Service packs have always been free of charge to download from Microsoft.
Whether or not you want to download about 100-150 megs of patches for an administrative installation is another question entirely. At which point if you're concerned about bandwidth you may as well pay for a SP CD, eh?
Um. Auto-update is different from sticking "apt-get update && apt-get upgrade" into a cron job how? The default setup for installations is to ASK you in what manner you want your updates delivered, and the FIRST and DEFAULT choice is to hold the updates for your approval.
Office Product Updates. Use those security patches to your advantage, roll them out in administrative installs over the network. Go hog wild.
Tried this recently? Default settings are based on IE's "restricted sites" permissions... which is pretty damned secure.
And where do you suppose that money to pay the software writers to WRITE software comes from?
Chicken and egg, perhaps?
Or would you rather suggest that all software writers go on contract where people who have specific software needs contract them out to write software?
DirectX is much more than a graphics lib: it's also useful for things like having a standard way of accepting input, which OpenGL (being, of course, graphics-oriented) doesn't handle. And then there's sound output. These are all things that Microsoft has done to ease writing games and apps for win32. OpenGL... is only for graphics.
SDL on win32 is a wrapper for DirectX. How would you get developers, who target only win32 systems, to potentially lower performance of their games by inserting a(nother) wrapper layer over the already complex system?
WinAMP sticks an AOL icon on your desktop, although it is left mostly alone, no noticeable AOL branding elsewhere. But I'd still rather be using Sonique.
Netscape. Um. Why should I use Netscape when I've got this or this instead?
ICQ, which has just recently overtaken Yahoo Messenger as the most invasive instant messenging client, with its own: Internet Explorer toolbar, Outlook integration, AOL icons in 3 or 4 different places (not optional), and a bootload of "ICQ Services" icons on the desktop.
Doom had a "funky sense of humor"? Give me a break. It is/was a great game, but... humor?
Serious Sam is the worst sort of crap to come out in ages. It's not even that fun the first time around--the gameplay consists of shooting several large swarms of monsters in one large courtyard, walk into the next large courtyard, and repeat.
Placement? What placement? The monsters teleport in. Items float about in the centers of these monstrous courtyards.
The final baddie is a big joke too: Where's the thrill of dodging 3 rockets in quick succession, the maddening race against an insanely fast and inexorable spray of chaingun bullets? The most "dangerous" attack the Serious Sam boss features is a spray of easy-to-dodge fruity color light bolts! And oh look, you can't kill it with all the guns you've been busy collecting, you have to play jump-into-the-hoop to blow it up!
There's a better comparison between Serious Sam to Duke Nukem 3D, in that multiplayer support is fairly decent on both games, and co-operative play is actually quite fun in Serious Sam... for the first couple of times. The large level sizes just make deathmatch a painful and not very enjoyable exercise.
Knowing that the immutable law of software production is that some bugs will inevitably slip out of the development cycle and make it into the release, assuming such a law is passed, what benefit would the end user find in suing themselves for lost time and data?
OSS software "vendor" profit margins are already low enough. What benefit would such a law render them?
On the other hand, would a company such as Microsoft be able to absorb whatever financial blows may land its way much more effectively than aforementioned OSS software "vendors"?
Where does this leave mass-adoption of said OSS software?
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know about HP devices, but I recently bought an iPaq 3765, and it's not any bigger than the Palms I've played around with.
Service packs have always been free of charge to download from Microsoft.
Whether or not you want to download about 100-150 megs of patches for an administrative installation is another question entirely. At which point if you're concerned about bandwidth you may as well pay for a SP CD, eh?
And where do you suppose that money to pay the software writers to WRITE software comes from?
Chicken and egg, perhaps?
Or would you rather suggest that all software writers go on contract where people who have specific software needs contract them out to write software?
A truly free market allows you to bypass the exchange-of-goods system wherein you pay another party for goods or services rendered? What?
Software writers have to make a living too. The most direct and effective way is *gasp* charging other people for using the software.
Just because you don't want to be paid for your efforts and time slaving over code doesn't mean other people don't either.
Adhere to pre-established standards and use already established media formats.
Hey, it probably shaves off their costs too.
Now imagine a beowulf cluster of slashdot editors!
... oh wait
Why is there not a CVS for the linux kernel?
And 2 years later, Carmack speaks about his development boxes again.
DirectX is much more than a graphics lib: it's also useful for things like having a standard way of accepting input, which OpenGL (being, of course, graphics-oriented) doesn't handle. And then there's sound output. These are all things that Microsoft has done to ease writing games and apps for win32. OpenGL ... is only for graphics.
SDL on win32 is a wrapper for DirectX. How would you get developers, who target only win32 systems, to potentially lower performance of their games by inserting a(nother) wrapper layer over the already complex system?
Great!
Instead of getting them the money they need to survive, let's all wait for them to shut down and buy everything from the bargain bin!
What a wonderful way to support such an excellent company, don't you think?
No wonder they're talking about shutting down.
Sounds like extortion to me.
...
Pay us X amount of dollars and we'll give you the source.
Oh wait
No. Mass bends light.
...
Large size does not equate to super-massiveness. A nebula is not a black hole.
Size * density, on the other hand
Because of that Dutch thing.
It's a bomb!
You're not a correspondent with CNN! You're a terrorist!
I don't want to see your identification, I don't believe your flimsy lies.
Guards! Arrest this man!
Is this how ZeroSync's decompression algorithm works?
There's already been an AOL client for linux.
I guess depriving Opera Software of ad revenues is alright then?
You are enjoying their hard work, aren't you?
Mono ring a bell?
And nevermind all the pop-up-ad-blocking features, it comes with its own ad bar.
Well, let's see, AOL pulled Gnutella.
WinAMP sticks an AOL icon on your desktop, although it is left mostly alone, no noticeable AOL branding elsewhere. But I'd still rather be using Sonique.
Netscape. Um. Why should I use Netscape when I've got this or this instead?
ICQ, which has just recently overtaken Yahoo Messenger as the most invasive instant messenging client, with its own: Internet Explorer toolbar, Outlook integration, AOL icons in 3 or 4 different places (not optional), and a bootload of "ICQ Services" icons on the desktop.
Indeed, this is the coolest stuff on the Net.
Doom had a "funky sense of humor"? Give me a break. It is/was a great game, but ... humor?
Serious Sam is the worst sort of crap to come out in ages. It's not even that fun the first time around--the gameplay consists of shooting several large swarms of monsters in one large courtyard, walk into the next large courtyard, and repeat.
Placement? What placement? The monsters teleport in. Items float about in the centers of these monstrous courtyards.
The final baddie is a big joke too: Where's the thrill of dodging 3 rockets in quick succession, the maddening race against an insanely fast and inexorable spray of chaingun bullets? The most "dangerous" attack the Serious Sam boss features is a spray of easy-to-dodge fruity color light bolts! And oh look, you can't kill it with all the guns you've been busy collecting, you have to play jump-into-the-hoop to blow it up!
There's a better comparison between Serious Sam to Duke Nukem 3D, in that multiplayer support is fairly decent on both games, and co-operative play is actually quite fun in Serious Sam... for the first couple of times. The large level sizes just make deathmatch a painful and not very enjoyable exercise.
"Best Game of 2001" my ass.
In my opinion, it isn't truly good until it can be freely converted back and forth into other usable, edit-able formats.
Which, I note, thanks to the efforts of many, is a criteria that even Microsoft Word doc format is able to meet.
You refuse to understand.
Knowing that the immutable law of software production is that some bugs will inevitably slip out of the development cycle and make it into the release, assuming such a law is passed, what benefit would the end user find in suing themselves for lost time and data?
OSS software "vendor" profit margins are already low enough. What benefit would such a law render them?
On the other hand, would a company such as Microsoft be able to absorb whatever financial blows may land its way much more effectively than aforementioned OSS software "vendors"?
Where does this leave mass-adoption of said OSS software?