The trouble with making a game multiplatform isn't "necessarily" the cost/time/effort/skill of using abstracted code or having to train DX programmers to use OpenGL. One large problem is that in the past, you could relatively easy put a game on 1 piece of physical media and have both the Mac and Windows tracks on the CD-ROM. Now that games are coming close to filling DVDs or spanning multiple CDs, it isn't nearly as simple to provide a single disc that is Windows+Mac.
How much of that space is executable and how much is resources that are the same for both versions? It makes installers slightly more complex, but not that bad. Besides there are more and more avaenues for online distribution these days.
Secondly, you have to consider it can quite difficult to provide "good" technical support... The bigest[sic] problem with purchased software; particularly entertainment/gaming software is that the market has little patience for a product that doesn't install and run on a single double-click. So support is an absolute necessity.
That's not an argument for support, but one for decent installers that have been well tested. You can't half ass the installer after QA is finished and expect it to be a success. Of course most big game developers have already figured this out. Given the levels of support generally offered, I don't see that it's much harder or more expensive to have two or three scripts instead of one before you tell the gamer to shove off.
Thirdly due to differences in APIs, available hardware (Mac) and quality drivers (linux) you're going to have widely varying system requirements and user experiences. Where if the Linux version is inferior to the Windows version, users are going to say it is a "half-assed" port, and drive down sales
You seem to be thinking of the niche market for high end FPS games instead of the mainstream market where performance is less of a concern and most developers target a midrange system from two years ago. Aside from a few weirdos, no one in the PC market compares performance on the same hardware and different OS and no one pays attention to them if they do. Hows the performance of the Sims 2 on OS X versus Windows XP? Does anyone know or care? Does it hurt sales of one or the other? I think you're a bit off on this one. Linux is hard to target because of fragmentation, but not impossible. OS X is already targeted by most of the big developers because it makes them money. With the Xbox not having dominated console gaming, making non-portable DirectX titles is simply betting your game will be a failure and you won't have lost as big of an investment. For everyone else not owned by MS, developing so that you can easily target the PS3, Wii, OS X, portables, netbooks, and everything else from the get go is simply being competent.
Not to reach the mainstream gaming market they don't. In fact, most of the top selling games already run on the Mac. The issue is, when you're thinking of gaming you're considering hardcore, niche products like Crysis instead of mainstream products like WoW or The Sims franchise.
Targeting a larger audience results in more sales. Who'd have guessed?:p
But at the cost of porting then testing and supporting three separate releases. TFA doesn't address the cost of that, and tripling your testing along must be huge.
Actually, in this case he showed doubling the supported platforms more than doubled sales, so even assuming your assumption was true, it would be worth it. But let's look at your assumptions. To triple the cost of testing you'd basically need to have no shared code between the ports. In my experience using portable code and testing on multiple platforms makes QA cheaper by a huge margin while making development a little more expensive. You often find a bug on one platform where it is obvious, but it is almost always also a bug on other platforms, but just a less obvious one. A lot more bugs fall into the 'low hanging fruit" category for discovery.
Sure, it worked for him, he got a huge volume of Mac sales, but that doesn't mean the numbers will work for everyone.
True, but then it doesn't mean it won't work for a large percentage of game developers. Look at the top five or ten top selling PC games of all time. Notice anything interesting, like a large number of them fall into the relatively small subset of games that had simultaneous Mac and PC releases?
The original premise was that developing your games to target multiple platforms can yield sales disproportionate to the market share of the added platform(s) and this is a pretty well understood concept in the professional game industry and is exploited by developers that aren't working on their first big game, aren't owned by Microsoft, and didn't lock themselves and their code base into Windows only technologies. The only novelty here is showing that it works for smaller games as well.
Of course anyone who played networked games in a university setting could have told you the same thing. Sure all twenty of us could all buy the PC only game, but two of us have Macs and one of those two is the hot girl that's into gaming. Gee what a tough choice. Thus, 10% of the OS market share translates into ten times as much influence on the purchasing decision. It's not just selling to the small market share. It's selling to everyone with an interest in interoperating with that market share.
Through amendments to it, we now have rights that our founding fathers thought that everyone was entitled to.
... except felons. You should try reading the document you talk about. People have a right to liberties regardless of their identity, but not regardless of their actions or history. You can't be denied your rights because of your race, your gender, your religion, but you sure as hell can for sticking it in some kid's butt.
Actually, you are protected from discrimination by the government on basis of certain criteria, which can include actions you take (such as joining a specific religion). Regardless, the constitution does not provide an exception from the rights enumerated for criminals who are no longer incarcerated. And before you make any rash decisions about what rights should be granted to criminals (whether imprisoned or not) think carefully. Imprisonment can undermine a democracy, you just lock up those who take an action ensuring even if the majority favors that action being legal, those in prison are denied the ability to vote on the topic. With a parole based system there is no practical limit to what percentage of the population can be denied rights in this way. Civil disobedience has a long and proud history of overcoming injustice in this country. If the law still made homosexuals sex offenders should they have no online privacy and be exempt from constitutional protections? If the law made interracial intercourse illegal (which the majority favored even when the bans were overturned) should those people have no privacy and be subject to having all their communications monitored by the police with no warrant?
I'm amazed that you believe tracking rapists equates to the holocaust.
Obviously the previous poster went a little overboard with the melodramatic references to Nazis. You, however, are doing the same. Sex offender != rapist. Sex offenders include people who sent a nude picture of themselves to their boyfriend when they and their boyfriend were 16. That should exempt them from the 4th amendment? Maybe some day you will be a sex offender once the laws are changed. Think about it.
Money is money. If a state says "this tax is going to pay for roads", that's just the sugar to get you to swallow the tax. It's all fungible.
That's beside the point. The point is whether the taxes collected are collected more from people driving longer distances or more from people using more gas. I'd argue the latter more effectively encourages behaviors that benefit society as whole. Whether that money goes to repairing roads or other uses, is a secondary concern.
As cars get more efficient in terms of gas use, the gov't wallet slims down.. but given the same car in terms of e.g. weight, footprint (literal - i.e. tires-on-road), it doesn't matter whether you're super-efficient or the worst gas guzzler in the world... you're still putting the same wear-and-tear on that road.
But taxing by the mile may be less reflective of wear and tear on the road than taxing by the gallon. You see, the larger the vehicle, the more wear and tear. This also correlates to some degree with the gas used by the vehicle. Huge SUVs cause more wear because of their weight and at the same time tend to use more gas. Ditto for cargo trucks and semis. Since gas used reflects the umber of miles travelled as well, this seems like a tax that would financially discourage transport companies and individuals from moving away from gasoline power (something anyone with a clue about the environment, global politics, or military preparedness would probably disapprove of).
InDesign is lousy for anything beyond a few pages.
It used to be, but it has gotten a lot better in recent years, pulling in much of Framemaker's feature set. It is a viable option these days and for some projects better than Frame.
I'm a tech writer and we use Word at work. It's not as bad as you think.
Did you read his criteria? Word is pretty awful when you try to use it with versioning and it is still pretty terrible for long documents. The continuing document corruption issues for large documents, especially with images makes it a poor choice for almost any long document, IMHO.
Good luck proving that their reason was religious preference, though.
Have you ever heard of a jury trial? With a huge portion of our society being christian, they have a good chance of having a bunch of people rule against them simply because they're afraid a company might be discriminating and would not want the same to happen to then. That's really all it takes.
Honor systems only work when people are watching you.
Actually, in several studies placing a video camera on the scene to provide the perception that one might be watched led to an increase in theft, not a decrease. The moral or ethical taboo on violating the trust of others is quite powerful, but indications that such trust does not exist (people watching and checking) largely negates that affect. Interestingly putting up signs which read "please don't steal" have been effective because of this phenomenon.
Piracy is the result of human nature: when faced with the option of getting something for free or paying for it, and in the absence of any significant risks, you don't need complex economic studies to show you that most people will opt for the free route."
The article summary includes the following quote, but it doesn't actually seem to be the case if you actually study the issue. In many studies it has been shown that "honor systems" result in fewer thefts than systems where there are technological or potential criminal penalties. In many, many cases building a system of trust and relying upon people's morals and ethics is the most effective solution.
I scanned this article and then gave up because it seemed unoriginal and completely one-sided. If you can't even understand the perspective of people on one side of an issue, how can you rant for so many pages about your perspective on it?
This isn't true. For example, the majority of the population has driven while (very) tired. This is a crime, (impaired driving), for a very good reason - it increases the risk of accidents, almost as much as drinking. So, here's a law, that the majority of the population breaks, but isn't "wrong" as it punishes dangerous behavior.
I disagree. That law is wrong for many reasons, including the vague definition of "very tired" that means no one can be reasonably expected to tell if they are or aren't breaking said law. More importantly, however, is that just because a law increases the safety of the citizenry does not mean it is a good law. Cars are dangerous and if we keep driving them people will keep getting accidents even if they follow the laws. Is a law banning driving cars then justified? Freedom is the lack of laws. We need to balance the rights of individuals to act with the likely consequences of those actions on others. It is up to each of us to decide when we're too tired to drive and the law cannot make that decision for us no matter how hard it tries because it does not have the faculties to assess said state of being, regardless of if it punishes "dangerous" behavior. All driving is dangerous, but that doesn't make a law banning it just or driving "wrong".
And I still think they're joined. (At least in the US, I don't know about the European versions because of the court action there.)
The rendering engine is still embedded deeply, while the browser application is more separated. As for the EU, they haven't even addressed the browser bundling as an antitrust issue as yet.
It's hard to say, given they were also talking about antitrust abuse in the very same sentence as they mention the tying. In any case, it is important to distinguish, since from an antitrust perspective they are still tied and that tying is still illegal.
IE7 isn't tied to the OS anymore. Heck, in Vista its not even used for updates or anything of the sort anymore.
In terms of antitrust law, tying is linking a product in a monopolized market with a product in a separate, pre-existing market. The first example and most common form of tying is selling the products bundled together in the same package (like Windows and IE are).
Well, yes the poster did. The laws close down unsanitary environments. She said the store was the most unsanitary.
No she didn't. The claim was that the place was the most unsanitary looking she had ever seen. How sanitary an location is represents a sliding scale. Nowhere did she claim the establishment was so unsanitary it would not pass a health inspection.
What makes you think it's impossible for Opera to use the same techniques for the JS engine as the other browsers and overtake them?
Nothing. I was just noting that they have not seem to have done so and their overall rate of development seems behind what others are managing these days.
Also, JavaScript is just one part of page rendering.
True, but it is often the bottleneck for Web apps these days, which is why it is such a hot spot for development right now.
And SunSpider only measures specific parts of JS (those Safari do well at), apparently leaving out others (the ones where Safari's JS techniques might actually make it slower).
Actually, Opera has been falling behind in JS overall, based upon many different tests. I just ran the Sunspider because it is so convenient and provides a good measure of if Opera has been doing anything significant. in that area.
It's nice to see Opera is still in the game and trying, but it feels like they're still falling behind in the new, turbocharged browser race. Now if only IE would fix their flat tires and get back in the race.
what? they're constantly innovating, adding new features, and striving to be more standards compliant than any other browser, and they've had 3 major releases this year, with 9.27, then 9.5, and now 10 alpha. i'd say they're far from being left behind.
I don't care how many releases they have, just how they compare on features I care about, compliance, and performance with other browsers. I mentioned several ways in which Opera seems to be slipping behind. Javascript performance is a good example. In some ways Opera is doing okay, but overall it seems to be losing out, IMHO.
The Wii is great but it's controllers are a huge leap from the norm and significantly changes the gaming experience - for the worse. Putting novelties like wii sports, etc. aside, the Wii is missing out on a lot of "normal" titles that are very good simply because of its interface.
I disagree. I think you can use the Wii to play normal titles, but they don't sell well because hardcore gamers buy them for other consoles with faster graphics and casual gamers (the Wii stonghold) are more interested in games with smaller learning curves for the gameplay. The exceptions to this are titles with large learning curves and novel gameplay made possible by Wii controllers, but which can't be easily ported to other consoles because of their limited controllers.
Games designed to work across many consoles or primarily for other consoles will never do well on the Wii because they come across as bad ports and don't have the fun of a game designed to work really well with Wii consoles. The same was true for NES games back in the day when people tried to use them with joysticks or to port joystick games to the NES.
Some kind of middle ground would be optimal.
I don't see this happening. Game companies that write for the Wii from the ground up and have good gameplay with those controllers do fine. Game companies that target all the consoles will never do very well on the Wii. They might make enough to make the port profitable, but they will always be eclipsed by "native" titles.
And we are back at step one - Apple became a monopoly because of the bundling trinity - it offered a simplicity that the consumer wanted. And why should Apple license Fairplay to others stores? Because that would not open up the market, but instead give more leverage back to the music industry and actually put Apple in the master monopoly position Microsoft was in with DRM'd WMA.
If other stores can't target he iPod with the same level of DRM as Apple. then they are at a disadvantage in the industry. Remember this applies to video as well as audio. Basically if other companies in markets Apple is in are not able to do the same thing Apple can and Apple can do that because they control the iPod, then Apple is breaking the law (if it has monopoly influence on iPods).
No, but then other stores aren't automatically connected to when you install the software that ships with iPods and other stores proprietary DRM schemes aren't supported by the iPod either.
Which is good, else there would not be any DRM free stores.
Why? Apple was the first to get a deal to sell music without DRM and they had DRM available. How would support for other DRM have made a difference. Not that it matters really.
I don't think you're understanding monopolies and leveraging them illegally and I'm not going to keep going in circles with you. Pick up an economics book and read the chapter on antitrust.
I will never go back to a browser without mouse gestures.
I rather think the same thing about my OS. That is, I won't ever go back to another OS without mouse gestures and spell checking and grammar checking and all the other system services I want to install. Are mouse gestures any less useful in music jukebox software or e-mail clients? Opera introduces inline spell checking in this release, but still ignores the inline spell checker offered by OS X as well as the grammar checker, thesaurus, dictionary, mouse gestures, etc. Implementing these features at the application level instead of the OS level is redundant and counter productive. Thanks to their decision to use their own text APIs and not provide a bridge and limit their browser to the least common denominator of OS functionality, I pretty much have to pass on Opera. I mean, I like mouse gestures and spell checking, but I don't want to retrain either from scratch using a different interface when I already have a trained set of services for my whole OS. I certainly don't want to use a browser that has no access to my other services.
For this reason alone, Opera is really not much of an option for power users of OS X (as most users of mouse gestures are).
Now if only IE would fix their flat tires and get back in the race.
One could, if it were me, would say the same for OS X.
One could what?
Well the pun was on your last line.
Maybe I'm obtuse. I still don't get it. I didn't say anything about someone could anything and I don't see a double meaning for a word if you're trying to make a pun (as you say). Would you mind explaining?
One could, if it were me, would say the same for OS X.
One could what?
Pun aside, you are using an ALPHA software - it's not even a beta! Believe me it will be better.
I'm sure it will be better by the time it is finalized, but we don't know in what ways and the alpha doesn't bring a whole lot of hope for features that concern me. You might note I was comparing it on speed and compliance to a nightly version of Webkit... not even an alpha.
From someone who switched from Firefox 3.1alpha1 today, and who has never seriously used a Mac.
Both Opera and Firefox are a lot better on Windows and Linux than on OS X. They both tend to ignore all the cool bits of OS X that make it nicer than other OS's in particular respects. I mean, Apple goes and implements a universal grammar checker that automatically works in everything that uses the default text APIs and cross platform browsers like Firefox and Opera both use nonstandard text handling for cross platform compatibility and don't bother to find a way to make it work. It makes them both second class applications, bounded by the limitations of the other OS's they're targeting.
On Linux and Windows I use Firefox, but when I can I use OS X and Safari because the combination is more featureful. If you don't use OS X I can see why you would not see the difference.
Okay I gave the OS X alpha a spin. It does get 100 on the Acid3, but still doesn't manage smooth animation on my machine and probably not on the reference hardware. Javascript performance is behind compared to the latest Webkit and the Sunspider test. On my machine the Opera alpha is very slightly slower than the release version of Safari and about six times slower than the nightly Webkit with the new javascript improvements. The alpha does support some OS X system services, but still fails to use the default spelling and grammar checking, instead offering only a proprietary spellcheck that ignores my carefully trained dictionaries that work in most all of my other programs.
It's nice to see Opera is still in the game and trying, but it feels like they're still falling behind in the new, turbocharged browser race. Now if only IE would fix their flat tires and get back in the race.
Apple has tied the iPod to the iTMS? Yes, sure, if by that you mean they created the iTMS because there was no way to legally buy anything but "independent" music (=music hardly anyone wants) online for it.
No, I mean technologically. Every iPod comes bundled with a copy of iTunes which connects users to the iTunes store. The iPod uses a proprietary DRM scheme to allow sale of DRM'd media and Apple does not license that DRM scheme for use by other stores. Both of these provide Apple with an advantage other music stores cannot duplicate. If the iPod is a monopoly influence, that's illegal.
Well, unless you bought from a WMD shop, forcing Apple to become yet another accomplice to the Microsoft monopoly. Not to mention that if they did that only iPod owners with Windows could buy songs for it, not Mac owners, because not a single one of those stores worked on the Mac.
Yeah, the market was broken because of Microsoft's monopoly abuse. They were even convicted of that abuse in one case although the "punishment" was so flaccid it did not even include stopping the crime.
Or do you mean that you can't play Fairplay songs on anything but an iPod?
You've still got it backwards. It is because the iPod will play Fairplay media, but not other DRM'd media and because other retailers can't sell Fairplay DRM'd media. That's the potentially illegal part. It doesn't matter one whit if other players can play Fairplay, but whether other stores can sell DRM'd media that works on the iPod.
Nobody forced you to buy anything from the iTMS, and you can pretty easily transcode the tunes to any format you want, including lossless, giving you the exact same sound.
No, but then other stores aren't automatically connected to when you install the software that ships with iPods and other stores proprietary DRM schemes aren't supported by the iPod either. If Apple is ruled to have a monopoly then both of those things are illegal leveraging of their iPod success into a separate market. Hopefully the courts won't act on that illegal action any more than they have on the other illegal abuse in these markets. That is, ideally they'll stop Apple right after breaking up both MS and the RIAA and MPAA cartels. Less ideally, they'll let Apple get away with their abuses along with everyone else after Apple pays a fine. The worst case is they stop Apple while letting the others continue.
Slashdot Mirror
The trouble with making a game multiplatform isn't "necessarily" the cost/time/effort/skill of using abstracted code or having to train DX programmers to use OpenGL. One large problem is that in the past, you could relatively easy put a game on 1 piece of physical media and have both the Mac and Windows tracks on the CD-ROM. Now that games are coming close to filling DVDs or spanning multiple CDs, it isn't nearly as simple to provide a single disc that is Windows+Mac.
How much of that space is executable and how much is resources that are the same for both versions? It makes installers slightly more complex, but not that bad. Besides there are more and more avaenues for online distribution these days.
Secondly, you have to consider it can quite difficult to provide "good" technical support... The bigest[sic] problem with purchased software; particularly entertainment/gaming software is that the market has little patience for a product that doesn't install and run on a single double-click. So support is an absolute necessity.
That's not an argument for support, but one for decent installers that have been well tested. You can't half ass the installer after QA is finished and expect it to be a success. Of course most big game developers have already figured this out. Given the levels of support generally offered, I don't see that it's much harder or more expensive to have two or three scripts instead of one before you tell the gamer to shove off.
Thirdly due to differences in APIs, available hardware (Mac) and quality drivers (linux) you're going to have widely varying system requirements and user experiences. Where if the Linux version is inferior to the Windows version, users are going to say it is a "half-assed" port, and drive down sales
You seem to be thinking of the niche market for high end FPS games instead of the mainstream market where performance is less of a concern and most developers target a midrange system from two years ago. Aside from a few weirdos, no one in the PC market compares performance on the same hardware and different OS and no one pays attention to them if they do. Hows the performance of the Sims 2 on OS X versus Windows XP? Does anyone know or care? Does it hurt sales of one or the other? I think you're a bit off on this one. Linux is hard to target because of fragmentation, but not impossible. OS X is already targeted by most of the big developers because it makes them money. With the Xbox not having dominated console gaming, making non-portable DirectX titles is simply betting your game will be a failure and you won't have lost as big of an investment. For everyone else not owned by MS, developing so that you can easily target the PS3, Wii, OS X, portables, netbooks, and everything else from the get go is simply being competent.
Not to reach the mainstream gaming market they don't. In fact, most of the top selling games already run on the Mac. The issue is, when you're thinking of gaming you're considering hardcore, niche products like Crysis instead of mainstream products like WoW or The Sims franchise.
Targeting a larger audience results in more sales. Who'd have guessed? :p
But at the cost of porting then testing and supporting three separate releases. TFA doesn't address the cost of that, and tripling your testing along must be huge.
Actually, in this case he showed doubling the supported platforms more than doubled sales, so even assuming your assumption was true, it would be worth it. But let's look at your assumptions. To triple the cost of testing you'd basically need to have no shared code between the ports. In my experience using portable code and testing on multiple platforms makes QA cheaper by a huge margin while making development a little more expensive. You often find a bug on one platform where it is obvious, but it is almost always also a bug on other platforms, but just a less obvious one. A lot more bugs fall into the 'low hanging fruit" category for discovery.
Sure, it worked for him, he got a huge volume of Mac sales, but that doesn't mean the numbers will work for everyone.
True, but then it doesn't mean it won't work for a large percentage of game developers. Look at the top five or ten top selling PC games of all time. Notice anything interesting, like a large number of them fall into the relatively small subset of games that had simultaneous Mac and PC releases?
The original premise was that developing your games to target multiple platforms can yield sales disproportionate to the market share of the added platform(s) and this is a pretty well understood concept in the professional game industry and is exploited by developers that aren't working on their first big game, aren't owned by Microsoft, and didn't lock themselves and their code base into Windows only technologies. The only novelty here is showing that it works for smaller games as well.
Of course anyone who played networked games in a university setting could have told you the same thing. Sure all twenty of us could all buy the PC only game, but two of us have Macs and one of those two is the hot girl that's into gaming. Gee what a tough choice. Thus, 10% of the OS market share translates into ten times as much influence on the purchasing decision. It's not just selling to the small market share. It's selling to everyone with an interest in interoperating with that market share.
Through amendments to it, we now have rights that our founding fathers thought that everyone was entitled to.
... except felons. You should try reading the document you talk about. People have a right to liberties regardless of their identity, but not regardless of their actions or history. You can't be denied your rights because of your race, your gender, your religion, but you sure as hell can for sticking it in some kid's butt.
Actually, you are protected from discrimination by the government on basis of certain criteria, which can include actions you take (such as joining a specific religion). Regardless, the constitution does not provide an exception from the rights enumerated for criminals who are no longer incarcerated. And before you make any rash decisions about what rights should be granted to criminals (whether imprisoned or not) think carefully. Imprisonment can undermine a democracy, you just lock up those who take an action ensuring even if the majority favors that action being legal, those in prison are denied the ability to vote on the topic. With a parole based system there is no practical limit to what percentage of the population can be denied rights in this way. Civil disobedience has a long and proud history of overcoming injustice in this country. If the law still made homosexuals sex offenders should they have no online privacy and be exempt from constitutional protections? If the law made interracial intercourse illegal (which the majority favored even when the bans were overturned) should those people have no privacy and be subject to having all their communications monitored by the police with no warrant?
I'm amazed that you believe tracking rapists equates to the holocaust.
Obviously the previous poster went a little overboard with the melodramatic references to Nazis. You, however, are doing the same. Sex offender != rapist. Sex offenders include people who sent a nude picture of themselves to their boyfriend when they and their boyfriend were 16. That should exempt them from the 4th amendment? Maybe some day you will be a sex offender once the laws are changed. Think about it.
Money is money. If a state says "this tax is going to pay for roads", that's just the sugar to get you to swallow the tax. It's all fungible.
That's beside the point. The point is whether the taxes collected are collected more from people driving longer distances or more from people using more gas. I'd argue the latter more effectively encourages behaviors that benefit society as whole. Whether that money goes to repairing roads or other uses, is a secondary concern.
As cars get more efficient in terms of gas use, the gov't wallet slims down.. but given the same car in terms of e.g. weight, footprint (literal - i.e. tires-on-road), it doesn't matter whether you're super-efficient or the worst gas guzzler in the world... you're still putting the same wear-and-tear on that road.
But taxing by the mile may be less reflective of wear and tear on the road than taxing by the gallon. You see, the larger the vehicle, the more wear and tear. This also correlates to some degree with the gas used by the vehicle. Huge SUVs cause more wear because of their weight and at the same time tend to use more gas. Ditto for cargo trucks and semis. Since gas used reflects the umber of miles travelled as well, this seems like a tax that would financially discourage transport companies and individuals from moving away from gasoline power (something anyone with a clue about the environment, global politics, or military preparedness would probably disapprove of).
InDesign is lousy for anything beyond a few pages.
It used to be, but it has gotten a lot better in recent years, pulling in much of Framemaker's feature set. It is a viable option these days and for some projects better than Frame.
I'm a tech writer and we use Word at work. It's not as bad as you think.
Did you read his criteria? Word is pretty awful when you try to use it with versioning and it is still pretty terrible for long documents. The continuing document corruption issues for large documents, especially with images makes it a poor choice for almost any long document, IMHO.
Good luck proving that their reason was religious preference, though.
Have you ever heard of a jury trial? With a huge portion of our society being christian, they have a good chance of having a bunch of people rule against them simply because they're afraid a company might be discriminating and would not want the same to happen to then. That's really all it takes.
Honor systems only work when people are watching you.
Actually, in several studies placing a video camera on the scene to provide the perception that one might be watched led to an increase in theft, not a decrease. The moral or ethical taboo on violating the trust of others is quite powerful, but indications that such trust does not exist (people watching and checking) largely negates that affect. Interestingly putting up signs which read "please don't steal" have been effective because of this phenomenon.
Piracy is the result of human nature: when faced with the option of getting something for free or paying for it, and in the absence of any significant risks, you don't need complex economic studies to show you that most people will opt for the free route."
The article summary includes the following quote, but it doesn't actually seem to be the case if you actually study the issue. In many studies it has been shown that "honor systems" result in fewer thefts than systems where there are technological or potential criminal penalties. In many, many cases building a system of trust and relying upon people's morals and ethics is the most effective solution.
I scanned this article and then gave up because it seemed unoriginal and completely one-sided. If you can't even understand the perspective of people on one side of an issue, how can you rant for so many pages about your perspective on it?
This isn't true. For example, the majority of the population has driven while (very) tired. This is a crime, (impaired driving), for a very good reason - it increases the risk of accidents, almost as much as drinking. So, here's a law, that the majority of the population breaks, but isn't "wrong" as it punishes dangerous behavior.
I disagree. That law is wrong for many reasons, including the vague definition of "very tired" that means no one can be reasonably expected to tell if they are or aren't breaking said law. More importantly, however, is that just because a law increases the safety of the citizenry does not mean it is a good law. Cars are dangerous and if we keep driving them people will keep getting accidents even if they follow the laws. Is a law banning driving cars then justified? Freedom is the lack of laws. We need to balance the rights of individuals to act with the likely consequences of those actions on others. It is up to each of us to decide when we're too tired to drive and the law cannot make that decision for us no matter how hard it tries because it does not have the faculties to assess said state of being, regardless of if it punishes "dangerous" behavior. All driving is dangerous, but that doesn't make a law banning it just or driving "wrong".
And I still think they're joined. (At least in the US, I don't know about the European versions because of the court action there.)
The rendering engine is still embedded deeply, while the browser application is more separated. As for the EU, they haven't even addressed the browser bundling as an antitrust issue as yet.
It's hard to say, given they were also talking about antitrust abuse in the very same sentence as they mention the tying. In any case, it is important to distinguish, since from an antitrust perspective they are still tied and that tying is still illegal.
IE7 isn't tied to the OS anymore. Heck, in Vista its not even used for updates or anything of the sort anymore.
In terms of antitrust law, tying is linking a product in a monopolized market with a product in a separate, pre-existing market. The first example and most common form of tying is selling the products bundled together in the same package (like Windows and IE are).
Well, yes the poster did. The laws close down unsanitary environments. She said the store was the most unsanitary.
No she didn't. The claim was that the place was the most unsanitary looking she had ever seen. How sanitary an location is represents a sliding scale. Nowhere did she claim the establishment was so unsanitary it would not pass a health inspection.
What makes you think it's impossible for Opera to use the same techniques for the JS engine as the other browsers and overtake them?
Nothing. I was just noting that they have not seem to have done so and their overall rate of development seems behind what others are managing these days.
Also, JavaScript is just one part of page rendering.
True, but it is often the bottleneck for Web apps these days, which is why it is such a hot spot for development right now.
And SunSpider only measures specific parts of JS (those Safari do well at), apparently leaving out others (the ones where Safari's JS techniques might actually make it slower).
Actually, Opera has been falling behind in JS overall, based upon many different tests. I just ran the Sunspider because it is so convenient and provides a good measure of if Opera has been doing anything significant. in that area.
It's nice to see Opera is still in the game and trying, but it feels like they're still falling behind in the new, turbocharged browser race. Now if only IE would fix their flat tires and get back in the race.
what? they're constantly innovating, adding new features, and striving to be more standards compliant than any other browser, and they've had 3 major releases this year, with 9.27, then 9.5, and now 10 alpha. i'd say they're far from being left behind.
I don't care how many releases they have, just how they compare on features I care about, compliance, and performance with other browsers. I mentioned several ways in which Opera seems to be slipping behind. Javascript performance is a good example. In some ways Opera is doing okay, but overall it seems to be losing out, IMHO.
The Wii is great but it's controllers are a huge leap from the norm and significantly changes the gaming experience - for the worse. Putting novelties like wii sports, etc. aside, the Wii is missing out on a lot of "normal" titles that are very good simply because of its interface.
I disagree. I think you can use the Wii to play normal titles, but they don't sell well because hardcore gamers buy them for other consoles with faster graphics and casual gamers (the Wii stonghold) are more interested in games with smaller learning curves for the gameplay. The exceptions to this are titles with large learning curves and novel gameplay made possible by Wii controllers, but which can't be easily ported to other consoles because of their limited controllers.
Games designed to work across many consoles or primarily for other consoles will never do well on the Wii because they come across as bad ports and don't have the fun of a game designed to work really well with Wii consoles. The same was true for NES games back in the day when people tried to use them with joysticks or to port joystick games to the NES.
Some kind of middle ground would be optimal.
I don't see this happening. Game companies that write for the Wii from the ground up and have good gameplay with those controllers do fine. Game companies that target all the consoles will never do very well on the Wii. They might make enough to make the port profitable, but they will always be eclipsed by "native" titles.
And we are back at step one - Apple became a monopoly because of the bundling trinity - it offered a simplicity that the consumer wanted. And why should Apple license Fairplay to others stores? Because that would not open up the market, but instead give more leverage back to the music industry and actually put Apple in the master monopoly position Microsoft was in with DRM'd WMA.
If other stores can't target he iPod with the same level of DRM as Apple. then they are at a disadvantage in the industry. Remember this applies to video as well as audio. Basically if other companies in markets Apple is in are not able to do the same thing Apple can and Apple can do that because they control the iPod, then Apple is breaking the law (if it has monopoly influence on iPods).
No, but then other stores aren't automatically connected to when you install the software that ships with iPods and other stores proprietary DRM schemes aren't supported by the iPod either.
Which is good, else there would not be any DRM free stores.
Why? Apple was the first to get a deal to sell music without DRM and they had DRM available. How would support for other DRM have made a difference. Not that it matters really.
I don't think you're understanding monopolies and leveraging them illegally and I'm not going to keep going in circles with you. Pick up an economics book and read the chapter on antitrust.
I will never go back to a browser without mouse gestures.
I rather think the same thing about my OS. That is, I won't ever go back to another OS without mouse gestures and spell checking and grammar checking and all the other system services I want to install. Are mouse gestures any less useful in music jukebox software or e-mail clients? Opera introduces inline spell checking in this release, but still ignores the inline spell checker offered by OS X as well as the grammar checker, thesaurus, dictionary, mouse gestures, etc. Implementing these features at the application level instead of the OS level is redundant and counter productive. Thanks to their decision to use their own text APIs and not provide a bridge and limit their browser to the least common denominator of OS functionality, I pretty much have to pass on Opera. I mean, I like mouse gestures and spell checking, but I don't want to retrain either from scratch using a different interface when I already have a trained set of services for my whole OS. I certainly don't want to use a browser that has no access to my other services.
For this reason alone, Opera is really not much of an option for power users of OS X (as most users of mouse gestures are).
Now if only IE would fix their flat tires and get back in the race.
One could, if it were me, would say the same for OS X.
One could what?
Well the pun was on your last line.
Maybe I'm obtuse. I still don't get it. I didn't say anything about someone could anything and I don't see a double meaning for a word if you're trying to make a pun (as you say). Would you mind explaining?
I love Opera more than any other browser out there and use it all the time, but wake me up when it starts to support nested tabs.
Yeah, nested tabs are a great idea. Also, they should steal resizable text fields from Safari, man that's hard to lose when using other browsers.
One could, if it were me, would say the same for OS X.
One could what?
Pun aside, you are using an ALPHA software - it's not even a beta! Believe me it will be better.
I'm sure it will be better by the time it is finalized, but we don't know in what ways and the alpha doesn't bring a whole lot of hope for features that concern me. You might note I was comparing it on speed and compliance to a nightly version of Webkit... not even an alpha.
From someone who switched from Firefox 3.1alpha1 today, and who has never seriously used a Mac.
Both Opera and Firefox are a lot better on Windows and Linux than on OS X. They both tend to ignore all the cool bits of OS X that make it nicer than other OS's in particular respects. I mean, Apple goes and implements a universal grammar checker that automatically works in everything that uses the default text APIs and cross platform browsers like Firefox and Opera both use nonstandard text handling for cross platform compatibility and don't bother to find a way to make it work. It makes them both second class applications, bounded by the limitations of the other OS's they're targeting.
On Linux and Windows I use Firefox, but when I can I use OS X and Safari because the combination is more featureful. If you don't use OS X I can see why you would not see the difference.
Okay I gave the OS X alpha a spin. It does get 100 on the Acid3, but still doesn't manage smooth animation on my machine and probably not on the reference hardware. Javascript performance is behind compared to the latest Webkit and the Sunspider test. On my machine the Opera alpha is very slightly slower than the release version of Safari and about six times slower than the nightly Webkit with the new javascript improvements. The alpha does support some OS X system services, but still fails to use the default spelling and grammar checking, instead offering only a proprietary spellcheck that ignores my carefully trained dictionaries that work in most all of my other programs.
It's nice to see Opera is still in the game and trying, but it feels like they're still falling behind in the new, turbocharged browser race. Now if only IE would fix their flat tires and get back in the race.
Apple has tied the iPod to the iTMS? Yes, sure, if by that you mean they created the iTMS because there was no way to legally buy anything but "independent" music (=music hardly anyone wants) online for it.
No, I mean technologically. Every iPod comes bundled with a copy of iTunes which connects users to the iTunes store. The iPod uses a proprietary DRM scheme to allow sale of DRM'd media and Apple does not license that DRM scheme for use by other stores. Both of these provide Apple with an advantage other music stores cannot duplicate. If the iPod is a monopoly influence, that's illegal.
Well, unless you bought from a WMD shop, forcing Apple to become yet another accomplice to the Microsoft monopoly. Not to mention that if they did that only iPod owners with Windows could buy songs for it, not Mac owners, because not a single one of those stores worked on the Mac.
Yeah, the market was broken because of Microsoft's monopoly abuse. They were even convicted of that abuse in one case although the "punishment" was so flaccid it did not even include stopping the crime.
Or do you mean that you can't play Fairplay songs on anything but an iPod?
You've still got it backwards. It is because the iPod will play Fairplay media, but not other DRM'd media and because other retailers can't sell Fairplay DRM'd media. That's the potentially illegal part. It doesn't matter one whit if other players can play Fairplay, but whether other stores can sell DRM'd media that works on the iPod.
Nobody forced you to buy anything from the iTMS, and you can pretty easily transcode the tunes to any format you want, including lossless, giving you the exact same sound.
No, but then other stores aren't automatically connected to when you install the software that ships with iPods and other stores proprietary DRM schemes aren't supported by the iPod either. If Apple is ruled to have a monopoly then both of those things are illegal leveraging of their iPod success into a separate market. Hopefully the courts won't act on that illegal action any more than they have on the other illegal abuse in these markets. That is, ideally they'll stop Apple right after breaking up both MS and the RIAA and MPAA cartels. Less ideally, they'll let Apple get away with their abuses along with everyone else after Apple pays a fine. The worst case is they stop Apple while letting the others continue.