I always thought that ultimately, Flash all but filled the role that Java Applets were supposed to meet on the browser, but didn't.

FWIW, I'm not sure I'd blame Flash for the failure of Applets, as by the time it started to become more than a simple animation player, the latter had already had plenty of time to take off, but never had.

I suspect that this was because Java Applets were too heavyweight and slow to start at the time, whereas Flash was more in sync with what computers were capable of back then.

Of course, it's possible that in the absence of Flash, Applets might have become more popular as computers grew more powerful, but essentially I'd say they weren't so much displaced as never having succeeded on their own merits. Yes, there was (and still is, to a limited extent) some use of browser-based Java, but it never dominated like it was meant to. Flash may be in decline now, but it's enjoyed a decade- if not 15 years- as a major success.

Not that I'm saying that Java was a failure, just that- ironically- the aspect that gained *by far* the most hype at its mid-90s launch was the one it ultimately failed in.

These are some very good points; you should at least get an account so that they start at a Score of +1 or +2 instead of 0, and are more likely to be seen.

I wasn't aware of TV Tropes' attempt to change the licensing terms a couple of years back. Had I known, I would already have had a contemptious view of them (since *my* first thought too was that "you can't simply (legally) relicense CC content under new terms unless the contributors agree or you make it clear"- and, as the article writer pointed out, no such terms were presented or agreed to by me when adding edits.)

Even so, I was already unimpressed with a trick I caught them using a couple of months or so back. I noticed that they had added small, square pictures containing links to other articles at the bottom of some pages. Nice, you might think, but mixed in with these pictorial links (alternating in a checkerboard pattern) were links to external sites, i.e. adverts.

What made this morally dubious was that the advertising links and internal article links were of very similar style, both image and caption-wise, and it was quite clear that they were being intermingled with the intent of looking like links to TV Tropes articles and getting people to click on them.

Not in the same ballpark as their attempt to re-appropriate (i.e. steal) people's work for their own use only, but still an indicator of how sleazy the people who run this apparently friendly site are.

Because I needed a new pair of running shorts (as in, I'd just noticed the other ones were literally starting to come apart), didn't have that much time to buy them, didn't expect that the other shop would be *that* much cheaper (*). And maybe because I was both slightly lazy and willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, while still retaining some doubt as to whether they were actually worth the price...

(*) They typically are, but "cheaper" on the branded stuff *they* sell still isn't that cheap, there's so much useless crap aimed at parents of kids wearing "sportswear as fashion" that it's impossible to find what one wants in a reasonable amount of time, and the staff are useless.

IIRC, my latest pair of running shorts apparently contain bamboo fibre. Whether or not this is a good thing or not, or even just an excuse to justify their overinflated price, I've no idea.

On the contrary, I was the only person to guess you *might* not have meant that (*). That's what everyone else thought... quite reasonably, as it *would be* the most sensible interpretation assuming you'd actually bothered to read the summary!! That makes clear that the magazine hasn't been sold in printed form for almost a decade. In that context, saying "I'm not sure what a gamer would need a magazine for" serves no purpose unless it referred to the years it *was* being published (i.e. 1981 to 2004).

That's why everyone else thought you were utterly clueless. I was the only one who figured out that your comment was somewhat less stupid *if* you'd made the mistake others did of not properly reading the summary and assuming the printed magazine was still going (rather than it being the offshoot website under threat as is made clear).

To be blunt, my view was somewhat more charitable than it needed to be, assuming you'd committed the minor stupidity of not reading the summary, rather than the major stupidity implied by most people's understandable interpretation of your comment...

(*) Though I couldn't discount the possibility that you really *were* that clueless!

Good grief! Even the bleeding summary makes clear that CVG has been "online only" (i.e. a *website*) since 2004 and it's that "re-emerged" web-based version of the magazine that is now in danger.

If you'd paid attention, you'd have noticed that the "magazine" has been online only (i.e. a website) for the past ten years.

To be fair, if you *had* made that mistake, it would at least make your question a less stupid one, i.e. "I'm not sure what a gamer would need a [printed] magazine for [in this day and age]".

Which is of course perfectly understandable. OTOH, if you really *did* mean this to refer to its entire lifetime from the early-1980s onwards, then yes, it was an utterly stupid question that suggests you're barely old enough to remember the dial-up Internet era, let alone what things were like before the Internet became widely available to the public in the mid-90s. :-O

Depends what you mean by "still going" as the original magazine ceased publishing almost ten years ago (*) when Future publishing bought the title (apparently it overlapped with their own GamesMaster magazine, which is still going today in its printed form (**)).

I don't know how much continuity there was before and after that takeover, though to be fair, the title had already been sold previously, from its original publishers EMAP, to Dennis Publishing.

Isn't Wikipedia wonderful? :-)

(*) Apparently they briefly relaunched it a few years back- or more accurately, reused the name- as "CVG Presents", a short-lived run of magazines each dedicated to a single game series (e.g. Grand Theft Auto). But that's long-defunct too.

(**) Mind you, that was a spinoff from the TV show that finished in the late 90s, so technically that's not *its* original form!

Yo dawg, I herd you like backdoors, so we put a backdoor in your backdoor so you can.... er, sod it, you can probably guess the rest yourselves. :-/

Who claimed anything "with horror"? It was pointing out the obvious as far as I was concerned.

Yes, I agree entirely that the measure was significantly about piracy- though the vast majority of PS pirates are unlikely to pay what Adobe are charging regardless, and they certainly know this.

And yes, even though you define their "illegitimate users" as being separate from their "users", the fact remains that it *is* quite clearly also a money-grab from the non-pirating userbase, as no-one forced Adobe to convert to a subscription-based model.

No, I don't believe that it's costing them all those extra squillions to run things on their servers- which I doubt most existing users would have chosen to go for if they'd had the choice to stay with the old design anyway- especially as the software continues to work for a limited time without an Internet connection. Had they wanted to keep the old licensing model, I'm sure the price would have covered the cost of running the servers.

In short, yes, of course it was about piracy, but it's also quite blatantly about converting existing perpetual-license users into a continuously milkable revenue stream, just as MS are trying to do- albeit in a less forceful manner- with Office 360.

The "users" referred to are by implication users of Adobe's software, i.e. the people who chose to and are still using it. Adobe wish to control who uses it and how they use it.

You're putting words in my mouth, as I didn't say anywhere that they shouldn't.

Again, you're putting words in my mouth- I didn't claim that it did. But the assumptions you made and read into my comment just because I criticised Adobe, and the way you responded to them say a lot.

What I did do is something that I- and anyone else- is something I'm perfectly entitled to. I criticised Adobe and their business model. Time and time again, when a company, product or service is criticised on Slashdot, someone else answers with a would-be riposte essentially boiling down to "you don't have to buy it, so you have no right to criticise it".

Time and time again I've pointed out that it doesn't work like that. Adobe and friends have the freedom to run their business how they like (within reason). Others have the freedom to criticise their behaviour or anything they don't like about it, even if they're not being forced at gunpoint to use it.

I bet you've never criticised a car model (because you don't *have* to buy it), a company's uncompetitive prices (because you don't *have* to buy there) or the way a business in general is run (because... well, you get the picture). In fact, I bet you're never said a word against *anything* you had the choice to reject (including advising those who might be making the same choice). Right?

It's funny how so many of those who rush to defend the freedom of companies to run themselves how they like in a free market seem to forget that freedom cuts (or rather, should cut) both ways.

No, that was only the rationale used to justify it to Photoshop users. The *reason* for it in many cases- such as this one- is quite obviously to increase software companies' control over users, and to get them used to a subscription model that provides those companies with a continuous income stream, rather than having the hassle of creating upgraded versions of software (gratuitous or otherwise (*)) and then having to convince users to pay for that upgrade when they might not feel the need for it.

That's not to say that cloud computing (i.e. distributed computing and distributed storage) is a bad idea in itself; of course, it has many theoretical benefits. But the concept has been co-opted and distorted by marketing, who have reduced the meaning of "cloud" to little more than a buzzword that applies to anything with online connectivity, even if that's not designed in a cloud-like way. And they've used that to make a method of control a selling point- or at least to try to sweeten the pill Photoshop users are being forced to swallow (**).

Really, what major cloud-like benefit does the latest Photoshop offer users? Does it let them harness the enormous power of a distributed computer network to massively speed up processing times on slow operations (vs. doing it on their own computer) in short bursts?

(*) Canonical example, Microsoft Word, which reached what most people needed several versions ago, but had to force upgrades to keep it selling, so kept adding new features, which also force other users who want to interoperate with those using the latest versions to *also* upgrade.
(**) Along the lines of (*) above, while some may argue that "you don't *have* to upgrade", those in industry who wish to interoperate with others and keep up with latest developments probably *will* need to upgrade eventually

That's nice- but it's not what was being asked.

The question is, was Blu-Ray ever really *popular* (i.e. popular in the mass-market sense) as Sony claimed? And the answer has to be... certainly not to anything like the extent that DVD was, and arguably far less than might have been expected when it was launched.

You must have got a very good price on it then, because even today the typical price of the cheapest Blu-Ray writers still hovers around the £60 mark and they've been stuck there for a long time now. In fact, that's the problem, prices gradually fell for a while... then they didn't.

The media is very affordable now- you can actually get packs of 10 discs for the equivalent of 27p each- but while £60 for a drive isn't much if you *really* want one, it's still too expensive to be a "no brainer" replacement for a DVD writer (*) for customers who might go for it if it was only a few quid extra- in much the way that DVD writers did when they got to be only a few quid more than a CD writer. Even a £40 premium on a computer (**) is a big increase on a low-end model if the person really isn't *that* bothered about Blu-Ray anyway.

Personally, I could easily afford to go out and buy a £60 Blu-Ray drive, but I'm not really into films, 25GB really *isn't* that big for data storage or backup any more (it's piggy in the middle between the stuff I can store on DVD-R and stuff that needs HDD capacities) and I don't even burn many DVDs these days. Why bother?

(*) eBuyer are selling an LG *writer* for under £12!
(**) I suspect most of these people would only be upgrading their drive as part of a new computer, probably a laptop. I'm assuming that £40 would be the bulk wholesale price differential- ironically, since that's still too expensive to include a BD writer in the cheapest laptops, I suspect manufacturers would probably market it as a "premium" feature and increase the price *more* (to make a profit-increasing virtue out of a drawback).