Wow, sorry to hear that. Also, I'm glad you didn't think I was being flippant, because I certainly wasn't. To be honest, I view the constant need to put every detail of your private life on Facebook as an addiction many people have, and I don't believe its an altogether healthy one.
Honestly, though, if it's this much trouble for you, have you considered just signing up and not putting any info on there you care about other than a name and an e-mail address? That way you can use the service but not really worry about privacy concerns (unless you're concerned about a friend's list, I suppose).
If you don't want to do that (and I can certainly respect that too)... it sounds like your friends are leaving you, not vice-versa. Don't feel bad about finding some folks who would actually make an effort (an e-mail or IM is an 'effort'?) to contact you when they want to hang out, because they actually enjoy your company.
It's like you're free to not do business with a company, only as long as you're willing to give up aspects of your life (like friendship) you used to get for free.
May I respectfully submit that if their friendship hinged on having a Facebook account, it probably wasn't a friendship worth salvaging?
For me, the rule is to only put up there info I actually want (or wouldn't mind) publicly disclosed. For instance, I use LinkedIn to keep track of professional contacts. Nothing I have there is something I want to keep confidential, of course. It doesn't bother me at all (and in fact, can be beneficial) if that information is sold to interested parties, because the only thing it would be good for is evaluating me as a hiring candidate. In addition, it provides me the service of keeping track of people. Win/win, but you just have to know the rules of the game ahead of time.
It's also for that reason I stay far away from Facebook.
Oddly enough, I think your post supports my thinking. China (we know we're talking about the PRC, ok?) simply doesn't view the counterfeiting as a significant problem to be dealt with. They likely blame the US for "demanding low prices", and so feel perfectly justified in manufacturing their own line of products with licensed designs to boost profits.
My assertion: China isn't really interested in stopping the counterfeiting - therefore, it will continue. Do you disagree?
I play games because they should be fun. I do not play games for profit, nor do I get upset if someone has more achievements, or a greater score than I.
Blizzard cares. They do, in fact, make their games for profit.
I'm not sure if Blizzards' work this way, but Xbox's achievements are essentially a competitive ranking of sorts. As such, it's arguably equivalent to online cheating. Moreover, the perceived value of the achievements are reduced if there's also a perception of rampant cheating.
I don't know if I necessarily support Blizzard's latest action here, but looking at it from their perspective, you could say that they're simply looking out for the interests of their average, non-cheating customers to keep the achievement playing-field level.
Coincidental timing after China's latest strangling of rare earths, yes?
It just means that China is now doing significant in-country R&D and authorship that they have a vested interest in protecting.
Pre-1900, the US was the same way. We couldn't give two shits about the European IP we were constantly ripping, and it pissed off plenty of European countries. Once we really started developing stuff in-country, our IP laws suddenly grew teeth.
History repeating itself itself.
The history is accurate, but not quite a reflection of current events IMO (although it may someday get there).
The counterfeiting is happening in China. If they were interested in stopping it, then they would do so. It's not like the counterfeiters are exactly hiding their production factories. This is China, knowing that the American politicians will never get tough on China, seeing as how they're financing most of our out-of-control national debt.
It's why nothing has come of thirty years of "Middle East Peace Talks". All the talking in the world won't do you any good if both parties at the table aren't really sincere.
I'm not sure its only consumers that always drive the shifts from platform to platform. Developers got screwed by Nintendo since there was only one game in town (so to speak). When Sony offered the relatively dev-friendly alternative of the PlayStation, devs jumped at the chance to free themselves from Nintendo's shackles, not to mention the high cost and relatively low capacity of cartridges. Once Sony got a near-monopoly in the PS2, they started acting just like Nintendo did. I was developing games for the PS2 relatively late in its life cycle, and SCA's approval process for the TRC (Technical Requirements Checklist) involved them dictating actual game design to us, such as the color of our game palette and other such idiocy. Essentially, they began aggressively turning away any game they didn't feel had "hit" potential, since they felt the market was glutted. It's true there was no way our game would ever by a smash hit, but it was a quality title with millions already sunk into its development.
So, after pissing off developers like that, they wonder why devs don't feel bad at all about switching over to the Xbox or Wii instead developing for the PS3? I'm no longer working on console development, but I wouldn't be surprised if Sony has gotten a lot more friendly with developers lately.
Still, it takes a critical mass of consumers flocking to a new device AND devs fed up with the current regime to force a switch like this. But as long as there remains some amount of competition, corporate restrictions can't get too draconian, or the competition starts looking more and more attractive.
When you're a child, it seems like a good idea to eat nothing but candy and stay up as late as you want. No matter how you implement those 'good ideas', they'll end up badly in the long run. I'm also sure that to a child, doing your homework, eating your broccoli, and going to bed on time seem like terrible ideas.
What is far, far more likely is each ebook will be purchased once, the DRM stripped and the resulting file posted in five or six different formats for the planet to freely download.
You could theoretically do that with music, yet people buy in droves from iTunes and Amazon, 100% DRM free. Eventually, publishers will realize it's pointless to fight the tide of technology and market forces, or they'll simply go out of business.
Many people don't mind rewarding companies that offer good products at reasonable prices - especially when its more convenient to purchase legitimately than to pirate. That, to me, is the real lesson to be learned from the Kindle. Purchasing an e-book is so convenient, I have a hard time imagining it to be much easier. Once the costs fall into line with the perceived value and the readers come down in price (like $50 for a reader low), you'll see the e-book market explode, and printed books will be a boutique item (high-quality hardbacks), or only available as print-on-demand. Of course, this won't happen overnight. It will occur gradually over the next decade or two - the same way computers, internet access, and cell phones have become completely ubiquitous technology among the citizens of first-world nations.
Also, I find it amusing that someone purchasing CDs is held up as an example as some sort of technological Luddite.
That's why WA doesn't tax some items like food or prescription drugs.
And yes, the rich don't spend as much (percentage-wise) as poor. What do they do with the rest? They INVEST it (business owners put profits back in their own business, such as upgrading equipment or hiring new staff). Trying to soak the rich with taxes inevitably leads to additional economic downturns, because while it's rhetoric that sounds fantastic to the common Joe, the simple fact is that the "rich" tend to put a huge percentage of their money back into investments, which is largely what drives our economy (and we desperately need that right now). Doesn't anyone remember how punitive high-income schemes have worked before? The luxury-item tax? 70% income tax brackets? They all had to be repealed because of unintended consequences - namely, they did more harm to low and middle class folks than the rich.
The opponents of this measure are some very smart and creative people. What are they proposing as an alternative to income taxes?
Oh, I don't know... working within their budget like everyone else has to? The state government is run by folks who don't feel bad about spending our state's rainy day fund when we actually had a surplus, and then complain about the lack of money when it eventually 'rains'. What we really need is to elect some folks that have any sense of fiscal responsibility at all. We already pay sales tax on goods purchased locally. It's about as fair as a tax as it comes - a tax on consumption rather than wealth. Those who purchase a lot pay a lot. Those who buy little pay little.
I'm nowhere near the tax mark, but it's a foolish, irresponsible idea. I'd much rather those people retain their own income to spend at their discretion, which helps to drive the economy. I thought we all would have learned by now that government spending doesn't work all that well to stimulate an economy.
No thanks. That's exactly why I stopped buying Wii titles (I have all three consoles). I tried one or two, and realized I really disliked motion control in the types of games I enjoy playing. Waggling your arm back and forth to slash your sword is entertaining for the first ten minutes. After ten hours of that, you're wishing you could just press a button.
I'm sure that motion control is great for some demographics, and could really have some specific titles that do great with it, like party games. I'm betting the Kinect/360 is going to be the perfect platform for fitness games. And with one-to-one control, a swordfighting game could be a lot of fun. But motion control just doesn't belong in every title.
Ads are what pay the bills, but search is what brings the eyeballs in. I find it interesting that people don't believe that Google might simply be trying to enhance the core search experience. After all, it's not exactly altruistic for them to do that, as better search functionality still will indirectly create more ad revenue for them.
Kotor had a fantastic story, and the most awesome droid ever. The story started getting interesting after the first planet, and the game really started picking up at that point too. Shame you missed it.
I knew a graphics developer who looked for every opportunity to use powers of two so he could use bit-masking and rotating: rotate 1 bit right to divide by two, or XOR with 0x07 to get modulus 8, etc.
This sort of thing is occasionally required in videogame programming. However, it's becoming less and less relevant. Question: is it quicker to flip a bit or set a value on an entire dword at once? If you don't know the answer to that, either measure it or just write the obvious code! Is the code going to be used in an inner loop, called thousands or even millions of times a second? No? Then write code that is obvious, because a clever optimization won't make a damn bit of difference, and will just be harder to debug when it goes wrong or needs to change. Do you know if a branch (potential cache miss) will outweigh a conditional optimization? Measure it. Trying to be clever by using bitshifts instead of divide by two? Check to see if the compiler is doing this for you (hint: it probably is).
I've seen too much game code that was incredibly "clever", and completely useless. That is, crazy optimizations, inline assembly, all sorts of obfuscation were used in places where they made no real impact on performance, or worse, even negatively impacted it.
So, I definitely agree with your point. But understanding goes two ways. Unless you really, really know what the hell you're doing, and MEASURE your results, let the compiler do its thing. Frankly, it's probably a better optimizer than you.
In general, it's far better to understand what's expensive at a fairly high level when working with C++. This will help prevent you from creating bad architectures from which no amount of low-level optimization will save you. String manipulation is expensive. Dynamic allocation is expensive, and can fragment memory. Watch copy constructor expense in your containers. Don't block the main thread - ever, for ANY reason. etc, etc...
Sure, for XBox 360 shooters fans, you probably don't actually realize what's perfect movement. It's not achievable with a game pad. Not even talking about FPS ported from console to PC with horrible game-pad feeling while using the mouse.
You mean, like being able to move fluidly at any angle, at any variable speed, instead of a single speed in only eight directions? Oh, wait...
I've had pretty good luck installing most Windows programs by clicking on the buttons that say "Next" in succession, followed by the button that says "Finish". I can see where clicking on random buttons might cause problems when installing software.
we all know that setting arbitrary and somewhat lower limits turns you into the most quoted man in history (640k should be enough for everyone....)
You do realize the 640K limit was not "arbitrary", right? It was a limitation of addressable space of the pre-386 Intel processors. And in fact, I'll just take this opportunity to again point outthe dubious nature of this quote.
Both blatantly recycle game engines from previous titles.
Not to disagree with your other points, but I don't understand this complaint in particular. "Recycling" a game engine is the entire point of creating a game engine. Quite frankly, it's a waste of money to rewrite an engine too often. Money otherwise spent re-inventing technology can be put into art and gameplay development.
they do it for the good of mankind, so long as mankind has his Health Insuranse Plan card
Why are health care practitioners derided when they want to make a decent living just like the rest of us? The harsh reality is, the only reason your child got such excellent care was because you PAID for it (ok, the insurance paid, and you pay the premiums, but that's splitting hairs). Without the motivation to earn good money, the medical field would not attract the best and brightest minds, nor would we have the fantastic advances in medical advances that we enjoy now. Sure, there are altruistic folks out there who do wonderful work, but there's no way we could care for everyone without the support of a well-financed medical industry like we have now.
You say that like it's a bad thing. When designing commercial aircraft, I don't mind that aircraft engineers typically take very slow and deliberate steps. Slow and steady advancement saves lives.
Since we're talking about NASA here, just look at how environmental concerns already (arguably) doomed two Space Shuttles. I have nothing against environmentally motivated improvements, provided the new solutions aren't rushed into place without proving their viability against the track record of the old proven component it's replacing. The rush to introduce the latest and greatest must be tempered against the risk of ANY change in a field where the slightest flaw or miscalculation can result in a tragically fatal outcome.
Your external video player can scale videos anyway you want, or not at all. I'd also suggest that a one click "open with" dialog is a nicer interface than a web browser that starts a video as soon as you hit the page. Why is launching another app such a big deal?
An external video is still problematic, unless we can agree on a universal format that every external external player on every platform can handle.
There is one thing I'll say. It would be nice if there were a one click way to pass an URL to an external video player for streaming, instead of "open with" which downloads the file first and passes that file to the video player. This could easily be done with no changes to the protocol.
Yep, agree on this point.
Software should do one thing, and do it well.
It depends on how you defined "one thing". Wouldn't you define "displaying web-based content" as "one thing"? Shouldn't then, by your definition, everything be handled by the browswer? Why not launch images in a separate viewer? It completely depends on whether you interpret video as part of the web content, or something external and separate. Why the arbitrary distinction between still and moving images?
Slashdot Mirror
Don't forget gaming platforms. Wouldn't Xbox Live points fall under this? Or MMO microtransation currency, like NCCoin?
No, it's a story about a guy who used quick thinking to save another's life. I think you really, really missed the point of the story.
Wow, sorry to hear that. Also, I'm glad you didn't think I was being flippant, because I certainly wasn't. To be honest, I view the constant need to put every detail of your private life on Facebook as an addiction many people have, and I don't believe its an altogether healthy one.
Honestly, though, if it's this much trouble for you, have you considered just signing up and not putting any info on there you care about other than a name and an e-mail address? That way you can use the service but not really worry about privacy concerns (unless you're concerned about a friend's list, I suppose).
If you don't want to do that (and I can certainly respect that too)... it sounds like your friends are leaving you, not vice-versa. Don't feel bad about finding some folks who would actually make an effort (an e-mail or IM is an 'effort'?) to contact you when they want to hang out, because they actually enjoy your company.
It's like you're free to not do business with a company, only as long as you're willing to give up aspects of your life (like friendship) you used to get for free.
May I respectfully submit that if their friendship hinged on having a Facebook account, it probably wasn't a friendship worth salvaging?
For me, the rule is to only put up there info I actually want (or wouldn't mind) publicly disclosed. For instance, I use LinkedIn to keep track of professional contacts. Nothing I have there is something I want to keep confidential, of course. It doesn't bother me at all (and in fact, can be beneficial) if that information is sold to interested parties, because the only thing it would be good for is evaluating me as a hiring candidate. In addition, it provides me the service of keeping track of people. Win/win, but you just have to know the rules of the game ahead of time.
It's also for that reason I stay far away from Facebook.
Oddly enough, I think your post supports my thinking. China (we know we're talking about the PRC, ok?) simply doesn't view the counterfeiting as a significant problem to be dealt with. They likely blame the US for "demanding low prices", and so feel perfectly justified in manufacturing their own line of products with licensed designs to boost profits.
My assertion: China isn't really interested in stopping the counterfeiting - therefore, it will continue. Do you disagree?
Who really cares though?
It's a game.
I play games because they should be fun. I do not play games for profit, nor do I get upset if someone has more achievements, or a greater score than I.
Blizzard cares. They do, in fact, make their games for profit.
I'm not sure if Blizzards' work this way, but Xbox's achievements are essentially a competitive ranking of sorts. As such, it's arguably equivalent to online cheating. Moreover, the perceived value of the achievements are reduced if there's also a perception of rampant cheating.
I don't know if I necessarily support Blizzard's latest action here, but looking at it from their perspective, you could say that they're simply looking out for the interests of their average, non-cheating customers to keep the achievement playing-field level.
Coincidental timing after China's latest strangling of rare earths, yes?
It just means that China is now doing significant in-country R&D and authorship that they have a vested interest in protecting.
Pre-1900, the US was the same way. We couldn't give two shits about the European IP we were constantly ripping, and it pissed off plenty of European countries. Once we really started developing stuff in-country, our IP laws suddenly grew teeth.
History repeating itself itself.
The history is accurate, but not quite a reflection of current events IMO (although it may someday get there).
The counterfeiting is happening in China. If they were interested in stopping it, then they would do so. It's not like the counterfeiters are exactly hiding their production factories. This is China, knowing that the American politicians will never get tough on China, seeing as how they're financing most of our out-of-control national debt.
It's why nothing has come of thirty years of "Middle East Peace Talks". All the talking in the world won't do you any good if both parties at the table aren't really sincere.
I'm not sure its only consumers that always drive the shifts from platform to platform. Developers got screwed by Nintendo since there was only one game in town (so to speak). When Sony offered the relatively dev-friendly alternative of the PlayStation, devs jumped at the chance to free themselves from Nintendo's shackles, not to mention the high cost and relatively low capacity of cartridges. Once Sony got a near-monopoly in the PS2, they started acting just like Nintendo did. I was developing games for the PS2 relatively late in its life cycle, and SCA's approval process for the TRC (Technical Requirements Checklist) involved them dictating actual game design to us, such as the color of our game palette and other such idiocy. Essentially, they began aggressively turning away any game they didn't feel had "hit" potential, since they felt the market was glutted. It's true there was no way our game would ever by a smash hit, but it was a quality title with millions already sunk into its development.
So, after pissing off developers like that, they wonder why devs don't feel bad at all about switching over to the Xbox or Wii instead developing for the PS3? I'm no longer working on console development, but I wouldn't be surprised if Sony has gotten a lot more friendly with developers lately.
Still, it takes a critical mass of consumers flocking to a new device AND devs fed up with the current regime to force a switch like this. But as long as there remains some amount of competition, corporate restrictions can't get too draconian, or the competition starts looking more and more attractive.
When you're a child, it seems like a good idea to eat nothing but candy and stay up as late as you want. No matter how you implement those 'good ideas', they'll end up badly in the long run. I'm also sure that to a child, doing your homework, eating your broccoli, and going to bed on time seem like terrible ideas.
Don't mistake 'popular' for 'good'.
What is far, far more likely is each ebook will be purchased once, the DRM stripped and the resulting file posted in five or six different formats for the planet to freely download.
You could theoretically do that with music, yet people buy in droves from iTunes and Amazon, 100% DRM free. Eventually, publishers will realize it's pointless to fight the tide of technology and market forces, or they'll simply go out of business.
Many people don't mind rewarding companies that offer good products at reasonable prices - especially when its more convenient to purchase legitimately than to pirate. That, to me, is the real lesson to be learned from the Kindle. Purchasing an e-book is so convenient, I have a hard time imagining it to be much easier. Once the costs fall into line with the perceived value and the readers come down in price (like $50 for a reader low), you'll see the e-book market explode, and printed books will be a boutique item (high-quality hardbacks), or only available as print-on-demand. Of course, this won't happen overnight. It will occur gradually over the next decade or two - the same way computers, internet access, and cell phones have become completely ubiquitous technology among the citizens of first-world nations.
Also, I find it amusing that someone purchasing CDs is held up as an example as some sort of technological Luddite.
That's why WA doesn't tax some items like food or prescription drugs.
And yes, the rich don't spend as much (percentage-wise) as poor. What do they do with the rest? They INVEST it (business owners put profits back in their own business, such as upgrading equipment or hiring new staff). Trying to soak the rich with taxes inevitably leads to additional economic downturns, because while it's rhetoric that sounds fantastic to the common Joe, the simple fact is that the "rich" tend to put a huge percentage of their money back into investments, which is largely what drives our economy (and we desperately need that right now). Doesn't anyone remember how punitive high-income schemes have worked before? The luxury-item tax? 70% income tax brackets? They all had to be repealed because of unintended consequences - namely, they did more harm to low and middle class folks than the rich.
The opponents of this measure are some very smart and creative people. What are they proposing as an alternative to income taxes?
Oh, I don't know... working within their budget like everyone else has to? The state government is run by folks who don't feel bad about spending our state's rainy day fund when we actually had a surplus, and then complain about the lack of money when it eventually 'rains'. What we really need is to elect some folks that have any sense of fiscal responsibility at all. We already pay sales tax on goods purchased locally. It's about as fair as a tax as it comes - a tax on consumption rather than wealth. Those who purchase a lot pay a lot. Those who buy little pay little.
I'm nowhere near the tax mark, but it's a foolish, irresponsible idea. I'd much rather those people retain their own income to spend at their discretion, which helps to drive the economy. I thought we all would have learned by now that government spending doesn't work all that well to stimulate an economy.
No thanks. That's exactly why I stopped buying Wii titles (I have all three consoles). I tried one or two, and realized I really disliked motion control in the types of games I enjoy playing. Waggling your arm back and forth to slash your sword is entertaining for the first ten minutes. After ten hours of that, you're wishing you could just press a button.
I'm sure that motion control is great for some demographics, and could really have some specific titles that do great with it, like party games. I'm betting the Kinect/360 is going to be the perfect platform for fitness games. And with one-to-one control, a swordfighting game could be a lot of fun. But motion control just doesn't belong in every title.
Ads are what pay the bills, but search is what brings the eyeballs in. I find it interesting that people don't believe that Google might simply be trying to enhance the core search experience. After all, it's not exactly altruistic for them to do that, as better search functionality still will indirectly create more ad revenue for them.
Kotor had a fantastic story, and the most awesome droid ever. The story started getting interesting after the first planet, and the game really started picking up at that point too. Shame you missed it.
I knew a graphics developer who looked for every opportunity to use powers of two so he could use bit-masking and rotating: rotate 1 bit right to divide by two, or XOR with 0x07 to get modulus 8, etc.
This sort of thing is occasionally required in videogame programming. However, it's becoming less and less relevant. Question: is it quicker to flip a bit or set a value on an entire dword at once? If you don't know the answer to that, either measure it or just write the obvious code! Is the code going to be used in an inner loop, called thousands or even millions of times a second? No? Then write code that is obvious, because a clever optimization won't make a damn bit of difference, and will just be harder to debug when it goes wrong or needs to change. Do you know if a branch (potential cache miss) will outweigh a conditional optimization? Measure it. Trying to be clever by using bitshifts instead of divide by two? Check to see if the compiler is doing this for you (hint: it probably is).
I've seen too much game code that was incredibly "clever", and completely useless. That is, crazy optimizations, inline assembly, all sorts of obfuscation were used in places where they made no real impact on performance, or worse, even negatively impacted it.
So, I definitely agree with your point. But understanding goes two ways. Unless you really, really know what the hell you're doing, and MEASURE your results, let the compiler do its thing. Frankly, it's probably a better optimizer than you.
In general, it's far better to understand what's expensive at a fairly high level when working with C++. This will help prevent you from creating bad architectures from which no amount of low-level optimization will save you. String manipulation is expensive. Dynamic allocation is expensive, and can fragment memory. Watch copy constructor expense in your containers. Don't block the main thread - ever, for ANY reason. etc, etc...
Sure, for XBox 360 shooters fans, you probably don't actually realize what's perfect movement. It's not achievable with a game pad. Not even talking about FPS ported from console to PC with horrible game-pad feeling while using the mouse.
You mean, like being able to move fluidly at any angle, at any variable speed, instead of a single speed in only eight directions? Oh, wait...
clicking on randome buttons guessing answers
I've had pretty good luck installing most Windows programs by clicking on the buttons that say "Next" in succession, followed by the button that says "Finish". I can see where clicking on random buttons might cause problems when installing software.
we all know that setting arbitrary and somewhat lower limits turns you into the most quoted man in history (640k should be enough for everyone....)
You do realize the 640K limit was not "arbitrary", right? It was a limitation of addressable space of the pre-386 Intel processors. And in fact, I'll just take this opportunity to again point out the dubious nature of this quote.
Both blatantly recycle game engines from previous titles.
Not to disagree with your other points, but I don't understand this complaint in particular. "Recycling" a game engine is the entire point of creating a game engine. Quite frankly, it's a waste of money to rewrite an engine too often. Money otherwise spent re-inventing technology can be put into art and gameplay development.
they do it for the good of mankind, so long as mankind has his Health Insuranse Plan card
Why are health care practitioners derided when they want to make a decent living just like the rest of us? The harsh reality is, the only reason your child got such excellent care was because you PAID for it (ok, the insurance paid, and you pay the premiums, but that's splitting hairs). Without the motivation to earn good money, the medical field would not attract the best and brightest minds, nor would we have the fantastic advances in medical advances that we enjoy now. Sure, there are altruistic folks out there who do wonderful work, but there's no way we could care for everyone without the support of a well-financed medical industry like we have now.
Besides, by law, no one is supposed to be denied emergency medical care in the US. Hospitals simply absorb the cost (well, in reality, they pass the cost onto paying customers) of uninsured patients who can't afford treatment. Incidentally, it's reported now that 55% of emergency care is uncompensated.
Who are fairly averse to risk and bold updates.
You say that like it's a bad thing. When designing commercial aircraft, I don't mind that aircraft engineers typically take very slow and deliberate steps. Slow and steady advancement saves lives.
Since we're talking about NASA here, just look at how environmental concerns already (arguably) doomed two Space Shuttles. I have nothing against environmentally motivated improvements, provided the new solutions aren't rushed into place without proving their viability against the track record of the old proven component it's replacing. The rush to introduce the latest and greatest must be tempered against the risk of ANY change in a field where the slightest flaw or miscalculation can result in a tragically fatal outcome.
Your external video player can scale videos anyway you want, or not at all. I'd also suggest that a one click "open with" dialog is a nicer interface than a web browser that starts a video as soon as you hit the page. Why is launching another app such a big deal?
An external video is still problematic, unless we can agree on a universal format that every external external player on every platform can handle.
There is one thing I'll say. It would be nice if there were a one click way to pass an URL to an external video player for streaming, instead of "open with" which downloads the file first and passes that file to the video player. This could easily be done with no changes to the protocol.
Yep, agree on this point.
Software should do one thing, and do it well.
It depends on how you defined "one thing". Wouldn't you define "displaying web-based content" as "one thing"? Shouldn't then, by your definition, everything be handled by the browswer? Why not launch images in a separate viewer? It completely depends on whether you interpret video as part of the web content, or something external and separate. Why the arbitrary distinction between still and moving images?