"Company forced to give up revenue stream due to open-source fanatics who refuse to acknowledge any boundary between open-source MySQL server APIs and closed-source enterprise utilities which call those APIs"
Despite the outcome, this is not a victory for the open-source movement. The original Slashdot story was inflammatory and designed to mislead, and now it has had the desired effect.
OK, replying to myself because I didn't finish expressing my thoughts correctly...
There is no explicit contract with the WiFi thing, so it boils down to what a "reasonable person" would expect of the service. I think a reasonable person with an iPhone would recognize that AT&T treats iPhone data access as distinctly separate from PC data access, and bills them at different rates.
If you have an iPhone, you should already be familiar with that distinction from your service agreement.
If your "more advanced device" is a computer, you're violating your service agreement. The limitations on what the device is capable of are part of the pricing strategy. A true unlimited data plan costs more than an iPhone data plan.
It doesn't really costs them anything more, but that's not the point - they have a right to charge you more for unrestricted service, and it is theft to take their lower-tier service and hack your way around the restrictions.
Your iPhone comes with unlimited data access for your iPhone. That agreement is based on the understanding that using the internet on your iPhone is not something people will do a lot of, because of the interface and other convenience factors. The data access is tied to the device.
If you use your PC web browser roughly as much as you would use Safari on the iPhone, and you don't download any more files (or Flash content) or visit more pages than you would have done on the phone, then I can agree that this is a "harmless" hack. Otherwise it's like hacking a cable box that was artificially restricting your channel selection, another time-honored and fully illegal activity.
Even if 60% of all players purchased via Steam (which would be a total coup for Valve, since as far as I'm aware, downloads are still the minority) the platform ratio is still 4:1.
A major worry being floated around the industry right now is the idea of PC sales cannibalism. How many people who bought it for PC also have a console, and would have purchased that version if were no PC SKU? More directly, how many people pirated it for the PC and never paid, but might have purchased it for a console where piracy requires more dedication?
I'm not saying that this cannibalism theory is true; it's almost impossible to test. But since industry figures peg piracy at 90%+ of the total PC install base for popular games (and 99%+ in Asia), it's certainly possible.
It's just that very few companies have the balls to talk about it in public, because saying it out loud is the same thing as calling your customer base a bunch of thieves. So they refer to it vaguely as 'business challenges' and say that a PC version is hard to make. EA is actually pulling this off right now with Madden 09, so in a year or so when we have the final sales numbers, we might know whether or not there's truth behind the cannibalism theory.
Yes, PC games are dominated by World of Warcraft and The Sims. Every other retail-box game is basically an also-ran, although Valve doesn't release numbers for Steam so it's possible that PC direct downloads make for a healthier picture.
There was a time when people said that FPS games would never catch on with consoles, but dual-analog controls proved them wrong. RTS games and MMOs are another two PC-centric genres, but maybe it's only a matter of time until their console equivalents get worked out as well.
What's the mistake exactly? The 360 version outsold the PC version 10:1 at retail stores. The PC gaming market might not be dead, but it's a small minority now.
No. The post in question is a train wreck. Combinatorial math does not work like that. Nor is that the reason that video recording is historically done in YUV. The human eye is very much capable of perceiving millions of distinguishable colors.
Bringing in the mechanics of color perception is irrelevant, not to mention that the post is using misleading and incorrect terminology (it's nothing to do with "dithering") and that it is conveniently overlooking the fact that the three wavelengths that the cones in the eye are sensitive to are red, green, and blue.
What the hell is the complaint about? Even a screen with an 8-bit DAC is only capable of displaying 766 colours - each subpixel can show 255 brightnesses of three distinct wavelengths of light (as each subpixel can show the same black this makes 766, not 768).... This whole thing is stupid. It sounds like people nitpicking advertising, without actually being aware of the technical concepts involved the image display process.
Interesting... you pass judgement with authority, but nowhere in your post do you indicate that you've actually looked at a new 20" iMac. So I'm gonna call you out and say that you're full of bullshit.
If there is no visual difference between a good 18-bpp display and a 24- or 36-bpp display, then why are they dirt cheap and considered inferior by everyone who has ever owned or used one for image processing work?
Maybe the stock would go higher, but maybe not. The rest of their finances are a disaster. The investment firms and stock analysts surely know how much of a hit GTA IV will be. You could argue (and EA has said) that this is why the stock was at 16 instead of 10 or 5; the value of future GTA earnings is already factored into the market price.
The stance isn't as crazy as the context-free summary makes it out to be. Linus isn't talking about the license for the ndiswrapper code. He's talking about access to kernel functions which have been marked as "GPLONLY". These are functions which are intentionally not exported to non-GPL code. Linus is saying that allowing ndiswrapper to use them is equivalent to allowing calls from non-GPL windows binary drivers. Which is true.
The debate then is whether or not this should be considered a problem. The contributors who added many of the GPLONLY functions may have different opinions on the topic. Linus hints that the contributors for the USB functions would prefer a strict interpretation and deny ndiswrapper access to the GPLONLY kernel-level functions, because there is a perfectly good user-space API. But everyone involved agrees that ndiswrapper is will never live in user-space, because there's no programmer who would do it and it's a crazy idea anyway. Anyway you slice it, it's clear that ndiswrapper will get fixed one way or another, and nobody is accusing the ndiswrapper project of misusing the GPL.
In summmary, it's a tempest in a teapot: someone accidentally broke ndiswrapper, kernel API discussion ensues, Slashdot posts inflammatory summary, life goes on.
Conservatism is not the issue. The problem, at least to me, is not that Vista changed things. It's that Vista changed many things without actually improving them and then left no way to go back to the old behavior.
Breaking backwards-compatibility is bad in general, but is easily justified if the new ways are better (or at least never worse) than the old. Breaking backwards-compatibility just for the sake of doing something new, without doing it better, is a sin.
I'm pretty sure that at least EA thinks that Bioware/Pandemic will provide more than $860M of value in 5 years. I'm inclined to agree:
- the two studios come with 10+ fully-owned IPs/franchises - successful technology, tools, and development processes can be re-used throughout EA - BioWare, known for RPG excellence, has a LucasArts-licensed MMO in production - also in production: Sonic the Hedgehog and other low-dev-cost/high-sales-target DS games - development costs for Mass Effect are already covered prior to the acquisition - two sequels to Mass Effect are planned, with lower development cost than an original game
Bioware/Pandemic have been ramping up headcount in the past few years, and since their output has not ramped up accordingly, it stands to reason that they now have many games in production at various stages of completion. By acquiring them now, EA gets to reap the rewards without paying out the full development costs.
We're in complete agreement - there's no point in running an email server if it cannot serve mail OR if it compromises your security. I also share your opinion that qmail (without patches) is completely unusable. That doesn't change the fact that security should be the highest concern of software development, nor does it mean that DJB's priorities are incorrect.
It just means that software has a minimum bar of functionality and usability, and that qmail fails to meet that bar, which is neither here nor there in a discussion about the importance of security.
Pointing out the lack of usability in qmail is not a justification for decreased security, it just means that everyone should strive to be a better software engineer than DJB.:)
I'm tired of this bogus argument. If that were truly the cost of security, then yes, I would stand by your example as the best SMTP server ever written. There is no point in running an email server if the only way to do so is to necessarily expose yourself to vulnerability.
What you really mean to complain about is that DJB has refused to improve usability on the grounds that to do so would compromise security. That's what I was referring to with the phrase "personal approach to security".
If you can improve usability without compromising security, you should do so. If you can't, then don't. However, if you can't do it and someone else can, then maybe you should hand over the reigns of your software.
DJB refuses to do anything that would decrease security. If he thinks adding usability will decrease security, that doesn't mean that his priorities are wrong. It just means that you might want to find a better programmer to maintain your SMTP server.
Your business accounting appear to be a little rusty. I think it's analogy time!
You are a dairy farmer. You have five cows. One of those cows has been eating more and more grass lately, but isn't producing much milk. What's more, the last milk it produced was extremely sour and didn't even pay for its grass. Do you keep this cow? No, because it will continue to eat grass that would be better given to other cows. You cut your losses, slaughter it, and make use of its meat to get some benefit out of the lame cow.
Now let's look at Bioware from a dairy perspective. You're still a farmer. You hear that someone might be willing to sell you a cow that has been history of producing excellent milk. What's more, cow experts are proclaiming that this cow's next batch of milk will achieve record sales, and there are many hints that the cow has a long and productive life ahead of it. How much is a cow like this worth? Is it worth the expected profits of its milk for one year? Two years? Five years?
In the end, a cash cow like Bioware is worth almost anything the current owner asks. Assuming that the cow doesn't get sick and die prematurely, it will eventually pay for itself -- and more. If you believe that the cow will be healthy for longer than five years, you should gladly fork over the equivalent of five years of that cow's projected milk revenue, because in the long run it will be profitable.
Regardless of whatever else you might think of him or his software, DJB is a promoter of "security at any cost", for which everyone should give him some respect. If there's anything we should have learned in the past ten years, it's that you can't half-ass security.
Too much software is written as if security concerns are on equal footing with features and performance. That should never be true. If your program deals with untrusted input and has access to sensitive information, then security must be the primary concern during the entire development process. Security is not something that you can "patch in" after the architecture is settled.
There can be no trade-offs when it comes to core internet services. If one mail server is 10x faster than another but also contains a remote execution exploit, it is not 10x better -- it is useless.
You can debate DJB's personal approach to security, but you cannot fault his priorities.
Given that one has to sign a contract with AT&T, I don't see the point of the hack if you have to pay double line fees to use on TMobile. I can wait a few years for a real one
Not true. You can walk into an Apple store, pay, and walk out with an iPhone in under two minutes. No paperwork.
You are presented with the AT&T contract when you first try to sync/activate the phone. The whole point of the hack is that it bypasses the activation process, thus cutting AT&T out of the picture.
I can't tell if you're being earnest or sarcastic. Your bridge metaphor is either unfortunately timed, or brilliantly placed.
Differences in programmer skill do exist, and it has nothing to do with their grasp of domain-specific knowledge. Rather, it has to do with the ability to hold a lot of knowledge at once, such that the appropriate knowledge springs to mind without needing to look it up.
The difference between a "decent" programmer and a "great" one is that the decent programmer will think of an approach, start coding it, come up against a wall where it collides with some other code, examine the other code, mull it over, and rework his approach accordingly. The great programmer will think about the task for a moment, the roadblock will be obvious to him, and he will get the right approach on the first try. (If he's really great, he'll even leave a comment explaining why the straightforward approach has a roadblock.)
No matter how much training you give the first programmer, his recall capacity is not going to increase dramatically. He can understand the design well enough to know where to look, or who to ask, but his working set is just not large enough to encompass the entire design.
If your systems are small enough that anyone can recall all aspects of them at all times, you don't need programmers. You just need monkeys who can write C/Java/Ruby/whatever. But if you work on any reasonably large project, the great programmers always stand out as "the people who get asked questions".
Anything I do, at all, is owned by my employer. If you're not an hourly worker (and, chances are, they weren't), then there's no such thing as "spare time": it's always owned by the employer.
That depends not only on your employment contract, but also the laws of your state. Some employment contracts make unenforceable or illegal claims. If you do something entirely yourself, at home, using your own equipment, in a field unrelated to your employer's business -- it's almost certainly yours. But talk to a lawyer to be sure.
This submission is omitting the fact that The White Council is no longer in production. I'm also not sure where it takes the Sims 2 AI line from, because that is not mentioned in the article at all.
The announcement follows EA's previously announced The Lord of the Rings: The White Council, an open world RPG for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. However, with EA making plans for a new The Lord Of The Rings title, the fate of this project, once referred to as the cryptic Project Gray Company, remains uncertain. EA confirmed in early February that the game, while not canceled, had been put on hold.
Guy, go away, the console world is tired of the FUD from people like you.
Given the obvious challenges of programming a system with 8 specialized CPUs and a non-traditional memory model, and considering the dearth of announced PS3-exclusive titles, I would say that the grandparent is spot-on.
The PS3 is hard to program for. Much harder than the XBox 360 (because it's got a great dev environment that makes DirectX programmers feel at home) or the Wii (because the technology is familiar - single core, traditional memory model, essentially just a clocked-up GameCube).
I'm that a few companies will step up to the challenge and create specialized engines that absolutely rock on the PS3. But many companies will not make games that absolutely rock on the PS3, because they they want to go for the widest possible audience (ie, multi-platform) which means their engines will not be structured in the bizarre and unique ways that are most efficient for a PS3.
So yes, it is in fact a bad thing that most games will never approach the PS3's theoretical hardware capacity. Sony made the PS3 architecture bizarre and unique, on the assumption that they would win the console war and it wouldn't matter because every developer would want to release games for a PS3 (as was the case with PS2).
Right now, a month after launch, Sony has barely got 250k units into consumers hands, while there are twice that many Wiis and fifteen times as many XBox 360s in peoples' living rooms. Sony is not "winning" the console war. And even if they pull to a dead-even tie with MS and Nintendo, which seems unlikely to me, they still lose. It makes no sense for a developer to focus on developing technology that will run great on 33% of the potential market when they can make a less efficient cross-platform game and target 100% of the potential market.
Before EA did this, the game was what it was, and there were strategy guides available on the net or in book form. There were even people (seriously) selling one-on-one "training" sessions. Now that EA has released this, the game is still unchanged, all those strategy guides are still available, and now there is an additional resource to maybe learn something if you are a football fan but not-so-great at Madden.
So, how exactly is selling a new informational product "evil"? Oh that's right, it's informational, and information wants to be free, right?... Come on.
Slashdot Mirror
"Company forced to give up revenue stream due to open-source fanatics who refuse to acknowledge any boundary between open-source MySQL server APIs and closed-source enterprise utilities which call those APIs"
Despite the outcome, this is not a victory for the open-source movement. The original Slashdot story was inflammatory and designed to mislead, and now it has had the desired effect.
OK, replying to myself because I didn't finish expressing my thoughts correctly...
There is no explicit contract with the WiFi thing, so it boils down to what a "reasonable person" would expect of the service. I think a reasonable person with an iPhone would recognize that AT&T treats iPhone data access as distinctly separate from PC data access, and bills them at different rates.
If you have an iPhone, you should already be familiar with that distinction from your service agreement.
If your "more advanced device" is a computer, you're violating your service agreement. The limitations on what the device is capable of are part of the pricing strategy. A true unlimited data plan costs more than an iPhone data plan.
It doesn't really costs them anything more, but that's not the point - they have a right to charge you more for unrestricted service, and it is theft to take their lower-tier service and hack your way around the restrictions.
Your iPhone comes with unlimited data access for your iPhone. That agreement is based on the understanding that using the internet on your iPhone is not something people will do a lot of, because of the interface and other convenience factors. The data access is tied to the device.
If you use your PC web browser roughly as much as you would use Safari on the iPhone, and you don't download any more files (or Flash content) or visit more pages than you would have done on the phone, then I can agree that this is a "harmless" hack. Otherwise it's like hacking a cable box that was artificially restricting your channel selection, another time-honored and fully illegal activity.
Even if 60% of all players purchased via Steam (which would be a total coup for Valve, since as far as I'm aware, downloads are still the minority) the platform ratio is still 4:1.
A major worry being floated around the industry right now is the idea of PC sales cannibalism. How many people who bought it for PC also have a console, and would have purchased that version if were no PC SKU? More directly, how many people pirated it for the PC and never paid, but might have purchased it for a console where piracy requires more dedication?
I'm not saying that this cannibalism theory is true; it's almost impossible to test. But since industry figures peg piracy at 90%+ of the total PC install base for popular games (and 99%+ in Asia), it's certainly possible.
It's just that very few companies have the balls to talk about it in public, because saying it out loud is the same thing as calling your customer base a bunch of thieves. So they refer to it vaguely as 'business challenges' and say that a PC version is hard to make. EA is actually pulling this off right now with Madden 09, so in a year or so when we have the final sales numbers, we might know whether or not there's truth behind the cannibalism theory.
Yes, PC games are dominated by World of Warcraft and The Sims. Every other retail-box game is basically an also-ran, although Valve doesn't release numbers for Steam so it's possible that PC direct downloads make for a healthier picture.
There was a time when people said that FPS games would never catch on with consoles, but dual-analog controls proved them wrong. RTS games and MMOs are another two PC-centric genres, but maybe it's only a matter of time until their console equivalents get worked out as well.
"CoD learned from that mistake"
What's the mistake exactly? The 360 version outsold the PC version 10:1 at retail stores. The PC gaming market might not be dead, but it's a small minority now.
No. The post in question is a train wreck. Combinatorial math does not work like that. Nor is that the reason that video recording is historically done in YUV. The human eye is very much capable of perceiving millions of distinguishable colors.
Bringing in the mechanics of color perception is irrelevant, not to mention that the post is using misleading and incorrect terminology (it's nothing to do with "dithering") and that it is conveniently overlooking the fact that the three wavelengths that the cones in the eye are sensitive to are red, green, and blue.
What the hell is the complaint about? Even a screen with an 8-bit DAC is only capable of displaying 766 colours - each subpixel can show 255 brightnesses of three distinct wavelengths of light (as each subpixel can show the same black this makes 766, not 768). ... This whole thing is stupid. It sounds like people nitpicking advertising, without actually being aware of the technical concepts involved the image display process.
... you pass judgement with authority, but nowhere in your post do you indicate that you've actually looked at a new 20" iMac. So I'm gonna call you out and say that you're full of bullshit.
Interesting
If there is no visual difference between a good 18-bpp display and a 24- or 36-bpp display, then why are they dirt cheap and considered inferior by everyone who has ever owned or used one for image processing work?
Maybe the stock would go higher, but maybe not. The rest of their finances are a disaster. The investment firms and stock analysts surely know how much of a hit GTA IV will be. You could argue (and EA has said) that this is why the stock was at 16 instead of 10 or 5; the value of future GTA earnings is already factored into the market price.
Bioshock sold around 2 million units. GTA: San Andreas sold over 20 million units. It's not even close.
The stance isn't as crazy as the context-free summary makes it out to be. Linus isn't talking about the license for the ndiswrapper code. He's talking about access to kernel functions which have been marked as "GPLONLY". These are functions which are intentionally not exported to non-GPL code. Linus is saying that allowing ndiswrapper to use them is equivalent to allowing calls from non-GPL windows binary drivers. Which is true.
The debate then is whether or not this should be considered a problem. The contributors who added many of the GPLONLY functions may have different opinions on the topic. Linus hints that the contributors for the USB functions would prefer a strict interpretation and deny ndiswrapper access to the GPLONLY kernel-level functions, because there is a perfectly good user-space API. But everyone involved agrees that ndiswrapper is will never live in user-space, because there's no programmer who would do it and it's a crazy idea anyway. Anyway you slice it, it's clear that ndiswrapper will get fixed one way or another, and nobody is accusing the ndiswrapper project of misusing the GPL.
In summmary, it's a tempest in a teapot: someone accidentally broke ndiswrapper, kernel API discussion ensues, Slashdot posts inflammatory summary, life goes on.
Conservatism is not the issue. The problem, at least to me, is not that Vista changed things. It's that Vista changed many things without actually improving them and then left no way to go back to the old behavior.
Breaking backwards-compatibility is bad in general, but is easily justified if the new ways are better (or at least never worse) than the old. Breaking backwards-compatibility just for the sake of doing something new, without doing it better, is a sin.
I'm pretty sure that at least EA thinks that Bioware/Pandemic will provide more than $860M of value in 5 years. I'm inclined to agree:
- the two studios come with 10+ fully-owned IPs/franchises
- successful technology, tools, and development processes can be re-used throughout EA
- BioWare, known for RPG excellence, has a LucasArts-licensed MMO in production
- also in production: Sonic the Hedgehog and other low-dev-cost/high-sales-target DS games
- development costs for Mass Effect are already covered prior to the acquisition
- two sequels to Mass Effect are planned, with lower development cost than an original game
Bioware/Pandemic have been ramping up headcount in the past few years, and since their output has not ramped up accordingly, it stands to reason that they now have many games in production at various stages of completion. By acquiring them now, EA gets to reap the rewards without paying out the full development costs.
We're in complete agreement - there's no point in running an email server if it cannot serve mail OR if it compromises your security. I also share your opinion that qmail (without patches) is completely unusable. That doesn't change the fact that security should be the highest concern of software development, nor does it mean that DJB's priorities are incorrect.
:)
It just means that software has a minimum bar of functionality and usability, and that qmail fails to meet that bar, which is neither here nor there in a discussion about the importance of security.
Pointing out the lack of usability in qmail is not a justification for decreased security, it just means that everyone should strive to be a better software engineer than DJB.
I'm tired of this bogus argument. If that were truly the cost of security, then yes, I would stand by your example as the best SMTP server ever written. There is no point in running an email server if the only way to do so is to necessarily expose yourself to vulnerability.
What you really mean to complain about is that DJB has refused to improve usability on the grounds that to do so would compromise security. That's what I was referring to with the phrase "personal approach to security".
If you can improve usability without compromising security, you should do so. If you can't, then don't. However, if you can't do it and someone else can, then maybe you should hand over the reigns of your software.
DJB refuses to do anything that would decrease security. If he thinks adding usability will decrease security, that doesn't mean that his priorities are wrong. It just means that you might want to find a better programmer to maintain your SMTP server.
Your business accounting appear to be a little rusty. I think it's analogy time!
You are a dairy farmer. You have five cows. One of those cows has been eating more and more grass lately, but isn't producing much milk. What's more, the last milk it produced was extremely sour and didn't even pay for its grass. Do you keep this cow? No, because it will continue to eat grass that would be better given to other cows. You cut your losses, slaughter it, and make use of its meat to get some benefit out of the lame cow.
Now let's look at Bioware from a dairy perspective. You're still a farmer. You hear that someone might be willing to sell you a cow that has been history of producing excellent milk. What's more, cow experts are proclaiming that this cow's next batch of milk will achieve record sales, and there are many hints that the cow has a long and productive life ahead of it. How much is a cow like this worth? Is it worth the expected profits of its milk for one year? Two years? Five years?
In the end, a cash cow like Bioware is worth almost anything the current owner asks. Assuming that the cow doesn't get sick and die prematurely, it will eventually pay for itself -- and more. If you believe that the cow will be healthy for longer than five years, you should gladly fork over the equivalent of five years of that cow's projected milk revenue, because in the long run it will be profitable.
Hmm. Now I'm thirsty.
Regardless of whatever else you might think of him or his software, DJB is a promoter of "security at any cost", for which everyone should give him some respect. If there's anything we should have learned in the past ten years, it's that you can't half-ass security.
Too much software is written as if security concerns are on equal footing with features and performance. That should never be true. If your program deals with untrusted input and has access to sensitive information, then security must be the primary concern during the entire development process. Security is not something that you can "patch in" after the architecture is settled.
There can be no trade-offs when it comes to core internet services. If one mail server is 10x faster than another but also contains a remote execution exploit, it is not 10x better -- it is useless.
You can debate DJB's personal approach to security, but you cannot fault his priorities.
Given that one has to sign a contract with AT&T, I don't see the point of the hack if you have to pay double line fees to use on TMobile. I can wait a few years for a real one
Not true. You can walk into an Apple store, pay, and walk out with an iPhone in under two minutes. No paperwork.
You are presented with the AT&T contract when you first try to sync/activate the phone. The whole point of the hack is that it bypasses the activation process, thus cutting AT&T out of the picture.
I can't tell if you're being earnest or sarcastic. Your bridge metaphor is either unfortunately timed, or brilliantly placed.
Differences in programmer skill do exist, and it has nothing to do with their grasp of domain-specific knowledge. Rather, it has to do with the ability to hold a lot of knowledge at once, such that the appropriate knowledge springs to mind without needing to look it up.
The difference between a "decent" programmer and a "great" one is that the decent programmer will think of an approach, start coding it, come up against a wall where it collides with some other code, examine the other code, mull it over, and rework his approach accordingly. The great programmer will think about the task for a moment, the roadblock will be obvious to him, and he will get the right approach on the first try. (If he's really great, he'll even leave a comment explaining why the straightforward approach has a roadblock.)
No matter how much training you give the first programmer, his recall capacity is not going to increase dramatically. He can understand the design well enough to know where to look, or who to ask, but his working set is just not large enough to encompass the entire design.
If your systems are small enough that anyone can recall all aspects of them at all times, you don't need programmers. You just need monkeys who can write C/Java/Ruby/whatever. But if you work on any reasonably large project, the great programmers always stand out as "the people who get asked questions".
That depends not only on your employment contract, but also the laws of your state. Some employment contracts make unenforceable or illegal claims. If you do something entirely yourself, at home, using your own equipment, in a field unrelated to your employer's business -- it's almost certainly yours. But talk to a lawyer to be sure.
Guy, go away, the console world is tired of the FUD from people like you.
Given the obvious challenges of programming a system with 8 specialized CPUs and a non-traditional memory model, and considering the dearth of announced PS3-exclusive titles, I would say that the grandparent is spot-on.
The PS3 is hard to program for. Much harder than the XBox 360 (because it's got a great dev environment that makes DirectX programmers feel at home) or the Wii (because the technology is familiar - single core, traditional memory model, essentially just a clocked-up GameCube).
I'm that a few companies will step up to the challenge and create specialized engines that absolutely rock on the PS3. But many companies will not make games that absolutely rock on the PS3, because they they want to go for the widest possible audience (ie, multi-platform) which means their engines will not be structured in the bizarre and unique ways that are most efficient for a PS3.
So yes, it is in fact a bad thing that most games will never approach the PS3's theoretical hardware capacity. Sony made the PS3 architecture bizarre and unique, on the assumption that they would win the console war and it wouldn't matter because every developer would want to release games for a PS3 (as was the case with PS2).
Right now, a month after launch, Sony has barely got 250k units into consumers hands, while there are twice that many Wiis and fifteen times as many XBox 360s in peoples' living rooms. Sony is not "winning" the console war. And even if they pull to a dead-even tie with MS and Nintendo, which seems unlikely to me, they still lose. It makes no sense for a developer to focus on developing technology that will run great on 33% of the potential market when they can make a less efficient cross-platform game and target 100% of the potential market.
Before EA did this, the game was what it was, and there were strategy guides available on the net or in book form. There were even people (seriously) selling one-on-one "training" sessions. Now that EA has released this, the game is still unchanged, all those strategy guides are still available, and now there is an additional resource to maybe learn something if you are a football fan but not-so-great at Madden.
... Come on.
So, how exactly is selling a new informational product "evil"? Oh that's right, it's informational, and information wants to be free, right?