Spoken like a true cluebie. Simple Directmedia Layer is actually a much better solution and runs on everything under the sun. Super simple to use (especially compared to DX), OpenGL works right alongside, and it supports "all those other things" you need for making games and not just doing 3D.
It's not like Microsoft could sell any LESS copies than zero, so they decided it's a good place to promote free software.
Ah, but this isn't precisely true. Reread the parent post; over the long term, Microsoft certainly could do worse than selling zero copies: dwindling mindshare. Sure, you can have an entire nation not paying for your product, but as long as they're still using it, they're still addicted to it. They want it, because they need it, and eventually this is something you might be able to profit on.
When they stop using it, they stop caring, they stop needing, and they move onto something else: something a competitor might profit from. Something, then, that a competitor might start to encroach upon further marketplaces in the same manner. "Look, we stopped using Microsoft, here's how you can too."
Unfortunately for Microsoft, they've really been in a downward spiral for years now. Vista is just another demonstration of their inability to be relevant. This too is a sign they've gone from being the aggressive bully to the doddering fool no one cares about. It's a slow decline, and they will likely never be completely gone, but it is decline: they are the hollow men; their world ends not with a bang but a wimper.
I don't recall much scoffing at Dennis Kucinich's attempt to hold impeachment hearings on President Bush. No, I guess that was all about a righteous avenger shining a spotlight on The Greatest Evil Our Planet Has Ever Known.
Another idea is to fine anyone who votes for a bill that is later found unconstitutional.
Hell send 'em to jail. They broke the Constitution---the highest law in the land. If that's not worth some jail time, what is? What, it'll cause lawmaking to grind to a halt and only the most well-considered and constitutionally-sound laws to be passed? Awww...;-)
Personally I've always thought of the Wii as more of a gimmick and that this was all a fad, but after 10 million units sold it's still going strong. So that shows what I know.
Only that you don't know that fads sell a lot of things. This is the point. Furby, for instance, sold 40 million units. One of the most indicative things of the Wii's fad nature is the fact it's selling a huge number of units, add-ons, etc... and there are next to no real games, leading one to ask what people are actually doing with them. People want to own a Wii because it's been equated with "cool" or "trendy" along with artificial scarcity to make people pull the trigger with less thought when they see one.
What's sad is that Nintendo is not using its reattained popularity to actually move the industry forward; instead it chooses to sit on its success and produce crap. With the supposed ease of development, we should be seeing tons of new games, at least a few a month. Instead, there is only braindead crap and a handful of anything worth playing.
In the end, the Wii is doing a great job for what it was meant to do. But it was not meant for gaming; it's meant of generating hype and income.
Upper management of the company I work at recently declared that all new development should be done with a single combination of development tools, language, and framework.
Find a new company. And let us know which, so we can divest. Stock symbol? Riddle? C'mon.
Note, I am by no means an Apple/Mac fan. "User" at best; I consider my mac like the rest of my music gear: as an appliance. My primary OS is Linux.
Maybe it's Apple competing with Windows that's somehow gravitationally moved the Mac experience closer to the Windows one, even as Windows has sucked ever closer to Apple's innovations. But it used to be easy for a beginner (or just an "uninformed expert" like me) to "just do it" with a Mac, with a much shallower, barely noticeable learning curve.
I call BS. The changes to OSX haven't been that big in past years---in fact, I've found them to be rather minimal tweaks at best. I recently moved from early 10.3 (on an original mac mini) to the latest 10.5 (on an imac). The changes I notice? The dock looks slightly different and has stacks now. Multiple desktops are builtin. There are probably a few other minor things.
Comparing this to "the windows experience" (which I sometimes must deal with), there are far more things I notice: in OSX, it's obvious and easy to find how to do stuff, especially configuring the system. Everything is in one place. I don't have to hunt through 3 or more different control panels and hope to happen upon the dialog that does what I want. Everything pretty much just works in OSX, and the complexities aren't hidden, they're simply organized in a very accessible fashion.
What we need is a GUI revolution. The iPhone offers one, with its multitouch innovations. As does Nintendo's Wii, with its unconventional new controllers.
I call more BS. There is little "innovative" or "unconventional" in either of these examples. The iPhone is, for the most part, single-touch-oriented with a conventional touchscreen interface. It has pretty graphics and scaling, and there are a few multitouch things you can do (that often work poorly). There is a bit of gesture recognition, which is hardly new. The Wii, likewise, has nothing particularly innovative in its UI. It's almost entirely mouse-like point and click in its interface components and the better games. The few games where it manages to use motion sensing in an "intuitive" fashion, it's anti-innovation: natural mimicry is what the GUI has been about for decades.
I hope Apple will spend the next year "streamlining" MacOS into something more simple and immediately usable, the way Apple has delivered in the past.
OK, so you're bored and you want a flashy new "streamlined" toy that doesn't work like anything else, but somehow magically delivers usability. That's not how it works. There is no magic. If you want a revolutionary, innovative, streamlined UI, go try out blender. It's quite unlike anything else, and once you learn it, it's extremely fast and easy to get things done. And it's got a hell of a learning curve to get there.
If you want something you can use without a lot of effort, it's going to be conventional. Maybe candy-coated so you don't notice so much, but it's going to be as conventional as anything. People are used to mice, clicking on icons and buttons, and menus. The problem is, once people are used to something, getting them to change or accept something new is difficult to impossible.
For what you want, Apple is doing the right thing: releasing new, more polished versions of its OS, with enough new shinies to keep your attention. Unfortunately they haven't talked about them yet, and you're starting to wander, but I'm sure we'll hear about something soon.
Two things I find funny about D&D 4E in comparison to GURPS 4e (my generally-preferred system). Remember when GURPS 4e came out? Everyone whined it was too expensive. Now D&D 4E is over $100 for the PHB/DMG/MM basic set (no pun intended), though of course you can find it online for cheaper. Yet no one seems to be complaining.
On the upside, many of the things that GURPS 4e did right D&D 4E is also doing right. Much improved rules layout and general unification/simplification of "stupid things". I was very much not a fan of d20 3.x for this exact reason; the entire ruleset was vomited into the book with what seemed like little attention to organization. (Remember GURPS 3e sidebars?)
That said, D&D 4E is very much still the quick hack'n'slash ruleset. Of course, it doesn't have to be, but it certainly doesn't have the attention to character personality advantages/disadvantages and all the non-combat skills that GURPS does. But then not much else does, and that's why we all love GURPS, isn't it.;-)
Ah you must not be using the Microsoft Certified Term(tm). The MCT "spam" actually means "any non-Microsoft-approved message," such as other advertisers or YouTube links, for instance.
There's probably room for a lucrative business based around this-- figuring out the most elegant way to archive and retain meaningful access to data under various computing/disaster scenarios. Hey, I do consulting.:)
I think including Rob Weir's response is topical, but let's be honest here. He's pretty much the single most outspoken critic of OOXML. That he and Durusau are examining the same situation and drawing very different conclusions isn't much of a surprise.
Wow, yet again, the exact same fallacy moderated up, and it's the exact same person espousing it, about the exact same subject, using the same phraseology. Moderators, I refer you.
Again, just because someone is an advocate, does not mean they are wrong. Just because someone supports an issue does not make their opinion on the issue less valid. The truthiness you seek is not to be had.
To use the same analogy I did last time: Let's be honest here. You're pretty much an outspoken critic of Rob Weir. That you're drawing a different conclusion isn't much of a surprise. Or the fact you're using the same informal fallacy to support your arguments.
He might well be right, but I'd be more inclined to believe it from someone who doesn't have a corporate interest in picking data points to fit the line he would like to draw.
So you won't verify anything, or even check, but rather you feel that the exact same thing from someone else would be more true. Essentially, despite the facts, you don't feel the truthiness is sufficient.
By your logic, you may well be right, but you may also just be a shill for Microsoft. I'd be more inclined to believe someone else who didn't have a corporate interesting in picking data points to disparage the argument you'd like to make. Or maybe if you had an argument to make not based on a well-known informal fallacy.
The blackberry is almost exclusively java, and while the apps aren't flashy, they get the job done and cover everything I do every day. All the google apps are Java, as others have mentioned; the blackberry has others including a Google Talk client (blackberry exclusive), BBMaps, etc. Plus there's MidpSSH, which, while laggy over EDGE (what do you expect), works and is very portable.
Is Java great? No: Personally, I hate it. Is it still a good thing to have because everyone under the sun uses it and there are good apps? Yes. Is it open? Also yes.
Yeah, I've always thought that if the universe were a simulation, things like the double-slit experiment could be explained in terms of breaking the simulation. You don't actually want to simulate every particle in the universe, so edge cases (like a single photon) end up breaking down.
I'm not a physicist, but I am a programmer, so that's why these things seem to make sense, I guess.
It would be a better parallel to say "How is this different from Clear Channel asking...", but I don't know if it's actually the case that Clear Channel is spearheading that.
Additionally, it's still different in that the RIAA is demonstrably evil, and Google is not (overlooking paranoid-delusional whiners).
Why must things be either decreed by heaven (whether there is a God there or just "Ideas") or by popular convention to be true?
Cannot truth stand on its own?
Because India and China adopted an education system, that since adopting, has lead them to become intellectual bulls in their own right. Japan, Korea etc didn't adopt the old British system. What I failed to mention is that the new British education system is failing at school level. It's no longer competitive with the old system. The US has been in this rut for a long time now; and it seems that many other modern, western countries are following suit. Technology seems to have a big influence. The number of undergrads I meet who can't explain very simple maths to me is distressing. The fact that almost every Chinese and Indian student I've had the pleasure of competing with over the last 5 years have beaten me and almost everyone I know in math exams is frightening.
The point is that this isn't how it worked: India didn't just say "let's have an education system and see what happens," then magically they got "intellectual" (by which I hope you mean "competitive in the technological arena," as this is hardly the only useful knowledge and education one can have). Rather the governments said, "we can't do X and we can't do Y, but we could get really good at Z," and so they established various systems and subsidized various universities and business endeavors, and made it really easy for people to "outsource," and thus the technology industry grew quickly.
Really, your whole rant comes down to "our education system works, everyone should focus on using it, rescue those savages from their savagery through education and medicine."
The OLPC endeavor on the other hand takes a different approach: a new approach, one more suited toward the culture and environment in question. Contrary to popular opinion, it is not about saying "computers! that'll fix it!" In reality, it's about addressing the problems in a novel way:
Schoolhouses are expensive. OLPC: Schoolhouses are for housing kids for communication. Maybe we can communicate differently, and thus save the expense and maintenance of a schoolhouse.
Supplies are expensive: pencils, paper, curriculum distribution. OLPC: Let's provide e-book reader capabilities and something to type on and communicate wirelessly with. Then we don't need these disposable resources.
Collaboration is good. OLPC: Let's help out by allowing easier collaboration over a wider geography.
Literacy, logic, math, engineering, and software development are useful skills. OLPC: Let's provide the tools.
Will it work? Maybe not. Maybe it'll be a complete flop and then we'll know. But then again it could easily lead to whole generations of kids growing up with a new culture of communication, collaboration, and sharing, with all the education they need. Maybe they can learn and develop themselves, rather than relying on constant outside funding. It's hard to say. But this is why we run such experiments. Don't run away from great potential just because "we have something that already works just fine for us."
Wow, I don't think I've read a more idiotic post about the OLPC yet.
What a lot of people don't realise is that most African's are fairly happy, and fairly adapted to their way of life. A computer won't help kids. A computer only helps administrators, and typists.
Utterly mindlessly wrong assertions. So African kids are "fairly happy": that sounds like a great reason to deny them computers. A computer won't help them, it "only helps administrators and typists"? Do you know anything about the OLPC project? What about providing teaching material, mathematics, and new ways to think? Even if you never use math and programming, learning them teaches you new ways to think, which is valuable. If just one in a thousand of these kids starts inventing and improving their society...
Sure, no one needs a computer. We could all be living in huts and caves and picking fleas off each other. But that doesn't help anyone, does it?
One of the projects I did while in Zambia was to help renovate a school. African's would rather have more materials for their schools, working radios they can teach with, or more access to simple life saving treatment such as blood or TB vaccines.
The point of OLPC is that you don't have to spend tens of thousands on buildings, textbooks, and other items which will need yearly replenishing and maintenance to serve only a few kids. Rather it's $100 per kid for physical materials, flat scale (and easy to donate). (Yes, it's more now, but this is the goal.)
Vaccines? Go take it up with the drug companies.
A rural teacher who I met simply wanted bars in the windows (holes) of his Oxfam built school so kids wouldn't climb in a steal what little supplied he had. Paper and pens were far far more useful than computers.
Did you even read this after you typed it? Yeah your way is much better: instead of giving the kids the supplies so they can use them---supplies without resource constraints, at that---we should instead lock them up so they can only be used under direction. Instead of giving the kids a laptop which doesn't require ink or dead trees, pens and paper sound like a great idea.
We have to look at India and China. They're becoming the world Math and Scientific elite. Employing an education system Britain abandoned 40 years ago in favour of modernising. Educations works.
How is this even remotely relevant? The good ol' British education system is the only thing that works? This is the real reason for India focusing on math and technology? (And China is different too. Why you didn't mention other countries... Japan? South Korea? US? France? I guess not all of these fit your nice little theory.)
Even though I dislike most religions and the dangerous ideologies they breed, religion in many developing countries is a key focus point for community driven development - people like to pitch in where there is a support structure; but support structures need money! Even if it's just food to sustain some of the 80% unemployed in Zimbabwe so they don't take to looting, hostage taking or drugs.
Another complete non sequitur. How is this relevant to OLPC? Can religious organizations not donate to OLPC? Is donating OLPC mutually exclusive with donating to other efforts?
There are better things to donate money to: such as anti-corruption schemes or Médecins Sans Frontières.
In your opinion. After reading what you have to say, I'm not sure your opinion is worth much. Additionally, if you didn't catch the rhetorical nature of the question above, it is possible to support more than one effort at a time. Maybe one that improves health and one that improves education.
Take your pick, GO TO A DEVELOPING COUNTRY AND SPONSOR A VILLAG
I have never found any need for a mouse with Resistance (or Warhawk). Both seem optimized for the controller. I'm not even sure you can use a mouse. I know a lot of FPS's (which Warhawk technically isn't) suffer if you don't use a mouse, but Resistance doesn't seem to have that issue. Maybe it's just really subtle aim-assist.
Get it for Resistance, Warhawk, Motorstorm, and Uncharted (next week) too. Maybe Eye of Judgment---if you liked Triple Triad in FF8, it's sortof like that, but way cooler and deeper (and online). If you don't have a 360, there's a lot of cross-platform stuff too (Stranglehold, Simpsons, etc). Plus all the smaller downloadable stuff. Basically, if you have a PS3, you won't be lacking for things to play.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, well, since an Anonymous Coward on slashdot has rated them MS-like, that definitely clinches it. Let's not confuse the issue with facts.
The sheen of truth you see is a reflection on the shiny surface scum.
Spoken like a true cluebie. Simple Directmedia Layer is actually a much better solution and runs on everything under the sun. Super simple to use (especially compared to DX), OpenGL works right alongside, and it supports "all those other things" you need for making games and not just doing 3D.
Ah, but this isn't precisely true. Reread the parent post; over the long term, Microsoft certainly could do worse than selling zero copies: dwindling mindshare. Sure, you can have an entire nation not paying for your product, but as long as they're still using it, they're still addicted to it. They want it, because they need it, and eventually this is something you might be able to profit on.
When they stop using it, they stop caring, they stop needing, and they move onto something else: something a competitor might profit from. Something, then, that a competitor might start to encroach upon further marketplaces in the same manner. "Look, we stopped using Microsoft, here's how you can too."
Unfortunately for Microsoft, they've really been in a downward spiral for years now. Vista is just another demonstration of their inability to be relevant. This too is a sign they've gone from being the aggressive bully to the doddering fool no one cares about. It's a slow decline, and they will likely never be completely gone, but it is decline: they are the hollow men; their world ends not with a bang but a wimper.
Kucinich is after Cthulhu?
Hell send 'em to jail. They broke the Constitution---the highest law in the land. If that's not worth some jail time, what is? What, it'll cause lawmaking to grind to a halt and only the most well-considered and constitutionally-sound laws to be passed? Awww... ;-)
Only that you don't know that fads sell a lot of things. This is the point. Furby, for instance, sold 40 million units. One of the most indicative things of the Wii's fad nature is the fact it's selling a huge number of units, add-ons, etc... and there are next to no real games, leading one to ask what people are actually doing with them. People want to own a Wii because it's been equated with "cool" or "trendy" along with artificial scarcity to make people pull the trigger with less thought when they see one.
What's sad is that Nintendo is not using its reattained popularity to actually move the industry forward; instead it chooses to sit on its success and produce crap. With the supposed ease of development, we should be seeing tons of new games, at least a few a month. Instead, there is only braindead crap and a handful of anything worth playing.
In the end, the Wii is doing a great job for what it was meant to do. But it was not meant for gaming; it's meant of generating hype and income.
Find a new company. And let us know which, so we can divest. Stock symbol? Riddle? C'mon.
Note, I am by no means an Apple/Mac fan. "User" at best; I consider my mac like the rest of my music gear: as an appliance. My primary OS is Linux.
I call BS. The changes to OSX haven't been that big in past years---in fact, I've found them to be rather minimal tweaks at best. I recently moved from early 10.3 (on an original mac mini) to the latest 10.5 (on an imac). The changes I notice? The dock looks slightly different and has stacks now. Multiple desktops are builtin. There are probably a few other minor things.
Comparing this to "the windows experience" (which I sometimes must deal with), there are far more things I notice: in OSX, it's obvious and easy to find how to do stuff, especially configuring the system. Everything is in one place. I don't have to hunt through 3 or more different control panels and hope to happen upon the dialog that does what I want. Everything pretty much just works in OSX, and the complexities aren't hidden, they're simply organized in a very accessible fashion.
I call more BS. There is little "innovative" or "unconventional" in either of these examples. The iPhone is, for the most part, single-touch-oriented with a conventional touchscreen interface. It has pretty graphics and scaling, and there are a few multitouch things you can do (that often work poorly). There is a bit of gesture recognition, which is hardly new. The Wii, likewise, has nothing particularly innovative in its UI. It's almost entirely mouse-like point and click in its interface components and the better games. The few games where it manages to use motion sensing in an "intuitive" fashion, it's anti-innovation: natural mimicry is what the GUI has been about for decades.
OK, so you're bored and you want a flashy new "streamlined" toy that doesn't work like anything else, but somehow magically delivers usability. That's not how it works. There is no magic. If you want a revolutionary, innovative, streamlined UI, go try out blender. It's quite unlike anything else, and once you learn it, it's extremely fast and easy to get things done. And it's got a hell of a learning curve to get there.
If you want something you can use without a lot of effort, it's going to be conventional. Maybe candy-coated so you don't notice so much, but it's going to be as conventional as anything. People are used to mice, clicking on icons and buttons, and menus. The problem is, once people are used to something, getting them to change or accept something new is difficult to impossible.
For what you want, Apple is doing the right thing: releasing new, more polished versions of its OS, with enough new shinies to keep your attention. Unfortunately they haven't talked about them yet, and you're starting to wander, but I'm sure we'll hear about something soon.
Two things I find funny about D&D 4E in comparison to GURPS 4e (my generally-preferred system). Remember when GURPS 4e came out? Everyone whined it was too expensive. Now D&D 4E is over $100 for the PHB/DMG/MM basic set (no pun intended), though of course you can find it online for cheaper. Yet no one seems to be complaining.
On the upside, many of the things that GURPS 4e did right D&D 4E is also doing right. Much improved rules layout and general unification/simplification of "stupid things". I was very much not a fan of d20 3.x for this exact reason; the entire ruleset was vomited into the book with what seemed like little attention to organization. (Remember GURPS 3e sidebars?)
That said, D&D 4E is very much still the quick hack'n'slash ruleset. Of course, it doesn't have to be, but it certainly doesn't have the attention to character personality advantages/disadvantages and all the non-combat skills that GURPS does. But then not much else does, and that's why we all love GURPS, isn't it. ;-)
Because wasting time taking inane tests on the internet shows a certain level of intelligence, if you get my drift. ;)
Nerd ants!
Ah you must not be using the Microsoft Certified Term(tm). The MCT "spam" actually means "any non-Microsoft-approved message," such as other advertisers or YouTube links, for instance.
Find a chisel.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right...,
Wow, yet again, the exact same fallacy moderated up, and it's the exact same person espousing it, about the exact same subject, using the same phraseology . Moderators, I refer you.
Again, just because someone is an advocate, does not mean they are wrong. Just because someone supports an issue does not make their opinion on the issue less valid. The truthiness you seek is not to be had.
To use the same analogy I did last time: Let's be honest here. You're pretty much an outspoken critic of Rob Weir. That you're drawing a different conclusion isn't much of a surprise. Or the fact you're using the same informal fallacy to support your arguments.
So you won't verify anything, or even check, but rather you feel that the exact same thing from someone else would be more true. Essentially, despite the facts, you don't feel the truthiness is sufficient.
By your logic, you may well be right, but you may also just be a shill for Microsoft. I'd be more inclined to believe someone else who didn't have a corporate interesting in picking data points to disparage the argument you'd like to make. Or maybe if you had an argument to make not based on a well-known informal fallacy.
The blackberry is almost exclusively java, and while the apps aren't flashy, they get the job done and cover everything I do every day. All the google apps are Java, as others have mentioned; the blackberry has others including a Google Talk client (blackberry exclusive), BBMaps, etc. Plus there's MidpSSH, which, while laggy over EDGE (what do you expect), works and is very portable.
Is Java great? No: Personally, I hate it. Is it still a good thing to have because everyone under the sun uses it and there are good apps? Yes. Is it open? Also yes.
Yeah, I've always thought that if the universe were a simulation, things like the double-slit experiment could be explained in terms of breaking the simulation. You don't actually want to simulate every particle in the universe, so edge cases (like a single photon) end up breaking down.
I'm not a physicist, but I am a programmer, so that's why these things seem to make sense, I guess.
It would be a better parallel to say "How is this different from Clear Channel asking...", but I don't know if it's actually the case that Clear Channel is spearheading that.
Additionally, it's still different in that the RIAA is demonstrably evil, and Google is not (overlooking paranoid-delusional whiners).
What is truth, and who says so?
The point is that this isn't how it worked: India didn't just say "let's have an education system and see what happens," then magically they got "intellectual" (by which I hope you mean "competitive in the technological arena," as this is hardly the only useful knowledge and education one can have). Rather the governments said, "we can't do X and we can't do Y, but we could get really good at Z," and so they established various systems and subsidized various universities and business endeavors, and made it really easy for people to "outsource," and thus the technology industry grew quickly.
Really, your whole rant comes down to "our education system works, everyone should focus on using it, rescue those savages from their savagery through education and medicine."
The OLPC endeavor on the other hand takes a different approach: a new approach, one more suited toward the culture and environment in question. Contrary to popular opinion, it is not about saying "computers! that'll fix it!" In reality, it's about addressing the problems in a novel way:
Will it work? Maybe not. Maybe it'll be a complete flop and then we'll know. But then again it could easily lead to whole generations of kids growing up with a new culture of communication, collaboration, and sharing, with all the education they need. Maybe they can learn and develop themselves, rather than relying on constant outside funding. It's hard to say. But this is why we run such experiments. Don't run away from great potential just because "we have something that already works just fine for us."
Wow, I don't think I've read a more idiotic post about the OLPC yet.
Utterly mindlessly wrong assertions. So African kids are "fairly happy": that sounds like a great reason to deny them computers. A computer won't help them, it "only helps administrators and typists"? Do you know anything about the OLPC project? What about providing teaching material, mathematics, and new ways to think? Even if you never use math and programming, learning them teaches you new ways to think, which is valuable. If just one in a thousand of these kids starts inventing and improving their society...
Sure, no one needs a computer. We could all be living in huts and caves and picking fleas off each other. But that doesn't help anyone, does it?
The point of OLPC is that you don't have to spend tens of thousands on buildings, textbooks, and other items which will need yearly replenishing and maintenance to serve only a few kids. Rather it's $100 per kid for physical materials, flat scale (and easy to donate). (Yes, it's more now, but this is the goal.)
Vaccines? Go take it up with the drug companies.
Did you even read this after you typed it? Yeah your way is much better: instead of giving the kids the supplies so they can use them---supplies without resource constraints, at that---we should instead lock them up so they can only be used under direction. Instead of giving the kids a laptop which doesn't require ink or dead trees, pens and paper sound like a great idea.
How is this even remotely relevant? The good ol' British education system is the only thing that works? This is the real reason for India focusing on math and technology? (And China is different too. Why you didn't mention other countries... Japan? South Korea? US? France? I guess not all of these fit your nice little theory.)
Another complete non sequitur. How is this relevant to OLPC? Can religious organizations not donate to OLPC? Is donating OLPC mutually exclusive with donating to other efforts?
In your opinion. After reading what you have to say, I'm not sure your opinion is worth much. Additionally, if you didn't catch the rhetorical nature of the question above, it is possible to support more than one effort at a time. Maybe one that improves health and one that improves education.
I have never found any need for a mouse with Resistance (or Warhawk). Both seem optimized for the controller. I'm not even sure you can use a mouse. I know a lot of FPS's (which Warhawk technically isn't) suffer if you don't use a mouse, but Resistance doesn't seem to have that issue. Maybe it's just really subtle aim-assist.
Get it for Resistance, Warhawk, Motorstorm, and Uncharted (next week) too. Maybe Eye of Judgment---if you liked Triple Triad in FF8, it's sortof like that, but way cooler and deeper (and online). If you don't have a 360, there's a lot of cross-platform stuff too (Stranglehold, Simpsons, etc). Plus all the smaller downloadable stuff. Basically, if you have a PS3, you won't be lacking for things to play.