Why is Symbian dying? Last I checked the smartphone adoption was something like 20% at global level. Much less that that in individual countries. What are the 80% dumbphones of the world running? Aren't most of them running Symbian?
If you mean "Nokia is [i]killing[/i] Symbian" then ok, but that's a whole different bunny.
Intel's relation with Microsoft has always struck me as more along the lines of "I've got a gun under the table pointing at your groin, now smile to the camera// Same for you buddy."
Wintel was a PC thing. The relation deteriorates rapidly nowadays, with Microsoft courting ARM in mobile product niches and Intel investing in Linux.
But what about certain expectations that the buyer had? Fairly reasonable ones, IMHO. Such as (a) "I can play games on my PS3" and (b) "Sony will respect my privacy".
Suddenly, (b) has been proven wrong and if you object to that, (a) will follow. [Not to mention the infamous (c) "I can run Linux on the PS3".]
I think you can see how people might get a bit pissed off about all this.
Adding to the GP and P posts: I also play online FPS games, I am an admin with reasonable experience, and, most importantly, [b]I've had the chance to see autistic kids gameplay[/b].
And here's the thing: before I found out a player was autistic, their manner of play raised all kinds of warning flags for me. There were spurts of uncanny abilities, they wouldn't talk to anybody, they were focusing obsessively on a limited sets of actions (run this exact route, attack at these exact points), they displayed anti-social behavior (attacking their own team) for no apparent reason. My first reaction? What a cheater/asshole combo!
Has anybody considered how their repetitive/compulsive nature alone may cause autists to deviate from the player norm? Not to mention that about 1 in 10 autists show outstanding abilities ("idiot savant" kind) and about 9 in 10 exhibit enhanced sensory perceptions.
So I find it strange that most highly-moderated comments so far have completely ignored the fact the kid is autistic and how it may have affected his gameplay. My own experience tells me that unless Microsoft knows for sure he used an actual bug or exploit, I'd take that "cheater" verdict with a BIG grain of salt. I'm fairly confident that an autistic person can trip both automated and human cheater detection. They were designed for regular people.
Dunno, but I'd sure like to ask the devs of Torchlight that question. Why intentionaly exclude a Linux port considering they used a cross-platform engine? It blows the mind.
Granted, it later turned out to run ok under Wine... but in the meantime I was undecided and waited until the game was up on offer for $5. If there was a native Linux port I'd have payed the full $20 from the start. That's $15 they cheated themselves out of. All this while most indy devs out there would be aghast at the thought of throwing $15 out the window like that.
The only people who will not install Windows at any cost are those with a moral objection to non-free software.
I wouldn't say I won't install Windows "at any cost"... but I'm not exactly looking forward to that ever being the case. I'd have to have a really burning reason to do so. It's just become so... alien.
No Compiz, not even workspaces; no centralized update and install; having to install firewall, antivirus, antispyware, wasting resources and still never be sure what's crawling inside your PC; apps installing pieces of themselves all over the main menu and the HDD and leaving cruft behing when you uninstall; every other app using a different look and feel; a taskbar, a "start" menu and a desktop in general that feel like a joke when it comes to customization; having the pleasure of being nagged about a perfectly legit copy as being "pirated".
Moral objection? I have a moral objection to the Apple lock-in. For Windows I have practical objections.
The problem with no centralized servers is that no one pays attention to ratio and the like.
Then they should implement the concept of "authoritative peers". Peers that have a secret key that gives them special powers over the swarm, such as kicking them out or regulating their participation.
It would also solve another problem with torrents: incremental updates. Today, if you want to do a minor alteration to one file out of 100 in a torrent, you have to publish a different torrent, tell all the peers to switch to that one and to start building up to 100% again. An authoritative peer would just push deltas on everybody.
Why would it benefit me personally to have to deal with wads of cash, write checks or directly expose my bank account via debit cards rather then making credit card transactions?
Why does it have to be exposed if you use a debit card? Have you never heard of double accounts, one empty (or with a max limit) in which you put money just before the online payment, and one with all the rest of the money, which cannot be withdrawn online?
Really, if JVM went away currently there is nothing that can replace it.
Not instantly, but eventually...
Let's take a look at the alternatives. We have Python, C and C++, as well as plenty of non-proprietary widget platforms, of which Qt is also well supported on mobile devices. I've kind of had it with companies who bait you inside their ecosystem only to trap you there. When you spend more time looking over your shoulder for fear of patent lawsuits than programming, something's wrong.
Ever notice how apart from 9/11 there hasn't been a single plane taken down due to terrorism in the US in the last decade?
"What are you wearing that open umbrella for, it's not raining?" "It keeps the elephants away." "But there are no elephants here anyway." "See, it's working."
C# has absolutely nothing windows oriented to it. It's a completely platform agnostic language.
Q1: Where's a complete FOSS implementation of it, not tied to or dependant on anything from.NET and/or Microsoft?
Q2: How confident are you that, should you build the next big thing on such an implementation, Microsoft won't come after you one day, like Oracle is coming after Google now?
Aren't both Java and Dalvik open source? If that was the case (verbatim copy of pieces of code) wouldn't it have come to attention much sooner?
Furthermore, why all this beating around the bush? Why doesn't Oracle come out and say "there, that file, that piece in Dalvik, is copied byte for byte from that file and that piece in Java".
What is wrong with drama being the meat of a SciFi TV show? I always thought that the best SciFi is that where the SciFi itself serves only as a backdrop, a support for the story and the characters, a background which would not otherwise be possible in contemporary or historical settings. I dislike shows that focus on the "cool factor" of SciFi. Most often than not they lack depth. SciFi is about making the spectator think.
I remember a scene in "War of the Worlds" which has always stuck with me. It's the one where the hero is hiding in a demolished house while the Martians are combing the area in their great Machines. He likens the feeling to the one a rabbit must get waking up in its burrow one day to find the forrest being utterly wiped out by a construction site. All this destruction, these huge things you cannot understand and all you can do is to hide, tremble and hope they won't turn over a root or a piece of rock and find you.
That scene would have not been possible without SciFi. There's nothing in human history that can replicate the horrible feeling of a human being literally looked down upon like vermin (figuratively, yes; literally, no). It's a very novel and unsettling feeling. The rabbit analogy was great, it was necessary, but it was not enough by itself. And the entire scene (as well as the book) is ultimately about human drama, not about the aliens from outer space.
I don't think that points the original motivation to be a lie, focuses change all the time, he may very well have been motivated differently at first and became motivated by money and evolve into a corporate douchebag over time.
Besides, it's hard for anyone to predict with 100% accuracy how they will behave if they ever get into some serious mega-bucks. "Douchebag" may not be so far from the truth for many of us. You never know for sure until you're in that position.
Maybe we should start asking what those 1-2% represent.
What kind of people use a Linux desktop full time? Geeks. Developers. Bright minds.
Consider Linux a piece of specialized software. How many computer users run specialized software? A small percentage of the total. Yet those are important for their respective niches.
Apple has 5% but it's the cream of the crop in regard to certain traits: people who favor aestethics and "just works" over everything else and are willing to pay extra for it.
Maybe it's time for Linux to stop aiming for more than 5%, ever, and instead embrace what it is: a professional-grade OS, for professionals.
Why obsess with taking over the desktop of average Joe, against Joe's wishes?
if you take the standing member line-up for OO.org and LibreOffice, and then look at the history of their commits for, say, the last two years, and measure the volume of said commits, how do the two groups compare?
You sure that's an accurate estimation? It assumes that everybody had free commit access... which I don't think was the case. What if someone at Sun had veto power over which stuff gets accepted into OpenOffice... they were probably using it.
It's difficult to accept because people are taught that there's one and only one way for any number to be written using decimal notation. So they assume that the relation between the set of all real numbers and the set of all decimal notations is one of bijection ie. one on one.
If you later come and slap them with "wait, we forgot to tell you, two of those notations point to the same number"... of course they're enclined not to believe it.
Oh wow, TEN whole tracks to OWN! Wowye, that sure sounds nice mister!
Or... I could listen to any songs I want on online radios, GrooveShark, Last.fm, Spotify, Pandora etc. and then use those $15 to buy 15 songs. AND I get to do that without having to use Windows or Zune.
Seriously? They loaded it chock full of DRM to the point you couldn't do anything they didn't want you to with it, and when they reached the point where their media partners would have started releasing stuff for it, they turned around and stabbed them in the back. And let's add a horrible user experience as the cherry on top.
What on Earth was so great about it? And if it was, how come it failed so spectacularly on the US market? After the initial figures for the first two years (which one may well suspect were artificially inflated) sales tapered off into nothing worth mentioning.
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Why is Symbian dying? Last I checked the smartphone adoption was something like 20% at global level. Much less that that in individual countries. What are the 80% dumbphones of the world running? Aren't most of them running Symbian?
If you mean "Nokia is [i]killing[/i] Symbian" then ok, but that's a whole different bunny.
Intel's relation with Microsoft has always struck me as more along the lines of "I've got a gun under the table pointing at your groin, now smile to the camera // Same for you buddy."
Wintel was a PC thing. The relation deteriorates rapidly nowadays, with Microsoft courting ARM in mobile product niches and Intel investing in Linux.
But what about certain expectations that the buyer had? Fairly reasonable ones, IMHO. Such as (a) "I can play games on my PS3" and (b) "Sony will respect my privacy".
Suddenly, (b) has been proven wrong and if you object to that, (a) will follow. [Not to mention the infamous (c) "I can run Linux on the PS3".]
I think you can see how people might get a bit pissed off about all this.
Adding to the GP and P posts: I also play online FPS games, I am an admin with reasonable experience, and, most importantly, [b]I've had the chance to see autistic kids gameplay[/b].
And here's the thing: before I found out a player was autistic, their manner of play raised all kinds of warning flags for me. There were spurts of uncanny abilities, they wouldn't talk to anybody, they were focusing obsessively on a limited sets of actions (run this exact route, attack at these exact points), they displayed anti-social behavior (attacking their own team) for no apparent reason. My first reaction? What a cheater/asshole combo!
Has anybody considered how their repetitive/compulsive nature alone may cause autists to deviate from the player norm? Not to mention that about 1 in 10 autists show outstanding abilities ("idiot savant" kind) and about 9 in 10 exhibit enhanced sensory perceptions.
So I find it strange that most highly-moderated comments so far have completely ignored the fact the kid is autistic and how it may have affected his gameplay. My own experience tells me that unless Microsoft knows for sure he used an actual bug or exploit, I'd take that "cheater" verdict with a BIG grain of salt. I'm fairly confident that an autistic person can trip both automated and human cheater detection. They were designed for regular people.
Why purposefully exclude a section of the market when it's not necessary?
Dunno, but I'd sure like to ask the devs of Torchlight that question. Why intentionaly exclude a Linux port considering they used a cross-platform engine? It blows the mind.
Granted, it later turned out to run ok under Wine... but in the meantime I was undecided and waited until the game was up on offer for $5. If there was a native Linux port I'd have payed the full $20 from the start. That's $15 they cheated themselves out of. All this while most indy devs out there would be aghast at the thought of throwing $15 out the window like that.
I wouldn't say I won't install Windows "at any cost"... but I'm not exactly looking forward to that ever being the case. I'd have to have a really burning reason to do so. It's just become so... alien.
No Compiz, not even workspaces; no centralized update and install; having to install firewall, antivirus, antispyware, wasting resources and still never be sure what's crawling inside your PC; apps installing pieces of themselves all over the main menu and the HDD and leaving cruft behing when you uninstall; every other app using a different look and feel; a taskbar, a "start" menu and a desktop in general that feel like a joke when it comes to customization; having the pleasure of being nagged about a perfectly legit copy as being "pirated".
Moral objection? I have a moral objection to the Apple lock-in. For Windows I have practical objections.
Then they should implement the concept of "authoritative peers". Peers that have a secret key that gives them special powers over the swarm, such as kicking them out or regulating their participation.
It would also solve another problem with torrents: incremental updates. Today, if you want to do a minor alteration to one file out of 100 in a torrent, you have to publish a different torrent, tell all the peers to switch to that one and to start building up to 100% again. An authoritative peer would just push deltas on everybody.
I'd rather have pedophiles get their fix by watching child porn movies than by actually going out and doing something to a real child.
I think Japan has the right idea on this, with their simulated porn is ok approach.
Why does it have to be exposed if you use a debit card? Have you never heard of double accounts, one empty (or with a max limit) in which you put money just before the online payment, and one with all the rest of the money, which cannot be withdrawn online?
Not instantly, but eventually...
Let's take a look at the alternatives. We have Python, C and C++, as well as plenty of non-proprietary widget platforms, of which Qt is also well supported on mobile devices. I've kind of had it with companies who bait you inside their ecosystem only to trap you there. When you spend more time looking over your shoulder for fear of patent lawsuits than programming, something's wrong.
"What are you wearing that open umbrella for, it's not raining?"
"It keeps the elephants away."
"But there are no elephants here anyway."
"See, it's working."
Q1: Where's a complete FOSS implementation of it, not tied to or dependant on anything from .NET and/or Microsoft?
Q2: How confident are you that, should you build the next big thing on such an implementation, Microsoft won't come after you one day, like Oracle is coming after Google now?
Aren't both Java and Dalvik open source? If that was the case (verbatim copy of pieces of code) wouldn't it have come to attention much sooner?
Furthermore, why all this beating around the bush? Why doesn't Oracle come out and say "there, that file, that piece in Dalvik, is copied byte for byte from that file and that piece in Java".
What is wrong with drama being the meat of a SciFi TV show? I always thought that the best SciFi is that where the SciFi itself serves only as a backdrop, a support for the story and the characters, a background which would not otherwise be possible in contemporary or historical settings. I dislike shows that focus on the "cool factor" of SciFi. Most often than not they lack depth. SciFi is about making the spectator think.
I remember a scene in "War of the Worlds" which has always stuck with me. It's the one where the hero is hiding in a demolished house while the Martians are combing the area in their great Machines. He likens the feeling to the one a rabbit must get waking up in its burrow one day to find the forrest being utterly wiped out by a construction site. All this destruction, these huge things you cannot understand and all you can do is to hide, tremble and hope they won't turn over a root or a piece of rock and find you.
That scene would have not been possible without SciFi. There's nothing in human history that can replicate the horrible feeling of a human being literally looked down upon like vermin (figuratively, yes; literally, no). It's a very novel and unsettling feeling. The rabbit analogy was great, it was necessary, but it was not enough by itself. And the entire scene (as well as the book) is ultimately about human drama, not about the aliens from outer space.
Who said GP was trying to feel superior to you? He just said it's possible to dislike software. Talk about being self-centered.
Fixed.
Besides, it's hard for anyone to predict with 100% accuracy how they will behave if they ever get into some serious mega-bucks. "Douchebag" may not be so far from the truth for many of us. You never know for sure until you're in that position.
Why was parent modded Troll? He deserves Redundant. That's the ultimate motivation of all men, he shouldn't even have to state it!
Oh, Linux users are snobs too, just a different kind. What, never heard the famous warcry before: "show us the code or shut up"? :)
Maybe we should start asking what those 1-2% represent.
What kind of people use a Linux desktop full time? Geeks. Developers. Bright minds.
Consider Linux a piece of specialized software. How many computer users run specialized software? A small percentage of the total. Yet those are important for their respective niches.
Apple has 5% but it's the cream of the crop in regard to certain traits: people who favor aestethics and "just works" over everything else and are willing to pay extra for it.
Maybe it's time for Linux to stop aiming for more than 5%, ever, and instead embrace what it is: a professional-grade OS, for professionals.
Why obsess with taking over the desktop of average Joe, against Joe's wishes?
It doesn't have to be a large corporation. Even small ones can do something to ruin the fun for everybody. Look at the Nexuiz/Xonotic fork.
You're assuming that the code that made it into OpenOffice releases was all the code that was written for it.
What if there was twice as much code written by non-Sun employees, except it wasn't accepted into OO?
You sure that's an accurate estimation? It assumes that everybody had free commit access... which I don't think was the case. What if someone at Sun had veto power over which stuff gets accepted into OpenOffice... they were probably using it.
It's difficult to accept because people are taught that there's one and only one way for any number to be written using decimal notation. So they assume that the relation between the set of all real numbers and the set of all decimal notations is one of bijection ie. one on one.
If you later come and slap them with "wait, we forgot to tell you, two of those notations point to the same number"... of course they're enclined not to believe it.
Oh wow, TEN whole tracks to OWN! Wowye, that sure sounds nice mister!
Or... I could listen to any songs I want on online radios, GrooveShark, Last.fm, Spotify, Pandora etc. and then use those $15 to buy 15 songs. AND I get to do that without having to use Windows or Zune.
Seriously? They loaded it chock full of DRM to the point you couldn't do anything they didn't want you to with it, and when they reached the point where their media partners would have started releasing stuff for it, they turned around and stabbed them in the back. And let's add a horrible user experience as the cherry on top.
What on Earth was so great about it? And if it was, how come it failed so spectacularly on the US market? After the initial figures for the first two years (which one may well suspect were artificially inflated) sales tapered off into nothing worth mentioning.