Just recently we had a problem of our VCR eating a tape and spending a couple of days without while it was fixed (fortunately the VCR was under warrenty). The tape didn't survive.
Certainly scratches are a big problem for optical media, but I think it's no less a problem than fragile tapes that have been wound/rewound several dozen times by the time your VCR gets them. And when DVDs are treated properly, the picture quality will be identical to the first viewing.
In a perfect world, we wouldn't have to put up with rental media at all. Simply get movies with digital quality on demand, watch once, and get on with our lives (probably with better cared-for DVD-type media for the movies we want to own).
I feel your rental pain, but think also that your DVD player was unaffected even by a crapped-out poorly cared-for disc. That's worth something too.
before everyone labels a Wolfenstein2000 another Doom/Quake clone. The original was top-down on the Apple][ and stressed tense situations (who could forget the fear of the SS storming in knowing only a grenade could take them out?) over rampant shooting.
Wolfenstein 3D was a pure shooter, and a darn fun one. I still play it from time to time. But iD intentionally removed all the sneaking and disguises to make the game move faster. Probably a wise idea at the time, but I think we've reached a point where a game can be done like the original again - with plenty of tense moments and a lot less shooting.
I mean, we already have plenty of 1st person shooters. How about something that requires more wits for a change?
And I can assure you they were annoying as hell! Every time we'd reach over to pick up something an arm would brush the lamp it would go on or off. Aaargh!
I'm trying to think of a viable use for touch-mice (beyond eliminating M$ toolbars, which I'd much rather eliminate perminantly). Perhaps removing the cursor from the screen would be a useful function for a mouse like this. Basically it tells the computer that you're not using the mouse and can keep it out of the way, but fading toolbars would get annoying very quickly while a disappearing cursor isn't quite so bad.
and maybe a star on top and we'd be all set. Still, this sounds like the stuff bad horror movies are made of. Imagine if they'd develop intelligence and start devouring people. On the other hand, a grove of carniverous christmas trees just doesn't have a big scare factor.
I think the "appliance PC" is already on the way, though the change to it has been so gradual hardly anyone has paid much attention - until something like the iMac comes along to make everyone take notice. But I like to call it the "throwaway PC".
The idea is simple: hardware and software has become so cheap, and internet access so ubiquitous, that the only two things people still care about are their peripherals and their precious data. Why update RAM when you'll need a new motherboard and CPU also to get your machine up to date? Heck, it'll all be obsolete soon enough anyway. The solution is easily removable hard drives (external SCSI? USB2?) so people can get their data moved over to a brand new box every couple of years whenever an app comes along they'd like (and that doesn't run on the old hardware). It'll still be a general purpose computer, but without the messy piecemeal upgrade path of current machines.
OS on a chip? Who cares. Just include an OS on every application CD and load it into memory. Far fetched? Maybe. But people in general only care about their data and the apps to modify said data. And PCs are getting more and more simplified every year...
While the graphical capabilites of consoles and PCs have traditionally "leapfrogged" over the years, all attempts at turning a console into anything resembling a PC replacement has been met with complete and utter consumer disinterest. And I feel the trend will continue.
Intellivision, Atari and 3DO all tried the tactic of bridging the gap, and all failed because they strayed too far from what consumers look for in a console: ease of setup and good performance of a single task (playing games). If one is going to go through the effort of having a machine that does it all (like a PC), why get a console that doesn't do the job as well?
Marketing the PlayStation2 as a "does everything" machine is a monumentally bad idea. Consoles have traditionally done one thing well: play games. Even the Dreamcast's internet facilities are optimized not for web browsing, but for playing others in online competition. Trying to push the PSX2 into the already-saturated does-it-all PC market is going to get it slaughtered - just as the 3DO was when it was initially marketed not as a video game console but as sort of a "mini PC".
The reason consoles survive is because they are specialized for a single task. Sony should remember that and learn from the mistakes of others.
I'm surprised, but not displeased, to see that there are DVD players with modifiable regions (short of using a soldering iron). The only reason they exist, IIRC, is because movies may have different copyrights in different areas of the world.
From the producer's standpoint, different regions cost them more money because they have to produce seperate versions of the same product. So I'm sure they'd rather just produce one version if they could. Instead we wind up with discs that are "for sale in US or Canada only" or some such nonesense.
In short, I think this is more the work of the Big Bad Lawyers rather than the work of the Big Bad Producers. The moviemakers *do* want your money for their product, after all.
It's already available at Sun's Java web site for all the "early access" people. The startup is a little slow, but once it's going it runs fine - not much difference between Java apps and native palm apps. The virtual machine takes a "whopping" 114k and the test apps are all in the 10-20k range. Give it a try!
I doubt it. Take the infamous GIF format. Once Unisys decided to crack down on their patent, OSS shifted very quickly to the PNG format instead for lossless images. Just as OSS can be fixed very quickly when bugs appear, it can also be modified in the case of a "legal attack". Is any major corperation going to spend the $ on a target that can move itself into compliance so quickly - or for so little monetary gain? OSS doesn't exactly offer a treasure-trove of wealth to be exploited.
And if someone should bring out the full-frontal-assault of patent litigation, wouldn't big Linux-backer corperations work to its defense? I wouldn't want to get into a legal tangle over patents with someone like IBM - with its big Linux investment and hoard of patents.
I don't see any real possibility that MegaCorp. will come along and try to sue OSS out of existence. Take the biggest patent case the internet has seen, the infamous GIF format. When Unisys began to crack down on their patent, the OSS response was to start using the (free) PNG format instead. I look through my GTK themes and see nothing but PNG images, for example. I think it's safe to conclude that if a piece of OSS software finds itself in violation, the open nature will guarantee a fix in no time flat.
Another thing to remember is the current OSS backers. IBM has invested heavily in Linux in their battle with Microsoft and isn't about to let their new hope fall under the hand of litigation. We can hope that if some greedy organization comes along with the hope of extortion, IBM's extensive patent array could be used in OSS's defense. Something along the lines of: "Linux is violating your patent Foo? Well, your software is in violation of our patents X, Y, Z, Q and Bar."
But really, OSS doesn't have the massive money behind it to be extorted and the open nature of it helps it dodge patent problems quickly, IMHO.
Assuming this scheme can work and they can map some subset of all languages to one another, the result won't be terribly pretty to use. The whole idea behind having different languages is to express cultural diversity - like the old adage that eskimos have 11 different words for snow. There's no way a universal language could capture that level of subtle differentiation.
On the other hand, they just might be able to come up with a way to map a small subset of natural language, computer-speak for example, for the purpose of easing the creating of internationalized apps and making web sites more navigable. But I don't see how this could be successful in a general case.
Already in production is a "Lord of the Rings", almost certainly with the full Tolkienian treatment and a lavish production. Probably a must-see.
Then there's the D&D Tolkienian treatment, which is based on an amalgamation of "the Hobbit", "the Lord of the Rings" and a jumble of greek and norse mythologies. Anything the D&D writers couldn't figure out (like elf heights or actual lifespans, since they apparently skipped "the Silmarillion") they simply made up based on their imaginations.
The result is a good game that's inspired countless computer/console clones, but I have serious doubts as to how well it'll survive a big-screen treatment. Good games make for terrible drama. (I didn't care at all for the whole Dragonlance series..ick) I'm afraid it'll wind up looking like a sorry parody of "the Lord of the Rings".
But hopefully we're behind that whole "D&D is the work of satan!" hysteria, inspired in part by "60 Minutes" hack journalism.
Invited a pile of pals over for a Matrix viewing and now I'm not sure if my Panasonic A120U will handle the disc. I checked out the start of the commentary option (which seems like the whole movie with running commentary from the stars and producers, etc.) and it worked okay. I might have to watch it ahead of time just to make sure it works.
According to Amazon.com. As for the future of DVD, I just look at any local Best Buy to see the titles are here and have reached that critical mass of consumer acceptance. And after having seen DVD in action on my own (crappy) TV, I'll never buy another VHS tape again.
(and the fact that they don't degrade with every playback is a nice bonus)
do you *know* the requirements for GPL packages?
on
Corel Clears the Air
·
· Score: 2
Corel hasn't violated anything. It's as simple as that. If they've modified GPL code, the GPL doesn't require source distribution until the release becomes non-private - i.e. public launch of Corel Linux. Beta tests aren't going to the public, as far as I know, and even if they were, Corel maintains the GPL'd code will be available.
And if Corel wants to put non-GPL portions under their own license as part of the distribution, that's okay too. Perl comes with virtually every Linux distribution, and is not GPL'd. The choice is Corel's. Choice is what Linux is all about.
And if someone uses GPL'd code and doesn't release under the GPL, then they're committing software piracy. I see no reason the GPL as a license is any less valid than a Windows license or a MacOS license. But if piracy is okay with you as a programmer, perhaps you haven't developed anything worth stealing.
Java's strong typing makes for awfully easy to read code. The objects wind up being nouns and the methods are usually pairs. The result is very verbose stuff that reads pretty well. Like:
I don't spend a lot of time on comments the first time around writing things, but invariably I comment the second time around as an eternal reminder why I did things the way I did. This holds especially true for the low-level bits of logic I try to abstract away first and hardly look at until the boss calls for some tweaks.
Too many comments can be as bad as too few, and trying to get the right mix is somewhat of an art that I still haven't quite mastered. But I think using them as reminders has come in very handy.
We're running MacOS8.5/6 on a PowerPC9600 (with 96 megs of RAM) and the stability is a real downer. It's prone to lockups, memory leaks and we've reinstalled the OS a half dozen times. MacOS just doesn't seem any more stable than Windows on a day-to-day basis. I have nothing against the MacOS, and the end users really like it when it works, but it just feels so damn fragile.
When Linux2.4 arrives (and I can use 3-button USB mice) I'd love to give Apple hardware a test drive. I just don't think MacOS can help me get my work done, no matter how easy it is to drag and drop things.
When one thinks of a GPL'd product, one thinks of something built a bit at a time by individuals with the source/binary always at hand. We've come to take for granted such an arrangement is how open software gets built.
But the GPL doesn't enforce any policy in that regard.
Assuming Corel has modified GPL licensed portions of their distribution, they have no requirement to send out binaries/source until the entire thing is ready for distribution. Beta testers, even 3rd pary beta testers, can still be considered part of Corel internal development and not part of the public at large.
In short, Corel doesn't have to release GPL'd source - yet. And if Corel hasn't made any modifications to anything GPL'd, they don't have to release the source at all. For instance, bundling closed-source WordPerfect with their distribution is okay, so long as the GPL'd distribution itself is available.
But this whole episode is so frustrating because it doesn't feel like a true open-source project. Sortof a "that's not how we do it" feel.
Assuming this is a lawsuit related to web browsing, Netscape's Navigator (Mozilla) predates the patents - and hasn't had any significant updates since (HTML rendering aside). Also, Explorer is an almost feature-for-feature clone, so why wasn't Microsoft sued also?
But if this patent is related to other Netscape products, what else could it be? Everything Netscape makes that I can think of has been done already - from web servers to commerce products. I don't understand why they're being singled out.
Is this license agreement a serious attempt to attach incompatible Corel licensing onto their distribution, or did they simply attach some "boilerplate" license without realizing it? Obviously it can't stand as it is. They'll either need to change their license, switch to an OS with a different licensing scheme, or prepare for a long legal battle.
"Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity.":)
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Just a little nit..
Certainly scratches are a big problem for optical media, but I think it's no less a problem than fragile tapes that have been wound/rewound several dozen times by the time your VCR gets them. And when DVDs are treated properly, the picture quality will be identical to the first viewing.
In a perfect world, we wouldn't have to put up with rental media at all. Simply get movies with digital quality on demand, watch once, and get on with our lives (probably with better cared-for DVD-type media for the movies we want to own).
I feel your rental pain, but think also that your DVD player was unaffected even by a crapped-out poorly cared-for disc. That's worth something too.
Wolfenstein 3D was a pure shooter, and a darn fun one. I still play it from time to time. But iD intentionally removed all the sneaking and disguises to make the game move faster. Probably a wise idea at the time, but I think we've reached a point where a game can be done like the original again - with plenty of tense moments and a lot less shooting.
I mean, we already have plenty of 1st person shooters. How about something that requires more wits for a change?
Unless, of course, they'd like to make the claim that genes didn't exist until they created them.
I'm trying to think of a viable use for touch-mice (beyond eliminating M$ toolbars, which I'd much rather eliminate perminantly). Perhaps removing the cursor from the screen would be a useful function for a mouse like this. Basically it tells the computer that you're not using the mouse and can keep it out of the way, but fading toolbars would get annoying very quickly while a disappearing cursor isn't quite so bad.
and maybe a star on top and we'd be all set. Still, this sounds like the stuff bad horror movies are made of. Imagine if they'd develop intelligence and start devouring people. On the other hand, a grove of carniverous christmas trees just doesn't have a big scare factor.
The idea is simple: hardware and software has become so cheap, and internet access so ubiquitous, that the only two things people still care about are their peripherals and their precious data. Why update RAM when you'll need a new motherboard and CPU also to get your machine up to date? Heck, it'll all be obsolete soon enough anyway. The solution is easily removable hard drives (external SCSI? USB2?) so people can get their data moved over to a brand new box every couple of years whenever an app comes along they'd like (and that doesn't run on the old hardware). It'll still be a general purpose computer, but without the messy piecemeal upgrade path of current machines.
OS on a chip? Who cares. Just include an OS on every application CD and load it into memory. Far fetched? Maybe. But people in general only care about their data and the apps to modify said data. And PCs are getting more and more simplified every year...
Intellivision, Atari and 3DO all tried the tactic of bridging the gap, and all failed because they strayed too far from what consumers look for in a console: ease of setup and good performance of a single task (playing games). If one is going to go through the effort of having a machine that does it all (like a PC), why get a console that doesn't do the job as well?
The reason consoles survive is because they are specialized for a single task. Sony should remember that and learn from the mistakes of others.
From the producer's standpoint, different regions cost them more money because they have to produce seperate versions of the same product. So I'm sure they'd rather just produce one version if they could. Instead we wind up with discs that are "for sale in US or Canada only" or some such nonesense.
In short, I think this is more the work of the Big Bad Lawyers rather than the work of the Big Bad Producers. The moviemakers *do* want your money for their product, after all.
It's already available at Sun's Java web site for all the "early access" people. The startup is a little slow, but once it's going it runs fine - not much difference between Java apps and native palm apps. The virtual machine takes a "whopping" 114k and the test apps are all in the 10-20k range. Give it a try!
And if someone should bring out the full-frontal-assault of patent litigation, wouldn't big Linux-backer corperations work to its defense? I wouldn't want to get into a legal tangle over patents with someone like IBM - with its big Linux investment and hoard of patents.
Just a few thoughts...
Another thing to remember is the current OSS backers. IBM has invested heavily in Linux in their battle with Microsoft and isn't about to let their new hope fall under the hand of litigation. We can hope that if some greedy organization comes along with the hope of extortion, IBM's extensive patent array could be used in OSS's defense. Something along the lines of: "Linux is violating your patent Foo? Well, your software is in violation of our patents X, Y, Z, Q and Bar."
But really, OSS doesn't have the massive money behind it to be extorted and the open nature of it helps it dodge patent problems quickly, IMHO.
On the other hand, they just might be able to come up with a way to map a small subset of natural language, computer-speak for example, for the purpose of easing the creating of internationalized apps and making web sites more navigable. But I don't see how this could be successful in a general case.
Then there's the D&D Tolkienian treatment, which is based on an amalgamation of "the Hobbit", "the Lord of the Rings" and a jumble of greek and norse mythologies. Anything the D&D writers couldn't figure out (like elf heights or actual lifespans, since they apparently skipped "the Silmarillion") they simply made up based on their imaginations.
The result is a good game that's inspired countless computer/console clones, but I have serious doubts as to how well it'll survive a big-screen treatment. Good games make for terrible drama. (I didn't care at all for the whole Dragonlance series..ick) I'm afraid it'll wind up looking like a sorry parody of "the Lord of the Rings".
But hopefully we're behind that whole "D&D is the work of satan!" hysteria, inspired in part by "60 Minutes" hack journalism.
Invited a pile of pals over for a Matrix viewing and now I'm not sure if my Panasonic A120U will handle the disc. I checked out the start of the commentary option (which seems like the whole movie with running commentary from the stars and producers, etc.) and it worked okay. I might have to watch it ahead of time just to make sure it works.
(and the fact that they don't degrade with every playback is a nice bonus)
And if Corel wants to put non-GPL portions under their own license as part of the distribution, that's okay too. Perl comes with virtually every Linux distribution, and is not GPL'd. The choice is Corel's. Choice is what Linux is all about.
And if someone uses GPL'd code and doesn't release under the GPL, then they're committing software piracy. I see no reason the GPL as a license is any less valid than a Windows license or a MacOS license. But if piracy is okay with you as a programmer, perhaps you haven't developed anything worth stealing.
But seriously, now how long do we have to wait before another orbiter arrives? Talk about frustrating...
Foo.getBar()
or
Sun.addAnotherJavaFeature()
Maybe Perl or Python would be better examples :)
Too many comments can be as bad as too few, and trying to get the right mix is somewhat of an art that I still haven't quite mastered. But I think using them as reminders has come in very handy.
When Linux2.4 arrives (and I can use 3-button USB mice) I'd love to give Apple hardware a test drive. I just don't think MacOS can help me get my work done, no matter how easy it is to drag and drop things.
But the GPL doesn't enforce any policy in that regard.
Assuming Corel has modified GPL licensed portions of their distribution, they have no requirement to send out binaries/source until the entire thing is ready for distribution. Beta testers, even 3rd pary beta testers, can still be considered part of Corel internal development and not part of the public at large.
In short, Corel doesn't have to release GPL'd source - yet. And if Corel hasn't made any modifications to anything GPL'd, they don't have to release the source at all. For instance, bundling closed-source WordPerfect with their distribution is okay, so long as the GPL'd distribution itself is available.
But this whole episode is so frustrating because it doesn't feel like a true open-source project. Sortof a "that's not how we do it" feel.
But if this patent is related to other Netscape products, what else could it be? Everything Netscape makes that I can think of has been done already - from web servers to commerce products. I don't understand why they're being singled out.
(hopefully this post won't get lost :)
"Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity." :)