Posts by Jared Spurbeck 3 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Aug 2007
If the Windows version of the SNES emulator works better, what about using Wine to run it in the OS the Eee ships with? Wine runs on the Eee ... right?
It doesn't run everything, but you never know until you try. I've been pleasantly surprised before, running it on my full-size notebook.
Many here are deriding the whole Web 2.0 / million monkeys thing. But it seems that the problem we're criticizing has less to do with the "unwashed masses," and more to do with a power-hungry elite that's suppressing them.
Was it inevitable that the elite should have arisen, or was it simply a case of poor judgment and people who couldn't be bothered to stop them? Was the design flawed from the get-go, in that it made this situation more likely? And is the idea of people working together so offensive that it needs to be mocked whenever it's brought up? Because open-source software is a popular target as well, but Linux companies are doing billions of dollars in business right now, and outpacing their competitors in what few performance metrics they haven't surpassed.
What did the open-source community get right that Wikipedia didn't? Perhaps, as the article suggests, their decision to let anyone fork the project -- thus placing the power of self-determination in the hands of the contributors, rather than an elite few?
Anyone who doesn't want to use Google software doesn't have to. There are plenty of other search engines, ad servers, mail clients and home pages. There are also plenty of alternatives to their webapp suite.
Contrast this with Microsoft, which uses proprietary formats to keep you locked into Windows and Office. And then uses forced obsolescence to make you pay money to upgrade.
If Google has a near-monopoly, it's because they're just that good. Microsoft has a monopoly because it's hard NOT to use their products.
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