Same old story with software. A well liked application has to have 'new versions' all the time because people get a hard-on for new stuff. Eventually it gets so bloated with 'features' of dubious use that its interface becomes clunky or its performance suffers.
I like firefox because it added tabs and simplified the web browser interface (its options screens seem so straightforward and easy to navigate compared to IE's internet options). I think that improving the way extensions are handled would be a good goal, but otherwise it does everything I think a browser should do and just need occasional security updates.
There's a shortage of people willing to do difficult skilled labor for the same wages that are paid for unskilled or at least much easier jobs.
Why the hell should I do 4 years of CS when I can get a business degree and spend my college years high on weed and do just as well on the other side? There has to be a reward for people, otherwise they just aren't going to put in the extra effort.
There is no such thing as a labor shortage. There's an unwillingness to pay the amount of money people will do that labor for. You increase the wages and boom, people are going to be willing put in the effort. If you send the jobs somewhere else or automate them with a machine, etc, less people are going to go into that field because its not worth the cost in time and eduction investment. And maybe thats just the way it works, but I have to laugh when I hear people say there is a 'shortage of IT workers' in the US. They're dangling stick with nothing on it in front of the donkeys and wondering why they're eating out of the cabbage patch two feet away instead of following them.
If MS gets what it wants on this one, I suspect PC costs will go up. Like it or not, I'm pretty sure Dell and company are paid to install all of that garbage. And considering how price competitive the US PC market is...at least some of that results in savings for the end customer. Basically, the PC purchase was subsidized by advertisements.
And what about Microsoft's own craplets? How come its so hard to get rid of MSN Messenger on some older PCs it shows up on? Hell, isn't it virtually impossible to uninstall most of the bundled software applications that come with windows? My windows 2K server box kept failing automatic update after I removed outlook express because it couldn't install an OE update. While I can understand Microsofts complaints here, and I even agree that some of the blame is going to be unfairly laid on them...it seems like they play this same little game when it suits them.
I really doubt we've seen the last of 'craplets'. OEMs aren't likely to toss that kickback anytime soon in such a low margin business.
Hasn't the supreme court tossed out everyone of the laws passed in states that old Jackie boy worked on?
Maybe thats why they want his help, so they can make sure that it gets thrown out. That way they can say they tried to 'fix the problem' and then blame it on the federal government.
Its by no means a totally black and white issue. They never are. However, I believe the bill has some level of allowances for QoS, but I could be wrong. And even that is kind of debatable about whether should be any sactioned management at all. But given how telephone and cable companies have operated in the past, and what have actually said they have planned for the future...I'm envisioning a choice between potentially clunky operation of some protocols and large amounts of internet scisms and the general loss of what made the internet so powerful in the first place.
If they're allowed to choke off whatever they please, its no longer an open internet with an equal burden of entry. If I start up some company that competes with say, ebay, I'll have to pay my bandwidth bills and some kind of extortion fees to every ISP I want to service (completely). They talk about going after the big guy to get money out of them, but those big guys have enough clout that they can throw a little weight around themselves. It won't be long until they start trying to hit guys further down the ladder up as well. Only guys with a lot of money will be able to get their stuff out their effectively, and I just don't want things to end up that way.
The whole thing got me thinking if it would be feasible and practical to run a web server with a bittorrent style peer to peer network. Thats a market workaround.
While I can understand your situation, Windows may meet your needs best...the crux of your example was photoshop, one application used for specific types of work. It hardly makes the case that only Windows can get the job done for computing...especially since its also available on the Mac.
The concern isn't that the telcos will use QoS to make their IPTV service faster. Its that they'll choke any IPTV packets that don't come from their own IPTV service, effectively shutting the competitors out of the market and leaving you with yet another local monopoly to deal with. Or try to extort money out of big content providers like google for instance. Hell, one of those fat fucks actually said he was planning on doing just that.
Microsoft is looking to push vista by not releasing DX10 on XP. DX10 is about the only thing I see most gamers interested in vista for. As it stands right now, all vista offers as a gaming environment is 10-15% worse performance with the same hardware. Whether you believe the business about DX10 not being able to function with XP because of kernel changes or not is irrelevant, I don't think we'll see it for XP.
Microsoft is hoping this is going to speed the adoption of Vista for gaming...but developers have used DirectX not just because it was there but because it was compatiable with previous operating systems. Hell, I think DX9 might even have a version for windows 98. When you used directX you weren't making market compromises. We've seen the increasingly risk averse game companies mostly abandone OpenGL altogether in recent years. We've even seen some dump support for directX 8 hardware. I'm not sure how excited they are going to be about having to do directX9 and 10. I'm not sure how much extra work that will involve...but they can't let directX9 go without abandoning most of the market. So they're back to supporting to APIs again.
So maybe we'll see developers taking a closer look at OpenGL again...it does work with everything which Microsoft no longer does. Of course, Microsoft seems to have foreseen that plan as well and last I read have made OpenGL just through a bunch of hoops just to get working or hobbles their performance with a directx wrapper.
I for one, am just plain getting off the train if I can help it.
Or genders. As a white male ages 18-35 I'm not complaining about the demographic gaming usually targets. But women are a huge market the gaming industry still largely ignores. Some of the best selling titles are probably best selling because that have at least a limited appeal to women as well as men.
The article mentions that Microsoft setup a thing that converts/loads legacy games to work with it. Its not surprise Halo is one of the titles on that list. The question is what happens when your old game isn't...or your game is new.
These NASA rebels must be stopped. The moon was claimed in the name of the United States by Neal Armstrong, we can't allow them to fruit it up by going all metric on its ass the next time they land there. We should nuke all of NASA's bases from orbit. Some one see about coordinating that with our national space agency.
I guess it was only a matter of time before the world with an unstoppable urge to accumulate useless junk, gave its nod of approval to the purchase of useless junk that isn't even real. On the bright side, this new crap I can buy in the game takes up way less space in my garage. What is the going rate for a beer helmet in this game?
I tend to agree. I'd actually call it a hybrid myself (leaning closer to 3rd then 1st) but wouldn't call you wrong for saying its 3rd person.
Interestingly, I just can't stand most shooters on consoles. I tried this one at my bother in laws and really enjoyed it. I usually feel hobbled by the controls in console FPS, but aside from accidentally rolling all over the place I found this one easy to pick up and play.
You're paying for it because its for the good of the nation! Now lets see about increasing that H1B visa quota so Microsoft can increase the amount of indentured servants on its pay roll.
I think he may be refering to internal releases. Instead of hoarding a load of fixes/features for large releases, increase the amount of incremental releases so the testing team can get their hands on the code as it is written.
I have no idea about the validity of that statement. However, VHS and betamax players cost something like $800-1200 dollars back in the day. I remember reading the VHS was cheaper because it sold for under $1000 at one point. These days its easy to say the savings would be minimal when you can buy a VCR for $50 and a DVD player for $40...but back then just sharing the tuner hardware might have added up to a few hundred dollars of 1980s money. I could see the appeal to at least some people for that kind of hardware.
Publicity can't turn shit into gold, regardless of whether it's positive or negative.
Try telling that to William Hung. That guy rode that shit train all the way to the bank.
And Martha Stewart seems like a bad example, because I've seen her doing everything up to and including reality shows. And Bush...well, he got re-elected somehow. I think that little line takes into account that most people just aren't actually paying attention, so as long as your name is getting drilled into their brains through some sort of hypnotic repetition exercise you're slowing winning over more people then you're putting off.
Just some food for thought...
People just have too short an attention span today. I remember when a company does evil and at least try not to deal with them anymore.
I tried doing that but I ended up living in a shed in the Antarctica pedaling a bicycle hitched to a generator.
google + bioshock gameplay video should grab what you're after.
Looking Glass just plain doesn't exist anymore. Their IP was bought up by..EA! (Dun, dun, dun!) IIRC.
Yes, SHODAN is missing and the setting is different. But if you look closely at the gameplay videos, its the same gameplay. The AI is much better and more integrated into the world, the graphics are way better, and you use 'Adam' instead of nanities and cyber modules but its all the same idea. Instead of being a cyborg, you're kind of a mutant that can change his own DNA.
While I don't agree with all of your observations, I agree with the general trend.
Consoles seem have been trying to be 'more PC like' for at least the last couple of generations. I hadn't really thought about it in the way you presented it.
One of the interesting things you brought up that hardly ever gets discussed is the converging price points between the platforms. Most people are quick to point out the PCs are more expensive, but we've seen the cost of highend to midrange PCs continue to fall while the cost of a next generation console climbs. New consoles are obviously offering more power then in the past and are trying to live on the edge of technology more, but its pushing their costs higher.
Another interesting thing about consoles becoming more PC like is that they seem to have quickly adopted many of the PCs huge disadvantages as well. Unstable consoles seem more common to me now, and the ability to patch games has created the necessity to patch them. Before, developers had to get the title right out of the door because they only had one shot at it. Now they can patch them after the fact just like PC titles, and in order to meet the release date pressure, thats exactly what they seem to be doing.
The thing I don't like about this convergence of platforms is that both have lost a lot of their charm, at least to me. When I play new PC games, I feel like I'm playing a console port with little thought to the platform I'm on. (Oblivion's UI is a great example of this). And when I play xbox 360 games, I feel like I'm playing a game that wants to be a PC game but just isn't quite there. I was glad to see the Wii, it says "I offer you something different then what can be done on your PC" instead of "Me too".
Bioshock has been described by the developers as a 'spiritual sequel' to SS. They don't own the rights to SS, but irrational did develop SS2 so I have high hopes for this title. Plus, the gameplay videos out there already have some promising things in them.
I think you'll be disappointed with stalker. It looks like vaporware and a ton of the developer quit last year IIRC. I'd be surprised if it came out at all at this point.
Oh, I agree that this format war is largely pointless for most consumers and that I don't think there is a large demand for either technology. I think the HD disks are a niche product that they are attempting to market as mass market. But in that niche, the cheaper for content providers to produce for will win out in the long run. People buying these players aren't really that concerned with bang for their buck...but people making the disks probably are.
I think what he's trying to say is to make up the share deficiency by uploading more of another torrent. In practice, this is what I do to keep my share ratio high. I usually try to seed everything I download to ~3.5, but there's some stuff that rots in my tracker at 0.25 for two weeks before I give up and delete it. (Assuming I didn't want to keep it)
My original response was to point out that locking people out on a per torrent basis like that would basically make it impossible to download old unpopular files. Private torrent trackers already do ban people with poor ratios overall already. Public are well...public, they're always going to be full of leeches. And thats ok IMO.
Slashdot Mirror
Same old story with software. A well liked application has to have 'new versions' all the time because people get a hard-on for new stuff. Eventually it gets so bloated with 'features' of dubious use that its interface becomes clunky or its performance suffers.
I like firefox because it added tabs and simplified the web browser interface (its options screens seem so straightforward and easy to navigate compared to IE's internet options). I think that improving the way extensions are handled would be a good goal, but otherwise it does everything I think a browser should do and just need occasional security updates.
There's a shortage of people willing to do difficult skilled labor for the same wages that are paid for unskilled or at least much easier jobs.
Why the hell should I do 4 years of CS when I can get a business degree and spend my college years high on weed and do just as well on the other side? There has to be a reward for people, otherwise they just aren't going to put in the extra effort.
There is no such thing as a labor shortage. There's an unwillingness to pay the amount of money people will do that labor for. You increase the wages and boom, people are going to be willing put in the effort. If you send the jobs somewhere else or automate them with a machine, etc, less people are going to go into that field because its not worth the cost in time and eduction investment. And maybe thats just the way it works, but I have to laugh when I hear people say there is a 'shortage of IT workers' in the US. They're dangling stick with nothing on it in front of the donkeys and wondering why they're eating out of the cabbage patch two feet away instead of following them.
If MS gets what it wants on this one, I suspect PC costs will go up. Like it or not, I'm pretty sure Dell and company are paid to install all of that garbage. And considering how price competitive the US PC market is...at least some of that results in savings for the end customer. Basically, the PC purchase was subsidized by advertisements.
And what about Microsoft's own craplets? How come its so hard to get rid of MSN Messenger on some older PCs it shows up on? Hell, isn't it virtually impossible to uninstall most of the bundled software applications that come with windows? My windows 2K server box kept failing automatic update after I removed outlook express because it couldn't install an OE update. While I can understand Microsofts complaints here, and I even agree that some of the blame is going to be unfairly laid on them...it seems like they play this same little game when it suits them.
I really doubt we've seen the last of 'craplets'. OEMs aren't likely to toss that kickback anytime soon in such a low margin business.
Hasn't the supreme court tossed out everyone of the laws passed in states that old Jackie boy worked on?
Maybe thats why they want his help, so they can make sure that it gets thrown out. That way they can say they tried to 'fix the problem' and then blame it on the federal government.
Its by no means a totally black and white issue. They never are. However, I believe the bill has some level of allowances for QoS, but I could be wrong. And even that is kind of debatable about whether should be any sactioned management at all. But given how telephone and cable companies have operated in the past, and what have actually said they have planned for the future...I'm envisioning a choice between potentially clunky operation of some protocols and large amounts of internet scisms and the general loss of what made the internet so powerful in the first place.
If they're allowed to choke off whatever they please, its no longer an open internet with an equal burden of entry. If I start up some company that competes with say, ebay, I'll have to pay my bandwidth bills and some kind of extortion fees to every ISP I want to service (completely). They talk about going after the big guy to get money out of them, but those big guys have enough clout that they can throw a little weight around themselves. It won't be long until they start trying to hit guys further down the ladder up as well. Only guys with a lot of money will be able to get their stuff out their effectively, and I just don't want things to end up that way.
The whole thing got me thinking if it would be feasible and practical to run a web server with a bittorrent style peer to peer network. Thats a market workaround.
While I can understand your situation, Windows may meet your needs best...the crux of your example was photoshop, one application used for specific types of work. It hardly makes the case that only Windows can get the job done for computing...especially since its also available on the Mac.
The concern isn't that the telcos will use QoS to make their IPTV service faster. Its that they'll choke any IPTV packets that don't come from their own IPTV service, effectively shutting the competitors out of the market and leaving you with yet another local monopoly to deal with. Or try to extort money out of big content providers like google for instance. Hell, one of those fat fucks actually said he was planning on doing just that.
Microsoft is looking to push vista by not releasing DX10 on XP. DX10 is about the only thing I see most gamers interested in vista for. As it stands right now, all vista offers as a gaming environment is 10-15% worse performance with the same hardware. Whether you believe the business about DX10 not being able to function with XP because of kernel changes or not is irrelevant, I don't think we'll see it for XP.
Microsoft is hoping this is going to speed the adoption of Vista for gaming...but developers have used DirectX not just because it was there but because it was compatiable with previous operating systems. Hell, I think DX9 might even have a version for windows 98. When you used directX you weren't making market compromises. We've seen the increasingly risk averse game companies mostly abandone OpenGL altogether in recent years. We've even seen some dump support for directX 8 hardware. I'm not sure how excited they are going to be about having to do directX9 and 10. I'm not sure how much extra work that will involve...but they can't let directX9 go without abandoning most of the market. So they're back to supporting to APIs again.
So maybe we'll see developers taking a closer look at OpenGL again...it does work with everything which Microsoft no longer does. Of course, Microsoft seems to have foreseen that plan as well and last I read have made OpenGL just through a bunch of hoops just to get working or hobbles their performance with a directx wrapper.
I for one, am just plain getting off the train if I can help it.
Or genders. As a white male ages 18-35 I'm not complaining about the demographic gaming usually targets. But women are a huge market the gaming industry still largely ignores. Some of the best selling titles are probably best selling because that have at least a limited appeal to women as well as men.
The article mentions that Microsoft setup a thing that converts/loads legacy games to work with it. Its not surprise Halo is one of the titles on that list. The question is what happens when your old game isn't...or your game is new.
These NASA rebels must be stopped. The moon was claimed in the name of the United States by Neal Armstrong, we can't allow them to fruit it up by going all metric on its ass the next time they land there. We should nuke all of NASA's bases from orbit. Some one see about coordinating that with our national space agency.
I guess it was only a matter of time before the world with an unstoppable urge to accumulate useless junk, gave its nod of approval to the purchase of useless junk that isn't even real. On the bright side, this new crap I can buy in the game takes up way less space in my garage. What is the going rate for a beer helmet in this game?
Can we build like...a taser into it too? And what about a portable toaster attachment for when I want to cook a bagel on the plane?
I tend to agree. I'd actually call it a hybrid myself (leaning closer to 3rd then 1st) but wouldn't call you wrong for saying its 3rd person.
Interestingly, I just can't stand most shooters on consoles. I tried this one at my bother in laws and really enjoyed it. I usually feel hobbled by the controls in console FPS, but aside from accidentally rolling all over the place I found this one easy to pick up and play.
But then again...its not a FPS is it?
You're paying for it because its for the good of the nation! Now lets see about increasing that H1B visa quota so Microsoft can increase the amount of indentured servants on its pay roll.
I think he may be refering to internal releases. Instead of hoarding a load of fixes/features for large releases, increase the amount of incremental releases so the testing team can get their hands on the code as it is written.
I have no idea about the validity of that statement. However, VHS and betamax players cost something like $800-1200 dollars back in the day. I remember reading the VHS was cheaper because it sold for under $1000 at one point. These days its easy to say the savings would be minimal when you can buy a VCR for $50 and a DVD player for $40...but back then just sharing the tuner hardware might have added up to a few hundred dollars of 1980s money. I could see the appeal to at least some people for that kind of hardware.
Publicity can't turn shit into gold, regardless of whether it's positive or negative.
Try telling that to William Hung. That guy rode that shit train all the way to the bank.
And Martha Stewart seems like a bad example, because I've seen her doing everything up to and including reality shows. And Bush...well, he got re-elected somehow. I think that little line takes into account that most people just aren't actually paying attention, so as long as your name is getting drilled into their brains through some sort of hypnotic repetition exercise you're slowing winning over more people then you're putting off.
Just some food for thought...
People just have too short an attention span today. I remember when a company does evil and at least try not to deal with them anymore.
I tried doing that but I ended up living in a shed in the Antarctica pedaling a bicycle hitched to a generator.
google + bioshock gameplay video should grab what you're after.
Looking Glass just plain doesn't exist anymore. Their IP was bought up by..EA! (Dun, dun, dun!) IIRC.
Yes, SHODAN is missing and the setting is different. But if you look closely at the gameplay videos, its the same gameplay. The AI is much better and more integrated into the world, the graphics are way better, and you use 'Adam' instead of nanities and cyber modules but its all the same idea. Instead of being a cyborg, you're kind of a mutant that can change his own DNA.
It looks promising.
While I don't agree with all of your observations, I agree with the general trend.
Consoles seem have been trying to be 'more PC like' for at least the last couple of generations. I hadn't really thought about it in the way you presented it.
One of the interesting things you brought up that hardly ever gets discussed is the converging price points between the platforms. Most people are quick to point out the PCs are more expensive, but we've seen the cost of highend to midrange PCs continue to fall while the cost of a next generation console climbs. New consoles are obviously offering more power then in the past and are trying to live on the edge of technology more, but its pushing their costs higher.
Another interesting thing about consoles becoming more PC like is that they seem to have quickly adopted many of the PCs huge disadvantages as well. Unstable consoles seem more common to me now, and the ability to patch games has created the necessity to patch them. Before, developers had to get the title right out of the door because they only had one shot at it. Now they can patch them after the fact just like PC titles, and in order to meet the release date pressure, thats exactly what they seem to be doing.
The thing I don't like about this convergence of platforms is that both have lost a lot of their charm, at least to me. When I play new PC games, I feel like I'm playing a console port with little thought to the platform I'm on. (Oblivion's UI is a great example of this). And when I play xbox 360 games, I feel like I'm playing a game that wants to be a PC game but just isn't quite there. I was glad to see the Wii, it says "I offer you something different then what can be done on your PC" instead of "Me too".
Bioshock has been described by the developers as a 'spiritual sequel' to SS. They don't own the rights to SS, but irrational did develop SS2 so I have high hopes for this title. Plus, the gameplay videos out there already have some promising things in them.
I think you'll be disappointed with stalker. It looks like vaporware and a ton of the developer quit last year IIRC. I'd be surprised if it came out at all at this point.
Oh, I agree that this format war is largely pointless for most consumers and that I don't think there is a large demand for either technology. I think the HD disks are a niche product that they are attempting to market as mass market. But in that niche, the cheaper for content providers to produce for will win out in the long run. People buying these players aren't really that concerned with bang for their buck...but people making the disks probably are.
I think what he's trying to say is to make up the share deficiency by uploading more of another torrent. In practice, this is what I do to keep my share ratio high. I usually try to seed everything I download to ~3.5, but there's some stuff that rots in my tracker at 0.25 for two weeks before I give up and delete it. (Assuming I didn't want to keep it)
My original response was to point out that locking people out on a per torrent basis like that would basically make it impossible to download old unpopular files. Private torrent trackers already do ban people with poor ratios overall already. Public are well...public, they're always going to be full of leeches. And thats ok IMO.