Anyone remember COM, VBX, and other MS-Windows technologies of yesteryear? Or the Visual Basic debacle of more recent vintage. For as long as I can remember, there's been a steady churn of Microsoft technologies, coming and going.
Well COM is still used as the basic programming interface today. Look at one of the most recent additions to the Windows UI - the Ribbon. According to the Ribbon introduction on MSDN:
"The Ribbon framework provides this flexibility by separating functionality from presentation with two distinct development structures: an Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML)-based markup language to declare controls and the visual layout of a Ribbon implementation, and C++ COM-based interfaces to initialize the framework and handle events at run time."
And VBX? You want to lament a technology built for Windows 3.1 that got superceded by a technology that would be built-in to the OS for all programming languages in Windows 95, was 32 bit instead of VBX's 16 bit (did you really want Windows to stay 16 bit forever?), and is built with that the COM system that you just learnt is still actively in use 17 years later.
The difference is that Longhorn's projected API's were advanced API's built on existing languages, tools, and frameworks, whereas the JavaScript switch is an attempt to move developers to a totally different (and arguably inferior) system.
But this is not a radical switch to Javascript designed to eliminate all other development systems any more than when Microsoft used HTML and Javascript to implement the Windows Sidebar, or when they used HTML and Javascript to implement HTML Applications (HTAs), or when they used HTML and Javascript to implement Active Desktop gadgets.
This is just a continuation of their development strategy that dates back to 1997. The controversy surrounding the use of HTML5 for the interface is just stupid and unjustified angst that ignores nearly 15 years of API precedent.
Seriously, how do you choose which hare-brained conspiracy theory you want to believe in? Since there is absolutely no evidence that he was killed years ago, is in a Guantanamo cell or is back at his office at he CIA, then how can you say that one theory is wrong and another right.
And why is any of those bizarre ideas more plausible than the official line. The idea that he died years ago requires both the co-operation of Al-Qaeda and President Bush to agree to defer the glory to his successor. Yeah, right.
MS Flight Simulator could convert subLOGIC Scenery Disks since version 2, but it wasn't until Flight Sim 4 that users could make their own. From the link I quoted before:
A large series of add-on products were produced for FS4 between 1989 and 1993. First from Microsoft & the Bruce Artwick Organization (BAO) came the Aircraft and Scenery Designer (ASD) integration module. This allowed FS4 users to quite easily build, on the fly from directly within the program, custom scenery units known as SC1 files which could be used within FS4 and traded with other users (this activity was quite popular in the FS Forum on CompuServe).
if microsoft flight simulator community kicked the hell out of any other modding community, they wouldnt be too naive as to rely on microsoft, which, not surprisingly and habitually, killed off microsoft flight simulator community.
We are talking about a franchise that began in 1982 and lasted 24 years. It is a bit rich to turn around after all that time and say "I told you so". Name one other modding community that has lasted that long.
Really? Visual Basic 6 was around for 5 years before it was replaced by VB.NET. Do you really think that Microsoft kept quiet about it for all that time and still somehow had it become an annoying popular development product?
and IMO they bought FoxPro just so they COULD kill it.
They aquired FoxPro in 1992, sold it through six versions and it is still available and supported today. They will not be releasing another version after the current one, but they have still sold it for over 20 years.
Microsoft Bob.
Yay! A truely failed and discontinued product. You finally found a technology that they killed off, which must have annoyed both of the users of MS Bob.
Zune.
You can still buy this today. It also still lives on in software form with the XBox360 and Windows Phone 7.
XENIX
Got sold off and transformed into SCO UNIX.
Personally, I feel absolutely no sympathy to anyone who's hitched his wagon to a company that only provides a development environment because they use illegal monopoly tactics to ruin their competition.
You don't have to feel sorry for them. Just let them wallow in their filthy money that they earned by choosing the most popular computing platform.
If I knew they were testing drivers for alcohol on my route back, then I would ensure the person driving the car back doesn't drink. Otherwise if you don't know where they are who cares if they are doing a test? The chance of getting caught on some random road are incredibly small.
That really just tells us about you. I'm not sure how much it says about society in general.
The other night I was out playing sport in the kind of competition where we ruin all our exercise by going out eating and drinking afterwards. I saw two separate instances of drivers encouraging their passengers to have another drink because they will stay under the limit to drive them home. I have been out with other couples and watched them negotiate with each other who will be driving them home so they knew who could keep drinking.
This is all without apps to tell them where the "booze buses" were. These were just ordinary people who obeyed the law. Whether that was because they thought they might get caught or just that they thought it was worth keeping under the limit to be safe on the roads, I don't know. But I saw no incredulous looks on the faces of those around me when these events occured. It was just accepted as the norm. Perhaps the people with whom I associate are a bit more civilized than you and your friends.
The cameras make mistakes all the time. In my area they flash even if you aren't moving, if at any time your front tyre rolls 1cm over the arbitrary flash limit somewhere near the white line.
As long as that does not result in fines being incorrectly issued then the cameras can flash as much as they like. If nothing else, it provides a reminder to drivers that they should not do anything stupid.
When you grow up, you will find life is more than just being a robot and following the rules the adults set up for you.
So as you get older, you become less mature. I get the feeling that I should read your message out aloud in my best Jeff Foxworthy voice and sprinkle a few "you might be a redneck if..." phrases in. It is people like you that make shops have security cameras so people who think that they are above the law do not just "help themselves".
If I found a member of my family died because some idiot refused to jump the light to let an ambulance past, I would be pretty pissed off.
Would you be similarly pissed off if your family member was killed by some idiot running a red light. I can't imagine the conflict that you would feel if it was to that road accident that your delayed ambulance was headed. Although now I think about it, in my neck of the woods we all stop when an ambulance comes through an intersection and allow the paramedic to drive on the wrong side of the road if necessary. I'm not sure how wise it would be to surprise an ambulance by suddenly driving out against the lights as they weave in and out of the traffic. In these parts they prefer people to be predictable.
Rules are not a substitute for common sense.
And yet we need to have rules precisely because common sense can often be quite uncommon. How many people who consider themselves to be safe drivers end up being involved in the yearly road casualty statistic that is over ten times larger than the death toll for 9/11.
So would you be happy to be one of the people who dies on the road for my right to free speech? Seriously???
I can understand that we should be able to have these discussions about road safety and police practices. As you say, in a democratic society this is a fundamental right. But it is not right to yell fire in a theatre because it will endanger people's lives. It is not right make libelous, false statements like "Mr Anonymous Coward is a kiddy fiddler. He lives at 22 Main Street and everyone should hunt him down and kill him."
So if I had to choose between not being able to tell people where a DUI checkpoint was and not being killed by a drunk driver tonight... well, I would rather live to argue the merits of this another day.
You say that "one of THE most basic and important fundamental rights in a proper democracy", but I say that the right to stay alive trumps this every single time. After all, you can't have free speech when you're dead.
Your argument is incredibly naive or indicative of some sort of bias.
What a moronic statement. The original complaint that you can't confront your accuser is the statement that shows bias. Why on earth would anyone feel the need to confront an inanimate object? Do you think the camera might have it in for ethnic minorities? Or perhaps it might have been distracted by something happening behind it and it wasn't really looking?
Confronting an accuser makes sense if the accuser is a human. If it is a camera, then it can be calibrated and regularly tested. We don't need to ask questions to find what a camera really saw, because it keeps a perfect record of this. But perhaps the picture doesn't see all the factors involved? Well neither does a pair of human eyes watching the same scene. But I would still place my bets on a camera recalling an incident better than any human.
The people who argue against traffic cameras are probably the same ones who also argued recently that knowing the locations of DUI checkpoints somehow makes the streets safer. These people really just want to protect their "right" to break the law.
No, it does not. The hypothetical situation only works if there is only one route to get home. The type of person who would drive home only when an app said the cops were not doing checks would not hesitate to choose an alternate route. How many times do you only have one road to get home?
And what could be worse for a drunk driver than to choose an unfamiliar route that might consist of badly lit back streets. This is an accident waiting to happen.
If you compare the case of the app showing a "safe" drive home, and the case of not having an app at all, I assume the outcome would usually be the same and that he would drive home intoxicated.
Except he would not get home if he got stopped at a checkpoint. Do that often enough and he would lose his licence. Getting an admitted drunk driver off the road for good sounds like the safest option yet!
Maybe some people would not drive home due to the uncertainty, but I don't think that would be the majority
The majority of people would not consult an app to see if it is safe to break the law. The majority of people alter their behaviour to prevent themselves getting into that situation. They will go out as a couple or in a group and have a designated driver. They will pace their drinking over the night and consume food to reduce their alcohol absorbtion. They will plan ahead to use an alternate mode of transport.
A better standard would be a really good field sobriety test based on reaction times administered in front of a dash camera.
That is too slow for testing a large number of vehicles at a checkpoint. By making a slow procedure, you can only test a smaller number of cars travelling past that point - meaning you may end up letting someone who would blow 0.90 sail right past without being tested at all. All for the sake of letting some people get lucky for being just under the limit.
I am not quite sure why it is such a problem anyway. How is a 0.01 lower BAC any different to being 0.01 seconds faster in a reaction time test. At some point there will be an arbitary number that will be tested against, and some people will slip just under the radar.
So if you check your app and you find that there isn't a checkpoint on the only highway between the bar and your house, does that mean you would happily drive home drunk and possibly cause an accident? That doesn't sound like it made the roads safer at all!
However, if you did not know if there was a checkpoint set up, then you may just decide not to risk it and take a cab anyway. Thus by not having the facts the road becomes safer.
And anyway, I don't see how these apps would help people avoid DUI checkpoints. If you're sufficiently wasted, then you probably don't have the judgment skills to use the app and avoid the checkpoint in the first place.
There is a huge gap between the legal alcohol limit where driving is impaired due to lower reaction times and being so blotto that you can't use an iPhone app. If you can't use an app then you probably can't get the key in your ignition either.
I have known people who take back streets to avoid likely checkpoint areas (making it a more complicated route to navigate) because they knew that they would be over the limit. Being drunk doesn't instantly make you stupid, it starts by making other people look more attractive.
This is how Apple have trained people in the iphone gestures from day one.
Really? Where is Apple's list of all the gestures? I haven't seen one. Even if it does exist, it doesn't work. I have watched the faces of people trying to use their brand new iPhones - it is not an expression of joy, but of confusion and frustration.
I bet that if you made up a list of every gesture then virtually every iOS user would learn something that they didn't know about. When you start talking about two and even three fingered gestures, these are not things that people will stumble across by themselves.
...and we're back to the Windows 1.0 tiled window interface.
That was my first thought too. It is a merge of Window 1.0's tiled interface with Windows 95's Active Desktop doing weblets on the desktop.
I'm a tablet user, so some of those features do look nice, but for my standard desktop computers then I'm not convinced. There were quite a lot of gestures being used, but that suffers from one of my complaints about iOS - the interface is not obvious. How would you know to drag in from an edge and hover to achieve something?
I'm also not a fan of tiles that are always running. It's great that the weather is always being updated, but I only check it a couple of times a week so it really doesn't need to be connecting to the net constantly. A weather app is tiny, but there are plenty of other apps that are really bloated - how slow will a system become with a bunch of those running all the time? It works on the Windows Phone 7 because phone apps tend to be much smaller than desktop apps.
Those were just a couple of things that came to mind as I watched the video. The real test will be to use the OS - I may find that my concerns are completely unwarrented. Only time will tell.
There have been many projects over the years that aim to create a sustainable city. I know when China announced its eco-city, it was just as much a showcase for technology that could be exported to other countries as it was an experiment in making towns better for the environment. This is going to be big business in the future once the politicians and those with a vested interest in fossil fuel stop fighting the change.
Nonetheless, this game is already on several torrent sites, so it's not as if the DRM worked in the first place.
As others have mentioned here, this game was always available without DRM if you bought it from GOG.com. Presumable it was this version that got pirated. Even if it wasn't that version, I doubt that they paid top dollar for the best DRM solution if they knew that they would abandon it so soon.
I just noticed something annoying. When you go to the page that I referenced above from an Australian IP address, you end up paying over US$75 for the game. Bloody region crap! I wont blame GOG for this too much, as I am sure that it is just part of their deal that they can't undercut the official distributors in other regions of the world. At least they say:
Since the AU price is almost $26 more than the price in USD, weâ(TM)re giving you a $26 USD credit to spend on GOG.com.
Which is fine for me, but if you are not interested in old games then it would be annoying. Finally, Aussies get a cut down version of the game due to our stupid ratings system because our government will not trust us. Oh well, at least GOG trusts us to enter our details correctly on the account settings page...
They ripped it off, it's well known. Apparently not by everyone though.
The problem with common knowledge is that it does not prove that something is correct. If a fact is "well known" then you should probably spend a bit more time checking to ensure that this is true.
The idea that the XBox 360 ripped off the Cell comes from the cover notes for David Shippy's book. However, in this interview with him, the details don't seem to match the blurb. Regarding Microsoft choosing IBM to design their chip::
Shippy doesn't believe that Microsoft yet knew that Sony had the PlayStation 3 in the works -- but liked what it saw in the PowerPC technology that was now possible thanks to design principles partly researched for Cell.
The article says that all the companies involved had the right to use the technology developed for the Cell for other projects and other customers. This is standard practice. The article goes on:
Does that mean Microsoft got a look at the Cell itself? "No, we didn't show them the Cell chip," Shippy clarifies. "The Cell itself and the fundamental architecture that went into that, actually not -- that was all proprietary for PS3. What was shown to Microsoft was just a technology road map that said, 'hey, we can go do these high-performance PowerPC cores at very high frequency and low power'."
In wanting to sell his book, the author made it seem that there was something underhanded going on with Microsoft. And yet:
So despite some higher-level conceptual ideas in common, Shippy stresses that both consoles' processors are very different, from architecture to software models. "They differentiated themselves in their own unique ways," says Shippy. "What's interesting is that they did that with this common building block that was designed initially for the PS3."
The Xenon processor was not a ripoff of the Cell, IBM just used some of the technology that they developed with the other processor.
Oh please,.Windows ME was not a bad idea. It was designed to kill off the Windows 9x line so everyone (users and developers) would move to XP. How much of the software that failed on ME would also failed on XP had developers not been forced to remove their assumptions of being able to load drivers in config.sys and autoexec in real mode DOS?
Microsoft Bob was a product of its time. There were a lot of attempts by many companies to make computing easy for non-techy people by mimicking real world objects. It always fails though. You should not look at Bob as a dumb idea, merely as an implementation of a failed genre.
Windows Vista got a lot worse reviews than it deserved. A lot of what was said about the OS turned out to be untrue. Windows 7 shows that they were actually on to a good idea once the drivers had caught up.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone remember COM, VBX, and other MS-Windows technologies of yesteryear? Or the Visual Basic debacle of more recent vintage. For as long as I can remember, there's been a steady churn of Microsoft technologies, coming and going.
Well COM is still used as the basic programming interface today. Look at one of the most recent additions to the Windows UI - the Ribbon. According to the Ribbon introduction on MSDN:
"The Ribbon framework provides this flexibility by separating functionality from presentation with two distinct development structures: an Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML)-based markup language to declare controls and the visual layout of a Ribbon implementation, and C++ COM-based interfaces to initialize the framework and handle events at run time."
And VBX? You want to lament a technology built for Windows 3.1 that got superceded by a technology that would be built-in to the OS for all programming languages in Windows 95, was 32 bit instead of VBX's 16 bit (did you really want Windows to stay 16 bit forever?), and is built with that the COM system that you just learnt is still actively in use 17 years later.
The difference is that Longhorn's projected API's were advanced API's built on existing languages, tools, and frameworks, whereas the JavaScript switch is an attempt to move developers to a totally different (and arguably inferior) system.
But this is not a radical switch to Javascript designed to eliminate all other development systems any more than when Microsoft used HTML and Javascript to implement the Windows Sidebar, or when they used HTML and Javascript to implement HTML Applications (HTAs), or when they used HTML and Javascript to implement Active Desktop gadgets.
This is just a continuation of their development strategy that dates back to 1997. The controversy surrounding the use of HTML5 for the interface is just stupid and unjustified angst that ignores nearly 15 years of API precedent.
Seriously, how do you choose which hare-brained conspiracy theory you want to believe in? Since there is absolutely no evidence that he was killed years ago, is in a Guantanamo cell or is back at his office at he CIA, then how can you say that one theory is wrong and another right.
And why is any of those bizarre ideas more plausible than the official line. The idea that he died years ago requires both the co-operation of Al-Qaeda and President Bush to agree to defer the glory to his successor. Yeah, right.
MS Flight Simulator could convert subLOGIC Scenery Disks since version 2, but it wasn't until Flight Sim 4 that users could make their own. From the link I quoted before:
A large series of add-on products were produced for FS4 between 1989 and 1993. First from Microsoft & the Bruce Artwick Organization (BAO) came the Aircraft and Scenery Designer (ASD) integration module. This allowed FS4 users to quite easily build, on the fly from directly within the program, custom scenery units known as SC1 files which could be used within FS4 and traded with other users (this activity was quite popular in the FS Forum on CompuServe).
if microsoft flight simulator community kicked the hell out of any other modding community, they wouldnt be too naive as to rely on microsoft, which, not surprisingly and habitually, killed off microsoft flight simulator community.
We are talking about a franchise that began in 1982 and lasted 24 years. It is a bit rich to turn around after all that time and say "I told you so". Name one other modding community that has lasted that long.
Well, Microsoft never really pushed VB6
Really? Visual Basic 6 was around for 5 years before it was replaced by VB.NET. Do you really think that Microsoft kept quiet about it for all that time and still somehow had it become an annoying popular development product?
and IMO they bought FoxPro just so they COULD kill it.
They aquired FoxPro in 1992, sold it through six versions and it is still available and supported today. They will not be releasing another version after the current one, but they have still sold it for over 20 years.
Microsoft Bob.
Yay! A truely failed and discontinued product. You finally found a technology that they killed off, which must have annoyed both of the users of MS Bob.
Zune.
You can still buy this today. It also still lives on in software form with the XBox360 and Windows Phone 7.
XENIX
Got sold off and transformed into SCO UNIX.
Personally, I feel absolutely no sympathy to anyone who's hitched his wagon to a company that only provides a development environment because they use illegal monopoly tactics to ruin their competition.
You don't have to feel sorry for them. Just let them wallow in their filthy money that they earned by choosing the most popular computing platform.
After getting blown off for all the help in WW II don't expect much from the US when the zombies come a callin'.
Where the hell did that come from? Who blew off whom?
About FOIA... I thought it was American legislation, but this is definitely a UK city. Is it called the same thing across the pond?
It is not a stupid question. In fact it is the most serious post here that I have read. The UK has the Freedom of Information Act 2000. In my own country of Australia we have the Freedom of Information act 1982. There are plenty of other countries that have something similar.
And this has been an entirely frivolous and annoying use the act.
If I knew they were testing drivers for alcohol on my route back, then I would ensure the person driving the car back doesn't drink. Otherwise if you don't know where they are who cares if they are doing a test? The chance of getting caught on some random road are incredibly small.
That really just tells us about you. I'm not sure how much it says about society in general.
The other night I was out playing sport in the kind of competition where we ruin all our exercise by going out eating and drinking afterwards. I saw two separate instances of drivers encouraging their passengers to have another drink because they will stay under the limit to drive them home. I have been out with other couples and watched them negotiate with each other who will be driving them home so they knew who could keep drinking.
This is all without apps to tell them where the "booze buses" were. These were just ordinary people who obeyed the law. Whether that was because they thought they might get caught or just that they thought it was worth keeping under the limit to be safe on the roads, I don't know. But I saw no incredulous looks on the faces of those around me when these events occured. It was just accepted as the norm. Perhaps the people with whom I associate are a bit more civilized than you and your friends.
The cameras make mistakes all the time. In my area they flash even if you aren't moving, if at any time your front tyre rolls 1cm over the arbitrary flash limit somewhere near the white line.
As long as that does not result in fines being incorrectly issued then the cameras can flash as much as they like. If nothing else, it provides a reminder to drivers that they should not do anything stupid.
When you grow up, you will find life is more than just being a robot and following the rules the adults set up for you.
So as you get older, you become less mature. I get the feeling that I should read your message out aloud in my best Jeff Foxworthy voice and sprinkle a few "you might be a redneck if..." phrases in. It is people like you that make shops have security cameras so people who think that they are above the law do not just "help themselves".
If I found a member of my family died because some idiot refused to jump the light to let an ambulance past, I would be pretty pissed off.
Would you be similarly pissed off if your family member was killed by some idiot running a red light. I can't imagine the conflict that you would feel if it was to that road accident that your delayed ambulance was headed. Although now I think about it, in my neck of the woods we all stop when an ambulance comes through an intersection and allow the paramedic to drive on the wrong side of the road if necessary. I'm not sure how wise it would be to surprise an ambulance by suddenly driving out against the lights as they weave in and out of the traffic. In these parts they prefer people to be predictable.
Rules are not a substitute for common sense.
And yet we need to have rules precisely because common sense can often be quite uncommon. How many people who consider themselves to be safe drivers end up being involved in the yearly road casualty statistic that is over ten times larger than the death toll for 9/11.
So would you be happy to be one of the people who dies on the road for my right to free speech? Seriously???
I can understand that we should be able to have these discussions about road safety and police practices. As you say, in a democratic society this is a fundamental right. But it is not right to yell fire in a theatre because it will endanger people's lives. It is not right make libelous, false statements like "Mr Anonymous Coward is a kiddy fiddler. He lives at 22 Main Street and everyone should hunt him down and kill him."
So if I had to choose between not being able to tell people where a DUI checkpoint was and not being killed by a drunk driver tonight... well, I would rather live to argue the merits of this another day.
You say that "one of THE most basic and important fundamental rights in a proper democracy", but I say that the right to stay alive trumps this every single time. After all, you can't have free speech when you're dead.
Your argument is incredibly naive or indicative of some sort of bias.
What a moronic statement. The original complaint that you can't confront your accuser is the statement that shows bias. Why on earth would anyone feel the need to confront an inanimate object? Do you think the camera might have it in for ethnic minorities? Or perhaps it might have been distracted by something happening behind it and it wasn't really looking?
Confronting an accuser makes sense if the accuser is a human. If it is a camera, then it can be calibrated and regularly tested. We don't need to ask questions to find what a camera really saw, because it keeps a perfect record of this. But perhaps the picture doesn't see all the factors involved? Well neither does a pair of human eyes watching the same scene. But I would still place my bets on a camera recalling an incident better than any human.
The people who argue against traffic cameras are probably the same ones who also argued recently that knowing the locations of DUI checkpoints somehow makes the streets safer. These people really just want to protect their "right" to break the law.
The OP's point still stands
No, it does not. The hypothetical situation only works if there is only one route to get home. The type of person who would drive home only when an app said the cops were not doing checks would not hesitate to choose an alternate route. How many times do you only have one road to get home?
And what could be worse for a drunk driver than to choose an unfamiliar route that might consist of badly lit back streets. This is an accident waiting to happen.
If you compare the case of the app showing a "safe" drive home, and the case of not having an app at all, I assume the outcome would usually be the same and that he would drive home intoxicated.
Except he would not get home if he got stopped at a checkpoint. Do that often enough and he would lose his licence. Getting an admitted drunk driver off the road for good sounds like the safest option yet!
Maybe some people would not drive home due to the uncertainty, but I don't think that would be the majority
The majority of people would not consult an app to see if it is safe to break the law. The majority of people alter their behaviour to prevent themselves getting into that situation. They will go out as a couple or in a group and have a designated driver. They will pace their drinking over the night and consume food to reduce their alcohol absorbtion. They will plan ahead to use an alternate mode of transport.
A better standard would be a really good field sobriety test based on reaction times administered in front of a dash camera.
That is too slow for testing a large number of vehicles at a checkpoint. By making a slow procedure, you can only test a smaller number of cars travelling past that point - meaning you may end up letting someone who would blow 0.90 sail right past without being tested at all. All for the sake of letting some people get lucky for being just under the limit.
I am not quite sure why it is such a problem anyway. How is a 0.01 lower BAC any different to being 0.01 seconds faster in a reaction time test. At some point there will be an arbitary number that will be tested against, and some people will slip just under the radar.
So if you check your app and you find that there isn't a checkpoint on the only highway between the bar and your house, does that mean you would happily drive home drunk and possibly cause an accident? That doesn't sound like it made the roads safer at all!
However, if you did not know if there was a checkpoint set up, then you may just decide not to risk it and take a cab anyway. Thus by not having the facts the road becomes safer.
And anyway, I don't see how these apps would help people avoid DUI checkpoints. If you're sufficiently wasted, then you probably don't have the judgment skills to use the app and avoid the checkpoint in the first place.
There is a huge gap between the legal alcohol limit where driving is impaired due to lower reaction times and being so blotto that you can't use an iPhone app. If you can't use an app then you probably can't get the key in your ignition either.
I have known people who take back streets to avoid likely checkpoint areas (making it a more complicated route to navigate) because they knew that they would be over the limit. Being drunk doesn't instantly make you stupid, it starts by making other people look more attractive.
Does that mean that if you are 42 years old then you are an above average gamer?
So that's who is kicking my butt in multiplayer! I don't know if that is a better or worse than it being some 12 year old punk.
This is how Apple have trained people in the iphone gestures from day one.
Really? Where is Apple's list of all the gestures? I haven't seen one. Even if it does exist, it doesn't work. I have watched the faces of people trying to use their brand new iPhones - it is not an expression of joy, but of confusion and frustration.
I bet that if you made up a list of every gesture then virtually every iOS user would learn something that they didn't know about. When you start talking about two and even three fingered gestures, these are not things that people will stumble across by themselves.
...and we're back to the Windows 1.0 tiled window interface.
That was my first thought too. It is a merge of Window 1.0's tiled interface with Windows 95's Active Desktop doing weblets on the desktop.
I'm a tablet user, so some of those features do look nice, but for my standard desktop computers then I'm not convinced. There were quite a lot of gestures being used, but that suffers from one of my complaints about iOS - the interface is not obvious. How would you know to drag in from an edge and hover to achieve something?
I'm also not a fan of tiles that are always running. It's great that the weather is always being updated, but I only check it a couple of times a week so it really doesn't need to be connecting to the net constantly. A weather app is tiny, but there are plenty of other apps that are really bloated - how slow will a system become with a bunch of those running all the time? It works on the Windows Phone 7 because phone apps tend to be much smaller than desktop apps.
Those were just a couple of things that came to mind as I watched the video. The real test will be to use the OS - I may find that my concerns are completely unwarrented. Only time will tell.
There have been many projects over the years that aim to create a sustainable city. I know when China announced its eco-city, it was just as much a showcase for technology that could be exported to other countries as it was an experiment in making towns better for the environment. This is going to be big business in the future once the politicians and those with a vested interest in fossil fuel stop fighting the change.
Nonetheless, this game is already on several torrent sites, so it's not as if the DRM worked in the first place.
As others have mentioned here, this game was always available without DRM if you bought it from GOG.com. Presumable it was this version that got pirated. Even if it wasn't that version, I doubt that they paid top dollar for the best DRM solution if they knew that they would abandon it so soon.
I just noticed something annoying. When you go to the page that I referenced above from an Australian IP address, you end up paying over US$75 for the game. Bloody region crap! I wont blame GOG for this too much, as I am sure that it is just part of their deal that they can't undercut the official distributors in other regions of the world. At least they say:
Since the AU price is almost $26 more than the price in USD, weâ(TM)re giving you a $26 USD credit to spend on GOG.com.
Which is fine for me, but if you are not interested in old games then it would be annoying. Finally, Aussies get a cut down version of the game due to our stupid ratings system because our government will not trust us. Oh well, at least GOG trusts us to enter our details correctly on the account settings page...
They ripped it off, it's well known. Apparently not by everyone though.
The problem with common knowledge is that it does not prove that something is correct. If a fact is "well known" then you should probably spend a bit more time checking to ensure that this is true.
The idea that the XBox 360 ripped off the Cell comes from the cover notes for David Shippy's book. However, in this interview with him, the details don't seem to match the blurb. Regarding Microsoft choosing IBM to design their chip::
Shippy doesn't believe that Microsoft yet knew that Sony had the PlayStation 3 in the works -- but liked what it saw in the PowerPC technology that was now possible thanks to design principles partly researched for Cell.
The article says that all the companies involved had the right to use the technology developed for the Cell for other projects and other customers. This is standard practice. The article goes on:
Does that mean Microsoft got a look at the Cell itself? "No, we didn't show them the Cell chip," Shippy clarifies. "The Cell itself and the fundamental architecture that went into that, actually not -- that was all proprietary for PS3. What was shown to Microsoft was just a technology road map that said, 'hey, we can go do these high-performance PowerPC cores at very high frequency and low power'."
In wanting to sell his book, the author made it seem that there was something underhanded going on with Microsoft. And yet:
So despite some higher-level conceptual ideas in common, Shippy stresses that both consoles' processors are very different, from architecture to software models. "They differentiated themselves in their own unique ways," says Shippy. "What's interesting is that they did that with this common building block that was designed initially for the PS3."
The Xenon processor was not a ripoff of the Cell, IBM just used some of the technology that they developed with the other processor.
Apart from the difficulty of staying employed.
Yeah, that 5% unemployment rate is a killer!
Windows ME was not a bad idea. It was designed to kill off the Windows 9x line so everyone (users and developers) would move to XP.
You might have a point, if anyone had actually used ME.
So that would be "Mission Accomplished" then. The product did exactly what I said it was intended to do.
Nope. I have never used Skype. But why do you ask? Was anything that I said incorrect?
Oh please,.Windows ME was not a bad idea. It was designed to kill off the Windows 9x line so everyone (users and developers) would move to XP. How much of the software that failed on ME would also failed on XP had developers not been forced to remove their assumptions of being able to load drivers in config.sys and autoexec in real mode DOS?
Microsoft Bob was a product of its time. There were a lot of attempts by many companies to make computing easy for non-techy people by mimicking real world objects. It always fails though. You should not look at Bob as a dumb idea, merely as an implementation of a failed genre.
Windows Vista got a lot worse reviews than it deserved. A lot of what was said about the OS turned out to be untrue. Windows 7 shows that they were actually on to a good idea once the drivers had caught up.