I said Tf2 already, but really anything that runs in the Source engine.
Unless it has additional restrictive DRM which doesn't work on Linux. All that CD check stuff tends to break Wine with memory exceptions. You have to strip out the CD checks before games will work, and in most cases, they still don't, not least because of incompetent, amateurish cracks.
I can't even name a Source engine game that has additional DRM besides Steam.
What pressures (if any) are keeping Adobe from just redesigning Flash in a way that facilitates the creation of Apple-compliant applications. If Adobe can rework Flash to make it Apple-compliant (and they sure ought to be able to do that), then what other legitimate gripe does Adobe have?
Because Apple's latest App Store developer agreement stipulates that applications for the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch have to be originally written in C, C++, or Objective C. Meaning that the Flash to iPhone feature built into Flash CS5 makes applications that don't conform to said agreement.
So, no, Apple specifically updated their licensing agreement to exclude apps originally made in Flash.
Unless Flash 10.1 includes a Time Machine feature, there's a big flaw in your argument.
If you'd used past tense, then yes... but you didn't.
At the present moment, there is a version of Flash that does hardware accelerated H.264 video for Windows and another for OSX, even if they are both preview releases.
Well guess what? No only does the iPhone support great h.264 video, sites like YouTube, NYT, and Facebook are transcoding to it, and it looks BETTER than those sites look in Flash on the desktop, using only a tiny fraction of the processing power.
[Citati... hell, screw this, I'll answer it directly rather than cop out on it.
Youtube didn't just start transcoding to H.264. They were already doing it. Guess what! Flash supports H.264 decoding!
So no, it doesn't "look BETTER" because it's the exact same video feed. As for the "tiny fraction of the processing power" you should try Flash Player 10.1 on a computer. You know, the version that adds hardware H.264 decoding.
So, if I write a browser plugin or standalone program that implements the SWF file format (PDF) [adobe.com], it won't work? Why?
If it's a browser-based app written in JavaScript, it will likely be unusably slow. If it is written in Objective-C, Apple will reject it the way it rejects any other interpreter.
Here, I'll quote what the GP said, bolding the important parts.
"Flash is closed, it is not an open standard. If adobe closed up tomorrow the amount of flash that we rely on would become a problem."
Do you see the problem with your answer yet? Well, I'm going to explain it anyway.
The iPhone/iPad doesn't support flash, so "flash that we rely on" doesn't apply to the the iPhone/iPad. Thus, both the point and counterpoint made by the GP and myself are unrelated to the iPhone/iPad.
H.264, which is what Apple is advocating to use for video on the web instead of Flash
Not entirely accurate. For one thing, Flash uses H.264 in either the FLV container or the MP4 container.
Not entirely accurate. For one thing, Flash supports multiple codecs, of which H.264 is a recent addition.
For another, Flash's original reason for existence was vector animation, and these become much bigger when transcoded to H.264.
That would be why I said "to use for video." Like it or not, video is a much larger market on the Internet than vector animation is, and thus is Flash's main use on the web now.
However, SVG animation does not appear to have widespread support yet, so good luck finding another vector animation source on the web.
[H.264] is not an open standard either.
At least the specification is published and the patents are available under a uniform royalty license, as opposed to relying exclusively on a case-by-case negotiated license.
That's implying you have to pay to license a codec at all. If you expected me to mention Theora here, you're right... but not in the way you thought.
It's a well known fact that H.264 outperforms Theora (AKA VP3)... but Google is apparently preparing to release the VP8 video codec as open source at next month's Google I/O conference.
The PS3 has dropped in price from $800 to $150, while you can replace your PS2 for $80.
I don't know what currency you're using, but in US Dollars, that should read: "The PS3 has dropped in price from $600 to $300, while you can replace your PS2 for $100."
I've been running Firefox on 6 machines running a combination of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Mac OS 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6 for the last 5 years. The flash plugin is installed, and I frequently browse sites that use Flash heavily for web galleries. The number of times Firefox has crashed on me in those 5 years I can count on one hand (actually I think its less than 3). My anecdotal evidence is as good yours and at least to me hints that perhaps something else wrong with your set up.
5 years?
My anecdotal evidence is that Windows XP + Firefox 2 + Flash (8 I think it was) + 2 or more flash objects on the same page = Either massive slowdown or Firefox crashing
It's what made install Flashblock for the first time.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. For one thing, the iPhone sandboxes all apps from one another for security and stability. How do you do that within a JVM? And are you talking about making a blacklist on the JVM itself to try to prevent certain code from running, rather than using the whitelist model all other apps in the store use?
Just like PCs do, run each Java app in its own JVM instance.
As for other security issues, I would assume you'd be dealing with signed JARs.
Flash is closed, it is not an open standard. If adobe closed up tomorrow the amount of flash that we rely on would become a problem. Right now a fully featured internet experience depends on using a platform that is supported by a single company that produces a non open plug in. If your platform isn't supported by Adobe, or isn't supported well, you are out of luck when it comes to using the internet. If your platform isn't well supported by Apple that doesn't make nearly as big of a difference when it comes to your internet experience (though quicktime can be an issue, at least there are tons of other options for streaming video).
So, if I write a browser plugin or standalone program that implements the SWF file format (PDF), it won't work? Why?
H.264, which is what Apple is advocating to use for video on the web instead of Flash, is not an open standard either. Even worse, companies that make media players and web browsers that support it have to pay a license fee. Except for companies like Apple that own patents used in it.
why do you think the Wii is absolutely crushing the PS3 and 360.
Price. The Wii went on sale for $250 USD when the cheapest the cheapest Xbox 360 model was $300 USD (but had no storage, no ability to play Xbox or XBLA games without buying a separate HDD... which cost another $100, wired controllers, and no wireless networking), and the cheapest PS3 model was $500 USD.
The market has changed a bit since then. The current prices for the cheapest models are: Wii $200 USD, Xbox 360 $200 (still no wireless networking built in, but it has a 512MB memory unit like the Wii), PS3 $300 (but no PS2 compatibility).
In fact, the PS3 and Xbox 360 $300 models are fairly similar, down to the HDD size (120GB). The main difference (besides the games they play) are that the 360 is backwards compatible with Xbox games, while the PS3 has wireless networking built in.
Unsurprisingly, the Wii's sales have slowed, while the PS3's sales have risen.
I recall said contract's second amendment* said something about selling the copyrights to SCO if they could show a reason that they would need them during the course of administering the UNIX license program.
It said nothing of the sort. What it did say was...
All copyrights and trademarks... required for SCO to exercise its rights with respect to the acquisition of UNIX and UnixWare technologies.
with respect to the acquisition of UNIX and UnixWare technologies... These technologies were acquired a long time ago, and this amendment is dead.
And the point still stands anyway. (Old) SCO clearly didn't need the copyrights in its dealings with UNIX/UnixWare and thus didn't acquire them.
It's the same age as Half-Life 2 and World of Warcraft, and half a year more recent than The Sims 2. It may not be "cutting-edge", but it's certainly not "old" either.
The only one of these that is still easily found in retail stores is World of Warcraft. That's no surprise, as updates are still pushed for it every few months. Not just that, but the next expansion involves updating all of the original game's contents... even for users who don't buy the expansion (hey, they're actually using all that money they earned to improve the game. Go figure.)
Yes, but you can get around that restriction with new Microsoft Flight Simulator Simulator 2010! Brought to you by the same people who brought you World of World of Warcraft!
That this SCO is doing this or that there is a legal avenue for them to do it?
Note: This response is going to ignore that both a federal judge and, after an appeal sent it back to the courts, a federal jury found that Novell kept control of the UNIX copyrights, since in theory SCO could appeal the second decision.
What, you didn't think there would be laws to force a company to abide by a contract they agreed to?
Having said that, as I recall said contract's second amendment* said something about selling the copyrights to SCO if they could show a reason that they would need them during the course of administering the UNIX license program. Which SCO never did.
Heck SCO, if you can't even adhere to the terms of your possibly fraudulent contract amendment, how can you possibly expect to win this?
* a potentially fraudulent document which SCO "found in a drawer" and Novell strangely didn't have a copy of, presumably signed by Ray Noorda, CEO of Novell when said contract was executed in the 90s and owner of The SCO Group at the time this lawsuit started...
ANY old ID game (not sure if you can say this about Duke Nukem or some older Blizzard games) still has many servers up and running AND people actually playing in them.
iD and Raven's earlier networked shooters (Doom*, Doom 2, Heretic, Hexen) didn't have Internet play built-in. Nor did Duke Nukem 3D**.
Quake was the first FPS game to introduce a client-server system, as opposed to the peer-to-peer system earlier games used. This means it was also the first game that used dedicated servers. (Side note: Its Internet play sucked at first, until the network support was rewritten and released as QuakeWorld.)
Blizzard still runs Battle.Net for the games that came with support for it. Unfortunately, the first game with that was StarCraft, after which is was backported to Warcraft 2 (to make Warcraft 2: Battle.Net Edition). Blizzard did support Kali for the original release of Warcraft 2, though.
*The official Windows port of Doom supports DirectPlay, part of DirectX. **Actually, DN3D may also have come with the Kali client... I don't remember.
One thing I noticed in Warhammer Online's "enfless trial" area is that it was extremely easy in the early Public Quests to get the most contribution points solely by healing. This was on the Chaos side as the Zealot class.
Something funny happened about the same time, somehow congress got it right and allowed relatively few controls on the 'internet'. People liked it, in fact they LOVED it!
AT&T was broken up in 1982. The Internet didn't even allow commercial traffic until 1993.
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I don't see why you couldn't develop an application using the XNA Framework under Mono. You can even test it on your Linux machine with Mono XNA
I can't even name a Source engine game that has additional DRM besides Steam.
Because Apple's latest App Store developer agreement stipulates that applications for the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch have to be originally written in C, C++, or Objective C. Meaning that the Flash to iPhone feature built into Flash CS5 makes applications that don't conform to said agreement.
So, no, Apple specifically updated their licensing agreement to exclude apps originally made in Flash.
I see the problem with the first sentence, but in the second, "only support" and "support only" both make sense.
I don't know about the German remake, but I thought the US remake got canned during the 2008 Writer's Strike.
If you'd used past tense, then yes... but you didn't.
At the present moment, there is a version of Flash that does hardware accelerated H.264 video for Windows and another for OSX, even if they are both preview releases.
[Citati... hell, screw this, I'll answer it directly rather than cop out on it.
Youtube didn't just start transcoding to H.264. They were already doing it. Guess what! Flash supports H.264 decoding!
So no, it doesn't "look BETTER" because it's the exact same video feed. As for the "tiny fraction of the processing power" you should try Flash Player 10.1 on a computer. You know, the version that adds hardware H.264 decoding.
[Citation needed]
Here, I'll quote what the GP said, bolding the important parts.
"Flash is closed, it is not an open standard. If adobe closed up tomorrow the amount of flash that we rely on would become a problem."
Do you see the problem with your answer yet? Well, I'm going to explain it anyway.
The iPhone/iPad doesn't support flash, so "flash that we rely on" doesn't apply to the the iPhone/iPad. Thus, both the point and counterpoint made by the GP and myself are unrelated to the iPhone/iPad.
Not entirely accurate. For one thing, Flash supports multiple codecs, of which H.264 is a recent addition.
That would be why I said "to use for video." Like it or not, video is a much larger market on the Internet than vector animation is, and thus is Flash's main use on the web now.
However, SVG animation does not appear to have widespread support yet, so good luck finding another vector animation source on the web.
That's implying you have to pay to license a codec at all. If you expected me to mention Theora here, you're right... but not in the way you thought.
It's a well known fact that H.264 outperforms Theora (AKA VP3)... but Google is apparently preparing to release the VP8 video codec as open source at next month's Google I/O conference.
I don't know what currency you're using, but in US Dollars, that should read:
"The PS3 has dropped in price from $600 to $300, while you can replace your PS2 for $100."
5 years?
My anecdotal evidence is that Windows XP + Firefox 2 + Flash (8 I think it was) + 2 or more flash objects on the same page = Either massive slowdown or Firefox crashing
It's what made install Flashblock for the first time.
Just like PCs do, run each Java app in its own JVM instance.
As for other security issues, I would assume you'd be dealing with signed JARs.
So, if I write a browser plugin or standalone program that implements the SWF file format (PDF), it won't work? Why?
H.264, which is what Apple is advocating to use for video on the web instead of Flash, is not an open standard either. Even worse, companies that make media players and web browsers that support it have to pay a license fee. Except for companies like Apple that own patents used in it.
They advertised it on the older models, but not the newer ones.
Also, they didn't pull backwards compatibility from models after the sale via a firmware update.
Price. The Wii went on sale for $250 USD when the cheapest the cheapest Xbox 360 model was $300 USD (but had no storage, no ability to play Xbox or XBLA games without buying a separate HDD... which cost another $100, wired controllers, and no wireless networking), and the cheapest PS3 model was $500 USD.
The market has changed a bit since then. The current prices for the cheapest models are:
Wii $200 USD, Xbox 360 $200 (still no wireless networking built in, but it has a 512MB memory unit like the Wii), PS3 $300 (but no PS2 compatibility).
In fact, the PS3 and Xbox 360 $300 models are fairly similar, down to the HDD size (120GB). The main difference (besides the games they play) are that the 360 is backwards compatible with Xbox games, while the PS3 has wireless networking built in.
Unsurprisingly, the Wii's sales have slowed, while the PS3's sales have risen.
And the point still stands anyway. (Old) SCO clearly didn't need the copyrights in its dealings with UNIX/UnixWare and thus didn't acquire them.
The only one of these that is still easily found in retail stores is World of Warcraft. That's no surprise, as updates are still pushed for it every few months. Not just that, but the next expansion involves updating all of the original game's contents... even for users who don't buy the expansion (hey, they're actually using all that money they earned to improve the game. Go figure.)
The Sims 2 is old; The Sims 3 is new.
Half-Life 2 is old; Left 4 Dead 2 is new.
Yes, but you can get around that restriction with new Microsoft Flight Simulator Simulator 2010! Brought to you by the same people who brought you World of World of Warcraft!
Note: This response is going to ignore that both a federal judge and, after an appeal sent it back to the courts, a federal jury found that Novell kept control of the UNIX copyrights, since in theory SCO could appeal the second decision.
What, you didn't think there would be laws to force a company to abide by a contract they agreed to?
Having said that, as I recall said contract's second amendment* said something about selling the copyrights to SCO if they could show a reason that they would need them during the course of administering the UNIX license program. Which SCO never did.
Heck SCO, if you can't even adhere to the terms of your possibly fraudulent contract amendment, how can you possibly expect to win this?
* a potentially fraudulent document which SCO "found in a drawer" and Novell strangely didn't have a copy of, presumably signed by Ray Noorda, CEO of Novell when said contract was executed in the 90s and owner of The SCO Group at the time this lawsuit started...
How recent is recent? The game came out in November 2004.
iD and Raven's earlier networked shooters (Doom*, Doom 2, Heretic, Hexen) didn't have Internet play built-in. Nor did Duke Nukem 3D**.
Quake was the first FPS game to introduce a client-server system, as opposed to the peer-to-peer system earlier games used. This means it was also the first game that used dedicated servers. (Side note: Its Internet play sucked at first, until the network support was rewritten and released as QuakeWorld.)
Blizzard still runs Battle.Net for the games that came with support for it. Unfortunately, the first game with that was StarCraft, after which is was backported to Warcraft 2 (to make Warcraft 2: Battle.Net Edition). Blizzard did support Kali for the original release of Warcraft 2, though.
*The official Windows port of Doom supports DirectPlay, part of DirectX.
**Actually, DN3D may also have come with the Kali client... I don't remember.
You too? I thought they did it for me because I was an early subscriber to Steam or something.
That should have said "endless trial" as in the area that people using trial accounts can access.
One thing I noticed in Warhammer Online's "enfless trial" area is that it was extremely easy in the early Public Quests to get the most contribution points solely by healing. This was on the Chaos side as the Zealot class.
AT&T was broken up in 1982. The Internet didn't even allow commercial traffic until 1993.
How soon we forget our history.