P.S. Before I get busted on a technicality and the point of my post is lost to needless bickering over unimportant points, I realize that Marketplace isn't an NPR show, it's an American Public Media show. But my local public radio station carries both NPR and APM shows, which is why I lumped it in with the others.
Funny, I listen to almost nothing but talk radio. The new music channels only spoonfeed you crap that the RIAA companies pay lots of money to promote the hell out of, and the classic rock stations (my previous favorites) only play stuff I already have on CDs and can play myself on my iPod.
Talk radio is the only thing left on the radio that's new and fresh and, depending on which show, halfway decent. I never thought I would fit this profile, but the station I actually listen to the most? NPR, definitely. I'm not a fan of classical music, but their news and talk shows are fantastic. I'm a Morning Edition/All Things Considered/Marketplace addict now.
I have to admit, I hate so-called "shock jocks." I've never listened to Opie and Anthony (I don't have XM), and I can't stand the likes of Michael Savage, Howard Stern, and those types. In my mind, they're all the same. Being stupid for the sole sake of being stupid. It's not funny, it's not enraging, it's overdone so much that it's not even shocking any more.
Oh yeah, and at home, I stream some Internet stations that play independent artists, if that counts.
First of all, modding pedants up always rubs me the wrong way. I'm a pedant myself, and sometimes even a grammar nazi, but I don't expect (or even hope) that such posts of mine are modded up. I completely fail to see how someone giving their definition of a "fair-weather friend" is insightful. If I point out that fair-weather friend is supposed to be hyphenated, does that make me insightful? What about if I point out that technically, only the B in Blu-ray is supposed to be capitalized?
Second of all, it seems to be your definition of fair-weather friend that needs adjusting. As pointed out above, a fair weather friend is not the same thing as a foul weather enemy. It's a friend that is "loyal only during a time of success." There's no implication that such a friend actually turns against you when the weather isn't so fair, just that they don't support you.
Just because Disney has been contractually beholden to the Blu-ray format does not necessarily make them a supporter. If their contracts lock them into using Blu-Ray but they were out there touting how great HD-DVD is and how much Blu-ray sucks, would that make them a supporter? No, and there have been some instances where something like that has happened. (The row between Howard Stern and Clear Channel comes to mind, when Stern was actively ridiculing Clear Channel on the very stations they owned.) In this case, Disney trying to straddle the fence with their public comments can certainly be taken as non-loyalty towards Blu-ray.
every bit of Google's effort in resisting the Chinese government's censorship will add that much pressure
Yes... Pressure for the Chinese government to completely block Google. And as I've pointed out before, Google is not a major force in China. It's not even the most used search engine, Baidu is. (A Chinese search engine which, you'd better believe is heavily censored by the Chinese government.) I'm astounded at how much "pressure" you and others here think that Google can place on the Chinese government or other businesses. I cannot emphasize how wrong you are. The answer is none. Not a little, not miniscule, not some contribution to an aggregate amount that will someday change the country. None.
what's the point of donating $100 bucks if that's not going to be even remotely meaningful for relieving the Katrina damages.
It's more like, "What's the point of donating 3 cents for relieving the Katrina damages?" In the end, it doesn't make a difference at all, and the effort it takes to process those three pennies actually takes away from Katrina relief efforts. It's the exact same thing here. Going after Google, a company that has significantly contributed to this and other communities for something that will literally make no difference at all isn't helping the situation. It's only hurting a good company for no reason (which is—should I say it?—evil) and distracting people from real ways they can make a difference.
I'm not suggesting that Google should try to be the hero and disregard its shareholders' interest
Good. Because this policy has nothing to do with being a hero. There was nothing to be gained here. No money for shareholders, no moral high ground, no difference to be made in the world. Nothing. It was a lose-lose situation, and the shareholders were wise to have voted it down. That's not evil, any more than me deciding not to go withdraw a wad of cash from the bank and setting it ablaze is.
I differ from you in that I think this all happened a long time ago
Could be. It's all happened before, and it will happen again. Our modern-day selves could be on any of the cycles of it happening.
Or they may get to Earth and find... Nothing. The thirteenth colony has been here, but they're gone. For some dramatic reason, a grown-up Eve and someone else (maybe a junior Adama, the child of Lee and Kara?) find themselves either stranded on Earth or deliberately stay behind as the Cylons and Galactica continue in search of the missing colony.
What happened to the thirteenth colony? What is the eventual fate of the colonial fleet and the Cylons? We don't know. Maybe it's fodder for movies and/or another mini-series. But I think we have a pretty good idea what becomes of Adama and Eve, especially once that final a gets dropped off his name over the centuries of the story being told.
Oh, and even if I were a paid astroturfer, at least that's a hell of a lot better than the bitter ugliness that is you. Nice attempt at trolling, though, and let me just say that it's an honor to make your "freaks" list.
This is the way the show should end, on a high note. As pointed out somewhere else further down, the show is starting to degrade. There was a time when you never really knew what was going to happen next. A time when, unlike other shows, they weren't afraid to kill off major characters or have the plot twist 180 degrees in another direction.
Now, though, it's gotten where you know that all the majors will be with us next week, that in the end, everything will work out okay. It's just gotten kind of ho-hum.
If they make this the last season, it gives them incredible freedom to do some really great things dramatically. All characters are fair game. All plots are on the board for major twists. And they can always come back and do movies or mini-series if there's a demand for it.
Here's my prediction, though. They get to Earth, but as it turns out, it's not exactly the thirteenth colony they expected. Think about it. It's all happened before, right? The Cylons and the thirteenth colony have encountered each other just as our ragtag colonial crew and the Cylons are encountering each other now. They intermingled (Eve, anyone?), and the result is that we here on earth are actually the progeny of both colonial humans and Cylons. We even adopted both religions. People here are killing each other over the same ideological differences as the Cylons and the colonials are.
I could be wrong, but I think that's ultimately the ending plot twist. When all is said and done, it turns out that WE are Cylons, too, a fact that has been lost to antiquity.
if we cannot take a stand on censorship, how can we possibly expect China to?
Fine, take a stand on censorship. But by hounding Google, you're doing it wrong. I can't say this enough, it seems, so I'll bring out the obnoxious bold letters again. Google has no impact whatsoever on whether or not the Chinese government censors its citizens. None. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Goose egg.
Could they take it up as an issue and maybe make an impact using their financial resources? Maybe. But then, they could also take up fighting genocide in Darfur. They could take up preventing AIDS in Africa. They could take up womens' reproductive rights. They could take up building tidal wave detection and alerting systems in southeast Asia. They could spend every dime they have on solving the world's problems. They already spend a lot. Which other ones should they take up? What do they have to do before they're no longer evil? Go bankrupt?
If anything, by hassling Google, you're actually being counterproductive, as there are much more effective means of trying to make positive changes than wasting your time griping about a company that has absolutely no say-so in the matter at all. Do you really feel so strongly that filtering search results in China is so evil that you should boycott Google for doing it? I'm sorry, but that's pretty stupid.
Plus, if this is the standard by which you judge whether a company is or isn't evil, then you're pretty much screwed supporting any company. As I've said, every company that deals with China at all has to abide by Chinese laws. Do you have a television? Did any of its parts come from China? You obviously have a computer, who made all of the components in it?
Oh, and what do you plan on doing about the U.S. government? That's right, our own government. You know that huge national debt that we keep hearing about? Guess who owns $416.2 billion of it? That's right: China. Just to put that in perspective, that's just shy of the amount of money that has been spent on the Iraq War. That's right, put another way, China is indirectly paying for our little experiment in spreading so-called democracy. (You sure as hell didn't think that we were paying for it, did you?) So unless you want to move out to the wilderness and get by on subsistence farming and hunting, I guess you're supporting oppression in various places around the world.
So of all the productive things that could be done to help unfetter the Chinese people from government oppression, and of all the ways in which you depend on China to live a normal life, why are you singling out Google to pick on? I mean, I already know the answer, but I'm interested in seeing what you have to say.
No, I'm just annoyed at how people are so eager to complain bitterly about a company that is one of the few decent ones out there.
From everything I've seen and heard, Google treats its employees very well compared to the rest of corporate America (thus me wishing I were on their payroll). The people they have working there are unbelievable smart. They provide extremely valuable services, 100% gratis. They even provide APIs to their software for you to use in clever and original ways. They've driven other companies to radically think about how they provide services. (Anyone else here remember when Google provided a gigabyte of e-mail when everyone else was providing like five or ten megabytes?) They're a huge contributor to the development of open source software, sponsoring such initiatives as the Summer of Code. Yes, they even fight poverty, disease, and global warming in new and inventive ways.
Yet because they abide by international law—like every other company that deals with China—they're vilified here. That's just not right.
Let's not kid ourselves. Google isn't evil, but it is an extremely wealthy company. There are people here who resent companies that get extremely wealthy, no matter how noble their goals are or how much they do to try to make the world a better place. There is a contingent of people who feel like they must tear down big companies, and they grasp at whatever straws they can to try to do so.
If Google did pass that proposal and miraculously managed to end government censorship in China—actually managed to get the Chinese government to pass a First Amendment like the U.S.'s!—these people would still find something to complain about. It's not about government censorship, it's not about Google being evil or not evil, it's about them being very, very rich.
I'm not paid to think some way or say anything. But when I see ignorant people going after people, companies, or organizations that are actually making positive differences in the world for something so stupid and contrived as not doing enough to change China from oppressive communism to being even more free than our own country, yeah, that bugs me.
For what it's worth, I also think that John Edwards would make a great president, that Charmin toilet paper is the best out there, that Morgan Spurlock's 30 Days is the best show on television, that my HP 2335 LCD monitor is the most gorgeous monitor I've ever laid my eyes on, and that Honda makes very reliable automobiles. I suppose that means I'm also being paid by the Edwards campaign, Proctor and Gamble, News Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, and Honda Motor Company. If only I were so lucky.
Oh, and if I were paid by Google, they would probably frown highly on me calling you an idiot. And you are, indeed, an idiot. There, satisfied?
Average users will use Firefox and be perfectly happy (probably much happier) with it. I honestly can't imagine anyone saying, "Where is Internet Explorer?"
Where the hell is solitaire!?
Ubuntu includes Solitaire. (In fact, isn't it installed by default?) In fact, if you're willing to go through the trouble of browsing what games are available for Ubuntu, there's a gazillion different variations of Solitaire games available, along with a ton of other Solitaire-type games. On Windows, you get, what, like five games in all before you have to start shelling out hard-earned pay?
Why doesn't my videos play!?
Touché, by default, Ubuntu won't play DVDs, and you can't run iTunes or other popular DRM media downloaders/players on Ubuntu. I think that this, along with gaming, will be the biggest hurdles Ubuntu will face in widespread acceptance.
If we're lucky though, as Linux becomes more and more pervasive, the market will realize what an opportunity it is and react to it accordingly. I mean, think about it. If iTunes sees that the Linux market is growing and releases iTunes For Linux, while everyone else maintains their tunnel vision on Windows-only solutions, what do you think will happen when Linux starts commanding something like 30% or 40% of the desktop market? iTunes will own 80% of the Windows market, and that's great, but it will also own 100% of the Linux market, and that's an unbelievably good position to be in when you're talking those kinds of numbers.
I posted a similar thought talking about MMORPGs on Linux. A smart company will use the shift as an opportunity to take over the Linux market, not as a hindrance to selling their games.
The DMCA doesn't make reverse engineering illegal. It "criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services that are used to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works (commonly known as DRM) and criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, even when there is no infringement of copyright itself."
This wouldn't apply to reverse engineering software APIs at all, except perhaps an API that is used to decrypt DRM implementations.
The DMCA is very, very, very, very, very, very, very evil for many, many, many, many, many, many, many reasons. This just happens to not be one of them.
However, Microsoft does have patents on trivial and obvious things that hinder WINE developers. Those should be fought vigorously.
Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying that WINE isn't a great piece of software, or that no one should install it because it hinders the development of native Linux applications.
All I'm saying is that for mass distribution of Linux on Dell computers, it shouldn't be included for precisely the reasons that Mark stated. I'm saying that because it's not a primetime player yet, it would cause more harm than good at a critical point in the determination of desktop Linux's feasibility.
If someone wants or needs it, they should install it, period. But it should be what Mark is indirectly saying it is: A tool to be used only when needed for specific circumstances, not a part of the core functionality of Ubuntu. It's just not that good yet.
But since I haven't mentioned it yet, yes, I also think that a side benefit of this is that now there will be a larger base of Linux users out there, developers will be encouraged to write more cross-platform or even Linux-specific software. Even Microsoft isn't stupid; if profits on the Office cash cow look like they're going to fall and the future of Windows starts looking shaky, it's entirely within the realm of the possible that we will see Office for Linux. Microsoft releasing Office for non-Windows platforms is not unprecedented.
There might be nothing material to be gained. Indeed, it would probably lead to a loss. But for some of us, at least, moral stature is another thing to be valued.
No, there is nothing to be gained here, financial, material, or moral. That's my point. None of this matters. That's not cynicism, that's practicality.
If you think that abiding by Chinese laws makes Google "evil," then you're going to have a very, very, very hard time feeling good about any company. I can't think of a single big company that doesn't have some sort of dealings in China, and they all abide by Chinese law when doing so. (Well, as far as I can tell, and when they don't, I suspect that most of them are doing it to make more money, not as some sort of rebellion against censorship.)
You sound like one of these people who would lecture me about how evil it is that I have a nice little house out in the suburbs instead of donating every cent I earn above the poverty line to charities to feed third-world children. Just because Google and I aren't saints, just because we don't sacrifice our own well-being on some futile gesture, does not make us evil.
Like I said, if Google starts getting people arrested and ruining their lives, come back and talk to me. But for now, I still see Google as one of the better companies out there, not "evil."
Oh, and by the way, if you're really that concerned about government censorship, I would once again advise you to worry more about the U.S. government. It's not as bad as China, but unlike China, it has been heading in a seriously wrong direction these past several years. And if you must address Chinese government censorship, I assure you that there are much, much more effective ways to fight it than calling Google evil. You could, you know, write some letters to your Congress critters to try to get the U.S. government to put more pressure on China. It may not work either, but it has a hell of a lot more potential than slandering Google's reputation on Slashdot does.
Because some of the API's either aren't fully documented or don't work as they are documented. Also, they've patented some of the critical components that allow software written for Windows to run. The end result is that people working on the WINE project have to do a lot of reverse-engineering of what the APIs actually do (as opposed to what they say they do) and figure out alternatives to really basic things that are legally off-limits.
And let's not kid ourselves. If WINE does manage to start making inroads towards running Windows software, I shudder at the FUD that will be cranked out my Microsoft telling people how inferior it is to the so-called "real" Windows. (When personal experience has shown that the things that WINE does successfully, it generally actually does better than Windows. I know that developers at Microsoft are smart, but frankly, a lot of open source developers are smarter.)
Oh, and last but not least, some software is written to do nasty low-level stuff that bypasses the APIs entirely. Even if WINE were 100% successful in re-creating the Windows APIs, such software still wouldn't work.
But really, that comment was mostly just a side note. The important point I was trying to make is that if Windows software doesn't work on machines that people buy thinking that it will run Windows software, they will get mad at Ubuntu and WINE, and that's a very, very bad thing.
what it can do is pressure the Western search engine businesses to stop dealing with China
Get a clue. China doesn't care. The top search engine in China is Baidu, not Google. I don't think you understand that if Google and every other Western search engine simply went away in China, there would be no riots in the streets, no calls to action, nothing at all. China would simply keep censoring its citizens. There is nothing to be gained here. Nothing.
how terrible would Yahoo look if it continued to aid the Chinese government in locking its citizenry away when Google had pulled out of the market
Here's a little experiment: Go out on the street and ask ten people at random what they know about Yahoo's participation in Chinese censorship. I guarantee you that 9.9 out of those 10 people will say that they don't know anything at all. (That last person only counts as 0.1 because they're lying just to try to look smart.) So the real answer is, Yahoo wouldn't look terrible at all. People aren't going to feel better or worse about Yahoo because of something that Google does.
Then it could raise cultural awareness in America to progress to other business sectors who would then pull out and move their factories back to America... [blah, blah, blah]
You're dreaming, right? Don't you think that Americans already know that the government in China is oppressive? I mean, we tend to hide under rocks, but please, go out and ask ten more random people whether they think the Chinese government is oppressive. I guarantee you that 10 out of 10 of them will say, "Yes, I do." And to say that other businesses will care how people feel towards Google or Yahoo to the point of shutting themselves off to the largest market in the world... I change my mind, you're not dreaming. You're clearly on drugs.
And the government does this with no help from companies, right? Google never helps the government in censoring its people, right? Google offers uncensored search engine results, right?
Now you're just being silly. Yes, the Chinese government would do this with no help from companies. Google doesn't "help" the government do anything, that implies that it's in collusion with the government. Google simply abides by the laws it has to in order to provide service. Google does exactly the same thing here in the United States, where there are also laws on what it can and can't show.
I'll say it once again since you don't seem to get it, and I'll put it in obnoxious bold letters so maybe it will start to sink in: Google does not censor the Chinese people. The Chinese government censors the Chinese people.
Can you point out the relevant quote please?
Sure, here it is: "Users will be clearly informed when the company has acceded to legally binding government requests to filter or otherwise censor content that the user is trying to access." If a government requests for Google not to disclose that they've ordered it to turn over personally identifiable information, what is Google to do? On the one hand, they have a company policy that says they must. On the other, they have a legal obligation that says they can't. If they follow their company policy (as you would have them do), they've broken international law. If they don't, they look twice as bad for not only giving up personal information and not telling the person whose information it was, but they broke their own company policy, a policy expressly created to keep that from happening, in doing so. There's no way to win with such a policy.
Of course, there's also a technical problem that's been completely overlooked here. Let's say that the Chinese government orders Google to turn over the IP addres
Every time I read something about Mark Shuttleworth, I become just a little bit more of a fan.
While I have nothing against WINE—indeed, I use it myself for several things—I have to agree that it's just not right for distribution by a company like Dell. There's an art to getting it set up and configured, and while it's good, there are still a lot of applications that either don't work at all or don't quite work right in it.
This is a massive problem, and could seriously backfire on Ubuntu. If people buy a Dell machine with Ubuntu and WINE installed thinking that it will run Windows software, when something doesn't work right (and there will be things that don't work right), the average consumers will get mad at the wrong people: Ubuntu and WINE, not Microsoft. The focus will be on how Ubuntu sucks at running Windows software, not on how Ubuntu rocks at running Linux software.
I see here a golden opportunity for desktop Linux to make major inroads with the public and take a significant step towards advancing free open source software. I also see here a golden opportunity to destroy the reputation of desktop Linux as a viable alternative to Windows and give people the impression that free open source software really sucks. Don't you think for a second that Microsoft is going to be trying their damned best to see that Linux on Dell machines gives people a bad taste for open source software.
I have to give Mark Shuttleworth a pat on the back for seeing the big picture, for sacrificing trying to please everyone for the sake of making sure that this is done right, and that the software that people get is great, not just "it works good enough with a few hours of tweaking."
Let's not kid ourselves. These proposals were aimed at doing the following:
Getting Google to stop serving China.
I think the misguided idea here is that Google can single-handedly pressure the Chinese government into giving free speech to its citizens. The rationale, I suppose, is that China wants Google so badly that they will shed off oppression just to have it.
If you believe this, you're fooling yourself. There's not a damn thing that Google can do to give people in China the right to free speech. If this proposal passed, the Chinese government would simply block Google from all of China, and by the time the Chinese people do hopefully have free speech someday, they'll all be using Yahoo and MSN instead of Google.
If you don't like the fact that the Chinese people don't have free speech, be mad at the right people, the people who are actually responsible for it: The Chinese government. Stop being so indignant with companies who are doing what they can with the rules they have to play with.
Force Google to fight things like the DMCA here in the United States
I'm all for Google fighting the DMCA. However, I am not in favor of forcing them to, which is exactly what this proposal would do. They should have the right to choose the battles they wish to fight. If I start my own business and decide that I (and my shareholders) want to fight for the prevention of animal cruelty and dedicate some of my profits towards that goal, that's noble. If an outside group decides that I (and my shareholders) should fight for the prevention of animal cruelty, and then we get raked over the coals because we decide that there are more worthwhile causes to take up, well, I wouldn't care so much.
Is repealing the DMCA a priority of mine? Yes. Do I call people (or companies) "evil" for not making it a priority of theirs? No.
And is anyone thinking that this is a double standard? Even in the United States, Google engages in proactive censorship. I'm sure there has been at least a few cases of national security information the government didn't want to get out being taken down, and we know that copyrighted videos have been pulled. In the case of China, this proposal says that Google is supposed to say, "To hell with it, we're going to do it anyway." In the case of the United States, though, Google is supposed to say, "We'll use legal means to resist."
Compel Google to break international laws.
As for telling people when Google has to disclose information about them, I actually would be in favor of such a proposal. It sounds like they are trying to keep Google for doing something like getting someone arrested, and when you cross the line from censoring your own operations and ruining other people's lives, it's a different ballgame.
But keep in mind a couple of things. First of all, it's not like China is the only place this can happen. If I used Gmail to send out terrorist threats here in the U.S., our government would compel Google to turn over my personally identifiable information. Is that a bad thing? I don't know, but there's no practical way Google can say, "Okay, this is a harmless joke e-mail, so we'll wipe the user's data. This is Chinese free speech, so we'll wipe the user's data. Whoops, this is a terrorist threat, so we'll keep this around for a while." Even if they could, I'm not so sure that is such a good idea, either. Again, there's a double standard of impractically expecting Google to comply with U.S. law, but thumb its nose at international law.
Also, to my knowledge, Google hasn't turned over personally identifiable information to a government like China. Is there some reason to think that it has? Or that if it was ordered to, that Google wouldn't fight it as vigorously as possible? How do we know that it hasn't already happened, and unlike Yahoo, Google was successful? It seems to me that compared to other soulless bastard corporations, Google would be one of the most likely to actually care about stuff like that.
Unfortunately, the American attitude has always been something along the lines of, "If other countries have a problem with it, then we must be doing it right." This is no exception. If other people in the world try to start inserting their opinions into our domestic matters, all it will do is 1) build resentment towards those people, no matter how well-intentioned their opinions were, and 2) push our government to do the exact opposite just to show how little we care about world opinion.
I'm not saying it's right. I wish all decisions like these were made independent of what other people thought, but they're not.
Also, there's the matter of protecting your own. Everyone has the right to complain about their home team. But when others start talking about ways in which your home team sucks, people tend to get defensive of them, even of those people are right and your home team really does suck.
Yeah, this is a bit off-topic, but I just had to chime in and say that I've run across this attitude towards open source software, too.
A coworker of mine bought a cheap computer a couple of years ago. He commented on how he didn't want to spend a lot of money of Microsoft Office for it, and was thinking about getting one of the second-tier office suites. I told him, "Just download OpenOffice."
He had no idea what I was talking about, and thought I was referring him to some seedy warez site. I explained what FOSS was and told him about some of the more popular FOSS applications out there, but he just couldn't bring himself to believe me. He was absolutely, positively convinced that you end up "paying" for free software in one way or another; that even if OpenOffice didn't charge you to download and install their software, that there was some kind of hidden catch where it had to be adware or spyware or something. I even showed him the copy of OpenOffice I have installed alongside Microsoft Office on my work machine. He seemed really impressed, but I think he still ended up buying a copy of StarOffice or Corel WordPerfect Office because he just couldn't believe that it was free.
Needless to say, I don't think he's going to be a Linux convert anytime soon.
It almost made me wish that OpenOffice.org would set up a web site, something like OpenOffice.com, that has the exact same software, but charges you a $50 or so fee to download. Unfortunately, regardless of the best of intentions, some people just don't get it. At least then, I could point these people to the site where you can get the "real" copy.
If there actually were millions of Linux using MMOGers out there, they'd make a client. But there aren't (not trying to troll, just being realistic). Cedega/Wine has several MMOs running as a secondary option.
I won't lie, the Linux and Mac gaming market just isn't there in force yet. However, I don't look at this as a hindrance to entering the market; I look at it as an opportunity.
Linux and MacOS is growing. Especially with Microsoft's feeble latest attempt at an operating system, I think that more and more people will be looking at it as a viable home computing platform. Those people are going to want games. There just aren't that many available yet, especially in the MMORPG market.
If I were an MMORPG developer, I'd be jumping on this chance. I'd use as many cross-platform libraries as I could, and that would be one of my major selling points: Whether you're using Windows, MacOS, or Linux, you can play our game. You might make a mediocre dent in the Windows market, probably trailing behind the 800 pound gorilla of WoW. But you would virtually own the MacOS and Linux market for these types of games.
As those markets continue to grow, so does your game, and the market for Windows-only games shrinks. Even Windows users may start preferring it because they can play with their friends who are using Macs and Linux boxes, not just the ones who are beholden to Uncle Bill. Also, as a development company, you gain experience at developing cross-platform games, so the games you come out with in the future will likely be better than other's who are playing catch-up to the new world of multiple OS's out there.
Personally, I think developing games only for Windows is a really bad business gamble. You're basically betting your financial future on Macs and Linux not gaining any market share in the future. I think that's extremely short-sighted.
Oh, and just as an added note, don't forget that in the case of an MMORPG, we're not talking about developing the whole game for multiple platforms, only the client. The primary function of these clients is simply to display graphical representations of network data efficiently and prettily to the user. A very powerful and popular cross-platform graphics library already exists (OpenGL) that will handle the lion's share of this work. In my opinion, if you're a graphics application developer and you're not using it, you're being pretty stupid. As for the back-end server software, unless you plan on selling it or otherwise distributing it, you're free to lock yourself into whatever platform strikes your fancy.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not all that could happen. Imagine the fun he could have with bankofamerica.cm.
I'm having a hard time visualizing that battle. YouTube link, anyone?
P.S. Before I get busted on a technicality and the point of my post is lost to needless bickering over unimportant points, I realize that Marketplace isn't an NPR show, it's an American Public Media show. But my local public radio station carries both NPR and APM shows, which is why I lumped it in with the others.
Funny, I listen to almost nothing but talk radio. The new music channels only spoonfeed you crap that the RIAA companies pay lots of money to promote the hell out of, and the classic rock stations (my previous favorites) only play stuff I already have on CDs and can play myself on my iPod.
Talk radio is the only thing left on the radio that's new and fresh and, depending on which show, halfway decent. I never thought I would fit this profile, but the station I actually listen to the most? NPR, definitely. I'm not a fan of classical music, but their news and talk shows are fantastic. I'm a Morning Edition/All Things Considered/Marketplace addict now.
I have to admit, I hate so-called "shock jocks." I've never listened to Opie and Anthony (I don't have XM), and I can't stand the likes of Michael Savage, Howard Stern, and those types. In my mind, they're all the same. Being stupid for the sole sake of being stupid. It's not funny, it's not enraging, it's overdone so much that it's not even shocking any more.
Oh yeah, and at home, I stream some Internet stations that play independent artists, if that counts.
heavy sigh...
First of all, modding pedants up always rubs me the wrong way. I'm a pedant myself, and sometimes even a grammar nazi, but I don't expect (or even hope) that such posts of mine are modded up. I completely fail to see how someone giving their definition of a "fair-weather friend" is insightful. If I point out that fair-weather friend is supposed to be hyphenated, does that make me insightful? What about if I point out that technically, only the B in Blu-ray is supposed to be capitalized?
Second of all, it seems to be your definition of fair-weather friend that needs adjusting. As pointed out above, a fair weather friend is not the same thing as a foul weather enemy. It's a friend that is "loyal only during a time of success." There's no implication that such a friend actually turns against you when the weather isn't so fair, just that they don't support you.
Just because Disney has been contractually beholden to the Blu-ray format does not necessarily make them a supporter. If their contracts lock them into using Blu-Ray but they were out there touting how great HD-DVD is and how much Blu-ray sucks, would that make them a supporter? No, and there have been some instances where something like that has happened. (The row between Howard Stern and Clear Channel comes to mind, when Stern was actively ridiculing Clear Channel on the very stations they owned.) In this case, Disney trying to straddle the fence with their public comments can certainly be taken as non-loyalty towards Blu-ray.
Yes... Pressure for the Chinese government to completely block Google. And as I've pointed out before, Google is not a major force in China. It's not even the most used search engine, Baidu is. (A Chinese search engine which, you'd better believe is heavily censored by the Chinese government.) I'm astounded at how much "pressure" you and others here think that Google can place on the Chinese government or other businesses. I cannot emphasize how wrong you are. The answer is none. Not a little, not miniscule, not some contribution to an aggregate amount that will someday change the country. None.
It's more like, "What's the point of donating 3 cents for relieving the Katrina damages?" In the end, it doesn't make a difference at all, and the effort it takes to process those three pennies actually takes away from Katrina relief efforts. It's the exact same thing here. Going after Google, a company that has significantly contributed to this and other communities for something that will literally make no difference at all isn't helping the situation. It's only hurting a good company for no reason (which is—should I say it?—evil) and distracting people from real ways they can make a difference.
Good. Because this policy has nothing to do with being a hero. There was nothing to be gained here. No money for shareholders, no moral high ground, no difference to be made in the world. Nothing. It was a lose-lose situation, and the shareholders were wise to have voted it down. That's not evil, any more than me deciding not to go withdraw a wad of cash from the bank and setting it ablaze is.
How do you know there isn't? Have you actually looked? ;-)
The concept is that we here are the product of Cylon/colonial interbreeding. We wouldn't necessarily have wires inside of us.
Could be. It's all happened before, and it will happen again. Our modern-day selves could be on any of the cycles of it happening.
Or they may get to Earth and find... Nothing. The thirteenth colony has been here, but they're gone. For some dramatic reason, a grown-up Eve and someone else (maybe a junior Adama, the child of Lee and Kara?) find themselves either stranded on Earth or deliberately stay behind as the Cylons and Galactica continue in search of the missing colony.
What happened to the thirteenth colony? What is the eventual fate of the colonial fleet and the Cylons? We don't know. Maybe it's fodder for movies and/or another mini-series. But I think we have a pretty good idea what becomes of Adama and Eve, especially once that final a gets dropped off his name over the centuries of the story being told.
Oh, and even if I were a paid astroturfer, at least that's a hell of a lot better than the bitter ugliness that is you. Nice attempt at trolling, though, and let me just say that it's an honor to make your "freaks" list.
This is the way the show should end, on a high note. As pointed out somewhere else further down, the show is starting to degrade. There was a time when you never really knew what was going to happen next. A time when, unlike other shows, they weren't afraid to kill off major characters or have the plot twist 180 degrees in another direction.
Now, though, it's gotten where you know that all the majors will be with us next week, that in the end, everything will work out okay. It's just gotten kind of ho-hum.
If they make this the last season, it gives them incredible freedom to do some really great things dramatically. All characters are fair game. All plots are on the board for major twists. And they can always come back and do movies or mini-series if there's a demand for it.
Here's my prediction, though. They get to Earth, but as it turns out, it's not exactly the thirteenth colony they expected. Think about it. It's all happened before, right? The Cylons and the thirteenth colony have encountered each other just as our ragtag colonial crew and the Cylons are encountering each other now. They intermingled (Eve, anyone?), and the result is that we here on earth are actually the progeny of both colonial humans and Cylons. We even adopted both religions. People here are killing each other over the same ideological differences as the Cylons and the colonials are.
I could be wrong, but I think that's ultimately the ending plot twist. When all is said and done, it turns out that WE are Cylons, too, a fact that has been lost to antiquity.
Fine, take a stand on censorship. But by hounding Google, you're doing it wrong. I can't say this enough, it seems, so I'll bring out the obnoxious bold letters again. Google has no impact whatsoever on whether or not the Chinese government censors its citizens. None. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Goose egg.
Could they take it up as an issue and maybe make an impact using their financial resources? Maybe. But then, they could also take up fighting genocide in Darfur. They could take up preventing AIDS in Africa. They could take up womens' reproductive rights. They could take up building tidal wave detection and alerting systems in southeast Asia. They could spend every dime they have on solving the world's problems. They already spend a lot. Which other ones should they take up? What do they have to do before they're no longer evil? Go bankrupt?
If anything, by hassling Google, you're actually being counterproductive, as there are much more effective means of trying to make positive changes than wasting your time griping about a company that has absolutely no say-so in the matter at all. Do you really feel so strongly that filtering search results in China is so evil that you should boycott Google for doing it? I'm sorry, but that's pretty stupid.
Plus, if this is the standard by which you judge whether a company is or isn't evil, then you're pretty much screwed supporting any company. As I've said, every company that deals with China at all has to abide by Chinese laws. Do you have a television? Did any of its parts come from China? You obviously have a computer, who made all of the components in it?
Oh, and what do you plan on doing about the U.S. government? That's right, our own government. You know that huge national debt that we keep hearing about? Guess who owns $416.2 billion of it? That's right: China. Just to put that in perspective, that's just shy of the amount of money that has been spent on the Iraq War. That's right, put another way, China is indirectly paying for our little experiment in spreading so-called democracy. (You sure as hell didn't think that we were paying for it, did you?) So unless you want to move out to the wilderness and get by on subsistence farming and hunting, I guess you're supporting oppression in various places around the world.
So of all the productive things that could be done to help unfetter the Chinese people from government oppression, and of all the ways in which you depend on China to live a normal life, why are you singling out Google to pick on? I mean, I already know the answer, but I'm interested in seeing what you have to say.
Heh, I wish I were on Google's payroll.
No, I'm just annoyed at how people are so eager to complain bitterly about a company that is one of the few decent ones out there.
From everything I've seen and heard, Google treats its employees very well compared to the rest of corporate America (thus me wishing I were on their payroll). The people they have working there are unbelievable smart. They provide extremely valuable services, 100% gratis. They even provide APIs to their software for you to use in clever and original ways. They've driven other companies to radically think about how they provide services. (Anyone else here remember when Google provided a gigabyte of e-mail when everyone else was providing like five or ten megabytes?) They're a huge contributor to the development of open source software, sponsoring such initiatives as the Summer of Code. Yes, they even fight poverty, disease, and global warming in new and inventive ways.
Yet because they abide by international law—like every other company that deals with China—they're vilified here. That's just not right.
Let's not kid ourselves. Google isn't evil, but it is an extremely wealthy company. There are people here who resent companies that get extremely wealthy, no matter how noble their goals are or how much they do to try to make the world a better place. There is a contingent of people who feel like they must tear down big companies, and they grasp at whatever straws they can to try to do so.
If Google did pass that proposal and miraculously managed to end government censorship in China—actually managed to get the Chinese government to pass a First Amendment like the U.S.'s!—these people would still find something to complain about. It's not about government censorship, it's not about Google being evil or not evil, it's about them being very, very rich.
I'm not paid to think some way or say anything. But when I see ignorant people going after people, companies, or organizations that are actually making positive differences in the world for something so stupid and contrived as not doing enough to change China from oppressive communism to being even more free than our own country, yeah, that bugs me.
For what it's worth, I also think that John Edwards would make a great president, that Charmin toilet paper is the best out there, that Morgan Spurlock's 30 Days is the best show on television, that my HP 2335 LCD monitor is the most gorgeous monitor I've ever laid my eyes on, and that Honda makes very reliable automobiles. I suppose that means I'm also being paid by the Edwards campaign, Proctor and Gamble, News Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, and Honda Motor Company. If only I were so lucky.
Oh, and if I were paid by Google, they would probably frown highly on me calling you an idiot. And you are, indeed, an idiot. There, satisfied?
Average users will use Firefox and be perfectly happy (probably much happier) with it. I honestly can't imagine anyone saying, "Where is Internet Explorer?"
Ubuntu includes Solitaire. (In fact, isn't it installed by default?) In fact, if you're willing to go through the trouble of browsing what games are available for Ubuntu, there's a gazillion different variations of Solitaire games available, along with a ton of other Solitaire-type games. On Windows, you get, what, like five games in all before you have to start shelling out hard-earned pay?
Touché, by default, Ubuntu won't play DVDs, and you can't run iTunes or other popular DRM media downloaders/players on Ubuntu. I think that this, along with gaming, will be the biggest hurdles Ubuntu will face in widespread acceptance.
If we're lucky though, as Linux becomes more and more pervasive, the market will realize what an opportunity it is and react to it accordingly. I mean, think about it. If iTunes sees that the Linux market is growing and releases iTunes For Linux, while everyone else maintains their tunnel vision on Windows-only solutions, what do you think will happen when Linux starts commanding something like 30% or 40% of the desktop market? iTunes will own 80% of the Windows market, and that's great, but it will also own 100% of the Linux market, and that's an unbelievably good position to be in when you're talking those kinds of numbers.
I posted a similar thought talking about MMORPGs on Linux. A smart company will use the shift as an opportunity to take over the Linux market, not as a hindrance to selling their games.
The DMCA doesn't make reverse engineering illegal. It "criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services that are used to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works (commonly known as DRM) and criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, even when there is no infringement of copyright itself."
This wouldn't apply to reverse engineering software APIs at all, except perhaps an API that is used to decrypt DRM implementations.
The DMCA is very, very, very, very, very, very, very evil for many, many, many, many, many, many, many reasons. This just happens to not be one of them.
However, Microsoft does have patents on trivial and obvious things that hinder WINE developers. Those should be fought vigorously.
Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying that WINE isn't a great piece of software, or that no one should install it because it hinders the development of native Linux applications.
All I'm saying is that for mass distribution of Linux on Dell computers, it shouldn't be included for precisely the reasons that Mark stated. I'm saying that because it's not a primetime player yet, it would cause more harm than good at a critical point in the determination of desktop Linux's feasibility.
If someone wants or needs it, they should install it, period. But it should be what Mark is indirectly saying it is: A tool to be used only when needed for specific circumstances, not a part of the core functionality of Ubuntu. It's just not that good yet.
But since I haven't mentioned it yet, yes, I also think that a side benefit of this is that now there will be a larger base of Linux users out there, developers will be encouraged to write more cross-platform or even Linux-specific software. Even Microsoft isn't stupid; if profits on the Office cash cow look like they're going to fall and the future of Windows starts looking shaky, it's entirely within the realm of the possible that we will see Office for Linux. Microsoft releasing Office for non-Windows platforms is not unprecedented.
Because morally, restricting fair use rights = killing people, right?
No, there is nothing to be gained here, financial, material, or moral. That's my point. None of this matters. That's not cynicism, that's practicality.
If you think that abiding by Chinese laws makes Google "evil," then you're going to have a very, very, very hard time feeling good about any company. I can't think of a single big company that doesn't have some sort of dealings in China, and they all abide by Chinese law when doing so. (Well, as far as I can tell, and when they don't, I suspect that most of them are doing it to make more money, not as some sort of rebellion against censorship.)
You sound like one of these people who would lecture me about how evil it is that I have a nice little house out in the suburbs instead of donating every cent I earn above the poverty line to charities to feed third-world children. Just because Google and I aren't saints, just because we don't sacrifice our own well-being on some futile gesture, does not make us evil.
Like I said, if Google starts getting people arrested and ruining their lives, come back and talk to me. But for now, I still see Google as one of the better companies out there, not "evil."
Oh, and by the way, if you're really that concerned about government censorship, I would once again advise you to worry more about the U.S. government. It's not as bad as China, but unlike China, it has been heading in a seriously wrong direction these past several years. And if you must address Chinese government censorship, I assure you that there are much, much more effective ways to fight it than calling Google evil. You could, you know, write some letters to your Congress critters to try to get the U.S. government to put more pressure on China. It may not work either, but it has a hell of a lot more potential than slandering Google's reputation on Slashdot does.
Because some of the API's either aren't fully documented or don't work as they are documented. Also, they've patented some of the critical components that allow software written for Windows to run. The end result is that people working on the WINE project have to do a lot of reverse-engineering of what the APIs actually do (as opposed to what they say they do) and figure out alternatives to really basic things that are legally off-limits.
And let's not kid ourselves. If WINE does manage to start making inroads towards running Windows software, I shudder at the FUD that will be cranked out my Microsoft telling people how inferior it is to the so-called "real" Windows. (When personal experience has shown that the things that WINE does successfully, it generally actually does better than Windows. I know that developers at Microsoft are smart, but frankly, a lot of open source developers are smarter.)
Oh, and last but not least, some software is written to do nasty low-level stuff that bypasses the APIs entirely. Even if WINE were 100% successful in re-creating the Windows APIs, such software still wouldn't work.
But really, that comment was mostly just a side note. The important point I was trying to make is that if Windows software doesn't work on machines that people buy thinking that it will run Windows software, they will get mad at Ubuntu and WINE, and that's a very, very bad thing.
Get a clue. China doesn't care. The top search engine in China is Baidu, not Google. I don't think you understand that if Google and every other Western search engine simply went away in China, there would be no riots in the streets, no calls to action, nothing at all. China would simply keep censoring its citizens. There is nothing to be gained here. Nothing.
Here's a little experiment: Go out on the street and ask ten people at random what they know about Yahoo's participation in Chinese censorship. I guarantee you that 9.9 out of those 10 people will say that they don't know anything at all. (That last person only counts as 0.1 because they're lying just to try to look smart.) So the real answer is, Yahoo wouldn't look terrible at all. People aren't going to feel better or worse about Yahoo because of something that Google does.
You're dreaming, right? Don't you think that Americans already know that the government in China is oppressive? I mean, we tend to hide under rocks, but please, go out and ask ten more random people whether they think the Chinese government is oppressive. I guarantee you that 10 out of 10 of them will say, "Yes, I do." And to say that other businesses will care how people feel towards Google or Yahoo to the point of shutting themselves off to the largest market in the world... I change my mind, you're not dreaming. You're clearly on drugs.
Now you're just being silly. Yes, the Chinese government would do this with no help from companies. Google doesn't "help" the government do anything, that implies that it's in collusion with the government. Google simply abides by the laws it has to in order to provide service. Google does exactly the same thing here in the United States, where there are also laws on what it can and can't show.
I'll say it once again since you don't seem to get it, and I'll put it in obnoxious bold letters so maybe it will start to sink in: Google does not censor the Chinese people. The Chinese government censors the Chinese people.
Sure, here it is: "Users will be clearly informed when the company has acceded to legally binding government requests to filter or otherwise censor content that the user is trying to access." If a government requests for Google not to disclose that they've ordered it to turn over personally identifiable information, what is Google to do? On the one hand, they have a company policy that says they must. On the other, they have a legal obligation that says they can't. If they follow their company policy (as you would have them do), they've broken international law. If they don't, they look twice as bad for not only giving up personal information and not telling the person whose information it was, but they broke their own company policy, a policy expressly created to keep that from happening, in doing so. There's no way to win with such a policy.
Of course, there's also a technical problem that's been completely overlooked here. Let's say that the Chinese government orders Google to turn over the IP addres
Every time I read something about Mark Shuttleworth, I become just a little bit more of a fan.
While I have nothing against WINE—indeed, I use it myself for several things—I have to agree that it's just not right for distribution by a company like Dell. There's an art to getting it set up and configured, and while it's good, there are still a lot of applications that either don't work at all or don't quite work right in it.
This is a massive problem, and could seriously backfire on Ubuntu. If people buy a Dell machine with Ubuntu and WINE installed thinking that it will run Windows software, when something doesn't work right (and there will be things that don't work right), the average consumers will get mad at the wrong people: Ubuntu and WINE, not Microsoft. The focus will be on how Ubuntu sucks at running Windows software, not on how Ubuntu rocks at running Linux software.
I see here a golden opportunity for desktop Linux to make major inroads with the public and take a significant step towards advancing free open source software. I also see here a golden opportunity to destroy the reputation of desktop Linux as a viable alternative to Windows and give people the impression that free open source software really sucks. Don't you think for a second that Microsoft is going to be trying their damned best to see that Linux on Dell machines gives people a bad taste for open source software.
I have to give Mark Shuttleworth a pat on the back for seeing the big picture, for sacrificing trying to please everyone for the sake of making sure that this is done right, and that the software that people get is great, not just "it works good enough with a few hours of tweaking."
I'm failing how to see how this is evil.
Let's not kid ourselves. These proposals were aimed at doing the following:
I think the misguided idea here is that Google can single-handedly pressure the Chinese government into giving free speech to its citizens. The rationale, I suppose, is that China wants Google so badly that they will shed off oppression just to have it.
If you believe this, you're fooling yourself. There's not a damn thing that Google can do to give people in China the right to free speech. If this proposal passed, the Chinese government would simply block Google from all of China, and by the time the Chinese people do hopefully have free speech someday, they'll all be using Yahoo and MSN instead of Google.
If you don't like the fact that the Chinese people don't have free speech, be mad at the right people, the people who are actually responsible for it: The Chinese government. Stop being so indignant with companies who are doing what they can with the rules they have to play with.
I'm all for Google fighting the DMCA. However, I am not in favor of forcing them to, which is exactly what this proposal would do. They should have the right to choose the battles they wish to fight. If I start my own business and decide that I (and my shareholders) want to fight for the prevention of animal cruelty and dedicate some of my profits towards that goal, that's noble. If an outside group decides that I (and my shareholders) should fight for the prevention of animal cruelty, and then we get raked over the coals because we decide that there are more worthwhile causes to take up, well, I wouldn't care so much.
Is repealing the DMCA a priority of mine? Yes. Do I call people (or companies) "evil" for not making it a priority of theirs? No.
And is anyone thinking that this is a double standard? Even in the United States, Google engages in proactive censorship. I'm sure there has been at least a few cases of national security information the government didn't want to get out being taken down, and we know that copyrighted videos have been pulled. In the case of China, this proposal says that Google is supposed to say, "To hell with it, we're going to do it anyway." In the case of the United States, though, Google is supposed to say, "We'll use legal means to resist."
As for telling people when Google has to disclose information about them, I actually would be in favor of such a proposal. It sounds like they are trying to keep Google for doing something like getting someone arrested, and when you cross the line from censoring your own operations and ruining other people's lives, it's a different ballgame.
But keep in mind a couple of things. First of all, it's not like China is the only place this can happen. If I used Gmail to send out terrorist threats here in the U.S., our government would compel Google to turn over my personally identifiable information. Is that a bad thing? I don't know, but there's no practical way Google can say, "Okay, this is a harmless joke e-mail, so we'll wipe the user's data. This is Chinese free speech, so we'll wipe the user's data. Whoops, this is a terrorist threat, so we'll keep this around for a while." Even if they could, I'm not so sure that is such a good idea, either. Again, there's a double standard of impractically expecting Google to comply with U.S. law, but thumb its nose at international law.
Also, to my knowledge, Google hasn't turned over personally identifiable information to a government like China. Is there some reason to think that it has? Or that if it was ordered to, that Google wouldn't fight it as vigorously as possible? How do we know that it hasn't already happened, and unlike Yahoo, Google was successful? It seems to me that compared to other soulless bastard corporations, Google would be one of the most likely to actually care about stuff like that.
Unfortunately, the American attitude has always been something along the lines of, "If other countries have a problem with it, then we must be doing it right." This is no exception. If other people in the world try to start inserting their opinions into our domestic matters, all it will do is 1) build resentment towards those people, no matter how well-intentioned their opinions were, and 2) push our government to do the exact opposite just to show how little we care about world opinion.
I'm not saying it's right. I wish all decisions like these were made independent of what other people thought, but they're not.
Also, there's the matter of protecting your own. Everyone has the right to complain about their home team. But when others start talking about ways in which your home team sucks, people tend to get defensive of them, even of those people are right and your home team really does suck.
Yeah, this is a bit off-topic, but I just had to chime in and say that I've run across this attitude towards open source software, too.
A coworker of mine bought a cheap computer a couple of years ago. He commented on how he didn't want to spend a lot of money of Microsoft Office for it, and was thinking about getting one of the second-tier office suites. I told him, "Just download OpenOffice."
He had no idea what I was talking about, and thought I was referring him to some seedy warez site. I explained what FOSS was and told him about some of the more popular FOSS applications out there, but he just couldn't bring himself to believe me. He was absolutely, positively convinced that you end up "paying" for free software in one way or another; that even if OpenOffice didn't charge you to download and install their software, that there was some kind of hidden catch where it had to be adware or spyware or something. I even showed him the copy of OpenOffice I have installed alongside Microsoft Office on my work machine. He seemed really impressed, but I think he still ended up buying a copy of StarOffice or Corel WordPerfect Office because he just couldn't believe that it was free.
Needless to say, I don't think he's going to be a Linux convert anytime soon.
It almost made me wish that OpenOffice.org would set up a web site, something like OpenOffice.com, that has the exact same software, but charges you a $50 or so fee to download. Unfortunately, regardless of the best of intentions, some people just don't get it. At least then, I could point these people to the site where you can get the "real" copy.
I won't lie, the Linux and Mac gaming market just isn't there in force yet. However, I don't look at this as a hindrance to entering the market; I look at it as an opportunity.
Linux and MacOS is growing. Especially with Microsoft's feeble latest attempt at an operating system, I think that more and more people will be looking at it as a viable home computing platform. Those people are going to want games. There just aren't that many available yet, especially in the MMORPG market.
If I were an MMORPG developer, I'd be jumping on this chance. I'd use as many cross-platform libraries as I could, and that would be one of my major selling points: Whether you're using Windows, MacOS, or Linux, you can play our game. You might make a mediocre dent in the Windows market, probably trailing behind the 800 pound gorilla of WoW. But you would virtually own the MacOS and Linux market for these types of games.
As those markets continue to grow, so does your game, and the market for Windows-only games shrinks. Even Windows users may start preferring it because they can play with their friends who are using Macs and Linux boxes, not just the ones who are beholden to Uncle Bill. Also, as a development company, you gain experience at developing cross-platform games, so the games you come out with in the future will likely be better than other's who are playing catch-up to the new world of multiple OS's out there.
Personally, I think developing games only for Windows is a really bad business gamble. You're basically betting your financial future on Macs and Linux not gaining any market share in the future. I think that's extremely short-sighted.
Oh, and just as an added note, don't forget that in the case of an MMORPG, we're not talking about developing the whole game for multiple platforms, only the client. The primary function of these clients is simply to display graphical representations of network data efficiently and prettily to the user. A very powerful and popular cross-platform graphics library already exists (OpenGL) that will handle the lion's share of this work. In my opinion, if you're a graphics application developer and you're not using it, you're being pretty stupid. As for the back-end server software, unless you plan on selling it or otherwise distributing it, you're free to lock yourself into whatever platform strikes your fancy.