3Com already spun Palm off into its own company. Now Palm is spinning PalmOS off into its own company..Which makes me wonder what becomes of the rest of Palm, as their hardware has been doing nothing but lose market-share for the past few years.
Linux is great, but it's not the answer for everything.
And what of Windows?
I have been using Windows 2000 since early beta, and none of the "amazing stuff" this guy's Mac does sounds at all amazing to me. Its stuff I've been doing every day for years without even giving it any thought.
Don't get me wrong, I've used MacOS X and it is rather nice, but its not quite the revolution in computing some people make it out to be.
They aren't really going for the Play-Choice 10 type setup (or even NeoGeo)...
What they are doing here is much more like Naomi. Naomi was Sega's 'arcade' version of the Dreamcast hardware. It powered many fairly recent arcade games including Crazy Taxi.
The basic idea is that they have this platform that they write arcade games for...Since its based on an existing console (Dreamcast then, XBOX now) when it comes time to do the home version they can reuse almost all of the same code with no changes.
This system is really meant to make it easy to go from the arcade to home, not the other way around (as it would first seem).
The ease of programming on the XBOX means we'll see some really good games for it in the near future, as opposed to some consoles these days (*cough*PS2*cough*) which are so alien to developers that the games tend to be crap until the 2nd or 3rd generation.
And then, of course, the GameCube is bound to have great games from Nintendo, not to mention the new rogue squadron game, and super monkey ball.
Personally I skipped the PS2, none of the games available for it (currently) appeal to me...Not enough of a car racing fan for GT3... However, I plan on buying both the XBOX and the GameCube.
At the very least, the arcade version will use different storage formats. Loading from DVD or a custom disc-based format is completely inappropriate for an arcade box.
Of course, then there's things coin-slot detection, to know when to start the game (yes, this could be somewhat standardized, but you'd want some integration into your attract screen), etc.
Not to mention that the arcade box might have more features (more standard memory, slightly faster CPU, etc).
All of this is pretty standard for arcade boxes based on consoles...Similar situations exist for the PS2-based arcade board as well as Naomi (the Sega Dreamcast based arcade board).
Clearly this was an example of their advanced new meta-troll...Those TrollTech folk are at least 2 years ahead of us civilians when it comes to trolling technology.
You're looking at the wrong types of books. Tech books are almost all works-for-hire and as such copyright is owned by the person who commisioned the work. Try looking at a novel.
Well Scott Rosenberg was forgetting tons of details, such as the fact that virtually every application checks the file-mappings on startup and will prompt the user to make it the default application for the file-types it supports. Some programs (like RealPlayer, which he even uses as an example of a program that can be hurt by this tactic) do this to the point of annoyance in their attempt to remain the default player.
If anything, Microsoft's sin is making it too easy for programs to change important registry settings. It is so very very annoying when a program's installer maps every file-type under the sun to itself (I'm not talking about Microsoft apps here, more like RealPlayer, ICQ, etc), changes your homepage, and commits various other acts bordering on trojan-horse type activity.
I just mailed a letter to the editor of Salon about this article before it popped up on Slashdot. I believe it is dangerous because this whole thing is really a non-issue. File-type mapping is a convience, not a curse, and the article is very misleading about how hard it is to change these mappings...
Below is the text of my letter:
---
I think Scott Rosenberg is way off the mark in his article regarding 'registered file types' for Microsoft Windows. In reality, it is not as hard to change these file mappings as he portrays.
To begin with, the user would very rarely want to change one of these file type mappings; it is the sort of action you tend to perform once and then leave alone. As it is such a rare event, it makes sense for it to be somewhere deeper within the UI than an action that you would want to perform very often. There's only so much space within the UI for quickly accessible items, and they should always be items that are used regularly by a majority of users.
Further, it is a lot easier to change these file-types than he portrays even if you want to change them. Since Windows 98, at least (I don't remember far enough back to know if Win95 supported this), you can right-click a particular file, choose "Open With.../Choose Program" and an easy-to-use dialog pops up which allows you to pick which program to use to open that file-type and even change the file mapping for that file type by choosing 'Always use this program to open these files'. Making this change is not exactly rocket science.
And lastly, while it is true that the process above may not be completely intuitive for new computer users, virtually every application released in the past five years will check the Windows registry to determine file mappings when it is launched and offer the user the option to change these mappings so that the program just launched will become the default for the file-types it supports. When this occurs, it is generally via a simple dialog box popped up when the application is launched, it is hard to argue that this interface is too difficult for users. One of Scott's own examples, RealPlayer, is adamant about informing users of file-type mappings at startup, and offering the choice to remap files to RealPlayer (using a simple Yes/No dialog), ditto for Netscape (and IE), and countless other applications.
I believe Microsoft has many questionable business practices, but file-type mapping is not one of them, and highlighting such a non-issue just detracts from the real problems via crying-wolf-syndrome.
With all due respect to his technical achievements, Vint is pretty full of shit.
The way network peering works (and the politics and money involved) at the highest levels is actually quite different than what they originally intended for the Internet. The only reason the Internet didn't come crashing down (at least in major portions of the country) is that the WTC, while a financial and business center, represents just an isolated leaf node on the Internet.
Had the terrorists slammed a plane into one of the major NAP centers, things would have been extremely different, with vast portions of the population denied access to vast portions of the Internet.
Of course, doing this wouldn't really be in the terrorists best interest..Loss of internet access is nothing compared to the loss of 6k+ lives, but Vint's argument is very weak because the circumstances involving the attack aren't at all related to an enemy purposefully trying to take out communication channels.
Considering how much CPU socket/slots and memory standards have been changing, the reuse value of a lot of PC components has been dropping quite a bit. The last 3 systems I built, I only reused harddrives and CDROMs from older systems...Considering this trend, integrated motherboards aren't quite as bad as they once seemed. I'd rather buy an integrated kick-ass solution once a year than buy all new parts and deal with the associated incompatibilities...So, if PC makers must continue with these upgrade-forcing standards-obsoleting changes, I'll probably start going integrated...
Cloning technology? There was no cloning technology on Naboo.
They invaded, at the behest of Palpatine/Sideous to further the political chaos that was already beginning to occur in the Galactic Senate. Palpatine used this chaos to force a no-confidence vote of the senate leader and then took his place, setting himself up as the eventual Emperor.
Anyway, my take on the whole suck/doesn't suck is that TPM *was* a Star Wars movie. It fit in neatly with all of the rest of the movies. In fact, I'd personally say it was a better movie than all the others except The Empire Strikes Back.
The issue here is that if you look at any of the movies past or present you can find all sorts of faults, if you're looking at them as anything more than pure serial escapist fantasy. The problem most people have is they saw the originals when they were much younger when they could overlook such issues.
While e-mail attachments are a particular worry for the Microsoft platform, worms can exist for any platform with security holes -- which is essentially all of them. There have been UNIX worms in the past and there will be UNIX worms in the future.
The major drawback to UNIX worms in the past wasn't that UNIX was super-secure, as some Slashdotters would have you believe, its that 'UNIX' just represented so many different platforms on different processors that a single do-it-all worm would be very difficult to write. This is starting to change as Linux/x86 is adopted more and more...
Anyway, my point is, if people start suing Microsoft over this, Linux distro companies and even potentially individual Linux programmers could also be at risk. If Microsoft's EULA doesn't protect it, why would the no warranty clause of the GPL protect GPL programmers? In essence the licenses are the same in that regard.
Such a lawsuit would be annoying to Microsoft... to Linux companies and individial GPL programmers it would be devestating.
Just because something can be 3D doesn't mean it should be. This applies quite a bit to desktops and browsers.
For a lot of things a 3D interface is just too cubersome and slows you down. Why 'fly' through a modelled tunnel to follow a link in 10 seconds rather than just click some text on a web page in 1/10th of a second?
Sure, there's a place for online 3D virtual community chat -- MMORPGs proved this, as just sitting around chatting is what they do best (most don't really have much of a game there other than kill monster, get xp, kill other monster that looks slightly different, repeat forever). But trying to integrate the whole browser (or desktop) experience into 3D is insane.
Some things just work better in 2D, just like some things just work better with a CLI, just like some things work better with dedicated devices rather than general purpose computers...
This is starting to get somewhat offtopic, but
I've had bad experiences trying to mix a Logitech Cordless Keyboard/Mouse (Freedom Pro? I believe was the moniker) with 802.11 Wireless LAN cards (D-Link PCI/PCMCIA cards).
I tried to mix the two when creating a 'set-top box' type computer system for TV use -- mostly to play MAME games and such on the big screen, but I added an 802.11 card and cordless key/mouse for some comfy web surfing.
At any rate, I had tons of connection problems with from the 802.11 in this machine to the 802.11 access point even though they were well within 802.11 range with very little obstruction..On a hunch I pulled out the cordless keyboard/mouse system and shelved it and the connection problems went away. I wish these devices were a bit smarter about collisions and finding some way to avoid them.
Its kind of cool that it supports the OS X API, but how useful is that in practice? There's hardly any apps that use the OS X APIs right now, and of the ones that exist the developers haven't really shown much interest in supporting Linux...
This type of selling is pretty common on quite a few online games, the big exception being EverQuest since Sony/Verant takes active steps to avoid the sale of virtual items/characters.
A couple of friends of mine made some serious amounts of money selling/buying/trading Asheron's Call characters and items last year. You'd be surprised how close to 'real world' markets some of these deals went...Often they would buy a character with decent items cheap on eBay, hold it for a week, and then just split the character up and sell the items and character seperately making a profit on the whole deal..Somewhat similar to robber barons buying up companies, spliting them up and selling off the pieces. Pay Pal and eBay both acted as great facilitators, with electronic money changing hands back and forth fludily between parties.
Having said that, no, I really don't understand the mindset of someone who pays $500 or more for 'uberloot' or a very high level character.
Here in Southern California there are still quite a few medium sized arcades, most with a Dance Dance Revolution console or two (many with other Konami music-based *mania games as well), and there's plenty of asian chicks playing them.
This story is crap. Bobby Fischer was hiding before that match as well. He's hiding from the publicity/media machine, and also because he's a bit of a paranoid. The US government may have been upset that he played in Yugoslavia at the time, but surely they wouldn't arrest him for that now (or even then).
VoIP just isn't a particularly viable medium for mass communication yet. Its good in certain niche markets, but installing the software, setting up speakers and microphone, etc, is so much more of a pain than just using a phone (though VoIP is, generally, cheaper).
In any case, I'd guess that if their 'call-in' line was VoIP other people would bitch and moan that they were shutting out members from less-industrialized nations who might not have the Internet infrastructure to support decent VoIP.
Not that I'm defending ICANN. Does ANYONE actually support the existence of this group of people? Have they actually accomplished ANYTHING in practice, other than alienating Internet users? They seem to exist solely for the purpose of holding useless meetings in exotic places -- good work if you can get it, but a waste of our time and money in the long run.
Slashdot Mirror
3Com already spun Palm off into its own company. Now Palm is spinning PalmOS off into its own company..Which makes me wonder what becomes of the rest of Palm, as their hardware has been doing nothing but lose market-share for the past few years.
Linux is great, but it's not the answer for everything.
And what of Windows?
I have been using Windows 2000 since early beta, and none of the "amazing stuff" this guy's Mac does sounds at all amazing to me. Its stuff I've been doing every day for years without even giving it any thought.
Don't get me wrong, I've used MacOS X and it is rather nice, but its not quite the revolution in computing some people make it out to be.
They aren't really going for the Play-Choice 10 type setup (or even NeoGeo) ...
What they are doing here is much more like Naomi. Naomi was Sega's 'arcade' version of the Dreamcast hardware. It powered many fairly recent arcade games including Crazy Taxi.
The basic idea is that they have this platform that they write arcade games for...Since its based on an existing console (Dreamcast then, XBOX now) when it comes time to do the home version they can reuse almost all of the same code with no changes.
This system is really meant to make it easy to go from the arcade to home, not the other way around (as it would first seem).
I say get both, if you possibly can afford it.
The ease of programming on the XBOX means we'll see some really good games for it in the near future, as opposed to some consoles these days (*cough*PS2*cough*) which are so alien to developers that the games tend to be crap until the 2nd or 3rd generation.
And then, of course, the GameCube is bound to have great games from Nintendo, not to mention the new rogue squadron game, and super monkey ball.
Personally I skipped the PS2, none of the games available for it (currently) appeal to me...Not enough of a car racing fan for GT3... However, I plan on buying both the XBOX and the GameCube.
At the very least, the arcade version will use different storage formats. Loading from DVD or a custom disc-based format is completely inappropriate for an arcade box.
Of course, then there's things coin-slot detection, to know when to start the game (yes, this could be somewhat standardized, but you'd want some integration into your attract screen), etc.
Not to mention that the arcade box might have more features (more standard memory, slightly faster CPU, etc).
All of this is pretty standard for arcade boxes based on consoles...Similar situations exist for the PS2-based arcade board as well as Naomi (the Sega Dreamcast based arcade board).
Clearly this was an example of their advanced new meta-troll...Those TrollTech folk are at least 2 years ahead of us civilians when it comes to trolling technology.
Lego are a wonderful creativity tool for kids and adults alike, but they are way too god-damn expensive, at least here in the US.
You're looking at the wrong types of books. Tech books are almost all works-for-hire and as such copyright is owned by the person who commisioned the work. Try looking at a novel.
Well Scott Rosenberg was forgetting tons of details, such as the fact that virtually every application checks the file-mappings on startup and will prompt the user to make it the default application for the file-types it supports. Some programs (like RealPlayer, which he even uses as an example of a program that can be hurt by this tactic) do this to the point of annoyance in their attempt to remain the default player.
If anything, Microsoft's sin is making it too easy for programs to change important registry settings. It is so very very annoying when a program's installer maps every file-type under the sun to itself (I'm not talking about Microsoft apps here, more like RealPlayer, ICQ, etc), changes your homepage, and commits various other acts bordering on trojan-horse type activity.
I just mailed a letter to the editor of Salon about this article before it popped up on Slashdot. I believe it is dangerous because this whole thing is really a non-issue. File-type mapping is a convience, not a curse, and the article is very misleading about how hard it is to change these mappings...
Below is the text of my letter:
---
I think Scott Rosenberg is way off the mark in his article regarding 'registered file types' for Microsoft Windows. In reality, it is not as hard to change these file mappings as he portrays.
To begin with, the user would very rarely want to change one of these file type mappings; it is the sort of action you tend to perform once and then leave alone. As it is such a rare event, it makes sense for it to be somewhere deeper within the UI than an action that you would want to perform very often. There's only so much space within the UI for quickly accessible items, and they should always be items that are used regularly by a majority of users.
Further, it is a lot easier to change these file-types than he portrays even if you want to change them. Since Windows 98, at least (I don't remember far enough back to know if Win95 supported this), you can right-click a particular file, choose "Open With.../Choose Program" and an easy-to-use dialog pops up which allows you to pick which program to use to open that file-type and even change the file mapping for that file type by choosing 'Always use this program to open these files'. Making this change is not exactly rocket science.
And lastly, while it is true that the process above may not be completely intuitive for new computer users, virtually every application released in the past five years will check the Windows registry to determine file mappings when it is launched and offer the user the option to change these mappings so that the program just launched will become the default for the file-types it supports. When this occurs, it is generally via a simple dialog box popped up when the application is launched, it is hard to argue that this interface is too difficult for users. One of Scott's own examples, RealPlayer, is adamant about informing users of file-type mappings at startup, and offering the choice to remap files to RealPlayer (using a simple Yes/No dialog), ditto for Netscape (and IE), and countless other applications.
I believe Microsoft has many questionable business practices, but file-type mapping is not one of them, and highlighting such a non-issue just detracts from the real problems via crying-wolf-syndrome.
With all due respect to his technical achievements, Vint is pretty full of shit.
The way network peering works (and the politics and money involved) at the highest levels is actually quite different than what they originally intended for the Internet. The only reason the Internet didn't come crashing down (at least in major portions of the country) is that the WTC, while a financial and business center, represents just an isolated leaf node on the Internet.
Had the terrorists slammed a plane into one of the major NAP centers, things would have been extremely different, with vast portions of the population denied access to vast portions of the Internet.
Of course, doing this wouldn't really be in the terrorists best interest..Loss of internet access is nothing compared to the loss of 6k+ lives, but Vint's argument is very weak because the circumstances involving the attack aren't at all related to an enemy purposefully trying to take out communication channels.
Microsoft has incorporated BSD code into Windows various times, each time giving proper credit and keeping copyright notices intact.
Don't try to reflect this onto Microsoft. Clearly the Linux developers fucked up here.
Considering how much CPU socket/slots and memory standards have been changing, the reuse value of a lot of PC components has been dropping quite a bit. The last 3 systems I built, I only reused harddrives and CDROMs from older systems...Considering this trend, integrated motherboards aren't quite as bad as they once seemed. I'd rather buy an integrated kick-ass solution once a year than buy all new parts and deal with the associated incompatibilities...So, if PC makers must continue with these upgrade-forcing standards-obsoleting changes, I'll probably start going integrated...
Cloning technology? There was no cloning technology on Naboo.
They invaded, at the behest of Palpatine/Sideous to further the political chaos that was already beginning to occur in the Galactic Senate. Palpatine used this chaos to force a no-confidence vote of the senate leader and then took his place, setting himself up as the eventual Emperor.
Anyway, my take on the whole suck/doesn't suck is that TPM *was* a Star Wars movie. It fit in neatly with all of the rest of the movies. In fact, I'd personally say it was a better movie than all the others except The Empire Strikes Back.
The issue here is that if you look at any of the movies past or present you can find all sorts of faults, if you're looking at them as anything more than pure serial escapist fantasy. The problem most people have is they saw the originals when they were much younger when they could overlook such issues.
Be careful what you wish for...
While e-mail attachments are a particular worry for the Microsoft platform, worms can exist for any platform with security holes -- which is essentially all of them. There have been UNIX worms in the past and there will be UNIX worms in the future.
The major drawback to UNIX worms in the past wasn't that UNIX was super-secure, as some Slashdotters would have you believe, its that 'UNIX' just represented so many different platforms on different processors that a single do-it-all worm would be very difficult to write. This is starting to change as Linux/x86 is adopted more and more...
Anyway, my point is, if people start suing Microsoft over this, Linux distro companies and even potentially individual Linux programmers could also be at risk. If Microsoft's EULA doesn't protect it, why would the no warranty clause of the GPL protect GPL programmers? In essence the licenses are the same in that regard.
Such a lawsuit would be annoying to Microsoft... to Linux companies and individial GPL programmers it would be devestating.
Just because something can be 3D doesn't mean it should be. This applies quite a bit to desktops and browsers.
For a lot of things a 3D interface is just too cubersome and slows you down. Why 'fly' through a modelled tunnel to follow a link in 10 seconds rather than just click some text on a web page in 1/10th of a second?
Sure, there's a place for online 3D virtual community chat -- MMORPGs proved this, as just sitting around chatting is what they do best (most don't really have much of a game there other than kill monster, get xp, kill other monster that looks slightly different, repeat forever). But trying to integrate the whole browser (or desktop) experience into 3D is insane.
Some things just work better in 2D, just like some things just work better with a CLI, just like some things work better with dedicated devices rather than general purpose computers...
On the other hand, its hard to code when you don't have electricity and are starving to death.
This is starting to get somewhat offtopic, but
I've had bad experiences trying to mix a Logitech Cordless Keyboard/Mouse (Freedom Pro? I believe was the moniker) with 802.11 Wireless LAN cards (D-Link PCI/PCMCIA cards).
I tried to mix the two when creating a 'set-top box' type computer system for TV use -- mostly to play MAME games and such on the big screen, but I added an 802.11 card and cordless key/mouse for some comfy web surfing.
At any rate, I had tons of connection problems with from the 802.11 in this machine to the 802.11 access point even though they were well within 802.11 range with very little obstruction..On a hunch I pulled out the cordless keyboard/mouse system and shelved it and the connection problems went away. I wish these devices were a bit smarter about collisions and finding some way to avoid them.
Nintendo didn't invent cel-shaded rendering. Its been used in various games already including Jet Grind Radio.
However, the new Zelda game does look very cool.
There's some video of it (and the new Mario game) here.
Its kind of cool that it supports the OS X API, but how useful is that in practice? There's hardly any apps that use the OS X APIs right now, and of the ones that exist the developers haven't really shown much interest in supporting Linux...
CLONE EVERYTHING!!
A couple of friends of mine made some serious amounts of money selling/buying/trading Asheron's Call characters and items last year. You'd be surprised how close to 'real world' markets some of these deals went...Often they would buy a character with decent items cheap on eBay, hold it for a week, and then just split the character up and sell the items and character seperately making a profit on the whole deal..Somewhat similar to robber barons buying up companies, spliting them up and selling off the pieces. Pay Pal and eBay both acted as great facilitators, with electronic money changing hands back and forth fludily between parties.
Having said that, no, I really don't understand the mindset of someone who pays $500 or more for 'uberloot' or a very high level character.
You must be in a bad location.
This story is crap. Bobby Fischer was hiding before that match as well. He's hiding from the publicity/media machine, and also because he's a bit of a paranoid. The US government may have been upset that he played in Yugoslavia at the time, but surely they wouldn't arrest him for that now (or even then).
In any case, I'd guess that if their 'call-in' line was VoIP other people would bitch and moan that they were shutting out members from less-industrialized nations who might not have the Internet infrastructure to support decent VoIP.
Not that I'm defending ICANN. Does ANYONE actually support the existence of this group of people? Have they actually accomplished ANYTHING in practice, other than alienating Internet users? They seem to exist solely for the purpose of holding useless meetings in exotic places -- good work if you can get it, but a waste of our time and money in the long run.