I generally eschew EA games. It take alot for me to plunk down my increasingly limited gaming budget down for one of their games, when they are such a strongarming company.
That said, I'm glad they are taking this stand, and I hope they follow suit and kill the Xbox as well. The Xbox deserves to die just as the Dreamcast did. Still won't buy any EA games, but I will applaud any effort that helps the Xbox down the shitter. Call it vengeance and you'd be correct. Microsoft thinks they can do whatever they want, wherever they want. I find it certainly amusing that they are being taught a lesson, and hopefully driven out of the console business. No, EA isn't a saint, but I have no problem with two devils locking horns, and the greater devil losing the fight. EA just does games. MS wants their fingers in everything. IN the end, it's more important that they be brought down. EA's time will come.
Why, pray tell, should I give MS $300 more to play these games on the Xbox, when I can play them networked NOW for the cost of the Win98 I bought for games oh so long ago.
I'll answer for you, there's not a single reason. With a few notable exceptions, all the games Microsoft has brought out for the Xbox are PC ports, hired sequels to Dreamcast games, or games that get released for all platforms (like sports games).
Microsoft didn't get that 40 billion stockpile by being stupid and digging their heels in when the odds were against them. The dumbest thing they could do would be to dump billions into the Xbox if no one's buying it. Unless they all just collectively lose their minds and anything resembling financial sense...
The graphics don't determine whether a console lives or dies.
The Dreamcast was head and shoulders above both the PS1 and the N64 graphically, but they bother handed Sega it's lungs back. Just because something has better graphics, doesn't mean a damn thing. If there were one answer to anything, life would be a whole lot simpler.
Please people, get your heads out of the sand. This is far more complicated than what machine can push pixels faster.
Nothing on the Internet is anonymous. Even "anonymizers" just make it difficult to find the source, not impossible. If you want anonymity, stay the hell off the Internet. Everything you do can be traced to you. If you hadn't figured this out before, wake up. There is no right to anonymity. There shouldn't be.
...because in my opinion, it's a fetid pile of Windows wannabe crap, and you can quote me on that. First, off, even choosing the "minimal" settings in the initial setup screens when you launch it for the first time, there is more useless graphical crap cluttering my workspace than even Windows. And WHAT THE HELL IS WITH THE LITTLE ANIMATED ICONS NEXT TO THE MOUSE POINTER?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Ye gods, if I wanted that crap, I'd have stuck with the Win98 Plus! that came installed with one of my machines. You can't even turn them off. How in the world can something like this, in an open-sourced window manager for goodness sake, be an option you can't turn off? Hint boxes popping up all over the damn place. Animated "working" hourglasses in the toolbar. Why not just copy the Windows interface whole? I can't even used it on my 266 iMac (running only YellowDog Linux 2.2) because there's so much flash that I CANNOT TURN OFF that it slows the machine down to a crawl whenever I so much as launch a terminal window. Gnome, however, runs like a top, and doesn't have all this mandatory idiocy associated with it.
I used to like KDE alot, but I'm definitely sworn off it, now. And hell, with Gnome I can run KDE apps, and don't have to deal with all the wasted memory and processor.
If SAM were a decent graphical admin tool, I might agree with you, but by the gods it so is not. I believe that HP-UX is the oldest commercial UNIX (aside from AT&T) and it shows in its Byzantine presentation and operation. I've worked with AIX, Digital Unix, Solaris, BSD back when it wasn't Free, Net, or Open. The only commercial UNIX so intentionally thickheaded that I'd use HP-UX over it is SCO, which makes makes HP-UX look like a sysadmins wet dream.
Maybe no one you personally know uses Enlightenment, but I know a whole lot of people who do, myself included. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean everyone doesn't like it. Blah blah no man is an island blah blah.
As far as Alpha goes, there are a lot of pretty influential people within Compaq that are real big fans of Alpha and Tru64. Matter of fact, if you've ever been in the bowels of Compaqs datacenters, you'll see (or at least you would about a year ago) large patches of Digital blue. The fact that Tru64 and the Alpha are still around is mostly due to the tireless efforts of these kinds of people within Compaq (as well as those who were using Digital Unix before the Digital merger) but I've got the feeling that they're going to run up against the wall, if they haven't already. While I wish them well in keeping the Alpha and Tru64 around, I have the sinking feeling I should rather wish them well in the job search. Enron dying was bad enough for Houston. The jobs that HPaq is going to shed as a result of all this are going to really put it down for the count.
And I wish HP-UX would die as a result of this, but there isn't a chance in hell of that happening, realistically. Gods, I hate HP-UX.
Yeah, but people don't give a damn when Dell releases new machines 'cause it happens all the time. Dell also doesn't have the cult following that Apple does. I don't see Dell user groups springing up the world over.
And if the CEO and the board of directors has any concern for the welfare of their employees and for their own ability to make decisions regarding the fate of what was once their company, they will begin buying back their stock as soon as possible.
While some people may believe that it makes sense, it more risk than I am willing to take. I don't trust the market, especially not now. I don't trust anyone to be able to undergo the kind of pressures that publicly traded companies are under and come out clean. The dot-bomb and the Enron debacle only prove it for me. The system didn't work, and no one has done a damn thing to fix it.
Actually, i honestly only listen to Public Radio (and I do send money) and only watch PBS (though I don't really watch PBS anymore, and have therefore stopped financially supporting it). I just don't visit the most ad-invasive sites on the net, because the ones that do have a subscription-for-no-ads model aren't worth it. I'm considering doing the Gamespot subscription that was mentioned perviously on slashdot, as it's a service I used alot before the banner ads just got WAY too invasive and annoying. Until they actually get it up and running and I decide whether it's worth it or not, I'll use other less invasive services. Hell, I even pay a monthly fee to play Dark Age of Camelot, because I like it enough to pay $11/month for it. It's worth it to me.
While I will support directly programming and content that I use, and I think that's the best way, I think the networks complaining about PVRs stealing their ad revenue is ludicrous. It's no different from ad-removing VCRs (which have been around for a good long time without any complaint) muting the TV, pressing the pause button while commercials are on, or even fast-forwarding through the commercials. All of that can be done with almost any TV/VCR combination available today, and it accomplishes the exact same thing as PVRs. The ad-supported networks are obviously running scared from new technology that does the same thing as old technology that they just don't understand.
Perhaps the US market should move to a subscription-only model for television, something like it is in the UK. I'd certainly be willing to pay $5.00/month/channel to get the two or three channels that I would ever watch piped into my home, commercial free. Especially I can specify channel numbers for them. I don't want to have to turn to channels 26, 71, and 82 if those are the only channels I want. It ought to be easy enough to get some kind of interface that allows me to map those onto 1, 2, and 3, or whatever.
As it is, I won't pay $40 for a whole load of crap I will never use. The channels I would watch are just not worth it.
This is what you get when your company goes public. You don't become a millionaire, your job security is at the whim of a bunch of greedy stockholders. As far as I'm concerned, going public is merely a sign of greed by all but the largest companies that do it. I can't think of 20 dot-bomb companies that actually had any damn business going public.
This is the price you pay for agreeing to work for them. Not me, and not anymore. I've had it up to here with the greed of publicly traded companies, and I'm never working for one ever again if I have anything to say about it. They're more trouble than they're worth.
I can't count the number of companies I've done work for that had glaring flaws in their physical security practices. Like one door with Pentagon level security, and a back door with absolutely none. I've walked through doors on military bases I shouldn't have been able to get NEAR, and that was without even trying.
The sad fact is that a lot of organizations haven't dealt with that revelation in any kind of rational, or even internally consistent manner. They generally react with panic, and implement a whole lot of rashly designed security plans that sound complete, but are actually so riddled with holes they might as well have done nothing.
Those "more pressing concerns" are employees taking their time to use their mp3 players to screw your business.
Employees ARE the biggest risk to a company. They know all your weaknesses. They know where the valuables are stored. They are the biggest risk any company has, either directly (the employees stealing/selling your information to others/employee sabotage) or indirectly (social engineering/a third party extorting the information in some manner). Denying it is just being willfully blind.
However, a balance needs to be struck between rampant paranoia and just letting your employees do whatever they want. The former will drive your employees to hate you. The latter will allow the less scrupulous employees to rob you blind. The problem is that most large corporations have wholeheartedly embraced rampant paranoia because you can't "prove" trust, and corporations want metrics and other hard and fast ways of predicting and stopping losses. While their employees may despise them, the managers look at it as a known factor that they can plan for, and therefore, I believe, seem to go out of their way to foster distrust.
And anyway, in the security business, you're paid to be paranoid. Thankfully I learned to seperate my security work paid-paranoia from the rest of my life. There are alot of people out there who are trapped by it all the time.
If you actually look at the pages, what is now the low end was the high end model before this announcement, and is now $500 cheaper. The old 550mhz G4 laptops are no longer available from the Apple Store anymore. The new options are more expensive than what used to be on there, but they're better. Materials didn't magically start costing less.
This is nothing new. If you've been exposed to Apple sales literature, this is the kind of thing that their marketing weasels have been putting out for a good long time.
Jet Set Radio Future is the SEQUEL to JSR for the Dreamcast. I should certainly hope that it's much better for the Xbox.
As for Halo, FPSes shouldn't be played on consoles. The interface is just plain clumsy in comparison to the keyboard/mouse interface, and there's no ability to mod or import skins and the like. Those who like consoles to play FPSes, more power to you, but you're not getting the real deal. I don't care what kind of graphics the Xbox can pump out. They still have to be displayed on a regular television. I personally can't tell the difference between the Xbox's graphics and the PSX graphics on a regular TV. While I expect that the Xbox does look significantly better on an HDTV compatible television, exactly how many people do you think own HDTVs? If your answer is "more and more," let me be the first to laugh my ass off at you.
Maybe one or two people out of 500 can afford to drop $2000+ on a HDTV system, if that. If it would even fit in their living rooms wherever. Hell, I just bought a regular 27" TV, only to find out that it's too big for my large entertainment center. Technical specs will blind all the gadget hounds out there, but most people want price and games, both things the Xbox loses big on.
Nintendo, I will freely admit, is being very VERY slow out of the gate with their games. However, they did the same thing with the N64 and it didn't hurt them much. Nintendo relies on their licensing juggernaut to get consoles out the door. Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, et al, all give Nintendo a "get out of jail free card" when it comes to slow release cycles. Hell, you can't buy Mario World 64 (one of the N64's launch titles) for less than $30 used. Nintendo also has the GameBoy Advance, which for all intents and purposes owns the portable console market. That as well allows them alot of slack in getting their GameCube lineup set.
The Xbox's game lineup is a cast-iron joke. Not to say that there aren't quality games released for the platform by any means (Jet Set Radio Future for one, Dead or Alive 3, Project Gotham Racing) but the rest of the lineup is either Windows ports, Dreamcast sequels, or 100% quality free productions.
There's nothing worth playing, aside from hijacked Dreamcast franchises (which both JSRF, Project Gotham are, and DOA2 was orignally DC only) that they can point to and proudly proclaim as Xbox only.
In today's console world there is no "next time". If Microsoft doesn't make the Xbox fly there will be few game publishers or developers who will be willing to shell out the kind of cash for a company that couldn't get their last system together.
In the publishing world, there's Quark, and then there's a bunch of bit players. They're the 800 pound gorilla. PageMaker used to be good competition, but after Adobe ate up Aldus, it just nosedived.
And while I will agree that there are issues with high-end printing solutions (pretty much every week I head complaints about how this or that super expensive printer doesn't have OS X drivers) Quark is basically a thug. Their not releasing a Carbonized version of Quark along with their very public comments (in this article and many others...I sometimes wonder if they have a PR guy out there full time spreading the word that they're not supporting OS X) are a direct, intentionally public slap in the face for Apple. They want things done their way, and they're doing their best to exert every bit of control they can over Apple, because Quark is a very important application for Apple. There are many people who wouldn't be using a Mac save for Quark.
I've never liked Quark. They've been thugs as long as I've been forced to deal with them. Unfortunately I'm going to have to suck it up and deal with their thuggery, because suggesting InDesign to my clients would at best garner me a laugh, at worst they'd call someone else when they're having problems.
Every other license for any other software also disclaims any warranty, making the GPL's warranty null and void as well, if the rest of them are rendered null and void.
kThat's not common sense, it's common courtesy, there's a difference. And the only real way to enforce common courtesy is avoidance of those who don't practice it.
If someone is a jerk, if you want to avoid problems, don't deal with them. If someone is trying to snow you with mounds of legalese in a user agreement that could contain the gods know what, don't install their software. That's common sense.
And I'm no defender of common sense...common sense is common sense whether people follow it or not. I just find people who completely ignore it, and then complain about it, pretty damn pathetic.
If your computer is your castle, YOU are the only person responsible for defending it, and YOU are the only person who is to blame when YOU install something without reading the license agreement.
You, you, you, you, you, you, and only you.
I install stuff from the internet all the damn time. I click through just like everyone else, but I don't complain that the devil made me do it. If its yours, take some responsibility for it. If you refuse to, then deal with it pal, 'cause only you are to blame. People don't say "read the fine print" because it's something nice to say. People say it because it's good advice.
I feel little sympathy for people "burned" by click-through stuff. If you're not willing do deal with the possible consequences, and you don't want to read the agreement, don't click "I Agree". If you click "I agree" you've got a shaky case because you allowed whatever to be installed on your machine.
Let the buyer beware. If you sign on the dotted line or click on the flashing button, you are assumed to have done your damn homework. If you haven't, you and only you are responsible for the problems it causes. It's common sense, people.
Oh wait, I forgot. Common sense is stuff that everyone says, but no one actually believes. I forgot.
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I generally eschew EA games. It take alot for me to plunk down my increasingly limited gaming budget down for one of their games, when they are such a strongarming company.
That said, I'm glad they are taking this stand, and I hope they follow suit and kill the Xbox as well. The Xbox deserves to die just as the Dreamcast did. Still won't buy any EA games, but I will applaud any effort that helps the Xbox down the shitter. Call it vengeance and you'd be correct. Microsoft thinks they can do whatever they want, wherever they want. I find it certainly amusing that they are being taught a lesson, and hopefully driven out of the console business. No, EA isn't a saint, but I have no problem with two devils locking horns, and the greater devil losing the fight. EA just does games. MS wants their fingers in everything. IN the end, it's more important that they be brought down. EA's time will come.
Uh, they're already networked, for the PC.
Why, pray tell, should I give MS $300 more to play these games on the Xbox, when I can play them networked NOW for the cost of the Win98 I bought for games oh so long ago.
I'll answer for you, there's not a single reason. With a few notable exceptions, all the games Microsoft has brought out for the Xbox are PC ports, hired sequels to Dreamcast games, or games that get released for all platforms (like sports games).
Microsoft didn't get that 40 billion stockpile by being stupid and digging their heels in when the odds were against them. The dumbest thing they could do would be to dump billions into the Xbox if no one's buying it. Unless they all just collectively lose their minds and anything resembling financial sense...
The graphics don't determine whether a console lives or dies.
The Dreamcast was head and shoulders above both the PS1 and the N64 graphically, but they bother handed Sega it's lungs back. Just because something has better graphics, doesn't mean a damn thing. If there were one answer to anything, life would be a whole lot simpler.
Please people, get your heads out of the sand. This is far more complicated than what machine can push pixels faster.
Nothing on the Internet is anonymous. Even "anonymizers" just make it difficult to find the source, not impossible. If you want anonymity, stay the hell off the Internet. Everything you do can be traced to you. If you hadn't figured this out before, wake up. There is no right to anonymity. There shouldn't be.
...because in my opinion, it's a fetid pile of Windows wannabe crap, and you can quote me on that. First, off, even choosing the "minimal" settings in the initial setup screens when you launch it for the first time, there is more useless graphical crap cluttering my workspace than even Windows. And WHAT THE HELL IS WITH THE LITTLE ANIMATED ICONS NEXT TO THE MOUSE POINTER?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Ye gods, if I wanted that crap, I'd have stuck with the Win98 Plus! that came installed with one of my machines. You can't even turn them off. How in the world can something like this, in an open-sourced window manager for goodness sake, be an option you can't turn off? Hint boxes popping up all over the damn place. Animated "working" hourglasses in the toolbar. Why not just copy the Windows interface whole? I can't even used it on my 266 iMac (running only YellowDog Linux 2.2) because there's so much flash that I CANNOT TURN OFF that it slows the machine down to a crawl whenever I so much as launch a terminal window. Gnome, however, runs like a top, and doesn't have all this mandatory idiocy associated with it.
I used to like KDE alot, but I'm definitely sworn off it, now. And hell, with Gnome I can run KDE apps, and don't have to deal with all the wasted memory and processor.
KDE 3, to hell with you.
Flame-retardent suit, engage!
If SAM were a decent graphical admin tool, I might agree with you, but by the gods it so is not. I believe that HP-UX is the oldest commercial UNIX (aside from AT&T) and it shows in its Byzantine presentation and operation. I've worked with AIX, Digital Unix, Solaris, BSD back when it wasn't Free, Net, or Open. The only commercial UNIX so intentionally thickheaded that I'd use HP-UX over it is SCO, which makes makes HP-UX look like a sysadmins wet dream.
Maybe no one you personally know uses Enlightenment, but I know a whole lot of people who do, myself included. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean everyone doesn't like it. Blah blah no man is an island blah blah.
As far as Alpha goes, there are a lot of pretty influential people within Compaq that are real big fans of Alpha and Tru64. Matter of fact, if you've ever been in the bowels of Compaqs datacenters, you'll see (or at least you would about a year ago) large patches of Digital blue. The fact that Tru64 and the Alpha are still around is mostly due to the tireless efforts of these kinds of people within Compaq (as well as those who were using Digital Unix before the Digital merger) but I've got the feeling that they're going to run up against the wall, if they haven't already. While I wish them well in keeping the Alpha and Tru64 around, I have the sinking feeling I should rather wish them well in the job search. Enron dying was bad enough for Houston. The jobs that HPaq is going to shed as a result of all this are going to really put it down for the count.
And I wish HP-UX would die as a result of this, but there isn't a chance in hell of that happening, realistically. Gods, I hate HP-UX.
Yeah, but people don't give a damn when Dell releases new machines 'cause it happens all the time. Dell also doesn't have the cult following that Apple does. I don't see Dell user groups springing up the world over.
And if the CEO and the board of directors has any concern for the welfare of their employees and for their own ability to make decisions regarding the fate of what was once their company, they will begin buying back their stock as soon as possible.
While some people may believe that it makes sense, it more risk than I am willing to take. I don't trust the market, especially not now. I don't trust anyone to be able to undergo the kind of pressures that publicly traded companies are under and come out clean. The dot-bomb and the Enron debacle only prove it for me. The system didn't work, and no one has done a damn thing to fix it.
Actually, i honestly only listen to Public Radio (and I do send money) and only watch PBS (though I don't really watch PBS anymore, and have therefore stopped financially supporting it). I just don't visit the most ad-invasive sites on the net, because the ones that do have a subscription-for-no-ads model aren't worth it. I'm considering doing the Gamespot subscription that was mentioned perviously on slashdot, as it's a service I used alot before the banner ads just got WAY too invasive and annoying. Until they actually get it up and running and I decide whether it's worth it or not, I'll use other less invasive services. Hell, I even pay a monthly fee to play Dark Age of Camelot, because I like it enough to pay $11/month for it. It's worth it to me.
While I will support directly programming and content that I use, and I think that's the best way, I think the networks complaining about PVRs stealing their ad revenue is ludicrous. It's no different from ad-removing VCRs (which have been around for a good long time without any complaint) muting the TV, pressing the pause button while commercials are on, or even fast-forwarding through the commercials. All of that can be done with almost any TV/VCR combination available today, and it accomplishes the exact same thing as PVRs. The ad-supported networks are obviously running scared from new technology that does the same thing as old technology that they just don't understand.
Perhaps the US market should move to a subscription-only model for television, something like it is in the UK. I'd certainly be willing to pay $5.00/month/channel to get the two or three channels that I would ever watch piped into my home, commercial free. Especially I can specify channel numbers for them. I don't want to have to turn to channels 26, 71, and 82 if those are the only channels I want. It ought to be easy enough to get some kind of interface that allows me to map those onto 1, 2, and 3, or whatever.
As it is, I won't pay $40 for a whole load of crap I will never use. The channels I would watch are just not worth it.
This is what you get when your company goes public. You don't become a millionaire, your job security is at the whim of a bunch of greedy stockholders. As far as I'm concerned, going public is merely a sign of greed by all but the largest companies that do it. I can't think of 20 dot-bomb companies that actually had any damn business going public.
This is the price you pay for agreeing to work for them. Not me, and not anymore. I've had it up to here with the greed of publicly traded companies, and I'm never working for one ever again if I have anything to say about it. They're more trouble than they're worth.
Oh, definitely.
I can't count the number of companies I've done work for that had glaring flaws in their physical security practices. Like one door with Pentagon level security, and a back door with absolutely none. I've walked through doors on military bases I shouldn't have been able to get NEAR, and that was without even trying.
The sad fact is that a lot of organizations haven't dealt with that revelation in any kind of rational, or even internally consistent manner. They generally react with panic, and implement a whole lot of rashly designed security plans that sound complete, but are actually so riddled with holes they might as well have done nothing.
Those "more pressing concerns" are employees taking their time to use their mp3 players to screw your business.
Employees ARE the biggest risk to a company. They know all your weaknesses. They know where the valuables are stored. They are the biggest risk any company has, either directly (the employees stealing/selling your information to others/employee sabotage) or indirectly (social engineering/a third party extorting the information in some manner). Denying it is just being willfully blind.
However, a balance needs to be struck between rampant paranoia and just letting your employees do whatever they want. The former will drive your employees to hate you. The latter will allow the less scrupulous employees to rob you blind. The problem is that most large corporations have wholeheartedly embraced rampant paranoia because you can't "prove" trust, and corporations want metrics and other hard and fast ways of predicting and stopping losses. While their employees may despise them, the managers look at it as a known factor that they can plan for, and therefore, I believe, seem to go out of their way to foster distrust.
And anyway, in the security business, you're paid to be paranoid. Thankfully I learned to seperate my security work paid-paranoia from the rest of my life. There are alot of people out there who are trapped by it all the time.
Informative my fat white ass.
If you actually look at the pages, what is now the low end was the high end model before this announcement, and is now $500 cheaper. The old 550mhz G4 laptops are no longer available from the Apple Store anymore. The new options are more expensive than what used to be on there, but they're better. Materials didn't magically start costing less.
This is nothing new. If you've been exposed to Apple sales literature, this is the kind of thing that their marketing weasels have been putting out for a good long time.
Oh yeah? When is Sega's next console due out?
Jet Set Radio Future is the SEQUEL to JSR for the Dreamcast. I should certainly hope that it's much better for the Xbox.
As for Halo, FPSes shouldn't be played on consoles. The interface is just plain clumsy in comparison to the keyboard/mouse interface, and there's no ability to mod or import skins and the like. Those who like consoles to play FPSes, more power to you, but you're not getting the real deal. I don't care what kind of graphics the Xbox can pump out. They still have to be displayed on a regular television. I personally can't tell the difference between the Xbox's graphics and the PSX graphics on a regular TV. While I expect that the Xbox does look significantly better on an HDTV compatible television, exactly how many people do you think own HDTVs? If your answer is "more and more," let me be the first to laugh my ass off at you.
Maybe one or two people out of 500 can afford to drop $2000+ on a HDTV system, if that. If it would even fit in their living rooms wherever. Hell, I just bought a regular 27" TV, only to find out that it's too big for my large entertainment center. Technical specs will blind all the gadget hounds out there, but most people want price and games, both things the Xbox loses big on.
Nintendo, I will freely admit, is being very VERY slow out of the gate with their games. However, they did the same thing with the N64 and it didn't hurt them much. Nintendo relies on their licensing juggernaut to get consoles out the door. Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, et al, all give Nintendo a "get out of jail free card" when it comes to slow release cycles. Hell, you can't buy Mario World 64 (one of the N64's launch titles) for less than $30 used. Nintendo also has the GameBoy Advance, which for all intents and purposes owns the portable console market. That as well allows them alot of slack in getting their GameCube lineup set.
The Xbox's game lineup is a cast-iron joke. Not to say that there aren't quality games released for the platform by any means (Jet Set Radio Future for one, Dead or Alive 3, Project Gotham Racing) but the rest of the lineup is either Windows ports, Dreamcast sequels, or 100% quality free productions.
There's nothing worth playing, aside from hijacked Dreamcast franchises (which both JSRF, Project Gotham are, and DOA2 was orignally DC only) that they can point to and proudly proclaim as Xbox only.
In today's console world there is no "next time". If Microsoft doesn't make the Xbox fly there will be few game publishers or developers who will be willing to shell out the kind of cash for a company that couldn't get their last system together.
In the publishing world, there's Quark, and then there's a bunch of bit players. They're the 800 pound gorilla. PageMaker used to be good competition, but after Adobe ate up Aldus, it just nosedived.
And while I will agree that there are issues with high-end printing solutions (pretty much every week I head complaints about how this or that super expensive printer doesn't have OS X drivers) Quark is basically a thug. Their not releasing a Carbonized version of Quark along with their very public comments (in this article and many others...I sometimes wonder if they have a PR guy out there full time spreading the word that they're not supporting OS X) are a direct, intentionally public slap in the face for Apple. They want things done their way, and they're doing their best to exert every bit of control they can over Apple, because Quark is a very important application for Apple. There are many people who wouldn't be using a Mac save for Quark.
I've never liked Quark. They've been thugs as long as I've been forced to deal with them. Unfortunately I'm going to have to suck it up and deal with their thuggery, because suggesting InDesign to my clients would at best garner me a laugh, at worst they'd call someone else when they're having problems.
Every other license for any other software also disclaims any warranty, making the GPL's warranty null and void as well, if the rest of them are rendered null and void.
kThat's not common sense, it's common courtesy, there's a difference. And the only real way to enforce common courtesy is avoidance of those who don't practice it.
If someone is a jerk, if you want to avoid problems, don't deal with them. If someone is trying to snow you with mounds of legalese in a user agreement that could contain the gods know what, don't install their software. That's common sense.
And I'm no defender of common sense...common sense is common sense whether people follow it or not. I just find people who completely ignore it, and then complain about it, pretty damn pathetic.
If your computer is your castle, YOU are the only person responsible for defending it, and YOU are the only person who is to blame when YOU install something without reading the license agreement.
You, you, you, you, you, you, and only you.
I install stuff from the internet all the damn time. I click through just like everyone else, but I don't complain that the devil made me do it. If its yours, take some responsibility for it. If you refuse to, then deal with it pal, 'cause only you are to blame. People don't say "read the fine print" because it's something nice to say. People say it because it's good advice.
I feel little sympathy for people "burned" by click-through stuff. If you're not willing do deal with the possible consequences, and you don't want to read the agreement, don't click "I Agree". If you click "I agree" you've got a shaky case because you allowed whatever to be installed on your machine.
Let the buyer beware. If you sign on the dotted line or click on the flashing button, you are assumed to have done your damn homework. If you haven't, you and only you are responsible for the problems it causes. It's common sense, people.
Oh wait, I forgot. Common sense is stuff that everyone says, but no one actually believes. I forgot.