I wanted to see more specific differences between (as you mention) things like open source initiative. Honestly I read this interview and I still don't see what they do that's different. Unless there's just something comforting to the corporate world in a microsoft launched OSI, but then that means there must be SOME differences, and what are they?
My suspicion that the big difference is that these lawyers are microsoft trained, which means that they can be so exceedinly obscure and abstract in their contracts and legalease that they give the companies contributing the open source projects the ability to 'yank' the projects about, and even withdraw them, if a project starts to go badly in relation to the company. In a way giving corporations the ability to "take their ball and go home".
Then again I've never been able to penetrate corporate speak and see the long-term implications... the skeptic in me says that's the whole point of corporate speak.
It's getting as though one can't even be demonically possessed and stage a true exorcism in hotels anymore! Just makes me sick... Urp! Oh there goes my pea-soup again!!
All software has bugs. It's just a matter of how serious they are. The Showstoppers. The question shouldn't be Will there be bug-free software, but whether or not developers can reduce the severity of bugs to a tolerable level. And most game companies think they've done that--until they're caught with their pants down.
* The internet has allowed game companies to use (and even expect) the public to do the debug/beta testing work that they used to pay for and what used to push out release times.
* A release loses millions by not releasing earlier than the competition, and any bozo who can get on a beta-testing team, can also work for your competition, thus any innovation (if there is any left in the game world) is gone about the second you do it.
* Many developers also don't come upon debug naturally, they see it as someone else's problem--or figure it should take all but a day to do, when those in verification/validation know that the verification cycle (done well) easily takes longer than the time it takes to code.
* This isn't helped by management which tends to put more belief in a developer's schedule than in the team of debuggers who are stating they need more time. It's always the first schedule to be chopped, because it works on the CEO's computer, so why isn't it making him any money!?
* Finally there's a new model in town, which not only bypasses debug, but also the content creation stage of gaming, which is the online gaming, where a simple game skeleton is thrown out there on a social networking site, like facebook, and then developers just continually improve their offerings by fixing things, and adding content as users progress through the game.
All of these factors have added to the malaise in quality software. So yay!
I really like the idea of a battery powered lawnmower, as opposed to the electric lawnmower I had as a kid back in the 70s. My parents were foolish enough to think I could use it without running over the cord... boy did I prove them wrong.
So essentially Microsoft sought a "Change of Venue" and was fined 16K? Buwahahaha! I wonder what was on Judge Judy today, maybe Slashdot's gonna start reporting that too...
I love it when atheists take it upon themselves to tell Christians how they can better their faith. You'd think that Christians would openly embrace such "intelligent criticism" from such know-it-alls... (shaking head in disbelief). If you can live a faith better, then live it. Otherwise keep it to yourself, cuz no one wants to hear it, cuz you're not actually willing to actually do it yourself.
As much as I hate the idea of DLC, I think these guys are right. It is a portal through which they can monitor who is using their game.
What's the cost?
1. Crippled/Incomplete game.
2. Internet connection required.
3. Immersive game experience is disrupted by constant nagging connections.
4. Possible performance issues.
5. Customer privacy compromised.
6. Potential liabilities
7. Free Distribution and popularity for game less likely to go viral (if you suscribe to the idea that piracy can help gain customers)
8. Hate mail from Slashdotters.:)
Of course there are positive consequences to requiring an internet connection, and not just for the vendor...
1. Free gamepacks and extras available to qualifying customers.
2. Bugfixes, and game evolution/balance can improve over time.
3. Multiplayer experience enhanced by Human interraction.
-
4. Company gains key demographic info for direct marketing.
5. Piracy curtailed.
6. Microsoft loves you...
Anyhow it's an interesting tradeoff.
Who doesn't want to be friends with a rubber ducky. Anyone raised on that nefarious propaganda brain-washing show, 'Sesame Street' knows to sing "Rubber ducky! You're the one! You make bathtime so much fun! Rubber ducky, you're the only one for me!" I mean who wouldn't want to be friends with a rubber ducky? It's much more meaningful a relationship than anyone you knew from High School.
HP's business class printers are dying on the vine. They continue to cut the R&D too many jobs to keep their printer's quality high. The company continues to cannibalize itself, eating up any R&D dollars they might have spent to create quality lowend printers, which in turn has a cascading effect throughout the whole company. They've lost so many due to lay offs, the real core know-how is leaving the first chance they get--which right now isn'thappening nearly as quickly as it would in nonrecession setting, but still is happening. Further because they've created a work environment of fear, the technology they hope to tap for the next generation of printers is being drawn to individuals more interested in keeping their jobs than sharing their discoveries with the rest of the company--seeing as how their innovations will only be sold off to an Asian factory.
But what IS a linux issue is the assumption that most of the documentation can or will be covered by someone on the web eventually. And remarkably this kinda works... a lot... at least for me, I can usually google up something eventually. Tools are becoming more complicated than ever, and yet, many linux tools still rely upon things like FAQs as their primary source of documentation, and then point you to a forum when you can't get the answers you want. Often the forums are dead, or require registration (as you noted) which I can't do from work due to security issues.
Heck, I've machines that aren't connected to the web, so I get a double dose of no-help... I have to go to one machine to search for help for a tool I have running on a different machine. (Meh. Now I'm just bellyaching)
IMO, if you rely upon the web to cover your documentation holes, then web problems are your problems...
Paper and Ink have been HP's bread and butter for a long time. They sell the printer at a loss, but keep the price of ink and paper high. Sadly because they give away the printers, the printer companies have also stopped investing in quality printer designs, drivers, software support, etc, and you can more or less kiss the printer goodbye once it starts to behave badly. Most printer related jobs have now been succesfully outsourced to Asia. Ten years ago when HP had its first lay offs, they didn't touch the printer divisions. Now they can't seem to cut employees fast enough. Printers have become a commodity in which innovation and quality are really no longer important.
1. Forums that are simply copies of other forums with no actual contributions.
2. Installation documentation as the only source for certain unix tools. I don't know how many times I've found Redhat's website insufficient, because it's about how to do an initial install.
3. Too many man pages lack useful examples of how commands options are used and their output. (How hard is it to simply create a few examples?)
4. Invariably someone has asked the question I want answered online, but often that's it. There's no posted answer for the question in many forums/newsgroups--the thread's just left dangling.
5. Stale links and really old revisions of a program clutter/obfuscate searching for solutions.
The EU is the reason I never bothered to code an SQL server or found a multinational hardware company from scratch. Mine would've been the coolest too, were it not for the EU. Stupid EU! Ruined my life....
Not quite the same thing... seeing as how it's highly unlikely... Mormons love it when missionaries come to their doorsteps. It saves them a lot of trouble.
Communicating faster than the speed of light? Isn't that straight out of Science Fiction? The Ansible in Ender's Game/Speaker for the Dead/Xenocide fame... Sweeeet... can't wait to meet a bugger.
Wait. Let me get this straight. Which is it? "Senseless riches" or is M$ Cutting into Google's margins? Seems to me that M$'s motives are pretty clear, and the riches being expended are not senseless but calculated.
So the one instuction is essentially a move command that has multiple modes... Ahem. Isn't that cheating?
Isn't move considered two instructions already, a load and store? I guess this is really dependent upon how you define what is and isn't an instruction.
The wallstreet journal article mentions the issue was with a new system, specifically noting that it was not related to their antiquated hardware that has historically been the cause of failures in the past. I think it's naive to suggest that old hardware or coding in C++ (over C, as if C's a completely dead language... they both have their places in complex engineering tasks) will eliminate failures in the system, because in this case it was newer hardware, which had a cascading effect, implying involvement of networked databases, etc...
Okay this could get me sued, but here's a joke I just thought up... (yeah, it's lame)
Q. What did the snakecharmer say to advertise his business?
A. There's an asp for that.
wah-wah-wah...
The games are free, at least on the surface, but facebook games also factor in elapsed time... so they are only free, if you consider your time to be free.
They are designed to take years to play, each day you log in and click a button here or there, and then leave it. By providing pay-for-stuff-now content, games like those provided by Zynga are allowing users to skip the need to wait for months in order to have features in the game immediately. Essentially it allows players to 'go munchkin' (power up even at low levels) and essentially pay for the ability to get ahead in the game.
Not only do the games pander to the greedy side of human nature, but also to the impatient side of us. They're designed to take advantage of our worst qualities. All of these games encourage sharing/publishing your "feats" in the game to attract the attention of your friends--so they'll join you in the game.
Some games require you to "share" the game with other players and recruit others in order to unlock features--therefore garanteeing that the best players bring in other players. In a popular game that I just played, one had to have about 100 other players coordinate "attacks" against an otherwise unbeatable foe in order to beat that boss.
It's quite an ingenious niche in that the games start off very simple, and can grow complicated as the userbase matures. You really can't "win" a game like this, and unlike MMOs with level caps, and other game balancing features, there's really no motivation to balance the players that pay out. They simply add more content as time passes, or for special occasions, more features, and due to the casual nature of the game play and the forced ellapsed time requirements between game leveling, the illusion is that you're really not spending money or time on it at all...
I like the option to get all my ads up front and then watch a show uninterrupted. Hulu has this feature with some of its teevee offerings. I generally mute the stupid thing for the couple minutes that the ads are running, run to the kitchen grab something to eat, or switch windows and do work there, then when the time's over, I'll watch my show. Essentially the whole thing is ad free at that point. Of course advertisers probably hate me for suggesting we all ignore them.
Slashdot Mirror
I wanted to see more specific differences between (as you mention) things like open source initiative. Honestly I read this interview and I still don't see what they do that's different. Unless there's just something comforting to the corporate world in a microsoft launched OSI, but then that means there must be SOME differences, and what are they? My suspicion that the big difference is that these lawyers are microsoft trained, which means that they can be so exceedinly obscure and abstract in their contracts and legalease that they give the companies contributing the open source projects the ability to 'yank' the projects about, and even withdraw them, if a project starts to go badly in relation to the company. In a way giving corporations the ability to "take their ball and go home". Then again I've never been able to penetrate corporate speak and see the long-term implications... the skeptic in me says that's the whole point of corporate speak.
Welp, it looks like all my kids are doomed to a life of crime... cuz that's the first thing they do when they arrive at a new hotel.
It's getting as though one can't even be demonically possessed and stage a true exorcism in hotels anymore! Just makes me sick... Urp! Oh there goes my pea-soup again!!
All software has bugs. It's just a matter of how serious they are. The Showstoppers. The question shouldn't be Will there be bug-free software, but whether or not developers can reduce the severity of bugs to a tolerable level. And most game companies think they've done that--until they're caught with their pants down.
* The internet has allowed game companies to use (and even expect) the public to do the debug/beta testing work that they used to pay for and what used to push out release times.
* A release loses millions by not releasing earlier than the competition, and any bozo who can get on a beta-testing team, can also work for your competition, thus any innovation (if there is any left in the game world) is gone about the second you do it.
* Many developers also don't come upon debug naturally, they see it as someone else's problem--or figure it should take all but a day to do, when those in verification/validation know that the verification cycle (done well) easily takes longer than the time it takes to code.
* This isn't helped by management which tends to put more belief in a developer's schedule than in the team of debuggers who are stating they need more time. It's always the first schedule to be chopped, because it works on the CEO's computer, so why isn't it making him any money!?
* Finally there's a new model in town, which not only bypasses debug, but also the content creation stage of gaming, which is the online gaming, where a simple game skeleton is thrown out there on a social networking site, like facebook, and then developers just continually improve their offerings by fixing things, and adding content as users progress through the game.
All of these factors have added to the malaise in quality software. So yay!
wait. Let me get this straight. You're saying they developed a corded hovercraft? Doesn't that limit the range of the vehicle?
I really like the idea of a battery powered lawnmower, as opposed to the electric lawnmower I had as a kid back in the 70s. My parents were foolish enough to think I could use it without running over the cord... boy did I prove them wrong.
So essentially Microsoft sought a "Change of Venue" and was fined 16K? Buwahahaha! I wonder what was on Judge Judy today, maybe Slashdot's gonna start reporting that too...
I love it when atheists take it upon themselves to tell Christians how they can better their faith. You'd think that Christians would openly embrace such "intelligent criticism" from such know-it-alls... (shaking head in disbelief). If you can live a faith better, then live it. Otherwise keep it to yourself, cuz no one wants to hear it, cuz you're not actually willing to actually do it yourself.
As much as I hate the idea of DLC, I think these guys are right. It is a portal through which they can monitor who is using their game. What's the cost? 1. Crippled/Incomplete game. 2. Internet connection required. 3. Immersive game experience is disrupted by constant nagging connections. 4. Possible performance issues. 5. Customer privacy compromised. 6. Potential liabilities 7. Free Distribution and popularity for game less likely to go viral (if you suscribe to the idea that piracy can help gain customers) 8. Hate mail from Slashdotters. :)
Of course there are positive consequences to requiring an internet connection, and not just for the vendor...
1. Free gamepacks and extras available to qualifying customers.
2. Bugfixes, and game evolution/balance can improve over time.
3. Multiplayer experience enhanced by Human interraction.
-
4. Company gains key demographic info for direct marketing.
5. Piracy curtailed.
6. Microsoft loves you...
Anyhow it's an interesting tradeoff.
Who doesn't want to be friends with a rubber ducky. Anyone raised on that nefarious propaganda brain-washing show, 'Sesame Street' knows to sing "Rubber ducky! You're the one! You make bathtime so much fun! Rubber ducky, you're the only one for me!" I mean who wouldn't want to be friends with a rubber ducky? It's much more meaningful a relationship than anyone you knew from High School.
HP's business class printers are dying on the vine. They continue to cut the R&D too many jobs to keep their printer's quality high. The company continues to cannibalize itself, eating up any R&D dollars they might have spent to create quality lowend printers, which in turn has a cascading effect throughout the whole company. They've lost so many due to lay offs, the real core know-how is leaving the first chance they get--which right now isn'thappening nearly as quickly as it would in nonrecession setting, but still is happening. Further because they've created a work environment of fear, the technology they hope to tap for the next generation of printers is being drawn to individuals more interested in keeping their jobs than sharing their discoveries with the rest of the company--seeing as how their innovations will only be sold off to an Asian factory.
But what IS a linux issue is the assumption that most of the documentation can or will be covered by someone on the web eventually. And remarkably this kinda works... a lot... at least for me, I can usually google up something eventually. Tools are becoming more complicated than ever, and yet, many linux tools still rely upon things like FAQs as their primary source of documentation, and then point you to a forum when you can't get the answers you want. Often the forums are dead, or require registration (as you noted) which I can't do from work due to security issues. Heck, I've machines that aren't connected to the web, so I get a double dose of no-help... I have to go to one machine to search for help for a tool I have running on a different machine. (Meh. Now I'm just bellyaching) IMO, if you rely upon the web to cover your documentation holes, then web problems are your problems...
Paper and Ink have been HP's bread and butter for a long time. They sell the printer at a loss, but keep the price of ink and paper high. Sadly because they give away the printers, the printer companies have also stopped investing in quality printer designs, drivers, software support, etc, and you can more or less kiss the printer goodbye once it starts to behave badly. Most printer related jobs have now been succesfully outsourced to Asia. Ten years ago when HP had its first lay offs, they didn't touch the printer divisions. Now they can't seem to cut employees fast enough. Printers have become a commodity in which innovation and quality are really no longer important.
My beefs with Unix docs:
1. Forums that are simply copies of other forums with no actual contributions.
2. Installation documentation as the only source for certain unix tools. I don't know how many times I've found Redhat's website insufficient, because it's about how to do an initial install.
3. Too many man pages lack useful examples of how commands options are used and their output. (How hard is it to simply create a few examples?)
4. Invariably someone has asked the question I want answered online, but often that's it. There's no posted answer for the question in many forums/newsgroups--the thread's just left dangling.
5. Stale links and really old revisions of a program clutter/obfuscate searching for solutions.
And here I thought this would be about perl scripts turning evil...
The EU is the reason I never bothered to code an SQL server or found a multinational hardware company from scratch. Mine would've been the coolest too, were it not for the EU. Stupid EU! Ruined my life....
Not quite the same thing... seeing as how it's highly unlikely... Mormons love it when missionaries come to their doorsteps. It saves them a lot of trouble.
Communicating faster than the speed of light? Isn't that straight out of Science Fiction? The Ansible in Ender's Game/Speaker for the Dead/Xenocide fame... Sweeeet... can't wait to meet a bugger.
I'm confused, where are the pointless buxom three-dee graphics with realistic jiggle effects!? I can't see how this game could ever attract gamers!?
Wait. Let me get this straight. Which is it? "Senseless riches" or is M$ Cutting into Google's margins? Seems to me that M$'s motives are pretty clear, and the riches being expended are not senseless but calculated.
So the one instuction is essentially a move command that has multiple modes... Ahem. Isn't that cheating? Isn't move considered two instructions already, a load and store? I guess this is really dependent upon how you define what is and isn't an instruction.
The wallstreet journal article mentions the issue was with a new system, specifically noting that it was not related to their antiquated hardware that has historically been the cause of failures in the past. I think it's naive to suggest that old hardware or coding in C++ (over C, as if C's a completely dead language... they both have their places in complex engineering tasks) will eliminate failures in the system, because in this case it was newer hardware, which had a cascading effect, implying involvement of networked databases, etc...
Okay this could get me sued, but here's a joke I just thought up... (yeah, it's lame) Q. What did the snakecharmer say to advertise his business? A. There's an asp for that. wah-wah-wah...
The games are free, at least on the surface, but facebook games also factor in elapsed time... so they are only free, if you consider your time to be free.
They are designed to take years to play, each day you log in and click a button here or there, and then leave it. By providing pay-for-stuff-now content, games like those provided by Zynga are allowing users to skip the need to wait for months in order to have features in the game immediately. Essentially it allows players to 'go munchkin' (power up even at low levels) and essentially pay for the ability to get ahead in the game.
Not only do the games pander to the greedy side of human nature, but also to the impatient side of us. They're designed to take advantage of our worst qualities. All of these games encourage sharing/publishing your "feats" in the game to attract the attention of your friends--so they'll join you in the game.
Some games require you to "share" the game with other players and recruit others in order to unlock features--therefore garanteeing that the best players bring in other players. In a popular game that I just played, one had to have about 100 other players coordinate "attacks" against an otherwise unbeatable foe in order to beat that boss.
It's quite an ingenious niche in that the games start off very simple, and can grow complicated as the userbase matures. You really can't "win" a game like this, and unlike MMOs with level caps, and other game balancing features, there's really no motivation to balance the players that pay out. They simply add more content as time passes, or for special occasions, more features, and due to the casual nature of the game play and the forced ellapsed time requirements between game leveling, the illusion is that you're really not spending money or time on it at all...
I like the option to get all my ads up front and then watch a show uninterrupted. Hulu has this feature with some of its teevee offerings. I generally mute the stupid thing for the couple minutes that the ads are running, run to the kitchen grab something to eat, or switch windows and do work there, then when the time's over, I'll watch my show. Essentially the whole thing is ad free at that point. Of course advertisers probably hate me for suggesting we all ignore them.