Who is more important in the building of a building? The architect or the builder? The opera house of Sydney is a case in point. The architects jobs was easy, just a few wavy lines. Then the engineers and builders had to figure out how to build it.
THINKING of man being able to fly was easy. BUILDING it was a LOT harder. Thinking of a man on the moon has been done a long time before it was possible.
And yes this applies to software. People have thought of secure systems for a LONG time, but failed to build it.
You can see this most clearly in game development. The ideas are a dime a dozen. The people actually able to go beyond the Xth 3d engine and push something new, worth their weight in gold.
This doesn't mean there aren't coders who are little more then typists, who put into words their betters dictation. Perhaps Anrego has never added anything of value to an idea. Maybe he has never had the job to turn a vague but promising idea into something that actually works. To bad for him. But some of us ARE good at our jobs and are the engineer to the architect. The builder to the artist. The cameraman to the director. The pianist to the conductor.
Ideas are one part. Realization is another. How they are divided varies from project to project and they can overlap, but only a fool thinks the idea is the thing. If that was the case, we would have a secure OS, interstellar travel, peace on earth and two girls for every boy.
Linux does not exist as an OS, what you are talking about here is a distro which uses Linux for its kernel that is making some choices.
Are they the right choices? That is irrelevant. It is their choice. There are already plenty of Linux distro's including ones based on Ubuntu, that any choice you don't like, you can easily switch.
Any choice is bad in somebodies eyes. I can make X work, so to replace it is to me unneeded because it only means I have to learn something new. But others can't make X do what they want, what ever that is. Are they wrong? No, it is a different choice.
The software culture that is "Linux" thrives on anyone being able to take the existing code and packages and making his own product of it. This is its strength but it also means it will never have the finesse of an OSX or even a Windows. You can't have an open system AND thight control.
Yes, I don't like the new Unity interface either. Or the plasma desktop of KDE. Both seem simply not to get that a desktop should be both flexible AND out of the way. Especially on the small screen of a netbook, the desktop as such should be to the edges. Unity tries this but KDE completly fails at this. That is party because there are TWO netbooks. The social one and the working machine. KDE Plasma Desktop goes the meego route and tries to make the desktop the application.
Unity tries to give you max space for running regular apps and it does it remarkably well. BUT it takes the gnome style to extreme and removes ANY control over it from the user. You can't even add any applets. But people have used these to make their desktop give them information they feel is necessary. Unity is therefor NOT regonized for its excellent use of the small screen but for stopping you from using long established applets.
The left dock is just horrible, but again its horridness comes less from the things it does right but from its complete failure to follow basic known dock designs that work. There are a dozen docks for linux. Why re-invent the wheel? Why the horrid icons, color choices and lack of clear division?
Frankly, Ubuntu has a goal and its goal is going further and further away from hard core linux users. It remains to be seen if this is good enough to instead attract the newbies. But newbies can't be handed what is essentially beta code in constant development. You need a finished product. Ubuntu might simply not have the resources to target the market its want.
But this is no problem. Other distro's exist. Just as Ubuntu arose on the ashes of Red Hat Desktop, another will arise to take over from Ubuntu. PCLinuxOS, Mint and others. Even perhaps some of the oldies, Mandrive or Suse or Fedora.
WHICH nation has an elected politician calling for the assasination of a foreign national? Which nation is stopping its own citizens from reading websites? Which nation is putting presure on private companies to follow its agenda without any laws being written? Which nation is performing a massive denial of service attack to censor the net from information it finds undesirable?
Sorry, but if the Chinese think the internet is controllable, it is because the US is showing them how to.
Freedom of publication. But can you afford to pay for the press, the ink, the distribution?
Freedom of broadcasting. But can you afford the license fee for the frequency, the cost of powering the transmitter?
Freedom to gather. But can you afford to take a day of work, the travel expenses? Can you get a meeting place?
The chains of oppression are never more powerful then when those chains are of our own making. We make the super-companies and gave them the power to control society. Google dictates what you can put on a website, oh you can pay for bandwidth yourself but who can afford to pay for a DDOS attack traffic? So you get google ads and abide by their content laws or you get the money elsewhere.
Through paypal donations? Only when PayPal approves.
The proof? Boobies. There is no need for congress to ban boobies on TV, self regulation does it already. How nice. But it goes further. Just how do you get something published on TV if the powers that be do not want it? Oh, you might be able to get it on some tiny channel but then the fast majority will never see it.
Mission accomplished.
The conspiracy theory nuts never think devious enough. They fear jackbooted thugs marching down the street when it is so much simpler to simply let it be known that an action would displease you and all the little puppets spring into action to prevent the risk that this displeasement might come on their necks. I could whip you into obeying my orders, or I could make you fear you won't have a job tomorrow with which to pay your credit card debt. I can only whip one person at a time. I can ruin thousands of lives by just signing a simple piece of paper except that the fear means I never have to do it to get you and your masters to obey.
We are seeing now in action what western democracy has become. And nothing will change. Because our masters have replaced the whip with credit card payments, mortages and Idols. The romans would have been proud. To bad they are gone, bread and circusses didn't work out to well for us. Doubt it will for us.
Wonder what the Chinese are making of all this. They seen the romans rice and fall, are we just another empire to die as the Chinese empire continues?
The police when investigating someone to determine wether that person is guilty or innocent has to trample all over that persons privacy. It is how the justice system works. When investigating even private diaries are not off limits, without knowing everything how can the police do its job?
And WE are the police when it comes to determining if our politicians are guilty or innocent. How can we investigate them, truly determine wether their actions are just if we do not know ALL the details? All the facts no matter how private?
A lot of people think governments need secrets to function. They are correct but take the need for secrecy far to far. Do I need to know the launch codes? No. Do I need to know the security measures in place to prevent abuse? YES! Why? How else can I determine whether the elected officials are handling the security of the nuclear arsenal properly? The sad fact is that the past has shown countless examples were incompetence was hidden by secrecy. Who is exactly going to get hurt by revealing the truth?
That Saudia Arabia. The country is getting a LOT of US support but is also funding Al Quada. Politicians have denied this, lied about it. To protect what? The US relation with Saudia Arabia OR to protect the fat contracts of their friends? To some politicians, this is one and the same. What is good for them, is good for the USA. Soldiers send to die on an assault on Iran as Saudia Arabia has urged might think differently.
Does a father of a soldier need to know the full truth about the US "allies" to determine which elected official can decide where to send his son?
Democracy isn't easy. It is probably the hardest form of government to have and not just because the voters are idiots. Those idiots, who rather watch Idols, must be able to inform themselves. Else an election would be based on nothing more the campaign promises. And do we really need politicians who want that?
The cable leaks do not have a clear single focus. They are not showing that Senator X sold out the country for Y millions. Rather it reveals a layer of deceit and secrecy that a lot of our political masters now have to come to accept as the norm. The voters don't needs know the inner dealings so they can keep electing the next puppet president based on empty campaign promises.
Or do you think the embassy staff reveals EVERYTHING TO every single person who is thinking about standing for office? But how can I decide to run for office to stop further deals with Saudia Arabia IF I don't know about the deals? This is a fundamental issue. Democracy is FOR the people, BY the people. If the people ain't informed, then how can they act? How can you run on a different agenda then the established powers if the true agenda is hidden? How can you question US foreign policy if you don't know what it is?
None of this is easy. It upsets people because in our hearts we want a simple life. Simple truths and for our betters to tell us who are the goodies and who are the baddies. Why do you think we like movies and books so much? Because the director/writer tells us what to think and we think it. It is nice and comforting.
And along comes Wikileaks and forces us to think for ourselves. Only a fraction of the cables have been released so far and there are some shocking things. Oh not because nobody suspected the facts. But now we know these rumors are in fact facts. Take North Korea, slashdot has seen a lot of people speculating about how China truly feels about it. Well, now we know. And?
A western excuse for NOT interfering in North Korea with force has been that China would oppose it with force. That is what our leaders told us. Now we know that our leaders have been informed that China isn't all that happy with North Korea itself. So just how opposed would China really be to a forced intervention? Might there be terms by which China would agree to re-unite Korea? The leaks suggest there is. So why isn't the west working on this?
The brazillian was NOT a tourist, he was an illegal alien who ran from the police trying to make an arrest. But I suppose "criminal fleeing from armed police and failing to respond to a stop order gets shot" isn't in line with your bleeding heart.
And since you are a bleeding heart who twist the truth to suite his agenda I will from now on assume that everything you say is twisted and a lie.
Just what the world needs, an advocate for truth who lies. That will get people to see things differently.
Democracy ONLY works when the public is well informed and this means the public must know things you would rather keep secret. How can I vote for the guy who is going to make foreign policy if I don't know the foreign policy?
Yes, this makes life very hard for democratic leaders. Though shit. It comes with the political system. I am sure cops would be able to do their jobs far better if we restrict the freedom of citizens as well. For instance a curfew would make patrolling the streets just so much easier.
But we can't do that so we accept that criminals go free because they got rights.
Wikileaks just made life harder for US politicians. So? What do you value more? Freedom or an easy life for the diplomatic core?
And the silly thing is that the outrage isn't really present in the countries the US has the most troubled relations with. Iran doesn't even give a shit.
But all this HAS given the US public a real insight into the true goings on on the diplomatic front. Just what is the official line? Well now we know. So we can base our votes on that... or one who promises the largest tax cut. Whatever takes the shortest attention span.
The romans had bread and circuses, the conservatives/tories have home owner ship, holland has to mortage deduction and America has the two cars in the drive way.
What does this do? It is about creating a working "middle" class. A hard working "middle" class. But not a real middle class. Not a middle class that has power but a middle class that have just enough to give them something to loose if they try to gain anything. The principle is VERY simple. Feed the masses just enough to don't make it an issue of starve or riot but rather, eat enough or riot and starve.
Strike, and you loose your mortage, can't make the monthly car payments and therefor you got to swallow everything, just so you can keep the two cars you so desperately need for the job to pay for the cars because there is no public transport alternative.
It is VERY effective. Look at the recent election results, people voted to protect the rights of rich people. Unemployed people voted against unemployment protection. All in the believe that they are some kind of middle class that doesn't need any government protection from the super rich. The divide between rich and poor has never been so big and the poor are voting to increase the gap.
Forget about letting them eat cake. Let them dream of cake, and they will go as sheep to the slaughterhouse.
There is a reason the rich are rich. They are smarter then the poor people.
LISTEN to the tape, this is NOT a case of wrong identification or a snap judgement made in the heat of battle. They shoot up clearly unarmed civilians in the act of evacuation wounded people and joke about it.
Any civilized country would have these soldiers in jail. The US does not. That is all you need to know about the US.
“When facism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”
America is a lie. Always has been, always will be. Land of the free. Except for the niggers, the kikes, the chinks, women. One man one vote? Not in the US of A of the founding fathers.
There is currently a BBC documentary running that has as one of the tales about the lie of the American Dream and negro pilot who flew for the US in WW2, shot down and made prisoner he had more rights as a black officer in nazi germany then as a black man in the US for a very long time after WW2.
THIS is the real USA, were a black doctor was refused a blood transfusion because of his color. THIS is the America of Sarah Palin. A bigoted nation in which more states allow marriage between first cousins then between members of the same sex. Where blacks can still be shot by the police without consequence. A nation whose appetite for drugs is causing civil war in a neighbouring country but drugs are not dealt with other then creating the largest prison population.
It is a country in which lack of control causing a bank collapse, industry collapse, housing collapse and a oil disaster, so the popular vote is for LESS government control. Whoo!
The US is fundementally a country in which the American Dream has such an appeal that rational thought has no place. The fact is that governments ain't sexy, efficient or cheap. You can't run a country on a wish because you can never control the rest of the world enough to stop them interfering with your plans. America HAD been withdrawing from the world stage pre-9/11 then a dozen Muslims changed the world stage and the US had to shelve any budget cuts to the armed forces it might have used to pay for the lack of banking/housing oversight.
There is another story on Slashdot, the selling of HMS Invinceble that shows just how hard it is to run a country with any sort of ideology. The carrier wasn't meant to be used this long, it was for sale to the Aussies. Then Argentine invaded the Falklands and British plans had to be changed.
In Holland a move is being made to raise the speed limit in some areas to 130 kilometers per hour. Nobody is in favor except the kind of people that support Sarah Palin. It is an environmental disaster, the will cause a lot of confusion, the sections it can even be done on are tiny and it will kill an additional 13 people per year. Holland is a tiny country and our highway system is basically one long on/off ramp. Traffic constantly weaves from lane to lane, but now with an even high speed difference. The sections it is proposed to raise the speed limit on often have traffic jams making a higher speed pointless. BUT it is the only thing they can do, because everything else is bogged down in procedure. They want to show they are having an effect and so come up with a plan has a negative effect just to show they can do something.
Sarah Palin does the same. She can't fight the Taliban, can't change the economy, can't revitalize American industry, so lets make a pull on the old patriotic heartstrings and we all sing the anthem as the USS America sinks beneath the waves.
In times of crisis we need smart leaders who do what is right, not popular. And the only way to get them is with a popularity contest.
Thank you so very very much Greek. Democracy, never meant for the common man (Meaning everyone who doesn't agree with me).
Sorry but I think that your claim the be highly educated is false. Kindergarden does NOT count as higher education even if you stayed in it till 18.
So basically you want the guy that says "Oh, you Chinese claim you are our friends, well sure you can buy our army for a buck, anything for a friend" as your nations leader.
It sure as hell explains a LOT.
Hate to break it to you, but unless rocks can stand for president, we can't find anything dumber then you to run the country. Or is that your plan? Show to more stupid then Palin and get elected?
People don't like people who rock the boat they are sitting in, especially if its edge is already close to the waterline. They tend to kick people overboard, even if they are the person trying to signal a rescuer.
Wikileaks is exposing not just the obvious criminal corruption, the stuff you claim on others, but the widespread moral apathy that is the US of A. You can see it from the murder video. 12 civilians clearly unarmed shot with the murderers expressing clear joy at their slaughter. The US reaction? Absolutely nothing. If any of these soldiers were ever to be brought before a war crimes tribunal, the US of A has invasion plans for The Netherlands to stop any international justice by whatever force required.
This is America, and it doesn't sit well to have this truth shoved in their face. They want to believe the US of A is the land of the free, defender of democracy, hero of the oppressed.
You have to remember that most countries have the same thing. The Netherlands and its war crimes in Indonesia. Recently the state refused to meet a survivor of a masacre the germans would have been proud off, because it was going to upset the murderers. Don't ask the british about their colonial behavior or say the treatment of Jews after WW2.
Wikileaks is kicking up the dirt in peoples eyes and the people don't like it one bit.
Easier to kill the messenger then deal with the message. Always has been true, always will be. Cue this message running a high change of instantly disappearing because a teabagger is upset and mods it down to never be seen again.
These invasion plans, approved by the senate, are specific for Holland because it holds the international supreme court. If ever an American is put on trial for war-crimes, the US will invade an allied friendly nation with full military force.
Gosh yeah, no need for the public to know that US ally Saudia Arabia is STILL financially supporting Al Queda while at the SAME time urging the US to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. No need to know. No, let the Saudi's play both sides while keeping the masses uninformed.
But we all "knew" this? Yes, but "we" "knew" so many things. Rumors are one thing, facts are another. NOW it is PROVEN and can therefor no longer be denied. Perhaps THIS time when shady deals with Arab nations are made again, this little bit of FACT will force US senators to be a bit more critical.
The US has a VERY long history of a two or even three-faced foreign policy. Claiming to be pro-democracy yet propping up dictarorships of the worsed kind around the globe. Speaking nice about allies like Holland yet having senate approved invasion plans for allied nations. These documents show what America truly thinks. But we don't need to know. No. We need to be kept in the dark, our masters know best and we should obey blindly.
He talks about all the costs to America. But what about the costs to the terrorists? Oh, they are far from defeated but they are not exactly in sterling form. Their leaders get picked off, their recruits are so crap they can only fight with suicide bombers because no soldier survives long enough to learn that you do NOT hold up a car with an RPG. They can't fight an open war anymore because anytime they do, they get killed.
And word-wide the jihadist message goes ignored. ALL this campaigning and all they got to show for it is a couple of half-assed attempts. Far more of them have been killed then they have managed to kill. Countries like Iran claim happily it is the west that is after them but their neighbours are urging the US to bomb the shit out of them. So much for Islamic solidarity.
And what is this all really costing the US? Huge army bill? Also happens to employ a lot of people, in the army AND the arms factories. Its military tech is thoroughly tested and it now has probably the most well trained army in the world, with tons of combat experience. Before all this, US tactics were based on its only ally to have extensive modern combat experience, Israel. Read up on IDF tactics and you can see how the US copied it. Now they got their own tactics based on their own hardware and strategic capabilities. Far far better then say Russian or Chinese soldiers. Security? Against employing a lot of people and for all the bitching, the fast majority of people barely notice it. Oh sure it is a hassle when you get searched, but I got searched decades ago travelling to britain on the ferry. Is it destroying the economy? No. Then what is the cost?
So far it also works, no successful attacks.
The economy down the drain? Yes... and? It has been down the drain before regardless of terrorists. It will recover, always has. Some people just don't seem to get that the US can't go bankrupt. Iceland did and what happened? NOTHING. The world isn't nearly as dramatic as people like to think.
No Mr Schneier, if you want to show the true costs of war, then you need to count all the costs, to both sides. War is good business. May not be nice, but only an idiot believes business is about being nice.
Kershner wasn't available. And the pressures on George Lucas were very different. The original was made pretty much as a self-financed project with the powers that be thinking "meh, if he fails it is his money, if he succeeds, we got a nice flick out of it that sells a few tickets to the kids".
And then Star Wars happened. And he got pretty much a green light on the 2 sequels because NOBODY understood just what the fuck had happened.
Many people don't understand anymore just what effect Star Wars had. The world, of entertainment at least, was shattered and it tooks years, no decades before the rest of the world recovered. We haven't had a movie on the scale of Star Wars until the Lotro trilogy. Pure escapist a thrill a minute fantasy ride. It just wasn't done back then and nobody understood just how a simple movie that is at best a bland copy of ancient stories often told better did so amazingly well.
The HYPE for the pre-quels was insane. Only Peter Jackson can begin to understand the pressure to deliver anything close and he at least had the advantage that he was doing something new to him. If he failed, people would just say that he failed because he sucked. Not that he had once succeeded and then failed. Never being a genuis is far easier then being an ex-genius.
And Lucas was pegged in, there are things you can't do anymore. The actors from A New Hope were relatively unknown. Yes yes, Alec Guinness was known. Okay, but from WHAT exactly? Could he pull the same with the new movies or did he have to get some known names because that is the way you make triple A titles?
Could he get away with dwarves in silly costumes and a very simple camera trick to transport us to an alien planet (the two suns, a classic piece of cinematography). No, been there, seen that. The audience expected more.
George Lucas was set an impossible task. A story that was nothing more then a couple of words in an 20 year old script to explain some backgrounds of two dimensional characters. And an audience used to full CGI wonder lands expecting the same mystique as the first movie to truly transport us to an alien civilization we had visited over and over again.
Yes, he screwed up and he screwed up big time. But my god, so did everyone around him. The actors SURELY could have acted better. Why couldn't any of the newbies pull an Alec Guinnes or Harrison Ford? Why did none of his helpers pull the movie up like his wife and others had done with the originals?
The original three movies are a coincedence, a happy cojuction of the right people meeting at the right time with the right frame of mind. The pre-quels are the example of a product designed by a commitee were nobody dares to upset the chairman.
The Mint Linux distro installs a default custom search that not only removes a lot of functionality from google but also takes up half the page size on a 12.1 inch netbook with a plain ugly design, just to make some cash. Fixing it is possible but come on! I donate cash already to various projects, but Mint can kiss my hairy ass. I need that left column in Google search because else it gives me results from the beginning of the ice age on any query related to current events.
But companies just can't accept that we don't want their crap. Especially American companies. Please ATI, I know about WoW, if I wanted to play it, I would have played it by now. So stop trying to slip the trial on my gaming machine. No thanks MSI, I do NOT want a dumb virus checker with my windows, I do not even want windows. And if I want games I get the one with my ATI card not some god awful free game with god knows what installed along with it.
I would love to serve one of the execs.
Bill Gates: "One milk shake please"
Me: *FAP FAP FAP*. *HATCHOO*. *SPIT*.
Me: "Sure, and enjoy the free extra I added in regoniztion of the quality software you shovelled on me."
The most recent elections elected the tea-party. That is the party that wants LESS government oversight on the banking industry, the financial industry and on oil companies. Because the bank collapse, the housing collapse and oil disaster in the gulf all happened because of to much government interference and not enough free market.
I am not suprised goverments are reluctant to talk to voters. After all, they know the people that put them in power. Would you want to talk to someone who put the tories back in charge of the british economy? Why not just re-surrect reagan and thatcher and just kiss our asses goodbye.
You get what you pay for. At sorting centers the speed is breakneck. Do you REALLY think "this side up" CAN even be respected if not only there are a dozen packages coming down your chute, but the sorting system itself already thumbles them every which way regardless of human handling?
In the Netherlands there is currently a struggle going on because the old postal service had to go commercial and the market was broken open. Results is dat companies like "selektvracht" came in and cherry picked the contracts with low low offers (they don't deliver in rural areas or pick up mail from mail boxes) employing straight from the imigration desk. The official language is "Engrish" with the bulk of workers from whatever boat docked most recent with a load of refugees. Gosh and they just don't seem to care about how your 2000 euro mac gets handled... wonder why.
If you pay peanuts, you get monkey's. And yet if you read the posts near the top you see a couple of losers whining that there cheap cheap package company doesn't employ people who care about their job.
They don't get that people DO care about their job. Just that what is good for your job in these companies isn't good for the customer. I did it ages ago for a while. I actually went around picking up all the busted packages to process them and was told "don't do that, you are paid to look after the system". Eventually they just got thrown out. It is COMPANY policy to care about quantity, not quality.
So stop blaming the monkeys. They do not try to break packages but they get paid for pushing as many as possible, and if some break. Though shit. Volume volume volume.
But hey, you wanted to save a buck on the shipping rate.
Consoles have always had a simple weakness. Memory. Developers love it, consoles don't have it.
Netbooks now come with 2GB. The PS3 comes with 512mb. That is all, video and main memory and in some ways it really only 256mb. When was the last time you had a computer with 256mb main memory? Or for that matter a 256mb video card? Oh okay, my current netbook has but then I would hardly call it a gaming machine.
A perfect example was Morrowind, it performed horrible on the PC at first with frequent loading between "zones". Until a PC only expansion was added which increased the memory usage. Foila, no more loading. The original game had been designed with the console in mind and so was extremely conservative with the amount it used.
Games like Fallout 3 show it as well. My DUAL core PC not only has higher resolution textures by default, it can even run smooth with insanely high definition user made textures. That is a DUAL core PC, two cores are better then 6(or 3 I believe for the x-box)? Why yes, because while the consoles are chugging along with constant streaming from a slow HD, my humble PC just has it in memory, in the 1 gig (4x video memory of the console) video memory.
Further proof lies in the horrible PS3 as a linux machine performance. Seriously, who would want a linux desktop with 256mb memory? Why not just try to run linux on the DS and really hurt yourself... oh wait... someone is doing just that.
But can't clever programming offset this? No, not really. That same clever programming after all also works on PC's so they get the same benefit and STILL have tons more memory. While you can make a lot of fun games that use little memory, a lot of games just don't fit. You can't have a large open persistent world where you can zoom around and have non-streaming optimized content (Think GTA where you have lots of car models but only a couple loaded at the same time) in 512mb.
And no, it ain't just shooters. Think the Sims 3. All that user created content, were is it going to fit? A decent installation with a owner who wants her sims to be JUST right already can bring a PC to its knees with its memory demands. On the console forget it! The HD would catch on fire.
The simple fact is that once all the tricks on the PS2 were learned, it was still a horribly obsolete machine compared to an average PC. Only people that don't game think different. Why do think we still got PC only games? MMO development is PC only (the recent FFXIV is such a failure that it can't be counted)?
Somehow I think the guys at Crytek know better then some console fanboy.
What sells MS software? The high quality (I just vomited in my mouth) or the lock-in? If it was the high quality of MS software (ugh, what did I eat yesterday) then there would be no reason for a rewrite.
So it must be the lock-in. People buy MS because that is what all their software runs on. Why do you think IE6 is still around? Because people WANT to use an hopelessly obsolete browser? No, because they have developer intranet applications that only run on IE6 and with that only on windows. Businesses put all their logic into Excel coupled with Access and Exchange until they are so tied into MS software that when the MS rep comes along they shout "Yes, sir. Thank you sir. Can we have another SIR!" when he cracks the wip and has the CEO lick his boots.
If MS were to pull a OSX, then this lock-in would disappear. Bye bye IE6/ActiveX, companies would have to either stick with the old MS software, which is why IE6 and XP and NT are still around, or rewrite it completely. Any competent manager (but what competent manager would choose MS) would have to ask, do I again design my new software with MS lockin considering their habit of abandoning their customers? Apple received plenty of flack itself for the OSX move, MS has far more customers locked to its old software.
When people start rewriting software, they might just decide to make it platform independent. And that is LETHAL to MS, because then every time the MS rep comes along, he will have the SELL his offering on both quality and price and why should I pay 260 for Windows 7 when Ubuntu 10.10 is free? Will the Ubunutu rep rent better hookers to get the support contract?
No, MS needs the lock-in its old software offers and by that it is itself locked-in. The snake eating its own tail. The US outsourcing all its manufacturing so it can sell goods cheap to unemployed Americans. Business 101: We ain't here to be nice.
Slashdot Mirror
Who is more important in the building of a building? The architect or the builder? The opera house of Sydney is a case in point. The architects jobs was easy, just a few wavy lines. Then the engineers and builders had to figure out how to build it.
THINKING of man being able to fly was easy. BUILDING it was a LOT harder. Thinking of a man on the moon has been done a long time before it was possible.
And yes this applies to software. People have thought of secure systems for a LONG time, but failed to build it.
You can see this most clearly in game development. The ideas are a dime a dozen. The people actually able to go beyond the Xth 3d engine and push something new, worth their weight in gold.
This doesn't mean there aren't coders who are little more then typists, who put into words their betters dictation. Perhaps Anrego has never added anything of value to an idea. Maybe he has never had the job to turn a vague but promising idea into something that actually works. To bad for him. But some of us ARE good at our jobs and are the engineer to the architect. The builder to the artist. The cameraman to the director. The pianist to the conductor.
Ideas are one part. Realization is another. How they are divided varies from project to project and they can overlap, but only a fool thinks the idea is the thing. If that was the case, we would have a secure OS, interstellar travel, peace on earth and two girls for every boy.
Linux does not exist as an OS, what you are talking about here is a distro which uses Linux for its kernel that is making some choices.
Are they the right choices? That is irrelevant. It is their choice. There are already plenty of Linux distro's including ones based on Ubuntu, that any choice you don't like, you can easily switch.
Any choice is bad in somebodies eyes. I can make X work, so to replace it is to me unneeded because it only means I have to learn something new. But others can't make X do what they want, what ever that is. Are they wrong? No, it is a different choice.
The software culture that is "Linux" thrives on anyone being able to take the existing code and packages and making his own product of it. This is its strength but it also means it will never have the finesse of an OSX or even a Windows. You can't have an open system AND thight control.
Yes, I don't like the new Unity interface either. Or the plasma desktop of KDE. Both seem simply not to get that a desktop should be both flexible AND out of the way. Especially on the small screen of a netbook, the desktop as such should be to the edges. Unity tries this but KDE completly fails at this. That is party because there are TWO netbooks. The social one and the working machine. KDE Plasma Desktop goes the meego route and tries to make the desktop the application.
Unity tries to give you max space for running regular apps and it does it remarkably well. BUT it takes the gnome style to extreme and removes ANY control over it from the user. You can't even add any applets. But people have used these to make their desktop give them information they feel is necessary. Unity is therefor NOT regonized for its excellent use of the small screen but for stopping you from using long established applets.
The left dock is just horrible, but again its horridness comes less from the things it does right but from its complete failure to follow basic known dock designs that work. There are a dozen docks for linux. Why re-invent the wheel? Why the horrid icons, color choices and lack of clear division?
Frankly, Ubuntu has a goal and its goal is going further and further away from hard core linux users. It remains to be seen if this is good enough to instead attract the newbies. But newbies can't be handed what is essentially beta code in constant development. You need a finished product. Ubuntu might simply not have the resources to target the market its want.
But this is no problem. Other distro's exist. Just as Ubuntu arose on the ashes of Red Hat Desktop, another will arise to take over from Ubuntu. PCLinuxOS, Mint and others. Even perhaps some of the oldies, Mandrive or Suse or Fedora.
Can you really call yourself a proffesional if you are willingly pulling a IE6 again by writing for a format that is NOT universally supported?
Simple fact check, what runs on more environments? HTML5, Flash, Silverlight?
And no, opensource efforts that will always be playing catchup do NOT count.
You are once again tying your customers into a specific tech. Now I know who was building those IE6 only apps. It was you.
So was IBM. Computers WERE IBM. You didn't buy a PC, you bought an IBM and later an IBM-compatible.
And where is IBM now? Oh okay, still there, but insignificant on the PC front.
WHICH nation has an elected politician calling for the assasination of a foreign national? Which nation is stopping its own citizens from reading websites? Which nation is putting presure on private companies to follow its agenda without any laws being written? Which nation is performing a massive denial of service attack to censor the net from information it finds undesirable?
Sorry, but if the Chinese think the internet is controllable, it is because the US is showing them how to.
Freedom of publication. But can you afford to pay for the press, the ink, the distribution?
Freedom of broadcasting. But can you afford the license fee for the frequency, the cost of powering the transmitter?
Freedom to gather. But can you afford to take a day of work, the travel expenses? Can you get a meeting place?
The chains of oppression are never more powerful then when those chains are of our own making. We make the super-companies and gave them the power to control society. Google dictates what you can put on a website, oh you can pay for bandwidth yourself but who can afford to pay for a DDOS attack traffic? So you get google ads and abide by their content laws or you get the money elsewhere.
Through paypal donations? Only when PayPal approves.
The proof? Boobies. There is no need for congress to ban boobies on TV, self regulation does it already. How nice. But it goes further. Just how do you get something published on TV if the powers that be do not want it? Oh, you might be able to get it on some tiny channel but then the fast majority will never see it.
Mission accomplished.
The conspiracy theory nuts never think devious enough. They fear jackbooted thugs marching down the street when it is so much simpler to simply let it be known that an action would displease you and all the little puppets spring into action to prevent the risk that this displeasement might come on their necks. I could whip you into obeying my orders, or I could make you fear you won't have a job tomorrow with which to pay your credit card debt. I can only whip one person at a time. I can ruin thousands of lives by just signing a simple piece of paper except that the fear means I never have to do it to get you and your masters to obey.
We are seeing now in action what western democracy has become. And nothing will change. Because our masters have replaced the whip with credit card payments, mortages and Idols. The romans would have been proud. To bad they are gone, bread and circusses didn't work out to well for us. Doubt it will for us.
Wonder what the Chinese are making of all this. They seen the romans rice and fall, are we just another empire to die as the Chinese empire continues?
The police when investigating someone to determine wether that person is guilty or innocent has to trample all over that persons privacy. It is how the justice system works. When investigating even private diaries are not off limits, without knowing everything how can the police do its job?
And WE are the police when it comes to determining if our politicians are guilty or innocent. How can we investigate them, truly determine wether their actions are just if we do not know ALL the details? All the facts no matter how private?
A lot of people think governments need secrets to function. They are correct but take the need for secrecy far to far. Do I need to know the launch codes? No. Do I need to know the security measures in place to prevent abuse? YES! Why? How else can I determine whether the elected officials are handling the security of the nuclear arsenal properly? The sad fact is that the past has shown countless examples were incompetence was hidden by secrecy. Who is exactly going to get hurt by revealing the truth?
That Saudia Arabia. The country is getting a LOT of US support but is also funding Al Quada. Politicians have denied this, lied about it. To protect what? The US relation with Saudia Arabia OR to protect the fat contracts of their friends? To some politicians, this is one and the same. What is good for them, is good for the USA. Soldiers send to die on an assault on Iran as Saudia Arabia has urged might think differently.
Does a father of a soldier need to know the full truth about the US "allies" to determine which elected official can decide where to send his son?
Democracy isn't easy. It is probably the hardest form of government to have and not just because the voters are idiots. Those idiots, who rather watch Idols, must be able to inform themselves. Else an election would be based on nothing more the campaign promises. And do we really need politicians who want that?
The cable leaks do not have a clear single focus. They are not showing that Senator X sold out the country for Y millions. Rather it reveals a layer of deceit and secrecy that a lot of our political masters now have to come to accept as the norm. The voters don't needs know the inner dealings so they can keep electing the next puppet president based on empty campaign promises.
Or do you think the embassy staff reveals EVERYTHING TO every single person who is thinking about standing for office? But how can I decide to run for office to stop further deals with Saudia Arabia IF I don't know about the deals? This is a fundamental issue. Democracy is FOR the people, BY the people. If the people ain't informed, then how can they act? How can you run on a different agenda then the established powers if the true agenda is hidden? How can you question US foreign policy if you don't know what it is?
None of this is easy. It upsets people because in our hearts we want a simple life. Simple truths and for our betters to tell us who are the goodies and who are the baddies. Why do you think we like movies and books so much? Because the director/writer tells us what to think and we think it. It is nice and comforting.
And along comes Wikileaks and forces us to think for ourselves. Only a fraction of the cables have been released so far and there are some shocking things. Oh not because nobody suspected the facts. But now we know these rumors are in fact facts. Take North Korea, slashdot has seen a lot of people speculating about how China truly feels about it. Well, now we know. And?
A western excuse for NOT interfering in North Korea with force has been that China would oppose it with force. That is what our leaders told us. Now we know that our leaders have been informed that China isn't all that happy with North Korea itself. So just how opposed would China really be to a forced intervention? Might there be terms by which China would agree to re-unite Korea? The leaks suggest there is. So why isn't the west working on this?
What does it say about our politica
The brazillian was NOT a tourist, he was an illegal alien who ran from the police trying to make an arrest. But I suppose "criminal fleeing from armed police and failing to respond to a stop order gets shot" isn't in line with your bleeding heart.
And since you are a bleeding heart who twist the truth to suite his agenda I will from now on assume that everything you say is twisted and a lie.
Just what the world needs, an advocate for truth who lies. That will get people to see things differently.
Democracy ONLY works when the public is well informed and this means the public must know things you would rather keep secret. How can I vote for the guy who is going to make foreign policy if I don't know the foreign policy?
Yes, this makes life very hard for democratic leaders. Though shit. It comes with the political system. I am sure cops would be able to do their jobs far better if we restrict the freedom of citizens as well. For instance a curfew would make patrolling the streets just so much easier.
But we can't do that so we accept that criminals go free because they got rights.
Wikileaks just made life harder for US politicians. So? What do you value more? Freedom or an easy life for the diplomatic core?
And the silly thing is that the outrage isn't really present in the countries the US has the most troubled relations with. Iran doesn't even give a shit.
But all this HAS given the US public a real insight into the true goings on on the diplomatic front. Just what is the official line? Well now we know. So we can base our votes on that... or one who promises the largest tax cut. Whatever takes the shortest attention span.
The romans had bread and circuses, the conservatives/tories have home owner ship, holland has to mortage deduction and America has the two cars in the drive way.
What does this do? It is about creating a working "middle" class. A hard working "middle" class. But not a real middle class. Not a middle class that has power but a middle class that have just enough to give them something to loose if they try to gain anything. The principle is VERY simple. Feed the masses just enough to don't make it an issue of starve or riot but rather, eat enough or riot and starve.
Strike, and you loose your mortage, can't make the monthly car payments and therefor you got to swallow everything, just so you can keep the two cars you so desperately need for the job to pay for the cars because there is no public transport alternative.
It is VERY effective. Look at the recent election results, people voted to protect the rights of rich people. Unemployed people voted against unemployment protection. All in the believe that they are some kind of middle class that doesn't need any government protection from the super rich. The divide between rich and poor has never been so big and the poor are voting to increase the gap.
Forget about letting them eat cake. Let them dream of cake, and they will go as sheep to the slaughterhouse.
There is a reason the rich are rich. They are smarter then the poor people.
LISTEN to the tape, this is NOT a case of wrong identification or a snap judgement made in the heat of battle. They shoot up clearly unarmed civilians in the act of evacuation wounded people and joke about it.
Any civilized country would have these soldiers in jail. The US does not. That is all you need to know about the US.
“When facism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”
America is a lie. Always has been, always will be. Land of the free. Except for the niggers, the kikes, the chinks, women. One man one vote? Not in the US of A of the founding fathers.
There is currently a BBC documentary running that has as one of the tales about the lie of the American Dream and negro pilot who flew for the US in WW2, shot down and made prisoner he had more rights as a black officer in nazi germany then as a black man in the US for a very long time after WW2.
THIS is the real USA, were a black doctor was refused a blood transfusion because of his color. THIS is the America of Sarah Palin. A bigoted nation in which more states allow marriage between first cousins then between members of the same sex. Where blacks can still be shot by the police without consequence. A nation whose appetite for drugs is causing civil war in a neighbouring country but drugs are not dealt with other then creating the largest prison population.
It is a country in which lack of control causing a bank collapse, industry collapse, housing collapse and a oil disaster, so the popular vote is for LESS government control. Whoo!
The US is fundementally a country in which the American Dream has such an appeal that rational thought has no place. The fact is that governments ain't sexy, efficient or cheap. You can't run a country on a wish because you can never control the rest of the world enough to stop them interfering with your plans. America HAD been withdrawing from the world stage pre-9/11 then a dozen Muslims changed the world stage and the US had to shelve any budget cuts to the armed forces it might have used to pay for the lack of banking/housing oversight.
There is another story on Slashdot, the selling of HMS Invinceble that shows just how hard it is to run a country with any sort of ideology. The carrier wasn't meant to be used this long, it was for sale to the Aussies. Then Argentine invaded the Falklands and British plans had to be changed.
In Holland a move is being made to raise the speed limit in some areas to 130 kilometers per hour. Nobody is in favor except the kind of people that support Sarah Palin. It is an environmental disaster, the will cause a lot of confusion, the sections it can even be done on are tiny and it will kill an additional 13 people per year. Holland is a tiny country and our highway system is basically one long on/off ramp. Traffic constantly weaves from lane to lane, but now with an even high speed difference. The sections it is proposed to raise the speed limit on often have traffic jams making a higher speed pointless. BUT it is the only thing they can do, because everything else is bogged down in procedure. They want to show they are having an effect and so come up with a plan has a negative effect just to show they can do something.
Sarah Palin does the same. She can't fight the Taliban, can't change the economy, can't revitalize American industry, so lets make a pull on the old patriotic heartstrings and we all sing the anthem as the USS America sinks beneath the waves.
In times of crisis we need smart leaders who do what is right, not popular. And the only way to get them is with a popularity contest.
Thank you so very very much Greek. Democracy, never meant for the common man (Meaning everyone who doesn't agree with me).
Sorry but I think that your claim the be highly educated is false. Kindergarden does NOT count as higher education even if you stayed in it till 18.
So basically you want the guy that says "Oh, you Chinese claim you are our friends, well sure you can buy our army for a buck, anything for a friend" as your nations leader.
It sure as hell explains a LOT.
Hate to break it to you, but unless rocks can stand for president, we can't find anything dumber then you to run the country. Or is that your plan? Show to more stupid then Palin and get elected?
People don't like people who rock the boat they are sitting in, especially if its edge is already close to the waterline. They tend to kick people overboard, even if they are the person trying to signal a rescuer.
Wikileaks is exposing not just the obvious criminal corruption, the stuff you claim on others, but the widespread moral apathy that is the US of A. You can see it from the murder video. 12 civilians clearly unarmed shot with the murderers expressing clear joy at their slaughter. The US reaction? Absolutely nothing. If any of these soldiers were ever to be brought before a war crimes tribunal, the US of A has invasion plans for The Netherlands to stop any international justice by whatever force required.
This is America, and it doesn't sit well to have this truth shoved in their face. They want to believe the US of A is the land of the free, defender of democracy, hero of the oppressed.
You have to remember that most countries have the same thing. The Netherlands and its war crimes in Indonesia. Recently the state refused to meet a survivor of a masacre the germans would have been proud off, because it was going to upset the murderers. Don't ask the british about their colonial behavior or say the treatment of Jews after WW2.
Wikileaks is kicking up the dirt in peoples eyes and the people don't like it one bit.
Easier to kill the messenger then deal with the message. Always has been true, always will be. Cue this message running a high change of instantly disappearing because a teabagger is upset and mods it down to never be seen again.
These invasion plans, approved by the senate, are specific for Holland because it holds the international supreme court. If ever an American is put on trial for war-crimes, the US will invade an allied friendly nation with full military force.
That says a LOT about the US of A.
Gosh yeah, no need for the public to know that US ally Saudia Arabia is STILL financially supporting Al Queda while at the SAME time urging the US to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. No need to know. No, let the Saudi's play both sides while keeping the masses uninformed.
But we all "knew" this? Yes, but "we" "knew" so many things. Rumors are one thing, facts are another. NOW it is PROVEN and can therefor no longer be denied. Perhaps THIS time when shady deals with Arab nations are made again, this little bit of FACT will force US senators to be a bit more critical.
The US has a VERY long history of a two or even three-faced foreign policy. Claiming to be pro-democracy yet propping up dictarorships of the worsed kind around the globe. Speaking nice about allies like Holland yet having senate approved invasion plans for allied nations. These documents show what America truly thinks. But we don't need to know. No. We need to be kept in the dark, our masters know best and we should obey blindly.
He talks about all the costs to America. But what about the costs to the terrorists? Oh, they are far from defeated but they are not exactly in sterling form. Their leaders get picked off, their recruits are so crap they can only fight with suicide bombers because no soldier survives long enough to learn that you do NOT hold up a car with an RPG. They can't fight an open war anymore because anytime they do, they get killed.
And word-wide the jihadist message goes ignored. ALL this campaigning and all they got to show for it is a couple of half-assed attempts. Far more of them have been killed then they have managed to kill. Countries like Iran claim happily it is the west that is after them but their neighbours are urging the US to bomb the shit out of them. So much for Islamic solidarity.
And what is this all really costing the US? Huge army bill? Also happens to employ a lot of people, in the army AND the arms factories. Its military tech is thoroughly tested and it now has probably the most well trained army in the world, with tons of combat experience. Before all this, US tactics were based on its only ally to have extensive modern combat experience, Israel. Read up on IDF tactics and you can see how the US copied it. Now they got their own tactics based on their own hardware and strategic capabilities. Far far better then say Russian or Chinese soldiers. Security? Against employing a lot of people and for all the bitching, the fast majority of people barely notice it. Oh sure it is a hassle when you get searched, but I got searched decades ago travelling to britain on the ferry. Is it destroying the economy? No. Then what is the cost?
So far it also works, no successful attacks.
The economy down the drain? Yes... and? It has been down the drain before regardless of terrorists. It will recover, always has. Some people just don't seem to get that the US can't go bankrupt. Iceland did and what happened? NOTHING. The world isn't nearly as dramatic as people like to think.
No Mr Schneier, if you want to show the true costs of war, then you need to count all the costs, to both sides. War is good business. May not be nice, but only an idiot believes business is about being nice.
Kershner wasn't available. And the pressures on George Lucas were very different. The original was made pretty much as a self-financed project with the powers that be thinking "meh, if he fails it is his money, if he succeeds, we got a nice flick out of it that sells a few tickets to the kids".
And then Star Wars happened. And he got pretty much a green light on the 2 sequels because NOBODY understood just what the fuck had happened.
Many people don't understand anymore just what effect Star Wars had. The world, of entertainment at least, was shattered and it tooks years, no decades before the rest of the world recovered. We haven't had a movie on the scale of Star Wars until the Lotro trilogy. Pure escapist a thrill a minute fantasy ride. It just wasn't done back then and nobody understood just how a simple movie that is at best a bland copy of ancient stories often told better did so amazingly well.
The HYPE for the pre-quels was insane. Only Peter Jackson can begin to understand the pressure to deliver anything close and he at least had the advantage that he was doing something new to him. If he failed, people would just say that he failed because he sucked. Not that he had once succeeded and then failed. Never being a genuis is far easier then being an ex-genius.
And Lucas was pegged in, there are things you can't do anymore. The actors from A New Hope were relatively unknown. Yes yes, Alec Guinness was known. Okay, but from WHAT exactly? Could he pull the same with the new movies or did he have to get some known names because that is the way you make triple A titles?
Could he get away with dwarves in silly costumes and a very simple camera trick to transport us to an alien planet (the two suns, a classic piece of cinematography). No, been there, seen that. The audience expected more.
George Lucas was set an impossible task. A story that was nothing more then a couple of words in an 20 year old script to explain some backgrounds of two dimensional characters. And an audience used to full CGI wonder lands expecting the same mystique as the first movie to truly transport us to an alien civilization we had visited over and over again.
Yes, he screwed up and he screwed up big time. But my god, so did everyone around him. The actors SURELY could have acted better. Why couldn't any of the newbies pull an Alec Guinnes or Harrison Ford? Why did none of his helpers pull the movie up like his wife and others had done with the originals?
The original three movies are a coincedence, a happy cojuction of the right people meeting at the right time with the right frame of mind. The pre-quels are the example of a product designed by a commitee were nobody dares to upset the chairman.
The Mint Linux distro installs a default custom search that not only removes a lot of functionality from google but also takes up half the page size on a 12.1 inch netbook with a plain ugly design, just to make some cash. Fixing it is possible but come on! I donate cash already to various projects, but Mint can kiss my hairy ass. I need that left column in Google search because else it gives me results from the beginning of the ice age on any query related to current events.
But companies just can't accept that we don't want their crap. Especially American companies. Please ATI, I know about WoW, if I wanted to play it, I would have played it by now. So stop trying to slip the trial on my gaming machine. No thanks MSI, I do NOT want a dumb virus checker with my windows, I do not even want windows. And if I want games I get the one with my ATI card not some god awful free game with god knows what installed along with it.
I would love to serve one of the execs.
Bill Gates: "One milk shake please"
Me: *FAP FAP FAP*. *HATCHOO*. *SPIT*.
Me: "Sure, and enjoy the free extra I added in regoniztion of the quality software you shovelled on me."
Anyone knows if the McD at Redmond is hiring?
The most recent elections elected the tea-party. That is the party that wants LESS government oversight on the banking industry, the financial industry and on oil companies. Because the bank collapse, the housing collapse and oil disaster in the gulf all happened because of to much government interference and not enough free market.
I am not suprised goverments are reluctant to talk to voters. After all, they know the people that put them in power. Would you want to talk to someone who put the tories back in charge of the british economy? Why not just re-surrect reagan and thatcher and just kiss our asses goodbye.
Only give this to people who do not have sex and therefor no offspring. Slashdot will LIVE FOREVER!!!
And the living will envy the death (because they got some).
You get what you pay for. At sorting centers the speed is breakneck. Do you REALLY think "this side up" CAN even be respected if not only there are a dozen packages coming down your chute, but the sorting system itself already thumbles them every which way regardless of human handling?
In the Netherlands there is currently a struggle going on because the old postal service had to go commercial and the market was broken open. Results is dat companies like "selektvracht" came in and cherry picked the contracts with low low offers (they don't deliver in rural areas or pick up mail from mail boxes) employing straight from the imigration desk. The official language is "Engrish" with the bulk of workers from whatever boat docked most recent with a load of refugees. Gosh and they just don't seem to care about how your 2000 euro mac gets handled... wonder why.
If you pay peanuts, you get monkey's. And yet if you read the posts near the top you see a couple of losers whining that there cheap cheap package company doesn't employ people who care about their job.
They don't get that people DO care about their job. Just that what is good for your job in these companies isn't good for the customer. I did it ages ago for a while. I actually went around picking up all the busted packages to process them and was told "don't do that, you are paid to look after the system". Eventually they just got thrown out. It is COMPANY policy to care about quantity, not quality.
So stop blaming the monkeys. They do not try to break packages but they get paid for pushing as many as possible, and if some break. Though shit. Volume volume volume.
But hey, you wanted to save a buck on the shipping rate.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn965-wheel-patented-in-australia.html If this didn't do it, NOTHING will. The only fix is a lead device encased in copper with an explosive powder.
Consoles have always had a simple weakness. Memory. Developers love it, consoles don't have it.
Netbooks now come with 2GB. The PS3 comes with 512mb. That is all, video and main memory and in some ways it really only 256mb. When was the last time you had a computer with 256mb main memory? Or for that matter a 256mb video card? Oh okay, my current netbook has but then I would hardly call it a gaming machine.
A perfect example was Morrowind, it performed horrible on the PC at first with frequent loading between "zones". Until a PC only expansion was added which increased the memory usage. Foila, no more loading. The original game had been designed with the console in mind and so was extremely conservative with the amount it used.
Games like Fallout 3 show it as well. My DUAL core PC not only has higher resolution textures by default, it can even run smooth with insanely high definition user made textures. That is a DUAL core PC, two cores are better then 6(or 3 I believe for the x-box)? Why yes, because while the consoles are chugging along with constant streaming from a slow HD, my humble PC just has it in memory, in the 1 gig (4x video memory of the console) video memory.
Further proof lies in the horrible PS3 as a linux machine performance. Seriously, who would want a linux desktop with 256mb memory? Why not just try to run linux on the DS and really hurt yourself... oh wait... someone is doing just that.
But can't clever programming offset this? No, not really. That same clever programming after all also works on PC's so they get the same benefit and STILL have tons more memory. While you can make a lot of fun games that use little memory, a lot of games just don't fit. You can't have a large open persistent world where you can zoom around and have non-streaming optimized content (Think GTA where you have lots of car models but only a couple loaded at the same time) in 512mb.
And no, it ain't just shooters. Think the Sims 3. All that user created content, were is it going to fit? A decent installation with a owner who wants her sims to be JUST right already can bring a PC to its knees with its memory demands. On the console forget it! The HD would catch on fire.
The simple fact is that once all the tricks on the PS2 were learned, it was still a horribly obsolete machine compared to an average PC. Only people that don't game think different. Why do think we still got PC only games? MMO development is PC only (the recent FFXIV is such a failure that it can't be counted)?
Somehow I think the guys at Crytek know better then some console fanboy.
What sells MS software? The high quality (I just vomited in my mouth) or the lock-in? If it was the high quality of MS software (ugh, what did I eat yesterday) then there would be no reason for a rewrite.
So it must be the lock-in. People buy MS because that is what all their software runs on. Why do you think IE6 is still around? Because people WANT to use an hopelessly obsolete browser? No, because they have developer intranet applications that only run on IE6 and with that only on windows. Businesses put all their logic into Excel coupled with Access and Exchange until they are so tied into MS software that when the MS rep comes along they shout "Yes, sir. Thank you sir. Can we have another SIR!" when he cracks the wip and has the CEO lick his boots.
If MS were to pull a OSX, then this lock-in would disappear. Bye bye IE6/ActiveX, companies would have to either stick with the old MS software, which is why IE6 and XP and NT are still around, or rewrite it completely. Any competent manager (but what competent manager would choose MS) would have to ask, do I again design my new software with MS lockin considering their habit of abandoning their customers? Apple received plenty of flack itself for the OSX move, MS has far more customers locked to its old software.
When people start rewriting software, they might just decide to make it platform independent. And that is LETHAL to MS, because then every time the MS rep comes along, he will have the SELL his offering on both quality and price and why should I pay 260 for Windows 7 when Ubuntu 10.10 is free? Will the Ubunutu rep rent better hookers to get the support contract?
No, MS needs the lock-in its old software offers and by that it is itself locked-in. The snake eating its own tail. The US outsourcing all its manufacturing so it can sell goods cheap to unemployed Americans. Business 101: We ain't here to be nice.