I gotta admit, I've played the port/rewrite of Age of Empires for Windows Mobile, and it runs fine. If that can be converted, and it uses virtually the same resolution and object size as Starcraft, I can see a Starcraft port/rewrite working fine on a slightly larger screen.
And if somewhere in that chain your licenses aren't legit, of course MS isn't going to hold you responsible. No BSA audits for you...oh, wait, you'd still be subject to those. But if you could prove you didn't know the licenses were bogus they might waive all the fines! Wo-ho! Lucky you! Actually, you're missing the only good thing about the Genuine Advantage program - if you dob in the bastard that sold you the dodgy licenses, they give you free legit replacements for any pirated ones you got.
Oh, total Live n00b here BTW and was amazed by how bad it has been after the praise Id heard for the Live service - simple pages on the demo listings fail to render while demo downloads (once I det to them( come over blisteringly fast suggesting that it is a scalability problem rather than bandwidth. That's actually the reason I don't think it's web based. All MS' web servers are behind the Akamai CDN, which is about as rock solid stable and scalable as they come.
It's also the reason people mistakenly say Microsoft uses Linux servers.
That's for the website (which I agree is obviously Windows, because they use ASP.NET) and Windows Live ID is the same deal... but do we REALLY know what the Xbox Live authentication and matchmaking servers are running?
Yeah, and it's getting harder and harder to deal with ol' Turbine too, since they roadblocked us with the legal department a year or so ago, and now they've hired a PR agency to stonewall us. No longer can we throw feedback willy nilly with any expectation of someone actually reading it to decide whether it gets ignored.
Incorrect. Microsoft don't make the XBLA games either. The majority of them are made by the large "arcade" producers like Popcap, or the smaller independents like GarageGames. Microsoft make none of them. Every game they give out free for this program means they still have to pay that developer/publisher.
Not to say Blizzard has done everything perfectly, or even close to it. But they've never had outages lasting more than a few hours. People who have been unable to access their WoW service from several days to a week due to routing issues/authentication outages/realm server failure would disagree.
Besides, considering that Microsoft is offering a free download, they are giving away nothing but some downloaded bytes, which their crappy service should have provided in the first place. It's not as if they were having the expense of printing a DVD or something like that No, they're giving you something you would otherwise not have received without paying for it. Just because it's downloaded, does not mean that it's value is zero. And no, their "crappy service" should [i]not[/i] have provided those particular bytes to you in the first place, not without paying extra.
To Microsoft, there is a very real cost involved in providing you a free game - if you ever took economics, you would have learned about "Opportunity Cost" - where basically giving you the game costs them the full cost of the game as they have given up the opportunity to charge you for it. Although the opportunity cost decreases on average as it encounters people who would otherwise not have bought it anyway, the chance of it approaching zero is virtually non-existent.
Oh, and provisioning it to silver members too incurs an actual physical cost, as silver members do not contribute to the upkeep of the network, therefore any bandwidth they use is sunk cost (after all, Microsoft DOES have to pay for it).
You're just trying to justify why they should give you something for free, when in reality they have no obligation to give you anything at all (try reading to terms and conditions of service).
Though, it would be better just giving the value of the arcade game in MS points and letting us decide what to put it towards, that'd probably go down better.
I've heard from several places that VGChartz numbers are the most made up crap ever seen too - rather, they have no inside knowledge to allow them to actually determine sales figures. This lines up quite well with their charts for MMO players (which are obviously fabricated, just based on WoW's numbers alone)
There were a couple of advantages back then, such as being able to sit in the lobby and bitch while the "Play" button is greyed out. I think the single greatest tool for the game was Dual Client though, with the side effect that you never even saw the gaming zone pages. The new launcher kind of irritates me though.
Bullshit. MS Word supports two formats that virtually every other tool supports because they're open, standardised, and free to implement. Text, and RTF. They may not support every wiz-bang features of the binary Word format, but they allow the simple things like tables, formatting, and basic layout. Noone "needs" to use Word, and there's no tyranny.
The last time they did that, Sun sued them. I can understand why Microsoft's opinion is "fuck Java". Most software developers feel the same way about it.
so what is the purpose of all this then? What is behind this since there does not seem to be a direct profit stream related to this product. Is there a special version of MS VS which they'll sell specifically for building Silverlight apps/sites? Actually? Yes. It's called Expression, and it's more than enough incentive for them to make a product (Silverlight) which is good enough that people will want to use it so people will want to develop for it.
Silverlight is a client side application. You need to be all kinds of stupid to use ADO in it anyway.
You do realise that the parts which aren't in the ECMA standard are all easily identifiable by their namespace names (like "System.Windows" and are easily avoidable right? And that they are NOT part of the.NET Framework, but part of the Windows Forms library?
Reading through your posts I suggest you get a towel and wipe the froth off the floor. Might wanna go get checked for Rabies too, with all that mouth foaming.
Tell me more about the state of WiFi in New Zealand...
Since I don't live in New Zealand I cannot. If have no ability to use WiFi because you entire continent resonates at 2.4GHz or whatever, then by all means you should stay away from the iPhone. My comment was of course targeted at the US, it's a shame you NZ people are so self centered you can''t realize there are other nations on this planet. He's not, I am. Our current state of hotspot WiFi is "sod all" and "bloody expensive where they even bother to set it up". Regrettably, our 2.4GHz spectrum IS in use by every blasted cordless phone in the country, and our powerlines seem to resonate at just the right rate to make WiFi near impossible..
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I gotta admit, I've played the port/rewrite of Age of Empires for Windows Mobile, and it runs fine. If that can be converted, and it uses virtually the same resolution and object size as Starcraft, I can see a Starcraft port/rewrite working fine on a slightly larger screen.
It's also the reason people mistakenly say Microsoft uses Linux servers.
Hmm? The Decal program, and a portion of it's old plugins, are still there and working, so I'm not sure where you got that idea from...
Ah well, I know what you mean about no time - I swear it, MMOs are all designed to chew far too much time out of each day with menial tasks.
That's for the website (which I agree is obviously Windows, because they use ASP.NET) and Windows Live ID is the same deal... but do we REALLY know what the Xbox Live authentication and matchmaking servers are running?
Yeah, and it's getting harder and harder to deal with ol' Turbine too, since they roadblocked us with the legal department a year or so ago, and now they've hired a PR agency to stonewall us. No longer can we throw feedback willy nilly with any expectation of someone actually reading it to decide whether it gets ignored.
Incorrect. Microsoft don't make the XBLA games either. The majority of them are made by the large "arcade" producers like Popcap, or the smaller independents like GarageGames. Microsoft make none of them. Every game they give out free for this program means they still have to pay that developer/publisher.
Allow me: "Windows servers, what do you expect?"
Looks awfully like "blame Windows" and an inferral that another OS wouldn't have that problem.
Of course for the amusement... who's to say Xbox Live DOES run on Windows?
To Microsoft, there is a very real cost involved in providing you a free game - if you ever took economics, you would have learned about "Opportunity Cost" - where basically giving you the game costs them the full cost of the game as they have given up the opportunity to charge you for it. Although the opportunity cost decreases on average as it encounters people who would otherwise not have bought it anyway, the chance of it approaching zero is virtually non-existent.
Oh, and provisioning it to silver members too incurs an actual physical cost, as silver members do not contribute to the upkeep of the network, therefore any bandwidth they use is sunk cost (after all, Microsoft DOES have to pay for it).
You're just trying to justify why they should give you something for free, when in reality they have no obligation to give you anything at all (try reading to terms and conditions of service).
Though, it would be better just giving the value of the arcade game in MS points and letting us decide what to put it towards, that'd probably go down better.
I've heard from several places that VGChartz numbers are the most made up crap ever seen too - rather, they have no inside knowledge to allow them to actually determine sales figures. This lines up quite well with their charts for MMO players (which are obviously fabricated, just based on WoW's numbers alone)
Holy crap, 3 AC players in a row! Well, 4 now.
There were a couple of advantages back then, such as being able to sit in the lobby and bitch while the "Play" button is greyed out. I think the single greatest tool for the game was Dual Client though, with the side effect that you never even saw the gaming zone pages. The new launcher kind of irritates me though.
Apparantly all of Twitter's accounts are in the negative karma, and he has to resort to anonymous "M$" bashing. How pathetic.
Bullshit. MS Word supports two formats that virtually every other tool supports because they're open, standardised, and free to implement. Text, and RTF. They may not support every wiz-bang features of the binary Word format, but they allow the simple things like tables, formatting, and basic layout. Noone "needs" to use Word, and there's no tyranny.
The english language translation is "XNA lets you make games. And they work on the Xbox360 AND Windows."
The last time they did that, Sun sued them. I can understand why Microsoft's opinion is "fuck Java". Most software developers feel the same way about it.
Silverlight is a client side application. You need to be all kinds of stupid to use ADO in it anyway.
.NET Framework, but part of the Windows Forms library?
You do realise that the parts which aren't in the ECMA standard are all easily identifiable by their namespace names (like "System.Windows" and are easily avoidable right? And that they are NOT part of the
Reading through your posts I suggest you get a towel and wipe the froth off the floor. Might wanna go get checked for Rabies too, with all that mouth foaming.
Say, have you met Twitter/Erris/WhoeverHeIsToday?
That breaking isn't specific to Linux. Even Windows users tolerate MSDN periodically changing links and otherwise collapsing.
Because they'll say "what the fuck is this?" and demand you fix their computer. I once installed Linux on a friend. That did NOT go well.
No, frighteningly, he's not. That's Twitter, and he actually believes that bullshit.
Not so for Memory and Disks, which are where the dumb managers come in.
No, it'd get them an another "monopoly abuse lol1!!!!111!!" case, because you suggested adding features.
Since I don't live in New Zealand I cannot. If have no ability to use WiFi because you entire continent resonates at 2.4GHz or whatever, then by all means you should stay away from the iPhone. My comment was of course targeted at the US, it's a shame you NZ people are so self centered you can''t realize there are other nations on this planet. He's not, I am. Our current state of hotspot WiFi is "sod all" and "bloody expensive where they even bother to set it up". Regrettably, our 2.4GHz spectrum IS in use by every blasted cordless phone in the country, and our powerlines seem to resonate at just the right rate to make WiFi near impossible..
You forgot to mention seeing Zonk as the editor.