What are you talking about? Companies love lock-in. They like knowing there is a phone number they can call and always get support. They like buying software from a company that's been around 30 years, so that when they are still using the same version of the same crappy program 15 years from now, they can be pretty sure help for their hilariously obsolete software is just a phone call or email away.
Granted, they eventually feel the pain of being on an ancient system that they have no way to migrate away from, but support is still a huge factor. Right or wrong, open source communities in general don't seem to have a lot of interest in supporting really old versions of anything. In a corporate setting, it is not always possible to follow the advice, "do an upgrade." Enterprise software is often supported for many years even if you don't upgrade. You might have to pay a premium for that support but the point is that you can make a phone call and get help because you are paying for it. Ah, the wonder of support/maintenance contracts.
"But wait!" you say, "If it's open source, you can fix problems yourself! You can even maintain your piddly-ass ancient version of the program!" Very true. However not all (probably not even most) organizations are equipped to do this. What if you're not a development shop or you have too few developers to spare any of them to maintain some old program no one understands the inner workings of? The source code is basically useless to you unless you have the time, manpower, and available skills to modify it. And there may or may not be anyone to contact for support.
Your average midsize-to-large corporation considers "vendor lock-in" a security blanket. They want support. They want a contractually-established level of service. They want a real organization they can call, not a bunch of anonymous developers on the Internet who may or may not feel like answering posts to their mailing list.
I love free/open source software, but let's not have illusions about why many companies don't want to use it for anything critical. There is a lot of fear and apprehension involved. A lot of it isn't rational but that doesn't mean there are no valid criticisms of FOSS as a model for supporting software. I don't argue that you can't develop great software in an open source fashion, but support can be very hit-or-miss, and good companies devote whole teams of people to providing world-class support for their applications--phone, email, even on-site assistance. How many FOSS groups can say the same?
It's probably worth pointing out that Final Fantasy I-IV used most of the same graphics assets, although they got color enhancements for IV in the move from 8- to 16-bit. As far as I'm aware, no graphics assets were reused once the series went 3D. Given that they improved the poly counts and texture details each time, it wouldn't have been possible to reuse the graphics anyway.
FF IX-XII each cost $40 million-plus to develop. VII had a budget around $30M, so presumably VIII was somewhere in that area. I can't find budget figures for the (S)NES entries but I seriously doubt any of them cost more than a few million to make, and the original was created as Square was near bankruptcy and might have been their last game had it not sold well.
XIII is already being touted as one of the most expensive video game flops of 2009/10. If only they'd spend some of those tens of millions focusing on solid gameplay rather than seeing how much pretty CGI they can pack into it.
Indeed. Recidivism rates show just how worthless our penal system is in terms of rehabilitation. That, or you have to believe people are just "born bad" and once they go astray they can't (or shouldn't) be helped.
It doesn't help that we jail boatloads of people who "commit" victimless, non-violent crimes--more than any country in the world.
As mainstream computing stands today, the operating system is almost completely irrelevant. Gaming continues to migrate to two different venues: the browser and the console. Productivity software is either cross-platform (Open/LibreOffice) or browser-based (Google Docs.) Typical users are spending more and more time in the browser as Web-based applications fulfill their needs.
There will always be a niche for platform-specific software but the writing is on the wall for computing in general. It's times like this I'm very glad Microsoft never managed to do to the Web what they did to the consumer operating system.
Which "everyday software" is still both platform-specific and lacking an adequate alternate on other operating systems? I think we'll find that our definitions of "everyday software" are not the same.:)
Good news, as far as I'm concerned. Wouldn't it be ironic if other, more sane countries started exerting international pressure on the US to get rid of some of our more draconian copyright and patent regulations? That'd be a hoot.
Games that still sell well tend to also be actively supported. Diablo II had a patch come out this year! Blizzard still maintains it and has had a pretty good history of doing so.
I'm sure there are exceptions. I'd like to hear about games that are several years old, still selling for over $20, yet are not supported at all (and the developer hasn't gone bankrupt or something.)
I'd just like to know what the hell happened to competition in mobile phone service. Carriers used to fight tooth and nail over customers, now it just seems like they collude to screw their customers as much as possible.
The $10 surcharge is precisely why I won't get a 4G phone when my Sprint contract is up for renewal. If it wasn't for the free mobile calls across the board I would've dropped my Sprint phone for an alternative a while ago. I already pay $70 + fees and taxes per month for it, and now they want me to pay $10 extra a month for the privilege of 4G? Shove it.
I remember when cell phone plan prices were going down, now they just seem to be climbing ever upward.
But there is nothing that says you have to buy an engine for a PC game. For a home console you have no choice--it's pay to play.
There are also immensely more resources for today's game developers, many of which can be acquired at no cost and with no licensing fees. The barrier to entry in the PC gaming world has never been lower.
I loved TIE Fighter primarily for the fact that you had to be good at flying your ship. For most of the game, you were in a craft with no shields and one or two hits would kill you. There's something satisfying about being able to take down waves of shielded fighters and even more shielded capital ships in a virtually defenseless TIE.
Battlecruiser 3000AD had multiple sequels, any of which should work well under XP.
The original game should run reasonably under DOSBox, or possibly in a Windows DOS session with VDMSound.
There was a 2.0 version that was compatible with Windows 9x, however it is utterly unsupported under 2000/XP and I've heard varying reports as to whether it works. Seems to depend on your specific setup, but people have had good luck with the aforementioned VDMSound and using compatibility mode.
This is quite common with games that are still popular many years after release. If your game is still selling a lot of copies 5 years after launch, why should you cut the price? Slashing prices is how you move more units. You don't bother if you're moving plenty of units already.
Diablo II is 10 years old and the Battle Chest still goes for $30-40. Blizzard must still be moving a decent number of copies otherwise they'd drop the price. Businesses do their best to maximize overall profit, so it doesn't make much sense to keep the price high if the game isn't selling.
As someone who frequently looks over bargain bins with games that are $10 and under, it's usually not a surprise what games wind up there: indie games that got no marketing, big-budget games that shipped with massive bugs and sold poorly, games that have since had one or more sequels (sequels tend to cannibalize sales of the original unless the sequel is just awful), and original versions of games that were later released with expansions in "gold" or "collector's editions." All of those make perfect sense from a business standpoint.
There's also the fact that good programmers can afford to be choosy and most likely will not want to live someplace like Iowa. There's a reason programming is concentrated on the coasts: software engineers, by and large, like the urban lifestyle. They don't want to live out in Bumfuck with no major cities nearby.
(Obviously, there are exceptions and I don't mean that developers are a monolithic group, but the trends and demographics are certainly there.)
I have only experienced this phenomenon at military base commissaries. I have never had groceries wheeled out to my car by someone else at a private sector store.
If people shop around for the best price--as they should if they have any sense at all--they'll notice the $30 surcharge from Best Buy and take their business elsewhere. I doubt Grandma is going to understand why she's paying 30 extra bucks for that PS3, so she may just as well go somewhere they're selling it cheaper.
This is it exactly. It's also why computer monitors come with HDMI ports now. I have two 1080p monitors hooked up to my computer but I could just as easily hook them up to an HDMI device instead.
It sounds like I misunderstood what he was doing. However, Google might be interested to know that he apparently has control over some (many?) spambot Gmail accounts, since that's where the messages I've got are coming from.
I do hope his messages are helpful to others but they sure aren't of much use to me.
I don't see how it's my responsibility to prevent spam on anyone's site but my own.
I thought Slashdotters were big on personal responsibility. Make sure your site is secure and doesn't let spambots run roughshod over everything. People who let spambots take over their sites and crap up the place aren't going to have much traffic. It's a self-correcting problem unless you're just not paying attention at all to your site.
If he wants to help people, that's fine, but going out and giving people unsolicited "help" by breaking into spambot accounts smacks more of being a busybody sticking your nose in where it doesn't belong and isn't wanted. If he really wants to provide help he should approach webmasters directly.
For that matter, it's a duplication of effort, because I'm already not allowing spam to thrive. He is wasting his time notifying me of spambots.
Instead of just shooting off messages that "account x is a spambot, please delete it," why not provide people with tips on spam control in general? What he's doing seems more like throwing water on a fire while doing nothing about the gang still throwing gasoline on it.
But he is doing this on other people's sites. Including mine, coincidentally. I already have spam filtering methods in place. Spambots can register but they can't do much of anything. I "trap" them quite effectively.
I'm rather annoyed that he is breaking into spambot accounts on my site and sending me messages to deactivate their accounts. I don't need to deactivate their accounts--they are well-contained already. His "helpful" messages wind up being a greater irritant to me than the spambots themselves. I don't need you to tell me how to run my site, thanks.
I certainly wouldn't assume I'd be charged for pushing a button on the phone itself, rather than clicking something on a particular webpage. Kudos to Verizon, I guess, for finding such a "great" way to scam people.
At this point I'm thinking we need some kind of functionality on ALL phones that, if an action is going to incur charges, you be prompted with some kind of confirmation box. "Silent" charges are evil.
Slashdot Mirror
What are you talking about? Companies love lock-in. They like knowing there is a phone number they can call and always get support. They like buying software from a company that's been around 30 years, so that when they are still using the same version of the same crappy program 15 years from now, they can be pretty sure help for their hilariously obsolete software is just a phone call or email away.
Granted, they eventually feel the pain of being on an ancient system that they have no way to migrate away from, but support is still a huge factor. Right or wrong, open source communities in general don't seem to have a lot of interest in supporting really old versions of anything. In a corporate setting, it is not always possible to follow the advice, "do an upgrade." Enterprise software is often supported for many years even if you don't upgrade. You might have to pay a premium for that support but the point is that you can make a phone call and get help because you are paying for it. Ah, the wonder of support/maintenance contracts.
"But wait!" you say, "If it's open source, you can fix problems yourself! You can even maintain your piddly-ass ancient version of the program!" Very true. However not all (probably not even most) organizations are equipped to do this. What if you're not a development shop or you have too few developers to spare any of them to maintain some old program no one understands the inner workings of? The source code is basically useless to you unless you have the time, manpower, and available skills to modify it. And there may or may not be anyone to contact for support.
Your average midsize-to-large corporation considers "vendor lock-in" a security blanket. They want support. They want a contractually-established level of service. They want a real organization they can call, not a bunch of anonymous developers on the Internet who may or may not feel like answering posts to their mailing list.
I love free/open source software, but let's not have illusions about why many companies don't want to use it for anything critical. There is a lot of fear and apprehension involved. A lot of it isn't rational but that doesn't mean there are no valid criticisms of FOSS as a model for supporting software. I don't argue that you can't develop great software in an open source fashion, but support can be very hit-or-miss, and good companies devote whole teams of people to providing world-class support for their applications--phone, email, even on-site assistance. How many FOSS groups can say the same?
It's probably worth pointing out that Final Fantasy I-IV used most of the same graphics assets, although they got color enhancements for IV in the move from 8- to 16-bit. As far as I'm aware, no graphics assets were reused once the series went 3D. Given that they improved the poly counts and texture details each time, it wouldn't have been possible to reuse the graphics anyway.
FF IX-XII each cost $40 million-plus to develop. VII had a budget around $30M, so presumably VIII was somewhere in that area. I can't find budget figures for the (S)NES entries but I seriously doubt any of them cost more than a few million to make, and the original was created as Square was near bankruptcy and might have been their last game had it not sold well.
XIII is already being touted as one of the most expensive video game flops of 2009/10. If only they'd spend some of those tens of millions focusing on solid gameplay rather than seeing how much pretty CGI they can pack into it.
iCrack'd?
Indeed. Recidivism rates show just how worthless our penal system is in terms of rehabilitation. That, or you have to believe people are just "born bad" and once they go astray they can't (or shouldn't) be helped.
It doesn't help that we jail boatloads of people who "commit" victimless, non-violent crimes--more than any country in the world.
As mainstream computing stands today, the operating system is almost completely irrelevant. Gaming continues to migrate to two different venues: the browser and the console. Productivity software is either cross-platform (Open/LibreOffice) or browser-based (Google Docs.) Typical users are spending more and more time in the browser as Web-based applications fulfill their needs.
There will always be a niche for platform-specific software but the writing is on the wall for computing in general. It's times like this I'm very glad Microsoft never managed to do to the Web what they did to the consumer operating system.
Which "everyday software" is still both platform-specific and lacking an adequate alternate on other operating systems? I think we'll find that our definitions of "everyday software" are not the same. :)
Good news, as far as I'm concerned. Wouldn't it be ironic if other, more sane countries started exerting international pressure on the US to get rid of some of our more draconian copyright and patent regulations? That'd be a hoot.
Newspapers are still businesses and as such have financial interests that are affected by public policy.
Games that still sell well tend to also be actively supported. Diablo II had a patch come out this year! Blizzard still maintains it and has had a pretty good history of doing so.
I'm sure there are exceptions. I'd like to hear about games that are several years old, still selling for over $20, yet are not supported at all (and the developer hasn't gone bankrupt or something.)
I'd just like to know what the hell happened to competition in mobile phone service. Carriers used to fight tooth and nail over customers, now it just seems like they collude to screw their customers as much as possible.
The $10 surcharge is precisely why I won't get a 4G phone when my Sprint contract is up for renewal. If it wasn't for the free mobile calls across the board I would've dropped my Sprint phone for an alternative a while ago. I already pay $70 + fees and taxes per month for it, and now they want me to pay $10 extra a month for the privilege of 4G? Shove it.
I remember when cell phone plan prices were going down, now they just seem to be climbing ever upward.
But there is nothing that says you have to buy an engine for a PC game. For a home console you have no choice--it's pay to play.
There are also immensely more resources for today's game developers, many of which can be acquired at no cost and with no licensing fees. The barrier to entry in the PC gaming world has never been lower.
I loved TIE Fighter primarily for the fact that you had to be good at flying your ship. For most of the game, you were in a craft with no shields and one or two hits would kill you. There's something satisfying about being able to take down waves of shielded fighters and even more shielded capital ships in a virtually defenseless TIE.
Battlecruiser 3000AD had multiple sequels, any of which should work well under XP.
The original game should run reasonably under DOSBox, or possibly in a Windows DOS session with VDMSound.
There was a 2.0 version that was compatible with Windows 9x, however it is utterly unsupported under 2000/XP and I've heard varying reports as to whether it works. Seems to depend on your specific setup, but people have had good luck with the aforementioned VDMSound and using compatibility mode.
This is quite common with games that are still popular many years after release. If your game is still selling a lot of copies 5 years after launch, why should you cut the price? Slashing prices is how you move more units. You don't bother if you're moving plenty of units already.
Diablo II is 10 years old and the Battle Chest still goes for $30-40. Blizzard must still be moving a decent number of copies otherwise they'd drop the price. Businesses do their best to maximize overall profit, so it doesn't make much sense to keep the price high if the game isn't selling.
As someone who frequently looks over bargain bins with games that are $10 and under, it's usually not a surprise what games wind up there: indie games that got no marketing, big-budget games that shipped with massive bugs and sold poorly, games that have since had one or more sequels (sequels tend to cannibalize sales of the original unless the sequel is just awful), and original versions of games that were later released with expansions in "gold" or "collector's editions." All of those make perfect sense from a business standpoint.
There's also the fact that good programmers can afford to be choosy and most likely will not want to live someplace like Iowa. There's a reason programming is concentrated on the coasts: software engineers, by and large, like the urban lifestyle. They don't want to live out in Bumfuck with no major cities nearby.
(Obviously, there are exceptions and I don't mean that developers are a monolithic group, but the trends and demographics are certainly there.)
I have only experienced this phenomenon at military base commissaries. I have never had groceries wheeled out to my car by someone else at a private sector store.
If people shop around for the best price--as they should if they have any sense at all--they'll notice the $30 surcharge from Best Buy and take their business elsewhere. I doubt Grandma is going to understand why she's paying 30 extra bucks for that PS3, so she may just as well go somewhere they're selling it cheaper.
I don't have a BR player so I can only assume HD monitors are not all created equal.
This is it exactly. It's also why computer monitors come with HDMI ports now. I have two 1080p monitors hooked up to my computer but I could just as easily hook them up to an HDMI device instead.
It sounds like I misunderstood what he was doing. However, Google might be interested to know that he apparently has control over some (many?) spambot Gmail accounts, since that's where the messages I've got are coming from.
I do hope his messages are helpful to others but they sure aren't of much use to me.
I don't see how it's my responsibility to prevent spam on anyone's site but my own.
I thought Slashdotters were big on personal responsibility. Make sure your site is secure and doesn't let spambots run roughshod over everything. People who let spambots take over their sites and crap up the place aren't going to have much traffic. It's a self-correcting problem unless you're just not paying attention at all to your site.
If he wants to help people, that's fine, but going out and giving people unsolicited "help" by breaking into spambot accounts smacks more of being a busybody sticking your nose in where it doesn't belong and isn't wanted. If he really wants to provide help he should approach webmasters directly.
For that matter, it's a duplication of effort, because I'm already not allowing spam to thrive. He is wasting his time notifying me of spambots.
Instead of just shooting off messages that "account x is a spambot, please delete it," why not provide people with tips on spam control in general? What he's doing seems more like throwing water on a fire while doing nothing about the gang still throwing gasoline on it.
But he is doing this on other people's sites. Including mine, coincidentally. I already have spam filtering methods in place. Spambots can register but they can't do much of anything. I "trap" them quite effectively.
I'm rather annoyed that he is breaking into spambot accounts on my site and sending me messages to deactivate their accounts. I don't need to deactivate their accounts--they are well-contained already. His "helpful" messages wind up being a greater irritant to me than the spambots themselves. I don't need you to tell me how to run my site, thanks.
To install Flash for Firefox Portable, follow the directions here: http://www.acidlabs.org/2006/09/05/installing-flash-in-portable-firefox-with-no-installer/
In case you don't want to go to the link, it's really simple:
Get this file: http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/xpi/current/flashplayer-win.xpi
Put it in your "plugins" folder in your FF Portable installation.
Restart FF and you should be good to go.
I certainly wouldn't assume I'd be charged for pushing a button on the phone itself, rather than clicking something on a particular webpage. Kudos to Verizon, I guess, for finding such a "great" way to scam people.
At this point I'm thinking we need some kind of functionality on ALL phones that, if an action is going to incur charges, you be prompted with some kind of confirmation box. "Silent" charges are evil.
I think a lot of people would trade being a good person for a massive pile of cash. A clear conscience and five bucks will buy you a cup of coffee.