Seriously, if you have hardware that is working fine with Windows XP or Win 2k3 Server, what possible reason do you have for taking a risky manuver like the Vista "upgrade"? A saner "migration plan" is to use the machine as is till it fails.
Contrary to what Microsoft wants you to believe, if your machine functions today it suddenly will not "suck" the day Vista comes out. Stay with what works *now* instead of doing untested upgrades.
The MGS is 10 years old and a really great piece of technology but I am not surprised it failed at this point and I wondered if it was going to make it to 2008. Although it is a "downer" to have it fail, we should take advantage of it. We know what in MGS that is good and with 10 years of improvement we can make a new Mars Global Surveryor that did everything the old one did plus more.
Is a voter "uninformed" if they "vote for the wrong things/people"? Who determins what these "wrong things" are? Is it when one votes against their pet party or isuse? Are they still bad voters if they vote with them? That is hardly a compelling reason to think someone is uninformed.
Democracy works better the more people you have participate not less. I don't know why there is this desire to limit the number of people who vote in very tight races. It seems that at the moment, the people who go through the voting process do so because they want to (more accurately they do it because they are mad or have an axe to grind). It is rare that some goofball on a whim registers and votes in a random manner.
Besides, even if the electorate is full of idiots voting randomly on things they shouldn't, it is probably spread evenly on both sides of these issues. Trying to make the case that we need to "weed out the bad voters" smacks of prejudice because there is the implication that they are all voting for the wrong things by subjective measure of the complainer. The way to fix "uninformed voters" is to give more information to more voters, not try to disallow them.
This is all a calculated risk. If they are "too early" it falls flat and the only thing out on the market that is really a Bluray player is the PS3. If they aren't, then they make out bandits being the top of the new wave of "next generation" of home media. It shouldn't surprise *anyone* that a buisness is taking on risks in the hopes of future profits because this is what buisness and entrepreneurish is about.
Beyond all of this, Sony has a history of doing this in their engineering. They come up with a new product where they can't find the technology needed to complete the product so they invent it. Sony thinks there is a need for a "next gen disk" system and once again to no one's surprise they create a system themselves. If something was established they would have gone with it but history has shown time and time again that if their isn't Sony is far more likely to create something from scratch. The trick is that although it gets the product out the door but doesn't mean anyone else will use it.
In other words, is it a problem that Sony takes a huge risk introducing what could be a next gen format? Heck no. In fact I wouldn't have it any other way because this is how market capitalism works. I'm pretty cool to supporting Sony but this is one facet of Sony I do give props too.
People complain about the loss of rumble but I've always seen it as a gimmick that was only effectively pulled off in a few games. The rest of it was just a toy not necessarily to the actually game or, even more importantly, the game mechanics. How do I know this? Because most games on the PC never bothered with it.
Take a look at gaming on the PC side and it is devoid of rumble and trust me when I say Logitech and Microsoft would like nothing better than to sell you something that "rumbles" especially a gamer thinks they need but it never took off. I don't think World of Warcraft needs rumble and if CounterStrike players don't notice it and The Sims can't use it effectively, just how "important" is rumble? These are some of the most played, highest selling games in the history of gaming running rings around some of the best console titles and yet none of them are eager to have rumble. I guess the PC side of gaming has been missing out on...something.
So what are these games that really need rumble? The only reason to keep rumble in would have been "it is cheap". With Immersion, there is really no surprise it is gone.
Which doesn't mean "it missed something!" Viking might have "missed something" and yet there still might not be life. It just means it isn't very conclusive so we should go back and look again.
One thing that I continually like to point out is that "life" at a basic level is agressively replicant. If there is any life that is a little successful, it explodes and tries to fill every nook and cranny and does it as fast as it can. If there is life anywhere on Mars it should be easy to find if we take a wide survey testing multiple places at multiple times of the Martian year. Just two tests isn't sufficient to call it either way.
It is stated in the last few Windows EULA (I don't have the XP version in front of me) that it is not a real time OS and it should not be used for "mission critical" applications like medical equipment, power plants, aero-space, high power applications, etc. I highly doubt they'll retract this for Vista. In any event, reguardless of your feelings about Windows using a desktop for a "99.9997% uptime" application is insanity. You need a very different operating system for these types of applications.
And besides, many pieces of software, free and closed, including operating systems have a "No Warrenty" clause that says they are not responsible if the software blows up your hardware or destroys your data. If something goes wrong it isn't their fault. I'm fond of pointing this out because neither Microsoft nor any Linux kernel developer make the same level of assurances that their stuff not only works but doesn't destroy things (which is none from both).
This was answered: The reason why FF consumes that much memory is because it is available and favors "allocation" for increased speed to avoid any cache. Letting it go to cache isn't "free" since it has an overhead as well. Asking it again in an effort to make it look dubious is a falacy.
The feature itself isn't bad: Using a memory when memory is available isn't automatically bad since there is a gain (speedup). But if it really bothers the user they should be allowed to turn it off or switch to another allocation scheme. The best would be to offer the user a choice of settings. Especially with a large free memory pool, the bonus of a "small memory footprint" becomes a distant secondary concern where the benefits of the tradeoff are easy to justify.
Aren't most security problems in Windows outside of the kernel? Make no mistake that kernel tampering is a problem and should be addressed by any platform but it seems that various pieces of malicious software modify the hooks of the software surrounding the kernel instead of the kernel itself. Installing a piece of modifies that modifies Explorer handles file browsing in a way the user didn't intend. Installing a piece of software that modifies the behavior of IE without knowing it. Looking at a piece of email that executes something it shouldn't. Modify the registry so anytime any piece of software queries about a file type, do something the user didn't intend. So on and so forth. Most of these things are not kernel controled and therefore protected by DRM security schemees. And I'm not sure where "mini-drivers" fall (think your USB Camera) since they should be dynamically loaded/unloaded on demand.
Please don't mistake that keeping the kernel "hardened" is important for security but I'm not sure what this really solves for the end user (which is something I suspect many out on/. also suspect). Making the kernel harder to modify accidently or by trickery is a good thing but what is this really doing? It seems more like a way to make sure Microsoft and only Microsoft can make changes to Windows since very few outside of Microsoft can do this anyway with a thinly veiled promise of benificial security.
I guess the fundemental question is how many people want to modify the Windows Vista kernel? What is the actual threat for kernel modification? If that pool is very small then it seems kind of like a non-feature for users and another layer of API for software engineers.
With naming conventions like this, it is starting to get close to Street Fighter levels of awesomenessocity. Next up: "Microsoft Windows Vista: Release Canidate 2 Beta Final Alpha Turbo 4...Professional!"
You Misunderstand: Feature Good, Process Bad
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IE7 Toolbar Mayhem
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Toolbars themselves are a good feature add. By design, "plug-ins" allows for extension of the framework in ways the user wants. I'm all for Microsoft or Mozilla or Opera to have a way to install plugins! What is bad is the way Microsoft goes about doing this with their rules and exceptions which lead to a confused user.
By design or miracle, "warning dialogs" are somewhat minimal in Mac or Linux but in Windows its all over. "Are you sure you want to do this? Yes/No" over and over again causes "fatigue" where users just dismiss it for the sake of making it go away. I've seen users who just click and dismiss things that are clearly warnings and indicators that something is wrong. Why? Because they see it dozens of times and its nonsense as far as they can tell. The reason they never hit "No" is because it stops what they were doing. They would rather be encumbered by a flakey IE than not do what they wanted and frankly these errant users have a point.
The point is worth repeating: Adding a toolbar to IE7 isn't a bad thing. The real problem is the way the process works and it isn't getting better for Vista. For each plugin there should be one and only one confirmation. If it fails **any hard defined requirements** then it the plugin is not installed. They should not be asked to elevate their privilages. They should not be asked if they want to activate secondary controls (Active X). They should not be asked if the install can modify the registry.
Why does any toolbar need 'elevated privilages' at all to install or work? IE is supposed to be an issolated framework that is user dependant. Why does a toolbar need another control hosted outside of itself (violates sandbox)? Why does any toolbar need to access the registry (again violates sandbox)? None of this stuff seems necessary at all for toolbars to function. Why bother asking the user "Yes/No" questions on things that are "violations"?? In most normal cases, when a program violates the rules it doesn't allow it. Why is IE different?
"Failing by design" Is Proper?
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IE7 Toolbar Mayhem
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· Score: 1, Interesting
In school, a design professor never hesitated to point out, "If it is possible to 'break' the application as a concenquence of the selection made, then you must think of it like that. The number of people that are going to answer 'Yes' to "Do you wish to ruin your computer? Yes/No" is irrelevant since you shouldn't have offered them to chance to see that dialog in the first place."
Most of the UI systems I've studied tell me that if the design has a "need" to ask the user to consider doing something bad, then the system designer should reconsider doing it all. I don't think it is very shocking that IE can be screwed up. I do think it is shocking that Microsoft knows of at least 4 interactions that shouldn't be done by the user and allows them the choice of doing it anyway.
The problem is that you need to be root to do this. If you already have this access, the system is already "yours". One may do with it whatever you wish where simply leveraging the way the kernel loads binaries is yet another trival thing. There might be some "tightening up" but this is no more of a security risk than say "compiling source code for a kernel module that is of a dubious source".
Trying to make out World of Warcraft as some den of degenerate, depressed people seeking "escapism" seems ignore that people do this all over all of the time without the game. People go to the club to escape. People go to the coffee shop to escape. People go to the sports bar and watch their game to escape. People go to Borders for the book club to escape! No one goes to these social settings or clubs for something that really ends either. They will continue to go to it as long as it is fun and comfy for them.
Honestly this "WoW is full of addicts" thing is old and really has no more support than claiming "Border's Book Club is full of book reading addicts". "Escapism" isn't necessarily an indicator anything beyond having free time. People spend their free time at the club, at the coffee shop, at the sports bar, and at the bookstore because they can get only so much social interaction with their family at home. Why is no one bemoaning these as addictive but World of Warcraft is?
This is the wrong way to fix "the problem". The "problem" is a browser is allowed to do some malicious behavior. The fix should be "never allow the browser to do this behavior" but they offer "scanner to catch the behvaior" instead? This has been tried before with miserable results. There are millions (if not billions) of permutations on the bad behavior so forgive me if I don't have a lot of confidence any scanner can figure it out.
An old coworker characterized Microsoft design philosophy and their fixes like an alluminum finish boat with a leak where they consistently fix "the wrong problem":
- These boats might leak, so lets add inflatable pontoons - The pontoons make the boat too heavy to movie with the original motor so add two larger motors - The motors now eat too much fuel so add more fuel tanks - The fuel tanks are too large for the boat so weld on another boat and put the fuel tanks there
By the end you end up with something that doesn't look like a boat wanted or needed or can actually use very well as a boat. The wrong fix was adding pontoons to keep the boat afloat. They just automatically assumed "leak = sinking" where this might not be the case at all. The hole in the boat might be small enough that it would never sink to begin with.
At the heart, this is the folley that Microsoft tries where they ignore the inherent design of web browsing: Web browsers by design accept a lot of questionable material from questionable sources. A scanner seems to fly in the face of this where Microsoft seems to claim that *some* questionable material from a question source isn't actually bad. What could this possibly be?
A lot of software, Microsoft, BSD, GPL, are all sold and used "as is". That is if it malfunctions, corrupts data, destroys the machine, causes cancer, or whatever, it isn't the author's fault. The author is not under any obligation to recoop costs of the damage or even fix the software. It is a pretty standard thing even for those that offer "high reliability/recovery".
This has been something I've tried to point out quite a bit: If Microsoft claims the same level of "It is not my problem" then why is their closed solution so much better? It isn't like you are going to get your money back from anyone if your machine dies from installed software.
From where I'm fun, "hard" is realitive and not an indicator of quality play. For the legions who play The Sims, hard isn't even in the equation and yet a fun game. Reguardless, the key for games is to present a challenge a player can readily feel is difficult and yet conquerable. Game designers actually want players to feel good that they accomplished something, not punish by throwing them at a brick wall to slam against for hours on end. You can make a challenging and fun game that is 5-10 hours long. I'm pretty sure it doesn't look like Prey though.
My feeling is that Prey isn't that it is too short but it doesn't have enough challenges. It feels (and smells) like they held back for the expansion especially given the ending. Just pumping up the number of monsters or lengthing the game isn't going to help fix it. I'm just not satified with the game because it felt I didn't accomplish enough.
ps. Anyone else wondering what is up with the spiking machine? Hello completely unnecessary deaths. Why not just kill the grandfather right away instead of watching him being impaled?
AC was demoed on a 360 dev with a modded PS3 controller. I never heard anything about it being demoed on a PS3. That's where this rumor got its teeth and why everyone in the world is making such a bold claim.
Huh? At the TGS 2005 which was the start of Sony's PS3 push, Sony showed some work by Ubi's Monteral Studios simply known as "Project Assassin". Assassin's Creed was *demoed* at E3 on PS3 hardware. It got plenty of press because it was actually a functional demo instead of some looping trailer which was what many had expected. Heck it got "Best PS3 Game" from 1Up.
Granted people for some reason forgot something was mentioned at Microsoft's X05 developer convention as well but a lot of public indicators were leading people to jump to the conclusion that it was always a PS3 exclusive. This was frankly a bit too much since I don't think Ubi ever claimed this. I believe they only promised it would be on the PS3, not that it was some sort of exclusive.
Given the huge cost of software development, let alone the cut throat world of games, it is probably too expensive for them to go "console exclusive" for any console. I view it as more of the fallout from the complexity of creating games in the new "game race" than a failure or success of anyone in party in particular. The producers of Assissin's Creed may simply not have gotten the finacial backing if they only promised to sell it on *one* platform.
Demoing AC on PS3 hardware was a good thing. Using it as proof of some exclusivity (ie no demos where avialable on other platforms) was a logical and seemingly falacious assumption.
What is just as odd is that they appear to be ignoring developer feedback as well. A lot of web developer time is sunk trying to resolve problems between IE and other browsers. Why do these complaints fall on deaf ears? They should be doing a lot more to satisfy developer needs and wants than users because ultimately if dev time is lost trying to develop apps on their technology and it turns out too be too costly then fewer apps are made.
I've mentioned this multiple times before but these arguments against either next gen format sound exactly like the last gen format. "No one wants this new format" is exactly one of them. LD and VHS more than fit needs of consumers of the 90s so DVD was a technology without a need or demand. Wow I suddenly have deja vu again...
This is a reflection of our language (English). If one hasn't noticed, most of the stuff in the Solar System is called out by Greek or Roman names of antiquity. There are big notable exceptions: Sun, Earth, Moon which come from the Germanic roots of our English language. In German, these things are Sonne, Erde, Mond and other related languages feature something similiar with similar sounds. Compared with a Romance Language like French where these things are called Soleli, Terre, Lune.
If you go by strict conventions, the name of "The Sun" is Sol, "The Earth" is Terra, "The Moon" is Luna. The name of The Moon in English has been settled long ago while the name of these other satelites have not been.
I've heard all of this stuff before when DVDs were trying to be adopted. Classics are:
- LD and VHS work great. - There isn't that much improvement over LDs. - No one knows if DVD will take off... - I am not interested in buying new equipment again.
So on and so fort, lots of teeth nashing and woe. But hey we lived through it and few will say we are worse off. HDTV is the biggest change to NTSC since the modification to handle color. On the two HDTV displays I have I already see the quality problems with DVD even when the player upscales. I'm already hungry for devices that generate true high definition content. I'm not sure why people are saying they need to wait because I've heard all of this before and it was just fine.
As for Sony, they design devices that have to meet certain requirements. They needed a "next gen DVD" system and this is what they came up with. Why are they evil for trying such a thing? Or why aren't the HD-DVD group evil as well? Sony is far from perfect often where they often "miss" instead of "hit" but that is the name of the game of innovation.
Why does anyone want Sony dstroyed? We are going to get some awesome titles out in the next two years simply because many ISVs consider the market in the air which applies pressure to Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo to perform and hunt for the best projects to sponsor. I enjoy the fact that Sony is pushing the technology envelope. Whether or not they are going about it the right way or could have picked a better set of features is a question for historians a couple of years from now. It might all be that Sony was a mere half a year off on their timing to push this stuff but I don't think anyone should stop them from trying.
The writing was on the wall: No matter how 'elite' the PS3 is they were going to lose market position because the competition is strong this time around instead of the limp wristed toss outs Nintendo and Microsoft threw last time. The only thing Sony could do is try to lead which means going out on the limb. They are way out on a thin branch where it might pay off or it might come crashing down.
As many who are going "ha ha!" at Sony's seemingly consistent knack for steping on all of the landmines, no one should relish a gaming world where Microsoft and Sony switch places. Do many of you think Microsoft will treat you better than Sony did if they dominate the space? I guarentee if Microsoft runs away with the market and crushes Sony we'll be back to same quite pace we've seen in the last few years. No thanks...I'll gladly take the three way race.
The problem is sitting here and now (May 31, 2006) no one knows. It is clear that Sony is taking a gamble on doing the PS3 like this and like many gambles there is a possibility they will make out like bandits or like beggers. It is simply too early now to tell reguardless of what any analyst thinks.
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Seriously, if you have hardware that is working fine with Windows XP or Win 2k3 Server, what possible reason do you have for taking a risky manuver like the Vista "upgrade"? A saner "migration plan" is to use the machine as is till it fails.
Contrary to what Microsoft wants you to believe, if your machine functions today it suddenly will not "suck" the day Vista comes out. Stay with what works *now* instead of doing untested upgrades.
The MGS is 10 years old and a really great piece of technology but I am not surprised it failed at this point and I wondered if it was going to make it to 2008. Although it is a "downer" to have it fail, we should take advantage of it. We know what in MGS that is good and with 10 years of improvement we can make a new Mars Global Surveryor that did everything the old one did plus more.
Is a voter "uninformed" if they "vote for the wrong things/people"? Who determins what these "wrong things" are? Is it when one votes against their pet party or isuse? Are they still bad voters if they vote with them? That is hardly a compelling reason to think someone is uninformed.
Democracy works better the more people you have participate not less. I don't know why there is this desire to limit the number of people who vote in very tight races. It seems that at the moment, the people who go through the voting process do so because they want to (more accurately they do it because they are mad or have an axe to grind). It is rare that some goofball on a whim registers and votes in a random manner.
Besides, even if the electorate is full of idiots voting randomly on things they shouldn't, it is probably spread evenly on both sides of these issues. Trying to make the case that we need to "weed out the bad voters" smacks of prejudice because there is the implication that they are all voting for the wrong things by subjective measure of the complainer. The way to fix "uninformed voters" is to give more information to more voters, not try to disallow them.
This is all a calculated risk. If they are "too early" it falls flat and the only thing out on the market that is really a Bluray player is the PS3. If they aren't, then they make out bandits being the top of the new wave of "next generation" of home media. It shouldn't surprise *anyone* that a buisness is taking on risks in the hopes of future profits because this is what buisness and entrepreneurish is about.
Beyond all of this, Sony has a history of doing this in their engineering. They come up with a new product where they can't find the technology needed to complete the product so they invent it. Sony thinks there is a need for a "next gen disk" system and once again to no one's surprise they create a system themselves. If something was established they would have gone with it but history has shown time and time again that if their isn't Sony is far more likely to create something from scratch. The trick is that although it gets the product out the door but doesn't mean anyone else will use it.
In other words, is it a problem that Sony takes a huge risk introducing what could be a next gen format? Heck no. In fact I wouldn't have it any other way because this is how market capitalism works. I'm pretty cool to supporting Sony but this is one facet of Sony I do give props too.
People complain about the loss of rumble but I've always seen it as a gimmick that was only effectively pulled off in a few games. The rest of it was just a toy not necessarily to the actually game or, even more importantly, the game mechanics. How do I know this? Because most games on the PC never bothered with it.
Take a look at gaming on the PC side and it is devoid of rumble and trust me when I say Logitech and Microsoft would like nothing better than to sell you something that "rumbles" especially a gamer thinks they need but it never took off. I don't think World of Warcraft needs rumble and if CounterStrike players don't notice it and The Sims can't use it effectively, just how "important" is rumble? These are some of the most played, highest selling games in the history of gaming running rings around some of the best console titles and yet none of them are eager to have rumble. I guess the PC side of gaming has been missing out on...something.
So what are these games that really need rumble? The only reason to keep rumble in would have been "it is cheap". With Immersion, there is really no surprise it is gone.
Which doesn't mean "it missed something!" Viking might have "missed something" and yet there still might not be life. It just means it isn't very conclusive so we should go back and look again.
One thing that I continually like to point out is that "life" at a basic level is agressively replicant. If there is any life that is a little successful, it explodes and tries to fill every nook and cranny and does it as fast as it can. If there is life anywhere on Mars it should be easy to find if we take a wide survey testing multiple places at multiple times of the Martian year. Just two tests isn't sufficient to call it either way.
It is stated in the last few Windows EULA (I don't have the XP version in front of me) that it is not a real time OS and it should not be used for "mission critical" applications like medical equipment, power plants, aero-space, high power applications, etc. I highly doubt they'll retract this for Vista. In any event, reguardless of your feelings about Windows using a desktop for a "99.9997% uptime" application is insanity. You need a very different operating system for these types of applications.
And besides, many pieces of software, free and closed, including operating systems have a "No Warrenty" clause that says they are not responsible if the software blows up your hardware or destroys your data. If something goes wrong it isn't their fault. I'm fond of pointing this out because neither Microsoft nor any Linux kernel developer make the same level of assurances that their stuff not only works but doesn't destroy things (which is none from both).
This was answered: The reason why FF consumes that much memory is because it is available and favors "allocation" for increased speed to avoid any cache. Letting it go to cache isn't "free" since it has an overhead as well. Asking it again in an effort to make it look dubious is a falacy.
The feature itself isn't bad: Using a memory when memory is available isn't automatically bad since there is a gain (speedup). But if it really bothers the user they should be allowed to turn it off or switch to another allocation scheme. The best would be to offer the user a choice of settings. Especially with a large free memory pool, the bonus of a "small memory footprint" becomes a distant secondary concern where the benefits of the tradeoff are easy to justify.
Aren't most security problems in Windows outside of the kernel? Make no mistake that kernel tampering is a problem and should be addressed by any platform but it seems that various pieces of malicious software modify the hooks of the software surrounding the kernel instead of the kernel itself. Installing a piece of modifies that modifies Explorer handles file browsing in a way the user didn't intend. Installing a piece of software that modifies the behavior of IE without knowing it. Looking at a piece of email that executes something it shouldn't. Modify the registry so anytime any piece of software queries about a file type, do something the user didn't intend. So on and so forth. Most of these things are not kernel controled and therefore protected by DRM security schemees. And I'm not sure where "mini-drivers" fall (think your USB Camera) since they should be dynamically loaded/unloaded on demand.
/. also suspect). Making the kernel harder to modify accidently or by trickery is a good thing but what is this really doing? It seems more like a way to make sure Microsoft and only Microsoft can make changes to Windows since very few outside of Microsoft can do this anyway with a thinly veiled promise of benificial security.
Please don't mistake that keeping the kernel "hardened" is important for security but I'm not sure what this really solves for the end user (which is something I suspect many out on
I guess the fundemental question is how many people want to modify the Windows Vista kernel? What is the actual threat for kernel modification? If that pool is very small then it seems kind of like a non-feature for users and another layer of API for software engineers.
With naming conventions like this, it is starting to get close to Street Fighter levels of awesomenessocity. Next up: "Microsoft Windows Vista: Release Canidate 2 Beta Final Alpha Turbo 4...Professional!"
Toolbars themselves are a good feature add. By design, "plug-ins" allows for extension of the framework in ways the user wants. I'm all for Microsoft or Mozilla or Opera to have a way to install plugins! What is bad is the way Microsoft goes about doing this with their rules and exceptions which lead to a confused user.
By design or miracle, "warning dialogs" are somewhat minimal in Mac or Linux but in Windows its all over. "Are you sure you want to do this? Yes/No" over and over again causes "fatigue" where users just dismiss it for the sake of making it go away. I've seen users who just click and dismiss things that are clearly warnings and indicators that something is wrong. Why? Because they see it dozens of times and its nonsense as far as they can tell. The reason they never hit "No" is because it stops what they were doing. They would rather be encumbered by a flakey IE than not do what they wanted and frankly these errant users have a point.
The point is worth repeating: Adding a toolbar to IE7 isn't a bad thing. The real problem is the way the process works and it isn't getting better for Vista. For each plugin there should be one and only one confirmation. If it fails **any hard defined requirements** then it the plugin is not installed. They should not be asked to elevate their privilages. They should not be asked if they want to activate secondary controls (Active X). They should not be asked if the install can modify the registry.
Why does any toolbar need 'elevated privilages' at all to install or work? IE is supposed to be an issolated framework that is user dependant. Why does a toolbar need another control hosted outside of itself (violates sandbox)? Why does any toolbar need to access the registry (again violates sandbox)? None of this stuff seems necessary at all for toolbars to function. Why bother asking the user "Yes/No" questions on things that are "violations"?? In most normal cases, when a program violates the rules it doesn't allow it. Why is IE different?
In school, a design professor never hesitated to point out, "If it is possible to 'break' the application as a concenquence of the selection made, then you must think of it like that. The number of people that are going to answer 'Yes' to "Do you wish to ruin your computer? Yes/No" is irrelevant since you shouldn't have offered them to chance to see that dialog in the first place."
Most of the UI systems I've studied tell me that if the design has a "need" to ask the user to consider doing something bad, then the system designer should reconsider doing it all. I don't think it is very shocking that IE can be screwed up. I do think it is shocking that Microsoft knows of at least 4 interactions that shouldn't be done by the user and allows them the choice of doing it anyway.
The problem is that you need to be root to do this. If you already have this access, the system is already "yours". One may do with it whatever you wish where simply leveraging the way the kernel loads binaries is yet another trival thing. There might be some "tightening up" but this is no more of a security risk than say "compiling source code for a kernel module that is of a dubious source".
Trying to make out World of Warcraft as some den of degenerate, depressed people seeking "escapism" seems ignore that people do this all over all of the time without the game. People go to the club to escape. People go to the coffee shop to escape. People go to the sports bar and watch their game to escape. People go to Borders for the book club to escape! No one goes to these social settings or clubs for something that really ends either. They will continue to go to it as long as it is fun and comfy for them.
Honestly this "WoW is full of addicts" thing is old and really has no more support than claiming "Border's Book Club is full of book reading addicts". "Escapism" isn't necessarily an indicator anything beyond having free time. People spend their free time at the club, at the coffee shop, at the sports bar, and at the bookstore because they can get only so much social interaction with their family at home. Why is no one bemoaning these as addictive but World of Warcraft is?
This is the wrong way to fix "the problem". The "problem" is a browser is allowed to do some malicious behavior. The fix should be "never allow the browser to do this behavior" but they offer "scanner to catch the behvaior" instead? This has been tried before with miserable results. There are millions (if not billions) of permutations on the bad behavior so forgive me if I don't have a lot of confidence any scanner can figure it out.
An old coworker characterized Microsoft design philosophy and their fixes like an alluminum finish boat with a leak where they consistently fix "the wrong problem":
- These boats might leak, so lets add inflatable pontoons
- The pontoons make the boat too heavy to movie with the original motor so add two larger motors
- The motors now eat too much fuel so add more fuel tanks
- The fuel tanks are too large for the boat so weld on another boat and put the fuel tanks there
By the end you end up with something that doesn't look like a boat wanted or needed or can actually use very well as a boat. The wrong fix was adding pontoons to keep the boat afloat. They just automatically assumed "leak = sinking" where this might not be the case at all. The hole in the boat might be small enough that it would never sink to begin with.
At the heart, this is the folley that Microsoft tries where they ignore the inherent design of web browsing: Web browsers by design accept a lot of questionable material from questionable sources. A scanner seems to fly in the face of this where Microsoft seems to claim that *some* questionable material from a question source isn't actually bad. What could this possibly be?
A lot of software, Microsoft, BSD, GPL, are all sold and used "as is". That is if it malfunctions, corrupts data, destroys the machine, causes cancer, or whatever, it isn't the author's fault. The author is not under any obligation to recoop costs of the damage or even fix the software. It is a pretty standard thing even for those that offer "high reliability/recovery".
This has been something I've tried to point out quite a bit: If Microsoft claims the same level of "It is not my problem" then why is their closed solution so much better? It isn't like you are going to get your money back from anyone if your machine dies from installed software.
From where I'm fun, "hard" is realitive and not an indicator of quality play. For the legions who play The Sims, hard isn't even in the equation and yet a fun game. Reguardless, the key for games is to present a challenge a player can readily feel is difficult and yet conquerable. Game designers actually want players to feel good that they accomplished something, not punish by throwing them at a brick wall to slam against for hours on end. You can make a challenging and fun game that is 5-10 hours long. I'm pretty sure it doesn't look like Prey though.
My feeling is that Prey isn't that it is too short but it doesn't have enough challenges. It feels (and smells) like they held back for the expansion especially given the ending. Just pumping up the number of monsters or lengthing the game isn't going to help fix it. I'm just not satified with the game because it felt I didn't accomplish enough.
ps. Anyone else wondering what is up with the spiking machine? Hello completely unnecessary deaths. Why not just kill the grandfather right away instead of watching him being impaled?
Huh? At the TGS 2005 which was the start of Sony's PS3 push, Sony showed some work by Ubi's Monteral Studios simply known as "Project Assassin". Assassin's Creed was *demoed* at E3 on PS3 hardware. It got plenty of press because it was actually a functional demo instead of some looping trailer which was what many had expected. Heck it got "Best PS3 Game" from 1Up.
Granted people for some reason forgot something was mentioned at Microsoft's X05 developer convention as well but a lot of public indicators were leading people to jump to the conclusion that it was always a PS3 exclusive. This was frankly a bit too much since I don't think Ubi ever claimed this. I believe they only promised it would be on the PS3, not that it was some sort of exclusive.
Given the huge cost of software development, let alone the cut throat world of games, it is probably too expensive for them to go "console exclusive" for any console. I view it as more of the fallout from the complexity of creating games in the new "game race" than a failure or success of anyone in party in particular. The producers of Assissin's Creed may simply not have gotten the finacial backing if they only promised to sell it on *one* platform.
Demoing AC on PS3 hardware was a good thing. Using it as proof of some exclusivity (ie no demos where avialable on other platforms) was a logical and seemingly falacious assumption.
What is just as odd is that they appear to be ignoring developer feedback as well. A lot of web developer time is sunk trying to resolve problems between IE and other browsers. Why do these complaints fall on deaf ears? They should be doing a lot more to satisfy developer needs and wants than users because ultimately if dev time is lost trying to develop apps on their technology and it turns out too be too costly then fewer apps are made.
I've mentioned this multiple times before but these arguments against either next gen format sound exactly like the last gen format. "No one wants this new format" is exactly one of them. LD and VHS more than fit needs of consumers of the 90s so DVD was a technology without a need or demand. Wow I suddenly have deja vu again...
This is a reflection of our language (English). If one hasn't noticed, most of the stuff in the Solar System is called out by Greek or Roman names of antiquity. There are big notable exceptions: Sun, Earth, Moon which come from the Germanic roots of our English language. In German, these things are Sonne, Erde, Mond and other related languages feature something similiar with similar sounds. Compared with a Romance Language like French where these things are called Soleli, Terre, Lune.
If you go by strict conventions, the name of "The Sun" is Sol, "The Earth" is Terra, "The Moon" is Luna. The name of The Moon in English has been settled long ago while the name of these other satelites have not been.
I've heard all of this stuff before when DVDs were trying to be adopted. Classics are:
- LD and VHS work great.
- There isn't that much improvement over LDs.
- No one knows if DVD will take off...
- I am not interested in buying new equipment again.
So on and so fort, lots of teeth nashing and woe. But hey we lived through it and few will say we are worse off. HDTV is the biggest change to NTSC since the modification to handle color. On the two HDTV displays I have I already see the quality problems with DVD even when the player upscales. I'm already hungry for devices that generate true high definition content. I'm not sure why people are saying they need to wait because I've heard all of this before and it was just fine.
As for Sony, they design devices that have to meet certain requirements. They needed a "next gen DVD" system and this is what they came up with. Why are they evil for trying such a thing? Or why aren't the HD-DVD group evil as well? Sony is far from perfect often where they often "miss" instead of "hit" but that is the name of the game of innovation.
Why does anyone want Sony dstroyed? We are going to get some awesome titles out in the next two years simply because many ISVs consider the market in the air which applies pressure to Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo to perform and hunt for the best projects to sponsor. I enjoy the fact that Sony is pushing the technology envelope. Whether or not they are going about it the right way or could have picked a better set of features is a question for historians a couple of years from now. It might all be that Sony was a mere half a year off on their timing to push this stuff but I don't think anyone should stop them from trying.
The writing was on the wall: No matter how 'elite' the PS3 is they were going to lose market position because the competition is strong this time around instead of the limp wristed toss outs Nintendo and Microsoft threw last time. The only thing Sony could do is try to lead which means going out on the limb. They are way out on a thin branch where it might pay off or it might come crashing down.
As many who are going "ha ha!" at Sony's seemingly consistent knack for steping on all of the landmines, no one should relish a gaming world where Microsoft and Sony switch places. Do many of you think Microsoft will treat you better than Sony did if they dominate the space? I guarentee if Microsoft runs away with the market and crushes Sony we'll be back to same quite pace we've seen in the last few years. No thanks...I'll gladly take the three way race.
The problem is sitting here and now (May 31, 2006) no one knows. It is clear that Sony is taking a gamble on doing the PS3 like this and like many gambles there is a possibility they will make out like bandits or like beggers. It is simply too early now to tell reguardless of what any analyst thinks.