Except that all other file managers have had scripting API's since... well, since forever. And ever. And then some. And flattening. And other stuff. Exactly how does adding that to x2 make it "better than the others" as opposed to merely "playing catch-up to"?pj wrote:That front-end to the post-processing scripts would put x2 into a class above all other file MANAGERS.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it, but since I work with spades all day long, it's easy for me to identify them.
Kilmatead, as it happens, doesn't actually drink. He also lives on significantly less than you might imagine, so upgrading anything for him is a big consideration. These are the choices honest men must make when faced with the lives this century suggests for us to live...drac wrote:I suspect that Kilmatead spends more on libations in a week than it would cost to upgrade to a new version of X2 every couple of years.
I confess I find your argument against lifetime licenses as somewhat... specious. Plausible, and no doubt supported by most developers because it makes sense - yet some of the best developer service/attention I've seen has actually been from free or "one-off" products, ironically. (e.g., Classic Shell). The false promise of dependable revenue is not an impetus to "better" development, it's actually an inducement more to mainstream conservatist pandering and "tried and true" methods of promising Much yet dribbling-out Little over as long a period as possible.
It's tempting to say (as my counter-argument traditionally "should" say) that innovation is actually more romantically born of failure, hunger, and the desperation that "no one really cares anyway" - why do you think Apple is so successful? They have never (ever!) "invented" anything - they just repackage the failures of others and sell it back to the witless rich at the greater cost of the poor. It's a perfect system. As this thread was started upon, people generally purchase according to their perceptions, and rarely to anything other than their "wants du jour" - a blind chimaera for a dispirited and helpless populace. There really is a reason we should be careful what we ask for.
Yet that is not my argument, for I don't pretend to have one. I'm just an experienced pessimist who's expectations of the world were only ever his greatest weakness: lifetime licenses make sense for the consumer precisely because they neuter the businessman where it counts the most. Beyond that, if one isn't prepared and vigilant enough to look after their own perceived "needs", they certainly best not expect it of others. I pay the farmer to mind his crops so I don't have to - I don't pay him to paint the inside of my eyelids with a utopian vista created of his sustenance. I have Thomas More for that, as is only proper in a world where we engender our own disappointments from the hopes of others.