Improved detection of Ongame Network software, and added a help message explaining why Ongame is not fully supported
Improved code to check for presence of poker apps – they no longer need to be in your “Applications” folder to be found
Updated the third-party database library to increase performance and stability
Database is now optimised at startup ONLY IF at least 10,000 hands have been added since the last database optimisation, leading to much faster startup if you have a large database
What’s fixed:
Fix to handle Merge Network’s “COMPLETE” bet type – seen infrequently
Fix for unlikely but possible situation where on startup Poker Copilot could crash
I’m spending the next few weeks in Central America and wanted to brush up my Spanish by doing some more Pimsleur audio Spanish lessons. On the iTunes store I did a search for “pimsleur spanish”:
Notice the scroll bar: there were roughly 200 matches, and they all look vaguely the same. I think I bought the right one for me, but I’ve got this lingering doubt that I chose poorly. Apparently this is a common reaction when given too many similar options to choose from.
I got myself a developer preview version of Mac OS X Lion. Poker Copilot works fully on Lion. There is a little bit of explaining to do about it, but for fear of breaching the Apple non-disclosure policy of unreleased products, I’ll not mention that for now. As soon as Lion is officially released, I’ll post some clarification notes.
It’s a sweet, sweet feeling. Occasionally a certain problem is reported. I’m never able to reproduce it or get enough information to find the cause. Then, after weeks, months, or even a year or two, I finally track it down.
Today I believe I’ve eliminated such a problem. Until today. It turns out that if you have some tournament summaries that Poker Copilot has not imported yet, but NO hand history files remaining to be imported AND you have no play money hands in your Poker Copilot database, then when you start up Poker Copilot, it will crash.
The fix for this will be in the next Poker Copilot update.
Read a review of Poker Copilot in Italian. I enjoy seeing the screenshots of Poker Copilot running in Italian. Thanks again to the volunteer translators.
Full Tilt Poker, one of the most popular online gambling sites, had its operations suspended by regulators in the British Channel Islands, delivering another blow to an industry already reeling from a U.S. crackdown.
Until recently Full Tilt was the second biggest online poker room. In my opinion they were the leader in online poker innovation. I also considered Full Tilt’s online poker software to be the best in the business.
Watch a video of Jon Skeet discussing how text, numbers, and dates are really difficult for software developers to handle correctly, yet they are at the core of most software.
Jon (with the help of a sock puppet?) shows that:
3.0 might not equal 3.0
“mail” in upper case might not equal “mail” in upper case
28th October 2009 3:15 am CST might not be 28th October 2009 3:15 am CST
Yes. Of course. Indeed. With a doubt. Indubitably. Incontrovertibly.
I could give you a reasoned explanation. Instead I’ll list some examples of good commercial software that exists and thrives despite excellent free alternatives.
Oracle database server is commercial and hideously expensive. MySQL is free.
Mac OS X operating system is commercial. Linux is free.
So how can commercial software exist and thrive where adequate free alternatives exist?
I’m not quite sure. But I’ll have some guesses:
Commercial software has better marketing
Consider Bugzilla’s top-listed “feature”: Optimized database structure for increased performance and scalability
JIRA says this at the top of their feature list: JIRA simplifies every step of tracking bugs for everyone involved.
I know which one is more likely to convince me it is software worth trying.
Commercial software often has better support
The financial imperative is a powerful one. When people are paying you for your software – and you require good word-of-mouth advertising – or you are trying to convert potential customers into paying customers – you have a strong motivation to support customers quickly and effectively.
Free software often costs less money but more time
Consider my free competitor, FPDB. Want to install it? Check out the instructions here. If you are brave enough and eager enough to take on that task, go for it. Otherwise, come back here and get Poker Copilot on your computer using our simple-as-can-be process.
Commercial software often does more, looks prettier, has better user guides, and is easier to use
The rule of “you get what you pay for” applies generally in software just as it does anywhere else in life. Yes, there are some notable counter-examples though.
Although I develop commercial software, I use free software everyday, as well as software I pay for. This is no “commercial software is better” manifesto. Just some reasoning going through my head that I felt compelled to blog.
Those of you with big Poker Copilot databases are probably familiar with the longish “Optimising Poker Copilot database…” process that runs whenever you start Poker Copilot. The next update partly eliminates this. The optimising will only be performed if there’s at least 10,000 additional hands in your database since the last optimising process. This means Poker Copilot will start up much faster.
I’ve never had a complaint about the slow starting up, but it certainly affects me when testing new features and searching for bugs. So I guess I’m the main beneficiary…
