RE: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (was shock))))
I'm not thrilled with everything about Windows; however, as a gamer...I don't see how you can't think Windows 95 and later made life MUCH better. Once Win 95 was adopted by game developers, and games were written (well) under it, gaming became so much easier. I still remember the bad old days of having multiple boot disks, QEMM, and a reconfig programugh...that was really a crappy way to game (having come from the ST, Amiga, Mac world). Once 95 became the standard, things for gamers got much better...peripherals (rudder pedals, steering wheels, etc) also become much easier to deal with...gotta love Plug and Play. To me, it sounds like another example of the good old days not being that good. Certainly from a gamer's perspective. Hugh -Original Message- From: Pedro Quaresma [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, November 16, 2001 5:10 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (was shock Jim Leonard wrote: Chris Newman wrote: What's the story? Is MS abusing its relationship with NBC? Where'd you hear the rumors? Yes, I'm very interested in that. Gates is part snake oil salesman, part gangster, and all opportunist. Rumor has it that Microsoft offered to 1. ignore existing NBC Microsoft product license violations (ie pirated copies) *and* cut them a deal on existing and future product license purchases if they set up Gates on a prime-time show (not necessarily Frasier) to promote XP. Oh great. Now you guys can't even calmly watch a TV show without suffering the risk of receiving a message from, according to Chris, Lucifer himself. Gates was paid standard SAG rates, something like $636 for a day's work. But this isn't surprising, really -- he doesn't need the money ;-) NBC should've paid him in legal copies of Windows ME instead of writing him a check. :) I'm not entirely sure I'd call Gates a gangster or snake-oil salesman -- that's Balmer's job and always has been. :-) Even before he became CEO? What did he do before? Opportunist is 99% of what Gates was/is. He saw some opportunities and he took advantage of them, and a couple of his successes -- MS-DOS licensed on multiple machines making him rich, Excel, Word for DOS -- were legitimate reasons to like Microsoft in the 1980s. Everything past Windows 3.0 was downhill though -- as late as 1989 they were telling application developers to develop for Windows 3.0 behind IBM's back (they had a license to co-develop OS/2 with IBM at the time). It was a total abuse of power. It sounds like gangster-like behaviour, actually. And praising WinME (the worst OS ever) makes him sound like a snake-oil salesman. If I head him say the word innovation again, I'll eat my MSDOS 4.01 floppies. Anyway, I think, from a technical point of view, that Microsoft really went downhill after Windows 3.11. Windows 95 is unexcusable: any OS should work with the least possible features on the Kernel, to minimize crashes. Windows95 has the whole GUI and much more on the kernel. All MS OSs after Win95 break several of basic rules of programming and maintaining an OS. My only real lament with the rise of Microsoft is two-fold: 1. People have come to expect buggy software, multiple releases/patches, and frequent crashing. It has become acceptable. Never thought of it that way, but that's the way things go nowadays, and it's not about OSes only. Games are following the same path. Does anyone remember a game released after 1998 that had no need for a patch? Me neither. 2. Geoworks Ensemble never got the recognition it deserved. The above is what really, really depresses me, especially Geoworks. Geoworks Ensamble? Please explain. I'd like once again to add #3 3. There's a solid, free, open source, nearly bug-free, easy to use, extremely stable, etc OS out there (Linux of course) and the number of people using it is still almost irrelevant, because most prefer any expensive and full of bugs version of Windows. http://www.MobyGames.com/ The world's most comprehensive gaming database project. Pedro R. Quaresma [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] So long, and thanks for all the fish http://www.salvador-caetano.pt http://www.globalshop.pt -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/ -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (was shock))))
Hugh Falk wrote: I'm not thrilled with everything about Windows; however, as a gamer...I don't see how you can't think Windows 95 and later made life MUCH better. Once Win 95 was adopted by game developers, and games were written (well) under it, gaming became so much easier. I still remember the bad old days of having multiple boot disks, QEMM, and a reconfig programugh...that was really a crappy way to game (having come from the ST, Amiga, Mac world). Yeah, but for that simplicity (I'm assuming you liked just having to stick the disk in and boot on those platforms) you sacrificed being able to load games on your hard disk. Not defending the IBM PC in this area; just making a counter-point. Loading games on Mac/ST/Amiga also took at least twice as long as on IBM clones of the time due to the hard disk. Once 95 became the standard, things for gamers got much better...peripherals (rudder pedals, steering wheels, etc) also become much easier to deal with...gotta love Plug and Play. To me, it sounds like another example of the good old days not being that good. Certainly from a gamer's perspective. My problem with today's Plug'n'Play devices is that they only work under Windows. I feel like that has locked me out of other platforms that are just as viable for gaming. Console gaming has become a lot more enticing recently. I still haven't seen anything that beats my 1GHz Athlon with GeForce 3 TI 500, but the *types* of games you can get on consoles is appealing. Just my $0.02... -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (was shock))))
From: Hugh Falk [EMAIL PROTECTED] By the late 80's hard drives were common on STs and Amigas (I had two). They may have been common here in the states, but over in Europe (where the bulk of Amiga users and games were) barely anyone had them. Most of the kids I went to high school with had Amigas and I can't recall a single one of them having an HD (heck only one of them had more then 1MB RAM in their system). The reason the machine was popular was it's cheapness and that meant things like HD's fell by the wayside. The most popular games on the Amiga tended to be small, like Cannon Fodder and Settlers which were only 3 disks each. Karl Kuras Visit Our House the online comic strip! http://ourhouse.trantornator.com -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (was shock))))
Hugh Falk wrote: By the late 80's hard drives were common on STs and Amigas (I had two). The problem with games is that the copy protection often kept you from installing them on a hard drive (on all platforms). That's why code wheels, page numbers, etc. became so popular. I hated them, but it was worth getting hard drive speed. Jim, you're right...load times off floppy were just horriblethough still a lot better than cassettes in the C-64 days :-). What I really hated was when they had disk copy protection and a code wheel! ACK, I don't think I've ever had the pleasure of crack^H^H^H^H^Hrunning any of those. The most elegant codewheel copy-protection I've ever seen had to be Rocket Ranger. The code wheel that came with the game was necessary to play it -- to travel from one country to another, you had to enter in both source and destination and the amount of fuel needed to get from here to there was what you stuck in your rocket pack for the flight. You couldn't just disable the code wheel code, or you'd disable the entire game. -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (was shock))))
Chris Newman wrote: What's the story? Is MS abusing its relationship with NBC? Where'd you hear the rumors? Yes, I'm very interested in that. Gates is part snake oil salesman, part gangster, and all opportunist. Rumor has it that Microsoft offered to 1. ignore existing NBC Microsoft product license violations (ie pirated copies) *and* cut them a deal on existing and future product license purchases if they set up Gates on a prime-time show (not necessarily Frasier) to promote XP. Gates was paid standard SAG rates, something like $636 for a day's work. But this isn't surprising, really -- he doesn't need the money ;-) I'm not entirely sure I'd call Gates a gangster or snake-oil salesman -- that's Balmer's job and always has been. :-) Opportunist is 99% of what Gates was/is. He saw some opportunities and he took advantage of them, and a couple of his successes -- MS-DOS licensed on multiple machines making him rich, Excel, Word for DOS -- were legitimate reasons to like Microsoft in the 1980s. Everything past Windows 3.0 was downhill though -- as late as 1989 they were telling application developers to develop for Windows 3.0 behind IBM's back (they had a license to co-develop OS/2 with IBM at the time). It was a total abuse of power. My only real lament with the rise of Microsoft is two-fold: 1. People have come to expect buggy software, multiple releases/patches, and frequent crashing. It has become acceptable. 2. Geoworks Ensemble never got the recognition it deserved. The above is what really, really depresses me, especially Geoworks. -- http://www.MobyGames.com/ The world's most comprehensive gaming database project. -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (was shock))))
Have you ever seen the great PBS documentary Triumph of the Nerds? Part two of the three part series deals with the evolution of DOS and the Microsoft/IBM split. It's probably not news to the participants of this mailing list, but it was neat to see all the faces of the famous years. Tim Patterson, Gary Kildall, Ed Roberts, Woz. You've probably seen those guys before, but the Eddie Currie's and Lee Felsenstein's of the era were also interviewed -- important folks who just never achieved the level of Kildall/Roberts. If you've never seen it you can grab it from Amazon on VHS for something like $60. It's well worth it. It was released in 1995 if I recall correctly. I'd still blame Microsoft's bullying practices on Gates as much as Ballmer. Just because Ballmer swung the ax doesn't mean Gates didn't give the orders. There's a great Geos fan page at: http://www.zimmers.net/geos/index.html Jim Leonard wrote: Chris Newman wrote: What's the story? Is MS abusing its relationship with NBC? Where'd you hear the rumors? Yes, I'm very interested in that. Gates is part snake oil salesman, part gangster, and all opportunist. Rumor has it that Microsoft offered to 1. ignore existing NBC Microsoft product license violations (ie pirated copies) *and* cut them a deal on existing and future product license purchases if they set up Gates on a prime-time show (not necessarily Frasier) to promote XP. Gates was paid standard SAG rates, something like $636 for a day's work. But this isn't surprising, really -- he doesn't need the money ;-) I'm not entirely sure I'd call Gates a gangster or snake-oil salesman -- that's Balmer's job and always has been. :-) Opportunist is 99% of what Gates was/is. He saw some opportunities and he took advantage of them, and a couple of his successes -- MS-DOS licensed on multiple machines making him rich, Excel, Word for DOS -- were legitimate reasons to like Microsoft in the 1980s. Everything past Windows 3.0 was downhill though -- as late as 1989 they were telling application developers to develop for Windows 3.0 behind IBM's back (they had a license to co-develop OS/2 with IBM at the time). It was a total abuse of power. My only real lament with the rise of Microsoft is two-fold: 1. People have come to expect buggy software, multiple releases/patches, and frequent crashing. It has become acceptable. 2. Geoworks Ensemble never got the recognition it deserved. The above is what really, really depresses me, especially Geoworks. -- http://www.MobyGames.com/ The world's most comprehensive gaming database project. -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/ -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (was shock))))
Chris Newman wrote: Voice on TV: [Person on talk show in sitcom] Sure, Windows XP will make your computing experience easier Me Jesus Christ, Bill Gates [Lucifer himself] is on a TV sitcom. And of course he's plugging Microsoft. While nobody wants to talk about it, this was the result of some pretty hefty favors exchanged between Microsoft and NBC. I have heard fairly unsettling rumors. -- http://www.MobyGames.com/ The world's most comprehensive gaming database project. -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (was shock))))
What's the story? Is MS abusing its relationship with NBC? Where'd you hear the rumors? Yes, I'm very interested in that. Gates is part snake oil salesman, part gangster, and all opportunist. Jim Leonard wrote: Chris Newman wrote: Voice on TV: [Person on talk show in sitcom] Sure, Windows XP will make your computing experience easier Me Jesus Christ, Bill Gates [Lucifer himself] is on a TV sitcom. And of course he's plugging Microsoft. While nobody wants to talk about it, this was the result of some pretty hefty favors exchanged between Microsoft and NBC. I have heard fairly unsettling rumors. -- http://www.MobyGames.com/ The world's most comprehensive gaming database project. -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/ -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
