The creation of ASP to disrupt PHP.
You do know ASP was introduced in 1996, before PHP became popular? That was during the PHP/FI 1.0 days, which were followed by PHP/FI 2.0 before it became PHP 3 and started resembling the PHP we know today.
No, ASP was introduced to unseat Perl, which was the defacto language for CGI scripts at the time.
I think you should do a bit of reading yourself. Your local laws set the rules. But any "local" laws that I know give you very, very little actual rights. Most of the rights that you get come from a license that you receive. The only rights that the law gives you for example in the USA: "If the seller gives you the right to install software on your computer, then you also have the right to copy it into memory to run it". Note the _if_. You may not have the right to install on your computer. And "if you have the right to install the software on your computer, then you have the right to make a backup". Again, the "if".
I'm so glad you decided to use the US as an example here.
Title 17 section 117 (part (a)(1) specifically) is worded quite broadly and gives you the right to make any copies as long as it's "an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine". Not anywhere in the text is a limit of one copy mentioned. Software requires installation to a hard drive or it won't run? Then that's an essential step and would be covered. Software needs to copy itself into RAM to run? Also an essential step. As much as I sometimes think Congress is stupid, by wording it vaguely and not specifying that it only applies to copies in RAM, they made it so it could be applied in this manner.
And excuse me, but I haven't run into any DRM that attempts to prevent backups. Take an eBook with DRM, copy it onto a CD, delete the original, copy the backup back to your computer, and it works. You mention broadcasts: No DRM. You mention copying music onto an iPod: Today, no DRM. Before: DRM allowed it.
You mean other than the DRM on DVDs/Blu-Ray which was explicitly introduced to prevent copying?
Before the dark times. Before the Actpire.
How exactly did you verify this?
ps -A | grep -i nsa
returned no results!
PS4 - Cannot do custom soundtracks, intentionally crippling media playback (DNLA, for example), and instead "urging" consumers to go for Playstation Plus, and another $10 a month for the Sony Music Unlimited "service"
Sony claims to be looking into the media playback formats issue... they claim they didn't think there would demand for playing mp3s and the like. We'll see if they patch it in with a later firmware update.
From what I've heard, PSN Plus is required for online play on the PS4. much like XBL Gold is for the XB1.
I suspect DVD and Bluray are working ok out-of-the-box.
From all the reviews I've read, they really aren't working out-of-box. Or at least Blu-Ray support isn't. That's one of the reasons there's a 300MB firmware update available on launch day.
Well, technically it was available several days before launch day, so you could download it and stick it on a USB drive so you don't have to wait for their (apparently) massively overloaded PSN service to download it from the PS4.
Rootkits part of game installations
The rootkit fiasco was about Sony BMG music discs installing rootkits when you tried to play them on a computer and had nothing to do with games.
I say music discs because said discs lost the right to be called CDs and have the CD Audio logo due to intervention by Philips.
Microsoft Security Essentials actually flags SourceForge's installer as malicious. I forget what exactly it calls it, but I ran into it when I had to install something from there recently (likely Filezilla on a new machine).
Here you go sir, this shit sandwhich has slightly less filling than the other one. Seriously, MS might be worse in this regard, but you haven't addressed the point. Finding an *EVEN* *WORSE* offender does not excuse or address it in any way. And from what I remeber, they did try to cover it up until it became so bad that it was impossible.
The post I was replying to concludes that the Xbox One was a better system because of things Sony had done.
My post was just refuting that by pointing out that MS is just as bad.
Sony is actually a number of different divisions operating under a single name.
Owned by the same company: it is the same company. So what that it's a different division. Clearly the corporate head is fine with their divisions abusing their customers.
And by the same token, Microsoft's Microsoft Devices and Studios Group and Microsoft Operating Systems Engineering Group are owned by the same company.
The point I was trying to make is that you can either include all the divisions owned by each company or just the console divisions. However, pointing out something bad done by a different division of one company while at the same time dismissing things done by different divisions done at the other company because it "has nothing to do with their console" (yes, GGP said that to me in his latest reply) is intentionally misrepresenting things. Either way, both companies have done some pretty heinous things over the years.
Personally, I have no intention of buying any consoles this generation, which is a change from owning all 3 from last generation. At this point, I'd just rather use my PC.
Drawing from Microsofts PC history, which has nothing to do with their console.
Excusing the Sony DRM debacle because it wasn't the same part of Sony that is responsible for the PS4
Did you seriously say those back to back with a straight face?
One of the reasons you listed was from a different division of Sony... and yet you call foul when I include things done by a different division of Microsoft. Make up your mind whether different divisions of the same company count or not.
Listing the standards Sony helped created, which does nothing to invalidate the proprietary standards they now enforce
Listing the open standards the PS4 supports, which does nothing to invalidate the proprietary standards they now enforce
The list of standards Sony helped create was there specifically to address Blu-Ray, because some people include that under "proprietary" and I couldn't tell if you were one of those people.
Speaking of proprietary, which "proprietary standards" are you referring to? You never actually said and it's impossible for me to respond to the vague assertions you've actually made.
Oh, and it should go without saying that mentioning things that both consoles do is off topic, as per the conclusion to your original post:
It feels weird to say it, but XBOX is clearly the better platform here.
But surely Sony have left a bad taste in many peoples mouths,
OK, I'll address these points one by one.
with removing promised features
I'll give you this one. Although I'm surprised IBM didn't push them to not include Linux support in the first place since they sold higher-end Cell systems.
poor security after getting hacked several times
That's still better than Microsoft whose response to Xbox Live hacks is to pretend they're not happening.
Oh, and due to your next argument, you also tacitly gave me permission to bring up that Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Internet Explorer are responsible for some of the largest security holes in computing ever.
DRM rootkits,
Sony is actually a number of different divisions operating under a single name. In this case, the rootkit was from Sony Music Entertainment and Phillips actually make Sony Music Entertainment stop using the CD designation for discs that had said DRM on it.
propriety crap instead of standards...
I can't tell if you're talking about all of Sony or just Sony Computer Entertainment.
If you're talking about all of Sony, I'm going to remind you that they were involved in the creation of:
* The cassette tape
* The 3.5" diskette
* CDs
* Blu-Ray
all of which were standards at one time or another. (Note: DVDs also used the error correcting technology from CDs, but Sony was not involved other than that)
For just the PS3:
The PS3's main processor is proprietary... but so was the Xbox 360 CPU (unless you thought a triple-core Power PC was a standard component...), the Wii CPU..., and the WiiU CPU while we're at it.
Having said that, the PS3 uses the following standards:
1. 802.11b/g built in to all models. The Xbox 360 originally went with wired networking only and required a $100 addon for WiFi support. It wasn't until the "S" models that they included it in the base system.
2. Standard 2.5" (aka laptop) SATA hard drive bay. The Xbox 360 uses hard drives with custom firmware instead.
3. Bluetooth 2.0 for wireless controllers and peripherals. The Xbox 360 uses custom 2.4GHz RF instead.
Note: I'm intentionally not listing technologies that both systems supported such as USB or video outputs.
I'm not sure where 8GB was pulled from, but remember that a full dual-layer BD-ROM is 50GB, not 8GB. And there is at least one PS3 game that took the entire disk: Metal Gear Solid 4. Plus, the system likely only has 1 HDD bay in it. So the default 500GB HDD, ignoring the size of the OS, only has space for 10 dual-layer BD-ROMs.
In other words, there are other reasons to use discs than just download time.
(And yes, I'm aware you can presumably swap the HDD out for any 2.5" HDD(/SDD?) like you could the PS3.)
when I first saw Warcraft, I thought: Hey, they used the Dune II engine and replaced the SF artwork with a fantasy one...
That's exactly what WarCraft 1 was. It used the Dune 2 control scheme and included silly restrictions like forcing you to build roads before you could build buildings next to them just like Dune 2 forced you to build cement slabs. I want to say you had to build units centrally like Dune 2, but that may be wrong. WarCraft 1 also ran tediously slowly and I don't remember it having a game speed control.
WarCraft 2 added a bunch of new controls, like right-click to move instead of right-click to cancel, removed some of the dumber building restrictions, and added the game speed control. Oh, and also upgraded the multiplayer component from 2 players (yes, WC1 only supported 2 players) to 8 players.
StarCraft changed things up by making it so that the various units for different races weren't carbon copies of one another, made it so multiplayer matches started with your command center/nexus/hive and 4 peons instead of a single peon with enough resources to build a town hall.
And then WarCraft 3 came out, which added Hero units. The less said about those the better.
Because of COPPA and other laws in the same vein more traditional online identities are not really practical if you intend the services to be used by children. With Friend Codes two players have to provide each with their personal code for each game. Ostensibly (and likely in the eyes of the law) these codes are not personally identifiable nor do they provide any sort of 1-to-1 correspondance to any particular person. It's just a code that corresponds to a particular game inserted into a particular console.
A few problems I can see in your statements:
1. Unlike the DS and Wii, the 3DS and WiiU use system-wide friend codes (or system+account-wide, I'm not sure since my 3DS only has one user), not per-game friend codes. The way the DS worked wouldn't allow for this, but the Wii did... just Nintendo didn't use them that way.
2. As I recall, all the other consoles also require you to have both sides add each other as friends before they can see what you're doing. I may be misremembering since it's been years since I've registered my PSN or Xbox Live accounts, but I doubt it.
The only thing friends codes gain you over usernames is that it's harder to spoof numbers.
SNES's graphics, sound and controller
I'm going to stop you right there to point out that the SNES sound chip was the Sony SPC-700 and the next generation of that same chip powered the PS1's sound system.
This restaurant was advertising breakfast any time. So I ordered french toast in the renaissance. - Steven Wright, comedian
