Kind of off topic, but the casual/hardcore distinction is bullshit. Nintendo has more mass-market appeal, yes, but a lot of the people who buy Wiis are simply die-hard Nintendo fans from earlier consoles, who eat up Zelda, Mario, Metroid, Super Smash, etc (like me). Those games are definitely hardcore, and I challenge anyone to call someone who has been a fan of Nintendo since the NES "casual." In my mind, the Xbox and its so-called "hardcore" audience is really the fratboy-type gamers who just like violent games such as Halo and Gears of War. I actually think though, that with XBLA the Xbox has decent casual wares, and I would also say that at this point the Wii is selling more not based on its merits but simply based on word of mouth. And I think that if the Zune 2 had been a little earlier to market, before the iPod touch came around, it would probably have done very well since it does everything an iPod does, plus more, and still looks reasonably attractive.
Umm, the comment you replied to was talking about how everyone considered Vista a failure and yet it sold more than OS X and Linux combined (or well has greater market share in the case of desktop Linux). I'd say you were the one who forgot what you replied to. And the Zune point is completely relevant, as the Zune is now clearly in second place behind the iPod, where everything else more or less fell into niche usage. People keep joking about never seeing a Zune, but I've seen more Zunes than I've seen Creative or Sandisk players these days. I think that's a pretty big achievement in a market that they don't dominate.
You fail to acknowledge the huge mindshare that MS has in the XBox owning, Halo playing group. Personally, I don't see what's so great about Halo, but there is a large number of people whose main experience with video games is Halo.
I'm pretty sure the XBox division has been making money for a while now, and the Zune is probably the best device out there for just playing media/music. And it's been generally accepted that their hardware (keyboards, mice, etc) is high quality and not fail, and all the game development studios they own are most definitely not fail either. And besides that, ignoring Windows and Office is incredibly disingenuous, that's like saying that besides the iPod line, Apple is a failure.
Have you been missing all the stuff about Larrabee? As of now it's still up in the air whether it will be successful, and my person guess is that it won't be, but who knows?
According to the engadget article their patents are fairly specific and not overly broad, but if they were to sue Palm just for using multi-touch that would definitely be stifling innovation, and I don't see how that could be construed otherwise. If the patents prevent other companies from building on Apple's groundwork, that is also stifling innovation. It's not protecting their device's novelty so much as being lazy; why innovate when no one else can do anything similar to what you can do?
But the big stick analogy is good, as is the nuclear option analogy. I don't think either company really wants to enter a long and costly legal fight. I don't see why Palm would force their hand, but Apple has been threatening that they will "protect" their IP so if anyone would start the fight, it would have to be Apple.
That's pretty interesting, and probably the first and only Engadget article actually worth reading on its own merits. I think it's safe to say that if Apple sues Palm, both sides will suffer a protracted legal battle, but I think Apple has more money unfortunately, so it can use that to stifle innovation. But I guess it goes without saying that the patent system needs a huge overhaul in the digital age.
I agree, although by the way you've got it a bit backwards. UAC makes admin accounts run as a regular user by default, and elevates privileges when they are needed. It also lets you elevate privileges from a standard account to an admin by entering an admin's password, but that's not the usual setup I guess. Unless by standard account you mean the default account when you install Windows, in which case I just misunderstood you.
Well, that isn't what I had in mind, but I was talking about more like running multiple programs at once, although I think you knew that. But that's basically why I have my Wii, for when friends are over and don't have enough laptops to play starcraft or something. On an unrelated note, I had really been wishing they would bring 8 player gameplay to Brawl, with 4 Gamecube and 4 Wii controllers. They have that in Bomberman Blast, another excellent WiiWare title, and it's pretty crazy fun.
I have a Wii, as my sig suggests, and downloading games is fairly slow on it. The games are pretty small but they take forever to download, and I've downloaded a lot so I've gone through the process many times. I also hate how they don't provide a goddamn progress bar, instead using a weird metric wherein Mario, or occasionally Luigi, runs and collects coins, presumably indicating the speed of the download, and occasionally he hits one of three blocks on the screen. Said blocks probably indicate the 1/3, 2/3, and 100% mark for the download but it sometimes seems be be a bit off. That said, Mega Man 9 is a brilliant, albeit brutal game, and you only have to suffer through downloading it once, so it's not too much trouble. I sometimes wish that the Wii had a better, multitasking OS with more complex features, but really, when I want that I play on my PC, which can do complex features and graphics better than any console.
Hmm, I just tried it, and it seems the backspace behavior is inconsistent. If you only use the back/forward arrows, it always gets you up, but if you use the breadcrumbs, it goes back. Apparently I've never noticed. I'm still not sure what you mean by "Breadcrumbs don't work with long path names", since I just navigated to a fairly deep directory, C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\MODI\12.0\DRIVERS, with the window purposefully small, and I can still navigate easily to any of the folders above the DRIVERS folder in the hierarchy, as well as the sibling folders. You can't do that with the up arrow. And again, if you just want to go up, how hard is it to click the parent folder's name? I just fired up Dolphin, and it works exactly the same, complete with the weird backspace function. I was going to suggest using Dolphin on Windows but I guess that doesn't solve the problem. You can always try an explorer replacement, like explorer2, if you don't like Vista's explorer. Nothing prevents you from doing that. Explorer2 is actually pretty nice besides that, it has tabs and lets you split the window into two panes.
OK, that just shows that you haven't used Vista, since C:\Documents and Settings has been changed to just C:\Users\, and all the My prefixes were removed. I don't see how the folder names are harder to click on than the up arrow was, and they're not small, but the little chevrons between folders might be if you're drunk or something. On the other hand though, the breadcrumbs give you more functionality than the up arrow did. And finally, you know you can always press backspace to go up? If you're going to whine about things, at least try to keep it accurate.
I think it probably doesn't throw off total disk usage but if you right click to see the folder size of the Windows folder itself then it might show up to be too big. I read that on one of the Windows developers' blogs so it should be accurate.
I just realized one thing- netbooks would be a bit hardpress to have 11-12GB taken up by the OS, but it seems like Windows 7 should be smaller since they took out Movie Maker, Photo Gallery, and some other stuff. Also, I would say that on a netbook the idea is probably to keep most of your storage either on the "cloud" or on another machine anyway, so maybe it doesn't matter as much as it would seem.
Haha, thanks for verifying that I'm not a marketdroid, I was worried for a second. I'm actually reading K&R (The C Programming Language) right now and I have seen some other things written by Kernighan. I suppose my views on this might change over time, so I will quietly get off your lawn.
Yeah, basically. A 1TB drive can be had for $100 these days. A Vista install is actually 11GB stock, and if you really want to you can trim it down using vLite. Also, there's a weird thing with the Windows folder in that it includes a junction to another location inside the Windows folder, something like winsxs or something like that, and so that space gets counted twice, although I don't know whether that throws off the total disk usage stat.
Those are your requirements, but they don't apply to everyone. If you're trying to argue that mingw gcc is not a compiler, I don't think you'll find much success on that front. I also don't see how using mingw gcc is accession to vendor control or a dead end, and even using MSVC isn't really, just use an older version if you have to. What you're saying is that Vista/7/Windows in general is not the best fit for you, which is perfectly, fine, but I don't see why others have to use your metrics to judge software.
I'm sorry, who am I? I guess I don't know myself, or something. If you really want to know, I'm just a random EECS student at UC Berkeley, who happens to use Windows along with FOSS tools and also is somewhat proficient Linux/UNIX, likes programming in his spare time, and also likes playing PC games. But feel free to elaborate on who I supposedly am.
I was just giving an example. Seriously though, Paint now has pressure sensitive tablet support, which is pretty cool. There are a host of other things on that blog, a lot of which are under the hood, since it's the Engineering Windows 7 blog.
I don't know enough about mingw gcc, but I don't see how being limited to the public APIs of Windows makes it limited to about 10% of the real environment.
I'm just not a fan of the crackhead software marketing model, also called teaseware, where your initial purchase gains you nothing useful other than a window into the marketplace where you can buy the various options that let you do useful stuff, like sound or 3d or video.
That's just flat out wrong, since there is no initial purchase, unless you include the Windows license (which I'm guessing you would), and you actually can use sound, 3d, or video in the express editions. This is just one quick result I found from Google, and it's almost 3 years old: http://www.burninghands.net/2006/04/01/vcexpress-with-directx-sdk/ . And then there's the whole XNA system, which is designed for hobbyists to use with the Express editions. It might be limited, but again, if you're doing anything more than that, you're probably intending on selling your product. And I don't see what Google has to do with anything, and unless you work at Google I don't know how you would know that they don't use Visual Studio for their Windows software. In fact, since Chrome still only exists on Windows, I would guess that maybe they did use Visual Studio for something.
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Selectively quoting somehow makes your point true? I think that's called a Straw Man, similar to what Apple does with its Mac ads.
Kind of off topic, but the casual/hardcore distinction is bullshit. Nintendo has more mass-market appeal, yes, but a lot of the people who buy Wiis are simply die-hard Nintendo fans from earlier consoles, who eat up Zelda, Mario, Metroid, Super Smash, etc (like me). Those games are definitely hardcore, and I challenge anyone to call someone who has been a fan of Nintendo since the NES "casual." In my mind, the Xbox and its so-called "hardcore" audience is really the fratboy-type gamers who just like violent games such as Halo and Gears of War. I actually think though, that with XBLA the Xbox has decent casual wares, and I would also say that at this point the Wii is selling more not based on its merits but simply based on word of mouth. And I think that if the Zune 2 had been a little earlier to market, before the iPod touch came around, it would probably have done very well since it does everything an iPod does, plus more, and still looks reasonably attractive.
Umm, the comment you replied to was talking about how everyone considered Vista a failure and yet it sold more than OS X and Linux combined (or well has greater market share in the case of desktop Linux). I'd say you were the one who forgot what you replied to. And the Zune point is completely relevant, as the Zune is now clearly in second place behind the iPod, where everything else more or less fell into niche usage. People keep joking about never seeing a Zune, but I've seen more Zunes than I've seen Creative or Sandisk players these days. I think that's a pretty big achievement in a market that they don't dominate.
My bullshit detector went off as soon as I read this. Really, every new version? Every version of Word between 97 and 2003 looked exactly the same.
Those are all fairly boring, but there's the whole XBox division that people seem to be ignoring here.
You fail to acknowledge the huge mindshare that MS has in the XBox owning, Halo playing group. Personally, I don't see what's so great about Halo, but there is a large number of people whose main experience with video games is Halo.
I'm pretty sure the XBox division has been making money for a while now, and the Zune is probably the best device out there for just playing media/music. And it's been generally accepted that their hardware (keyboards, mice, etc) is high quality and not fail, and all the game development studios they own are most definitely not fail either. And besides that, ignoring Windows and Office is incredibly disingenuous, that's like saying that besides the iPod line, Apple is a failure.
It's also a run-on, that first comma should be a period or at least a semicolon, and then the one before for should also be a period.
Have you been missing all the stuff about Larrabee? As of now it's still up in the air whether it will be successful, and my person guess is that it won't be, but who knows?
According to the engadget article their patents are fairly specific and not overly broad, but if they were to sue Palm just for using multi-touch that would definitely be stifling innovation, and I don't see how that could be construed otherwise. If the patents prevent other companies from building on Apple's groundwork, that is also stifling innovation. It's not protecting their device's novelty so much as being lazy; why innovate when no one else can do anything similar to what you can do?
But the big stick analogy is good, as is the nuclear option analogy. I don't think either company really wants to enter a long and costly legal fight. I don't see why Palm would force their hand, but Apple has been threatening that they will "protect" their IP so if anyone would start the fight, it would have to be Apple.
That's pretty interesting, and probably the first and only Engadget article actually worth reading on its own merits. I think it's safe to say that if Apple sues Palm, both sides will suffer a protracted legal battle, but I think Apple has more money unfortunately, so it can use that to stifle innovation. But I guess it goes without saying that the patent system needs a huge overhaul in the digital age.
I agree, although by the way you've got it a bit backwards. UAC makes admin accounts run as a regular user by default, and elevates privileges when they are needed. It also lets you elevate privileges from a standard account to an admin by entering an admin's password, but that's not the usual setup I guess. Unless by standard account you mean the default account when you install Windows, in which case I just misunderstood you.
Well, that isn't what I had in mind, but I was talking about more like running multiple programs at once, although I think you knew that. But that's basically why I have my Wii, for when friends are over and don't have enough laptops to play starcraft or something. On an unrelated note, I had really been wishing they would bring 8 player gameplay to Brawl, with 4 Gamecube and 4 Wii controllers. They have that in Bomberman Blast, another excellent WiiWare title, and it's pretty crazy fun.
I have a Wii, as my sig suggests, and downloading games is fairly slow on it. The games are pretty small but they take forever to download, and I've downloaded a lot so I've gone through the process many times. I also hate how they don't provide a goddamn progress bar, instead using a weird metric wherein Mario, or occasionally Luigi, runs and collects coins, presumably indicating the speed of the download, and occasionally he hits one of three blocks on the screen. Said blocks probably indicate the 1/3, 2/3, and 100% mark for the download but it sometimes seems be be a bit off. That said, Mega Man 9 is a brilliant, albeit brutal game, and you only have to suffer through downloading it once, so it's not too much trouble. I sometimes wish that the Wii had a better, multitasking OS with more complex features, but really, when I want that I play on my PC, which can do complex features and graphics better than any console.
Hmm, I just tried it, and it seems the backspace behavior is inconsistent. If you only use the back/forward arrows, it always gets you up, but if you use the breadcrumbs, it goes back. Apparently I've never noticed. I'm still not sure what you mean by "Breadcrumbs don't work with long path names", since I just navigated to a fairly deep directory, C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\MODI\12.0\DRIVERS, with the window purposefully small, and I can still navigate easily to any of the folders above the DRIVERS folder in the hierarchy, as well as the sibling folders. You can't do that with the up arrow. And again, if you just want to go up, how hard is it to click the parent folder's name? I just fired up Dolphin, and it works exactly the same, complete with the weird backspace function. I was going to suggest using Dolphin on Windows but I guess that doesn't solve the problem. You can always try an explorer replacement, like explorer2, if you don't like Vista's explorer. Nothing prevents you from doing that. Explorer2 is actually pretty nice besides that, it has tabs and lets you split the window into two panes.
OK, that just shows that you haven't used Vista, since C:\Documents and Settings has been changed to just C:\Users\, and all the My prefixes were removed. I don't see how the folder names are harder to click on than the up arrow was, and they're not small, but the little chevrons between folders might be if you're drunk or something. On the other hand though, the breadcrumbs give you more functionality than the up arrow did. And finally, you know you can always press backspace to go up? If you're going to whine about things, at least try to keep it accurate.
I never said it was an upgrade justification. Learn to take things in context. I was refuting the idea that nothing has changed.
I think it probably doesn't throw off total disk usage but if you right click to see the folder size of the Windows folder itself then it might show up to be too big. I read that on one of the Windows developers' blogs so it should be accurate.
I just realized one thing- netbooks would be a bit hardpress to have 11-12GB taken up by the OS, but it seems like Windows 7 should be smaller since they took out Movie Maker, Photo Gallery, and some other stuff. Also, I would say that on a netbook the idea is probably to keep most of your storage either on the "cloud" or on another machine anyway, so maybe it doesn't matter as much as it would seem.
Haha, thanks for verifying that I'm not a marketdroid, I was worried for a second. I'm actually reading K&R (The C Programming Language) right now and I have seen some other things written by Kernighan. I suppose my views on this might change over time, so I will quietly get off your lawn.
Yeah, basically. A 1TB drive can be had for $100 these days. A Vista install is actually 11GB stock, and if you really want to you can trim it down using vLite. Also, there's a weird thing with the Windows folder in that it includes a junction to another location inside the Windows folder, something like winsxs or something like that, and so that space gets counted twice, although I don't know whether that throws off the total disk usage stat.
Those are your requirements, but they don't apply to everyone. If you're trying to argue that mingw gcc is not a compiler, I don't think you'll find much success on that front. I also don't see how using mingw gcc is accession to vendor control or a dead end, and even using MSVC isn't really, just use an older version if you have to. What you're saying is that Vista/7/Windows in general is not the best fit for you, which is perfectly, fine, but I don't see why others have to use your metrics to judge software.
I'm sorry, who am I? I guess I don't know myself, or something. If you really want to know, I'm just a random EECS student at UC Berkeley, who happens to use Windows along with FOSS tools and also is somewhat proficient Linux/UNIX, likes programming in his spare time, and also likes playing PC games. But feel free to elaborate on who I supposedly am.
I'm not trying to "win" anything, I'm just saying that you're sort of creating a straw man and then beating it down, instead of relying on facts.
I was just giving an example. Seriously though, Paint now has pressure sensitive tablet support, which is pretty cool. There are a host of other things on that blog, a lot of which are under the hood, since it's the Engineering Windows 7 blog.
I'm just not a fan of the crackhead software marketing model, also called teaseware, where your initial purchase gains you nothing useful other than a window into the marketplace where you can buy the various options that let you do useful stuff, like sound or 3d or video.
That's just flat out wrong, since there is no initial purchase, unless you include the Windows license (which I'm guessing you would), and you actually can use sound, 3d, or video in the express editions. This is just one quick result I found from Google, and it's almost 3 years old: http://www.burninghands.net/2006/04/01/vcexpress-with-directx-sdk/ . And then there's the whole XNA system, which is designed for hobbyists to use with the Express editions. It might be limited, but again, if you're doing anything more than that, you're probably intending on selling your product. And I don't see what Google has to do with anything, and unless you work at Google I don't know how you would know that they don't use Visual Studio for their Windows software. In fact, since Chrome still only exists on Windows, I would guess that maybe they did use Visual Studio for something.