May 2004 Entries
This is a stupid move by Microsoft. To save $80 million, it's going to sacrifice a lot of employee good will. It's part of Microsoft culture that employee's are expected to "go the extra mile" and work some very long hours during crunch time but this is going to dampen that will.
My kids use quite a few education software titles. It's great that they think they're playing when they're also learning. However, there's some really annoying software in this market. Here's some of my peeves.
Rude installations that don't follow Windows conventions. For example, installing in a directory just below the C drive root. Worst of all, many don't give you a choice about where it gets installed.
Copy protection that requires you to always have the CD. Kids handling CD's is a nightmare. They get scratched, dropped, dirty and lost.
Support for Windows XP. I have quite a few titles that only...
Nice little article titled Hunting and Gathering. It highlights the decline of top-down cultural dissemination by TV, newspapers and magazines and the rise of bottom-up Internet culture relying on network effects. I believe it given how much I use the Internet. The TV is for DVD's.
Cool visual mapping of Google News. Check it out.
The article compares the issue of global software pricing to how much a Big Mac sells in different countries but that's very misleading. You can't transmit a Big Mac on a wire.
It should be obvious that you can't sell software for the same price in every country in the world. Well, you can, but you won't get much market share in emerging markets. There's such a huge difference in relative cost! But the problem with selling it cheaper in one country is that software can easily be exported to other countries where it is more expensive and begin to undermine that market.
So Microsoft...
Corporate Watch has an extensive piece on Microsoft. Ugly reading.
After seeing so many raves about Far Cry, I went and got myself a copy from GamePlay. Just finished level four last night. I've mentioned before that I'm not a real fan of first person shooters but I gotta admit this is a superb game.
The graphics are stunning. You're on a tropical island and the vegetation is lush and gently sways. The play of light is fantastic. I always consider water to be the graphics acid test and Far Cry does it very well. There's lots of detail with birds, fish and dragonflies. Lots and lots of detail. It...
I got infected by NetSearchSoft the other day. What a royale pain it was to get rid of it! Spybot and Ad-aware didn't do the job properly so eventually I learned about using HijackThis running under SafeMode. Very useful little program. I can't remember the exact file names so just run it and start looking for things that don't look right!