You can either hack it yourself, or (gasp!) pay others to do it, or take what is given to you for free and be grateful.
The option of offering constructive criticism should be there as well, but, with the understanding that if a developer is not working towards linux gaining a larger share of the desktop market, there's no reason for them to listen to constructive criticism. They should either hack it to do what they want, or wait for someone to pay them to develop.
If the developer is interested in linux being adopted by average end users more often, then the constructive criticism needs to be accepted and dealt with. Not meaning do everything everybody says, but at least accept it as constructive criticism and look at ways of overcoming the problem that the criticism highlights.
I think a lot of the people that say "Linux should do XYZ to make it more popular!" don't realize that not everyone is working towards the same goal. If average end-user adoption is not a goal, then the opinions of average end-users don't really matter and the (hack|pay|be grateful) options make sense.
Re:Nope, it's the putative new users problem
on
Linux Needs Critics
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Your use of "fault" suggests you don't understand what Moryath said. And your example seems to support Moryath's conclusion very well.
If a manufacturer makes a MOBO that doesn't support a type of HDD that PC World is selling, it isn't the manufacturer's fault, but it is their problem. At least, it is their problem if they want more people to buy their MOBOs. If you support a fraction of the hardware out there, you get a fraction of the customers. That fraction consists of people that bought pieces specifically to work with your product and people that just happen to have pieces that work with your product.
Its not about fault. Its about figuring out a goal. If your goal is to get more desktop users to run Linux on their DVR, then available hardware thats incompatible with your software becomes your problem. It becomes a challenge you have to overcome to reach your goal.
As far as linux spreading on the desktop, I couldn't guess at how many developers actually have a goal of making an OS for the average desktop user. I've spoken with a few that set goals of making the platform stable, or fast, or capable of doing a specific task they are interested in. All of that is fine and, I believe, necessary. But if there are people that actually want linux to gain market share on the desktop, they will have to face the problems of achieving that goal, even if its not their fault the problems exist.
The author makes a distinction between playing for fun and playing to win as if they are mutually exclusive. In reality, it is most certainly possible to play for fun AND play to win, and I believe that should be the target of game design.
I believe the best way to deal with balance and fairness is to make a game with balance, as in players of equal skill have an equal chance of winning, and depth, meaning there are many valid and usable options available to the player at any point throughout the game. I think the notion of depth is an important one the author either didn't think about or doesn't recognize as being a characteristic that can be separated away from balance and fairness. He touches on the idea of a game that lets everyone start out on an even footing but that has a single dominant strategy to win. That means the game lacks depth.
Variety could be a word to apply to the depth of a game, however variety is not enough and just having that does not ensure depth. Imagine you are playing a fighting game with 10 characters that all vary wildly. Now imagine in this game, the characters can all do something to knock you down to the ground and once down on the ground all you can do is get up. That's variety without depth because after the throw you have no options and your opponent knows exactly what you are going to do and has plenty of time to capitalize on it.
Targeting players that both play to win and play for fun is important. Because if someone is really playing just for fun with no care about winning, then game design loses a lot of its importance. At that point you just have to keep them doing something amusing for some period of time and it'll keep them happy.
Playing to Win by Sirlin could be a helpful guide to anyone designing a gaming experience. Because, unlike the author of this article, I don't think you can ever exclude playing to win from playing for fun. If you are playing Super Mario and you can simply walk from one end of the level to the other, its not fun. If you add the challenge, and the fun is trying to get past it, congratulations, you are playing to win.
Personal preference is what Zombie Ryushu was talking about. He didn't make any broad sweeping comments about what users of Windows want. What you quoted starts with "this guy" meaning he is taking a guess about what this one person's personal preferences are based on the article.
I think the lightheartedness of the whole thing goes even beyond what you are describing.
as Pluto passes overhead through Illinois' night skies
They aren't even saying they want to see it reestablished as a planet. They are saying that "When its in the sky above Illinois, it's a planet!"
I've read a few light-hearted resolutions. I think this is one of the funnier ones. And its a shame that so many people (like many here on/. and the blogger that tried so hard to make this a big deal) totally missed the joke.
And also, considering how successful he was at picking software he could sell for big money, there's a chance that in addition to learning to program, there may have been 10,000 hours of learning to maneuver in the rapidly growing computer industry.
I know people that I would consider master salesmen. They aren't sleezy or pushy, they are just good at selling stuff to you. Part of it is interpersonal skills and part of it is an understanding of whats for sale, who's buying, and how to shine the light on the product to maximize how useful it looks.
Hearing retellings of Gates' success makes leads me to believe he learned a lot at an early age but only part of it (and perhaps not the most important part in the end) was programming.
It sounds like they have at least some sort of scripted end for Tabula Rasa. As in it will end in a series of events, probably culminating in this ultimate weapon destroying the world. One ending for the whole world. The question was if any other MMOs also have a scripted end.
Just asking if something like this has happened before. Do you know if it has?
I've read past versions of the Guiness World Records Gamers Edition. They essentially random select. The Gamers Editions are often filled with, not only incredibly subjective claims, but often flatout lies.
I believe the last one I looked at was from 2007 and I encourage anyone to flip through it if they happen to be at a book store with an old copy. They list games as First of a genre that clearly aren't. They list games as introducing new features that had been around for a long time.
Its just a book full of lies some random people that don't know anything about video games (or video gamers for that matter) through together. Nothing more.
From the 2 or 3 sentences I've heard out of a Kindle 2, it didn't seem anywhere near indistinguishable from a human voice. It was still better than I expected, but I can't imagine it would replace a human reader. Even beyond simple voice synthesizing, the audio books I've listened to conveyed feelings, often did slightly different voices for different characters, stuff like that.
The audio books I have listened to are definately unique works. The way they are put together, the way they are read, background music on some of them, how they pick and prep the person reading...
TTS doesn't have any of that, it doesn't replace any of that actual work that went into the audio book version specifically. Its making use of the same source material, but thats there from purchasing the book itself.
That is very annoying. Although this has been the case with test versions of FF and IE as well. I don't know if test versions of FireFox still say not to install them along side existing FireFox installations, but I've been told that a few times before and the result has been the test version taking over the existing version.
Are there any browsers besides Opera that allow you to have as many copies of as many versions of it installed as you want?
I believe its the grid of webpage thumbnails he is referring to when he says Opera beat them to it. The difference with Opera's compared to Chrome is that Opera doesn't automatically pick what goes there, the user has to do that. It looks like the same goes for Safari and also Safari has a smoother visual for it.
The Control 1-9 is just his justification for why he likes that Opera doesn't automatically pick what sites go there. Its not the feature he is emphasizing.
Re â" media: Under XP you could select 'Stereo Mix' or similar under audio recording inputs and nicely capture any program then playing. No longer.
This refers just to XP. You can achieve the same thing in Vista, its just that by default the Wave Out Mix is disabled and by default disabled recording sources are hidden. Annoying, yes, but also only 2 clicks away from being fixed as long as the soundcard supports it (my newest mobo has integrated sound and under XP and Vista it does not support this).
Based on this post, it sounds like that functionality present in Vista has been removed. Has it actually been removed? Because this whole post looks like mindless fud.
And, as far as Photoshop CS4, I've experienced the same sort of behavior in Vista, XP and OS X. I don't understand why they are targeting Windows 7 with it. Can someone with a level head that's used Windows 7 in combination with a CS4 product confirm that Windows 7 is doing something that isn't just part of the Adobe protective measures that are present on any other supported OS?
The Cube World stuff he linked to is a series of children's toys. They are physical blocks with little stick figure people in them. If you put them together they recognize the connection and react. You can also do things like tilt them to interact with the stick figure people.
The Siftables at TED are much more capable and more powerful. But there are at least some basic elements that are almost identical to the CubeWorld toys.
One of my younger cousins has these. She loves them.
It doesn't site any legitimate sources, and links to a youtube video of a plane crashing, but that particular plane crash has also been showed on TLC and Discovery and described as being an unmanned, computer controlled plane.
They used iBench 5.0 for the HTML rendering test. Its an out of date benchmark for testing HTML render speeds that doesn't really represent internet browsing as it is today.
I love VIA processors because I've had great experiences with them, but this particular "win" seems to have very little actual value to it.
I think the issue is that functionality and quality don't go as far as they should in winning browser share. Mozilla fundraises to develop a good browser and market that browser. And that marketing made a big difference, especially right at its launch. This whole thing with the EU and the politics just seems to be going too far to me though.
I lost a lot of respect for Opera when they started whining about it and I feel the same loss of respect for Mozilla if they really jump in this too. Their fundraising has been justified (for the most part) in my opinion as a way of growing support for the standards, but that was a case of them building a good browser with functionality and quality and using it as the selling point. This is using politics to sabotage.
Are they talking about getting rid of the blue E and bundling other browsers or are they actually talking about stripping IE out of the OS completely?
I ask because, while I never use IE now that all the sites I frequent work in good alternative browsers, I do use HTML Applications based on IE regularly. Many of the software installation CDs I have use a simple HTA as the frontend for when the disc is dropped in and I frequently build simple HTAs to "streamline" windows for family and friends.
I don't care if "Internet Explorer" as the window that opens when you click a URL is replaced with something else and while I think bundling an arbitrary group of 3rd party browsers is bizarre, I don't really care if they do that. But, if they actually strip IE from the whole system and remove the HTML Application functionality, it would cut out a portion of the OS that's (at least somewhat) useful that isn't really connected to the issue at hand.
Those 2000+ people signed up for a game where alliances battle rivals through various methods. This didn't impact their hobby, this IS their hobby. What they signed up to is a game where this sort of thing not only can happen, but happens pretty often. If this is the first time something like this happened with an alliance this large, great, they got the high score in their game.
The only thing interesting about this whole situation is the "news" coverage it is getting.
It might seem like some sort of big deal because so many people are involved, but this sort of thing is a core element for the higher level play of the game. Maybe if the game didn't focus on this aspect of the gameplay as one of its main selling points to get new players, this would be interesting. This is just a "water is wet" story.
The real headline could be about how one alliance managed to use sites like Slashdot to wave the flag that their rival's outposts are now conquerable. Going so far as to get pseudo news sites with large followings to function as a communications tool and a rallying cry for a virtual world battle is actually pretty interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
The option of offering constructive criticism should be there as well, but, with the understanding that if a developer is not working towards linux gaining a larger share of the desktop market, there's no reason for them to listen to constructive criticism. They should either hack it to do what they want, or wait for someone to pay them to develop.
If the developer is interested in linux being adopted by average end users more often, then the constructive criticism needs to be accepted and dealt with. Not meaning do everything everybody says, but at least accept it as constructive criticism and look at ways of overcoming the problem that the criticism highlights.
I think a lot of the people that say "Linux should do XYZ to make it more popular!" don't realize that not everyone is working towards the same goal. If average end-user adoption is not a goal, then the opinions of average end-users don't really matter and the (hack|pay|be grateful) options make sense.
Your use of "fault" suggests you don't understand what Moryath said. And your example seems to support Moryath's conclusion very well.
If a manufacturer makes a MOBO that doesn't support a type of HDD that PC World is selling, it isn't the manufacturer's fault, but it is their problem. At least, it is their problem if they want more people to buy their MOBOs. If you support a fraction of the hardware out there, you get a fraction of the customers. That fraction consists of people that bought pieces specifically to work with your product and people that just happen to have pieces that work with your product.
Its not about fault. Its about figuring out a goal. If your goal is to get more desktop users to run Linux on their DVR, then available hardware thats incompatible with your software becomes your problem. It becomes a challenge you have to overcome to reach your goal.
As far as linux spreading on the desktop, I couldn't guess at how many developers actually have a goal of making an OS for the average desktop user. I've spoken with a few that set goals of making the platform stable, or fast, or capable of doing a specific task they are interested in. All of that is fine and, I believe, necessary. But if there are people that actually want linux to gain market share on the desktop, they will have to face the problems of achieving that goal, even if its not their fault the problems exist.
Based on this story, I believe they have shifted their efforts towards munging our brains.
The author makes a distinction between playing for fun and playing to win as if they are mutually exclusive. In reality, it is most certainly possible to play for fun AND play to win, and I believe that should be the target of game design.
I believe the best way to deal with balance and fairness is to make a game with balance, as in players of equal skill have an equal chance of winning, and depth, meaning there are many valid and usable options available to the player at any point throughout the game. I think the notion of depth is an important one the author either didn't think about or doesn't recognize as being a characteristic that can be separated away from balance and fairness. He touches on the idea of a game that lets everyone start out on an even footing but that has a single dominant strategy to win. That means the game lacks depth.
Variety could be a word to apply to the depth of a game, however variety is not enough and just having that does not ensure depth. Imagine you are playing a fighting game with 10 characters that all vary wildly. Now imagine in this game, the characters can all do something to knock you down to the ground and once down on the ground all you can do is get up. That's variety without depth because after the throw you have no options and your opponent knows exactly what you are going to do and has plenty of time to capitalize on it.
Targeting players that both play to win and play for fun is important. Because if someone is really playing just for fun with no care about winning, then game design loses a lot of its importance. At that point you just have to keep them doing something amusing for some period of time and it'll keep them happy.
Playing to Win by Sirlin could be a helpful guide to anyone designing a gaming experience. Because, unlike the author of this article, I don't think you can ever exclude playing to win from playing for fun. If you are playing Super Mario and you can simply walk from one end of the level to the other, its not fun. If you add the challenge, and the fun is trying to get past it, congratulations, you are playing to win.
Personal preference is what Zombie Ryushu was talking about. He didn't make any broad sweeping comments about what users of Windows want. What you quoted starts with "this guy" meaning he is taking a guess about what this one person's personal preferences are based on the article.
They aren't even saying they want to see it reestablished as a planet. They are saying that "When its in the sky above Illinois, it's a planet!"
/. and the blogger that tried so hard to make this a big deal) totally missed the joke.
I've read a few light-hearted resolutions. I think this is one of the funnier ones. And its a shame that so many people (like many here on
Yet another thing I have in common with dinosaurs.
And also, considering how successful he was at picking software he could sell for big money, there's a chance that in addition to learning to program, there may have been 10,000 hours of learning to maneuver in the rapidly growing computer industry.
I know people that I would consider master salesmen. They aren't sleezy or pushy, they are just good at selling stuff to you. Part of it is interpersonal skills and part of it is an understanding of whats for sale, who's buying, and how to shine the light on the product to maximize how useful it looks.
Hearing retellings of Gates' success makes leads me to believe he learned a lot at an early age but only part of it (and perhaps not the most important part in the end) was programming.
It sounds like they have at least some sort of scripted end for Tabula Rasa. As in it will end in a series of events, probably culminating in this ultimate weapon destroying the world. One ending for the whole world. The question was if any other MMOs also have a scripted end.
Just asking if something like this has happened before. Do you know if it has?
As in a proper, scripted end to the entire world?
I've read past versions of the Guiness World Records Gamers Edition. They essentially random select. The Gamers Editions are often filled with, not only incredibly subjective claims, but often flatout lies.
I believe the last one I looked at was from 2007 and I encourage anyone to flip through it if they happen to be at a book store with an old copy. They list games as First of a genre that clearly aren't. They list games as introducing new features that had been around for a long time.
Its just a book full of lies some random people that don't know anything about video games (or video gamers for that matter) through together. Nothing more.
The apparent bias towards console games is probably because its a list of the most influential console games.
"My tax dollars at work"
From the 2 or 3 sentences I've heard out of a Kindle 2, it didn't seem anywhere near indistinguishable from a human voice. It was still better than I expected, but I can't imagine it would replace a human reader. Even beyond simple voice synthesizing, the audio books I've listened to conveyed feelings, often did slightly different voices for different characters, stuff like that.
The audio books I have listened to are definately unique works. The way they are put together, the way they are read, background music on some of them, how they pick and prep the person reading...
TTS doesn't have any of that, it doesn't replace any of that actual work that went into the audio book version specifically. Its making use of the same source material, but thats there from purchasing the book itself.
That is very helpful!
That is very annoying. Although this has been the case with test versions of FF and IE as well. I don't know if test versions of FireFox still say not to install them along side existing FireFox installations, but I've been told that a few times before and the result has been the test version taking over the existing version.
Are there any browsers besides Opera that allow you to have as many copies of as many versions of it installed as you want?
I believe its the grid of webpage thumbnails he is referring to when he says Opera beat them to it. The difference with Opera's compared to Chrome is that Opera doesn't automatically pick what goes there, the user has to do that. It looks like the same goes for Safari and also Safari has a smoother visual for it.
The Control 1-9 is just his justification for why he likes that Opera doesn't automatically pick what sites go there. Its not the feature he is emphasizing.
This refers just to XP. You can achieve the same thing in Vista, its just that by default the Wave Out Mix is disabled and by default disabled recording sources are hidden. Annoying, yes, but also only 2 clicks away from being fixed as long as the soundcard supports it (my newest mobo has integrated sound and under XP and Vista it does not support this).
Based on this post, it sounds like that functionality present in Vista has been removed. Has it actually been removed? Because this whole post looks like mindless fud.
And, as far as Photoshop CS4, I've experienced the same sort of behavior in Vista, XP and OS X. I don't understand why they are targeting Windows 7 with it. Can someone with a level head that's used Windows 7 in combination with a CS4 product confirm that Windows 7 is doing something that isn't just part of the Adobe protective measures that are present on any other supported OS?
The Cube World stuff he linked to is a series of children's toys. They are physical blocks with little stick figure people in them. If you put them together they recognize the connection and react. You can also do things like tilt them to interact with the stick figure people.
The Siftables at TED are much more capable and more powerful. But there are at least some basic elements that are almost identical to the CubeWorld toys.
One of my younger cousins has these. She loves them.
Yes, thats one of a few sites that lists it. But not are actually official sites so its hard to say how legitimate the info is on there.
I noticed this the other day:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296
It doesn't site any legitimate sources, and links to a youtube video of a plane crashing, but that particular plane crash has also been showed on TLC and Discovery and described as being an unmanned, computer controlled plane.
They used iBench 5.0 for the HTML rendering test. Its an out of date benchmark for testing HTML render speeds that doesn't really represent internet browsing as it is today.
I love VIA processors because I've had great experiences with them, but this particular "win" seems to have very little actual value to it.
I think the issue is that functionality and quality don't go as far as they should in winning browser share. Mozilla fundraises to develop a good browser and market that browser. And that marketing made a big difference, especially right at its launch. This whole thing with the EU and the politics just seems to be going too far to me though.
I lost a lot of respect for Opera when they started whining about it and I feel the same loss of respect for Mozilla if they really jump in this too. Their fundraising has been justified (for the most part) in my opinion as a way of growing support for the standards, but that was a case of them building a good browser with functionality and quality and using it as the selling point. This is using politics to sabotage.
Are they talking about getting rid of the blue E and bundling other browsers or are they actually talking about stripping IE out of the OS completely?
I ask because, while I never use IE now that all the sites I frequent work in good alternative browsers, I do use HTML Applications based on IE regularly. Many of the software installation CDs I have use a simple HTA as the frontend for when the disc is dropped in and I frequently build simple HTAs to "streamline" windows for family and friends.
I don't care if "Internet Explorer" as the window that opens when you click a URL is replaced with something else and while I think bundling an arbitrary group of 3rd party browsers is bizarre, I don't really care if they do that. But, if they actually strip IE from the whole system and remove the HTML Application functionality, it would cut out a portion of the OS that's (at least somewhat) useful that isn't really connected to the issue at hand.
Is that what they are going for?
Those 2000+ people signed up for a game where alliances battle rivals through various methods. This didn't impact their hobby, this IS their hobby. What they signed up to is a game where this sort of thing not only can happen, but happens pretty often. If this is the first time something like this happened with an alliance this large, great, they got the high score in their game.
The only thing interesting about this whole situation is the "news" coverage it is getting.
It might seem like some sort of big deal because so many people are involved, but this sort of thing is a core element for the higher level play of the game. Maybe if the game didn't focus on this aspect of the gameplay as one of its main selling points to get new players, this would be interesting. This is just a "water is wet" story.
The real headline could be about how one alliance managed to use sites like Slashdot to wave the flag that their rival's outposts are now conquerable. Going so far as to get pseudo news sites with large followings to function as a communications tool and a rallying cry for a virtual world battle is actually pretty interesting.