A piece of instant film could be handed directly over to a friend or relative without further hassle. Digital cameras still require you to take the time to get to a computer and do something with the picture via the memory card or the camera itself. Instant sharing isn't as simple or direct as snapping the picture and handing it to someone, like with a Polaroid. Although being able to see if it was a "bad picture" was also handy, I think the coolest thing was the instant gratification factor that digital cameras still don't quite possess.
You can very easily hand them a memory card with no fuss at all. Or you can get a keychain-sized digital picture frame and hand that to them. Or you can get a small, portable printer and print out a copy of the photo. Or you can stop by just about any camera store, photo shop, or electronics department and print out a photo in minutes.
Not quite as immediate as a Polaroid... But obviously close enough to kill Polaroid.
Internet users have become used to getting things when they want it and how they want it, and those of us in the entertainment business want to meet that kind of demand as efficiently and effectively as possible. But what has happened online is that if it is 'beyond store hours' and the shop is closed, a lot of people just smash the window and steal what they want.
This is why a lot of these old-school industries aren't going to make it through the digital transition. They're still trying to treat the Internet as if it was no different than opening up another storefront. They aren't understanding what automation and digital distribution can do for them. Instead of embracing the technologies, they're fighting them tooth and nail.
You can also see this playing out in the video rental industry. BlockBuster is having a hard time dealing with the Internet. Their brick & mortar stores actually have business hours and eventually close up for the day. But BlockBuster was smart enough to offer an on-line rental plan similar to Netflix. So people who want their movies don't even have to wonder whether the store is open... They just click a few buttons and their movie is on the way.
Or if they've got Netflix they can click a few buttons and stream it right to their screen.
And other companies are springing up in the gaps between the Internet and traditional brick & mortar stores. We've got RedBox movie vending machines showing up all over town. You don't need a computer, you don't need a subscription, you don't need to wait for the mail - all the benefits of a traditional brick & mortar store. But you just walk up to a vending machine, push a couple buttons, and get your movie - no store hours to worry about.
Insurance is gambling. If information is available it will be used. You can't make things fairer by forcing one party to ignore information that all parties have access to.
That is very true.
And, I think, that's the root of the problem most people have with the insurance companies... It is a gamble, and they're in the business to make money. It is in their best interest to deny coverage to folks wit pre-existing conditions, and to deny as many claims as they can.
But when it comes to something as important as your health or your house, people don't want it to be treated as a game. Folks don't want to feel like they're just a mark.
Having something that operates a bit like a wii controller combined with a universal remote.
Imagine pointing the wand at your receiver and giving an upward flitting motion and the receiver bumps up the volume. or flick to the right and it changes stations or goes to the next track. Twirl it in a circle clockwise to turn on or counterclockwise to turn off etc.
And would only react to the device you point at. (might have to establish separate gestures for nearby components etc)
I'd buy that.
Sounds nifty... But I fail to see how it would be an improvement over the universal remote that I have.
I don't see how physical gestures would be any easier or more intuitive than just hitting a button labeled "on" or "volume." And I'm really not sure how it would tell whether I want to turn on the TV, the VCR, the DVD player, or the cable box... They're all piled within about a foot of eachother. Unless you had a different gesture for each device... Or a selector switch/button to tell the wand what to talk to... But, in either case, I don't see it being any easier than my current remote.
what if I'm denied coverage at some point down the road because of it?
It's only a matter of time.
Modern insurance policies can deny you coverage due to a pre-existing condition. It won't be long before we're able to identify all kinds of disorders and diseases with a simple genetic screening. Then we just call having a 90% chance to develop cancer a pre-existing condition, and you're screwed.
Get over it.. Who really needs users to identify which piece of their computer is broken? Even if they could tell the different components apart, they'd probably be wrong about where the problem is 90% of the time anyway.
I don't expect my users to tell me what piece of their computer is broken. How the hell would they know? And if they did know, I probably wouldn't have a job.
But, just as I don't tell my mechanic that there's something wrong with my distributor when there's just some generic problem with my car and I'm not sure what the issue really is... I don't really think it is terribly helpful when my users tell me that there's something wrong with their hard disk when there's just some generic problem with their computer and they're not sure what the issue really is.
If I have a problem with my car, I bring it in and say "there's something wrong with my car." I might be able to be a little more helpful... "It makes a weird noise" "The radio doesn't work" "It won't start" But I don't say "My radiator is broken" unless I know for a fact that it is my radiator (which doesn't happen, because I couldn't even point at my radiator, much less diagnose it as being broken).
But, somehow, with computers it is all different. Folks don't expect users to know anything at all about computers. Nobody is allowed to complain about bad terminology. And we're supposed to just shrug and accept it because we're geeks and that technospeak is just too fancy for most people.
If I told my mechanic that I rotated the valves on my manifold they'd probably laugh in my face.
But I've had users tell me that they downloaded a program from the disc onto their modem, and I'm not supposed to correct them?
And here we see the next step in FireFox going down the drain. I want a browser not an OS.
That isn't really a design decision that anyone at Mozilla made... That's just the way the web is going. It doesn't matter if you use Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, Opera, whatever... They're all becoming more of an operating system than a data display.
Used to be that the WWW was more-or-less static. You'd create a page, publish it, and it wouldn't change much until you published some changes to it. Used to be that displaying a web page wasn't a whole lot different than displaying a text file or a jpeg.
These days web pages are very dynamic. Never mind all the dynamic database-driven pages... Look at stuff like Gmail - that isn't a web page, that's a full-blown application that just happens to live inside a web browser.
That isn't a decision that anyone at Mozilla made - Google built Gmail that way. And people like it that way. That's why all the competing webmail apps like Hotmail and Yahoo and OWA have gone super-AJAXy.
Putting your backup storage server on the other end of a point to point circuit (or MPLS, or frame, etc.) eliminates the "yay I'm on the internet" factor. The downside is cost.
It does, but it doesn't keep you from transmitting a virus across that circuit. Nor does it prevent the backup storage server from eating its own HDD/CPU/motherboard/whatever.
It's certainly better than a backup server in the same building... But it isn't the same as putting your backup on simple removable media. Aside from straight-up mechanical failure it's hard to go terribly wrong with tapes, CD/DVD, or removable HDDs. Put them someplace safe and you really don't have to worry about much.
A dedicated backup box can be much more hardened than a general-purpose webserver, as the backup box pretty much has a job of storing and retrieving files.
A solid system of incremental backups helps, too.
Yes, taking it offline is great. Do that... maybe monthly, if that.
This scenario sounds much more like someone confused "RAID" with "Backup". RAID (and other high-availability schemes) protects you from hardware failure. Backup protects you from more software failure and human error.
Wrong.
What if your building burns down? What if some minor fire triggers the sprinklers? What if you get struck by lightning? What if an employee goes postal and takes a sledgehammer to all the electronics? What if a tree falls on the power lines and sends a giant surge through your wiring? What if someone breaks in and steals all the computers?
It isn't a backup unless it leaves the site.
Of course you could put your live backup box on the other end of some fiber in another state... That's physically off-site... But as long as it is up and running you have to worry about it as well. Hardened or not, it could get hacked. Or it could get a virus. Or some random glitch could corrupt the data on disk. Or its motherboard/HDD/CPU/whatever could die.
It isn't a backup unless it is offline.
And then there's the question of whether the thing actually works... You can have all the backups in the world, but if they're all corrupt it won't do you any good. You'll be restoring broken garbage to your replacement server.
It isn't a backup unless it has been verified.
What all of this comes down to is some kind of relatively portable media. Tapes, removable HDDs, CDs, DVDs, whatever. You want something that can leave the building on a daily basis. You want pretty much all your media to be out of the building. Bring in just what you need to run today's backup, and then take it out of the building as soon as that is done. Preferably to someplace relatively remote and safe... A safety deposit box is great. Or if someone has a safe at home. Or if you've got a branch-office or something.
Mirrors, RAIDs, whatever... Those aren't backups. They give you absolutely no ability to recover from a real disaster. They give my more reliability... You can survive a dead HDD or a fried motherboard or something...
But if your building burns down, you're toast. If you delete a key file that change is replicated, and you're toast. If someone hacks your site that change is replicated, and you're toast.
A backup is an offline copy that has been verified to work and leaves the building. Tape, CD, removable HDD, DVD, reams of paper, a whole server that's unplugged and hauled out of the building, whatever...
If it isn't offline, the changes just get replicated and it does you no good.
If it hasn't been verified to work, you don't know if you'll be able to restore it or not.
And if it doesn't leave the building it won't save you from a real disaster.
It constantly amazes me how many folks don't understand this.
You don't think that having functionality removed from something you've bought, after the fact, is a problem?
This is the big issue for me.
Say I'm shopping for a new toaster. There's all sorts of toasters on the market, lots of good models to choose from. Ultimately I decide to buy one specifically because it has a built-in bagel slicer... But not just any bagel slicer - it's some kind of high-powered laser bagel slicer.
But, after I buy the thing, lawsuits start cropping up. Kids are sticking their fingers in the thing and getting them sliced off. Traditionally manufacturers have done a recall if something like this happened... Or issued a warning... Or designed new packaging that indicates it isn't kid-safe... Or redesigned the product so that kids can't stick their fingers in it...
Not anymore though. These days they'd just send the kill signal and disable the laser bagel slicer. Suddenly my toaster, which I bought specifically for the bagel slicer, has no bagel slicer.
A key feature that made me buy that product, instead of another, is gone. A feature that may have made one product cost more than another, is gone. A feature that I liked and used, is gone.
I understand it's "illegal" under US law, but so is tearing the tags off mattresses.
No it isn't. Those tags indicate what the mattress is made of, what it contains, etc. It is illegal for the manufacturer/shopkeeper to remove them. It is not illegal for you to remove them once you've purchased the mattress. Unless you're maybe thinking of going into some big mattress resale business.
*I* certainly claim that MORAL right.
Really? You have a right to make a mod based on someone else's game?
I'm no fan of current copyright law... I think it's all kinds of messed up... I agree that pretty much everything should fall into the public domain fairly quickly. I think that Disney has done horrible damage to the way copyright law works. I understand that things like West Side story would never have happened if Disney had been playing with copyright laws since the dawn of time. But a right to do what you want with someone else's work? As in we hold these truths to be self-evident constitutional right?
I understand you're arguing from moral grounds, rather than legal... But still, a right to someone else's work? And do they have a right to your paycheck?
Unlimited copyright is causing serious damage to the US economy. Right now Chinese entrepreneurs are making billions off "mash up" products Americans can't legally produce and market.
Agreed.
Although it isn't just copyright laws here in the US holding us back... But that's a discussion for another day.
As I said in other posts, in any sane world there would be limited terms on copyrights. 10 years is reasonable for video games. Chrono Trigger would be in the public domain under this regime.
Agreed.
There really isn't any reason for a copyright to extend much beyond 10-15 years. The whole idea, from the start, was to encourage more creative works. Let a guy collect money from the publication of his first creation for a few years, but then he needs to create something new to get more money.
Today's perpetual copyrights mean that you can produce one hit and then keep milking it, literally, forever. Even after you're dead your estate can keep milking it.
It's also worth noting this mod is legal under the copyright laws of many other nations.
Seems to me, then, that these mod developers need to move their webserver to another nation...
Now... There are official re-makes of this title that are still in print (i.e. the DS version). That definitely will affect Square's bottom line.
This is what I was referring to when I said "purchase the original title." The DS version is basically a port of the original Chrono Trigger - it isn't a sequel/spin-off/whatever.
I would suggest that having this mod out in the wild might very well generate more interest than the almost-nonexistent advertising Square-Enix has done for the DS version of Chrono Trigger.
Now, look at the devil's advocate side: People playing this fan-made version may negatively affect their sales for the DS version and may just end up pirating it instead.
It is certainly possible that people will pirate the game... But you can't really base your business model on that. It'd be like refusing to open a store, despite overwhelming evidence that people want to buy your product, because there's a possibility that you will be robbed at some point in the future.
A dedicated cult fanbase does not automatically mean that it's a marketable audience. It does not take many fans to make a fan game, especially if they aren't shooting for commercial polish.
Do 10+ years of good sales mean there's a marketable audience?
The original game was released in 1995. Every time it has been ported it has sold well - even as recently as 2008 when it was ported to the DS.
This isn't some abstract thought exercise... There are 10+ years of sales figures that say yes, people want this.
Sadly, that's the same thing people said about a Firefly movie, and yet...
There is a long and storied tradition of a huge fan upswell convincing a company to put for money on a project only for it to fail due to lack of actual sales when the time comes.
Except that Firefly hasn't been re-released, and sold like crazy, several times over.
Firefly was only in production for a year or so... Folks have been begging for a sequel to Chrono Trigger for over 10 years - the game originally came out in 1995 on the SNES.
The original sales of Chrono Trigger were good. When they ported it to the Playstation it sold great. When they ported it to the DS it sold great. Even Chrono Cross, which is a terrible game, sold well because it was related to Chrono Trigger.
In this case they've got over 10 years of good sales to back up the decision, not a pile of letters from disgruntled fans.
Seems to be the growing trend; instead of listening to their fans, which would net them even more money, game developers continue to lock down old gaming IP
There is no proof that listening to their fans would net them more money, especially since those fans are creating their own games and not necessarily buying the real product.
It's almost the same argument as the filesharing canard that says that companies need to either give away their music for free or face going out of business.
Actually, in this case, there's plenty of proof that you can stick the word "Chrono" on just about anything and it will sell like hotcakes.
Take a look on eBay... Original copies of Chrono Trigger sell for absurd amounts.
The game sold tons of copies on its first run... Tons more when it was ported to the Playstation... Tons more when it was ported to the DS...
People even bought Chrono Cross, which was a horrible game, just because it was vaguely related to Chrono Trigger.
Fans are literally begging for an official sequel. If one was available it would be purchased without hesitation. Folks would be all over it. There is, in this case, no "real product" to buy - Square-Enix won't produce it. So the fans are creating their own.
...after all, they did release their own 3D remake of Chrono Trigger after they shut down Chrono Ressurection.... right?
Oh, yeah, they didn't.
And we probably won't see a Chrono sequel either. Ever since they simply gave up on the "Chrono Break" trademark, I'm pretty much convinced that the franchise does not interest them anymore. Not enough to work on it beyond releasing ports.
It is strange...
Chrono Trigger has a huge fanbase. It easily has the same draw as the Final Fantasy series. And yet they haven't bothered with a sequel. Not one. While they keep turning out new Final Fantasy titles left and right.
You'd think someone at Square-Enix might realize there's money to be made here.
But that wasn't their claim. Their claim was that "A lot of great PC games were even more successful than they otherwise might have been because they opened themselves up to the mod community".
World of Warcraft - One of the reasons it is so popular is the huge modding community. You can completely customize your UI. Don't like how Blizzard did it? Do it differently! And Blizzard not only lets you roll your own mods, but incorporates the most popular ones back into the core product. That's how we got the raid UI for example.
Neverwinter Nights - The modding community kept that game alive, and kept it on store shelves, long after it should have faded away. There were some terrific mods you could download - some for free, some paid. I purchased a deluxe boxed set several years after the original game was released simply because I'd seen some good mods on their website.
Half-Life - Great game, no doubt about it. But how many people wound up buying Half-Life just so they could play Counterstrike? Enough people, ultimately, that they released Counterstrike as a standalone product.
Starcraft - Good game, yes, but that isn't why people still play it. Maps built by the players and mods like DOTA have kept that game alive for years.
Those are just a few that I can think of right off the top of my head that I can say, with certainty, have sold additional boxes solely because of the modding community. There are plenty of other titles out there that are popular, and allow mods, but maybe wouldn't do any worse without the mods.
They have no intention of making another Chrono sequel.
So what? That doesn't allow someone to take their non-free assets and do with it as they please.
The ROM hacking community is nearly all diehard fans. Pissing them off does not sound like a good way to do business.
And the ROM hacking community probably makes up a hugely small fraction of game buyers so I really doubt Square Enix could even care less.
This decision will certainly make me think twice before buying a Square-Enix game new.
I'm sure they are quaking in their boots over that.
I don't think anyone is claiming some kind of right to hack together a derivative work... I think this is more just complaining about Square-Enix's business practices.
At this point allowing some ROM hackers to throw together a mod probably doesn't affect Square-Enix's bottom line at all. Yes, it is their IP. They paid someone to code up that original game, produce the original artwork, etc. But that money was spent years ago, and has already been repaid several times over with the success of Chrono Trigger. At this point it doesn't cost Square-Enix anything to allow these mod developers to continue.
Furthermore, it might very well lead to increased revenues for Square-Enix. Folks might be exposed to the Chrono Trigger franchise through this mod who never would have known the franchise existed. They may very well go out and purchase the original title. Or it could stir up enough interest in the franchise for Square-Enix to turn out an official title.
So we've got a company taking action against some of their biggest fans... Killing a project that costs them nothing, and could very well make them money... Square-Enix certainly isn't the first company to do something like this, nor will they be the last, but that doesn't make their actions any more intelligent.
Fans have been clamoring for more Chrono Trigger games for years. Folks would very happily purchase a new Chrono Trigger game produced by Square-Enix. Rather than stomp on this derivative work that costs them nothing, it might make more sense to roll out a product that your customers want to pay for.
The client software refuses to run on anything newer than Windows XP SP1.... This is the kind of problem the XP-mode is intended to address.
Umm... what makes you think that XP-mode will offer anything but WinXP SP3 level emulation? (just curious)
For your situation, what you've already done (roll your own VM) is the perfect solution. An even better solution from a cost perspective, if the main use of the machine is the VM, is to look at things like Linux to decrease the cost of the desktops, which you just need to host the VM (assuming the VM is the main thing you need, since every OS now-a-days supports Documents, Email and Web).
I don't expect XP-mode to fix our particular problem. I wouldn't even bother testing to find out if it works because we've already fixed the problem. I was simply giving an example of legacy software that will not work with modern operating systems.
That suite of applications that you're testing doesn't accurately represent the target population for XP emulation.
XP Emulation is primarily geared towards businesses with legacy/custom business applications which have not been re-written for Windows Vista/7.
We run an ancient version of Televantage here.
The Televantage server itself is still running NT4. The client software refuses to run on anything newer than Windows XP SP1.
The solution has been to go ahead and update our machines to SP2/SP3/Vista/whatever and run Televantage inside a small virtual machine running Windows 2000 SP4 - it works great.
This is the kind of problem the XP-mode is intended to address.
Why does MS need a separate XP mode? Why are the two so different that one needs a separate product, virtual PC to run the code? Why do they want XP to run on a virtual machine at all? It this decision based on the way Windows work, or does MS just not want such an ability integrated into the OS.
You don't need a separate product to run XP. It's an added feature being rolled into some versions of Windows 7. It uses Virtual PC because that's what Microsoft has for virtual machine software.
I haven't tried Windows 7 yet, nor this XP-mode, so I've got no authority here... But I would assume efforts would be made to make the virtualization as transparent and seamless as possible.
The reason I am confused is because this would have been great for the Vista transition, and seems to be old technology. Over ten years ago Apple included this capability in OS X, allowing OS 9 application to run in the classic environment. Apple also included bundles to allow the transition from 68K to PPC, and later PPC to Intel. Why did MS not do the same, and why are the including a hack solution at the last minute.
This is exactly what Microsoft is doing. They are allowing you to run your old XP-only code within Windows 7. Much like Apple allowed you to run your old 9-only code within OS X.
I agree that they're a bit late though... Something like this could have really helped with Vista adoption.
The thing is, if coffee is too hot to be poor over your crotch then how the hell wouldn't it ALSO be too hot to be drank?
Dunno... Maybe not.
I drink my coffee hot. It tastes good that way. It doesn't hurt my mouth/tongue. But I've spilled it on myself and it hurt like hell. Maybe your mouth is less sensitive to heat? Maybe saliva acts as some kind of insulation? Maybe it's because you're typically taking small sips of coffee, and not dumping the entire cup down your throat?
Can anyone explain how what is being claimed here is possible?
I believe that a good chunk of the problem was not only that McDonalds normally served their coffee hotter than other restaurants, but that this particular McDonalds was heating their coffee beyond what they were supposed to.
Of course there's plenty of debate here... I guess the lawyers convinced everyone that 180 F was too hot, and that coffee at that temperature couldn't even be consumed safely. And they claim that most other places server their coffee colder than that. But there are counter-claims that you need to brew your coffee at about 200 F for optimal flavor... And that people want their coffee to be served hot, even though that means it may be unsafe to drink it immediately - that folks typically understand this and wait for it to cool to the appropriate temperature.
There have been similar lawsuits against other restaurants... And similar lawsuits outside the US... But I don't think any of them really went anywhere. The consensus generally seems to be that people buying coffee ought to understand that it is hot enough to burn you right out of the pot, and that caution should be exercised until it has cooled enough to drink. I'm not really sure what made this case special... Maybe this particular restaurant really was heating its coffee to insane temperatures. Or maybe the lady was just sympathetic enough to swing things in her direction. Or maybe someone's lawyers just did a really good/bad job.
I agree with pretty much everything you said... Except that I still don't see why we ought to be worrying about an artist's estate.
And why would we want to pay the artist's estate? Is the estate somehow going to turn out more artistic works?
The two surviving Beatles did finish one of John Lennon's unpublished works. The Lennon estate could have sat on it if it couldn't get a cut.
So, the estate has possession of unpublished works. And the surviving Beatles want to finish it up and publish it. And the estate is sitting on it because it isn't getting a cut of the copyright.
What's to stop the estate from writing a contract with the surviving Beatles to get a cut of all royalties? Is there some strange clause in the existing copyright law that prevents someone from creating such a contract?
If there's something useful in the estate that can be published, by all means, publish it. But then the copyright wouldn't belong to Joe Deadguy, it'd belong to whoever got around to publishing it.
I don't see why Joe Deadguy's kids are somehow entitled to whatever profits his previous artistic works generated. If they want to make money from artistic works they ought to publish something new - either their own works, or something from the estate that hasn't been published yet.
Slashdot Mirror
A piece of instant film could be handed directly over to a friend or relative without further hassle. Digital cameras still require you to take the time to get to a computer and do something with the picture via the memory card or the camera itself. Instant sharing isn't as simple or direct as snapping the picture and handing it to someone, like with a Polaroid. Although being able to see if it was a "bad picture" was also handy, I think the coolest thing was the instant gratification factor that digital cameras still don't quite possess.
You can very easily hand them a memory card with no fuss at all. Or you can get a keychain-sized digital picture frame and hand that to them. Or you can get a small, portable printer and print out a copy of the photo. Or you can stop by just about any camera store, photo shop, or electronics department and print out a photo in minutes.
Not quite as immediate as a Polaroid... But obviously close enough to kill Polaroid.
This is why a lot of these old-school industries aren't going to make it through the digital transition. They're still trying to treat the Internet as if it was no different than opening up another storefront. They aren't understanding what automation and digital distribution can do for them. Instead of embracing the technologies, they're fighting them tooth and nail.
You can also see this playing out in the video rental industry. BlockBuster is having a hard time dealing with the Internet. Their brick & mortar stores actually have business hours and eventually close up for the day. But BlockBuster was smart enough to offer an on-line rental plan similar to Netflix. So people who want their movies don't even have to wonder whether the store is open... They just click a few buttons and their movie is on the way.
Or if they've got Netflix they can click a few buttons and stream it right to their screen.
And other companies are springing up in the gaps between the Internet and traditional brick & mortar stores. We've got RedBox movie vending machines showing up all over town. You don't need a computer, you don't need a subscription, you don't need to wait for the mail - all the benefits of a traditional brick & mortar store. But you just walk up to a vending machine, push a couple buttons, and get your movie - no store hours to worry about.
Insurance is gambling. If information is available it will be used. You can't make things fairer by forcing one party to ignore information that all parties have access to.
That is very true.
And, I think, that's the root of the problem most people have with the insurance companies... It is a gamble, and they're in the business to make money. It is in their best interest to deny coverage to folks wit pre-existing conditions, and to deny as many claims as they can.
But when it comes to something as important as your health or your house, people don't want it to be treated as a game. Folks don't want to feel like they're just a mark.
Having something that operates a bit like a wii controller combined with a universal remote.
Imagine pointing the wand at your receiver and giving an upward flitting motion and the receiver bumps up the volume. or flick to the right and it changes stations or goes to the next track. Twirl it in a circle clockwise to turn on or counterclockwise to turn off etc.
And would only react to the device you point at. (might have to establish separate gestures for nearby components etc)
I'd buy that.
Sounds nifty... But I fail to see how it would be an improvement over the universal remote that I have.
I don't see how physical gestures would be any easier or more intuitive than just hitting a button labeled "on" or "volume." And I'm really not sure how it would tell whether I want to turn on the TV, the VCR, the DVD player, or the cable box... They're all piled within about a foot of eachother. Unless you had a different gesture for each device... Or a selector switch/button to tell the wand what to talk to... But, in either case, I don't see it being any easier than my current remote.
what if I'm denied coverage at some point down the road because of it?
It's only a matter of time.
Modern insurance policies can deny you coverage due to a pre-existing condition. It won't be long before we're able to identify all kinds of disorders and diseases with a simple genetic screening. Then we just call having a 90% chance to develop cancer a pre-existing condition, and you're screwed.
It is going to happen.
Get over it.. Who really needs users to identify which piece of their computer is broken? Even if they could tell the different components apart, they'd probably be wrong about where the problem is 90% of the time anyway.
I don't expect my users to tell me what piece of their computer is broken. How the hell would they know? And if they did know, I probably wouldn't have a job.
But, just as I don't tell my mechanic that there's something wrong with my distributor when there's just some generic problem with my car and I'm not sure what the issue really is... I don't really think it is terribly helpful when my users tell me that there's something wrong with their hard disk when there's just some generic problem with their computer and they're not sure what the issue really is.
If I have a problem with my car, I bring it in and say "there's something wrong with my car." I might be able to be a little more helpful... "It makes a weird noise" "The radio doesn't work" "It won't start" But I don't say "My radiator is broken" unless I know for a fact that it is my radiator (which doesn't happen, because I couldn't even point at my radiator, much less diagnose it as being broken).
But, somehow, with computers it is all different. Folks don't expect users to know anything at all about computers. Nobody is allowed to complain about bad terminology. And we're supposed to just shrug and accept it because we're geeks and that technospeak is just too fancy for most people.
If I told my mechanic that I rotated the valves on my manifold they'd probably laugh in my face.
But I've had users tell me that they downloaded a program from the disc onto their modem, and I'm not supposed to correct them?
And here we see the next step in FireFox going down the drain. I want a browser not an OS.
That isn't really a design decision that anyone at Mozilla made... That's just the way the web is going. It doesn't matter if you use Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, Opera, whatever... They're all becoming more of an operating system than a data display.
Used to be that the WWW was more-or-less static. You'd create a page, publish it, and it wouldn't change much until you published some changes to it. Used to be that displaying a web page wasn't a whole lot different than displaying a text file or a jpeg.
These days web pages are very dynamic. Never mind all the dynamic database-driven pages... Look at stuff like Gmail - that isn't a web page, that's a full-blown application that just happens to live inside a web browser.
That isn't a decision that anyone at Mozilla made - Google built Gmail that way. And people like it that way. That's why all the competing webmail apps like Hotmail and Yahoo and OWA have gone super-AJAXy.
Putting your backup storage server on the other end of a point to point circuit (or MPLS, or frame, etc.) eliminates the "yay I'm on the internet" factor. The downside is cost.
It does, but it doesn't keep you from transmitting a virus across that circuit. Nor does it prevent the backup storage server from eating its own HDD/CPU/motherboard/whatever.
It's certainly better than a backup server in the same building... But it isn't the same as putting your backup on simple removable media. Aside from straight-up mechanical failure it's hard to go terribly wrong with tapes, CD/DVD, or removable HDDs. Put them someplace safe and you really don't have to worry about much.
I'm going to respectfully disagree, there.
A dedicated backup box can be much more hardened than a general-purpose webserver, as the backup box pretty much has a job of storing and retrieving files.
A solid system of incremental backups helps, too.
Yes, taking it offline is great. Do that... maybe monthly, if that.
This scenario sounds much more like someone confused "RAID" with "Backup". RAID (and other high-availability schemes) protects you from hardware failure. Backup protects you from more software failure and human error.
Wrong.
What if your building burns down? What if some minor fire triggers the sprinklers? What if you get struck by lightning? What if an employee goes postal and takes a sledgehammer to all the electronics? What if a tree falls on the power lines and sends a giant surge through your wiring? What if someone breaks in and steals all the computers?
It isn't a backup unless it leaves the site.
Of course you could put your live backup box on the other end of some fiber in another state... That's physically off-site... But as long as it is up and running you have to worry about it as well. Hardened or not, it could get hacked. Or it could get a virus. Or some random glitch could corrupt the data on disk. Or its motherboard/HDD/CPU/whatever could die.
It isn't a backup unless it is offline.
And then there's the question of whether the thing actually works... You can have all the backups in the world, but if they're all corrupt it won't do you any good. You'll be restoring broken garbage to your replacement server.
It isn't a backup unless it has been verified.
What all of this comes down to is some kind of relatively portable media. Tapes, removable HDDs, CDs, DVDs, whatever. You want something that can leave the building on a daily basis. You want pretty much all your media to be out of the building. Bring in just what you need to run today's backup, and then take it out of the building as soon as that is done. Preferably to someplace relatively remote and safe... A safety deposit box is great. Or if someone has a safe at home. Or if you've got a branch-office or something.
Mirrors, RAIDs, whatever... Those aren't backups. They give you absolutely no ability to recover from a real disaster. They give my more reliability... You can survive a dead HDD or a fried motherboard or something...
But if your building burns down, you're toast. If you delete a key file that change is replicated, and you're toast. If someone hacks your site that change is replicated, and you're toast.
A backup is an offline copy that has been verified to work and leaves the building. Tape, CD, removable HDD, DVD, reams of paper, a whole server that's unplugged and hauled out of the building, whatever...
If it isn't offline, the changes just get replicated and it does you no good.
If it hasn't been verified to work, you don't know if you'll be able to restore it or not.
And if it doesn't leave the building it won't save you from a real disaster.
It constantly amazes me how many folks don't understand this.
You don't think that having functionality removed from something you've bought, after the fact, is a problem?
This is the big issue for me.
Say I'm shopping for a new toaster. There's all sorts of toasters on the market, lots of good models to choose from. Ultimately I decide to buy one specifically because it has a built-in bagel slicer... But not just any bagel slicer - it's some kind of high-powered laser bagel slicer.
But, after I buy the thing, lawsuits start cropping up. Kids are sticking their fingers in the thing and getting them sliced off. Traditionally manufacturers have done a recall if something like this happened... Or issued a warning... Or designed new packaging that indicates it isn't kid-safe... Or redesigned the product so that kids can't stick their fingers in it...
Not anymore though. These days they'd just send the kill signal and disable the laser bagel slicer. Suddenly my toaster, which I bought specifically for the bagel slicer, has no bagel slicer.
A key feature that made me buy that product, instead of another, is gone. A feature that may have made one product cost more than another, is gone. A feature that I liked and used, is gone.
I definitely have a problem with that.
No it isn't. Those tags indicate what the mattress is made of, what it contains, etc. It is illegal for the manufacturer/shopkeeper to remove them. It is not illegal for you to remove them once you've purchased the mattress. Unless you're maybe thinking of going into some big mattress resale business.
Really? You have a right to make a mod based on someone else's game?
I'm no fan of current copyright law... I think it's all kinds of messed up... I agree that pretty much everything should fall into the public domain fairly quickly. I think that Disney has done horrible damage to the way copyright law works. I understand that things like West Side story would never have happened if Disney had been playing with copyright laws since the dawn of time. But a right to do what you want with someone else's work? As in we hold these truths to be self-evident constitutional right?
I understand you're arguing from moral grounds, rather than legal... But still, a right to someone else's work? And do they have a right to your paycheck?
Agreed.
Although it isn't just copyright laws here in the US holding us back... But that's a discussion for another day.
Agreed.
There really isn't any reason for a copyright to extend much beyond 10-15 years. The whole idea, from the start, was to encourage more creative works. Let a guy collect money from the publication of his first creation for a few years, but then he needs to create something new to get more money.
Today's perpetual copyrights mean that you can produce one hit and then keep milking it, literally, forever. Even after you're dead your estate can keep milking it.
Seems to me, then, that these mod developers need to move their webserver to another nation...
Now... There are official re-makes of this title that are still in print (i.e. the DS version). That definitely will affect Square's bottom line.
This is what I was referring to when I said "purchase the original title." The DS version is basically a port of the original Chrono Trigger - it isn't a sequel/spin-off/whatever.
I would suggest that having this mod out in the wild might very well generate more interest than the almost-nonexistent advertising Square-Enix has done for the DS version of Chrono Trigger.
Now, look at the devil's advocate side: People playing this fan-made version may negatively affect their sales for the DS version and may just end up pirating it instead.
It is certainly possible that people will pirate the game... But you can't really base your business model on that. It'd be like refusing to open a store, despite overwhelming evidence that people want to buy your product, because there's a possibility that you will be robbed at some point in the future.
A dedicated cult fanbase does not automatically mean that it's a marketable audience. It does not take many fans to make a fan game, especially if they aren't shooting for commercial polish.
Do 10+ years of good sales mean there's a marketable audience?
The original game was released in 1995. Every time it has been ported it has sold well - even as recently as 2008 when it was ported to the DS.
This isn't some abstract thought exercise... There are 10+ years of sales figures that say yes, people want this.
Sadly, that's the same thing people said about a Firefly movie, and yet...
There is a long and storied tradition of a huge fan upswell convincing a company to put for money on a project only for it to fail due to lack of actual sales when the time comes.
Except that Firefly hasn't been re-released, and sold like crazy, several times over.
Firefly was only in production for a year or so... Folks have been begging for a sequel to Chrono Trigger for over 10 years - the game originally came out in 1995 on the SNES.
The original sales of Chrono Trigger were good. When they ported it to the Playstation it sold great. When they ported it to the DS it sold great. Even Chrono Cross, which is a terrible game, sold well because it was related to Chrono Trigger.
In this case they've got over 10 years of good sales to back up the decision, not a pile of letters from disgruntled fans.
Seems to be the growing trend; instead of listening to their fans, which would net them even more money, game developers continue to lock down old gaming IP
There is no proof that listening to their fans would net them more money, especially since those fans are creating their own games and not necessarily buying the real product.
It's almost the same argument as the filesharing canard that says that companies need to either give away their music for free or face going out of business.
Actually, in this case, there's plenty of proof that you can stick the word "Chrono" on just about anything and it will sell like hotcakes.
Take a look on eBay... Original copies of Chrono Trigger sell for absurd amounts.
The game sold tons of copies on its first run... Tons more when it was ported to the Playstation... Tons more when it was ported to the DS...
People even bought Chrono Cross, which was a horrible game, just because it was vaguely related to Chrono Trigger.
Fans are literally begging for an official sequel. If one was available it would be purchased without hesitation. Folks would be all over it. There is, in this case, no "real product" to buy - Square-Enix won't produce it. So the fans are creating their own.
...after all, they did release their own 3D remake of Chrono Trigger after they shut down Chrono Ressurection.... right?
Oh, yeah, they didn't.
And we probably won't see a Chrono sequel either. Ever since they simply gave up on the "Chrono Break" trademark, I'm pretty much convinced that the franchise does not interest them anymore. Not enough to work on it beyond releasing ports.
It is strange...
Chrono Trigger has a huge fanbase. It easily has the same draw as the Final Fantasy series. And yet they haven't bothered with a sequel. Not one. While they keep turning out new Final Fantasy titles left and right.
You'd think someone at Square-Enix might realize there's money to be made here.
But that wasn't their claim. Their claim was that "A lot of great PC games were even more successful than they otherwise might have been because they opened themselves up to the mod community".
World of Warcraft - One of the reasons it is so popular is the huge modding community. You can completely customize your UI. Don't like how Blizzard did it? Do it differently! And Blizzard not only lets you roll your own mods, but incorporates the most popular ones back into the core product. That's how we got the raid UI for example.
Neverwinter Nights - The modding community kept that game alive, and kept it on store shelves, long after it should have faded away. There were some terrific mods you could download - some for free, some paid. I purchased a deluxe boxed set several years after the original game was released simply because I'd seen some good mods on their website.
Half-Life - Great game, no doubt about it. But how many people wound up buying Half-Life just so they could play Counterstrike? Enough people, ultimately, that they released Counterstrike as a standalone product.
Starcraft - Good game, yes, but that isn't why people still play it. Maps built by the players and mods like DOTA have kept that game alive for years.
Those are just a few that I can think of right off the top of my head that I can say, with certainty, have sold additional boxes solely because of the modding community. There are plenty of other titles out there that are popular, and allow mods, but maybe wouldn't do any worse without the mods.
They have no intention of making another Chrono sequel.
So what? That doesn't allow someone to take their non-free assets and do with it as they please.
The ROM hacking community is nearly all diehard fans. Pissing them off does not sound like a good way to do business.
And the ROM hacking community probably makes up a hugely small fraction of game buyers so I really doubt Square Enix could even care less.
This decision will certainly make me think twice before buying a Square-Enix game new.
I'm sure they are quaking in their boots over that.
I don't think anyone is claiming some kind of right to hack together a derivative work... I think this is more just complaining about Square-Enix's business practices.
At this point allowing some ROM hackers to throw together a mod probably doesn't affect Square-Enix's bottom line at all. Yes, it is their IP. They paid someone to code up that original game, produce the original artwork, etc. But that money was spent years ago, and has already been repaid several times over with the success of Chrono Trigger. At this point it doesn't cost Square-Enix anything to allow these mod developers to continue.
Furthermore, it might very well lead to increased revenues for Square-Enix. Folks might be exposed to the Chrono Trigger franchise through this mod who never would have known the franchise existed. They may very well go out and purchase the original title. Or it could stir up enough interest in the franchise for Square-Enix to turn out an official title.
So we've got a company taking action against some of their biggest fans... Killing a project that costs them nothing, and could very well make them money... Square-Enix certainly isn't the first company to do something like this, nor will they be the last, but that doesn't make their actions any more intelligent.
Fans have been clamoring for more Chrono Trigger games for years. Folks would very happily purchase a new Chrono Trigger game produced by Square-Enix. Rather than stomp on this derivative work that costs them nothing, it might make more sense to roll out a product that your customers want to pay for.
Umm ... what makes you think that XP-mode will offer anything but WinXP SP3 level emulation? (just curious)
For your situation, what you've already done (roll your own VM) is the perfect solution. An even better solution from a cost perspective, if the main use of the machine is the VM, is to look at things like Linux to decrease the cost of the desktops, which you just need to host the VM (assuming the VM is the main thing you need, since every OS now-a-days supports Documents, Email and Web).
I don't expect XP-mode to fix our particular problem. I wouldn't even bother testing to find out if it works because we've already fixed the problem. I was simply giving an example of legacy software that will not work with modern operating systems.
That suite of applications that you're testing doesn't accurately represent the target population for XP emulation.
XP Emulation is primarily geared towards businesses with legacy/custom business applications which have not been re-written for Windows Vista/7.
We run an ancient version of Televantage here.
The Televantage server itself is still running NT4. The client software refuses to run on anything newer than Windows XP SP1.
The solution has been to go ahead and update our machines to SP2/SP3/Vista/whatever and run Televantage inside a small virtual machine running Windows 2000 SP4 - it works great.
This is the kind of problem the XP-mode is intended to address.
Why does MS need a separate XP mode? Why are the two so different that one needs a separate product, virtual PC to run the code? Why do they want XP to run on a virtual machine at all? It this decision based on the way Windows work, or does MS just not want such an ability integrated into the OS.
You don't need a separate product to run XP. It's an added feature being rolled into some versions of Windows 7. It uses Virtual PC because that's what Microsoft has for virtual machine software.
I haven't tried Windows 7 yet, nor this XP-mode, so I've got no authority here... But I would assume efforts would be made to make the virtualization as transparent and seamless as possible.
The reason I am confused is because this would have been great for the Vista transition, and seems to be old technology. Over ten years ago Apple included this capability in OS X, allowing OS 9 application to run in the classic environment. Apple also included bundles to allow the transition from 68K to PPC, and later PPC to Intel. Why did MS not do the same, and why are the including a hack solution at the last minute.
This is exactly what Microsoft is doing. They are allowing you to run your old XP-only code within Windows 7. Much like Apple allowed you to run your old 9-only code within OS X.
I agree that they're a bit late though... Something like this could have really helped with Vista adoption.
The thing is, if coffee is too hot to be poor over your crotch then how the hell wouldn't it ALSO be too hot to be drank?
Dunno... Maybe not.
I drink my coffee hot. It tastes good that way. It doesn't hurt my mouth/tongue. But I've spilled it on myself and it hurt like hell. Maybe your mouth is less sensitive to heat? Maybe saliva acts as some kind of insulation? Maybe it's because you're typically taking small sips of coffee, and not dumping the entire cup down your throat?
Can anyone explain how what is being claimed here is possible?
I believe that a good chunk of the problem was not only that McDonalds normally served their coffee hotter than other restaurants, but that this particular McDonalds was heating their coffee beyond what they were supposed to.
Of course there's plenty of debate here... I guess the lawyers convinced everyone that 180 F was too hot, and that coffee at that temperature couldn't even be consumed safely. And they claim that most other places server their coffee colder than that. But there are counter-claims that you need to brew your coffee at about 200 F for optimal flavor... And that people want their coffee to be served hot, even though that means it may be unsafe to drink it immediately - that folks typically understand this and wait for it to cool to the appropriate temperature.
There have been similar lawsuits against other restaurants... And similar lawsuits outside the US... But I don't think any of them really went anywhere. The consensus generally seems to be that people buying coffee ought to understand that it is hot enough to burn you right out of the pot, and that caution should be exercised until it has cooled enough to drink. I'm not really sure what made this case special... Maybe this particular restaurant really was heating its coffee to insane temperatures. Or maybe the lady was just sympathetic enough to swing things in her direction. Or maybe someone's lawyers just did a really good/bad job.
I agree with pretty much everything you said... Except that I still don't see why we ought to be worrying about an artist's estate.
And why would we want to pay the artist's estate? Is the estate somehow going to turn out more artistic works?
The two surviving Beatles did finish one of John Lennon's unpublished works. The Lennon estate could have sat on it if it couldn't get a cut.
So, the estate has possession of unpublished works. And the surviving Beatles want to finish it up and publish it. And the estate is sitting on it because it isn't getting a cut of the copyright.
What's to stop the estate from writing a contract with the surviving Beatles to get a cut of all royalties? Is there some strange clause in the existing copyright law that prevents someone from creating such a contract?
If there's something useful in the estate that can be published, by all means, publish it. But then the copyright wouldn't belong to Joe Deadguy, it'd belong to whoever got around to publishing it.
I don't see why Joe Deadguy's kids are somehow entitled to whatever profits his previous artistic works generated. If they want to make money from artistic works they ought to publish something new - either their own works, or something from the estate that hasn't been published yet.