Welp, I grew a smile on my face when I read the headline. Wish I had something insightful to say, but I don't. The guy was heavily opinionated, and badly informed. He doesn't know that his customers aren't all thieves awaiting opportunity. He thinks they can't compete with free even though there are many MANY successful businesses out there doing just that, Starbucks to name one, Aquafina to name another. He once likened backing up a DVD to demanding a new lawn mower after wrecking the first. He didn't understand the concept that a backup copy costs the original producer of the content absolutely 0. I remember when cornered about the use of encryption, he said something to the effect of "nobody'd be against the oil companies putting a new lock on their tanks if everybody had a copy of the key." Guess he doesn't realize that despite the fact that people steal gas from a gas station, it hasn't been enough to make gas stations 'secure' with guard arms and spikes in the ground. Oh, and the absolute most amusing thing, was his take on VCRs. Yep, those machines would turn everybody into a pirate.
So yes, I'm glad he's gone. He's a figurehead for the industry with a loud voice, but little reason to back it up. Assuming that his replacement isn't a clone exactly 1/8th his size, I'm hoping we're in for better times ahead. I, for one, would like to be treated like a paying customer and not a thief in training.
.. that the demo of the game wasn't all that exciting?
No, this is not a very scientific test. Perform it with the Wind Waker, and you'll get numbers in favor of the demo. Perform it with Daikatana, and you'll get results in favor of no demo.
What the demo does do is let you know if a game holds up to the promises made by the marketing team. This isn't so useful with companies that make bad games because they haven't suckered the customer out of their money yet.
"Which means if one person figures out how to get it, everyone has the book for free (thanks to kazaa and sharing.)"
I see the reasoning here, but they should think about how many people aren't buying books because they don't know which book has the information they want. I can think of a few times I've gone to the book store to buy a book with hopes of solving a particular problem. I had to go there, take the book off the shelf, flip a few pages, and even risk reading the solution and ending my demand for that book. With a service like this, I could ease my search time, and even find books I wouldn't have found otherwise, no extra risk.
I just wish they'd sit back and think of a few important factors:
Sitting at the computer to read a book isn't fun.
Books are generally priced reasonably, it's difficult to imagine that it's worth the effort to go download books regularly.
As proven by electronic manuals, people like having the book there in their hands.
It seems to me that if people were really willing to jump through hoops and use a hack and a half to get a book online, they should consider revising how e-books work. Frankly, I think the technology is heading there anyway. Lots of people have PDAs out there, and paying for virtual stuff doesn't seem so strange these days.
In any case, history has proven that the more exposure you give people to a product, the more they want it. We're all sick of the "open your mouth and close your eyes" business model. Want me to buy your book? Let me read a chapter or two of it. (Yes, I know that sometimes a sample chapter of a book is released.) Want me to watch a movie coming out soon? Instead of giving me a 2 minute teaser that really doesn't tell you anything about a movie, make 10 minutes of the movie available on-line. Want me to buy an hour of music? Let me listen to it first.
Funny thing is, the internet can provide these services, but the people behind it are scared. Are they scared of change, or are they scared that they'll have to work harder to make money? I mean, who'd go see that Britney Spears movie if they saw 10 minutes of it?
"Just because you have a splufty multisync monitor that has some logic in it to display "bad refresh rate" doesn't mean everyone does."
Reminds me of the Pinto. Do ya solve the problem by spending a measly $11, or do you solve the problem by lowering the speed limit down to 30 mph?
My point? Well, I personally feel that both X and the monitor, in this example, should have saftey features built in to prevent damage to the hardware. In this case, though, anyone can go into X and disable those features. They might need to if they're a developer. So why doesn't the monitor have a failsafe?
It isn't possible to make everything completely safe, but both sides of it should have features in place.
"I don't believe in making people jump through hoops to get in touch with me."
For an experiment, I created a new email address and used it as my Slashdot address without 'spam armor' for a couple of weeks. It didn't take me very long to generate quite a few unsolicited messages.
Though I agree with you in spirit, at some point you have to stop and consider that if you don't slightly inconvenience people trying to reach you, then you'll inconvenience them by missing their email due to being lost in a cluttered inbox.
Uh, the topic was about borgifying astronauts for extended space missions. It wasn't much of a leap to go from there to their borg implants running Windows. It wasn't much of a leap from that point to the inevitable Windows crash joke. So tell me, why was this off-topic?
"Damn, now that's rude: using Slashdot to earn referrer revenue. Shouldn't the editors have spotted this? Oh well. Nice offer, anyway."
What's the big deal? It's a book you want, right? Why not reward the guy who pointed it out to you? Honestly, of all the things to be annoyed by in the world, this is pretty low on the list.
The reason that Rare has such a following is that they consistently surprise people with what the hardware can do. Though I agree with your opinion of Star Fox Adventures, that game was still very impressive graphically. It was so startling to see fur and grass in the scene.
Rare is a team of very creative and talented people. They have the same sort of appeal that Pixar does in some respects. "Man, what are they going to do next?"
" Cant really use Doom3 as a benchmark, unless you can override the 60FPS cap."
Sure you can. Use motion blur. The more in-between frames you have to create the blur, the better the blur gets. If you have a 5-frame motion blur, then you've got roughly 300fps of information there, not including the time it takes to average the frames together. This is assuming, of course, that Doom 3 can or will have any such feature.
Personally, what interests me about MMORPG games is interaction with other people. I would love for a GTA based massively multiplayer game. Heh I get a smile on my face just imagining some of the mischief I can get into. That's what I used to do with Quake. Play little games with other people's minds. It was always fun making the other guy go "Son of a bitch!"
It seems to me that anything you can do to create a game where the humans are allowed to be human puts it on the right track. Pity they took the flipoff button out in Quake 3.
" Claiming you "defeated a master troll" is quite silly though. "
That's because I did.;)
Let's be serious for a moment, if you had 'won' like you think you had, you wouldn't be up at all hours of the day trying to gain a rematch.
Incidently, the post you referred to here flies right in the face of your claim that I'm an "MS Apologist". Really kind of takes the wind out of your sails for your previous attempts to troll, now doesn't it?
" Since you are making the arguement (and have time and time again) that GTA shows consequences (this is YOUR arguement), isn't it showing that the consequence will be minor and life will go on?"
I get your point, and I think it's a good one, but I don't think it's as extreme as you're making it. When you go to jail in either game, you lose all your weapons, and some of your cash. Plus, you have to start whatever mission you were on over. So this game teaches you that you lose everything and serve time. The problem with putting a 'game over' in it is that you just go back and load from where you last saved. It doesn't buy you anything.
At this point, you have to draw a line and say "kids will understand at least this." If they don't know that saving and reloading is a gaming concept, not something based on real life, then.. well.. you know I just can't imagine anybody who's led a life that'd believe that.
"Steve Ballmer recently told an industry conference that Microsoft software is more secure than Linux"
Ballmer did make a questionable claim, but the submitter of this story made it more general than it really was.
"Ballmer also disputed the notion that open-source code is more secure than Windows. "The data doesn't jibe with that. In the first 150 days after the release of Windows 2000, there were 17 critical vulnerabilities. For Windows Server 2003 there were four. For Red Hat (Linux) 6, they were five to ten times higher," he said."
In other words, he didn't say Microsoft Software (people start imagining IE, Outlook, etc...) in general is more secure than Linux, he said Windows 2000 and 2003 had fewer 'critical vulernabilities' than Redhat 6.
Now, I'm not defending Ballmer here, but I do wish story submitters would chill on the flame-bait headlines.
Now, with that aside, here's a few things wrong with that statement:
- One of those 'critical vulnerabilities' in Windows 2000 facilitated a very wide spread attack, something that hasn't happened with Linux.
- Redhat is up to what.. 9 now? Redhat 6 is going back at least a couple of years. It's disappointing that he didn't pick a more recent version of Redhat. Something tells me that their numbers for critical issues wasn't so interesting.
- The number of security issues is not a very good measure of security. Though it sounds great for the PHB's out there, but it is well documented that Microsoft's foundation is, in general not very secure. Those critical vulnerabilities are going to do more damage on a Microsoft Platform than a Linux based one.
So, to summarize: Ballmer's full of shit and the authors need to be more responsible in their reporting, especially when sites can be Slashdotted.
" Now please tell me how is this better than getting a free cellphone and a REAL PDA or a REAL camera?"
Volume comes to mind. Take your cell phone, real pda, and real camera and put them in your pocket.
I personally found this comment a little short sighted. Over the weekend my two year old nephew was over, and he was being silly while we were at the restaraunt. I got a couple of great photos of him with my cell phone. They're not multi-mega pixel, and they're a little soft, but they're still damn cute photos. I have a nice digital camera at home, but I don't carry it around all the time like I do my cell phone.
Not everybody wants to walk around carrying more equipment than a Ghostbuster.
Slashdot Mirror
Welp, I grew a smile on my face when I read the headline. Wish I had something insightful to say, but I don't. The guy was heavily opinionated, and badly informed. He doesn't know that his customers aren't all thieves awaiting opportunity. He thinks they can't compete with free even though there are many MANY successful businesses out there doing just that, Starbucks to name one, Aquafina to name another. He once likened backing up a DVD to demanding a new lawn mower after wrecking the first. He didn't understand the concept that a backup copy costs the original producer of the content absolutely 0. I remember when cornered about the use of encryption, he said something to the effect of "nobody'd be against the oil companies putting a new lock on their tanks if everybody had a copy of the key." Guess he doesn't realize that despite the fact that people steal gas from a gas station, it hasn't been enough to make gas stations 'secure' with guard arms and spikes in the ground. Oh, and the absolute most amusing thing, was his take on VCRs. Yep, those machines would turn everybody into a pirate.
So yes, I'm glad he's gone. He's a figurehead for the industry with a loud voice, but little reason to back it up. Assuming that his replacement isn't a clone exactly 1/8th his size, I'm hoping we're in for better times ahead. I, for one, would like to be treated like a paying customer and not a thief in training.
You're missing out.
.. that the demo of the game wasn't all that exciting?
No, this is not a very scientific test. Perform it with the Wind Waker, and you'll get numbers in favor of the demo. Perform it with Daikatana, and you'll get results in favor of no demo.
What the demo does do is let you know if a game holds up to the promises made by the marketing team. This isn't so useful with companies that make bad games because they haven't suckered the customer out of their money yet.
I see the reasoning here, but they should think about how many people aren't buying books because they don't know which book has the information they want. I can think of a few times I've gone to the book store to buy a book with hopes of solving a particular problem. I had to go there, take the book off the shelf, flip a few pages, and even risk reading the solution and ending my demand for that book. With a service like this, I could ease my search time, and even find books I wouldn't have found otherwise, no extra risk.
I just wish they'd sit back and think of a few important factors:
Sitting at the computer to read a book isn't fun.
Books are generally priced reasonably, it's difficult to imagine that it's worth the effort to go download books regularly.
As proven by electronic manuals, people like having the book there in their hands.
It seems to me that if people were really willing to jump through hoops and use a hack and a half to get a book online, they should consider revising how e-books work. Frankly, I think the technology is heading there anyway. Lots of people have PDAs out there, and paying for virtual stuff doesn't seem so strange these days.
In any case, history has proven that the more exposure you give people to a product, the more they want it. We're all sick of the "open your mouth and close your eyes" business model. Want me to buy your book? Let me read a chapter or two of it. (Yes, I know that sometimes a sample chapter of a book is released.) Want me to watch a movie coming out soon? Instead of giving me a 2 minute teaser that really doesn't tell you anything about a movie, make 10 minutes of the movie available on-line. Want me to buy an hour of music? Let me listen to it first.
Funny thing is, the internet can provide these services, but the people behind it are scared. Are they scared of change, or are they scared that they'll have to work harder to make money? I mean, who'd go see that Britney Spears movie if they saw 10 minutes of it?
"Just because you have a splufty multisync monitor that has some logic in it to display "bad refresh rate" doesn't mean everyone does."
Reminds me of the Pinto. Do ya solve the problem by spending a measly $11, or do you solve the problem by lowering the speed limit down to 30 mph?
My point? Well, I personally feel that both X and the monitor, in this example, should have saftey features built in to prevent damage to the hardware. In this case, though, anyone can go into X and disable those features. They might need to if they're a developer. So why doesn't the monitor have a failsafe?
It isn't possible to make everything completely safe, but both sides of it should have features in place.
"What's in it for Microsoft? Well, I run Linux under Virtual PC on XP and they still get a licence out of me."
I think they just don't want to answer questions like "How come my 3d card doesn't work in Solaris?
Of course, that suggestion's not in line with how evil Microsoft is so I witdhraw it.
"I don't believe in making people jump through hoops to get in touch with me."
For an experiment, I created a new email address and used it as my Slashdot address without 'spam armor' for a couple of weeks. It didn't take me very long to generate quite a few unsolicited messages.
Though I agree with you in spirit, at some point you have to stop and consider that if you don't slightly inconvenience people trying to reach you, then you'll inconvenience them by missing their email due to being lost in a cluttered inbox.
I really hope you don't run into that.
"you OBVIOUSLY need to use a shell with auto-completion."
No, I obviously need to use a UI that presents the options I have available to me.
Anyhoo, it's not a comment to get your panties in a bunch over.
Uh, the topic was about borgifying astronauts for extended space missions. It wasn't much of a leap to go from there to their borg implants running Windows. It wasn't much of a leap from that point to the inevitable Windows crash joke. So tell me, why was this off-topic?
Unfunny/Overrated maybe, but off-topic?
It beats the alternative: "damn." "damn." "Fuck! He's dead."
"Well I certainly hope the implants aren't running Windows, or we'll have another Columbia on our hands! Giggle giggle, snort snort."
There, we got the obvious Microsoft joke out of the way, let's move on people.
"yeah, because no two people ever come up with the same turn of phrase for the same thing..."
Don't have a cow, man.
"Damn, now that's rude: using Slashdot to earn referrer revenue. Shouldn't the editors have spotted this? Oh well. Nice offer, anyway."
What's the big deal? It's a book you want, right? Why not reward the guy who pointed it out to you? Honestly, of all the things to be annoyed by in the world, this is pretty low on the list.
"Too sad those M$ idiots didn't realize that all games RARE produced so successfully for the N64 did contain concepts that are Nintendo ONLY. "
Troll? Well maybe, but he does have a point. Rare's adventures with Nintendo properties have generally been good.
"Can someone explain to me Rare's appeal?"
Don't you remember Donkey Kong Country?
The reason that Rare has such a following is that they consistently surprise people with what the hardware can do. Though I agree with your opinion of Star Fox Adventures, that game was still very impressive graphically. It was so startling to see fur and grass in the scene.
Rare is a team of very creative and talented people. They have the same sort of appeal that Pixar does in some respects. "Man, what are they going to do next?"
" Cant really use Doom3 as a benchmark, unless you can override the 60FPS cap."
Sure you can. Use motion blur. The more in-between frames you have to create the blur, the better the blur gets. If you have a 5-frame motion blur, then you've got roughly 300fps of information there, not including the time it takes to average the frames together. This is assuming, of course, that Doom 3 can or will have any such feature.
Frankly, I prefer this as a benchmark anyway.
"Are like wet ducks in the desert... it's just not quite right. "
Why not? They're like Cliff Notes for OSS developers.
Personally, what interests me about MMORPG games is interaction with other people. I would love for a GTA based massively multiplayer game. Heh I get a smile on my face just imagining some of the mischief I can get into. That's what I used to do with Quake. Play little games with other people's minds. It was always fun making the other guy go "Son of a bitch!"
It seems to me that anything you can do to create a game where the humans are allowed to be human puts it on the right track. Pity they took the flipoff button out in Quake 3.
" Claiming you "defeated a master troll" is quite silly though. "
;)
:)
That's because I did.
Let's be serious for a moment, if you had 'won' like you think you had, you wouldn't be up at all hours of the day trying to gain a rematch.
Incidently, the post you referred to here flies right in the face of your claim that I'm an "MS Apologist". Really kind of takes the wind out of your sails for your previous attempts to troll, now doesn't it?
Nice try.
Ya know, I always wondered why the date is often ordered like that in some places. Learned something new today, thank you.
" Since you are making the arguement (and have time and time again) that GTA shows consequences (this is YOUR arguement), isn't it showing that the consequence will be minor and life will go on?"
I get your point, and I think it's a good one, but I don't think it's as extreme as you're making it. When you go to jail in either game, you lose all your weapons, and some of your cash. Plus, you have to start whatever mission you were on over. So this game teaches you that you lose everything and serve time. The problem with putting a 'game over' in it is that you just go back and load from where you last saved. It doesn't buy you anything.
At this point, you have to draw a line and say "kids will understand at least this." If they don't know that saving and reloading is a gaming concept, not something based on real life, then.. well.. you know I just can't imagine anybody who's led a life that'd believe that.
Would 10-21-2003 be better?
"Whats your beef? He picked 2 OSs (OSi? :) )that came out about the same time."
Mainly that he mentioned that 2003 server dramatically improved, but didn't say whether or not the latest Redhat did or not.
Ballmer did make a questionable claim, but the submitter of this story made it more general than it really was.
In other words, he didn't say Microsoft Software (people start imagining IE, Outlook, etc...) in general is more secure than Linux, he said Windows 2000 and 2003 had fewer 'critical vulernabilities' than Redhat 6.
Now, I'm not defending Ballmer here, but I do wish story submitters would chill on the flame-bait headlines.
Now, with that aside, here's a few things wrong with that statement:
- One of those 'critical vulnerabilities' in Windows 2000 facilitated a very wide spread attack, something that hasn't happened with Linux.
- Redhat is up to what.. 9 now? Redhat 6 is going back at least a couple of years. It's disappointing that he didn't pick a more recent version of Redhat. Something tells me that their numbers for critical issues wasn't so interesting.
- The number of security issues is not a very good measure of security. Though it sounds great for the PHB's out there, but it is well documented that Microsoft's foundation is, in general not very secure. Those critical vulnerabilities are going to do more damage on a Microsoft Platform than a Linux based one.
So, to summarize: Ballmer's full of shit and the authors need to be more responsible in their reporting, especially when sites can be Slashdotted.
" Now please tell me how is this better than getting a free cellphone and a REAL PDA or a REAL camera?"
Volume comes to mind. Take your cell phone, real pda, and real camera and put them in your pocket.
I personally found this comment a little short sighted. Over the weekend my two year old nephew was over, and he was being silly while we were at the restaraunt. I got a couple of great photos of him with my cell phone. They're not multi-mega pixel, and they're a little soft, but they're still damn cute photos. I have a nice digital camera at home, but I don't carry it around all the time like I do my cell phone.
Not everybody wants to walk around carrying more equipment than a Ghostbuster.