Lawrence Lessig JUST did a http://www.grad.washington.edu/lectures/schedule.htmtalk on this at University of Washington last night. It was officially titled "Is Google(2008) Microsoft(1998)?" Because he's a smart guy the answer is a bit more complicated than yes or no.
But he did point out a few significant similarities. Fundamentally, both companies are/were trying to create a platform that other developers would use to create good stuff for users. That's been covered before and most of us are familiar with that strategy. The key is that these platforms only work when developers that use it TRUST that they won't get screwed by the platform operator at some later time. Lessig feels that this loss of trust was a far worse consequence to MS than any DOJ settlement/penalty was for the anti-trust fight of the late '90s.
Heck, it's safe to say that trust is the very reason we keep watching Google like hawks. It's the reason MS gets bashed and it's the reason FOSS is embraced. There's flat out NO WAY the rug can be pulled out from under you if you develop over an open source platform.
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Now, can you imagine your reaction if MS revoked your license because you bashed them in an email sent from a Windows box?
Kinda makes me feel sorry for any poor dude that has a 60" screen.
My point being, the remote isn't going to have a 1:1 mapping of its motion to that on the screen, just like our PC mice don't map precisely to the distance of motion of our pointers on the screen. As long as there's a point of reference on the screen to look at, it doesn't matter how sensitive the tracking is.
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...damn, I need to learn how to use comment tags...
But he did point out a few significant similarities. Fundamentally, both companies are/were trying to create a platform that other developers would use to create good stuff for users. That's been covered before and most of us are familiar with that strategy. The key is that these platforms only work when developers that use it TRUST that they won't get screwed by the platform operator at some later time. Lessig feels that this loss of trust was a far worse consequence to MS than any DOJ settlement/penalty was for the anti-trust fight of the late '90s.
Heck, it's safe to say that trust is the very reason we keep watching Google like hawks. It's the reason MS gets bashed and it's the reason FOSS is embraced. There's flat out NO WAY the rug can be pulled out from under you if you develop over an open source platform.
In light of that, Lessig pointed out a rather scary http://www.google.com/apis/maps/terms.htmlfact:
Now, can you imagine your reaction if MS revoked your license because you bashed them in an email sent from a Windows box?
Kinda makes me feel sorry for any poor dude that has a 60" screen.
My point being, the remote isn't going to have a 1:1 mapping of its motion to that on the screen, just like our PC mice don't map precisely to the distance of motion of our pointers on the screen. As long as there's a point of reference on the screen to look at, it doesn't matter how sensitive the tracking is.