Considering the post he's responding to was "which of these features has OS X had for years" you're a bit off target - "Well...yeah, Apple does it too" is entirely the correct response in this case.
What makes a game fun? Is this different for different genres? How does it change betwwen a game you play alone and one you play with others? Games with persistent scores or ways fo measuring progress versus games without such mechanics?
For me - and I'm aware that this is just one of many possible views - overcoming challenge is a key point of any game. Yes there are games that I consider fun for other reasons (Looks good, sounds fun, has humour, etc) but the most overriding source of fun is facing some kind of challenge and having to put some (not too much!) effort into beating it - be it physical twitch reflexes or mental effort.
Let's take the ever loved and loathed WoW - this is a game played with multiple people and a game which records your progress - your gear and achievements show what you've done. For someone who wants a challenge, making the content easier or offering non-challenging ways to access gear (badges vs raiding) means their own rewards no longer stand out - and makes the idea of trying hard pointless. They don't try anymore and the game is less fun. This isn't my opinion but it's easy to see how that works.
Rubber banding is not a blanket answer. Different genres and players beget different sources of fun. Rubber banding reduces challenges effort required. In games where that's not why it's fun then it's fine. But in games where you are trying to beat other players, or your rewards are expected to be linked to your efforts then yes, it encourages medicority if not applied very carefully.
It's far simpler. With very few exceptions, OS X applications are not installed in the usual sense - an application is a completely discrete unit. They look like single files when you browse to them but in fact they are a special kind of folder that contain the application's binary, libraries, resources and anything else you need. Settings and saved preferences are saved in a user and system specific location on first run. So applications can be moved between machines with the same ease of a text document. And you can run them from any location in the file system.
Windows MSI packages are the installers, not the application itself. Unfortunately Windows apps not only have to create a folder strcuture for themselves (if this were all they would also be easy to move) but usually require various custom registry additions, drop icons in all sorts of locations, perhaps add a control panel applet or a shell extension and so on. Since there's no real standard or rule, there's really no reliable way to transfer all your custom apps from one machine to another. MS could conceivably add custom extensions for it's opwn software though - no reason why the Easy Transfer tool couldn't be made "aware" of specific programs like Office and enable transferring those.
Unfortunately, here in lil 'ol UK, they can. So you either provide them the means to obtain incriminating evidence so they can lock you up or...or.... they lock you up anyway for violating this stupid law. Best write down that key on a post-it note and superglue it to your forehead so you don't forget it in case you ever get wrongly accused of anything.
When I install a *new* piece of software, like Acrobat Reader, it includes a plugin.
When I install WinZip, it includes browser (explorer) plugins.
When I install Java, it includes plugins.
I'm not installing anything new here. I'm "allowing" a critical update to an existing installation. An installation that to my mind has no association with my web browser. An installation that has already been installed, and did not include modifications to any other rhird-party software on my system.
So, regardless of how useful, wanted or harmful or harmless this browser extension may be, *why* is a brand new piece of software being installed as part of a security fix? And why was I not informed? And why cannot I not remove it easily like any other such extension?
Of course you're right - so much of this anger is knee-jerk distrust and group-think hatred for Microsoft. But it's not totally misplaced - if my Apple updates started installing addons for third party apps, or if Apt-get started downloading completely unrelated and new packages as part of an update I would be equally concerned.
Microsoft is a massive company, with a particular reputation and legal responsibilities. This kind of cock-up is not just worrying, it's downright stupid.
The focus is on MS because MS is the one with the monopoly. You may not think this is a fair description, but it's currently a legally binding one.
In both the US and EU, a company with a legally determined monopoly in one market ("Operating Systems") may not use that advantage to create a new monopoly in another market ("Web Browsers").
Apple has a minority share in the OS market. Bundling Safari only gives them a share of the browser market equal to their small slice of the OS market. The other 90% or whatever users are not force fed Safari.
Of course, whether you believe this is right or fair is an entirely seperate flamewar, but as it stands it *is* a matter of legal record.
Same goes for me here in the UK.
If something were to happen to me while at work or while *travelling* to/from work, my next of kin get a rather large payout.
Er...hang on, gotta go check the brakes on my car...
More than this.
It's hard not to be a cynic when you live in a country that pulls this off so many times. What we have here is a not a U-turn but a well-used method of having your cake and eating it.
1. Propose outlandishly extreme system, preferrably with nice fat government contracts for companies you/your spouse holds shares in.
2. Stand firm while public outcry commences.
3. Replace outlandishly extreme system with watered down system that still costs far too much money and still does what you actually wanted.
4. Pretend to look sheepish as the public thinks they've won and stops fighting.
Don't take this as the truth but unfortunately I'm beyond the point of accepting "incompetence" instead of "malice" when it comes to my (ha, "my"...) government.
Not really.
The layers are nested. In theory, you can't even see one layer until you've got past another. So in fact, you need to take advantage of more vulnerabilities to get access to the target system, which requires more time, effort and knowledge. Not mention that one attack vector could make it more difficult to implement the next attack vector for the second firewall.
Of course, the exact impact of adding multiple layers is debatable - two layers of tissue paper is barely better than one:)
For future reference: The result of a stop screen error can be found in XP's system log. The reason you weren't getting anything is that XP (rather sneakily) defaults to automatically re-booting on a STOP error instead of just halting and giving you dump screen.
You can change this behaviour in System Properties>Error Recovery.
And if you want real deep diagnostics, use the debugging tools and check out the DMP files (memory dumps) produced by each re-boot.
Short story - XP *does* have all the info, it's just in a different place. I won't comment on your choosing to switch to Vista - I have to go make movies on my Mac now....
The old virus SirCam did this too. It's going back a bit, but I had to manually remove that garbage from a couple machines once. Couldn't run a virus checker, couldn't edit the registry since I couldn't run any new processes.
Dead easy solution though - just located regedit.exe, renamed it to regedit.com, fired it up and got fixing....Did I mention I prefer Linux and OS X now?
If I remember correctly, AMD have stated that there is more to come - the specs and documentation covering the 3D functions has been promised for the "near future".
The reason for the delay is due to patents and third party code in those areas and have had to take greater care to make sure the specs and docs aren't encumbered.
I hope they follow through on this.
It might be needed to identify which updates to apply, but it doesn't need to be sent to MS. Older versions of Windows Update used this information by downloading the list of available updates (and criteria) and then the local WU client did all the checking. Remember the phrase "No information is sent to Microsoft during this process"?
So yes, for accuracy and safe updating, that information is needed. The issue here is where that information is going. Needlessly.
Too lazy to look up the specifics, but OpenOffice.org is called that because a company owns the rights to the name "OpenOffice" (sans ".org"). I believe the project was originally using OpenOffice and adopted the ".org" part of the current website name to avoid a lawsuit.
Personally, I've migrated to OO.o (or NeoOffice) on all my PCs and Macs, with the exception of my work PC (which I have no choice in). I've yet to find anything that caused me significant delay that I could have done quicker in Office.
I will acknowledge that I've had to spend a good deal of time on and off in the help files to find my way around, and that well formatted documents and simple formula spreadsheets is about the limit of my requirements.
I'd probably qualify as an Apple fan, but the article was distastefully biased. A fact made extremely clear when the author went off the deep end about how complex it would be for iTunes to deal both DRM and non-DRM files.
You know.
Like how it couldn't deal with non-DRM'd MP3s or AACs along side your iTunes purchased files.
Well, the UK has it's extremists, apathists, irrationalists and plenty other '*ists' like anywhere else. But in this particular case there's nothing ominous at all - money got spent in the wrong place trying to bail out an old UK company and this is where that money has come from.
It's a fraction of the total amount earmarked for various sciences and it's a one-off reduction - it'll be back on budget next year.
I really don't like DRM in any shape or form. However, I think there *is* a point to this.
The Beeb's public broadcasts are public only in the UK. Other countries around the world that show BBC shows (Monty Python repeats are a good example) have had to buy the rights to those shows, just like any commercial station.
This "on-demand" system is a free service - any licence payer can use it. The DRM and use of a proprietary player enables the BBC to ensure that by enabling free access to shows previously broadcast (thus exposing them for a longer period of time) they don't make it easier for non-licence payers.
In practice the DRM is likely to be easily bypassed/broken and it'll be a moot point anyway.
As an aside, doesn't anybody see a silver lining here? The BBC has basically been told they *can't* use Microsoft's DRM because it's platform specific. If I were in Redmond, I'd be gnashing my teeth at seeing such a large lock-in opportunity escape my grasp...
Oh stop propagating myths. It's well known that *like for like* Apple machines are near enough at Dell prices. The illusion arises from the lack of entry-level models (MacMini aside).
I think it's a case of typical front-end bloat. I'm tasked with looking after a few MSSQL DBs - 7, 2000 and 2005 as well as occasionally developing light apps with them and when they are set up and running well, they are indeed decent RDBMS and very feature rich - as in *useful* features. But day to day admin tasks are horrible and documentation is poor. Lot's of it, but as you mentioned it's all very "business speak" and only skims the technical stuff you actually need.
Far from being an MS fan, I have to admit that a fair amount of software they produce *is* impressive. But then they invariably tack on horrible interfaces or bloated extra features until you have to spend days digging through the morass before you find the functionality you were looking for.
In fact, this applies to the OS as a whole - good core, crappy shell.
Slashdot Mirror
And you get to choose whether to install Chrome Frame or not. You can even *gasp* uninstall it at a later date!
Considering the post he's responding to was "which of these features has OS X had for years" you're a bit off target - "Well...yeah, Apple does it too" is entirely the correct response in this case.
But yes, he failed on the games front!
It's not that simple though.
What makes a game fun? Is this different for different genres? How does it change betwwen a game you play alone and one you play with others? Games with persistent scores or ways fo measuring progress versus games without such mechanics?
For me - and I'm aware that this is just one of many possible views - overcoming challenge is a key point of any game. Yes there are games that I consider fun for other reasons (Looks good, sounds fun, has humour, etc) but the most overriding source of fun is facing some kind of challenge and having to put some (not too much!) effort into beating it - be it physical twitch reflexes or mental effort.
Let's take the ever loved and loathed WoW - this is a game played with multiple people and a game which records your progress - your gear and achievements show what you've done. For someone who wants a challenge, making the content easier or offering non-challenging ways to access gear (badges vs raiding) means their own rewards no longer stand out - and makes the idea of trying hard pointless. They don't try anymore and the game is less fun. This isn't my opinion but it's easy to see how that works.
Rubber banding is not a blanket answer. Different genres and players beget different sources of fun. Rubber banding reduces challenges effort required. In games where that's not why it's fun then it's fine. But in games where you are trying to beat other players, or your rewards are expected to be linked to your efforts then yes, it encourages medicority if not applied very carefully.
No, he's had 1 kernel panic since installing 10.6 - come back in December if you want to see your if your "average" holds up.
It's far simpler.
With very few exceptions, OS X applications are not installed in the usual sense - an application is a completely discrete unit. They look like single files when you browse to them but in fact they are a special kind of folder that contain the application's binary, libraries, resources and anything else you need. Settings and saved preferences are saved in a user and system specific location on first run. So applications can be moved between machines with the same ease of a text document. And you can run them from any location in the file system.
Windows MSI packages are the installers, not the application itself. Unfortunately Windows apps not only have to create a folder strcuture for themselves (if this were all they would also be easy to move) but usually require various custom registry additions, drop icons in all sorts of locations, perhaps add a control panel applet or a shell extension and so on. Since there's no real standard or rule, there's really no reliable way to transfer all your custom apps from one machine to another. MS could conceivably add custom extensions for it's opwn software though - no reason why the Easy Transfer tool couldn't be made "aware" of specific programs like Office and enable transferring those.
Unfortunately, here in lil 'ol UK, they can. So you either provide them the means to obtain incriminating evidence so they can lock you up or...or.... they lock you up anyway for violating this stupid law. Best write down that key on a post-it note and superglue it to your forehead so you don't forget it in case you ever get wrongly accused of anything.
Sorry to digress, but is being charged to _receive_ SMS texts normal in the US?
...Aaaaaand there goes my nasal coffee spray all over my nice new keyboard...
When I install a *new* piece of software, like Acrobat Reader, it includes a plugin.
When I install WinZip, it includes browser (explorer) plugins.
When I install Java, it includes plugins.
I'm not installing anything new here. I'm "allowing" a critical update to an existing installation. An installation that to my mind has no association with my web browser. An installation that has already been installed, and did not include modifications to any other rhird-party software on my system.
So, regardless of how useful, wanted or harmful or harmless this browser extension may be, *why* is a brand new piece of software being installed as part of a security fix? And why was I not informed? And why cannot I not remove it easily like any other such extension?
Of course you're right - so much of this anger is knee-jerk distrust and group-think hatred for Microsoft. But it's not totally misplaced - if my Apple updates started installing addons for third party apps, or if Apt-get started downloading completely unrelated and new packages as part of an update I would be equally concerned.
Microsoft is a massive company, with a particular reputation and legal responsibilities. This kind of cock-up is not just worrying, it's downright stupid.
The focus is on MS because MS is the one with the monopoly. You may not think this is a fair description, but it's currently a legally binding one.
In both the US and EU, a company with a legally determined monopoly in one market ("Operating Systems") may not use that advantage to create a new monopoly in another market ("Web Browsers").
Apple has a minority share in the OS market. Bundling Safari only gives them a share of the browser market equal to their small slice of the OS market. The other 90% or whatever users are not force fed Safari.
Of course, whether you believe this is right or fair is an entirely seperate flamewar, but as it stands it *is* a matter of legal record.
Same goes for me here in the UK. If something were to happen to me while at work or while *travelling* to/from work, my next of kin get a rather large payout. Er...hang on, gotta go check the brakes on my car...
It's hard not to be a cynic when you live in a country that pulls this off so many times. What we have here is a not a U-turn but a well-used method of having your cake and eating it.
Don't take this as the truth but unfortunately I'm beyond the point of accepting "incompetence" instead of "malice" when it comes to my (ha, "my"...) government.
Not really. The layers are nested. In theory, you can't even see one layer until you've got past another. So in fact, you need to take advantage of more vulnerabilities to get access to the target system, which requires more time, effort and knowledge. Not mention that one attack vector could make it more difficult to implement the next attack vector for the second firewall. Of course, the exact impact of adding multiple layers is debatable - two layers of tissue paper is barely better than one :)
For future reference: The result of a stop screen error can be found in XP's system log. The reason you weren't getting anything is that XP (rather sneakily) defaults to automatically re-booting on a STOP error instead of just halting and giving you dump screen. You can change this behaviour in System Properties>Error Recovery. And if you want real deep diagnostics, use the debugging tools and check out the DMP files (memory dumps) produced by each re-boot. Short story - XP *does* have all the info, it's just in a different place. I won't comment on your choosing to switch to Vista - I have to go make movies on my Mac now....
The old virus SirCam did this too. It's going back a bit, but I had to manually remove that garbage from a couple machines once. Couldn't run a virus checker, couldn't edit the registry since I couldn't run any new processes.
...Did I mention I prefer Linux and OS X now?
Dead easy solution though - just located regedit.exe, renamed it to regedit.com, fired it up and got fixing.
If I remember correctly, AMD have stated that there is more to come - the specs and documentation covering the 3D functions has been promised for the "near future". The reason for the delay is due to patents and third party code in those areas and have had to take greater care to make sure the specs and docs aren't encumbered. I hope they follow through on this.
Oh no, mental image...
Thank you for making me splurt tea all over my keyboard and make my co-workers think I'm crazy.
Sorry. Crazier....
Thank you for making me laugh out loud and scaring everyone in my office like some Slashdot trawling, outta-touch-with-reality nerd type.
Oh, wait...
It might be needed to identify which updates to apply, but it doesn't need to be sent to MS.
Older versions of Windows Update used this information by downloading the list of available updates (and criteria) and then the local WU client did all the checking. Remember the phrase "No information is sent to Microsoft during this process"?
So yes, for accuracy and safe updating, that information is needed. The issue here is where that information is going. Needlessly.
Just for your information:
Too lazy to look up the specifics, but OpenOffice.org is called that because a company owns the rights to the name "OpenOffice" (sans ".org"). I believe the project was originally using OpenOffice and adopted the ".org" part of the current website name to avoid a lawsuit.
Personally, I've migrated to OO.o (or NeoOffice) on all my PCs and Macs, with the exception of my work PC (which I have no choice in). I've yet to find anything that caused me significant delay that I could have done quicker in Office.
I will acknowledge that I've had to spend a good deal of time on and off in the help files to find my way around, and that well formatted documents and simple formula spreadsheets is about the limit of my requirements.
Have to agree here.
I'd probably qualify as an Apple fan, but the article was distastefully biased. A fact made extremely clear when the author went off the deep end about how complex it would be for iTunes to deal both DRM and non-DRM files.
You know.
Like how it couldn't deal with non-DRM'd MP3s or AACs along side your iTunes purchased files.
Oh, wait...
No and Yes!
Well, the UK has it's extremists, apathists, irrationalists and plenty other '*ists' like anywhere else. But in this particular case there's nothing ominous at all - money got spent in the wrong place trying to bail out an old UK company and this is where that money has come from.
It's a fraction of the total amount earmarked for various sciences and it's a one-off reduction - it'll be back on budget next year.
I really don't like DRM in any shape or form. However, I think there *is* a point to this.
The Beeb's public broadcasts are public only in the UK. Other countries around the world that show BBC shows (Monty Python repeats are a good example) have had to buy the rights to those shows, just like any commercial station.
This "on-demand" system is a free service - any licence payer can use it. The DRM and use of a proprietary player enables the BBC to ensure that by enabling free access to shows previously broadcast (thus exposing them for a longer period of time) they don't make it easier for non-licence payers.
In practice the DRM is likely to be easily bypassed/broken and it'll be a moot point anyway.
As an aside, doesn't anybody see a silver lining here? The BBC has basically been told they *can't* use Microsoft's DRM because it's platform specific. If I were in Redmond, I'd be gnashing my teeth at seeing such a large lock-in opportunity escape my grasp...
Oh stop propagating myths. It's well known that *like for like* Apple machines are near enough at Dell prices. The illusion arises from the lack of entry-level models (MacMini aside).
I think it's a case of typical front-end bloat. I'm tasked with looking after a few MSSQL DBs - 7, 2000 and 2005 as well as occasionally developing light apps with them and when they are set up and running well, they are indeed decent RDBMS and very feature rich - as in *useful* features. But day to day admin tasks are horrible and documentation is poor. Lot's of it, but as you mentioned it's all very "business speak" and only skims the technical stuff you actually need.
Far from being an MS fan, I have to admit that a fair amount of software they produce *is* impressive. But then they invariably tack on horrible interfaces or bloated extra features until you have to spend days digging through the morass before you find the functionality you were looking for.
In fact, this applies to the OS as a whole - good core, crappy shell.