Excellent point. Stating that 84% of CIOs were uninfluenced by the SCO fiasco is a weak attempt at positive spin. If this survey is accurate, 1 in 6 CIOs are re-evaluating their linux installation plans. Scary.
Scully mentions how hypercard was sort of a predecessor to HTML interfaces. I disagree, it was more like an early version of Visual Basic or Python.
I disagree with this. Hypercard's interface, at least superficially, is very similar to early html. When you open a hypercard stack, you start at your "home" card, and then navigate within the stack via hyperlinks. Each card in the stack behaves somewhat like a web page. Compare a good hypercard stack to the interface on an early version of Mosaic, and you'll find alot of similarities. When I first saw a web browser, I thought it looked like hypercard with network support.
Granted, you could use hypercard as a cludgey python like language, but it's strong point lies in organizing information, like a tutorial or instruction manual.
Excuse me, the US has zero to do with any of the civil wars in Africa. Zero. There are problems that can't be blamed on the US and the war in the Congo is one of them.
I disagree. The US backed Congolese (then called Zaire) dictator Joseph Mobutu for years and used him to funnel money into a civil war in neighboring Angola. He was overthrown in the late 90's, and DR Congo has been in civil war ever since. While the United States government cannot be blamed entirely for tthe civil war in DR Congo, they are at least partially responsible for it.
I really doubt it. Maybe at first, but they've had over a year to cost reduce these things. If they're still losing money, it sure isn't $100 a unit.
I've worked on projects where we've rushed something out the door, at a loss, to be first to the market. After the initial release, the engineering efforts turn to cost reduction. I've seen costs drop by 50% after two or three revisions. First you get the product working, and then you bring costs down.
High-quality gameplay back in the old days was the sole focus of developing games. They didn't have the gimmicks of fancy graphics or the capabilities massive hard drives or even memory.
I disagree. Remember that fancy graphics and eye candy are relative. When the NES was first released, it had amazing graphics compared to older consoles like the 2600 or Colecovision. Certain NES games depended heavily on graphics or other gimics. For example, Ninja Gaiden is a passable action game that featured silent movie-like cutscenes and nice graphics. At the time, the buzz about the game wasn't the gameplay, but the cutscenes that pushed the graphical envelope of the system. Final Fantasy I was basically a plain, vanilla rpg with slick graphics and presentation. There were also a slew of horrible, almost unplayable games (Track & Field II & Golgo 13 come to mind) that featured beautiful graphics and even digitized voice, but totally lacked gameplay. As for gimics, remember the stupid robot? Or how about the power pad? And don't get me started on the 2600. Fore every Pitfall or Joust there were dozens of horrible, unplayable games for the system.
However, the good games from the 8-bit era were great, and I agree with you that they are still better than most modern games.
Desktop applications in Linux are not yet up to par.
Every time I've tried to do word processing in Linux, I find a feature I need isn't correctly implemented, an annoying minor bug pops up, or I get a core dump. I always end up rebooting and using MS Office. Granted, Abiword, OpenOffice, etc. have been getting better over the past few years but still have an amateur feel to them.
Web browsing is also a problem. While I agree that developers should write standards compliant HTML, this isn't the way things are. Unfortunately, if you want all your web pages to display properly, you need Explorer. End of discussion.
With this said, I always try to use a unix based software package if it is comparable or better than it's windows counterpart. For certain tasks, though, windows is the superior tool.
I wouldn't say "sucks", but it is massively overrated. I read the first novel in high school and found it mildly entertaining but not insightful or engrossing. I really had no desire to read the other sequels/prequels/whatever.
I think Dune is a decent SF/Fantasy novel, but it definitely isn't a cornerstone of the genre as many people think it is.
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Excellent point. Stating that 84% of CIOs were uninfluenced by the SCO fiasco is a weak attempt at positive spin. If this survey is accurate, 1 in 6 CIOs are re-evaluating their linux installation plans. Scary.
Scully mentions how hypercard was sort of a predecessor to HTML interfaces. I disagree, it was more like an early version of Visual Basic or Python.
I disagree with this. Hypercard's interface, at least superficially, is very similar to early html. When you open a hypercard stack, you start at your "home" card, and then navigate within the stack via hyperlinks. Each card in the stack behaves somewhat like a web page. Compare a good hypercard stack to the interface on an early version of Mosaic, and you'll find alot of similarities. When I first saw a web browser, I thought it looked like hypercard with network support.
Granted, you could use hypercard as a cludgey python like language, but it's strong point lies in organizing information, like a tutorial or instruction manual.
Excuse me, the US has zero to do with any of the civil wars in Africa. Zero. There are problems that can't be blamed on the US and the war in the Congo is one of them.
I disagree. The US backed Congolese (then called Zaire) dictator Joseph Mobutu for years and used him to funnel money into a civil war in neighboring Angola. He was overthrown in the late 90's, and DR Congo has been in civil war ever since. While the United States government cannot be blamed entirely for tthe civil war in DR Congo, they are at least partially responsible for it.
I really doubt it. Maybe at first, but they've had over a year to cost reduce these things. If they're still losing money, it sure isn't $100 a unit.
I've worked on projects where we've rushed something out the door, at a loss, to be first to the market. After the initial release, the engineering efforts turn to cost reduction. I've seen costs drop by 50% after two or three revisions. First you get the product working, and then you bring costs down.
High-quality gameplay back in the old days was the sole focus of developing games. They didn't have the gimmicks of fancy graphics or the capabilities massive hard drives or even memory.
I disagree. Remember that fancy graphics and eye candy are relative. When the NES was first released, it had amazing graphics compared to older consoles like the 2600 or Colecovision. Certain NES games depended heavily on graphics or other gimics. For example, Ninja Gaiden is a passable action game that featured silent movie-like cutscenes and nice graphics. At the time, the buzz about the game wasn't the gameplay, but the cutscenes that pushed the graphical envelope of the system. Final Fantasy I was basically a plain, vanilla rpg with slick graphics and presentation. There were also a slew of horrible, almost unplayable games (Track & Field II & Golgo 13 come to mind) that featured beautiful graphics and even digitized voice, but totally lacked gameplay. As for gimics, remember the stupid robot? Or how about the power pad? And don't get me started on the 2600. Fore every Pitfall or Joust there were dozens of horrible, unplayable games for the system.
However, the good games from the 8-bit era were great, and I agree with you that they are still better than most modern games.
Wrong.
The Legend of Zelda (NES) is the best game ever. I might also have accepted Ultima IV.
Let the holy wars commence!
Desktop applications in Linux are not yet up to par.
Every time I've tried to do word processing in Linux, I find a feature I need isn't correctly implemented, an annoying minor bug pops up, or I get a core dump. I always end up rebooting and using MS Office. Granted, Abiword, OpenOffice, etc. have been getting better over the past few years but still have an amateur feel to them.
Web browsing is also a problem. While I agree that developers should write standards compliant HTML, this isn't the way things are. Unfortunately, if you want all your web pages to display properly, you need Explorer. End of discussion.
With this said, I always try to use a unix based software package if it is comparable or better than it's windows counterpart. For certain tasks, though, windows is the superior tool.
I wouldn't say "sucks", but it is massively overrated. I read the first novel in high school and found it mildly entertaining but not insightful or engrossing. I really had no desire to read the other sequels/prequels/whatever.
I think Dune is a decent SF/Fantasy novel, but it definitely isn't a cornerstone of the genre as many people think it is.