If the game is 2GB in size, then that represents 400MB of bug fixes. If those are bugfixes, then Valve take the title from Microsoft for Most Buggy Product On Release Day [TM].
I keep hearing all this talk on how PocketPC is more versatile, but not once have I actually heard someone explain an application which can be done on PocketPC but not on Palm.
As a Palm user, I'm really eager to know about this, because I was having a tough decision picking between the two, and in the end I discovered that both units had about the same capabilities, with the lack of one feature in Palm OS (multithreading) which I still don't consider to be very useful in a PDA.
I would love to see a phone with similar capabilities to my PDA, for the same price as my PDA. But the truth is, the closest thing I could find at the time (only 3 months ago, though) was still at least 50% more expensive, no matter how much I looked at it.
Convergence will probably only result in dilution, like it did with the camera function. We'll just get half-arsed PDA features on a device with a half-arsed screen size.
Better would be something like an XDA where you get a full PDA size, and just use a Bluetooth headset instead of holding the thing up to your ear... but I could buy two Tungsten T3 units for the price of a single XDA2, and still have money to spare. They need to lower the price a little before it becomes a real competitor with PDAs.
Palm could easily rewrite their GUI and all their apps to run on embedded Linux.
Advantages: less time wasted developing an OS, when many people around the world are already putting time into improving it. More familiar and more open development environments for all developers. Able to use large parts of existing Java implementations which run on Linux on ARM CPUs.
Disadvantages: they would have to rewrite their emulator for earlier processors to run on Linux, and also they might break compatibility with the few OS5 apps which were written to run directly on ARM, rather than for m68k.
If they get the Java implementation up to scratch, then they hit a whole new market, which they can't even touch with the shitty VM they currently provide. Building on that, and making a Java API available as an alternative to the C/C++ APIs, they could try and one-up the Zaurus.:-)
I want to buy a Zaurus, and as soon as I can justify it, I will.
What I really want though, is one of the clamshell models to get Bluetooth. I'm not particularly keen on buying a CF Bluetooth adapter and then having to manually configure it.
But actually, how is the process of configuring these things anyway? Is the hardware support for CF devices more or less equivalent to the hardware support of the USB devices on PC? If I can buy pretty much any CF Bluetooth adapter off the shell and configure it in the same way I configured my USB adapter on my Linux desktop, I might be a little more keen on this option.
The other thing I just noticed is that on this page, you can clearly see a picture which shows that Half-Life 2 is only 78% "downloaded", after "buying" the game.
I put "buying" in quotes here, because I don't consider 78% of something to be the complete product. As far as I'm concerned, Valve and Co. should be responsible for the remaining bandwidth I need to waste completing the download.
Or, at a LAN party. Imagine that a year down the track, you're at a LAN party and feel like playing some Half-Life 2. But you already uninstalled it to make way for something else, and you need to reinstall it.
The majority of LAN parties have no Internet connection, so you're screwed... unless you Bluetooth to your phone and connect via GPRS or something, which isn't very friendly anyway.
And of course, there is also the whole deal of buying something that doesn't work. Surely someone can be sued for all this, and I can bet you that at least one angry customer will try.;-)
But isn't this already the case? Windows XP has a search tool built in, which can be optionally configured to automatically index all new files. You can't uninstall that, either.
For example, if you standardise the filesystem hierarchy among distributions, then it encourages people writing software to hardcode the location of certain things.
Hardcoding is bad.
Hardcoding causes otherwise groundbreaking distributions like GoboLinux to need to support stupid notions like configuration files "always" being in/etc, which in turn means they end up filling a directory full of symlinks to the real location of the files.:-)
Maybe what's really needed is for all the upstreams to be kicked in the shins if they don't already support a flexible configure mechanism. Pretty much all autoconf-based stuff already does, it's everything else which tends to be slack.:-)
The other problem is that they didn't really address the problem at all:
some comments expressed displeasure with the fact that you have to be tied up to your computer to make those VOIP calls via Skype. Not anymore - this adapter from Siemens plugs into the USB port of the computer
Call me crazy, but having to be plugged into the computer sounds pretty fucking much like being tied to the computer.
It's funny that you should mention lawyers, actually. My previous employer was a lawyer in his earlier career, and he was telling me a lot of stories about how they used to create entire content assembly applications out of WordPerfect macros.
I figure that anything which has macro facilities good enough to do what modern webapp frameworks are doing today, is good.:-)
Now, I suppose Word has these features today, but there was probably a point in time where it was playing catch-up.
I can't tell you for Outlook Express since I'm effectively prevented from uninstalling that one. But in the case of "uninstalling" Windows Messenger, it doesn't look like it even hides the executable. I can still see it here, in Program Files.:-/
It would cost to send the rubbish, at the moment... but you could use Bluetooth and just push the advertisement to unwilling pedestrians in the vicinity of your advertising nodes.
Actually, it's worse than that. When you "uninstall" IE, it leaves iexplore.exe on your computer and merely sets its hidden attribute. You can still run the program itself, as well as like you say, all the DLLs which are the real problem.
Right, but you do push patches out to Windows desktops. Put Firefox in the patches, et voila. Firefox on desktops. I bet you can script the uninstalling of IE, as well, even if you don't lock it out completely.
Not all malicious code necessarily needs to be clicked upon. Many of the malware nasties that get through, get through because IE didn't even bother to prompt for it, for "convenience." Or, they just exploit the buffer overrun du jour.
PNG supporters are marginal? All the big commercial graphics tools seem to support it. All modern desktop operating systems support it (including Windows!) All web browsers but one support it.
I suppose that this one web browser is what you call "marginal."
Also, the IBM patent covering the LZW compression algorithm which GIF uses, has not expired (Friday 11th of August 2006, in the US, I believe.)
Slashdot Mirror
If the game is 2GB in size, then that represents 400MB of bug fixes. If those are bugfixes, then Valve take the title from Microsoft for Most Buggy Product On Release Day [TM].
I keep hearing all this talk on how PocketPC is more versatile, but not once have I actually heard someone explain an application which can be done on PocketPC but not on Palm.
As a Palm user, I'm really eager to know about this, because I was having a tough decision picking between the two, and in the end I discovered that both units had about the same capabilities, with the lack of one feature in Palm OS (multithreading) which I still don't consider to be very useful in a PDA.
I would love to see a phone with similar capabilities to my PDA, for the same price as my PDA. But the truth is, the closest thing I could find at the time (only 3 months ago, though) was still at least 50% more expensive, no matter how much I looked at it.
Convergence will probably only result in dilution, like it did with the camera function. We'll just get half-arsed PDA features on a device with a half-arsed screen size.
Better would be something like an XDA where you get a full PDA size, and just use a Bluetooth headset instead of holding the thing up to your ear... but I could buy two Tungsten T3 units for the price of a single XDA2, and still have money to spare. They need to lower the price a little before it becomes a real competitor with PDAs.
I think you have a good idea there.
Palm could easily rewrite their GUI and all their apps to run on embedded Linux.
Advantages: less time wasted developing an OS, when many people around the world are already putting time into improving it. More familiar and more open development environments for all developers. Able to use large parts of existing Java implementations which run on Linux on ARM CPUs.
Disadvantages: they would have to rewrite their emulator for earlier processors to run on Linux, and also they might break compatibility with the few OS5 apps which were written to run directly on ARM, rather than for m68k.
If they get the Java implementation up to scratch, then they hit a whole new market, which they can't even touch with the shitty VM they currently provide. Building on that, and making a Java API available as an alternative to the C/C++ APIs, they could try and one-up the Zaurus. :-)
I want to buy a Zaurus, and as soon as I can justify it, I will.
What I really want though, is one of the clamshell models to get Bluetooth. I'm not particularly keen on buying a CF Bluetooth adapter and then having to manually configure it.
But actually, how is the process of configuring these things anyway? Is the hardware support for CF devices more or less equivalent to the hardware support of the USB devices on PC? If I can buy pretty much any CF Bluetooth adapter off the shell and configure it in the same way I configured my USB adapter on my Linux desktop, I might be a little more keen on this option.
Which Palm?
PalmSource have developed a new OS which has been out for-frigging-ever. OS6, or Cobalt, would be a very nice thing, if someone would take it up.
So the OS certainly isn't stagnant.
PalmOne, on the other hand, have expressed no interest in releasing any Cobalt-based devices for a very long time.
The other thing I just noticed is that on this page, you can clearly see a picture which shows that Half-Life 2 is only 78% "downloaded", after "buying" the game.
I put "buying" in quotes here, because I don't consider 78% of something to be the complete product. As far as I'm concerned, Valve and Co. should be responsible for the remaining bandwidth I need to waste completing the download.
Or, at a LAN party. Imagine that a year down the track, you're at a LAN party and feel like playing some Half-Life 2. But you already uninstalled it to make way for something else, and you need to reinstall it.
The majority of LAN parties have no Internet connection, so you're screwed... unless you Bluetooth to your phone and connect via GPRS or something, which isn't very friendly anyway.
And of course, there is also the whole deal of buying something that doesn't work. Surely someone can be sued for all this, and I can bet you that at least one angry customer will try. ;-)
Basically, yes.
But isn't this already the case? Windows XP has a search tool built in, which can be optionally configured to automatically index all new files. You can't uninstall that, either.
Standards can be good, and standards can be bad.
For example, if you standardise the filesystem hierarchy among distributions, then it encourages people writing software to hardcode the location of certain things.
Hardcoding is bad.
Hardcoding causes otherwise groundbreaking distributions like GoboLinux to need to support stupid notions like configuration files "always" being in /etc, which in turn means they end up filling a directory full of symlinks to the real location of the files. :-)
Maybe what's really needed is for all the upstreams to be kicked in the shins if they don't already support a flexible configure mechanism. Pretty much all autoconf-based stuff already does, it's everything else which tends to be slack. :-)
The other problem is that they didn't really address the problem at all:
some comments expressed displeasure with the fact that you have to be tied up to your computer to make those VOIP calls via Skype. Not anymore - this adapter from Siemens plugs into the USB port of the computer
Call me crazy, but having to be plugged into the computer sounds pretty fucking much like being tied to the computer.
You can already use mJabber on a capable phone, but I use Chatopus on my PDA, since I can't stand the tiny phone screen.
Firefox doesn't run on mobile phones yet, so I figure Opera has a niche there.
Alternatively, I will buy the first phone to ship with the Gecko rendering engine in its web browser.
It's funny that you should mention lawyers, actually. My previous employer was a lawyer in his earlier career, and he was telling me a lot of stories about how they used to create entire content assembly applications out of WordPerfect macros.
I figure that anything which has macro facilities good enough to do what modern webapp frameworks are doing today, is good. :-)
Now, I suppose Word has these features today, but there was probably a point in time where it was playing catch-up.
...
And myself, I use Vim. Much better. ;-)
Yeah, that too. It's really pathetic. :-/
I can't tell you for Outlook Express since I'm effectively prevented from uninstalling that one. But in the case of "uninstalling" Windows Messenger, it doesn't look like it even hides the executable. I can still see it here, in Program Files. :-/
It would cost to send the rubbish, at the moment... but you could use Bluetooth and just push the advertisement to unwilling pedestrians in the vicinity of your advertising nodes.
Actually, it's worse than that. When you "uninstall" IE, it leaves iexplore.exe on your computer and merely sets its hidden attribute. You can still run the program itself, as well as like you say, all the DLLs which are the real problem.
Right, but you do push patches out to Windows desktops. Put Firefox in the patches, et voila. Firefox on desktops. I bet you can script the uninstalling of IE, as well, even if you don't lock it out completely.
Don't forget the poll option, "Where is the Cowboy Neal option, you insensitive clod!"
Not all malicious code necessarily needs to be clicked upon. Many of the malware nasties that get through, get through because IE didn't even bother to prompt for it, for "convenience." Or, they just exploit the buffer overrun du jour.
PNG supporters are marginal? All the big commercial graphics tools seem to support it. All modern desktop operating systems support it (including Windows!) All web browsers but one support it.
I suppose that this one web browser is what you call "marginal."
Also, the IBM patent covering the LZW compression algorithm which GIF uses, has not expired (Friday 11th of August 2006, in the US, I believe.)
They actually fucked up the gamma too.
Why not cut straight to the chase: Internet XP
If it worked for MS selling copies of the OS to a bunch of n00bs, why wouldn't it work for selling a browser to the same bunch of n00bs?
Surely there are just as many who are, as any given company with loose rules tends to be smaller than any given company with tight rules.