Web bussineses have and will continue to limited their customers to those MS find acceptable. For instance such bussineses require IE by using random IE standards
I just don't find this to be true. I browse with Mozilla and haven't ever encountered an ecommerce site that simply didn't work because it was reliant on proprietary MS markup or scripting. Even the most inexperienced web designer knows that relying on proprietary extensions is just plain stupid. No benefit is conferred from using proprietary extensions; all it does is cut off potential customers. What business would do this? If you can point me to a (remotely reputable) business whose site only works in IE, let me know.
So wait a minute....Microsoft is behind the fight for broadband freedom? But they're evil! I know we rotate daily on hating the MPAA, but it seems like everyday is Microsoft-hating day.
Can't handle...ambiguitity...black and white viewpoint...blurring to gray...
Mohammad's "infallibility" (whatever that really means) is a question of dispute among the various factions of Islam.
However, as a Muslim, I can say that the "under God" in the pledge always bothered me. It's not right. If people want to believe in God, fine, but coercion doesn't make believers out of anyone. So, just in case anyone cares, there's at least one Muslim who's bothered by it!
Uh, Text Formatting?
on
ICANN Updates
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· Score: -1, Offtopic
Was anyone else totally befuddled by the mix of regular and italic text combined with ALL CAPS ACRONYMS and regular lowercase text all rolled up into long run-on sentences in this news story?
As I understand it, this is because the pixel/vertex shading virtual machine does not, in fact, support branching or conditional branching, so you can't actually do a loop in the low-level language, so you can't do it in the high-level language either.
I don't really want to respond to the flame, but he has a point. In fact, in the upcoming XP service pack 1, Microsoft is adding an area (to the control panel I think), where you can easily change all of the default applications, so you can effectively remove internet explorer from your desktop (finally!) Of course, they are only doing this in response to their antitrust suit, but it seems like something of a step in the direction you were talking about, i.e. more choices.
Well, as with all things, there are good ideas and bad ideas. Just as there are crap remixes of songs and good remixes of songs. If you don't like something, then don't go see it. Your examples are truly bone-chilling however.:-)
What is really needed is a simple system in which content providers are paid for their work and consumers are still allowed their fair-use rights (duh).
Quite frankly, we already had this a few years ago, until the content providers decided they wanted to control the whole game. Turn back the clock a few years to before the DMCA. Allow people the make an unmetered number of copies (digital or otherwise) for personal use and crack down on the trafficking of pirated media.
Have stronger laws for dealing with real piracy, i.e. thousands of copies, but make these laws very specific in terms of what they address. No more nebulous language like "could be used to circumvent copyright, maybe, if a person really wanted to." Don't allow companies the excuse to drag people into civil court based on trumped-up charges. Make piracy a criminal offense (it already is) and leave the civil side for after the criminal trial. Don't allow 'symbolic' lawsuits, only allow content-providers to sue people that they can actually prove were selling illegal copies of their property.
This will protect both the consumers and the companies, and hopefully will enable artists to continue to make their music/movies/whatever and to make money from them. But, of course, IANAL, so this may be impossible.
Not to mention, in a large enterprise-type situation , with users who have trouble doing basic things (adding attachments to email), expecting users to run windows update on their own to patch their computers periodically is a bit much.
In addition, Microsoft doesn't really provide a good way (that I know of) to deploy their hotfixes to a network of machines. They don't even release their own patches as Windows Installer files so you can publish them to machines!
In short, patching a large number of machines under their particular system is a nightmare.
But then again, maybe there is an easy way that I just don't know about....
It was in Wired when the XBOX was the cover story I believe. I believe his quote was "I don't want to be in the razor business if I can't get in on the blades." Or something.
Word. I bought the PS2 with the idea that I'd also be able to use it as a DVD player. Yeah, it's kind of crappy for a DVD player, not to mention mine (along with many others) developed a condition where it tends to reject DVDs. In short, I finally broke down and bought a real DVD player. I'm very happy with the PS2 as a gaming system, but a DVD player it ain't.
Glenn Reynolds has written an interesting, albiet a bit speculative, in regards to the role of the US Government in the possible quieting of nanotechnology research.
Um, is it just me, or is this sentence missing something, like what exactly was written?
Yes, getting arrested outside of Electronics Boutique doing exactly what Vivendi/Blizzard claims people who use BnetD will do (distributing pirated software) will really help prove that there are legitimate uses for BnetD. Thanks for your insight.
But that's not the issue either. BnetD is not a retooling of battle.net code, it's a totally new piece of software that uses the battle.net protocol.
The metaphor would be if you read a Stephen King novel, said "I can do better than that!" and wrote a book of your own that had a similar plot to the original but was better. You can't copyright ideas, only manifestations of those ideas. That's why we have like 10,000 civilization and warcraft clones out there, because the idea of a sim or an RTS game is not somehow sacred, only a specific implementation of that idea is.
As I understand it, the main reason why DirectX helps render faster is not because it is somehow more effecient than other API's but because it allows the programmer to interface (more) directly with the video card through a Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL). In other words, you can take advantage of specialized hardware if it exists (which it does in most newer systems). Even for drawing in 2D, using directx to draw rather than Windows GDI is much faster, although more complicated to code, IMHO.
I agree with the WinXP performance hit, ever since I've installed it, I've wanted to go back to win2k.
Is this the same BMG that runs the 12CDs for the price of one deal? If it is, I could see them enticing people by putting up a server with tons of bandwidth and their entire catalog available.
In short, I think it would work a lot like a music club does through the mail, only with MP3s instead of CDs. I think that's a business model that would work, although I don't understand what they need Napster for.
Except that you'd need to deCSS the DVD in order to cut of the video, which is, of course, already illegal under the DMCA, although I would consider it fair-use, but IANAL.
This option is sort of present in the Terminator 2 "Super Ultimate Edition" or whatever the hell it's called. Either way, you can choose between the original theatrical cut, or the cut that has additional scenes. It's kind of nice, and I've watched both all the way through. A lot of things in that movie make more sense with the deleted scenes re-added. In short, you can see the deleted scenes in context with the movie.
The coolest thing from my childhood that I remember was actually going to California on vacation and visiting the Sierra Headquarters. My family was cool like that. At that time they were giving us, as a tour group, a preview of Space Quest 4, with its (oh my God) VGA graphics and fully voiced dialogue! I was blown away. Then the presenter went on to show us all the various creative ways you could die in the first few screens of the game.
I kinda doubt that I'd have the same experience going to visit id Software headquarters so they could show us their incredibly cool graphics engine and wax poetic about the GeForce 4.
KQ3 was absolutely the best. The evil wizard dude who kept you hostage, how you had to collect all the ingredients to do the various spells. How you had to sneak out to the countryside without getting caught and get back within a certain time. And then, nothing was more satisfying than when you turned that bastard into a cat.
Oh it was sooo cool.
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Web bussineses have and will continue to limited their customers to those MS find acceptable. For instance such bussineses require IE by using random IE standards
I just don't find this to be true. I browse with Mozilla and haven't ever encountered an ecommerce site that simply didn't work because it was reliant on proprietary MS markup or scripting. Even the most inexperienced web designer knows that relying on proprietary extensions is just plain stupid. No benefit is conferred from using proprietary extensions; all it does is cut off potential customers. What business would do this? If you can point me to a (remotely reputable) business whose site only works in IE, let me know.
So wait a minute....Microsoft is behind the fight for broadband freedom? But they're evil! I know we rotate daily on hating the MPAA, but it seems like everyday is Microsoft-hating day.
Can't handle...ambiguitity...black and white viewpoint...blurring to gray...
Mohammad's "infallibility" (whatever that really means) is a question of dispute among the various factions of Islam. However, as a Muslim, I can say that the "under God" in the pledge always bothered me. It's not right. If people want to believe in God, fine, but coercion doesn't make believers out of anyone. So, just in case anyone cares, there's at least one Muslim who's bothered by it!
Was anyone else totally befuddled by the mix of regular and italic text combined with ALL CAPS ACRONYMS and regular lowercase text all rolled up into long run-on sentences in this news story?
Dude, Selphie was like a little girl. You gotta go with Quistis to get the older woman's experience.
As I understand it, this is because the pixel/vertex shading virtual machine does not, in fact, support branching or conditional branching, so you can't actually do a loop in the low-level language, so you can't do it in the high-level language either.
I don't really want to respond to the flame, but he has a point. In fact, in the upcoming XP service pack 1, Microsoft is adding an area (to the control panel I think), where you can easily change all of the default applications, so you can effectively remove internet explorer from your desktop (finally!) Of course, they are only doing this in response to their antitrust suit, but it seems like something of a step in the direction you were talking about, i.e. more choices.
Well, as with all things, there are good ideas and bad ideas. Just as there are crap remixes of songs and good remixes of songs. If you don't like something, then don't go see it. Your examples are truly bone-chilling however. :-)
What is really needed is a simple system in which content providers are paid for their work and consumers are still allowed their fair-use rights (duh).
Quite frankly, we already had this a few years ago, until the content providers decided they wanted to control the whole game. Turn back the clock a few years to before the DMCA. Allow people the make an unmetered number of copies (digital or otherwise) for personal use and crack down on the trafficking of pirated media.
Have stronger laws for dealing with real piracy, i.e. thousands of copies, but make these laws very specific in terms of what they address. No more nebulous language like "could be used to circumvent copyright, maybe, if a person really wanted to." Don't allow companies the excuse to drag people into civil court based on trumped-up charges. Make piracy a criminal offense (it already is) and leave the civil side for after the criminal trial. Don't allow 'symbolic' lawsuits, only allow content-providers to sue people that they can actually prove were selling illegal copies of their property.
This will protect both the consumers and the companies, and hopefully will enable artists to continue to make their music/movies/whatever and to make money from them. But, of course, IANAL, so this may be impossible.
Not to mention, in a large enterprise-type situation , with users who have trouble doing basic things (adding attachments to email), expecting users to run windows update on their own to patch their computers periodically is a bit much.
In addition, Microsoft doesn't really provide a good way (that I know of) to deploy their hotfixes to a network of machines. They don't even release their own patches as Windows Installer files so you can publish them to machines!
In short, patching a large number of machines under their particular system is a nightmare.
But then again, maybe there is an easy way that I just don't know about....
It's called "Happiness in Slavery" its on the Broken album, which is circa 1991 I believe.
It was in Wired when the XBOX was the cover story I believe. I believe his quote was "I don't want to be in the razor business if I can't get in on the blades." Or something.
? pg=1. It also discusses how much Microsoft was initially losing on the boxes ($100 - $110 I believe).
The story is here http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.11/flex.html
Word. I bought the PS2 with the idea that I'd also be able to use it as a DVD player. Yeah, it's kind of crappy for a DVD player, not to mention mine (along with many others) developed a condition where it tends to reject DVDs. In short, I finally broke down and bought a real DVD player. I'm very happy with the PS2 as a gaming system, but a DVD player it ain't.
$1000 membership? Sounds like MSDN.
Glenn Reynolds has written an interesting, albiet a bit speculative, in regards to the role of the US Government in the possible quieting of nanotechnology research.
Um, is it just me, or is this sentence missing something, like what exactly was written?
Yes, getting arrested outside of Electronics Boutique doing exactly what Vivendi/Blizzard claims people who use BnetD will do (distributing pirated software) will really help prove that there are legitimate uses for BnetD. Thanks for your insight.
But that's not the issue either. BnetD is not a retooling of battle.net code, it's a totally new piece of software that uses the battle.net protocol.
The metaphor would be if you read a Stephen King novel, said "I can do better than that!" and wrote a book of your own that had a similar plot to the original but was better. You can't copyright ideas, only manifestations of those ideas. That's why we have like 10,000 civilization and warcraft clones out there, because the idea of a sim or an RTS game is not somehow sacred, only a specific implementation of that idea is.
As I understand it, the main reason why DirectX helps render faster is not because it is somehow more effecient than other API's but because it allows the programmer to interface (more) directly with the video card through a Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL). In other words, you can take advantage of specialized hardware if it exists (which it does in most newer systems). Even for drawing in 2D, using directx to draw rather than Windows GDI is much faster, although more complicated to code, IMHO.
I agree with the WinXP performance hit, ever since I've installed it, I've wanted to go back to win2k.
Or take the first line of the Qur'an: "Glory be to God, the Lord of the Worlds."
It's definitely plural.
Is this the same BMG that runs the 12CDs for the price of one deal? If it is, I could see them enticing people by putting up a server with tons of bandwidth and their entire catalog available.
In short, I think it would work a lot like a music club does through the mail, only with MP3s instead of CDs. I think that's a business model that would work, although I don't understand what they need Napster for.
Except that you'd need to deCSS the DVD in order to cut of the video, which is, of course, already illegal under the DMCA, although I would consider it fair-use, but IANAL.
This option is sort of present in the Terminator 2 "Super Ultimate Edition" or whatever the hell it's called. Either way, you can choose between the original theatrical cut, or the cut that has additional scenes. It's kind of nice, and I've watched both all the way through. A lot of things in that movie make more sense with the deleted scenes re-added. In short, you can see the deleted scenes in context with the movie.
The coolest thing from my childhood that I remember was actually going to California on vacation and visiting the Sierra Headquarters. My family was cool like that. At that time they were giving us, as a tour group, a preview of Space Quest 4, with its (oh my God) VGA graphics and fully voiced dialogue! I was blown away. Then the presenter went on to show us all the various creative ways you could die in the first few screens of the game.
I kinda doubt that I'd have the same experience going to visit id Software headquarters so they could show us their incredibly cool graphics engine and wax poetic about the GeForce 4.
KQ3 was absolutely the best. The evil wizard dude who kept you hostage, how you had to collect all the ingredients to do the various spells. How you had to sneak out to the countryside without getting caught and get back within a certain time. And then, nothing was more satisfying than when you turned that bastard into a cat. Oh it was sooo cool.
Actually, Google restored the links to Xenu.net on Friday. It was a front page story on Yahoo!