Because when soccer mom jumps into Bing! and searches for "halloween costume halo" they are going to be confronted with pages and pages and pages of Master Chief instead of a prop for their 5 year old.
I'm not saying there isn't something to what you wrote that tuning it to something is better than nothing but if they go too far tuning it for one fringe audience, it turns Bing! into the thing Microsoft's comericals try to show us is bad: Internet meme babble.
The Real Problem: Unknown Upgrade Stability
on
Gaming On Windows 7
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· Score: 1
The real problem with Vista was that people were taking functional XP boxes and crippling them. Many times the home user wouldn't recognize the upgrade would be risky and end up with peripherals, which are major features on all PCs, being useless or require aggressive tinkering with settings and drivers to get them back to what they had with XP. It was this giant unknown risk that really hosed adoption of Vista for many. Someone would ask me "Should I upgrade to Vista?" where the only safe answer would be "I'd wait" because I didn't want to get into a protracted support trying to get them to gather all of the updated, Vista versions of their old drivers on disk.
This "unknown upgrade stability" was the thing that really hurt Vista where it appears to be fairly well addressed in Windows 7. So far there I haven't run into a combination of hardware that flaked out stopped working post upgrade but there is an occasional piece of software that complains which requires a little tinkering to get working correctly. This is much improved over Vista for sure where the option to return functionality was to go back to XP.
....but you are close. It isn't that "virus-making community is proportional to the installed user-base" as much as "developers are proportional to the quality of tools" where "virus-making community" is simply a subset. Given the tools for free you can get for Microsoft and the quality of documentation and debuggers you are going to have an easier time making software in general than you are going for Linux or Mac where "malware" is simply a subset.
The weakness in Windows has always been they have too many ways software can modify system resources with easy to access tools and documentation. Since I don't believe hiding the tools or documentation is the correct course of action nor does it promote user interaction which is ultimately the use of any machine I'm left with believing that the reason why Windows has a lot of virus is the system.
According to that page you cited, April 24 is Beta 4 and according to the release notes for 3.5b4 it was released April 27. Although a little off I'm not sure it qualifies as scorn or says their attitude is "...can't be bothered to update their own schedule". Especially since it says right there "Future date are estimates" on a page authored April 19.
What seems to be going on is that a vendor with HP equipping running Windows Server 2003 is complaining it is hard to replace mainframe deployments. That is a giant "duh" because mainframes are designed that way with being 5 x 9s and all of that. Companies that buy these expensive mainframes are looking for a super stable, super redundant, super long lived hardware and software platform. They aren't looking for a "cloud computing" platform. They aren't looking for what this vendor is selling (HP hardware, Windows Server 2003) as a replacement. I never see these "complaints" as an example of being anti-competitive but as the customer has the right tool and is happy to stick with it.
Since/. loves the car analogy, its like a car manufacturer seeing a truck manufacturer sell trucks for hauling freight, seeing them be good at it and making money from it, and then complaining how they can't get into their market because of "lock in" due to the fact these trucks are built like trucks. I'm not a big fan of Microsoft or IBM but it is crazy to suggest any HP vendor with Windows Server 2003 can replace a 30+ year mainframe easily. Or to look at it another way, by design mainframes like that are design not to be replaced so complaining about it being anti-competitive is weird.
You'd have a good point if they were actually trying "...fix their broken OS" but that isn't what is happening. They are offering another package of software to cover up the holes in their broken OS instead of fixing any flawed software component. I'd give a lot more leeway to Microsoft if they were actually correcting Windows and making AV vendors go out of business due to a lack of flaws that need protection but that isn't what is going on here. The flaws are still very much there where they only thing that has changed is which vendor is providing the Band-Aid.
Regardless of what these analysts think, I know that HD-DVD is dead. How do I know this? Because no PC is sold today with a HD-DVD drive. Because I can't find HD-DVD burners or media easily. It isn't so much that I think that this accessibility is key or that "grandma" needs to find it to be successful but the trend has always been what ever gets widely adopted on PC is accepted as a general format. Frankly this is where HD-DVD really lost the battle where even during the prime time of the format struggle, it was harder to find HD-DVD drives and media than it was to find Blu-ray.
Its fine to take suggestions and inputs from the audience but asking the audience to create the game for you is insanity (pun!). You will always need the team or the leader or the person in control of "the vision" to make the tough calls when there is no right decision to be made. One of the weaknesses in "crowd sourcing" is that everyone is ready to offer their idea too few are around for the repercussions.
Code reviews are worth it but often the "cost" of doing proper reviews are underestimated. To implement results of the review may cost a bit of time and money if not another review where if project managers and planners just assume its a "fast fix" then problems will arrise.
I could have sworn Sony (maybe Nintendo as well at an ancient E3?) dabbled in this (camera oriented motion tracking) before and the public rejected it. I wonder why suddenly think it is an awesome idea when Microsoft does it....
But as a technology feature, this isn't a bad thing to add for free. I can see this as a great way to control media features: Instead of using a remote or a controller to select which movie to play do a "cover layout" and have the user reach up and grab the one they want. If they don't like any on presented, swipe their hand left/right or up/down to scroll through. I'm not entirely sure it is a solid way to make beyond some of the toys we've already seen. I can't see this replacing games that have been designed around keyboard + mice or controller but I can see this for other things.
There is a cost to staying with IE6 as well so I'm not sure why people cling to the idea that cash strapped IT departments need to stay with IE6. They day will come when the cost of maintenance of software to support IE6 is greater than it is for other solutions. Kicking the can down the road until then is a recipe for disaster where no one should support software like this without a "end of support" plan.
The problem is that L4D itself is hard to justify as a $60 and I say that as a big fan. Now they want us to spend another $60 on another game that features the same technology with four characters and four scenarios? In the past this would have been free updates possibly spread apart but updates instead of separate products.
To repeat: I love the game and I consider it an example of understanding the weakness in a engine platform and maximizing it to the fullest extent but asking us to pay $60 for another version of the same thing is kind of "boo".
Don't forget more robust debugger support. When compilers and debuggers on a platform get robust and feature filled the quality of applications can increase.
There are a couple of ways to fix "the problem" then. We could bury the maps and data and pray no one stockpiles the information offering it up to the highest, black market bidders. Or we could embrace it and show that people who have 8 generations removed from Scumtown are fine upstanding citizens. I'm not sure where hiding the truth gets people.
Unfortunately their images are down but I bet you can find video on youtube about it. Its a very compelling demo where it took nothing more than the EyeToy to interpret your moves in 3D to interact with virtual pet. The question is how much of it was smoke/mirrors/vaporware.
But I think your expectations are a bit off. BSD has its place and eagerly accepted in various spaces but that doesn't mean "rule the world" by any stretch of the imagination. No one should feel sorry for the BSD guys because they are creating great software that is satisfying users all over the world.
The university I went to school had a Unix system but to access it you'd either need to be in the CS building or access it through a 14.4 modem via the terminal server. When crunch time came the thing was always overloaded. At about the same time Linux was just hitting 1.0 and supported gcc which was perfect for homework. In this case, necessity was the mother of installation.
The Correct Answer Is: Support Both
on
Oracle Buys Sun
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· Score: 1
Oracle should make both their main development platforms. Sun for high end, high performance while Linux for middle and low. There are plenty of small and custom built apps that don't need a huge license or big hardware to run fine. Oracle concedes that market when they allow Microsoft to throw around their cheap/freebie stuff that behaves almost like a full database.
Both Gnome and KDE are both very usable. I am stumped what people mean when they say "Linux is not usable". Although each desktop is highly configurable and customizable, the fundamentals are still each enough to understand. Click the Firefox button for the web browser. Click the envelope icon for email. Folder navigation is just as expected. Common UI elements (buttons, menus, scroll bars ect) all behave as commonly expected. Exactly what is unusable about modern Gnome and KDE? I honestly want to know.
I don't think it is coming not because Bethesda hates Sony/loves Microsoft but they have serious quality issues. The game by itself had problems on all three platforms. Anchorage was kind of small but The Pitt is supposed to be large and was a little broken when first released. They can't seem to get things stable so the last thing they need to do is sign up for another platform to support.
This sort of stuff, trading real world cash for virtual world goods, is only "bad" in subscription MMOs. "Pay per play" model games are designed to trade money for game performance (which is what is going on with buying gold) while subscription models trade time for performance. Or in other words, introducing "gold farmers" to that and it throws off the balance of the content. Instead of someone's carefully designed content taking 6 months to consume, with gold farmers in full force, they can do it much faster leaving the producer and game designers in a lurch.
I personally think "gold sellers" are a nuisance only because they generate a cacophony of noise in public spaces and communication channels. There is a reason why we have ad-block on web browsers where now we need such a thing in these games. However, I don't think using the "banning hammer" is the right approach where the smarter idea is to make progression less depending on storing up a huge pile of gold and more about giving worthwhile experiences win or lose. A great game should be able to allow someone who is "a pauper" and "a prince" to consume the same content if they are both skilled players.
I suspect one of the difficulties in Sci-Fi is that it has a different if not difficult set of rules to "suspend belief". Many can accept the guy in funny colored cloth robes and the pointy hat can shoot a fireball by pointing his had and babbling some stuff. Its a bit harder to explain why a purple alien "Sirsac VI" can shoot a fireball because because none of that is expected. There is no "folklore" level of understand and people will demand a bit more detail before they "suspend their belief". And for whatever reason, Sci-Fi settings seem to demand more "order" and nitty gritty details.
The real world technical side hasn't been a help either. A lot of the "quirks" we currently face in MMOs can be glossed over by a vainer of Fantasy magic but are a bit harder to explain away. In particular ranged attacks are still tricky although better than it used to be. A Wizard can throw a fireball at a running target and still hit it. The purple alien from Sirsac VI is going to have to explain why their lasers are curving towards their target because again, this isn't expected.
First and foremost, producers need to make a solid MMO. Forget the setting and such if it doesn't scale well or the interactions become tricky then it won't do well regardless if it is Fantasy or Sci-Fi themed. There have been a number of "failed" Sci-fi MMOs that failed to be good games first that just happen to have Sci-Fi backdrops.
You know people bashed the hell out of WinME as well but I had a P3 Dell that ran like a champ. It probably did help Dell supported the hardware drivers really well and I never bothered to make modifications to the box until way later and kept a limited amount of software installed on it. I can't understand why people hate WinME either....
Of course I know that WinME was a piece of junk where all I had to do was step outside of the strictly supported hardware and software configuration delivered by Dell and I would have issues. Just because I was extremely careful with one box doesn't mean WinME didn't deserve the roasting it got where Vista is in the same boat.
The actual problem is that Windows is a "dancing bear" ala "The Inmates Are Running the Asylum". The real problem is Windows is the bear and it shuffles around never really dancing well at all but people are amazed by its activities instead of questioning the entire endeavor in the first place. Asking the users to make sound decisions about permissions and other settings given way Windows works is like asking people at the circle to critique the dancing bear.
Stop blaming the user. Users of other electronics devices are not required to understand intricate security feature yet apologists for Windows continue to blame "the dumb user" for not recognizing dangerous security situation. Browsing a web page, looking at email, clicking on items on a desktop are normal user activities. A user shouldn't have to know ahead of time a link is bad news nor how would they really know before they get there and inspect the page. Asking them "Is this okay?" is a dumb question anyway.
We really need to stop blaming the user for all the security issues on home pc desktops and put the blame back on the system design. Expecting a user to activate functionality, then ask them "Is this okay?" is insanity that is a feignt for shifting the blame from the poorly designed system back to the user.
An amusing memory popped up for me on this topic: I was on a team that worked on 2D/3D software in the 90s where part of the work was spread across various offices around where one active site was a group in Cambridge, UK. A bug popped up in the way HP-UX does it color byte ordering for its X Server where people in our location and Cambridge were trying to fix it at the same time. Without going into the boring details, the net effect was that it was fixed twice where one relied on "color" while the other relied on "colour". The good news is that both teams caught this when the merges happened but shows how inadequate computers are at handling stuff like this.
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Because when soccer mom jumps into Bing! and searches for "halloween costume halo" they are going to be confronted with pages and pages and pages of Master Chief instead of a prop for their 5 year old. I'm not saying there isn't something to what you wrote that tuning it to something is better than nothing but if they go too far tuning it for one fringe audience, it turns Bing! into the thing Microsoft's comericals try to show us is bad: Internet meme babble.
The real problem with Vista was that people were taking functional XP boxes and crippling them. Many times the home user wouldn't recognize the upgrade would be risky and end up with peripherals, which are major features on all PCs, being useless or require aggressive tinkering with settings and drivers to get them back to what they had with XP. It was this giant unknown risk that really hosed adoption of Vista for many. Someone would ask me "Should I upgrade to Vista?" where the only safe answer would be "I'd wait" because I didn't want to get into a protracted support trying to get them to gather all of the updated, Vista versions of their old drivers on disk. This "unknown upgrade stability" was the thing that really hurt Vista where it appears to be fairly well addressed in Windows 7. So far there I haven't run into a combination of hardware that flaked out stopped working post upgrade but there is an occasional piece of software that complains which requires a little tinkering to get working correctly. This is much improved over Vista for sure where the option to return functionality was to go back to XP.
....but you are close. It isn't that "virus-making community is proportional to the installed user-base" as much as "developers are proportional to the quality of tools" where "virus-making community" is simply a subset. Given the tools for free you can get for Microsoft and the quality of documentation and debuggers you are going to have an easier time making software in general than you are going for Linux or Mac where "malware" is simply a subset. The weakness in Windows has always been they have too many ways software can modify system resources with easy to access tools and documentation. Since I don't believe hiding the tools or documentation is the correct course of action nor does it promote user interaction which is ultimately the use of any machine I'm left with believing that the reason why Windows has a lot of virus is the system.
According to that page you cited, April 24 is Beta 4 and according to the release notes for 3.5b4 it was released April 27. Although a little off I'm not sure it qualifies as scorn or says their attitude is "...can't be bothered to update their own schedule". Especially since it says right there "Future date are estimates" on a page authored April 19.
What seems to be going on is that a vendor with HP equipping running Windows Server 2003 is complaining it is hard to replace mainframe deployments. That is a giant "duh" because mainframes are designed that way with being 5 x 9s and all of that. Companies that buy these expensive mainframes are looking for a super stable, super redundant, super long lived hardware and software platform. They aren't looking for a "cloud computing" platform. They aren't looking for what this vendor is selling (HP hardware, Windows Server 2003) as a replacement. I never see these "complaints" as an example of being anti-competitive but as the customer has the right tool and is happy to stick with it.
Since /. loves the car analogy, its like a car manufacturer seeing a truck manufacturer sell trucks for hauling freight, seeing them be good at it and making money from it, and then complaining how they can't get into their market because of "lock in" due to the fact these trucks are built like trucks. I'm not a big fan of Microsoft or IBM but it is crazy to suggest any HP vendor with Windows Server 2003 can replace a 30+ year mainframe easily. Or to look at it another way, by design mainframes like that are design not to be replaced so complaining about it being anti-competitive is weird.
You'd have a good point if they were actually trying "...fix their broken OS" but that isn't what is happening. They are offering another package of software to cover up the holes in their broken OS instead of fixing any flawed software component. I'd give a lot more leeway to Microsoft if they were actually correcting Windows and making AV vendors go out of business due to a lack of flaws that need protection but that isn't what is going on here. The flaws are still very much there where they only thing that has changed is which vendor is providing the Band-Aid.
Regardless of what these analysts think, I know that HD-DVD is dead. How do I know this? Because no PC is sold today with a HD-DVD drive. Because I can't find HD-DVD burners or media easily. It isn't so much that I think that this accessibility is key or that "grandma" needs to find it to be successful but the trend has always been what ever gets widely adopted on PC is accepted as a general format. Frankly this is where HD-DVD really lost the battle where even during the prime time of the format struggle, it was harder to find HD-DVD drives and media than it was to find Blu-ray.
Its fine to take suggestions and inputs from the audience but asking the audience to create the game for you is insanity (pun!). You will always need the team or the leader or the person in control of "the vision" to make the tough calls when there is no right decision to be made. One of the weaknesses in "crowd sourcing" is that everyone is ready to offer their idea too few are around for the repercussions.
Code reviews are worth it but often the "cost" of doing proper reviews are underestimated. To implement results of the review may cost a bit of time and money if not another review where if project managers and planners just assume its a "fast fix" then problems will arrise.
I could have sworn Sony (maybe Nintendo as well at an ancient E3?) dabbled in this (camera oriented motion tracking) before and the public rejected it. I wonder why suddenly think it is an awesome idea when Microsoft does it....
But as a technology feature, this isn't a bad thing to add for free. I can see this as a great way to control media features: Instead of using a remote or a controller to select which movie to play do a "cover layout" and have the user reach up and grab the one they want. If they don't like any on presented, swipe their hand left/right or up/down to scroll through. I'm not entirely sure it is a solid way to make beyond some of the toys we've already seen. I can't see this replacing games that have been designed around keyboard + mice or controller but I can see this for other things.
There is a cost to staying with IE6 as well so I'm not sure why people cling to the idea that cash strapped IT departments need to stay with IE6. They day will come when the cost of maintenance of software to support IE6 is greater than it is for other solutions. Kicking the can down the road until then is a recipe for disaster where no one should support software like this without a "end of support" plan.
The problem is that L4D itself is hard to justify as a $60 and I say that as a big fan. Now they want us to spend another $60 on another game that features the same technology with four characters and four scenarios? In the past this would have been free updates possibly spread apart but updates instead of separate products.
To repeat: I love the game and I consider it an example of understanding the weakness in a engine platform and maximizing it to the fullest extent but asking us to pay $60 for another version of the same thing is kind of "boo".
Don't forget more robust debugger support. When compilers and debuggers on a platform get robust and feature filled the quality of applications can increase.
There are a couple of ways to fix "the problem" then. We could bury the maps and data and pray no one stockpiles the information offering it up to the highest, black market bidders. Or we could embrace it and show that people who have 8 generations removed from Scumtown are fine upstanding citizens. I'm not sure where hiding the truth gets people.
http://kotaku.com/5041543/pet-ownership-and-you-eyepet-screens-surface
Unfortunately their images are down but I bet you can find video on youtube about it. Its a very compelling demo where it took nothing more than the EyeToy to interpret your moves in 3D to interact with virtual pet. The question is how much of it was smoke/mirrors/vaporware.
But I think your expectations are a bit off. BSD has its place and eagerly accepted in various spaces but that doesn't mean "rule the world" by any stretch of the imagination. No one should feel sorry for the BSD guys because they are creating great software that is satisfying users all over the world.
The university I went to school had a Unix system but to access it you'd either need to be in the CS building or access it through a 14.4 modem via the terminal server. When crunch time came the thing was always overloaded. At about the same time Linux was just hitting 1.0 and supported gcc which was perfect for homework. In this case, necessity was the mother of installation.
Oracle should make both their main development platforms. Sun for high end, high performance while Linux for middle and low. There are plenty of small and custom built apps that don't need a huge license or big hardware to run fine. Oracle concedes that market when they allow Microsoft to throw around their cheap/freebie stuff that behaves almost like a full database.
Both Gnome and KDE are both very usable. I am stumped what people mean when they say "Linux is not usable". Although each desktop is highly configurable and customizable, the fundamentals are still each enough to understand. Click the Firefox button for the web browser. Click the envelope icon for email. Folder navigation is just as expected. Common UI elements (buttons, menus, scroll bars ect) all behave as commonly expected. Exactly what is unusable about modern Gnome and KDE? I honestly want to know.
I don't think it is coming not because Bethesda hates Sony/loves Microsoft but they have serious quality issues. The game by itself had problems on all three platforms. Anchorage was kind of small but The Pitt is supposed to be large and was a little broken when first released. They can't seem to get things stable so the last thing they need to do is sign up for another platform to support.
This sort of stuff, trading real world cash for virtual world goods, is only "bad" in subscription MMOs. "Pay per play" model games are designed to trade money for game performance (which is what is going on with buying gold) while subscription models trade time for performance. Or in other words, introducing "gold farmers" to that and it throws off the balance of the content. Instead of someone's carefully designed content taking 6 months to consume, with gold farmers in full force, they can do it much faster leaving the producer and game designers in a lurch.
I personally think "gold sellers" are a nuisance only because they generate a cacophony of noise in public spaces and communication channels. There is a reason why we have ad-block on web browsers where now we need such a thing in these games. However, I don't think using the "banning hammer" is the right approach where the smarter idea is to make progression less depending on storing up a huge pile of gold and more about giving worthwhile experiences win or lose. A great game should be able to allow someone who is "a pauper" and "a prince" to consume the same content if they are both skilled players.
I suspect one of the difficulties in Sci-Fi is that it has a different if not difficult set of rules to "suspend belief". Many can accept the guy in funny colored cloth robes and the pointy hat can shoot a fireball by pointing his had and babbling some stuff. Its a bit harder to explain why a purple alien "Sirsac VI" can shoot a fireball because because none of that is expected. There is no "folklore" level of understand and people will demand a bit more detail before they "suspend their belief". And for whatever reason, Sci-Fi settings seem to demand more "order" and nitty gritty details.
The real world technical side hasn't been a help either. A lot of the "quirks" we currently face in MMOs can be glossed over by a vainer of Fantasy magic but are a bit harder to explain away. In particular ranged attacks are still tricky although better than it used to be. A Wizard can throw a fireball at a running target and still hit it. The purple alien from Sirsac VI is going to have to explain why their lasers are curving towards their target because again, this isn't expected.
First and foremost, producers need to make a solid MMO. Forget the setting and such if it doesn't scale well or the interactions become tricky then it won't do well regardless if it is Fantasy or Sci-Fi themed. There have been a number of "failed" Sci-fi MMOs that failed to be good games first that just happen to have Sci-Fi backdrops.
You know people bashed the hell out of WinME as well but I had a P3 Dell that ran like a champ. It probably did help Dell supported the hardware drivers really well and I never bothered to make modifications to the box until way later and kept a limited amount of software installed on it. I can't understand why people hate WinME either....
Of course I know that WinME was a piece of junk where all I had to do was step outside of the strictly supported hardware and software configuration delivered by Dell and I would have issues. Just because I was extremely careful with one box doesn't mean WinME didn't deserve the roasting it got where Vista is in the same boat.
The actual problem is that Windows is a "dancing bear" ala "The Inmates Are Running the Asylum". The real problem is Windows is the bear and it shuffles around never really dancing well at all but people are amazed by its activities instead of questioning the entire endeavor in the first place. Asking the users to make sound decisions about permissions and other settings given way Windows works is like asking people at the circle to critique the dancing bear.
Stop blaming the user. Users of other electronics devices are not required to understand intricate security feature yet apologists for Windows continue to blame "the dumb user" for not recognizing dangerous security situation. Browsing a web page, looking at email, clicking on items on a desktop are normal user activities. A user shouldn't have to know ahead of time a link is bad news nor how would they really know before they get there and inspect the page. Asking them "Is this okay?" is a dumb question anyway.
We really need to stop blaming the user for all the security issues on home pc desktops and put the blame back on the system design. Expecting a user to activate functionality, then ask them "Is this okay?" is insanity that is a feignt for shifting the blame from the poorly designed system back to the user.
An amusing memory popped up for me on this topic: I was on a team that worked on 2D/3D software in the 90s where part of the work was spread across various offices around where one active site was a group in Cambridge, UK. A bug popped up in the way HP-UX does it color byte ordering for its X Server where people in our location and Cambridge were trying to fix it at the same time. Without going into the boring details, the net effect was that it was fixed twice where one relied on "color" while the other relied on "colour". The good news is that both teams caught this when the merges happened but shows how inadequate computers are at handling stuff like this.