Kids have to be enticed with activities to become active. "Just go outside" was never about just going outside. It was about going down to the lake, building forts, catching frogs, seeing how far you could throw broken glass, spitting on passing cars, etc. But now "outside" is dangerous. "The lake is toxic." "The glass is dangerous." "That dirt will make you sick." "The drivers are going to run you over."
We've raised a generation of kids terrified of going outside. Of course they don't know what to do when out there: nothing is safe. They don't go outside because there is nothing they can do out there.
Ironically, dancing has also gotten a bad name in the past 20 years. While 100 years ago it was common to send your kids off to dance class, now dancing generally means drugs and hedonism and, well, fun things to protect your kids from.
3D tetris was probably the best rendition of 3D tetris I've played, with a ton of puzzles and setups.
Wario was a great 2D rendition of the platforming antihero, and might be the best 2d sidescrolling Wario period.
Teleroboxer is unparalleled. It is by far the best fantasy punchout-style 2.5 D boxing game. It was done very, very well by a talented group of first timers who probably didn't survive to make any other games.
Garage sales, garage sales, garage sales. You can pick up old cartridges by the bucketload for a few dollars at most garage sales. You can usually make a reasonable but small offer on the whole bunch and walk away with a crate of goodies. Plus these usually happen about the time that college students move out, so head on over to a college town around the beginning of June and get some steals.
Going out-of-business sales and police auctions are your friends. A lot of people have a lot of old or used merchandise sitting around, and if you keep your ears up you can get some amazing deals.
If you're going to E-bay, check the lowest price that the game has gone for in the past year, and stick with that price over time. Don't go over. It's easy to get swept up in bidding wars, but if youre patient the price always comes down to something reasonable. I've seen Ikaruga go for as high as 60 dollars the month before I picked mine up for 25.
And if you don't really want to have it, but just want to try it, go with redoctane or another online game rental company. They're a lot cheaper than picking up a series of titles that don't deserve to be played for more than a day or two.
More than just the Japanese developers, Microsoft has pretty much been playing all of it's cards right. It hired incredibly bright people and gave them free reign to create the system they wanted to. They created something solid, flexible, with the correct gambles. They didn't sell it as a set-top box, but rather a dedicated gaming console. Except that they're still losing money on them, and they're the size of SUV's, it's a great system. Even the great controller mistake was largely corrected.
I don't think one company can "win" the market. As other people have pointed out, this market turns over every few years. Backwards compatibility, while a nice selling feature, isn't needed because you still have the old console. XBL might be a way to lock people in, but only to the same extent that AOL can lock people in. Plus the market likes to create new gods and tear down old ones. Even if Microsoft plays everything right, after several years they'll naturally lose luster and get kicked out.
How would you describe what red looks like to someone who is sighted? Considering the amount of individual development that goes into our sight centers, and our general lack of knowledge about the interface between brain signals and conscious experience, the colors that one person sees could be totally different from the colors that other people see. There's really no way to tell.
Ah. Yes. I hadn't intended for the entire OS's rights to be transferred to any one person or group of people. I had meant that the source code would be open and transparent, allowing people to more easily figure out what it was doing and implement compatibility with it, either on top of it or to replace it. The "gun" in this example was the secrecy around MS's source code. Ironically, a better description would probably have been "shared source."
That's really the crux of how Microsoft goes from being a major software vendor in a healthy field to being a monopoly: incompatibility. Facilitating compatibility would re-open the marketplace, albeit with a lot of hard work and elbow grease on the part of competitors.
And yes, pulling rules out of your bum isn't the best way to rule under law. Multibillion dollar penalties would probably work to some degree. But then again, it is the government's job to respond to unexpected things which negatively affect a population. I don't know if the European government has the power to split the OS and system groups like the US government almost did, but such a thing might also be sufficient.
That's not entirely true. In the US, your show pretty much always gets booted by any live show that comes on before it, like the Grammys or any football / baseball / etc game. See also Futurama. While it may be at 10PM on Wednesday this week, it will probably jump around to 11PM on Friday next week and 3:30 PM on Monday the week after. And television studios have been known to do really dumb things like show serials out of order intentionally. See also Firefly. They frequently drop series with just days notice. Sometimes they will show a pilot at a "special time," move it to a different time slot for the first episode, move it to another time slot for the second episode where 1/2 of it gets eaten up by a sporting event, and then promptly cancel it for low ratings.
Daytime television and cable broadcasts are more stable. 10 AM could stay 10 AM for years. But prime time here in the US is pretty darned unstable and unpredictable. I can't comment on how this is better / worse than Austrailia's system, as I've never been there. However, I do know in the past few years I've had far more luck finding series I like through bittorrent or p2p apps than I have trying to play the "where did they move that show to" game.
But there is an international court system of sorts, in the forms of the treaties and arrangements made between most major powers. While someone who had robbed a store in Brussles might be safe in New York City, a person who had killed a shopkeeper in Brussles would be quickly extradited.
I was under the impression that these arrangements extended to a lot of the economic activities engaged in by people and companies in 1st world nations, and the reason why DeBeers got away with what they did was because they were located in a country with a low entanglement with the US. However, with the EU being a strong trading partner, I was under the impression that there were stronger safeguards against such things. But IANAL, and I probably ought to consult one before making such assumptions.
there is nothing - NOTHING - stopping superior alternatives from being adopted, if they are sufficiently better.
That's the key if they are sufficiently better. Microsoft has ensured through anticompetitive tactics that that threshold is far, far higher than any benefit. Find that BeOS is significantly better a desktop than Windows? (It was, BTW) Well, not only will you not be able to read any of the Word documents they've worked so hard to obfuscate, but you won't be able to read any of the websites whose standards they've co-opted, or run any of the applications whose API's have been intentionally hidden. You won't be able to buy this from a vendor who has one of Microsoft's patently illegal forced exclusivity contracts. And of course you may get sued from a pretty explicitly Microsoft-funded umbrella corporation who claims rights over your OS. Because Microsoft forbade, again illegally, non-Microsoft software to be placed on the desktop after sale, the compatible competitors were forced off, so you can kiss a lot of the open standards goodbye.
A real open market with competition would have a reasonable threshold above which people would switch to a better system. There is no indication this is how the markets around Windows or Microsoft Word or Exchange Server are functioning, and there is plenty of evidence as to why this is the case.
there is nothing - NOTHING - stopping superior alternatives from being adopted, if they are sufficiently better.
Dr Dos was superior to DOS in every way. It was significantly cheaper, faster, more stable, and 100% compatible with MS Dos. Because of this Microsoft re-wrote Windows 3.1 to randomly crash if it was run on top of DrDos. They then promoted "awareness" that DrDos was unstable and would crash Windows 3.1. That's not competing on features, that's using something you sell in one area to irrecoverably damage a competitor's product in an underhanded fashion. They were, BTW, convicted of this.
there is nothing - NOTHING - stopping superior alternatives from being adopted, if they are sufficiently better.
OS2Warp ran Windows applications better than Windows 3.1 did. It multithreaded and multitasked, and was pretty stable... an impressive feat for a Dos-based system. What did Microsoft do? They charged all of their system manufacturers based on how many systems they sold, not how many systems with Windows they sold. In other words, if you were a mixed house and wanted to sell OS2 Warp-based systems, each system you sold with OS2 Warp would cost you one OS2 Warp license you used and one Windows license you didn't and could never use. Thus, Microsoft used their position very directly to prevent competitors from getting on shelves, in a fashion completely illegal. They were, BTW, convicted of this.
there is nothing - NOTHING - stopping superior alternatives from being adopted, if they are sufficiently better.
You can't engage in illegal anticompetitive behaviors and still represent something as an even playing field. Period. I'm sorry if this sounds patronizing to you, but it's a pretty easy concept. If there was a way I could explain it that was complicated and difficult I would.
Not all Monopolies are evil or behave in an anticompetitive fashion. While Intel's hands aren't squeaky clean, it did decide to largely compete based upon power and marketing when rivals appeared. Google has a near-monopoly on search activities, and it hasn't abused that position. I can only think of one example of outright sabotage of interoperability with a competitor's parts from Shimano. But with Microsoft the list of abuses is very, very long. They even did a lot of anticompetitive stuff that failed, like bundling Messenger into every copy of Windows, refusing to allow it to be uninstalled, and if it found that you did uninstall it, the bloody OS would reinstall it. Or their attempts to corrupt Java (which, BTW, they were convicted of). Or their attempts to patent-en
It's their source, they wrote it, they paid for it, they developed it, they should not have to share it with anyone they don't want to.
It's my gun. I bought it. I cleaned it. I blew someone's head off with it. I shouldn't be forced to give it to the police.
Face it, Microsoft has broken the law repeatedly. They've used their position to crush competition on multiple occasions in multiple ways. They've outright stolen competitor's ideas and code, they've used their OS to cause errors in competing software, they've obscured their file format so much that each new version of Word must include a miniature version of the previous Word file reader in order to read it. They've used their position as a monopoly seller to try and corrupt Java, to drive Netscape into the ground. They've fed bad web pages intentionally to competing browsers. There is a ton more out there if you want to go digging, I've only scratched the surface.
They made a tool. They abused a tool badly. Reparations were attempted with the company on specific issues. If Microsoft enters an area where they're actively in contempt of court, they can and should have that tool taken away. It would happen to any other company or individual trying to pull the same stunts. If I owned a resturant and a meat factory, and used my meat factory to sneak maggots into the food of my resturant competitors, and then I snubbed my nose at the court and refused their judgement, I'd lose my business. Plain and simple. Why would this be any different?
Personally I think that opening Windows (and forcing it to stay open) without removing their copyright would be far more than enough to allow competitors to create compatible alternatives, giving them a fair footing in an open market.
Oh, and add to that list they've not only falsified court documents, they've falsified evidence they then showed to an open court.
The banks in Switzerland that hold their money? Officers of the company for non-compliance as they travel the world?
You can't violate a country's laws, get caught, and decide to go home instead of facing the penalties. Even US courts would recognize that. It's not a question of whether or not they want to make this deal. It's a question of how hard can the international court system come down on them if they try to hide from justice. Considering how difficult it would be fore MS to actually hide, they're far better off trying to derail the court proceedings.
Very true. However, I like to use the word "proof" because whenever the word "theory" gets used these days it's generally used to discredit things that people don't have real evidence or arguments against. The "theory" of evolution. The Big Bang "theory." The "theory" of global warming. Would you bet your children's safety on the "theory" that Saddam Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction?
Theories have gotten a bad name recently. Then again, your post is technically correct, in theory.
Normally on a disk the magnetic fields run flat along the top, like what would happen if you lay a series of pencils down on a notebook. Some of the pencils face one way and some the other. The different facing pencils represent a bit, either a one or a zero, depending on if they are facing left or right.
For a "3d" disk, take all of those pencils and stand them on end, so that they are either pointing towards you or down towards the paper. Now you can pack a lot more in there without (theoretically) bleeding over into eachother.
Personally I was hoping for some hypersensitive way to detect and manipulate multiple layers of magnetic media, like the name would imply. But overall this is a nice step forward in increasing density on a 2D platter.
Preach it brother! And add to that list time dialation, length dialation, non simultaneity, spontaneous quantum particle creation, particle smearing, the particle-wave duality, 2-slit experiments, splitting atoms, bowling balls and feathers falling at the same speeds, and the earth being round. Crackpottery, all.
Geez, just because you don't understand it doesn't make it wrong. Weirder stuff has already been proven.
I must say, the whole article sounds a lot like sour grapes. He's predicting the fall of the MMPORPG that burst onto the scene and captured more players than all other MMPORPG's combined in less than three months. And why the fall? Because, the theory goes, games that are easy and fun to get into must not have a lot going for the hardcore player. So, like Diablo, World of Warcraft will be a flash in the pan compared to deeper games with richer gameplay like, erm, Everquest. Right. Deep gameplay, that Everquest. City of Heroes must also not have any longevity because it's accessible, and so City of Heroes should be due for a crash too... Any day now... It's only been a year, give that crash some time.
Basically, he dismisses Planetside and CoH as just games without a "real" online component, and thereby dismisses the fact that "real" people pay to play them online. He talks about how the gameplay is "novel" and somehow equates that with not worth playing. Like DDR, it's just a flash-in-the-pan novelty. Apparently, non-novel game ideas, like selecting "attack" from a menu a million times, are really what is driving the gaming industry.
That there should be more high-level content in WoW is a valid concern. But you're talking about a game which now rakes in almost twenty million dollars per month. If that isn't enough cash to make some white dragons of infinite hitpoints, I don't know what is.
Look at eveyr single socialist/communist state - every sing one, without fail, regulated speech and ensured that it was politically correct.
Look at every single socialist / communist state - every single one, without fail, had people paid to promote things they didn't believe to get money from rich people who wanted into power or who wanted to stay in power, and who greased their hands in return.
Paid speech isn't free. It costs more than just money.
It's a general ordinance referring to "electioneering communication." Essentially, if you spend over 1,000 dollars specifically trying to promote a single candidate, in any media, you have to register this for sake of tracking election funding. And that's it. The bill defines "electioneering communication" as any communication to broadcast, cable, radio, internet, or telephone, or mailings, flyers, doorhangers, pamphlets, brochures, cards, signs, billboards, facsimiles, or printed advertisements that: refers to a clearly identified candidate for City elective office or a City elective officer who is the subject of a recall election; and is distrubuted within 90 days to an election for the City elective office sought by the candidate or a recall election regarding the City elective officer to 500 or more individuals who are registered to vote or eligible to register to vote in the election or recall election. There shall be a rebuttable presumption that any broadcast, cable, satellite, or radio communication and any sign, billboard or printed advertisement is distributed to 500 or more individuals who are eligible to vote...
This is a minor piece of campaign finance accountability. You can't buy thousands of dollars of airtime for a candidate without registering that with the city. It mentions the internet in passing, once, and no where else.
And to be eligible, you have to have spent 1,000 dollars in the 3 months prior to get a candidate elected. How much of your blog is devoted to getting a candidate elected? Is your blog costing you 4,000 dollars a year?
The ordinance makes explicit exceptions for spoken communication, news stories, communications to all members of a specific subgroup, communications during a debate, anything on bumper stickers, pins, stickers, hat bands, badges, ribbons, or other memorobelia, etc. While the 1,000 dollar threshold generally rules out having to register to be a blogger, if people were really worried about it, they could add such a thing here.
It may sound funny, but this is a common practice in big business. You enter a new market, you subsidize the hell out of your product using money earned elsewhere. This forces your competitors out of business. Once your competitors are dead, you raise prices, and make a move into another market.
And, of course, you do all of this with cheap Chinese labor. At least the Chinese don't offshore.
Exactly. If people are forced to a different mail system, there is a good chance that it will either be a non-MS system, or at least a battle ground that OE/etc doesn't have as strong a foothold in.
Generally, the thing that seems to be replacing E-mail is I.M.. You can communicate instantaneously and informally, even if the person is not there. And, unfortunatly for Microsoft the king of IM is AIM, despite their Frick'in required copy of MS Messenger which they should be sent to hell for which pops up every few seconds like it's posessed by a deranged clippy and which you can't get rid of without hacking the system and if you use MS's listed and tenuous uninstall procedure it will just reinstall it's bloody self when you update... Ahem, where was I? Oh yes, people get driven to Instant Messenging services, an area where Microsoft has traditionally not done very well.
I do applaud them for their efforts in stopping SPAM though. We could all definitely use their help in the matter.
What's even more surprising is that that the editor who approved the article linked to something inside of it, proving that he actually read it.
This has to be a record of some sort. Not only did the poster read the article, but it isn't a dupe and there aren't obvious spelling or grammar mistakes. I think overlooking the possible copyright issue is ok, given that this is obviously some sort of god-given miracle.
This is basically true, but many counter examples exist. Fight Club was improved in it's transition to the big screen. Arguably The Godfather and The Shawshank Redemption were as good at the books. I'm sure there will be a generation of people saying that The Lord of the Rings movies are better than the books in that they cut out some of the fat, a view with which I agree.
The Running Man movie was better than the book. Stand By Me... Why is Stephen King coming up so often?
Battlefield Earth was hideous, but no worse than the books. Starship Troopers was more entertaining as a movie than the short story upon which it is based.
Southpark: BLU was as funny as the TV show, and it had catchy musical numbers about destroying Canada, so it wins.
Several of Kurosawa's movies are based upon Japanese legends, and while the legends never interested me the movies were captivating.
Star Wars: KOTR is much better than Star Wars: TPM or TCW.
Rainbow 6 the game was better than the novel it was based upon. GoldenEye for the N64 was better than the so-so movie that spawned it.
The Chronicles of Riddick game was far better than The Chronicles of Riddick movie.
Mad TV was better than Mad Magazine. Pokemon the cartoon was a lot less tedious than Pokemon the game.
Tim Burton's Batman was better than pretty much all of the batmen that came before that time. Pee Wee's Big Adventure was better than Pee Wee's Playhouse.
For various reasons, the West Side Story movie was better than the West Side Story stage production. The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy book was as good if not better than the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio drama.
Tony Hawk's life, while great, was no where near as great as Tony Hawk the video game.
Most of the worries around player control doesn't come from the artistic side of things. People have a way of wanting to do things that will destroy the experience for them. If you let FPS players create their own weapons, they would create the "kill everyone but me in one flash" gun. If you let the players choose all of the parameters of the game, they frequently choose settings that are boring, not fun, etc... like 5-square mile maps in a 2-person combat game. If you give MMPORPG players the ability to advance their level by walking 20 feet to the left, digging radishes for an hour, and walking 20 feet to the right to the store, they will do it, and complain that your game is boring as hell.
The artistic side of things comes into play, as if the player destroys the artisttic side of the game then they're probably also ruining the aesthetic experience. But in general practical needs of play outweigh any sort of personal thing the developer is attempting to communicate.
I'm not saying don't expose the game parameters, I'm saying you have to be careful when you do. It's not as simple as just letting the player make the perfect game for you... It's your responsibility to make sure they have a good time, not theirs.
How would this be different than, say, buying a Vaio, installing Linux on it, configuring KDE to look like Windows at a cursory glance, and returning it?
Hey, that's not a bad idea. Thanks! Now I've got a project for the weekend.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it infinitely superior?
Kids have to be enticed with activities to become active. "Just go outside" was never about just going outside. It was about going down to the lake, building forts, catching frogs, seeing how far you could throw broken glass, spitting on passing cars, etc. But now "outside" is dangerous. "The lake is toxic." "The glass is dangerous." "That dirt will make you sick." "The drivers are going to run you over."
We've raised a generation of kids terrified of going outside. Of course they don't know what to do when out there: nothing is safe. They don't go outside because there is nothing they can do out there.
Ironically, dancing has also gotten a bad name in the past 20 years. While 100 years ago it was common to send your kids off to dance class, now dancing generally means drugs and hedonism and, well, fun things to protect your kids from.
It had some good games.
3D tetris was probably the best rendition of 3D tetris I've played, with a ton of puzzles and setups.
Wario was a great 2D rendition of the platforming antihero, and might be the best 2d sidescrolling Wario period.
Teleroboxer is unparalleled. It is by far the best fantasy punchout-style 2.5 D boxing game. It was done very, very well by a talented group of first timers who probably didn't survive to make any other games.
Garage sales, garage sales, garage sales. You can pick up old cartridges by the bucketload for a few dollars at most garage sales. You can usually make a reasonable but small offer on the whole bunch and walk away with a crate of goodies. Plus these usually happen about the time that college students move out, so head on over to a college town around the beginning of June and get some steals.
Going out-of-business sales and police auctions are your friends. A lot of people have a lot of old or used merchandise sitting around, and if you keep your ears up you can get some amazing deals.
If you're going to E-bay, check the lowest price that the game has gone for in the past year, and stick with that price over time. Don't go over. It's easy to get swept up in bidding wars, but if youre patient the price always comes down to something reasonable. I've seen Ikaruga go for as high as 60 dollars the month before I picked mine up for 25.
And if you don't really want to have it, but just want to try it, go with redoctane or another online game rental company. They're a lot cheaper than picking up a series of titles that don't deserve to be played for more than a day or two.
More than just the Japanese developers, Microsoft has pretty much been playing all of it's cards right. It hired incredibly bright people and gave them free reign to create the system they wanted to. They created something solid, flexible, with the correct gambles. They didn't sell it as a set-top box, but rather a dedicated gaming console. Except that they're still losing money on them, and they're the size of SUV's, it's a great system. Even the great controller mistake was largely corrected.
I don't think one company can "win" the market. As other people have pointed out, this market turns over every few years. Backwards compatibility, while a nice selling feature, isn't needed because you still have the old console. XBL might be a way to lock people in, but only to the same extent that AOL can lock people in. Plus the market likes to create new gods and tear down old ones. Even if Microsoft plays everything right, after several years they'll naturally lose luster and get kicked out.
How would you describe what red looks like to someone who is sighted? Considering the amount of individual development that goes into our sight centers, and our general lack of knowledge about the interface between brain signals and conscious experience, the colors that one person sees could be totally different from the colors that other people see. There's really no way to tell.
Ah. Yes. I hadn't intended for the entire OS's rights to be transferred to any one person or group of people. I had meant that the source code would be open and transparent, allowing people to more easily figure out what it was doing and implement compatibility with it, either on top of it or to replace it. The "gun" in this example was the secrecy around MS's source code. Ironically, a better description would probably have been "shared source."
That's really the crux of how Microsoft goes from being a major software vendor in a healthy field to being a monopoly: incompatibility. Facilitating compatibility would re-open the marketplace, albeit with a lot of hard work and elbow grease on the part of competitors.
And yes, pulling rules out of your bum isn't the best way to rule under law. Multibillion dollar penalties would probably work to some degree. But then again, it is the government's job to respond to unexpected things which negatively affect a population. I don't know if the European government has the power to split the OS and system groups like the US government almost did, but such a thing might also be sufficient.
That's not entirely true. In the US, your show pretty much always gets booted by any live show that comes on before it, like the Grammys or any football / baseball / etc game. See also Futurama. While it may be at 10PM on Wednesday this week, it will probably jump around to 11PM on Friday next week and 3:30 PM on Monday the week after. And television studios have been known to do really dumb things like show serials out of order intentionally. See also Firefly. They frequently drop series with just days notice. Sometimes they will show a pilot at a "special time," move it to a different time slot for the first episode, move it to another time slot for the second episode where 1/2 of it gets eaten up by a sporting event, and then promptly cancel it for low ratings.
Daytime television and cable broadcasts are more stable. 10 AM could stay 10 AM for years. But prime time here in the US is pretty darned unstable and unpredictable. I can't comment on how this is better / worse than Austrailia's system, as I've never been there. However, I do know in the past few years I've had far more luck finding series I like through bittorrent or p2p apps than I have trying to play the "where did they move that show to" game.
Scheduling here is pretty roundly terrible too.
True. I had totally forgotten about DeBeers.
But there is an international court system of sorts, in the forms of the treaties and arrangements made between most major powers. While someone who had robbed a store in Brussles might be safe in New York City, a person who had killed a shopkeeper in Brussles would be quickly extradited.
I was under the impression that these arrangements extended to a lot of the economic activities engaged in by people and companies in 1st world nations, and the reason why DeBeers got away with what they did was because they were located in a country with a low entanglement with the US. However, with the EU being a strong trading partner, I was under the impression that there were stronger safeguards against such things. But IANAL, and I probably ought to consult one before making such assumptions.
there is nothing - NOTHING - stopping superior alternatives from being adopted, if they are sufficiently better.
That's the key if they are sufficiently better. Microsoft has ensured through anticompetitive tactics that that threshold is far, far higher than any benefit. Find that BeOS is significantly better a desktop than Windows? (It was, BTW) Well, not only will you not be able to read any of the Word documents they've worked so hard to obfuscate, but you won't be able to read any of the websites whose standards they've co-opted, or run any of the applications whose API's have been intentionally hidden. You won't be able to buy this from a vendor who has one of Microsoft's patently illegal forced exclusivity contracts. And of course you may get sued from a pretty explicitly Microsoft-funded umbrella corporation who claims rights over your OS. Because Microsoft forbade, again illegally, non-Microsoft software to be placed on the desktop after sale, the compatible competitors were forced off, so you can kiss a lot of the open standards goodbye.
A real open market with competition would have a reasonable threshold above which people would switch to a better system. There is no indication this is how the markets around Windows or Microsoft Word or Exchange Server are functioning, and there is plenty of evidence as to why this is the case.
there is nothing - NOTHING - stopping superior alternatives from being adopted, if they are sufficiently better.
Dr Dos was superior to DOS in every way. It was significantly cheaper, faster, more stable, and 100% compatible with MS Dos. Because of this Microsoft re-wrote Windows 3.1 to randomly crash if it was run on top of DrDos. They then promoted "awareness" that DrDos was unstable and would crash Windows 3.1. That's not competing on features, that's using something you sell in one area to irrecoverably damage a competitor's product in an underhanded fashion. They were, BTW, convicted of this.
there is nothing - NOTHING - stopping superior alternatives from being adopted, if they are sufficiently better.
OS2Warp ran Windows applications better than Windows 3.1 did. It multithreaded and multitasked, and was pretty stable... an impressive feat for a Dos-based system. What did Microsoft do? They charged all of their system manufacturers based on how many systems they sold, not how many systems with Windows they sold. In other words, if you were a mixed house and wanted to sell OS2 Warp-based systems, each system you sold with OS2 Warp would cost you one OS2 Warp license you used and one Windows license you didn't and could never use. Thus, Microsoft used their position very directly to prevent competitors from getting on shelves, in a fashion completely illegal. They were, BTW, convicted of this.
there is nothing - NOTHING - stopping superior alternatives from being adopted, if they are sufficiently better.
You can't engage in illegal anticompetitive behaviors and still represent something as an even playing field. Period. I'm sorry if this sounds patronizing to you, but it's a pretty easy concept. If there was a way I could explain it that was complicated and difficult I would.
Not all Monopolies are evil or behave in an anticompetitive fashion. While Intel's hands aren't squeaky clean, it did decide to largely compete based upon power and marketing when rivals appeared. Google has a near-monopoly on search activities, and it hasn't abused that position. I can only think of one example of outright sabotage of interoperability with a competitor's parts from Shimano. But with Microsoft the list of abuses is very, very long. They even did a lot of anticompetitive stuff that failed, like bundling Messenger into every copy of Windows, refusing to allow it to be uninstalled, and if it found that you did uninstall it, the bloody OS would reinstall it. Or their attempts to corrupt Java (which, BTW, they were convicted of). Or their attempts to patent-en
It's their source, they wrote it, they paid for it, they developed it, they should not have to share it with anyone they don't want to.
It's my gun. I bought it. I cleaned it. I blew someone's head off with it. I shouldn't be forced to give it to the police.
Face it, Microsoft has broken the law repeatedly. They've used their position to crush competition on multiple occasions in multiple ways. They've outright stolen competitor's ideas and code, they've used their OS to cause errors in competing software, they've obscured their file format so much that each new version of Word must include a miniature version of the previous Word file reader in order to read it. They've used their position as a monopoly seller to try and corrupt Java, to drive Netscape into the ground. They've fed bad web pages intentionally to competing browsers. There is a ton more out there if you want to go digging, I've only scratched the surface.
They made a tool. They abused a tool badly. Reparations were attempted with the company on specific issues. If Microsoft enters an area where they're actively in contempt of court, they can and should have that tool taken away. It would happen to any other company or individual trying to pull the same stunts. If I owned a resturant and a meat factory, and used my meat factory to sneak maggots into the food of my resturant competitors, and then I snubbed my nose at the court and refused their judgement, I'd lose my business. Plain and simple. Why would this be any different?
Personally I think that opening Windows (and forcing it to stay open) without removing their copyright would be far more than enough to allow competitors to create compatible alternatives, giving them a fair footing in an open market.
Oh, and add to that list they've not only falsified court documents, they've falsified evidence they then showed to an open court.
The banks in Switzerland that hold their money? Officers of the company for non-compliance as they travel the world?
You can't violate a country's laws, get caught, and decide to go home instead of facing the penalties. Even US courts would recognize that. It's not a question of whether or not they want to make this deal. It's a question of how hard can the international court system come down on them if they try to hide from justice. Considering how difficult it would be fore MS to actually hide, they're far better off trying to derail the court proceedings.
Very true. However, I like to use the word "proof" because whenever the word "theory" gets used these days it's generally used to discredit things that people don't have real evidence or arguments against. The "theory" of evolution. The Big Bang "theory." The "theory" of global warming. Would you bet your children's safety on the "theory" that Saddam Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction?
Theories have gotten a bad name recently. Then again, your post is technically correct, in theory.
Normally on a disk the magnetic fields run flat along the top, like what would happen if you lay a series of pencils down on a notebook. Some of the pencils face one way and some the other. The different facing pencils represent a bit, either a one or a zero, depending on if they are facing left or right.
For a "3d" disk, take all of those pencils and stand them on end, so that they are either pointing towards you or down towards the paper. Now you can pack a lot more in there without (theoretically) bleeding over into eachother.
Personally I was hoping for some hypersensitive way to detect and manipulate multiple layers of magnetic media, like the name would imply. But overall this is a nice step forward in increasing density on a 2D platter.
Preach it brother! And add to that list time dialation, length dialation, non simultaneity, spontaneous quantum particle creation, particle smearing, the particle-wave duality, 2-slit experiments, splitting atoms, bowling balls and feathers falling at the same speeds, and the earth being round. Crackpottery, all.
Geez, just because you don't understand it doesn't make it wrong. Weirder stuff has already been proven.
I must say, the whole article sounds a lot like sour grapes. He's predicting the fall of the MMPORPG that burst onto the scene and captured more players than all other MMPORPG's combined in less than three months. And why the fall? Because, the theory goes, games that are easy and fun to get into must not have a lot going for the hardcore player. So, like Diablo, World of Warcraft will be a flash in the pan compared to deeper games with richer gameplay like, erm, Everquest. Right. Deep gameplay, that Everquest. City of Heroes must also not have any longevity because it's accessible, and so City of Heroes should be due for a crash too... Any day now... It's only been a year, give that crash some time.
Basically, he dismisses Planetside and CoH as just games without a "real" online component, and thereby dismisses the fact that "real" people pay to play them online. He talks about how the gameplay is "novel" and somehow equates that with not worth playing. Like DDR, it's just a flash-in-the-pan novelty. Apparently, non-novel game ideas, like selecting "attack" from a menu a million times, are really what is driving the gaming industry.
That there should be more high-level content in WoW is a valid concern. But you're talking about a game which now rakes in almost twenty million dollars per month. If that isn't enough cash to make some white dragons of infinite hitpoints, I don't know what is.
Look at eveyr single socialist/communist state - every sing one, without fail, regulated speech and ensured that it was politically correct.
Look at every single socialist / communist state - every single one, without fail, had people paid to promote things they didn't believe to get money from rich people who wanted into power or who wanted to stay in power, and who greased their hands in return.
Paid speech isn't free. It costs more than just money.
Link to the PDF.
It's a general ordinance referring to "electioneering communication." Essentially, if you spend over 1,000 dollars specifically trying to promote a single candidate, in any media, you have to register this for sake of tracking election funding. And that's it. The bill defines "electioneering communication" as any communication to broadcast, cable, radio, internet, or telephone, or mailings, flyers, doorhangers, pamphlets, brochures, cards, signs, billboards, facsimiles, or printed advertisements that: refers to a clearly identified candidate for City elective office or a City elective officer who is the subject of a recall election; and is distrubuted within 90 days to an election for the City elective office sought by the candidate or a recall election regarding the City elective officer to 500 or more individuals who are registered to vote or eligible to register to vote in the election or recall election. There shall be a rebuttable presumption that any broadcast, cable, satellite, or radio communication and any sign, billboard or printed advertisement is distributed to 500 or more individuals who are eligible to vote...
This is a minor piece of campaign finance accountability. You can't buy thousands of dollars of airtime for a candidate without registering that with the city. It mentions the internet in passing, once, and no where else.
And to be eligible, you have to have spent 1,000 dollars in the 3 months prior to get a candidate elected. How much of your blog is devoted to getting a candidate elected? Is your blog costing you 4,000 dollars a year?
The ordinance makes explicit exceptions for spoken communication, news stories, communications to all members of a specific subgroup, communications during a debate, anything on bumper stickers, pins, stickers, hat bands, badges, ribbons, or other memorobelia, etc. While the 1,000 dollar threshold generally rules out having to register to be a blogger, if people were really worried about it, they could add such a thing here.
Haven't we picked you up as an antipatriotic malcontent terrorist yet?
Already done. He wrote that from prison on his PSP.
It may sound funny, but this is a common practice in big business. You enter a new market, you subsidize the hell out of your product using money earned elsewhere. This forces your competitors out of business. Once your competitors are dead, you raise prices, and make a move into another market.
And, of course, you do all of this with cheap Chinese labor. At least the Chinese don't offshore.
Exactly. If people are forced to a different mail system, there is a good chance that it will either be a non-MS system, or at least a battle ground that OE/etc doesn't have as strong a foothold in.
Generally, the thing that seems to be replacing
E-mail is I.M.. You can communicate instantaneously and informally, even if the person is not there. And, unfortunatly for Microsoft the king of IM is AIM, despite their Frick'in required copy of MS Messenger which they should be sent to hell for which pops up every few seconds like it's posessed by a deranged clippy and which you can't get rid of without hacking the system and if you use MS's listed and tenuous uninstall procedure it will just reinstall it's bloody self when you update... Ahem, where was I? Oh yes, people get driven to Instant Messenging services, an area where Microsoft has traditionally not done very well.
I do applaud them for their efforts in stopping SPAM though. We could all definitely use their help in the matter.
What's even more surprising is that that the editor who approved the article linked to something inside of it, proving that he actually read it.
This has to be a record of some sort. Not only did the poster read the article, but it isn't a dupe and there aren't obvious spelling or grammar mistakes. I think overlooking the possible copyright issue is ok, given that this is obviously some sort of god-given miracle.
This is basically true, but many counter examples exist. Fight Club was improved in it's transition to the big screen. Arguably The Godfather and The Shawshank Redemption were as good at the books. I'm sure there will be a generation of people saying that The Lord of the Rings movies are better than the books in that they cut out some of the fat, a view with which I agree.
The Running Man movie was better than the book. Stand By Me... Why is Stephen King coming up so often?
Battlefield Earth was hideous, but no worse than the books. Starship Troopers was more entertaining as a movie than the short story upon which it is based.
Southpark: BLU was as funny as the TV show, and it had catchy musical numbers about destroying Canada, so it wins.
Several of Kurosawa's movies are based upon Japanese legends, and while the legends never interested me the movies were captivating.
Star Wars: KOTR is much better than Star Wars: TPM or TCW.
Rainbow 6 the game was better than the novel it was based upon. GoldenEye for the N64 was better than the so-so movie that spawned it.
The Chronicles of Riddick game was far better than The Chronicles of Riddick movie.
Mad TV was better than Mad Magazine. Pokemon the cartoon was a lot less tedious than Pokemon the game.
Tim Burton's Batman was better than pretty much all of the batmen that came before that time. Pee Wee's Big Adventure was better than Pee Wee's Playhouse.
For various reasons, the West Side Story movie was better than the West Side Story stage production. The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy book was as good if not better than the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio drama.
Tony Hawk's life, while great, was no where near as great as Tony Hawk the video game.
Most of the worries around player control doesn't come from the artistic side of things. People have a way of wanting to do things that will destroy the experience for them. If you let FPS players create their own weapons, they would create the "kill everyone but me in one flash" gun. If you let the players choose all of the parameters of the game, they frequently choose settings that are boring, not fun, etc... like 5-square mile maps in a 2-person combat game. If you give MMPORPG players the ability to advance their level by walking 20 feet to the left, digging radishes for an hour, and walking 20 feet to the right to the store, they will do it, and complain that your game is boring as hell.
The artistic side of things comes into play, as if the player destroys the artisttic side of the game then they're probably also ruining the aesthetic experience. But in general practical needs of play outweigh any sort of personal thing the developer is attempting to communicate.
I'm not saying don't expose the game parameters, I'm saying you have to be careful when you do. It's not as simple as just letting the player make the perfect game for you... It's your responsibility to make sure they have a good time, not theirs.
How would this be different than, say, buying a Vaio, installing Linux on it, configuring KDE to look like Windows at a cursory glance, and returning it?
Hey, that's not a bad idea. Thanks! Now I've got a project for the weekend.