Which division of MS do you work for? Hint: an insult to the faceless corporation you work for is neither a troll nor flamebait.
This is quite possibly the single most annoying thing about Slashdot nowadays. For fuck's sake people, you don't have to work for a company to like their products. On a website where posters are constantly complaining about e.g. government officials who refuse to think for themselves, the fucking hive mind is pretty god-damn prevalent here. Fucking hypocrites.
Whether you agree with someone or not, they're entitled to their own fucking opinion.
(And for what it's worth, what you posted was Flamebait - you insulted a whole group of people by comparing them to an ill-conceived UI design pattern that doesn't work on half the platforms they're implementing it on).
I think a "menu" style application selection is bad. I can't count how many times I've bounced between different options 2 or 3 levels down and had to start over b/c my mouse moved a few pixels the wrong way.
What infuriates me is that they stopped using "sticky" menus ten or more years ago. You want to open a file, click "file" and edit is open -- damn it, the file menu should STAY open until I make a selection or click outside the menu.
It's a really shitty design that iinm MS started, and unfortunately KDE has emulated it.
I tried a few times, and I still cannot work out what the hell you're talking about there. Can you expand upon that?
No, it's nothing to do with forcing "xbox style licensing" at all. It's a somewhat misguided attempt at a unified interface across everything running Windows. Windows Phone, Windows Tablet, Windows PC, Xbox 360 - all exactly the same to use. Apple's doing the same thing unifying the interface between iPhone, iPad, OS X, Apple TV as well.
Whether it will work remains to be seen, but as long as you have studios like Stardock (you know, the ones that call themselves desktop customization experts, because they've been at it since OS/2?) you can always switch back to the old way.
The Microsoft Logo Guidelines actually say you must do this. All Start Menu shortcuts are required to be in Publisher Name\Product Name, all games are required not to have any shortcuts but must add themselves to Game Explorer.
And, um, how is that exactly? They can't offer Windows 7 or XP the way they are (VDI licenses can't be rented to the public. SPLA licenses are designed for this, but Windows 7 on a SPLA is a no-go). They could offer Terminal Services connections to Windows Server, but Windows Server doesn't support the full DirectX platform and most games will refuse to install on it anyway (that and an Office license costs a bloody fortune for Terminal Servers).
Near as anyone I know can tell, there's no way to legitimately offer desktop OSs to the public as OnLive is doing. It's pretty much a given that they have to set up a special agreement.
Well, looking at all the software I have installed at work, 100% of it either has shitty or no open source and/or Linux equivalent (exempting Windows itself from this assertion).
But anyway, this is a whole different beast. The difference is that with books, they can be sold through many stores so retailers can compete to set prices. With app stores, you only have one store per platform through which you can sell (exempting Amazon's Android market for the moment). WP7 apps have to go through Microsoft, iOS apps through Apple. However, the price on those markets is kept down due to the fact that there can be many apps that do the same task - you don't have to buy Angry Birds, you can buy Grumpy Pigs instead (example). With books, there is only one George RR Martin or Raymond E Feist, so for competition to apply it has to be at the retail level. Agency model prevents this competition as the publishing companies set the price for the entire retail market.
True, however Lulu's rule doesn't prevent retailers from discounting the book - it prevents the author from screwing over Lulu's channel partners by selling the book cheaper to, say, Amazon then they can buy it. They explicitly say they sell on a wholesale basis, not Agency. Very different beast - the Agency model constricts the retailers as much as it does the publishers.
Many of those are transfer errors - i.e. the process introduced the errors rather than the people. The book was still copy-edited when the manuscript was received.
And frankly, bad though many e-books may be, without editors they would be worse.
Maybe this could bring up a market for companies that just do copy editing, or cover design, etc on a competitive basis, so publishers aren't needed?
If that were the truth, Amazon could get into just as much shit as the publishers are now - price dumping is illegal and will get you hit with an anti-trust suit just as quickly (perhaps more so) than price fixing. I'm pretty sure Amazon isn't that stupid.
And instead Amazon ended up temporarily dropping one publisher's entire catalogue. Even now, for Agency Model publishers Amazon has a little banner on the price effectively saying "Why does this book cost so much? Click here".
Except that's not true. Embassies and military bases are sovereign territory of the host state, but have special diplomatic immunity by treaty (the Vienna Convention). So before declaring something a FACT (in capital letters no less), you should probably verify it's not WRONG (also capital letters).
Now that, I can agree with. And for what it's worth, I do think it's stupid that you need to have a bank vault and $20,000 to develop literally anything for a Nintendo or Sony console. XNA is a good first step, and there's not Xbox Live Indie Games which I hear actually allows a proper devkit so maybe sometime in the future you can run just about anything on an Xbox.
You just stated that "A console doesn't run any standard PC titles, especially PC titles that an individual just compiled in Visual Studio". This is patently false, as an Xbox 360 can run titles an individual just compiled in Visual Studio. He tells you this, then suddenly you redefine what you said. Face it, you're wrong.
Not the Kindle Fire specifically no. But tablet PCs in general? Hell yes. In fact, doctors were using HP Tablet PCs since long before the iPad was a fucking twinkle in someone's eye.
So what you're saying is that Apple is what Microsoft would be if they let Microsoft Research make things? (Barring Songsmith, which technically tanks the whole statement if I don't)
Slashdot Mirror
Which division of MS do you work for? Hint: an insult to the faceless corporation you work for is neither a troll nor flamebait.
This is quite possibly the single most annoying thing about Slashdot nowadays. For fuck's sake people, you don't have to work for a company to like their products. On a website where posters are constantly complaining about e.g. government officials who refuse to think for themselves, the fucking hive mind is pretty god-damn prevalent here. Fucking hypocrites.
Whether you agree with someone or not, they're entitled to their own fucking opinion.
(And for what it's worth, what you posted was Flamebait - you insulted a whole group of people by comparing them to an ill-conceived UI design pattern that doesn't work on half the platforms they're implementing it on).
I think a "menu" style application selection is bad. I can't count how many times I've bounced between different options 2 or 3 levels down and had to start over b/c my mouse moved a few pixels the wrong way.
What infuriates me is that they stopped using "sticky" menus ten or more years ago. You want to open a file, click "file" and edit is open -- damn it, the file menu should STAY open until I make a selection or click outside the menu.
It's a really shitty design that iinm MS started, and unfortunately KDE has emulated it.
I tried a few times, and I still cannot work out what the hell you're talking about there. Can you expand upon that?
No, it's nothing to do with forcing "xbox style licensing" at all. It's a somewhat misguided attempt at a unified interface across everything running Windows. Windows Phone, Windows Tablet, Windows PC, Xbox 360 - all exactly the same to use. Apple's doing the same thing unifying the interface between iPhone, iPad, OS X, Apple TV as well.
Whether it will work remains to be seen, but as long as you have studios like Stardock (you know, the ones that call themselves desktop customization experts, because they've been at it since OS/2?) you can always switch back to the old way.
Or Shift+Click will do it too if you're on a Mac with no middle mouse button
The Microsoft Logo Guidelines actually say you must do this. All Start Menu shortcuts are required to be in Publisher Name\Product Name, all games are required not to have any shortcuts but must add themselves to Game Explorer.
And, um, how is that exactly? They can't offer Windows 7 or XP the way they are (VDI licenses can't be rented to the public. SPLA licenses are designed for this, but Windows 7 on a SPLA is a no-go). They could offer Terminal Services connections to Windows Server, but Windows Server doesn't support the full DirectX platform and most games will refuse to install on it anyway (that and an Office license costs a bloody fortune for Terminal Servers).
Near as anyone I know can tell, there's no way to legitimately offer desktop OSs to the public as OnLive is doing. It's pretty much a given that they have to set up a special agreement.
Well, looking at all the software I have installed at work, 100% of it either has shitty or no open source and/or Linux equivalent (exempting Windows itself from this assertion).
Purple can get you sued by Cadbury, who have a trademark on the colour purple.
It does cost $5 to get Monopoly on your phone.
But anyway, this is a whole different beast. The difference is that with books, they can be sold through many stores so retailers can compete to set prices. With app stores, you only have one store per platform through which you can sell (exempting Amazon's Android market for the moment). WP7 apps have to go through Microsoft, iOS apps through Apple. However, the price on those markets is kept down due to the fact that there can be many apps that do the same task - you don't have to buy Angry Birds, you can buy Grumpy Pigs instead (example). With books, there is only one George RR Martin or Raymond E Feist, so for competition to apply it has to be at the retail level. Agency model prevents this competition as the publishing companies set the price for the entire retail market.
True, however Lulu's rule doesn't prevent retailers from discounting the book - it prevents the author from screwing over Lulu's channel partners by selling the book cheaper to, say, Amazon then they can buy it. They explicitly say they sell on a wholesale basis, not Agency. Very different beast - the Agency model constricts the retailers as much as it does the publishers.
No, the EU is going after Apple for creating the Agency Model. And you know how rough they are with big American businesses.
What's this about "two separate publication deals"? No publisher will tolerate that, so you'd be a publisher with no clients.
I've seen them on bus shelters, TV advertisements, newspapers, buses, internet advertisements... the list goes on.
Many of those are transfer errors - i.e. the process introduced the errors rather than the people. The book was still copy-edited when the manuscript was received.
And frankly, bad though many e-books may be, without editors they would be worse.
Maybe this could bring up a market for companies that just do copy editing, or cover design, etc on a competitive basis, so publishers aren't needed?
If that were the truth, Amazon could get into just as much shit as the publishers are now - price dumping is illegal and will get you hit with an anti-trust suit just as quickly (perhaps more so) than price fixing. I'm pretty sure Amazon isn't that stupid.
The latest Raymond E. Feist book has an entire chapter with the wrong character name through it.
And instead Amazon ended up temporarily dropping one publisher's entire catalogue. Even now, for Agency Model publishers Amazon has a little banner on the price effectively saying "Why does this book cost so much? Click here".
Except that's not true. Embassies and military bases are sovereign territory of the host state, but have special diplomatic immunity by treaty (the Vienna Convention). So before declaring something a FACT (in capital letters no less), you should probably verify it's not WRONG (also capital letters).
Now that, I can agree with. And for what it's worth, I do think it's stupid that you need to have a bank vault and $20,000 to develop literally anything for a Nintendo or Sony console. XNA is a good first step, and there's not Xbox Live Indie Games which I hear actually allows a proper devkit so maybe sometime in the future you can run just about anything on an Xbox.
You just stated that "A console doesn't run any standard PC titles, especially PC titles that an individual just compiled in Visual Studio". This is patently false, as an Xbox 360 can run titles an individual just compiled in Visual Studio. He tells you this, then suddenly you redefine what you said. Face it, you're wrong.
PCs by definition easily handle 1080p. In fact, 1080 is a significant downgrade on PC resolutions.
Not the Kindle Fire specifically no. But tablet PCs in general? Hell yes. In fact, doctors were using HP Tablet PCs since long before the iPad was a fucking twinkle in someone's eye.
Asus begs to differ with you, what with all those Linux powered eeePCs they sell.
TrueType is. Granted OpenType is gaining steam, but there you have it.
So what you're saying is that Apple is what Microsoft would be if they let Microsoft Research make things? (Barring Songsmith, which technically tanks the whole statement if I don't)