It's so satisfying watching them get their just desserts after betraying their Kickstarter backers by taking the Facebook money and then going back on all their words about keeping the platform free for everybody. Meanwhile that acquisition kicked off a race among the other big players which Valve appears to be winning while having the best features. I mean, Valve isn't perfect, but they're a lot better than Facebook. Things seem to have worked out for the best for once.
One thing worth noting is all Kickstarter backers get a free Oculus CV1 from Facebook (that's of course in addition to the DK1 they received after backing in August 2012).
That decision takes away a lot of the "betrayal" of the Facebook acquisition - for backers it's an incredible return on investment (that was unlikely to happen if it weren't for Facebook)
I don't share your conviction that ROI is far more important than any ethical consideration. I seem to recall the KS pitch was full of aspirational language about a democratized future of VR spearheaded by a close-knit team of diehards who wouldn't fall prey to Big Whatever.
You're suggesting that the majority of backers will be mollified by an artifact of the very forces that Oculus promised to avoid; I'm sure some of them will be.
Not sure you recall correctly. I checked the Kickstarter [1], and I didn't see anything along those lines in the video, the description (which doesn't seem to have been modified, per archive.org), or the first few updates. If Luckey talked about that, I think it was somewhere else.
The video you linked has competing companies all taking about how good it will be to integrate (valve included)... you are right there is no line like "it will be an open platform" but they heavily imply it will be an open platform
I backed the Kickstarter with a friend, backing at the level to get two of the dev kits, because we happened to be living together at the time. After explaining that situation, I was told that I would not get a CV1.
I never expected to get the CV1 when I backed, so I'm not angry about that, it just sucks a bit to hear 'you are getting this for free' and then get told, no you are not.
They already got their billions from Facebook, so just desserts at this point mostly affect the consumers who just got locked in, months after their purchase.
It was at that point that I abandoned the platform. Wild conjecture isn't discouraged on Reddit and, over there, the creepy Facebook user tracking was predicted well in advance.
Given the comments here on Palmer's diminishing public interaction, and the quotes in the article, I don't think the founders completely anticipated what Facebook would demand. Although I now have zero interest in the platform, I still can't help but feel a little sorry for them. They clearly still believe in that vision but do not have the autonomy to follow it through.
At first I defended the Facebook buyout because it seemed like a logical move. I feel Oculus was pressured into the buyout because valve was about to kill them. Truth is, Carmarck joining the team made it all that much sweeter.
If you read through the lines of some of Palmer's communications, it's obvious that there is a rift between Oculus and Facebook that no one is talking about. Carmarck, being Carmarck keeps pushing even when the top tries to push you down. Reading the tweets, it's obvious that he remains focused on the technology, which is a good sign.
In the end, I think Oculus is facing a backlash because of the buyout, and their 'simular' to Origin approach rings bells of many gamers and how EA continues to alienate them.
Microsoft proved it could compete with the Xbox. Oculus just needs to change its game or get away from its overlord. Blizzard had some fallout with Diablo 3, it happens.
The real question for Oculus, now is, what is your next move?
I think it's your incorrect assumption that bash's popularity is due to it being a "fetish" for anyone. There aren't alternatives that are both better and more available / cross-platform / standard.
I agree its a crappy language, but remember, it's a shell, not a language. It serves a different purpose than being good for pure code, so saying something like "<your favorite scripting language here> is better than bash" doesn't hold a whole lot of water. It is way better than batch though.
"<your favorite scripting language here> is better than bash at the kind of tasks that bash is used for" would be a pretty substantial claim, though. (Unfortunately, it's almost never the claim that people are making. "X is better than bash at creating UIs/database lookups/OO/web programming"? Yeah, of course it is. Water's wet, too.)
Until your enterprise security people have a fit at something like PowerSploit [1] existing and turn on AllSigned via Group Policy. Then it's pretty much impossible to use PowerShell - edit, sign, test, edit, sign is quite painful with the current tooling (and that's even if you're "trusted" enough to get the codesigning cert). Not to mention that some of the scripts that Visual Studio uses aren't signed!
PowerShell took everything that was great about .NET and combined it with everything that was terrible about Bash. So we have, yet again, a difficult to understand language for shell scripting.
Why is it bad? I've been able to write some pretty great PS scripts to automate tasks. It's easier than firing up Visual Studio and writing a C# program I'd need to recompile if I ever want to change it.
It's very powerful but the syntax is step back 20 years:
If ($Number -gt 0)
That's just one example. There is a lot of really confusing stuff in powershell that's entirely unnecessary. There were going for some kind of Bash-shell familiarity which, oddly enough, most Windows developers don't even have.
The shell is a mess of symbols making any sane programming language impossible. Instead of perhaps rethinking the "mess of symbols" issue they ruined the language instead.
And PowerShell is an awful shell; it's great for script automation of windows, but as a shell, just no. Microsoft recognizes this, it's the reason a full Ubuntu bash shell is available in Windows 10.
The problem with PowerShell is its syntax, not the extra features of the shell environment. Trying to expose the .Net runtime to the command line is an admirable goal for a scripting language, not a shell. It comes down to this, PowerShell is a catherderal, bash and tools are a bizarre, and that's why they win IMHO. Personally the best shell for any Windows box is to install cygwin and treat it like a Linux box, and on Windows 10 just install Ubuntu and have a real Linux shell.
Windows servers are a dying breed and Microsoft knows it, they've lost that war and are quickly porting everything they can to run on Linux including their .Net runtime and Sql Server; they know they've lost the war, it's only a matter of time.
Most of my big complaints about syntax are related to the shell-ness of PowerShell. For example, when comparing things, I really want to use '<' and '>' rather than -le and -gt.
Generally though, the syntax is different but once you learn it, it's mostly fine and sometimes the text-based nature of Unix commands means you have to do a lot more reg-exing.
My point still stands. They are different but (IMHO) both excellent. Ubuntu on Windows may eventually reach parity with PowerShell but until then, PowerShell is worth knowing (especially if you follow Microsoft's advice and run servers without the GUI installed).
I agree it's worth knowing, I just don't like it. My prefferred avenue will be porting all .Net stuff to Linux servers and just getting rid of all Windows servers as it becomes possible. .Net is great, C# is great, Windows isn't and I'm glad to see Microsoft's new CEO isn't blind to that reality.
Really? I though PowerShell was designed primarily to replace cmd. Surely Windows people use actual programming languages for the majority of tasks with PowerShell/cmd for smaller scripting tasks.
