This is only a problem if your company also has IT management that gets duped into buying from shit software vendors.
I've seen this problem in a number of places, from schools, to large corporations. Software bought from good, reputable vendors doesn't have this issue, because they are the ones who use MSDN as it's meant to be used and download the betas and make sure their software is working fine with the latest and greatest before it's even released.
There is a lot of bad software out there that even some of the largest companies get duped into buying only to find it takes them 9 months to update their software to the latest version of Windows. Buying from these vendors is in itself a problem, because sometimes the counter argument is true- new products sometimes require the latest version of Windows and whilst I don't agree with this particularly either, it's easier to justify upgrading your OS to support new software, than downgrading to support old, because you're going to have to upgrade at some point anyway.
Don't get duped and buy software from companies who have developed a codebase bigger than they can reasonably support, the fact they don't have a development team capable of running a proper maintenance schedule in itself should be a warning that even if there's not an OS support issue, if other issues arise they still wont have the man power to fix them in a timely manner either.
I can't think why anyone would think that making such an international drama and giving up $600m in annual profit would be worth doing just to distract attention from the fact a handful of people are whining about getting the phone to use 3G instead of 2G in some areas on the Nexus One.
What next? Microsoft purchases a nuclear missile and launches it at Russia to distract everyone from the fact no one is buying the Zune?
That's really not suprising at all, because it was so perfectly timed and turned so perfectly into a political tool, even though there wasn't really much in the e-mails to care about when it actually came to.
The other possibility is Saudi Arabia who had strong interests in turning the Copenhagen talks. Saudi has an oil based economy and actually has the gall to believe that any deal on cutting CO2 emissions should involve compensation being paid to it by the rest of the world because it has chosen all this time to run a one trick pony economy and cannot be bothered to change this if it's grand export goes out of fashion.
Indeed it's true. I see many people talk of fearing China, but the reality is it simply doesn't have the military equipment to fight far from it's shores, it doesn't have the stability to guarantee that if it does send it's soldiers outside it's borders that it wont lose territory to dissidents inside it's borders. Contrary to popular belief it doesn't have that much support from Russia, partly because it's still locked in border disputes with them, the same goes for it's other neighbours in almost every direction who would love the opportunity of China spreading itself to far to claim territory they believe is their own.
Economically it could certainly be a problem, but in terms of us losing it's manufacturing facility the likes of India which is of a similar population would gladly pick up the slack, and in the current weakened economic situation in fact, most countries would be willing to take on a big manufacturing boost.
That's not to say they couldn't be a problem at all of course, if they backed up North Korea by having North Korea threaten further to launch nukes whilst providing them military support to try and wave of the US and such from attacking it in response to such threats it'd be a big deal. Similarly any war with them would still be a hell of a headache, but the point to take away is this, no matter what China does, even if in the worst case they decide to pursue a military route, whilst they'd cause a lot of harm and damage, they'd have absolutely no chance of winning. Even their nuclear stockpile is relatively small, particularly when you take into account modern American ICBM defences.
In a way though it's a real shame, because China has so many smart people, it has such potential to be a thriving peaceful modern nation. It's perhaps ironic that the lust for power and control at the top of China is exactly what stops China from becoming a more powerful player on the international stage. It has a big population, but it can't unilaterally take on the world despite seeming to believe otherwise.
"Clearly, you've never met an actual Chinese person."
I've met a few, and I can tell you not all Chinese people are the same.
I was in Beijing on business with a client that owned factories out in the rural areas of Shaanxi province. Whilst you're right that many in Beijing were smart, well educated, well aware of the situation, the same could not be said when we went out on site to rural areas.
As with many dictatorships, it is the rural workers that are kept away from things like education and are kept stupid and brainwashed to support the government in the face of the more intellectual amongst the population. This is exactly the same situation we have in Iran, whilst Tehran is filled with smart individuals opposed to the regime there, it is the majority in the rural areas that uphold the government and believe the likes of Ahmadinejad is truly sent from god and can really perform miracles (no I'm not exagerating or being sarcastic).
Those who work as labourers in fields and so forth are a useful tool for governments such as that of China and Iran, because they have more children for reasons such as lower cost of living making children more affordable amongst others. Also, as big cities and education go hand in hand because education feeds the high end economies of big cities, those in rural areas are much further removed from decent education. There is less foreign influence in rural areas as most foreigners only go to the likes of Beijing and so forth also. There are many factors at play, but the idea that there isn't a good amount of people who are brainwashed and kept that way because they're the ones that are more numerous and often even more willing to be violent than the more educated section of society is outright false, there absolutely is.
"There's no hardball involved. Google looks at China and goes "It cost us more than it's getting us." Pure business, with the added bonus of nice PR for being the first corp that said no to the PRC."
This was my thought but I'm not sure that it's that straightforward. From the BBC's article, the Chinese search market is worth $1bn and Google makes $600m of that, so 60% of it each year. In contrast however, the lost share value from the hack was 1.1%. I'm not sure what the monetary share value would be and whether they believe it would outweight the income loss from that, but that should put it in a financial context at least.
Despite making more, they've never had the user share of Baidu however even though they've made more money from search, and Baidu was hacked just a day or so ago by an Iranian group. I wonder if perhaps this is their bargaining chip- now that Baidu has been shown to be unreliable in that it had it's front page hacked maybe they felt now was a good time to threaten to pull out, leaving China's other major search engine the only real option, an option whose ability to keep the search frontpage secure has now been severely discredited?
I don't disagree bad voice acting can ruin a game, I had the misfortune of buying Rogue Warrior recently to see that first hand.
I'm just suprised you'd need to pay for acting talent when all you want is voice- I'd have thought you could get voice actors cheaper than you could get physical and voice actors. Similarly, although I agree you wouldn't want to just use any old joe for it, I'd have thought there are plenty of low end voice actors that are perfectly good enough for a game well below hollywood rates.
I agree using big names would get more sales, but I didn't even know Kiefer Sutherland was in CoD5 until the end credits, so it's not as if they really even capitalised on that.
It's certainly not that simple. Whilst I agree that's true in the odd Apple article, there are plenty also where it's not the case and where Apple gets defended, sometimes even illogically so. For example, I've seen companies like Apple and Valve defended over DRM in the past, by the very same people who attack DRM when it comes from the likes of Sony.
Perhaps more interestingly though is that I recommend you look through a few Apple related articles here without filtering out any comments based on their score. What's interesting is that even in articles where the majority of comments go against Apple there are often countless comments that are perfectly objective, valid and insightful but also put Apple in a not so positive light that get modded down.
"Like breaking the law in pretty much all major localities around the planet."
You realise a lot of companies have too yes? Facebook has been guilty of breaking privacy laws across the world, Apple has been guilty of price fixing in the UK due to it's higher pricing of songs to the rest of the EU, Google has found itself guilty of breaching copyright across the world through it's books quest. But you single out only Microsoft's cases?
"If you hear a chorus of disapproval maybe, just maybe, there is a frigging reason of why people feel so aggravated."
This argument is stupid, by the same logic you could argue that Microsoft's dominance in many areas is because most people prefer them. The fact is, you can't infer anything about the validity of the problem from numbers when there's clearly other factors involved like bias in this case, or monopolistic practices in Microsoft's case.
"Google and Apple now have quite a dominance in the markets that will matter in the future and people are far more cool about them because they are not complete and utter unethical bastards."
Huh? Is this the same Apple that although improving, is still one of the worst offenders when it comes to pollution caused by manufacturing and disposal of it's products? The same Apple that uses child labour? The same Apple guilty of price fixing? The same Apple guilty of being one of the most prolific pushers of DRM over the last decade? The same Apple that simply blames the user when their iPhone explodes in their face? The same Apple that leverages a combination of iTunes, the iPhone and it's app store for anti-competitive practices?
What about Google? Is this the same Google that wants to farm all your data? The same Google whose CEO doesn't believe you need privacy unless you have something to hide? The same Google that would happily pander to Chinese censorship and so on?
Look, I'm a fan of some of Apple and Google's products as much as the next guy, but that doesn't mean I'm going to pretend they don't do much wrong as well, clearly they can be quite evil themselves, arguably just as much so as Microsoft. In reality Microsoft seem no less evil than other major players like Facebook either. In the grand scheme of things Microsoft couldn't even come close to many manufacturing firms, many mining firms and so forth. Really in terms of being evil, Microsoft as a company, are pretty much par for the course. The difference is, they're the main opponent of the open source movement and as this is largely an open source supporting community then that is why you see such a focus on them here, not because there is some reality in them being evil enough to stand out from the rest of the world.
No, but Call of Duty 5 (World at War) did use Kiefer Sutherland as a voice actor.
MW2 did use professional actors also, although I can't remember who.
Perhaps if games didn't spend money on Hollywood types like this they could cut costs a fair whack- most people wouldn't even know it's Kiefer Sutherland in CoD5, so why not just use someone else who can speak and would be MUCH cheaper.
I wouldn't be suprised if between all the actors paid in MW2 to do voices there was a few million spent.
So anyone that makes good points that are a bit more level headed than the usual hate based anti-Microsoft drivel is an apologist?
The problem with Slashdot (which really is a problem that stems from the FOSS community) is that it often has a zealotry to it that does it more harm than good in the eyes of anyone looking for objective comments. You read some of the anti-MS stuff here and if you were an outsider it'd give you the impression the site is full of nutjobs.
Microsoft have done a lot of things wrong, but they've also done a lot of things right. The issue is that Apple is guilty of doing as much wrong as Microsoft nowadays, yet because they base MacOS X on BSD they're often given a free ride. Despite Job's insistence otherwise, Apple has been the biggest proponent of DRM over the last decade for example and ironically it's platforms like the iPhone are more closed than even Microsoft's.
The hate for Microsoft here is usually 50% understandable, 50% utterly irrational, yet when someone like sopssa comes along and manages to post with only the understandable portion of hate without the stupid irrationality he's attacked for it? It's a shame there aren't more posters like him here so that we can have discussions that make sense, rather than an orgy of mutual reassurance that it's okay to attack Microsoft in the most irrational ways possible which just reinforce the nonsensical trash that is so often repeated.
There are of course fanboys that lean in completely the other direction, Microsoft fanboys who take things too far the other way and refuse to recognise when Microsoft does wrong. These people deserve to be chastised too, but the day I see one with a +5 insightful mod is the day Slashdot is taken over by MS so they're less of a problem here. It's not like I even agree with sopssa on some of his pro-Microsoft views all the time, but for the most part, his posts make a lot more sense from an objective viewpoint that those caught up in their own rabid fanboyism.
"I think it's an open question if this is on purpose or by design."
It's really a closed question to be honest. The settings used to be better, easier to use. Privacy used to be something that was easy to set on Facebook, this attracted people to the site because they thought it was no big deal publishing to it if they could set their privacy.
Over time the privacy settings have gotten worse, people have had privacy settings defaulted to insecure without their knowledge after site changes and so forth.
In terms of privacy, Facebook has been a classic bait and switch. Millions were lured in with a site that allowed them to control what was private and what wasn't. Nowadays, you have to assume nothing on Facebook is private. The issue for many is do they delete their account and have no way of communicating with some of their friends who only use Facebook now and forego the likes of IM programs because of that or do they keep it to stay in touch with their friends?
The problem is that there are actually people on Slashdot who would believe that Steve Ballmer is personally attacking them, it's hard to know when to take such things seriously anymore:p
It sounds like the real issue is that you don't really know much about math at all as otherwise you wouldn't make such a silly statement as calling combinatorics and computability theory introductory.
I suppose if all you've done is introductory course you might make that mistake, but these topics go well beyond graduate level. In fact, many important unsolved problems are in these fields and they are the focus of much modern mathematical research. Really, if you think you can solve P=NP with only introductory computability theory then please, go and try.
Please, at least have an understanding about the topics you post about before posting. Just because you don't know the subject well enough to be able to make use of it doesn't mean it's not useful, and just because you do not know a topic beyond a certain point does not mean there is no further knowledge to be gained beyond that point. Even if you were correct that combinatorics and computability theory were vastly smaller subjects than they really are and did not extend past an introductory stage then you're still completely wrong in general, number theory extends again to the edge of human knowledge, it's a subject that starts off easy but expands to be one of the highest end mathematical topics out there and yet it's still entirely applicable to cryptography and so forth in computing.
Put simply, you're wrong, high end math matters, and if you want to be a programmer that can make a difference and break new ground with their software then you absolutely do need it.
Um, dude, are you taking the piss, or are you really that fucked up?
The idea that an AC here is Steve Ballmer is fucking laughable for exactly the reasons the AC states, he has better things to do.
Whilst you may be right that MS has people influencing ideas in forums you can guarantee that Slashdot is not included in that. Why? There is absolutely no fucking point spending any money whatsoever on trying to influence opinion in Slashdot's discussion forums because Slashdot's discussion forums have absolutely no influence on anything, whatsoever.
Please, take your pills and realise, you are not talking to Steve Ballmer. I can only imagine that you do actually have some condition such as schizophrenia to come up with such an absurd conclusion.
All Android apps have to specifically declare what they require access to when you install them. This was really just a phishing attack, the only thing that's newsworthy is that it was an attack by a different medium. Just because the iPhone hasn't been victim of attacks via this specific medium doesn't mean it's any more secure. Countless iPhone users have no doubt equally been victim of phishing attacks via classic methods on their phone such as the browser, e-mail and so forth. But even Apple's vetting of apps is meaningless when it's a web enabled device designed to integrate closely with the web- no amount of initial verification can confirm that whatever is done server side is always going to be valid when Apple neither control nor have access to the servers and the code running on them.
Regarding jailbreak stores- that seems pretty irrelevant when recently jailbroken iPhones were victim to a worm spreading itself between them because they are insecure by default and you have to specifically secure them.
Really, making it an iPhone is better than everything else in the world thing is stupid, the exploits depend on convincing the user it's safe to enter their details just like any other phishing attack which pretty much every platform is vulnerable to. Feel free to search for 'iPhone phishing' in Google to see my point.
"3) There's latent demand for a mobile computing device that's smaller and lighter than a laptop but has more screen real estate than a smartphone -- something reminiscent of a Star Trek tricorder or PADD."
smaller and lighter than a laptop, but more screen real estate than a smartphone- something reminiscent of a Star Trek tricorder or PADD... or, erm, I don't know, say, a netbook?
Tablets are pointless because although they solve the small size problem of mobiles they don't solve the crippled input problem of mobiles. Netbooks are smaller than normal laptops and so are highly portable, but they're bigger than mobiles so don't have the limitations of them as they can be both more powerful and offer a much better set of features and a set of much easier to use input offerings. Hell, there's no reason netbooks can't also have touch screens to do everything a tablet can anyway. Plenty of laptops have already done this in the past- allowed you to fold the screen to turn it into a tablet. Couple this with the size of a netbook and the thinness of some of the newer netbooks and really, you begin to realise that tablets are absolutely nothing more than just extremely crippled laptops/netbooks at the end of the day.
There is absolutely no problem that a tablet solves that can't be better solved by either a smartphone or a well designed netbook depend on the problem in question.
That's only because most software that you would enter mathematical symbols into simply has fuck all investment into good UI design.
Mathcad for example allows you to enter equations extremely quickly thanks to smart keyboard shortcuts meaning you can just type your integrals and stuff on the fly just like anything else. Also I tend to feel it's often quicker to fill in large matrices and/or tables on computers than it is to write them out for example also.
Of course, Mathcad could still use a lot of work, and the issue with it is that it's simply not as powerful as the likes of Mathematica and even an undergrad maths student will begin to start finding things that Mathcad simply can't do for them.
So I agree, math and science students certainly still have to write, but I disagree with any suggestion that it has to be that way. We just need better software, we need math software that has a decent interface that does allow you to work faster.
This is why I found the UK parliament minutes interesting.
David Lammy, the UK's IP minister stated in the minutes that ACTA would have to be implemented under existing legislation rather than be something for which new legislation would need to be passed. If that's the case, ACTA doesn't really have teeth, because the government already pushes existing legislation to it's limits anyway (i.e. using anti-terror legislation to seize the assets of icelandic banks when they began to fail etc.).
Of course, whether that actually ends up being the case is questionable too though, but if it does, then colour me not concerned about ACTA.
"Why would OpenGL need to incorporate game development?"
This question seems to ignore the context of the thread - to stay relevant is the answer.
Yes, there is lots you can do with OpenGL that's not game development but it's a driving force. Game development support doesn't prevent producing serious apps and such with it as demonstrated by Direct3D- there are plenty of non-game applications out there written using DirectX.
"Besides, most of the other game-related libraries (sound, networking) are available as separate F/OSS libraries such as SDL."
Indeed, but no one wants to fuck around finding out which ones are best, dealing with multiple different libraries and interfaces all with different coding styles and so forth, all with their own quirks, missing features, not when they can again just use DirectX which avoids this.
I agree that it's the only option for Mac/Linux and I agree the DirectX 10/11 thing is stupid. I'm not saying I like the situation, I don't, as I say I'd much rather see OpenGL be more useful and relevant for modern games and multi-media applications development precisely so we don't all just have to use DirectX or face a horrible mish-mash of code and unproductivity.
Er, I think you need to check the summary again. It's quite clearly referencing a performance argument from 1997 and then saying, I quote "This lesson appears to have been forgotten over the last few years." inferring that arguments again DirectX from 1997 are somehow relevant today, when quite clearly they aren't as things have changed so drastically.
I quote also:
"Most game developers have fallen under the spell of DirectX marketing"
Which is again simply wrong, developers haven't fallen under a marketing spell, they've chosen DirectX for practical and sensible reasons such as those I stated.
The article talks about a network effect, but clearly there is no network effect in the way they suggest as OpenGL for a long time was the API of choice, and so by their logic would've remained on top because of this effect. People only started ditching OpenGL when DirectX started providing more and better than OpenGL was, not because of some marketing campaign unless they are suggesting that getting feedback on their API was somehow a marketing campaign when it clearly wasn't due to the fact it was a real and demonstrated way of simply producing a better product.
They also argue about training but again this is false- simply search for 3D programming tutorials and you'll find far more, far more helpful programming tutorials for OpenGL than you will for DirectX. Try simply searching for "3D programming tutorials" for example and see the likes of NeHe at the top.
It talks about the likes of vendor extensions but doesn't mention what an utter headache these are when you have to cater for the very fact they are vendor specific, the fact you have to implement on a per-graphics card basis. What's worse is they even contradict themselves, they state the reason that OpenGL is losing out is because of poorer support, then they reference an nVidia presentation that points out OpenGL has faster draw calls specifically because of nVidia's extensions and support for it.
The whole article was mostly full of shit. The only point I agree with is that it'd be nice if an open games development platform ruled the roost again, but you can't blame Microsoft for the fact it doesn't, only blame OpenGL and related groups for not putting the time and effort into keeping it relevant that Microsoft has into DirectX.
Slashdot Mirror
This is only a problem if your company also has IT management that gets duped into buying from shit software vendors.
I've seen this problem in a number of places, from schools, to large corporations. Software bought from good, reputable vendors doesn't have this issue, because they are the ones who use MSDN as it's meant to be used and download the betas and make sure their software is working fine with the latest and greatest before it's even released.
There is a lot of bad software out there that even some of the largest companies get duped into buying only to find it takes them 9 months to update their software to the latest version of Windows. Buying from these vendors is in itself a problem, because sometimes the counter argument is true- new products sometimes require the latest version of Windows and whilst I don't agree with this particularly either, it's easier to justify upgrading your OS to support new software, than downgrading to support old, because you're going to have to upgrade at some point anyway.
Don't get duped and buy software from companies who have developed a codebase bigger than they can reasonably support, the fact they don't have a development team capable of running a proper maintenance schedule in itself should be a warning that even if there's not an OS support issue, if other issues arise they still wont have the man power to fix them in a timely manner either.
No, not really.
I can't think why anyone would think that making such an international drama and giving up $600m in annual profit would be worth doing just to distract attention from the fact a handful of people are whining about getting the phone to use 3G instead of 2G in some areas on the Nexus One.
What next? Microsoft purchases a nuclear missile and launches it at Russia to distract everyone from the fact no one is buying the Zune?
That's really not suprising at all, because it was so perfectly timed and turned so perfectly into a political tool, even though there wasn't really much in the e-mails to care about when it actually came to.
The other possibility is Saudi Arabia who had strong interests in turning the Copenhagen talks. Saudi has an oil based economy and actually has the gall to believe that any deal on cutting CO2 emissions should involve compensation being paid to it by the rest of the world because it has chosen all this time to run a one trick pony economy and cannot be bothered to change this if it's grand export goes out of fashion.
Indeed it's true. I see many people talk of fearing China, but the reality is it simply doesn't have the military equipment to fight far from it's shores, it doesn't have the stability to guarantee that if it does send it's soldiers outside it's borders that it wont lose territory to dissidents inside it's borders. Contrary to popular belief it doesn't have that much support from Russia, partly because it's still locked in border disputes with them, the same goes for it's other neighbours in almost every direction who would love the opportunity of China spreading itself to far to claim territory they believe is their own.
Economically it could certainly be a problem, but in terms of us losing it's manufacturing facility the likes of India which is of a similar population would gladly pick up the slack, and in the current weakened economic situation in fact, most countries would be willing to take on a big manufacturing boost.
That's not to say they couldn't be a problem at all of course, if they backed up North Korea by having North Korea threaten further to launch nukes whilst providing them military support to try and wave of the US and such from attacking it in response to such threats it'd be a big deal. Similarly any war with them would still be a hell of a headache, but the point to take away is this, no matter what China does, even if in the worst case they decide to pursue a military route, whilst they'd cause a lot of harm and damage, they'd have absolutely no chance of winning. Even their nuclear stockpile is relatively small, particularly when you take into account modern American ICBM defences.
In a way though it's a real shame, because China has so many smart people, it has such potential to be a thriving peaceful modern nation. It's perhaps ironic that the lust for power and control at the top of China is exactly what stops China from becoming a more powerful player on the international stage. It has a big population, but it can't unilaterally take on the world despite seeming to believe otherwise.
"Clearly, you've never met an actual Chinese person."
I've met a few, and I can tell you not all Chinese people are the same.
I was in Beijing on business with a client that owned factories out in the rural areas of Shaanxi province. Whilst you're right that many in Beijing were smart, well educated, well aware of the situation, the same could not be said when we went out on site to rural areas.
As with many dictatorships, it is the rural workers that are kept away from things like education and are kept stupid and brainwashed to support the government in the face of the more intellectual amongst the population. This is exactly the same situation we have in Iran, whilst Tehran is filled with smart individuals opposed to the regime there, it is the majority in the rural areas that uphold the government and believe the likes of Ahmadinejad is truly sent from god and can really perform miracles (no I'm not exagerating or being sarcastic).
Those who work as labourers in fields and so forth are a useful tool for governments such as that of China and Iran, because they have more children for reasons such as lower cost of living making children more affordable amongst others. Also, as big cities and education go hand in hand because education feeds the high end economies of big cities, those in rural areas are much further removed from decent education. There is less foreign influence in rural areas as most foreigners only go to the likes of Beijing and so forth also. There are many factors at play, but the idea that there isn't a good amount of people who are brainwashed and kept that way because they're the ones that are more numerous and often even more willing to be violent than the more educated section of society is outright false, there absolutely is.
"There's no hardball involved. Google looks at China and goes "It cost us more than it's getting us." Pure business, with the added bonus of nice PR for being the first corp that said no to the PRC."
This was my thought but I'm not sure that it's that straightforward. From the BBC's article, the Chinese search market is worth $1bn and Google makes $600m of that, so 60% of it each year. In contrast however, the lost share value from the hack was 1.1%. I'm not sure what the monetary share value would be and whether they believe it would outweight the income loss from that, but that should put it in a financial context at least.
Despite making more, they've never had the user share of Baidu however even though they've made more money from search, and Baidu was hacked just a day or so ago by an Iranian group. I wonder if perhaps this is their bargaining chip- now that Baidu has been shown to be unreliable in that it had it's front page hacked maybe they felt now was a good time to threaten to pull out, leaving China's other major search engine the only real option, an option whose ability to keep the search frontpage secure has now been severely discredited?
"What I want to know is what will i4i do with its 300 million from Microsoft."
Retire I would imagine ;)
I don't disagree bad voice acting can ruin a game, I had the misfortune of buying Rogue Warrior recently to see that first hand.
I'm just suprised you'd need to pay for acting talent when all you want is voice- I'd have thought you could get voice actors cheaper than you could get physical and voice actors. Similarly, although I agree you wouldn't want to just use any old joe for it, I'd have thought there are plenty of low end voice actors that are perfectly good enough for a game well below hollywood rates.
I agree using big names would get more sales, but I didn't even know Kiefer Sutherland was in CoD5 until the end credits, so it's not as if they really even capitalised on that.
Well playing in such a boring manner is your choice.
You could run through Doom with just the shotgun, but that wouldn't mean it had only one weapon choice throughout the game.
It's certainly not that simple. Whilst I agree that's true in the odd Apple article, there are plenty also where it's not the case and where Apple gets defended, sometimes even illogically so. For example, I've seen companies like Apple and Valve defended over DRM in the past, by the very same people who attack DRM when it comes from the likes of Sony.
Perhaps more interestingly though is that I recommend you look through a few Apple related articles here without filtering out any comments based on their score. What's interesting is that even in articles where the majority of comments go against Apple there are often countless comments that are perfectly objective, valid and insightful but also put Apple in a not so positive light that get modded down.
"Like breaking the law in pretty much all major localities around the planet."
You realise a lot of companies have too yes? Facebook has been guilty of breaking privacy laws across the world, Apple has been guilty of price fixing in the UK due to it's higher pricing of songs to the rest of the EU, Google has found itself guilty of breaching copyright across the world through it's books quest. But you single out only Microsoft's cases?
"If you hear a chorus of disapproval maybe, just maybe, there is a frigging reason of why people feel so aggravated."
This argument is stupid, by the same logic you could argue that Microsoft's dominance in many areas is because most people prefer them. The fact is, you can't infer anything about the validity of the problem from numbers when there's clearly other factors involved like bias in this case, or monopolistic practices in Microsoft's case.
"Google and Apple now have quite a dominance in the markets that will matter in the future and people are far more cool about them because they are not complete and utter unethical bastards."
Huh? Is this the same Apple that although improving, is still one of the worst offenders when it comes to pollution caused by manufacturing and disposal of it's products? The same Apple that uses child labour? The same Apple guilty of price fixing? The same Apple guilty of being one of the most prolific pushers of DRM over the last decade? The same Apple that simply blames the user when their iPhone explodes in their face? The same Apple that leverages a combination of iTunes, the iPhone and it's app store for anti-competitive practices?
What about Google? Is this the same Google that wants to farm all your data? The same Google whose CEO doesn't believe you need privacy unless you have something to hide? The same Google that would happily pander to Chinese censorship and so on?
Look, I'm a fan of some of Apple and Google's products as much as the next guy, but that doesn't mean I'm going to pretend they don't do much wrong as well, clearly they can be quite evil themselves, arguably just as much so as Microsoft. In reality Microsoft seem no less evil than other major players like Facebook either. In the grand scheme of things Microsoft couldn't even come close to many manufacturing firms, many mining firms and so forth. Really in terms of being evil, Microsoft as a company, are pretty much par for the course. The difference is, they're the main opponent of the open source movement and as this is largely an open source supporting community then that is why you see such a focus on them here, not because there is some reality in them being evil enough to stand out from the rest of the world.
No, but Call of Duty 5 (World at War) did use Kiefer Sutherland as a voice actor.
MW2 did use professional actors also, although I can't remember who.
Perhaps if games didn't spend money on Hollywood types like this they could cut costs a fair whack- most people wouldn't even know it's Kiefer Sutherland in CoD5, so why not just use someone else who can speak and would be MUCH cheaper.
I wouldn't be suprised if between all the actors paid in MW2 to do voices there was a few million spent.
That's because AC was an awfully dull game even though it looked stunning and the fighting was impressive.
Try Assassins Creed 2, far, far better and puts even classics like Thief to shame.
So anyone that makes good points that are a bit more level headed than the usual hate based anti-Microsoft drivel is an apologist?
The problem with Slashdot (which really is a problem that stems from the FOSS community) is that it often has a zealotry to it that does it more harm than good in the eyes of anyone looking for objective comments. You read some of the anti-MS stuff here and if you were an outsider it'd give you the impression the site is full of nutjobs.
Microsoft have done a lot of things wrong, but they've also done a lot of things right. The issue is that Apple is guilty of doing as much wrong as Microsoft nowadays, yet because they base MacOS X on BSD they're often given a free ride. Despite Job's insistence otherwise, Apple has been the biggest proponent of DRM over the last decade for example and ironically it's platforms like the iPhone are more closed than even Microsoft's.
The hate for Microsoft here is usually 50% understandable, 50% utterly irrational, yet when someone like sopssa comes along and manages to post with only the understandable portion of hate without the stupid irrationality he's attacked for it? It's a shame there aren't more posters like him here so that we can have discussions that make sense, rather than an orgy of mutual reassurance that it's okay to attack Microsoft in the most irrational ways possible which just reinforce the nonsensical trash that is so often repeated.
There are of course fanboys that lean in completely the other direction, Microsoft fanboys who take things too far the other way and refuse to recognise when Microsoft does wrong. These people deserve to be chastised too, but the day I see one with a +5 insightful mod is the day Slashdot is taken over by MS so they're less of a problem here. It's not like I even agree with sopssa on some of his pro-Microsoft views all the time, but for the most part, his posts make a lot more sense from an objective viewpoint that those caught up in their own rabid fanboyism.
That's probably even worse because then you're basically just admitting you completely ripped that game off.
"I think it's an open question if this is on purpose or by design."
It's really a closed question to be honest. The settings used to be better, easier to use. Privacy used to be something that was easy to set on Facebook, this attracted people to the site because they thought it was no big deal publishing to it if they could set their privacy.
Over time the privacy settings have gotten worse, people have had privacy settings defaulted to insecure without their knowledge after site changes and so forth.
In terms of privacy, Facebook has been a classic bait and switch. Millions were lured in with a site that allowed them to control what was private and what wasn't. Nowadays, you have to assume nothing on Facebook is private. The issue for many is do they delete their account and have no way of communicating with some of their friends who only use Facebook now and forego the likes of IM programs because of that or do they keep it to stay in touch with their friends?
The problem is that there are actually people on Slashdot who would believe that Steve Ballmer is personally attacking them, it's hard to know when to take such things seriously anymore :p
It sounds like the real issue is that you don't really know much about math at all as otherwise you wouldn't make such a silly statement as calling combinatorics and computability theory introductory.
I suppose if all you've done is introductory course you might make that mistake, but these topics go well beyond graduate level. In fact, many important unsolved problems are in these fields and they are the focus of much modern mathematical research. Really, if you think you can solve P=NP with only introductory computability theory then please, go and try.
Please, at least have an understanding about the topics you post about before posting. Just because you don't know the subject well enough to be able to make use of it doesn't mean it's not useful, and just because you do not know a topic beyond a certain point does not mean there is no further knowledge to be gained beyond that point. Even if you were correct that combinatorics and computability theory were vastly smaller subjects than they really are and did not extend past an introductory stage then you're still completely wrong in general, number theory extends again to the edge of human knowledge, it's a subject that starts off easy but expands to be one of the highest end mathematical topics out there and yet it's still entirely applicable to cryptography and so forth in computing.
Put simply, you're wrong, high end math matters, and if you want to be a programmer that can make a difference and break new ground with their software then you absolutely do need it.
Um, dude, are you taking the piss, or are you really that fucked up?
The idea that an AC here is Steve Ballmer is fucking laughable for exactly the reasons the AC states, he has better things to do.
Whilst you may be right that MS has people influencing ideas in forums you can guarantee that Slashdot is not included in that. Why? There is absolutely no fucking point spending any money whatsoever on trying to influence opinion in Slashdot's discussion forums because Slashdot's discussion forums have absolutely no influence on anything, whatsoever.
Please, take your pills and realise, you are not talking to Steve Ballmer. I can only imagine that you do actually have some condition such as schizophrenia to come up with such an absurd conclusion.
All Android apps have to specifically declare what they require access to when you install them. This was really just a phishing attack, the only thing that's newsworthy is that it was an attack by a different medium. Just because the iPhone hasn't been victim of attacks via this specific medium doesn't mean it's any more secure. Countless iPhone users have no doubt equally been victim of phishing attacks via classic methods on their phone such as the browser, e-mail and so forth. But even Apple's vetting of apps is meaningless when it's a web enabled device designed to integrate closely with the web- no amount of initial verification can confirm that whatever is done server side is always going to be valid when Apple neither control nor have access to the servers and the code running on them.
Regarding jailbreak stores- that seems pretty irrelevant when recently jailbroken iPhones were victim to a worm spreading itself between them because they are insecure by default and you have to specifically secure them.
Really, making it an iPhone is better than everything else in the world thing is stupid, the exploits depend on convincing the user it's safe to enter their details just like any other phishing attack which pretty much every platform is vulnerable to. Feel free to search for 'iPhone phishing' in Google to see my point.
Yes, I really liked this part of the summary:
"3) There's latent demand for a mobile computing device that's smaller and lighter than a laptop but has more screen real estate than a smartphone -- something reminiscent of a Star Trek tricorder or PADD."
smaller and lighter than a laptop, but more screen real estate than a smartphone- something reminiscent of a Star Trek tricorder or PADD... or, erm, I don't know, say, a netbook?
Tablets are pointless because although they solve the small size problem of mobiles they don't solve the crippled input problem of mobiles. Netbooks are smaller than normal laptops and so are highly portable, but they're bigger than mobiles so don't have the limitations of them as they can be both more powerful and offer a much better set of features and a set of much easier to use input offerings. Hell, there's no reason netbooks can't also have touch screens to do everything a tablet can anyway. Plenty of laptops have already done this in the past- allowed you to fold the screen to turn it into a tablet. Couple this with the size of a netbook and the thinness of some of the newer netbooks and really, you begin to realise that tablets are absolutely nothing more than just extremely crippled laptops/netbooks at the end of the day.
There is absolutely no problem that a tablet solves that can't be better solved by either a smartphone or a well designed netbook depend on the problem in question.
That's only because most software that you would enter mathematical symbols into simply has fuck all investment into good UI design.
Mathcad for example allows you to enter equations extremely quickly thanks to smart keyboard shortcuts meaning you can just type your integrals and stuff on the fly just like anything else. Also I tend to feel it's often quicker to fill in large matrices and/or tables on computers than it is to write them out for example also.
Of course, Mathcad could still use a lot of work, and the issue with it is that it's simply not as powerful as the likes of Mathematica and even an undergrad maths student will begin to start finding things that Mathcad simply can't do for them.
So I agree, math and science students certainly still have to write, but I disagree with any suggestion that it has to be that way. We just need better software, we need math software that has a decent interface that does allow you to work faster.
This is why I found the UK parliament minutes interesting.
David Lammy, the UK's IP minister stated in the minutes that ACTA would have to be implemented under existing legislation rather than be something for which new legislation would need to be passed. If that's the case, ACTA doesn't really have teeth, because the government already pushes existing legislation to it's limits anyway (i.e. using anti-terror legislation to seize the assets of icelandic banks when they began to fail etc.).
Of course, whether that actually ends up being the case is questionable too though, but if it does, then colour me not concerned about ACTA.
"Why would OpenGL need to incorporate game development?"
This question seems to ignore the context of the thread - to stay relevant is the answer.
Yes, there is lots you can do with OpenGL that's not game development but it's a driving force. Game development support doesn't prevent producing serious apps and such with it as demonstrated by Direct3D- there are plenty of non-game applications out there written using DirectX.
"Besides, most of the other game-related libraries (sound, networking) are available as separate F/OSS libraries such as SDL."
Indeed, but no one wants to fuck around finding out which ones are best, dealing with multiple different libraries and interfaces all with different coding styles and so forth, all with their own quirks, missing features, not when they can again just use DirectX which avoids this.
I agree that it's the only option for Mac/Linux and I agree the DirectX 10/11 thing is stupid. I'm not saying I like the situation, I don't, as I say I'd much rather see OpenGL be more useful and relevant for modern games and multi-media applications development precisely so we don't all just have to use DirectX or face a horrible mish-mash of code and unproductivity.
Er, I think you need to check the summary again. It's quite clearly referencing a performance argument from 1997 and then saying, I quote "This lesson appears to have been forgotten over the last few years." inferring that arguments again DirectX from 1997 are somehow relevant today, when quite clearly they aren't as things have changed so drastically.
I quote also:
"Most game developers have fallen under the spell of DirectX marketing"
Which is again simply wrong, developers haven't fallen under a marketing spell, they've chosen DirectX for practical and sensible reasons such as those I stated.
The article talks about a network effect, but clearly there is no network effect in the way they suggest as OpenGL for a long time was the API of choice, and so by their logic would've remained on top because of this effect. People only started ditching OpenGL when DirectX started providing more and better than OpenGL was, not because of some marketing campaign unless they are suggesting that getting feedback on their API was somehow a marketing campaign when it clearly wasn't due to the fact it was a real and demonstrated way of simply producing a better product.
They also argue about training but again this is false- simply search for 3D programming tutorials and you'll find far more, far more helpful programming tutorials for OpenGL than you will for DirectX. Try simply searching for "3D programming tutorials" for example and see the likes of NeHe at the top.
It talks about the likes of vendor extensions but doesn't mention what an utter headache these are when you have to cater for the very fact they are vendor specific, the fact you have to implement on a per-graphics card basis. What's worse is they even contradict themselves, they state the reason that OpenGL is losing out is because of poorer support, then they reference an nVidia presentation that points out OpenGL has faster draw calls specifically because of nVidia's extensions and support for it.
The whole article was mostly full of shit. The only point I agree with is that it'd be nice if an open games development platform ruled the roost again, but you can't blame Microsoft for the fact it doesn't, only blame OpenGL and related groups for not putting the time and effort into keeping it relevant that Microsoft has into DirectX.