You make an interesting argument, but I don't know if I fully agree. Let's say Microsoft wants to keep Linux buried in litigation through this organization. Well, the problem is that it has other members with very likely competing interests. For example, Nokia might not like seeing its patent troll baby being used to quash one of its own business partners. So what happens when this sort of conflict of interest arises? And it will.
I find it hard to believe this troll group will be used for the evil people seem to be claiming. More likely, it will be used as a massive reserve for defensive patents. Much like a defensive alliance between nations, you won't see members picking fights and suing people actively, but instead the group exists to allow for a collective means to *defend* from REAL patent trolls.
Is it just me or does it seem insanely odd that a "shell" for an OS is a) shipped seperately and b) doesn't use text as a native data type? Maybe I'm stuck in the "past," but I always saw the shell as the barebones method for a user interact with an OS. Either this really is cutting edge (object data types) or this is just a hyped-up.NET application that is designed to *look like* the shell.
Except all of us have hotmail accounts. We all grew up with hotmail. But most of my friends now use hotmail as their "spam account." Hotmail accounts tend to get used for registration crap, but when I ask for an email address from a collegue, most of the time I'll get a personal domain, work, school, gmail, or yahoo. Having a hotmail or msn email makes you look like a noob idiot.
Just because you grew up using it doesn't mean you are loyal to it.
You're right, where's the news here? I mean the McDonalds down the street from me gets hit by mortars all the time and they keep serving cheese burgers without skipping a beat too.
"there were only 842 help-line calls out of more than 50,000 user sessions in the first 45 days of service."
So almost one in 50? I'd say that's pretty shitty when you consider a lot of people didn't know the number to call except... hmm, maybe by looking it up on the INTERNET? Let's also not forget a lot of people wouldn't have tried it out until after they were away from their homes and actually needed the net.
notice you had to patch it? i remember playing the game with a balance patch too. i do remember the toxic gen being very strong (esp tunnel). i played the game for about a year straight every day before giving up. i remember the GLA was tough to beat once you got into a super weapon match (china get owned by them there).
In some ways, I sorta hope they succeed. This will likely introduce a whole new set of spyware / virus / phishing schemes never before imaginable or possible until Vista.
I loved Generals. It was an awesome game. For a while.
But I have vowed never to give EA another dime for that franchise if it's the last thing I ever do. Why? Because their commitment to their customers is crap compared to their RTS rival Blizzard. Here's what happened for you non C&G:G players:
First they released the game. It was cool. People noticed it was blantantly unbalanced. It was still imbalanced. They released 3 or 4 patches and then Zero Hour came out. Zero hour further screwed up the balance of the game. In the end, they patched it a few more times and then left it in a crippled, obviously screwed up state. I remember being so frustrated with the game being one sided that I was posting in their support forums. EVERYBODY was angry about the game. It came down to a point where people were telling prospective customers to not purchase the game because EA doesn't care about you once you cough up cash. It was only after insane amounts of anti-EA posts when EA staff finally started interacting - on a very limited basis - with the community. I remember their first post being an apology of sorts. But it was clear the higher ups were telling them to can support and move on to working on the LoTR game that was coming up.
The consensus was that the game coulda been great, but EA's lack of commitment to release balance patches (is it that much work???) killed hard core players' will to keep playing. I remember vowing to never play again until they patched the current version. I haven't picked up that CD since.
Why would I complain about the game's balance? Because the expansion set made the game have TWELVE sides and yet at the end of the day there was one or two CLEAR superior sides to play (inf and usaf). It became boring and frustrating to play when two out of three random opponents you played was one of the two cheese sides.
I don't care how shiny and flashy their next game is. I'm not giving them a damn dime. If they are going to release a multiplayer RTS and then not bother to make sure it's balanced, I'm not interested.
You are talking about the man who directed one of the top internet brands in the world through the bubble burst and into profitability. $1.1 million plus $80k ($1.18 million) for a CEO is chump change. They could double or triple the cost of his security and salary and he'd still be worth it. When you have a CEO that makes your company adapt and grow to new trends as well as Amazon has, paying the CEO less than 0.05% of your company's revenue isn't insane.
7 years ago, people weren't really complaining about Altavista and having to go to page 3 to find the right result either. But then Google changed the status quo.
If you think about it, Microsoft has been screaming and flailing for attention lately. Look at all the "leaked" memos and overhyped-and-then-suddenly-delayed products. The storm has been going on for months and nobody has even noticed. They're trying to compete with Google on the hip news race, but it's obvious after their initial press releases, their products seem to get forgotten by the mainstream media.
Yeah. If Oracle tried to take Ubuntu, the very next day you'd see news about a fork. The goals of Oracle are simply too different from the developers of Ubuntu for any simbiotic relationship to develop. Oracle wants a stable, no frills server for a massively scaleable database. Ubunto aims for the desktop crowd.
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You make an interesting argument, but I don't know if I fully agree. Let's say Microsoft wants to keep Linux buried in litigation through this organization. Well, the problem is that it has other members with very likely competing interests. For example, Nokia might not like seeing its patent troll baby being used to quash one of its own business partners. So what happens when this sort of conflict of interest arises? And it will.
I find it hard to believe this troll group will be used for the evil people seem to be claiming. More likely, it will be used as a massive reserve for defensive patents. Much like a defensive alliance between nations, you won't see members picking fights and suing people actively, but instead the group exists to allow for a collective means to *defend* from REAL patent trolls.
And I thought I'd never get a chance to tag a story with "ponies" again.
Looks like they built the functionality of a brick straight into the phone! Er... Wait, I think I have that sentence backwards...
So it's only available to the people they want it open to? Isn't that how "proprietary" is also defined?
http://www.middlewareblog.com/2006/04/20/the-futur e-of-ipods/
I think the most elegant solution to this problem will come from Apple in a year or two.
Is it just me or does it seem insanely odd that a "shell" for an OS is a) shipped seperately and b) doesn't use text as a native data type? Maybe I'm stuck in the "past," but I always saw the shell as the barebones method for a user interact with an OS. Either this really is cutting edge (object data types) or this is just a hyped-up .NET application that is designed to *look like* the shell.
This is partially true.
Except all of us have hotmail accounts. We all grew up with hotmail. But most of my friends now use hotmail as their "spam account." Hotmail accounts tend to get used for registration crap, but when I ask for an email address from a collegue, most of the time I'll get a personal domain, work, school, gmail, or yahoo. Having a hotmail or msn email makes you look like a noob idiot.
Just because you grew up using it doesn't mean you are loyal to it.
This is Rob, your janitor.
Please stop filling up the garbage can with office supplies. It makes the trash heavier. I hate surfing the web in sweaty clothes.
The declining prices of the XBox 360 will surely seal its doomed fate.
I been probing my girlfriend's tongue for months. And don't worry, the research has been fruitful; I've found many uses for it.
When can I sign up to write a virus for the OS?
You're right, where's the news here? I mean the McDonalds down the street from me gets hit by mortars all the time and they keep serving cheese burgers without skipping a beat too.
"there were only 842 help-line calls out of more than 50,000 user sessions in the first 45 days of service."
So almost one in 50? I'd say that's pretty shitty when you consider a lot of people didn't know the number to call except... hmm, maybe by looking it up on the INTERNET? Let's also not forget a lot of people wouldn't have tried it out until after they were away from their homes and actually needed the net.
Nice spin.
notice you had to patch it? i remember playing the game with a balance patch too. i do remember the toxic gen being very strong (esp tunnel). i played the game for about a year straight every day before giving up. i remember the GLA was tough to beat once you got into a super weapon match (china get owned by them there).
Sure, at the expense of hurting themselves even more.
Notice that eBay uses a little e. They're only a little evil. Whereas Microsoft is just Evil.
In some ways, I sorta hope they succeed. This will likely introduce a whole new set of spyware / virus / phishing schemes never before imaginable or possible until Vista.
I loved Generals. It was an awesome game. For a while.
But I have vowed never to give EA another dime for that franchise if it's the last thing I ever do. Why? Because their commitment to their customers is crap compared to their RTS rival Blizzard. Here's what happened for you non C&G:G players:
First they released the game. It was cool. People noticed it was blantantly unbalanced. It was still imbalanced. They released 3 or 4 patches and then Zero Hour came out. Zero hour further screwed up the balance of the game. In the end, they patched it a few more times and then left it in a crippled, obviously screwed up state. I remember being so frustrated with the game being one sided that I was posting in their support forums. EVERYBODY was angry about the game. It came down to a point where people were telling prospective customers to not purchase the game because EA doesn't care about you once you cough up cash. It was only after insane amounts of anti-EA posts when EA staff finally started interacting - on a very limited basis - with the community. I remember their first post being an apology of sorts. But it was clear the higher ups were telling them to can support and move on to working on the LoTR game that was coming up.
The consensus was that the game coulda been great, but EA's lack of commitment to release balance patches (is it that much work???) killed hard core players' will to keep playing. I remember vowing to never play again until they patched the current version. I haven't picked up that CD since.
Why would I complain about the game's balance? Because the expansion set made the game have TWELVE sides and yet at the end of the day there was one or two CLEAR superior sides to play (inf and usaf). It became boring and frustrating to play when two out of three random opponents you played was one of the two cheese sides.
I don't care how shiny and flashy their next game is. I'm not giving them a damn dime. If they are going to release a multiplayer RTS and then not bother to make sure it's balanced, I'm not interested.
You are talking about the man who directed one of the top internet brands in the world through the bubble burst and into profitability. $1.1 million plus $80k ($1.18 million) for a CEO is chump change. They could double or triple the cost of his security and salary and he'd still be worth it. When you have a CEO that makes your company adapt and grow to new trends as well as Amazon has, paying the CEO less than 0.05% of your company's revenue isn't insane.
7 years ago, people weren't really complaining about Altavista and having to go to page 3 to find the right result either. But then Google changed the status quo.
Can Oracle make their searches more relevant than Google's?
Next week: "Torvalds Patches Kernel Against Cross-Platform Virus"
If you think about it, Microsoft has been screaming and flailing for attention lately. Look at all the "leaked" memos and overhyped-and-then-suddenly-delayed products. The storm has been going on for months and nobody has even noticed. They're trying to compete with Google on the hip news race, but it's obvious after their initial press releases, their products seem to get forgotten by the mainstream media.
Yeah. If Oracle tried to take Ubuntu, the very next day you'd see news about a fork. The goals of Oracle are simply too different from the developers of Ubuntu for any simbiotic relationship to develop. Oracle wants a stable, no frills server for a massively scaleable database. Ubunto aims for the desktop crowd.
the author believes that Microsoft will unleash an abundance of next-generation applications that will take everyone by surprise.
Does the (pretty much destined to fail) Origami count?