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Comment Re:Harry Shearer wanted more money (Score 1) 100

Not just Bugs, but Mickey Mouse (Goofy, Donald, Minnie, etc.) Shaggy & Scooby Doo, the muppets, Elmo, animated Batman / The Joker, King Julien / Puss in Boots etc.

Either the original actor dies, or wants to do other things, or is too expensive (especially for TV / videogame spinoffs), or takes the whole tickle-me-elmo a little too far. So sound-a-likes are hired.

Comment Re:Harry Shearer wanted more money (Score 3) 100

YouTube is filled with talented impressionists who can do these voices. I'm sure that if Shearer hadn't been persuaded (with $$$) to stay that Fox could easily have hired replacements whose voices were indistinguishable. It might have resulted in a fan backlash or rancour from the other actors but the voices would be the least of their troubles.

Comment Re:Modularity (Score 1) 80

I'm developing for Windows first where the general practice is for applications to ship with whatever DLLs they need rather than install them in shared folders, the windows\system directory or somewhere else on the PATH. Otherwise DLL-hell will surely follow.

Ultimately the application may end up an embedded device, where space is at a premium. In that instance I'll probably have to static link but it depends on licencing issues.

Comment Re: Modularity (Score 1) 80

Most desktop OSes would have services that could provide that information and do encodings and transformations between character sets. I don't see that QT needs to ship all of it. Aside from that my app is localizable so I can't do away with the way its implemented either.

Comment Re:Modularity (Score 3, Informative) 80

It's modular but it's still got bloat. I'm writing an application which has a fairly modest UI that has a main window, some tabs and dialogs. The weight of the runtime I have to ship with it - icu*, Qt5core, Qt5Guid.dll, Qt5Widgets runtimes is nearly 38MB. Most of the modular bits with the exception of webkit - (multimedia, networking, OpenGL, SVG etc.) are comparatively lightweight compared to the slab of unavoidable "core" stuff that you need whether you like it or not.

Comment More like it's an opportunity for con men (Score 0) 359

Bitcoin has repeatedly demonstrated that it's nothing more than a ponzi - stoke up fears in a currency or appeal to their greed, wait for people to buy in and then exit with the different.

No matter how bad the Greek crisis gets, no matter how much of a haircut people get on their savings from any currency swap, it will still be less risk than bitcoin.

Comment Re:I wonder why Oracle are doing this (Score 1) 328

I might not be paying them money directly but I'm certainly making them money. Developers and companies pay Oracle for tools, support, certification, training for Java and they do it because there is a demand for the language. If the brand is cheapened then ultimately it will hurt them in the wallet.

Same principle applies to Adobe and Flash. They make nothing from the Flash player but its all those eyeballs are what make professionals want to buy the dev tools that they do make money from. Cheapen the brand and it goes into decline.

Comment I wonder why Oracle are doing this (Score 2) 328

The first contact many have with a new product is the installer. So what are companies doing to make a good first impression? Conning them into installing adware / crapware or changing their browser settings. It's insulting, it undermines trust and it cheapens the product by association.

I got so fed up of Adobe loading their updates will crapware like McAfee that I stopped installing it altogether. Likewise I've avoided other products which have started bundling stuff in their installers. I'm sure Oracle are compensated for promoting Yahoo from their installer but the reputational damage will suffer could be immense.

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