathers. Talking down some drunk idiot waving a gun is really no different from dealing with an irate customer who can't get his XBOX to work.
As they're doing a basic customer service job, I find complaints that they can't manage to do the job without beating people in the face ridiculous. If your temperament isn't suitable for customer service, you shouldn't be a cop. And customer service guy who screamed at people over the phone would be fired immediately, and any cop who threatens or beats people should similarly be fired (and punished).
The training involves procedures and equipment. If you can't manage common sense before going to the academy, they shouldn't give you a gun.
I don't have a wii. I do know it's a huge step backwards from a hacked original XBOX for emulation. The original XBOXes were x86/Windows based which made porting all kinds of software far easier than other consoles. I have an emulator for virtually every system for the original XBOX and many of them are far superior to what's available on the wii. In particular this is true of Nintendo 64 emulation, where games are relatively bug-free on the XBOX but barely work on the wii at all. And of course having access to a hard drive helps a lot.
If you want an emulation box go to GameStop and buy a used original XBOX and an orginal XBOX memory card, then follow one of the online tutorials to soft-mod it. It's really not that difficult. From there you can load hard drive images which will give you dashboards with dozens of emulators and thousands of games and the awesomeness that is XBOX Media Center. XBMC is an incredibly successful homebrew project that in fact FAR outstrips the capabilities of commercial products. It stomps all over AppleTV (for example).
It is highly unlikely we'll see a console better for homebrew anytime soon, so get 'em while you can.
Those same God botherers have been shown in study after study to be far quicker to give a large percentage of their income to charities that directly reach out to the poor and down-trodden than their secular counterparts.
I call bullshit. Let's see some citations on these nonexistent "studies". I seriously doubt any such study exists for Americans and even if it did this strikes me as something extraordinarily difficult to study in the US because it has been proven that Americans lie about religion and charity a lot. You would have to find a way to identify people's religion without asking them, an extraordinarily difficult task.
Last time I looked into it technical problems with emulating various bits of the Saturn was really hampering emulation attempts. It sounds like they've made a lot of progress.
most complicated video game console to program for ever
Actually, the Saturn was probably the most difficult console to program for ever. Sega basically told developers "Here's some of the system calls and incomplete design docs. Have fun." and it NEVER got any better. To this day there are parts of the Sega Saturn that are basically totally undocumented. Notice how you've never seen any Saturn emulators? This is why.
The first 2 years of the PS2 were painful, and then much better development tools arrived on the scene that handled much of the fiddly crap. Nowadays it's easy to develop for the PS2.
So, the natural solution to this is to give corporations incentives to keep their money local instead of sending it to tax havens.
Yeah, incentives like "If you try to evade taxes by sending your money offshore we will put you in jail."
Why don't you think these companies OPERATE in Ireland? You know the answer, because Ireland doesn't have the population, infrastructure, educational system, etc. these companies need to operate. And that infrastructure if paid for largely by tax dollars. Make no mistake, these companies are defrauding the American government and American people by dodging taxes.
This is behavior that should be punished, not encouraged.
Yes, you can buy a PC game at EB but it's mostly consoles.
GameStop/EBGames makes it's money one of 2 ways:
1) Selling used consoles, console accessories, and console games. Virtually all of the revenue comes from this source.
2) Kickbacks from publishers for promoting games with pre-orders, product placement, etc.
That's it. You might notice "new games sales" isn't in there. EBGameStop makes less than $1 on most new games because the margins are so tight. Most new games are on the shelf because the publisher paid EBGamestop for that placement. Since there isn't much of a used market for PC games due to piracy and technical issues, and publishers aren't willing to pay as much for shelf space, EBGameStop has virtually no incentive to stock them at all.
You praise the virtual console, but based on the above you should realize that selling old games as DLC will eventually drive EBGameStop (and all other game retailers) out of business since it will kill the used market. By the next console generation I expect specialty game retailers will cease to exist and game consoles and accessories will be sold at big box retailers. Most games will be sold as DLC.
Re:Users are branching out - game companies are no
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Is the Gaming PC Dead?
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Took about 5 hours.
Not enough memory in the notebook. Vista wants shitloads of memory (at least 2 GB) in the same way MacOS X wants shitloads of memory. 4GB of memory is around $40 nowadays. Vista will run fine on just about any $500 entry-level desktop shipped today as long as you upgrade the memory to at least 2 GB.
Another thing I can do with Linux (and to a lesser degree Mac) is chose all updates, applications and OS, hit "do it" without having to track down individual application updates and patches.
No, you can't. This is bullshit. Yes, most Linux distributions have software repositories. Not all of the software you will want or need will be the repository and/or the repository won't have the correct package. This was true of at least 50% of the software I wanted to run when I looked at Ubuntu last. The situation is even more grim with CentOS, the distribution I use the most.
Re:Users are branching out - game companies are no
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Is the Gaming PC Dead?
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I have to do wifi sniffing, last i checked none of the wifi drivers for windows supported rfmon mode for sniffing...
Wildpackets has supported this for a very long time. You have to use their custom drivers.
I run a number of servers with no video support,... I could use graphical based lights out management cards, but they cost more and are much slower than the serial console based ones.
No, you're not. Most motherboards won't boot without a video card so there is almost certainly a video card installed in the hardware you're using. What you're doing is running the system headless and redirecting the video output to serial. This only works well with CLI operating systems like Unix/Linux. You can install Windows through a serial console. I've done it. It's just a PITA. Windows Server 2008 also has a CLI-only mode. It's also a PITA. This doesn't mean you can't remote-install Windows. Far from it. PXE works GREAT with Windows and I install this way all the time.
You shouldn't be using serial console anyway because it's too limited. Now that they're widely available, you should be using IP KVMs. What will you do if you need to break into the BIOS on that system you're connecting to through serial? You have to walk over to it and hook up a monitor and keyboard. I support Linux systems all the time and it annoys me that admins don't realize that if there's a disk error the serial console won't do them any good.
In practice, serial console really doesn't get you anything you couldn't get with SSH or Remote Desktop.
I need to install and remove a lot of tools, package management on linux makes that easy, cleanly removing something from windows can be difficult.
It's called.MSI. And package management works great in Linux right up to the point where you install a badly formed package that screws up dependences or you have to manually install something and handle all the dependencies yourself. I've had more problems dealing with library version conflicts in Linux than I have in Windows. A LOT more.
windows can do this with third party hacks but none of them work very well since virtually no apps are designed to make use of them and will often open dialogs on the wrong workspaces (osx apps do this too, since spaces was only introduced with 10.5).
Few apps in Linux are designed to work in multiple workspaces. Most Unix window managers "sandbox" workspace instances so apps tend to open dialogs in the "right" workspace because they think there's only ONE workspace. The default Virtual Desktop PowerToy works exactly this way. There are lots of other schemes available in Windows. I use Nvidia's.
I'd also point out that this customization comes at the expense of consistency. Many GUI Linux apps (GIMP, FireFox, OpenOffice, etc.) have radically divergent UIs that won't integrate seamlessly with your desktop. Windows apps have very standardized dialogs, widgets, etc. so users know what to expect. Many Linux vendors, the ones using KDE, agree with me on this.
Chroot - i can easily have multiple user lands installed, without the overhead of a vm and multiple copies of the kernel, which is incredibly useful for development.
Not having a real multiuser mode is one of the things that pisses me off the most about desktop Windows. I really wish they would have let people run just 2 simultaneous users in Vista. This is a licensing limitation, not a technical limitation. Run Windows Server and you can have all the instances you want.
security - vista achieves its out of the box level of security by having all the stupid msrpc services listening on the network and then filtering them (they're obviously not needed or filtering would break stuff, so why have them listening in the first place?) whereas linux simply wont have anything listening.
I know a bit more about HP and what they did to Voodoo PC. First off, they fired almost everyone. In particular, everyone in support. This is because their support guys were very well paid. GOOD support costs big money. Shockingly, once they dropped the very expensive high-quality support staff and kicked Voodoo PC customers to mindless HP drones reading off scripts AND dropped ALL onsite support, their customers abandoned them in droves. When someone pays $10,000 for a PC they expect top-flight support. HP wasn't willing to do this, so their customers abandoned them.
Other vendors like Falcon Northwest aren't having these problems because they figured out that $10,000 PCs are a very demanding market a long time ago. The situation is really no different from selling high-end TVs or audiophile components. Big companies don't compete in this space because they don't have the attention to detail or exceptional service demanded by customers.
"Commodity PC vendors are abandoning high-end gaming PCs due to low demand for luxury goods during a economic downturn and low margins given the high cost of support."
In the past, high-end gaming PCs were the purview of boutique PC vendors like Falcon Northwest, Overdrive PC, Voodoo PC, and Alienware. Alienware was bought by Dell, Velocity Micro bought Overdrive PC, and Voodoo PC was bought by HP. HP found out there was a REASON Voodoo PC stayed small (very low demand, very high support costs) and promptly ran Voodoo PC into the ground. Dell is doing slightly better with Alienware by gimping the service and support. Make no mistake, at least 50% of the cost of that $10,000 PC is the elaborate testing and support offered. Alienware, for example, used to offer free on-site install, tech support, and component replacement. You could call an Alienware tech to come to your house and install games for you.
The fact is that $10,000 gaming PCs have NEVER been that popular. During the tech boom of the late 90's people were pissing away money left and right so these kinds of LUXURY GOODS (a high-end gaming PC is almost the definition of a luxury product that nobody really needs) sold somewhat better.
High-end gaming PCs are the equivalent to very high-end ($10,000+) TVs. There is a a market out there. It is small market with demanding customers. They are not going away, the market is just shrinking, largely due to the economic downturn and mismanagement by HP and Dell. For example, Falcon Northwest still lists an $11,000 desktop on their site.
Another thing is the technical sophistication of users is slowly going up, and the difficulty of building a PC is going DOWN, meaning that more people on the high end are willing to build their own (especially given the increasingly bad support from Alienware and Voodoo PC). This isn't an option for laptops, but gaming laptops with really serious horsepower have major limitations, like size, weight, and battery life (basically, 20lbs laptops with 30 minutes of battery life). Most customers who originally go for a gaming laptop end up with a "fragbox" or Shuttle-type mini-desktop because they aren't willing to accept these tradeoffs.
...when asked whether or not Spore would contain the dreaded SecuROM DRM that contributed to it being the most pirated game of 2008...
Ok...I understand that people get mad about DRM (at least, those who even notice it), etc., etc. But how is this statement any different that the **AAs saying that piracy has contributed to their decline in profits? Everyone gets all pissy about that kind of claim, but here we have the same thing in reverse, and nobody notices the flaw.
Credible reporting from unbiased sources has shown that Spore has been downloaded through torrents and through "the Scene" far more frequently than other games this year. Commentary within the pirate community suggested SecuROM was an issue long before "the media" began to hype up the problems. Long before the game was released, in fact.
Could it be that the media that hyped up all this DRM vs. piracy about the game that maybe raised people's awareness/interest in pirating the game?
Definitely. Receiving negative press for using DRM is one of the side effects of using DRM in your products. DRM is fundamentally anti-consumer for a variety of reasons and a reporter speaking AS A CONSUMER will certainly have negative things to say about DRM.
FWIW, I have seen and personally experienced technical problems and incompatibilities with the Steam client.
Though the fundamental problem is the one you highlighted at the end of your post. Steam's servers HAVE gone down in the past. And, eventually, they will go down for good. What do gamers do then?
There have been other server-based authentication schemes in the past (and eventually all their servers were permanently disconnected) and in some cases the companies released patches that effectively cracked the DRM or, in most cases, gamers had to rely on "community" cracks.
The lack of data recovery is the fundamental problem with all DRM schemes and is one of the reasons all such schemes are anti-consumer.
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Which ones? I've got Mario 64 and Ocaria of Time and both have audio, framerate, and REALLY NASTY clipping problems on the wii Virtual Console. These issues don't exist in my PC emulator (which is the same one I use on the original XBOX).
Have you ever played N64 games in a PC emulator? I thought not.
You do realize that most open source emulators and such compile on non-Intel platforms just fine, right?
Actually, no. This is a myth. I've done significant embedded development on Linux (MIPS, PowerPC) and it's a MAJOR PITA to port many apps to non-x86 architectures in large part because the compilers suck. If you don't feel like re-wiriting large chunks of source code your x86 app is unlikely to work in PowerPC. Running a VM is cheating. Spend some time working on Gentoo, you'll notice there is a LOT more software for x86 than PowerPC. Look at the capabilities of PS3 Linux vs. original XBOX Linux. There is a very wide gulf.
And finally, some of the emulators I'm talking about are Windows-based. I wasn't clear before, but the original XBOX runs Windows 2000 so with relatively minimal changes you can run Windows apps just fine on the original XBOX.
How many console games require a new graphic card, new processor, more memory, DirectX/drivers updates or OS upgrades?
The NES, Sega Genesis, Neo Geo, N64, and probably other consoles I can't remember have required memory upgrades to play certain games. The Dreamcast, PS2, Original XBOX, XBOX 360, and PS3 have OS updates and game patches. I can't think of any console that offered a processor upgrade off the top of my head (the Jaguar maybe?).
No half hour installations, needles restarts, patches that take several hours to download and install.
Except the PS3 which requires large hard drive installs for many games. Or Last Remnant, which requires a hard drive install on the 360. I don't know about the giant patches you're talking about. You're probably talking about MMO client updates. There ARE no MMOs on the console except Final Fantasy XI which distributes such client updates on discs.
Only game niches where PC still keeps the crowd entertained with greater efficiency are RTS, FPS and MMORPG games.
The reality is more that genres change. PC gaming used to be dominated by point and click adventure games and flight sims. These genres didn't transition to the consoles, they faded in popularity. "Devil May Cry" style action-adventure games were big last generation, in this generation, not so much. And speaking of RPGs, console RPGs are widely incorporating elements from PC games, particularly MMOs (see FFXII) not the other way around.
Facts: PC game sales have been going up dramatically every year. Certain genres, and even certain games, have dominated PC gaming since it's inception. Those genres change over time.
People have been predicting the death of PC gaming since before it even started. It's not going to happen unless people stop using PCs or manufacturers refuse to make gaming hardware for PCs.
Talk about FUD:
1) People don't seem to grasp that MS uses these 25-character alphanumeric keys for EVERYTHING. Look at the back of Zune marketplace prepaid cards or XBOX live cards, same kind of code. They've got something that works for generating unique keys and don't feel like re-inventing the wheel.
2) MS' keygen probably got overloaded and they instead decided just to give everyone keys from the same pool of 25. Or maybe that was the plan from the beginning. They clearly underestimated the public interest in Windows 7 (how this is a bad thing, I don't know).
3) MS has been REALLY clear for a REALLY long time that it's a REALLY bad idea to run beta MS software on production systems. This is common sense.
4) Release date was probably pushed back because everyone wasn't back from the holiday. Not everything is sinister.
5) Considering Apple doesn't release betas for MacOS upgrades to the public, I wonder why you think users will think MacOS is superior in THIS regard. Linux, sure. Linux distributions are usually released and distributed quickly through bittorrent which helps avoid these problems.
Currently, 8 GB of ram costs about $80. Well within the budget of most users. If you do anything even slightly memory-intensive on your Windows system, like encoding video or using large Java apps, you could use the extra memory. Another example of something I do every day is compressing and decompressing archives (ZIPs, tarballs, etc.).
If the applications a built for 64bitness, and nowadays apps like video encoders and compressors and the JVM takes advantage of 64bitness so there's more out there that you think.
Saying "nobody will use 64-bit" is akin to saying "640K should be enough for anybody".
How does Vista "remove more control of your machine"?
UAC? It's just an approval. It gives you MORE control. Do personal firewalls like ZoneAlarm "remove control" when they ask you to whitelist outgoing traffic?
DRM? The only new DRM in Vista is the protected video path for playing HD video off BD-ROM (and HD-DVD) players. That's it. This functionality simply DID NOT EXIST in earlier operating systems, so they didn't take anything away. And it's not like this was MS' idea.
TPM? Unless you work for a business that is using the TPM for security purposes this will have no negative effect on you. Nor is it new in Vista. Nor is the TPM "issue" specific to Windows, both Linux and MacOS can use TPM.
Can we have any specific examples not covered above?
Some of the Control Panels have changed such that some functionality isn't exposed through the GUI anymore and you have to set it with MMCs or registry keys. I can't think of anything major off the top of my head.
The only really major loss of control I can think of is the fact that you can't directly edit certain sections of the registry anymore as a "security" feature against malware. You have to use the API which can be a PITA.
You don't mention (or don't know, most Vista critics are just ignorant) that the command-line shell and scripting engine have been dramatically improved in Vista. Most people would consider this "more control".
Um, no.
Vista 64-bit does not require 64-bit drivers to be signed. It just doesn't. I'm running it right now and loading an unsigned driver.
What you CAN'T do is load the unsigned drivers automagically. You have to manually load the drivers because that allows Vista to give you the "You're loading an unsigned driver you crazy bastard!" dialog. And you have to be an Admin to do it.
These are GOOD security features.
Yeah, having DRM on your system allows you to play DRM'd media, but only if the providers of that media think you paid for it.
How does having the ABILITY to play DRM media on Vista REMOVE the ABILITY to play NON-DRM Media?
IT DOES NOT.
I do not use DRM'ed media except DVD movies, and those I usually rip. I mostly use Xvid, which works just fine on Vista. For audio I mostly use FLAC, which again works just fine in Vista.
Your argument is that a portable media player that supports MP3, Ogg, and FLAC has MORE features than a portable media player that supports MP3, Protected AAC, Ogg, WMA, and FLAC.
Windows 7 still doesn't have virtual desktops.
Virtual desktops have been available as first-party and third-party add-ons since Windows 95. Most Windows users use tools provided by video card vendors like NView.
I'm getting a little tired of this "damned if you do, damned if you don't" crap about Microsoft. Back in the 90s Microsoft was the devil for "bundling" in all kinds of apps with Windows like Internet Explorer (and they STILL get crap for it in Europe). MS was recently threated with anti-trust for trying to do their own anti-virus application. But Linux bundles in dozens of apps and has a fixed software repository where you are supposed to download all your software built-in.
You can't criticize MS for being a "monopoly" and then criticize them for not including features that would further their "monopoly".
And if you work for a small company, the boss is probably so hard-set in his entrepreneurial control-everything mindset that you spend more time cleaning up messes than you do actually making progress.
This is where you sit down the boss and lay down the law. Working in a startup/small company means you are likely poorly paid and you're not getting any prestige out of the job because nobody has heard of the company. Explain to him that the only reason you're WILLING to work for his company is because you expect great, essentially absolute, freedom do do as you see fit within your budget.
If he can't deal with that, move on.
Think about this, "Is this guy going to give me a great reference for my NEXT job?"
Because if he's not going to tell your next boss you cured cancer, AND you're being overworked, AND you get no prestige out of the job because you're not working for a "name" company like Google or Microsoft or Apple, AND you're poorly paid, you have absolutely no reason to stay. It's actually costing you in the long term because you're wasting time at a job that won't look good on your resume.
He won't ask you what he should do, he'll make some spontaneous, completely uninformed decision and order you to do it -- trying to be circumspect, like you must in this line of work, is considered insubordination.
You might notice, I'm not circumspect. This can cause great conflict with about 70% of manager and "boss" types.
That's a good thing.
I've learned from long experience that 70% of people are assholes and that maps pretty well to the 70% who don't like my "style" (speaking plainly). That 70% of assholes WILL eventually screw you or make the job unbearable so it's good to identify the conflict quickly and move on before you get too invested in the position.
Ironically, most of the work I do is product support in one way or another. In this line of work my attitude brings the differences between bosses into sharp focus. Customers love me. Whether the bosses love me or not depends on whether they're "please the customer at all costs" types or "CYA" types (that 70% are mostly CYA types). The CYA people hate my guts because I won't tell outrageous lies to customers. This is why I can't work in sales.
Just a quick note:
Wow, is this model stupid. Allowing people to self-sign the security certificate for their applications completely defeats the purpose, unless they have a setting for users to disable allowing self-signed certificates (which means that most users WOULD be limited to the Android store). I don't understand why they won't allow unsigned apps given that they've completely defeated the purpose of having certificates. Blackberry does they same thing for Java apps, they just don't allow self-sign.
Once again, this is what happened in California when lots of people in favor of proposition 8 cared enough about it to go call their neighbors and reason with them why it was a good idea.
Not really, the Pro Prop 8 campaign was notable for being very deceptive. Proponents would talk about anything BUT gay marriage. It was originally the "Defending Families and Children Act" but the AG made them name it something sensible. They still continued to market it as something other than a ban on gay marriage. Exit polls revealed that some voters didn't know what they were voting for.
These are some of the reasons Prop 8 is likely to be overturned. That and the fact Prop 8 is a big "fuck you" to the CA Supreme Court. If you start by insulting them don't expect them to be sympathetic to your side.
Police take a lot of training and talent to *not* act like thugs.
I think it's pretty insulting to police officers to imply they need special training or "talent" to exhibit basic human decency. Police work is basically a customer service job. The lion's share of your work involves smoothing out ruffled feathers. Talking down some drunk idiot waving a gun is really no different from dealing with an irate customer who can't get his XBOX to work.
As they're doing a basic customer service job, I find complaints that they can't manage to do the job without beating people in the face ridiculous. If your temperament isn't suitable for customer service, you shouldn't be a cop. And customer service guy who screamed at people over the phone would be fired immediately, and any cop who threatens or beats people should similarly be fired (and punished).
The training involves procedures and equipment. If you can't manage common sense before going to the academy, they shouldn't give you a gun.
I don't have a wii. I do know it's a huge step backwards from a hacked original XBOX for emulation. The original XBOXes were x86/Windows based which made porting all kinds of software far easier than other consoles. I have an emulator for virtually every system for the original XBOX and many of them are far superior to what's available on the wii. In particular this is true of Nintendo 64 emulation, where games are relatively bug-free on the XBOX but barely work on the wii at all. And of course having access to a hard drive helps a lot.
If you want an emulation box go to GameStop and buy a used original XBOX and an orginal XBOX memory card, then follow one of the online tutorials to soft-mod it. It's really not that difficult. From there you can load hard drive images which will give you dashboards with dozens of emulators and thousands of games and the awesomeness that is XBOX Media Center. XBMC is an incredibly successful homebrew project that in fact FAR outstrips the capabilities of commercial products. It stomps all over AppleTV (for example).
It is highly unlikely we'll see a console better for homebrew anytime soon, so get 'em while you can.
Those same God botherers have been shown in study after study to be far quicker to give a large percentage of their income to charities that directly reach out to the poor and down-trodden than their secular counterparts.
I call bullshit. Let's see some citations on these nonexistent "studies". I seriously doubt any such study exists for Americans and even if it did this strikes me as something extraordinarily difficult to study in the US because it has been proven that Americans lie about religion and charity a lot. You would have to find a way to identify people's religion without asking them, an extraordinarily difficult task.
Last time I looked into it technical problems with emulating various bits of the Saturn was really hampering emulation attempts. It sounds like they've made a lot of progress.
most complicated video game console to program for ever
Actually, the Saturn was probably the most difficult console to program for ever. Sega basically told developers "Here's some of the system calls and incomplete design docs. Have fun." and it NEVER got any better. To this day there are parts of the Sega Saturn that are basically totally undocumented. Notice how you've never seen any Saturn emulators? This is why.
The first 2 years of the PS2 were painful, and then much better development tools arrived on the scene that handled much of the fiddly crap. Nowadays it's easy to develop for the PS2.
So, the natural solution to this is to give corporations incentives to keep their money local instead of sending it to tax havens.
Yeah, incentives like "If you try to evade taxes by sending your money offshore we will put you in jail."
Why don't you think these companies OPERATE in Ireland? You know the answer, because Ireland doesn't have the population, infrastructure, educational system, etc. these companies need to operate. And that infrastructure if paid for largely by tax dollars. Make no mistake, these companies are defrauding the American government and American people by dodging taxes.
This is behavior that should be punished, not encouraged.
Yes, you can buy a PC game at EB but it's mostly consoles.
GameStop/EBGames makes it's money one of 2 ways:
1) Selling used consoles, console accessories, and console games. Virtually all of the revenue comes from this source.
2) Kickbacks from publishers for promoting games with pre-orders, product placement, etc.
That's it. You might notice "new games sales" isn't in there. EBGameStop makes less than $1 on most new games because the margins are so tight. Most new games are on the shelf because the publisher paid EBGamestop for that placement. Since there isn't much of a used market for PC games due to piracy and technical issues, and publishers aren't willing to pay as much for shelf space, EBGameStop has virtually no incentive to stock them at all.
You praise the virtual console, but based on the above you should realize that selling old games as DLC will eventually drive EBGameStop (and all other game retailers) out of business since it will kill the used market. By the next console generation I expect specialty game retailers will cease to exist and game consoles and accessories will be sold at big box retailers. Most games will be sold as DLC.
Took about 5 hours.
Not enough memory in the notebook. Vista wants shitloads of memory (at least 2 GB) in the same way MacOS X wants shitloads of memory. 4GB of memory is around $40 nowadays. Vista will run fine on just about any $500 entry-level desktop shipped today as long as you upgrade the memory to at least 2 GB.
Another thing I can do with Linux (and to a lesser degree Mac) is chose all updates, applications and OS, hit "do it" without having to track down individual application updates and patches.
No, you can't. This is bullshit. Yes, most Linux distributions have software repositories. Not all of the software you will want or need will be the repository and/or the repository won't have the correct package. This was true of at least 50% of the software I wanted to run when I looked at Ubuntu last. The situation is even more grim with CentOS, the distribution I use the most.
I have to do wifi sniffing, last i checked none of the wifi drivers for windows supported rfmon mode for sniffing...
Wildpackets has supported this for a very long time. You have to use their custom drivers.
I run a number of servers with no video support, ... I could use graphical based lights out management cards, but they cost more and are much slower than the serial console based ones.
No, you're not. Most motherboards won't boot without a video card so there is almost certainly a video card installed in the hardware you're using. What you're doing is running the system headless and redirecting the video output to serial. This only works well with CLI operating systems like Unix/Linux. You can install Windows through a serial console. I've done it. It's just a PITA. Windows Server 2008 also has a CLI-only mode. It's also a PITA. This doesn't mean you can't remote-install Windows. Far from it. PXE works GREAT with Windows and I install this way all the time.
You shouldn't be using serial console anyway because it's too limited. Now that they're widely available, you should be using IP KVMs. What will you do if you need to break into the BIOS on that system you're connecting to through serial? You have to walk over to it and hook up a monitor and keyboard. I support Linux systems all the time and it annoys me that admins don't realize that if there's a disk error the serial console won't do them any good.
In practice, serial console really doesn't get you anything you couldn't get with SSH or Remote Desktop.
I need to install and remove a lot of tools, package management on linux makes that easy, cleanly removing something from windows can be difficult.
It's called .MSI. And package management works great in Linux right up to the point where you install a badly formed package that screws up dependences or you have to manually install something and handle all the dependencies yourself. I've had more problems dealing with library version conflicts in Linux than I have in Windows. A LOT more.
windows can do this with third party hacks but none of them work very well since virtually no apps are designed to make use of them and will often open dialogs on the wrong workspaces (osx apps do this too, since spaces was only introduced with 10.5).
Few apps in Linux are designed to work in multiple workspaces. Most Unix window managers "sandbox" workspace instances so apps tend to open dialogs in the "right" workspace because they think there's only ONE workspace. The default Virtual Desktop PowerToy works exactly this way. There are lots of other schemes available in Windows. I use Nvidia's.
I'd also point out that this customization comes at the expense of consistency. Many GUI Linux apps (GIMP, FireFox, OpenOffice, etc.) have radically divergent UIs that won't integrate seamlessly with your desktop. Windows apps have very standardized dialogs, widgets, etc. so users know what to expect. Many Linux vendors, the ones using KDE, agree with me on this.
Chroot - i can easily have multiple user lands installed, without the overhead of a vm and multiple copies of the kernel, which is incredibly useful for development.
Not having a real multiuser mode is one of the things that pisses me off the most about desktop Windows. I really wish they would have let people run just 2 simultaneous users in Vista. This is a licensing limitation, not a technical limitation. Run Windows Server and you can have all the instances you want.
security - vista achieves its out of the box level of security by having all the stupid msrpc services listening on the network and then filtering them (they're obviously not needed or filtering would break stuff, so why have them listening in the first place?) whereas linux simply wont have anything listening.
Again, simply not tr
Psychotria hit the nail on the head here.
I know a bit more about HP and what they did to Voodoo PC. First off, they fired almost everyone. In particular, everyone in support. This is because their support guys were very well paid. GOOD support costs big money. Shockingly, once they dropped the very expensive high-quality support staff and kicked Voodoo PC customers to mindless HP drones reading off scripts AND dropped ALL onsite support, their customers abandoned them in droves. When someone pays $10,000 for a PC they expect top-flight support. HP wasn't willing to do this, so their customers abandoned them.
Other vendors like Falcon Northwest aren't having these problems because they figured out that $10,000 PCs are a very demanding market a long time ago. The situation is really no different from selling high-end TVs or audiophile components. Big companies don't compete in this space because they don't have the attention to detail or exceptional service demanded by customers.
Translation:
"Commodity PC vendors are abandoning high-end gaming PCs due to low demand for luxury goods during a economic downturn and low margins given the high cost of support."
In the past, high-end gaming PCs were the purview of boutique PC vendors like Falcon Northwest, Overdrive PC, Voodoo PC, and Alienware. Alienware was bought by Dell, Velocity Micro bought Overdrive PC, and Voodoo PC was bought by HP. HP found out there was a REASON Voodoo PC stayed small (very low demand, very high support costs) and promptly ran Voodoo PC into the ground. Dell is doing slightly better with Alienware by gimping the service and support. Make no mistake, at least 50% of the cost of that $10,000 PC is the elaborate testing and support offered. Alienware, for example, used to offer free on-site install, tech support, and component replacement. You could call an Alienware tech to come to your house and install games for you.
The fact is that $10,000 gaming PCs have NEVER been that popular. During the tech boom of the late 90's people were pissing away money left and right so these kinds of LUXURY GOODS (a high-end gaming PC is almost the definition of a luxury product that nobody really needs) sold somewhat better.
High-end gaming PCs are the equivalent to very high-end ($10,000+) TVs. There is a a market out there. It is small market with demanding customers. They are not going away, the market is just shrinking, largely due to the economic downturn and mismanagement by HP and Dell. For example, Falcon Northwest still lists an $11,000 desktop on their site.
Another thing is the technical sophistication of users is slowly going up, and the difficulty of building a PC is going DOWN, meaning that more people on the high end are willing to build their own (especially given the increasingly bad support from Alienware and Voodoo PC). This isn't an option for laptops, but gaming laptops with really serious horsepower have major limitations, like size, weight, and battery life (basically, 20lbs laptops with 30 minutes of battery life). Most customers who originally go for a gaming laptop end up with a "fragbox" or Shuttle-type mini-desktop because they aren't willing to accept these tradeoffs.
...when asked whether or not Spore would contain the dreaded SecuROM DRM that contributed to it being the most pirated game of 2008...
Ok...I understand that people get mad about DRM (at least, those who even notice it), etc., etc. But how is this statement any different that the **AAs saying that piracy has contributed to their decline in profits? Everyone gets all pissy about that kind of claim, but here we have the same thing in reverse, and nobody notices the flaw.
Credible reporting from unbiased sources has shown that Spore has been downloaded through torrents and through "the Scene" far more frequently than other games this year. Commentary within the pirate community suggested SecuROM was an issue long before "the media" began to hype up the problems. Long before the game was released, in fact.
Could it be that the media that hyped up all this DRM vs. piracy about the game that maybe raised people's awareness/interest in pirating the game?
Definitely. Receiving negative press for using DRM is one of the side effects of using DRM in your products. DRM is fundamentally anti-consumer for a variety of reasons and a reporter speaking AS A CONSUMER will certainly have negative things to say about DRM.
FWIW, I have seen and personally experienced technical problems and incompatibilities with the Steam client.
Though the fundamental problem is the one you highlighted at the end of your post. Steam's servers HAVE gone down in the past. And, eventually, they will go down for good. What do gamers do then?
There have been other server-based authentication schemes in the past (and eventually all their servers were permanently disconnected) and in some cases the companies released patches that effectively cracked the DRM or, in most cases, gamers had to rely on "community" cracks.
The lack of data recovery is the fundamental problem with all DRM schemes and is one of the reasons all such schemes are anti-consumer.