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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Balaam Xumucane: [QB] We are so OT it hurts [QUOTE]Originally posted by PsyLiam: [qb]"We've had, what, five great virus epidemics the past three years, haven't we?" No. We've had five situations where we were told there was going to be a great big virus outbreak that would cripple the worlds computers. And nothing happened.[/qb][/QUOTE] Well certainly the world's computers didn't come screeching to a halt as the melodramatic media had feared(hoped?), but that's not to say that [i]nothing[/i] happened. I personally had to fix three of my friends PCs after the 'I Love You' virus came via some other friend's MS Outlook. Vulnerability. Those people lost a lot of the information on their hard disks. [QUOTE]Originally posted by PsyLiam: [qb]On the other hand, if I write something in word, and want to use it on another computer, I can be almost completely sure that the other computer will be able to display the file.[/qb][/QUOTE] Say, didn't there used to be a program called Word Perfect? I seem to remember a time when that was the standard. Then there were some compatibility problems with Windows 3.1; nasty luck, that. I guess it's good that MS Word was there to take up the slack... No, but I hear you and I do use PDFs every day. It's the same idea, and it's a good thing to be able to share documents among your peers. To their credit, Microsoft even produced a free PowerPoint Viewer app. I just wish there could be a universal format we could all share that wasn't so proprietary and wasn't so quirky ([i]cough, cough[/i] OpenDoc [i]cough, cough[/i]). [QUOTE]Originally posted by PsyLiam: [qb]Diversity is good. Standardisation is good. Do you remember the nightmare of trying to play games under DOS? Programs having to cope with a million different sound cards? Trying to get the game to accept your crap sound card?[/qb][/QUOTE] Vividly. In fact, I would say it greatly contributed to my choice of OS. Direct X has made the gaming consumer's life much easier, but at what cost? For those of you who don't use Macs, you should know that of the very few titles released for Mac, simultaneous cross-platform release is virtually unheard of and a 6-12 month wait is generally the norm. It is the reality in the industry, and I do understand it. It isn't profitable to develop for Mac. In fact, I was a level designer at a video game company a few years back. Microsoft had us eating out of their hand to get the latest Direct X Dev kits, etc. Pretty much the idea was that if we developed using their controllers (game controllers, joysticks, etc.) and when the Virgin interactive VC people came around we [i]used[/i] those controllers for demos we'd get the stuff we needed. It wasn't blackmail perse, but it was pathetic. We needed to make a profitable game, and that was the only way to do it. They were the only game in town. I was pretty green back then, but my co-workers made it pretty clear this was standard operating procedure. This was small time though, we were a group of maybe sixty artists, programers, producers and designers at a company of maybe a hundred people. Imagine the kind of leverage they could bring to bear on a larger company with an established product with even more at stake. I believe they wouldn't hesitate for a heartbeat to abuse that power. For those truly interested in the commie-mac-user perspective on the Redland tyranny, please visit: http://netaction.org/msoft/world/ [/QB][/QUOTE]
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