Actually, the same reasons for not OOS Quicktime are the same reasons they can't just roll out a *inx version of Quicktime. The owners of the codecs need to give their blessing for each OS they make for Quicktime.
There isn't a single Quicktime codec, but a host of standard codecs that work under the Quicktime umbrella. Codecs like Sorenson and MPEG. These are licensed out by the various owners, but not owned by Apple. This means that Apple can't open source Quicktime unless the owners of these codecs open source their codecs.
And if that happens, well, it's when I win the lotto.
But they are the complete patches, while the Windows patches have one milestone (SP1) and then a lot of other smaller patches that are hard to track down.
Right now, I am posting this post at a coffee shop with wireless access. Late last year, a few of the Espresso Royale Caffe's in Boston carried a paid WiFi service. I was already in the cafe regularly, so I paid the monthly subscription fee for $15/month. Since I was in the cafe on average of five hours each day, this was a comparable deal. However, the hourly rate was $7/hour, so the less frequent users were not apt to go on-line.
The service was provided by a separate WiFi provider. The provider puts in the equipment, does the billing and support, and ran the system. The owner gets a cut in the fee. Or so he thought.
The cafe cut their deal with the company after two months. Though they had an increase of customers and sales, their return from WiFi was less than comparable. I figure someone informed the owner that it was cheaper for the shop itself to deal with the WiFi on its own and offer it for free. Because it was free, the expectation for support is signifantly lowered. Also, there's no billing involved. You don't need to pay someone to create a system to take in money. If the customer has the equipment, they're on-line. End of story.
As a result, customers stayed longer because the WiFi is free, and the café sold more drinks and food. Their bottom line was achieved by providing free access.
The moral of the story is that sometimes, the process to charge WiFi cuts into profits. The investment needed for a support and billing system made the system less profitable than providing the access for free. Some times the best way to make money is to not charge.
My reference to templetes is just Dreamweaver's templates. Yes, there are many ways in which to incorperate your own templates that will work just the way you decribed.
However, sad as it may be, a lot of web developers do not even know what xslt or even css is, let alone use it well. Nor is anyone willing to learn them. I would ventuer that the poster of the article is no different.
At the end of the day, WYSIWYG tools are what win, not hand coding. What ever the tools do to make the final product is fine for web developers, no matter what the means were to get there.
The LIB format isn't really proprietary. In short, it's your HTML page with a different file extension and a few additional HTML comment blocks. The only reason it's.lib is so you don't treat it as a HTML page since it's not a complete HTML page.
The LIB file is text that's copy and pasted into the parent document. That is, if you were to delete the LIB file, you still have all the code in the parent files. What Dreamweaver does with the LIB files is recognize that any code changed within the LIB file must be changed in the parent files that use that code. However, this is the Dreamweaver executable that's detecting and making the changes. This isn't a server technology. This isn't anything special in the files (outside of standard HTML comment blocks), just how your copy of Dreamweaver is using a form of find/replace function on your site.
As to open-source alternatives, you may have read previously about OSS lack of usability. This is why there aren't many good OSS editors out there. Oh there are editors, but they are mostly glorified text editors and some will display HTML pages with a WYSIWYG interface. But what makes Dreamweaver special are the advanced find/replace functions like LIB files. To my knowledge, nothing in OSS offers any where close to this functionality. You can code a site, even dynamic sites, with just a text editor and a FTP client. However, tools like Dreamweaver add functionality that makes the development process easier. You can make templates in text edit. But when you make a change to the template, text edit won't make the changes to the 200 other files that refer to that template. Dreamweaver will.
I use Dreamweaver (with the GPL extention PHAkt) because it gets my job done faster. If a tool came out that was better or even comparable to Dreamweaver, I'd go for it. But, alas, there is no such a tool.
You need only to look at the about page for G4TV to understand what video game press is geared towards. The only missing word is male, but being that obvious would get them into a lot of trouble. Watch the channel and you will know that the word 'male' is implied. Had they include both genders, you wouldn't have shows that feature titles such as graphic adventures which have a higher gender mix than other titles.
Right now the industry is approching a crossroads. Had I have time to be detailed, I would make certain paralles with electrionic gaming and early history of the film industry where the market wasn't realized until after the Hollywood monoploies were broken. Since this is a/. post, I don't feel I need to be too detailed.
What I will say is the industry is at a point for easy money makers, similar to the 30's and 40's for film that the B-film was made for. Churn them out, get high returns with low investment. You can make a very sucessful title that for a general audience that will make mad-money (IE: The Sims, Myst, Flight Simulator), but these titles appear to be hard to make sucessful. So, we get tons of product that fits in the easy market: 12 to 34 male.
It's a standard rule of Public Relations. Never announce anything between Friday at 4pm till Monday at 8am.
The reason being that news outlets are not at full capacity during the weekends, so any news announced over the weekend won't get as much coverage. If NASA announced the news today, it will be covered on the Sunday evening news, and never again since that piece of news was already done, even when not many saw it.
You can notice this practice when someone famous dies over a weekend. There will be an immediate announcement saying that the person is missing or very ill or something of the sort, then make the announcement on Monday.
I didn't read or agree to the EULA, but that's because it wasn't even displayed. When you install software updates via SSH, you are never offered or even know the existence of the EULAs.
Reminds me of when software in CD sleeves had the sticker that read "By breaking this seal, you agree to the terms of use." By cutting the bottom of the sleeve, you could use the software with out breaking the seal, thus using said software w/o agreeing to the terms.
As a student working on a graphic adventure game, I agree completely with the statement on lack of standards.
Right now I am faced with the issue of game engines. Since I'm doing the 'slideshow of images and video' approach, the only commercial tool out there is Director [Flash doesn't handle long videos]. The school has Director, but only educational versions which are branded as educational and legally not allowed to be seen outside of the classroom. I have been trying to find an engine that will allow me to create a game [technologically] like Riven, that's portable to MAC and PC. It's either that or make a brand new engine, which I don't have time to do with-in the scope of the project.
So far there are not any OSS/Low cost solutions that I have found. Any pointers are appreciated and welcomed!
The problem I have when dealing with these programs was how I could not support them. Granted, a lot of money is paid for the support attached to the solution, but there are times where you have 25 patrons sitting outside and you need to get it fixed now. Calling tech support takes a while no matter how good the support line is.
Thank you for the reply. I wasn't expecting someone who actually works with one of the companies. If you ever want some new concept ideas, give me an e-mail. There are a few things I've always thought would be very keen to have...
I work for various theatre companies doing websites or general tech support. For each of their ticket offices, they are using DOS-based software to conduct ticketing. They are running Windows 2000 machines, but the software is still stuck in DOS.
The first time I asked why the software was in DOS, the Audience Services director told me the company they outsourced to provide the ticketing solution requires that software. The company not only sells the software, but everything from the ticket paper to the ticket machine to the on-line ordering solution.
The downside is the software causes a lot of problems when it comes to (seemingly) simple things like printing and internet connectivity. But, it's a niche market; There are very few solutions out there. It's not just the ticketing software, but they provide the total package.
However, when the software does go wrong, they have been quick to blame the ticket office, even when they reproduced the error in-house. I would understand not moving away from DOS in the mid-90s, but at this point it's just sad.
I believe this is the test case for the DMCA that we have been waiting for. What stonger defence is there with this case? It is summed up in a way that anyone can be explained the action in question, and the widely documented feature from a wide number of soruces, inclduing the Windows Operating system itself.
I believe the real question asked is what is the license agreement that is acknowledged when breaking the seal on a CD/Album/etc.
Since this is/., let's think of this in terms of a program. What are you as a consumer agreeing to when you click 'I Agree' to a software installation? Obviously this varies between each program.
The question to be asked with the publisher of the CD is what agreement is made by the purchase and use of their product?
I don't want to say your reasons are invalid, because they are valid, but you're forgetting the non-l33t users.
When you're releasing to the general public, you have to make it easy as sin to install. Though all of us here can think unziping a zip/gz file and placing its contents to its home is easy, this goes way beyond 'normal' users. Installers are needed for the general public.
This is a proplem with the OSS community; in order to be sucessful and adopted, the general public needs to be able to use the software. The closest that comes into my mind is Mozzila, but they are no where near being completly normal-user-friendly.
However, I do belive there is a way to make an installer that can easilly pop between 'easy' and 'expert' modes, even with out a concious seperation. I don't think it hurts to but in a 'chouse your install location' diolge box for instance.
It's a matter of being smart and understanding your target audience. Not having a gz file of PHP is perfectly alright. Having a gz file for a end-user web browser is not.
I don't think that they are trying to maintain the MS Office suite for a long-term time frame.
Personally, I would like to think that in the next few months OpenOffice will have a major following once the Aqua version is hammered out. Then the MS Office for Mac may go way of IE for Mac.
The proplem is the non-existant Alpha support on MSIE. Every other [modern] browser reads the alpha beautifully.
For creating PNGs, outside of using GD in PHP, I use Fireworks which so far does the trick as long as you use the Export Preview function, not the native 'save as..' function. WAY better than GIFs by far!
Personally, you have to individual check on each image that comes into your browser to know who's using what. PNG is used more than you think. But I still wish MSIE would wise up to the alpha problem.
Yes, you sign up for a free acount and then you're all set.
You can use the one-click buy option or put it in a shoping cart. They also have a reduced price for some albums. For example, you can buy Live: Throwing Copper for $.99 a song, or get all 14 tracks for $9.99. Not all albums offered do this, but most will.
Slashdot Mirror
From what I could quickly find, look on page 16 of this PDF file under the sections "MPEG-2 Notice" and "Use of MPEG-4"
Actually, the same reasons for not OOS Quicktime are the same reasons they can't just roll out a *inx version of Quicktime. The owners of the codecs need to give their blessing for each OS they make for Quicktime.
Because Apple doesn't own all of Quicktime.
There isn't a single Quicktime codec, but a host of standard codecs that work under the Quicktime umbrella. Codecs like Sorenson and MPEG. These are licensed out by the various owners, but not owned by Apple. This means that Apple can't open source Quicktime unless the owners of these codecs open source their codecs.
And if that happens, well, it's when I win the lotto.
But they are the complete patches, while the Windows patches have one milestone (SP1) and then a lot of other smaller patches that are hard to track down.
As of right now, the OS X patches are just two installers from the initial 10.3.
Combined 10.3.3 (67.6mb)
Combined Secuirty update 2004-05-03 (3.7mb)
That's 71.3mb total.
Right now, I am posting this post at a coffee shop with wireless access. Late last year, a few of the Espresso Royale Caffe's in Boston carried a paid WiFi service. I was already in the cafe regularly, so I paid the monthly subscription fee for $15/month. Since I was in the cafe on average of five hours each day, this was a comparable deal. However, the hourly rate was $7/hour, so the less frequent users were not apt to go on-line.
The service was provided by a separate WiFi provider. The provider puts in the equipment, does the billing and support, and ran the system. The owner gets a cut in the fee. Or so he thought.
The cafe cut their deal with the company after two months. Though they had an increase of customers and sales, their return from WiFi was less than comparable. I figure someone informed the owner that it was cheaper for the shop itself to deal with the WiFi on its own and offer it for free. Because it was free, the expectation for support is signifantly lowered. Also, there's no billing involved. You don't need to pay someone to create a system to take in money. If the customer has the equipment, they're on-line. End of story.
As a result, customers stayed longer because the WiFi is free, and the café sold more drinks and food. Their bottom line was achieved by providing free access.
The moral of the story is that sometimes, the process to charge WiFi cuts into profits. The investment needed for a support and billing system made the system less profitable than providing the access for free. Some times the best way to make money is to not charge.
My reference to templetes is just Dreamweaver's templates. Yes, there are many ways in which to incorperate your own templates that will work just the way you decribed.
However, sad as it may be, a lot of web developers do not even know what xslt or even css is, let alone use it well. Nor is anyone willing to learn them. I would ventuer that the poster of the article is no different.
At the end of the day, WYSIWYG tools are what win, not hand coding. What ever the tools do to make the final product is fine for web developers, no matter what the means were to get there.
The LIB format isn't really proprietary. In short, it's your HTML page with a different file extension and a few additional HTML comment blocks. The only reason it's .lib is so you don't treat it as a HTML page since it's not a complete HTML page.
The LIB file is text that's copy and pasted into the parent document. That is, if you were to delete the LIB file, you still have all the code in the parent files. What Dreamweaver does with the LIB files is recognize that any code changed within the LIB file must be changed in the parent files that use that code. However, this is the Dreamweaver executable that's detecting and making the changes. This isn't a server technology. This isn't anything special in the files (outside of standard HTML comment blocks), just how your copy of Dreamweaver is using a form of find/replace function on your site.
As to open-source alternatives, you may have read previously about OSS lack of usability. This is why there aren't many good OSS editors out there. Oh there are editors, but they are mostly glorified text editors and some will display HTML pages with a WYSIWYG interface. But what makes Dreamweaver special are the advanced find/replace functions like LIB files. To my knowledge, nothing in OSS offers any where close to this functionality. You can code a site, even dynamic sites, with just a text editor and a FTP client. However, tools like Dreamweaver add functionality that makes the development process easier. You can make templates in text edit. But when you make a change to the template, text edit won't make the changes to the 200 other files that refer to that template. Dreamweaver will.
I use Dreamweaver (with the GPL extention PHAkt) because it gets my job done faster. If a tool came out that was better or even comparable to Dreamweaver, I'd go for it. But, alas, there is no such a tool.
You need only to look at the about page for G4TV to understand what video game press is geared towards. The only missing word is male, but being that obvious would get them into a lot of trouble. Watch the channel and you will know that the word 'male' is implied. Had they include both genders, you wouldn't have shows that feature titles such as graphic adventures which have a higher gender mix than other titles.
/. post, I don't feel I need to be too detailed.
Right now the industry is approching a crossroads. Had I have time to be detailed, I would make certain paralles with electrionic gaming and early history of the film industry where the market wasn't realized until after the Hollywood monoploies were broken. Since this is a
What I will say is the industry is at a point for easy money makers, similar to the 30's and 40's for film that the B-film was made for. Churn them out, get high returns with low investment. You can make a very sucessful title that for a general audience that will make mad-money (IE: The Sims, Myst, Flight Simulator), but these titles appear to be hard to make sucessful. So, we get tons of product that fits in the easy market: 12 to 34 male.
It's a standard rule of Public Relations. Never announce anything between Friday at 4pm till Monday at 8am.
The reason being that news outlets are not at full capacity during the weekends, so any news announced over the weekend won't get as much coverage. If NASA announced the news today, it will be covered on the Sunday evening news, and never again since that piece of news was already done, even when not many saw it.
You can notice this practice when someone famous dies over a weekend. There will be an immediate announcement saying that the person is missing or very ill or something of the sort, then make the announcement on Monday.
Well, an Xserve doesn't take that much space. Anyone ever attempt to install a rack-mount computer into an entertainment center?
I didn't read or agree to the EULA, but that's because it wasn't even displayed. When you install software updates via SSH, you are never offered or even know the existence of the EULAs.
Reminds me of when software in CD sleeves had the sticker that read "By breaking this seal, you agree to the terms of use." By cutting the bottom of the sleeve, you could use the software with out breaking the seal, thus using said software w/o agreeing to the terms.
Thank you!!!! Thank you !!!!
As a student working on a graphic adventure game, I agree completely with the statement on lack of standards.
Right now I am faced with the issue of game engines. Since I'm doing the 'slideshow of images and video' approach, the only commercial tool out there is Director [Flash doesn't handle long videos]. The school has Director, but only educational versions which are branded as educational and legally not allowed to be seen outside of the classroom. I have been trying to find an engine that will allow me to create a game [technologically] like Riven, that's portable to MAC and PC. It's either that or make a brand new engine, which I don't have time to do with-in the scope of the project.
So far there are not any OSS/Low cost solutions that I have found. Any pointers are appreciated and welcomed!
The problem I have when dealing with these programs was how I could not support them. Granted, a lot of money is paid for the support attached to the solution, but there are times where you have 25 patrons sitting outside and you need to get it fixed now. Calling tech support takes a while no matter how good the support line is.
Thank you for the reply. I wasn't expecting someone who actually works with one of the companies. If you ever want some new concept ideas, give me an e-mail. There are a few things I've always thought would be very keen to have...
I work for various theatre companies doing websites or general tech support. For each of their ticket offices, they are using DOS-based software to conduct ticketing. They are running Windows 2000 machines, but the software is still stuck in DOS.
The first time I asked why the software was in DOS, the Audience Services director told me the company they outsourced to provide the ticketing solution requires that software. The company not only sells the software, but everything from the ticket paper to the ticket machine to the on-line ordering solution.
The downside is the software causes a lot of problems when it comes to (seemingly) simple things like printing and internet connectivity. But, it's a niche market; There are very few solutions out there. It's not just the ticketing software, but they provide the total package.
However, when the software does go wrong, they have been quick to blame the ticket office, even when they reproduced the error in-house. I would understand not moving away from DOS in the mid-90s, but at this point it's just sad.
I believe this is the test case for the DMCA that we have been waiting for. What stonger defence is there with this case? It is summed up in a way that anyone can be explained the action in question, and the widely documented feature from a wide number of soruces, inclduing the Windows Operating system itself.
We shall watch this case with great interest.
What a difference a L makes. Sorry for that! I wouldn't know about the SSL holes then. Sorry again!
Apple made their own patch fixes with-in the OpenSSL (and others), hence similar verison number.
This link has a link to the mailing list post from Apple that states the details. To access this link, use the username and password: archives
I believe the real question asked is what is the license agreement that is acknowledged when breaking the seal on a CD/Album/etc.
/., let's think of this in terms of a program. What are you as a consumer agreeing to when you click 'I Agree' to a software installation? Obviously this varies between each program.
Since this is
The question to be asked with the publisher of the CD is what agreement is made by the purchase and use of their product?
I don't want to say your reasons are invalid, because they are valid, but you're forgetting the non-l33t users.
When you're releasing to the general public, you have to make it easy as sin to install. Though all of us here can think unziping a zip/gz file and placing its contents to its home is easy, this goes way beyond 'normal' users. Installers are needed for the general public.
This is a proplem with the OSS community; in order to be sucessful and adopted, the general public needs to be able to use the software. The closest that comes into my mind is Mozzila, but they are no where near being completly normal-user-friendly.
However, I do belive there is a way to make an installer that can easilly pop between 'easy' and 'expert' modes, even with out a concious seperation. I don't think it hurts to but in a 'chouse your install location' diolge box for instance.
It's a matter of being smart and understanding your target audience. Not having a gz file of PHP is perfectly alright. Having a gz file for a end-user web browser is not.
I don't think that they are trying to maintain the MS Office suite for a long-term time frame.
Personally, I would like to think that in the next few months OpenOffice will have a major following once the Aqua version is hammered out. Then the MS Office for Mac may go way of IE for Mac.
Well, at least I'd like to think that.
So we need more Starbucks (TM) ?
I use a lot of PNGs with client's websites.
The proplem is the non-existant Alpha support on MSIE. Every other [modern] browser reads the alpha beautifully.
For creating PNGs, outside of using GD in PHP, I use Fireworks which so far does the trick as long as you use the Export Preview function, not the native 'save as..' function. WAY better than GIFs by far!
Personally, you have to individual check on each image that comes into your browser to know who's using what. PNG is used more than you think. But I still wish MSIE would wise up to the alpha problem.
Yes, you sign up for a free acount and then you're all set.
You can use the one-click buy option or put it in a shoping cart. They also have a reduced price for some albums. For example, you can buy Live: Throwing Copper for $.99 a song, or get all 14 tracks for $9.99. Not all albums offered do this, but most will.
Just FYI, Apple is doing an iTunes for Windows.
It's in development for-sure, and the rumor mill has the release set for November, but we'll see what turns up. Then things will get interesting.