For Valve's defense, their reasoning for this is more than valid.
What rubbish! In their announcement of the change, they tried to sell it as if us not being able to join a class action lawsuit was somehow better for us. This is all about them, and to claim otherwise is duplicitous.
I clicked the "I agree" button, but if I felt the need to sue their asses off I would do so and argue that I agreed to this under duress. They have hundreds of dollars worth of games that I have purchased. For Valve to make this change and say that I have to agree otherwise I lose all access to my games is despicable. I can understand it if I make any more purchased and have to agree to a new EULA then that is my choice, but I shouldn't have to agree to something just because I want to keep using what I had already payed for.
I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further. - Darth Vader.
I have currently placed a hold on any new purchases on Steam. I realise that is a cheap threat to make after they had their big sale, but I am going to use up my backlog of games so that if they do alter the agreement yet again then I am in a better position to make a choice to agree or disagree. And let's face it, for all I know they are making this change now to prevent us from suing them because they want to make an even worse change in the future.
This boycott will actually fit in well with another recent change I decided to make. I decided to pay more for indie games. I realised that I have been spoilt by the multitude of bundles on offer that I have really cut back on buying indie games because I assume that they will eventually be part of a bundle. But I want to support the indie developers. I want there to be a large number of game houses out there so that the balance between developer and gamer is no so one-sided like it is with Ubisoft, EA and Valve. If I want that, then I should be willing to pay a bit more to help it happen.
I have used a tiny mouse for years. My current one is a Logitech M185 which is huge in comparison to my previous ones. It is 117g, but for me a 1.1kg notebook is at the upper limit of weight (my lightest was about 700g) so it is still one tenth the weight of my computer.
To be honest, it is not so much the weight of the mouse that interests me, but just being able to fit it in my backpack. A standard size mouse seems a lot larger when crammed it into a fairly full bag than it does sitting on a desk.
Go on, keep scrolling the images. It is actually kind of hypnotic seeing all the shapes and colours scrolling by. It would be super freaky to do this if you were high on drugs!
There was a fellow who said the same thing like a year ago, and all the pro-AGW people were singing in the streets, trumpeting their final victory.
Oh yeah! Now what was his name again? That's right, it was Professor Richard Muller. Yes, it is the same guy.
And no, he was not later found to have joined the study under false pretenses. That was just the anti-AGW crowd's attempt to belittle the study by attacking the author, in the same way that the great-grandparent did with the claim of not being able to find any skeptical statement by Muller.
The problem is that he is not an extremist, and when he finds evidence that does support the climate change then he accepts it. However, he does have problems with some of the claims from the scientific community and he calls them out on it. He is a true skeptic, unlike the people who keep insisting that they are called skeptics who turn nasty on anyone who actually has their mind changed by scientific data. Those so-called skeptics are really just deniers.
That's nice, but I was talking about the work of Microsoft. As you said, iRMX was produced by Intel.
The simple fact is that Microsoft wanted OS/2 to target the 386 to allow for preemptive multitasking of Windows programs. OS/2 1.x could not even have two command prompts running at the same time. OS/2 2.0 finally allowed for preemptive multitasking of OS/2 programs, but it wasn't until OS/2 Warp that it allowed this for Windows programs too. And what do you know, Warp targeted 386 just like Microsoft had advocated.
None of your examples have anything to do with Microsoft. They didn't design the hardware, so they could not control the sound and graphics of the PC. They may have had real multitasking prior to NT had it not been for IBM insisting that OS/2 ran in 286 mode. It was one of the reasons wh IBM and Microsoft went their separate ways in the OS market.
Microsoft have had plenty of innovation over the years, especially from the work done at Microsoft Research. Unfortunately, they are not always very good at commercializing the technologies that are invented.
To be fair, a Commodore 64 could render the Metro interface at a reasonable speed. The advantage of changing to an interface that looks like it is from the 80s or 90s is that you don't have to push around a lot of pixels or do fancy 3D tricks to make it work.
When they finally retire the old non-Metro UI and just have the full-screen interface, I wonder if they will rename the product from Microsoft Windows to Microsoft Window. The tagline: there can be only one (program onscreen).
In Valve are serious about gaming on a linux base, it can't be at the ground zero of current Intel GFX. Well, it can - but I won't be the slightest bit interested.
Well Valve can't be serious about Windows gaming either, because even their most recent games still run pretty well on Intel graphics.
That's a nice list. It is silly how many people will happily claim that <MACKAY>Windows Phone is bad</MACKAY> without being able to name a single thing that it does wrong.
It is interesting how many of those complaints also applied to the iPhone (or at least, early versions of it). I read the first ten items on the list and then skipped to the end to see what I thought was going to be the inevitable s/Zune/iTunes/ line. It seemed like such an obvious setup for the joke. Mind you, there were a number of bizzare problems on that list that even Apple wouldn't get wrong. The compass being wrong in the Southern Hemisphere was funny (#115).
Yeah MS handles low end hardware well -- just look at how great those "Vista Capable" machines turned out....
They turned out exactly as the grandparent described: the "Vista Capable" computers were not powerful enough so Vista automatically switched off Aero. The OS still worked on the low end computers, but it would happily make use of the extra power provided by the more modern, high-end systems.
I assume that nobody here has actually used this system, so surely we can only say that theoretically it is bad in practice. In practice, they may have accounted for these problems in their theory.
My guess is that their software would not assume that people are lurching tens of meters in a single moment just because they pass something magnetic. They would use the same smoothing algorithm that GPS mapping uses. Have you ever noticed when you first load up a map on your GPS position is often quite inaccurate initially before eventually pin-pointing your location a few seconds later. They smooth out any anomalous readings after this, which you can see when your position briefly pauses while you are moving at a constant speed. During those pauses, the system has received new location that differs significantly from the last reading. These are obviously ignored to give the illusion of accuracy.
This magnetic system could do the same. With bidirectional communication, the software could report back anomalies due to changed environments and incorporate them into the self-correcting maps. Given that shopping centers do want to track their shoppers, it seems quite likely that there would be bidirectional communication happening.
I repeat:So why hasn't anyone implement it on a phone before Apple with or without using an actual bolt?
Did you not even read the summary (let alone the article)? It seems Apple was not the first:
He said Apple's slide-to-unlock feature was an "obvious" development in the light of a similar function on an earlier Swedish handset.
There are also plenty of examples of people mimicking real world devices in virtual screens. Sliders on mixing desks, rotating switches, radio buttons (why else would they be called radio buttons?) etc. Even if Apple were the first to use this particular interface, it is still not actual innovation to just copy an existing design in a virtual form.
This is not a defensive move in reaction to the iPhone at all. Microsoft's move to tablet computing began back in the Windows 3.1 days with Windows for Pen Computing as extensions to the OS. It became a version of Windows in its own right with Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. This was merged into the main OS with Vista and is still part of Windows 7.
Their efforts to change the user interface to suit the tablet continued with the introduction of the Ribbon in Office 2007.
With Metro, they have come full circle with their efforts to make their phone interface the same as their desktop interface. Previously they had adapted the phone interface to look like the Windows 95 desktop, including a tiny little start menu (it even ran on the ARM CPU). Now they are making their desktop look like a phone. It was a dumb idea then and it is a dumb idea now, but that is another issue. However, it does show that everything they have done as been consistent long term strategy, and not just a knee-jerk reaction to one Apple product.
Let's face it. In the age of the touchscreen tablet, this rehash by Nintendo looks like something only the 10-yr old and under crowd would find acceptable, notwithstanding the cheapskate faithful addict market sector.
The trouble with touchscreen gaming is that it does not suit games that require a controller. The virtual d-pad is too finicky and is no replacement for real buttons (IMHO). I will happily play games that require the touchscreen or gyroscope on my iPhone, but I will jump back on my DS Lite for platformers.
The thing that stops me from getting a 3DS is the region coding. I don't want to have to even think about where I am buying something from when I am shopping online.
He was a congressman for 9 years prior to being elected to the Senate. He was boring the pants off everyone about the Internet since the 70s! The actual quote containing his infamous claim was:
During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.
Microsoft and Linux go together like gasoline and chocolate. No way am I installing their ware on my stuff.
I think that this was probably meant as a to reply to this post rather than mine.
But seriously, if you really want to avoid Microsoft software (and let's face it, we all know your feelings on that subject) then it is even more important to mention the name of the company in the summary. And even if you do not want to use the software yourself, you can at least become better informed as to what modern Microsoft practices are like so that you don't continue to make the assumption (which was not unreasonable at the time) that Microsoft would drop Linux support for Skype.
Still I'm utterly astounded that it took Microsoft ownership to finally pry a halfway decent and up to date version from the developers.
I think it is interesting how Microsoft didn't get a mention at all in the summary or the article considering that the story is about them release software for Linux. And yet prior to Microsoft aquiring Skype they were directly blamed for Skype dropping other clients. It seems we only want to mention Microsoft when bad things are happening, even if it has nothing to do with them.
That said, it is interesting that the Skype website wasn't immediately rebranded with Microsoft logos. It seems MS are underplaying their ownership of this cross platform service. Perhaps they did some market research and found that their name would make users on non-Windows platforms aprehensive. You only need to look at the predictions of doom and gloom in the various Skype stories here on/. to appreciate that.
I am guessing that you are referring to Stephen McIntyre of Climate Audit. Have a look at his biography:
Mr. Steve McIntyre has been appointed as Chairman of the Board of Trelawney Mining and Exploration Inc with effect from June 30, 2011. Mr. McIntyre has over 30 years experience in the mining and mineral exploration business, including over 10 years with Noranda Mines Ltd. and 20 years as an officer and director of several junior mineral exploration companies, including Dumont Nickel Inc., Northwest Explorations Inc., Timmins Nickel Inc. and Vedron Gold Inc. Most recently, Mr. McIntyre has achieved international prominence through critical statistical analysis of climate research. In 2010, he was named as one of "50 People Who Matter" by the New Statesman, an English magazine, and was co-winner of the Julian Simon Award from the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Why is it that so many prominant climate nay-sayers can be traced back to the mining industry? The common complaint about scientists in this field is that they spruke global warming to get research funds, but those same complainers don't seem to care about how the denialist scientists make their money.
Have a look the next time a "scientist" comes out against climate change. You will often find that a lot of those scientists are actually geologists. I accept that geologists can tell us a lot about atmospheric conditions going back over time, but I also accept that the biggest industry that employs geologists is the mining industry.
Slashdot Mirror
For Valve's defense, their reasoning for this is more than valid.
What rubbish! In their announcement of the change, they tried to sell it as if us not being able to join a class action lawsuit was somehow better for us. This is all about them, and to claim otherwise is duplicitous.
I clicked the "I agree" button, but if I felt the need to sue their asses off I would do so and argue that I agreed to this under duress. They have hundreds of dollars worth of games that I have purchased. For Valve to make this change and say that I have to agree otherwise I lose all access to my games is despicable. I can understand it if I make any more purchased and have to agree to a new EULA then that is my choice, but I shouldn't have to agree to something just because I want to keep using what I had already payed for.
I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further. - Darth Vader.
I have currently placed a hold on any new purchases on Steam. I realise that is a cheap threat to make after they had their big sale, but I am going to use up my backlog of games so that if they do alter the agreement yet again then I am in a better position to make a choice to agree or disagree. And let's face it, for all I know they are making this change now to prevent us from suing them because they want to make an even worse change in the future.
This boycott will actually fit in well with another recent change I decided to make. I decided to pay more for indie games. I realised that I have been spoilt by the multitude of bundles on offer that I have really cut back on buying indie games because I assume that they will eventually be part of a bundle. But I want to support the indie developers. I want there to be a large number of game houses out there so that the balance between developer and gamer is no so one-sided like it is with Ubisoft, EA and Valve. If I want that, then I should be willing to pay a bit more to help it happen.
Saying I'm an atheist is ok, saying you are stupid because you believe in god is not.
What about someone saying that you will burn in hell for eternity because you are an atheist?
I have used a tiny mouse for years. My current one is a Logitech M185 which is huge in comparison to my previous ones. It is 117g, but for me a 1.1kg notebook is at the upper limit of weight (my lightest was about 700g) so it is still one tenth the weight of my computer.
To be honest, it is not so much the weight of the mouse that interests me, but just being able to fit it in my backpack. A standard size mouse seems a lot larger when crammed it into a fairly full bag than it does sitting on a desk.
Go do an image search for Microsoft Mouse and tell us that they are only just started thinking about design now.
Go on, keep scrolling the images. It is actually kind of hypnotic seeing all the shapes and colours scrolling by. It would be super freaky to do this if you were high on drugs!
There was a fellow who said the same thing like a year ago, and all the pro-AGW people were singing in the streets, trumpeting their final victory.
Oh yeah! Now what was his name again? That's right, it was Professor Richard Muller. Yes, it is the same guy.
And no, he was not later found to have joined the study under false pretenses. That was just the anti-AGW crowd's attempt to belittle the study by attacking the author, in the same way that the great-grandparent did with the claim of not being able to find any skeptical statement by Muller.
nobody seems to be able to find anything he's ever said that put him in the "skeptic" camp...
And yet the people who are pro-AGW have heard of him, and have felt the need to create a rebuttal page listing what he has said and where he went wrong. Here is an article written by Muller about the hockey stick graph.
The problem is that he is not an extremist, and when he finds evidence that does support the climate change then he accepts it. However, he does have problems with some of the claims from the scientific community and he calls them out on it. He is a true skeptic, unlike the people who keep insisting that they are called skeptics who turn nasty on anyone who actually has their mind changed by scientific data. Those so-called skeptics are really just deniers.
That's nice, but I was talking about the work of Microsoft. As you said, iRMX was produced by Intel.
The simple fact is that Microsoft wanted OS/2 to target the 386 to allow for preemptive multitasking of Windows programs. OS/2 1.x could not even have two command prompts running at the same time. OS/2 2.0 finally allowed for preemptive multitasking of OS/2 programs, but it wasn't until OS/2 Warp that it allowed this for Windows programs too. And what do you know, Warp targeted 386 just like Microsoft had advocated.
None of your examples have anything to do with Microsoft. They didn't design the hardware, so they could not control the sound and graphics of the PC. They may have had real multitasking prior to NT had it not been for IBM insisting that OS/2 ran in 286 mode. It was one of the reasons wh IBM and Microsoft went their separate ways in the OS market.
Microsoft have had plenty of innovation over the years, especially from the work done at Microsoft Research. Unfortunately, they are not always very good at commercializing the technologies that are invented.
To be fair, a Commodore 64 could render the Metro interface at a reasonable speed. The advantage of changing to an interface that looks like it is from the 80s or 90s is that you don't have to push around a lot of pixels or do fancy 3D tricks to make it work.
When they finally retire the old non-Metro UI and just have the full-screen interface, I wonder if they will rename the product from Microsoft Windows to Microsoft Window. The tagline: there can be only one (program onscreen).
In Valve are serious about gaming on a linux base, it can't be at the ground zero of current Intel GFX. Well, it can - but I won't be the slightest bit interested.
Well Valve can't be serious about Windows gaming either, because even their most recent games still run pretty well on Intel graphics.
There would be shooting, but the shooter wouldn't have survived.
And how many more would have been killed in the crossfire as panicked people start shooting wildly in a smoke-filled theatre?
That's a nice list. It is silly how many people will happily claim that <MACKAY>Windows Phone is bad</MACKAY> without being able to name a single thing that it does wrong.
It is interesting how many of those complaints also applied to the iPhone (or at least, early versions of it). I read the first ten items on the list and then skipped to the end to see what I thought was going to be the inevitable s/Zune/iTunes/ line. It seemed like such an obvious setup for the joke. Mind you, there were a number of bizzare problems on that list that even Apple wouldn't get wrong. The compass being wrong in the Southern Hemisphere was funny (#115).
Yeah MS handles low end hardware well -- just look at how great those "Vista Capable" machines turned out....
They turned out exactly as the grandparent described: the "Vista Capable" computers were not powerful enough so Vista automatically switched off Aero. The OS still worked on the low end computers, but it would happily make use of the extra power provided by the more modern, high-end systems.
I assume that nobody here has actually used this system, so surely we can only say that theoretically it is bad in practice. In practice, they may have accounted for these problems in their theory.
My guess is that their software would not assume that people are lurching tens of meters in a single moment just because they pass something magnetic. They would use the same smoothing algorithm that GPS mapping uses. Have you ever noticed when you first load up a map on your GPS position is often quite inaccurate initially before eventually pin-pointing your location a few seconds later. They smooth out any anomalous readings after this, which you can see when your position briefly pauses while you are moving at a constant speed. During those pauses, the system has received new location that differs significantly from the last reading. These are obviously ignored to give the illusion of accuracy.
This magnetic system could do the same. With bidirectional communication, the software could report back anomalies due to changed environments and incorporate them into the self-correcting maps. Given that shopping centers do want to track their shoppers, it seems quite likely that there would be bidirectional communication happening.
I repeat:So why hasn't anyone implement it on a phone before Apple with or without using an actual bolt?
Did you not even read the summary (let alone the article)? It seems Apple was not the first:
He said Apple's slide-to-unlock feature was an "obvious" development in the light of a similar function on an earlier Swedish handset.
There are also plenty of examples of people mimicking real world devices in virtual screens. Sliders on mixing desks, rotating switches, radio buttons (why else would they be called radio buttons?) etc. Even if Apple were the first to use this particular interface, it is still not actual innovation to just copy an existing design in a virtual form.
This is not a defensive move in reaction to the iPhone at all. Microsoft's move to tablet computing began back in the Windows 3.1 days with Windows for Pen Computing as extensions to the OS. It became a version of Windows in its own right with Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. This was merged into the main OS with Vista and is still part of Windows 7.
Their efforts to change the user interface to suit the tablet continued with the introduction of the Ribbon in Office 2007.
With Metro, they have come full circle with their efforts to make their phone interface the same as their desktop interface. Previously they had adapted the phone interface to look like the Windows 95 desktop, including a tiny little start menu (it even ran on the ARM CPU). Now they are making their desktop look like a phone. It was a dumb idea then and it is a dumb idea now, but that is another issue. However, it does show that everything they have done as been consistent long term strategy, and not just a knee-jerk reaction to one Apple product.
Let's face it. In the age of the touchscreen tablet, this rehash by Nintendo looks like something only the 10-yr old and under crowd would find acceptable, notwithstanding the cheapskate faithful addict market sector.
The trouble with touchscreen gaming is that it does not suit games that require a controller. The virtual d-pad is too finicky and is no replacement for real buttons (IMHO). I will happily play games that require the touchscreen or gyroscope on my iPhone, but I will jump back on my DS Lite for platformers.
The thing that stops me from getting a 3DS is the region coding. I don't want to have to even think about where I am buying something from when I am shopping online.
No, it was more like "let there be money".
It is just like how Steve Jobs didn't work in a Foxconn sweatshop building iPhones, and yet he still got the kudos for the product.
He was a congressman for 9 years prior to being elected to the Senate. He was boring the pants off everyone about the Internet since the 70s! The actual quote containing his infamous claim was:
During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.
Software took another turn recently... The new Mac OS Mountain Lion costs $20 for instance.
And for a more appropriate comparison than an upgrade of a 12 month old version of an OS, iWork costs $79.
What is the difference between the words that would impact my original post?
Microsoft and Linux go together like gasoline and chocolate. No way am I installing their ware on my stuff.
I think that this was probably meant as a to reply to this post rather than mine.
But seriously, if you really want to avoid Microsoft software (and let's face it, we all know your feelings on that subject) then it is even more important to mention the name of the company in the summary. And even if you do not want to use the software yourself, you can at least become better informed as to what modern Microsoft practices are like so that you don't continue to make the assumption (which was not unreasonable at the time) that Microsoft would drop Linux support for Skype.
Still I'm utterly astounded that it took Microsoft ownership to finally pry a halfway decent and up to date version from the developers.
I think it is interesting how Microsoft didn't get a mention at all in the summary or the article considering that the story is about them release software for Linux. And yet prior to Microsoft aquiring Skype they were directly blamed for Skype dropping other clients. It seems we only want to mention Microsoft when bad things are happening, even if it has nothing to do with them.
That said, it is interesting that the Skype website wasn't immediately rebranded with Microsoft logos. It seems MS are underplaying their ownership of this cross platform service. Perhaps they did some market research and found that their name would make users on non-Windows platforms aprehensive. You only need to look at the predictions of doom and gloom in the various Skype stories here on /. to appreciate that.
Obviously, they are completely different from each other.
And I say they are not too completely different from each other enough!
</MISQUOTE>
I am guessing that you are referring to Stephen McIntyre of Climate Audit. Have a look at his biography:
Mr. Steve McIntyre has been appointed as Chairman of the Board of Trelawney Mining and Exploration Inc with effect from June 30, 2011. Mr. McIntyre has over 30 years experience in the mining and mineral exploration business, including over 10 years with Noranda Mines Ltd. and 20 years as an officer and director of several junior mineral exploration companies, including Dumont Nickel Inc., Northwest Explorations Inc., Timmins Nickel Inc. and Vedron Gold Inc. Most recently, Mr. McIntyre has achieved international prominence through critical statistical analysis of climate research. In 2010, he was named as one of "50 People Who Matter" by the New Statesman, an English magazine, and was co-winner of the Julian Simon Award from the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Why is it that so many prominant climate nay-sayers can be traced back to the mining industry? The common complaint about scientists in this field is that they spruke global warming to get research funds, but those same complainers don't seem to care about how the denialist scientists make their money.
Have a look the next time a "scientist" comes out against climate change. You will often find that a lot of those scientists are actually geologists. I accept that geologists can tell us a lot about atmospheric conditions going back over time, but I also accept that the biggest industry that employs geologists is the mining industry.