I don't want to hear what "everybody else" is saying, I want to hear what issues you've encountered personally. After all, the post that started this all is marked as "interesting," and I'd like to actually be interested in it.
What issues have you had with UAC? What does Aero have to do with anything related to application compatibility? What about printing? What kind of sharing issues? (The IE7 one I'll give you, but you can't blame Microsoft for locking it down tighter than Fort Knox with all the bad press IE issues have given them.)
I'm not a whiner, I'm just trying to get you to do two things here: 1) Prove you actually know what you're talking about. (Just repeating you're a Vista developer and I'm not over and over again doesn't really do that.)
2) Give me some new insight I haven't seen before. If you are experiencing some specific UAC problem that's been encountered by tons of other developers before, then by all means link to it. From my experience, most UAC issues applications have were bugs in those applications before Vista that Vista just exposed (like trying to write to the Program Files directory for trivial reasons, or to HKeyLocalMachine in the registry.) As a user who's constantly pissed-off over XP software that requires administrative permissions for no reason (especially video games!) I'm very interested in these problems.
Let's earn the +5 Interesting by saying something that's actually interesting, that's all I'm asking for.
Correct me if I'm wrong here but I thought the way Apple dealt with the problem of legacy cruft with OSX was saying "Hey, this is a clean sheet design, or at least clean as far as OS9 is concerned, going with FreeBSD and all. But we'll give you a copy of OS9 included and it will run in an almost seamless virtual machine so you can still get your legacy apps." And the hardware was advanced enough that it could handle a VM in a window without choking. That's my understanding of the way it was done, am I correct?
Kind of, but in the process they removed a bunch of features in OS X that people had gotten used to in OS 9. (Many still aren't added back in!) I'm fine with a company creating backwards compatibility using a virtual machine, like Apple did, or like Microsoft does on the Xbox 360, but you can't use that as an excuse to remove features from the product.
Just for example, under XP, most application operations that require elevated privileges (e.g. writing to Program Files) will simply work if the application is being run by an admin.
If your application requires write access to Program Files, it's already broken under Windows XP, and Windows 2000 for that matter and arguably under Windows NT 4 as well. (If you even support NT 4.) This isn't a case of Microsoft "breaking" your software in Vista, this is a case of Microsoft allowing your already-broken software to run correctly for many (not all!) users in XP.
As a home user who tries to always run Windows with non-admin permissions (as, frankly, everybody should be doing), I'm happy that Microsoft has "broken" your software-- maybe it'll run correctly for me in XP now!
Asking you to defend your own viewpoint with a concrete example sets a hostile tone?
I'm just sick of all the people posting vague opinions and getting modded up, even though their posts are basically content-less except "I don't like it." Well, hell, you're posting on Slashdot, I'll just make the assumption you don't like Vista-- what I'd like to read is why you have problems with it, which would actually be helpful to me and, I think, add much more to the discussion other than just reinforcing the groupthink. It would also be nice if moderators moderated accordingly, as well, but that's probably hoping for too much.
I think my real problem is that I'm not a jackass like you are. I'm sorry that I'll never be rich enough to "be able to use" your wealth management software, and I'm sorry that I don't somehow telepathically know exactly what you're talking about without you having to type it, but I guess you'll just have to cope with the fact that until you provide at least some rationale for your statement, I'm going to just dismiss it out-of-hand.
I think pretty much everyone agrees that the current US system is broken and badly in need of reform. The real issue is whether a socialized system is the best way to do it... it's pretty counter to the American way of thinking, so it's going to really need to prove itself before people can get behind it. And, who knows, there's always the possibility we'll find something better which makes more use of the free market we all love.
So to make a good game, you have to do something that's never been done before? Ever? That's going to be a bit of a challenge...
But more seriously, Bioshock did do something that's never been done before: It brought the world/environment of Rapture to life. Rapture didn't even exist until Bioshock came along, and it's definitely a lot different than any other setting I've seen.
I liked Bad Street Brawler, damnit. The graphics were good on my Commodore, and the enemies were funny (like the old lady who flew by swinging her purse like a helicopter blade.) I know the NES version sucked, but it wasn't that bad a game on other platforms. Damnit.
I was wondering how the Slashdot community would respond to this article which is so against its ethos. I mean, everybody here loves Nintendo and the Wii, but everybody here also loves pirating movies, music and games... how do you resolve that? Ah! Brilliant, we'll just say it's impossible!
Right wing "pro life" advocates who seem to have no problem supporting a war in which innocent people are dieing every day spring to mind.
No to derail the conversation too much, but you make it sound like the pro-war movement want the US military to just go to a country and shoot people for no reason. The general belief of the pro-war movement is that US involvement in Iraq is the lesser of two evils-- that is, by using our military as a stabilizing force *fewer* innocent people are dying than if we left and let the country degrade into civil war (which is a near-certainty, considering how weak the central government is.)
Pro-war and anti-war factions both want the same result: fewer people to be killed. They just disagree on which people (Americans vs. Iraqis) and how to best accomplish it.
Ok, it's nice of you to cherry-pick Madden as an example, when, being a football game, Madden is one of those games that really does have limited opportunities for innovation... I mean, they can't change the rules of football when making the game! (Despite that, it does have about three dozen features that Madden '99 did not have, so even in a game genre that's stale by design there's room for improvement.)
However, pick any other game and your argument falls apart. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time had a cast and crew of hundreds, and yet was a great, innovative new game with a compelling storyline, game mechanics that had never been seen before, impressive graphics and sound and, yes, even to impress grumpy old men like you it even included the original Prince of Persia 2D games as unlockables. How can you argue that there's something wrong with the industry that produced this product?
And it's just an example I plucked out of thin air. You could same the same thing about Bioshock, or Half-Life 2, or any of a dozen other games that have come out in the last 5 years. Viva Pinata has more concentrated fun than a thousand Pong machines.
"Guys from our time" is a misnomer here. It's not when you're from, it's how much your mind is constrained by the limits of your grumpy nostalgia. Open your mind and give some new games a try, and you'll be surprised by what you find. Ignore the nostalgia when it crops up, nostalgia is total BS.
I'm not willing to let a program that does something so trivial run as admin. And, anyway, I tried that and it didn't work. (It couldn't read the files on my media server share, telling me to set the service to an admin account. I did that, rebooted, and it still couldn't read the files on my media server with the same error message.)
Interesting, I'll have to try that game out when I have more time.
For a second, though, I thought you were referring to "A Mind Forever Voyaging." I'd also argue that if you make it to the end of that game and you don't feel anything, you should check your pulse. Absolutely amazing game.
This idea keeps coming up, and it's still a bad idea.
They don't do it because: * The LiveCD can't possibly have drivers for all future video cards * The LiveCD can't even guarantee the ability to read the host computer's HD to save the game. The HD could be encrypted or in a format it doesn't understand. * The LiveCD can't possible guarantee it will have every game accessory the player may use during the game (like a voice chat program, or maybe a web browser), and if it did, it would have to be re-configured for every game.
Running in a VM is a new angle I hadn't seen before, and might solve a couple of these problems, but it still seems a lot more trouble than it's worth. The number one most important reason is this:
I have no f-ing clue. I just made them using a program called "Handbrake" on my Mac, so it's whatever the hell format it makes. It calls them ".mp4".
Also, holy crap, your post reminds me of a huge pet peeve I have: when is somebody going to come along and make video SIMPLE?! Doing anything with video right now is so goddamned complicated, it makes my brain hurt. For instance:
When you say 'MP4' files, are they actually.mp4s, or.mkvs that contain H264 files? I know it's a slightly daft question, but I've seen a few people claim to be hosting mp4s when they're really mkvs.
Anyway, assuming they are genuine mp4 files, what audio/video format are they? I regularly use Quicktime Pro to convert 720p trailers to.mp4 files with a straight passthrough of the video, but you've got to downmix 5.1 audio to 2.0 AAC for the 360 to play them.
That's pretty much utter gibberish to me. I just want my DVDs to play on my Xbox!
Then, because WMP has the problem you've highlighted, dump them on a DVD+RW to put in the machine directly.
That defeats the purpose of me owning a media server in the first place. If the solution involves burning disks, I'll just watch them on my computer monitor.
What are the odds someone has a video game console (which basically requires a TV for output-- yes I know there's a VGA adaptor, stop being pedantic) and aren't already paying the license fee?
Well so much for this generation of consoles being the end all be all "it just works, I don't have to upgrade every year" devices that were supposedly hamering the last nails into the coffin of PC gaming.
Who ever claimed it was? Seriously, throw me a reference here.
If anything, the current generation of consoles (at least the Xbox 360 and PS3) were crowing that they were going to be MORE PC-like and less console-like. Releasing multiple versions at 6-month-or-so intervals is a pretty PC-like thing to do.
If you like PC games, that's fine. Personally, the last PC game I played was Battlefield: 2142 and it was such a gigantic ball of bugs and crap that even getting into a game with friends was a small miracle. It was bad enough that it encouraged me to always buy the Xbox version when possible. (The reporting of Bioshock's crazy DRM restrictions didn't help, either. I happily have the Xbox version of Bioshock.)
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I don't want to hear what "everybody else" is saying, I want to hear what issues you've encountered personally. After all, the post that started this all is marked as "interesting," and I'd like to actually be interested in it.
What issues have you had with UAC? What does Aero have to do with anything related to application compatibility? What about printing? What kind of sharing issues? (The IE7 one I'll give you, but you can't blame Microsoft for locking it down tighter than Fort Knox with all the bad press IE issues have given them.)
I'm not a whiner, I'm just trying to get you to do two things here:
1) Prove you actually know what you're talking about. (Just repeating you're a Vista developer and I'm not over and over again doesn't really do that.)
2) Give me some new insight I haven't seen before. If you are experiencing some specific UAC problem that's been encountered by tons of other developers before, then by all means link to it. From my experience, most UAC issues applications have were bugs in those applications before Vista that Vista just exposed (like trying to write to the Program Files directory for trivial reasons, or to HKeyLocalMachine in the registry.) As a user who's constantly pissed-off over XP software that requires administrative permissions for no reason (especially video games!) I'm very interested in these problems.
Let's earn the +5 Interesting by saying something that's actually interesting, that's all I'm asking for.
Correct me if I'm wrong here but I thought the way Apple dealt with the problem of legacy cruft with OSX was saying "Hey, this is a clean sheet design, or at least clean as far as OS9 is concerned, going with FreeBSD and all. But we'll give you a copy of OS9 included and it will run in an almost seamless virtual machine so you can still get your legacy apps." And the hardware was advanced enough that it could handle a VM in a window without choking. That's my understanding of the way it was done, am I correct?
Kind of, but in the process they removed a bunch of features in OS X that people had gotten used to in OS 9. (Many still aren't added back in!) I'm fine with a company creating backwards compatibility using a virtual machine, like Apple did, or like Microsoft does on the Xbox 360, but you can't use that as an excuse to remove features from the product.
Just for example, under XP, most application operations that require elevated privileges (e.g. writing to Program Files) will simply work if the application is being run by an admin.
If your application requires write access to Program Files, it's already broken under Windows XP, and Windows 2000 for that matter and arguably under Windows NT 4 as well. (If you even support NT 4.) This isn't a case of Microsoft "breaking" your software in Vista, this is a case of Microsoft allowing your already-broken software to run correctly for many (not all!) users in XP.
As a home user who tries to always run Windows with non-admin permissions (as, frankly, everybody should be doing), I'm happy that Microsoft has "broken" your software-- maybe it'll run correctly for me in XP now!
I only replied in the tone you set.
Asking you to defend your own viewpoint with a concrete example sets a hostile tone?
I'm just sick of all the people posting vague opinions and getting modded up, even though their posts are basically content-less except "I don't like it." Well, hell, you're posting on Slashdot, I'll just make the assumption you don't like Vista-- what I'd like to read is why you have problems with it, which would actually be helpful to me and, I think, add much more to the discussion other than just reinforcing the groupthink. It would also be nice if moderators moderated accordingly, as well, but that's probably hoping for too much.
I think my real problem is that I'm not a jackass like you are. I'm sorry that I'll never be rich enough to "be able to use" your wealth management software, and I'm sorry that I don't somehow telepathically know exactly what you're talking about without you having to type it, but I guess you'll just have to cope with the fact that until you provide at least some rationale for your statement, I'm going to just dismiss it out-of-hand.
Do you have a single specific example, rather than this vague handwaving?
I think pretty much everyone agrees that the current US system is broken and badly in need of reform. The real issue is whether a socialized system is the best way to do it... it's pretty counter to the American way of thinking, so it's going to really need to prove itself before people can get behind it. And, who knows, there's always the possibility we'll find something better which makes more use of the free market we all love.
So to make a good game, you have to do something that's never been done before? Ever? That's going to be a bit of a challenge...
But more seriously, Bioshock did do something that's never been done before: It brought the world/environment of Rapture to life. Rapture didn't even exist until Bioshock came along, and it's definitely a lot different than any other setting I've seen.
I liked Bad Street Brawler, damnit. The graphics were good on my Commodore, and the enemies were funny (like the old lady who flew by swinging her purse like a helicopter blade.) I know the NES version sucked, but it wasn't that bad a game on other platforms. Damnit.
I was wondering how the Slashdot community would respond to this article which is so against its ethos. I mean, everybody here loves Nintendo and the Wii, but everybody here also loves pirating movies, music and games... how do you resolve that? Ah! Brilliant, we'll just say it's impossible!
Haha, I visited New Zealand in 2000, and they were STILL pissed-off about that. They didn't seem to appreciate my laughing at it.
Right wing "pro life" advocates who seem to have no problem supporting a war in which innocent people are dieing every day spring to mind.
No to derail the conversation too much, but you make it sound like the pro-war movement want the US military to just go to a country and shoot people for no reason. The general belief of the pro-war movement is that US involvement in Iraq is the lesser of two evils-- that is, by using our military as a stabilizing force *fewer* innocent people are dying than if we left and let the country degrade into civil war (which is a near-certainty, considering how weak the central government is.)
Pro-war and anti-war factions both want the same result: fewer people to be killed. They just disagree on which people (Americans vs. Iraqis) and how to best accomplish it.
Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with Iraq. No one ever said that except for those on the left that try to say that Bush said it.
Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with Iraq? This post has to be a troll, or the worst typo ever.
(If there are any 5-year-olds in the audience, Saddam Hussein happened to be dictator of Iraq for decades.)
Ok, it's nice of you to cherry-pick Madden as an example, when, being a football game, Madden is one of those games that really does have limited opportunities for innovation... I mean, they can't change the rules of football when making the game! (Despite that, it does have about three dozen features that Madden '99 did not have, so even in a game genre that's stale by design there's room for improvement.)
However, pick any other game and your argument falls apart. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time had a cast and crew of hundreds, and yet was a great, innovative new game with a compelling storyline, game mechanics that had never been seen before, impressive graphics and sound and, yes, even to impress grumpy old men like you it even included the original Prince of Persia 2D games as unlockables. How can you argue that there's something wrong with the industry that produced this product?
And it's just an example I plucked out of thin air. You could same the same thing about Bioshock, or Half-Life 2, or any of a dozen other games that have come out in the last 5 years. Viva Pinata has more concentrated fun than a thousand Pong machines.
"Guys from our time" is a misnomer here. It's not when you're from, it's how much your mind is constrained by the limits of your grumpy nostalgia. Open your mind and give some new games a try, and you'll be surprised by what you find. Ignore the nostalgia when it crops up, nostalgia is total BS.
I'm not willing to let a program that does something so trivial run as admin. And, anyway, I tried that and it didn't work. (It couldn't read the files on my media server share, telling me to set the service to an admin account. I did that, rebooted, and it still couldn't read the files on my media server with the same error message.)
Interesting, I'll have to try that game out when I have more time.
For a second, though, I thought you were referring to "A Mind Forever Voyaging." I'd also argue that if you make it to the end of that game and you don't feel anything, you should check your pulse. Absolutely amazing game.
Windoze is like a Ford Pinto. It'll get you to work and back home again, just don't expect it to have any real power.
This is what I always want to reply to people like you:
"You can't even spell 'Windows', why the hell should I trust what you have to say about it?"
Seriously, it's not clever, it's not funny, it's just stupid to type "windoze" or "M$". Grow up, and let's have an adult conversation.
This idea keeps coming up, and it's still a bad idea.
They don't do it because:
* The LiveCD can't possibly have drivers for all future video cards
* The LiveCD can't even guarantee the ability to read the host computer's HD to save the game. The HD could be encrypted or in a format it doesn't understand.
* The LiveCD can't possible guarantee it will have every game accessory the player may use during the game (like a voice chat program, or maybe a web browser), and if it did, it would have to be re-configured for every game.
Running in a VM is a new angle I hadn't seen before, and might solve a couple of these problems, but it still seems a lot more trouble than it's worth. The number one most important reason is this:
* DirectX already exists. Why reinvent the wheel?
For about ... ummm ZERO dollars I can setup up an application development station for Linux apps.
.net application for Windows using any of the Express development tools.
I don't know what goes into your "station", but for $0 you can make a
So there's no solution except that TVersity program that doesn't work with my media server? Damn. Thanks anyway.
Which of those points did the NES have?
Wow, you're so full of crap *my* head hurts.
I have no f-ing clue. I just made them using a program called "Handbrake" on my Mac, so it's whatever the hell format it makes. It calls them ".mp4".
.mp4s, or .mkvs that contain H264 files? I know it's a slightly daft question, but I've seen a few people claim to be hosting mp4s when they're really mkvs.
.mp4 files with a straight passthrough of the video, but you've got to downmix 5.1 audio to 2.0 AAC for the 360 to play them.
Also, holy crap, your post reminds me of a huge pet peeve I have: when is somebody going to come along and make video SIMPLE?! Doing anything with video right now is so goddamned complicated, it makes my brain hurt. For instance:
When you say 'MP4' files, are they actually
Anyway, assuming they are genuine mp4 files, what audio/video format are they? I regularly use Quicktime Pro to convert 720p trailers to
That's pretty much utter gibberish to me. I just want my DVDs to play on my Xbox!
Then, because WMP has the problem you've highlighted, dump them on a DVD+RW to put in the machine directly.
That defeats the purpose of me owning a media server in the first place. If the solution involves burning disks, I'll just watch them on my computer monitor.
What are the odds someone has a video game console (which basically requires a TV for output-- yes I know there's a VGA adaptor, stop being pedantic) and aren't already paying the license fee?
Well so much for this generation of consoles being the end all be all "it just works, I don't have to upgrade every year" devices that were supposedly hamering the last nails into the coffin of PC gaming.
Who ever claimed it was? Seriously, throw me a reference here.
If anything, the current generation of consoles (at least the Xbox 360 and PS3) were crowing that they were going to be MORE PC-like and less console-like. Releasing multiple versions at 6-month-or-so intervals is a pretty PC-like thing to do.
If you like PC games, that's fine. Personally, the last PC game I played was Battlefield: 2142 and it was such a gigantic ball of bugs and crap that even getting into a game with friends was a small miracle. It was bad enough that it encouraged me to always buy the Xbox version when possible. (The reporting of Bioshock's crazy DRM restrictions didn't help, either. I happily have the Xbox version of Bioshock.)
If you hold off on tech purchases because there's always a later and greater version a few months away... how do you ever buy anything?