I *used* to play 3D games on Linux, both under Wine (GoG titles, mostly) and native (Freespace Source Code Project [http://scp.indiegames.us/], OpenArena, native ports of iD engine games, Introversion titles etc.). Graphics card: Radeon HD 4670. Driver: the most recent proprietary ATI fglrx driver compatible with my kernel. There were some minor issues but for the most part everything worked and performance was great.
Then I switched to the open-source radeon driver. Most of the titles that used to work, particularly the Wine-based games, the native commercial games like Quake4 or the games that fully use the modern 3D graphics api (eg. Freespace 2 Open) don't any more. Sometimes the system just locks up, goes to black screen or otherwise becomes unstable. Some games work, but poorly with many visual glitches or performance issues. A few open source games like OpenArena and the like, play just fine. This is true for both the latest "stable" drivers available from and distributions (OpenSUSE 11.4, Ubuntu 11.04) and the latest nightly builds.
At present, using the open radeon driver, games don't get played much on my system. (To preemptively address the claims that 'game x, y or z plays just fine using the open drivers', the games *I* want to play don't work very well, and that's really all that matters to me.)
To be fair, many things that were buggy under the proprietary drivers (Video playback, KDE KWin compositing) work perfectly using the open drivers (which is what prompted me to switch to begin with. I'll take a stable desktop over functioning games any day. I can always dual boot if I really want to.)
The opensource drivers are coming along nicely, but at present they still leave much room for improvement. With all their problems (both ethical and technical), the proprietary, closed-source ATI drivers are just better. Let's hope that isn't true for much longer (though it has been so for the better part of the last decade, so I don't have much hope.) At least ATI/AMD are actively open to the development of the open drivers, so the developers don't have to battle manufacturer indifference in addition to the technical challenges.
You're just making this up. I have the 'one-DVD' plan and have had at least 3 simultaneous streams going at once (at least one from a different IP - laptop at library).
Please try not to state your speculations as fact.
Backwards? I certainly hope that developers are not expected to restrain themselves from creating new or improved technology (like an image format) without prior "user approval". That, IMHO, would be a huge step backwards (or sideways). I don't really think you understand what FLOSS is and what makes it work. FLOSS thrives on a D.I.Y., "scratch your own itch" mentality, with a little meritocracy and Darwinian natural selection mixed in. Requiring "permission" from some nebulous planning committee of "users" before moving ahead with new ideas would undermine the very thing that makes it viable.
Now, a smart developer might want to solicit feedback via a mechanism something like Request for Comments (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Request_for_Comments) in order to ensure a better design that meshes well with existing infrastructure, but that's different from what you're talking about.
Wow, you have it all figured out. Why haven't we done this already? It seems so easy and there are no apparent downsides. Let's ride the cracking whiplash into... SPACE!
And they can all be enforced server-side to protect users from their own mistakes.
Very nice for multinational corporations who want to protect their trade secrets and monitor employee communications and can afford a BES. Not so nice for an individual who wants a personal device that respects their security and privacy. How does a private BB user enforce server-side permissions exactly? I don't recall seeing a free BES offered with my Blackberry mobile plan.
Your arguments are irrelevant to the current discussion and obsolete since RIM made concessions to allow monitoring of communications in repressive countries. Come back and discuss this again when private citizens can realistically and securely benefit from the advantages you espouse. Until then, you're entirely missing the point.
Any non-trivial app requires permissions to one or more of the following:
- Your location (coarse or fine grained) - Full network capabilities - Call status - Your personal contacts - Account information
And the big kahuna:
- Your SD card
Putatively for storage of application data, settings etc. But as far as I know, there is no mechanism to prevent an app from accessing ANY other information on the SD card once granted access. And just about every app requires read/write access to the SD card. Let the data-mining begin - high fives all around. I honestly have no idea why sane people do things like personal banking from their Android devices.
Apps should be limited to only their own sandboxed storage on the SD card or world-readable data. Everything else should require explicit permission from the user.
All good advice, except I don't think Dropbox is an absolute requirement, since you can store the same data on a personal computer or thumbdrive. Unless you live in an area where random search-and-seizures occur with regularity. But then your screwed in many other ways, so your phone security is trivial in comparison.
If there's anything that demands more suspicion than the mobile ecosystem, it's the cloud. Keep your most sensitive personal information away from there. Seriously.
No. What I was saying is that Android permissions aren't all that fine-grained and are seriously broken if protecting the user is the goal. What I didn't say is that they should be redesigned if personal security and personal privacy are a priority. I'm saying that now.
You, on the other hand seem to be implying that Blackberry is better for some unspecified reason. Since you obviously don't live in a Middle-eastern country where Blackberry caved and allowed personal communications of BB users to be monitored. So what was your point again?
Security is only valid if it's completely in the hands of the users at the endpoints of the desired communication, not the middleman who is managing it all while saying "trust me - you're completely secure, honestly".
To me, Android is much more secure than Blackberry, because at least I can root my android device and set up my own communications channel that has at least a chance of being secure. Don't really see that as an option for the dark fruit.
The problem with Android is that the permissions aren't in fact "fine grained" (though they might seem so to the 'TL;DR' generation). They are relatively course-grained with respect to what modern applications might require. Any non-trivial app will require permissions from the available pool that can be abused by malicious developers. The user has to fall back on trust when installing any non-trivial app.
Android needs something more like a sandbox environment for each application and a reasonable system where the user is asked for permission before accessing sensitive information.
Android permissions == FAIL, at least from a personal privacy and security perspective.
The problem lies in what 'reasonable' means, which IMHO is the basis for most of the conflict involving "intellectual property". Reasonable to me means fair compensation for those 'useful services' as they are rendered. The problem is that such compensation is continually being pushed towards "maximum compensation in perpetuity", which seems entirely unreasonable. Most people interpret the latter as "greed", particularly since the vast, vast majority of humanity is NOT compensated in perpetuity for the very useful services they provide, once they have done so. The evil is not the desire to receive fair compensation, the evil is continually demanding payment beyond the point where fair compensation has been delivered.
So what happens when some of those publications inevitably go out of business? We lose all of their works forever?
Let them vanish from the face of history. We can't preserve every jot and tittle of every utterance from every publication throughout history (yet), and using the attitudes of the parent companies as a filter seems like a decent way to filter out the kruft in via "natural selection" of information. Information sponsored by companies who have a genuine interest in adding to the historical record is preserved, information sponsored by companies only interested in short term profit is forgotten forever. Good riddance, I say.
The real question is why you don't have enough imagination to figure out reasons why we might want to go up there.
No, the real question is why buzzword filled drivel like yours gets modded insightful.
I won't contest your "drivel" accusation - this is Slashdot after all, so you are quite correct (though horribly redundant). I'm having trouble picking out the buzzwords you accuse me of, however. Was it "question"? "Imagination?" "The?". Help me out here - I want to improve the quality of my writing.
The OP made a valid point - which you failed to address at all.
This may be too subtle, but: "When exploring the unknown, by definition you don't know what you will find." My point is that the act of exploration, of tackling difficult challenges, of seeking out new knowledge and experience quite often yields benefits that are unexpected and unanticipated. Judging the benefits of an activity in terms of a established framework or system alone doesn't take that into account. Negative arguments are easy when taking that approach. That's the lack of imagination I was referring to. The possible economic benefits for this kind of activity are very likely NOT going to be realized primarily in terms of things that are currently economically beneficial, but rather will come from new knowledge and experience gained as a result of trying.
Jingoism is no substitute to actual thought.
Jingoism is no substitute for actual thought. There, fixed that for you.
By the way - "jingoism"? Do you even know what that means? Because I'm not really detecting any "excessive patriotism" or "aggressive nationalism" anywhere in this thread.
The so-called 'l33t' name is actually my Quake 1 deathmatch name, which involved no more than 20 seconds or so of thought when during its selection. ("Hey - let's play some Quake deathmatch!". "Ok.". "Hurry up and pick a name - everyone is waiting!". "Ok - how about c0d3g33k?". "Awesome - let's play.") This happened to be the time I had to choose an online nick when signing up for Slashdot, and to my eternal regret, I chose my Quake nick. So as you can see, I'm really just a thoughtless dumbass, not the l33t master of all things trivial and arcane you think me to be. It's really that simple. Wait - did you see what I just did there? It's clear I am now its master. Fear me, dread apostrophe, for I have learned your arcane ways. Thanks, Mr. AC - I couldn't have done it without your help.
The real question is why you don't have enough imagination to figure out reasons why we might want to go up there. We wouldn't have those satellites in orbit at all if people approached things with your attitude. The opportunities always seem obvious in hindsight, but it takes a pioneering spirit to seek new ones out and make them real.
While I appreciate your snarky cynicism, Mr. Landis, not every advance in the world is measured in miraculous breakthroughs. Some things are hard and just improve incrementally through the hard work of people that give a shit. They work hard and figure out how to make things better a bit at a time. That's in contrast to the people that just sit back and do nothing while waiting for the miraculous breakthroughs. While asshats the world over snicker because these solar cells are "slightly less lousy", the people that give a shit will continue to bust their asses to make things better until the day when they cross the line that defines a "massively viable" solar cell. Then the critics will jump on board and ride the wave as if they had everything to do with it and were believers all along. Now THAT'S depressing and worthy of cynicism.
And while I haven't finished the last one I've found them to be an enjoyable romp.
I wouldn't disagree with that. The books were enjoyable and fun enough. But part of the enjoyment (for me at least) was the anticipation of the full exposition of the ideas that were hinted at early on. That didn't happen, which leads to the aforementioned disappointment. This kind of thing seems to be quite common in recent years, for some reason. The Matrix Trilogy is a classic example, but television series seem to be particularly prone to this. The writers are skilled at setting up a story in a compelling way, but so many don't seem to be able to carry their big ideas through to a satisfying and self-consistent ending. Lost, Heroes and Battlestar Galactica come to mind.
Never read "His Dark Materials," heard it was good, though.
Sadly, you heard wrong. The trilogy could have been brilliant, but didn't quite live up to the promise of the first book. It's a good read, but somewhat of a muddled mess at times, with an unsatisfying ending. Quite disappointing.
Yeah - I deserve it. Should have written my thesis about something useful like Buffy instead of molecular transport across cell membranes. What a waste of time that was.:-)
Joss Whedon is secretly laughing at all of you who are writing deep existential doctoral theses about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Oh, I don't know about that. The "high school as hell" metaphor that the show was based on seems pretty danged existential to me, so further analysis by the fans isn't a huge stretch. Besides, he wouldn't secretly laugh - he'd publicly make a snarky yet witty metaphorical comment about the whole Buffy Studies thing and maybe weave it into a future storyline.
You're clearly expecting the best of people (that's ok - I do too, and I'm happily justified in doing so much of the time. However...). In the *real* real world, this "collaboration" you refer to often boils down to this: the folks that cheated their way through their educations ride on the backs of those who didn't. The former can't actually do the work their jobs require (or at least not at an expert level), so they rely on the latter to carry the load. A team context makes it easier for such people because they can share in the achievements of the team though individual contributions were highly unbalanced. This sucks, particularly if you're the one who gets to be the pack mule. I, for one, welcome our new calculator banning overlords.
It's a pity he settled, but given the corruption of the USA's court system compared to that of the free world, [*snip*] it's understandable.
Are the court systems of the 'free world' really that much less corrupt than that of the US? It seems to me they are all dysfunctional in one way or the other and could all stand to be improved. What I learned of the court system in Italy while watching a murder trial last year made me hope I never have to stand trial for a crime there. Free world or not, the best way to be assured of the potential of a fair trial is to avoid committing any offense - the fairness goes away once you actually set foot in a courtroom.
Slashdot Mirror
I *used* to play 3D games on Linux, both under Wine (GoG titles, mostly) and native (Freespace Source Code Project [http://scp.indiegames.us/], OpenArena, native ports of iD engine games, Introversion titles etc.). Graphics card: Radeon HD 4670. Driver: the most recent proprietary ATI fglrx driver compatible with my kernel. There were some minor issues but for the most part everything worked and performance was great.
Then I switched to the open-source radeon driver. Most of the titles that used to work, particularly the Wine-based games, the native commercial games like Quake4 or the games that fully use the modern 3D graphics api (eg. Freespace 2 Open) don't any more. Sometimes the system just locks up, goes to black screen or otherwise becomes unstable. Some games work, but poorly with many visual glitches or performance issues. A few open source games like OpenArena and the like, play just fine. This is true for both the latest "stable" drivers available from and distributions (OpenSUSE 11.4, Ubuntu 11.04) and the latest nightly builds.
At present, using the open radeon driver, games don't get played much on my system. (To preemptively address the claims that 'game x, y or z plays just fine using the open drivers', the games *I* want to play don't work very well, and that's really all that matters to me.)
To be fair, many things that were buggy under the proprietary drivers (Video playback, KDE KWin compositing) work perfectly using the open drivers (which is what prompted me to switch to begin with. I'll take a stable desktop over functioning games any day. I can always dual boot if I really want to.)
The opensource drivers are coming along nicely, but at present they still leave much room for improvement. With all their problems (both ethical and technical), the proprietary, closed-source ATI drivers are just better. Let's hope that isn't true for much longer (though it has been so for the better part of the last decade, so I don't have much hope.) At least ATI/AMD are actively open to the development of the open drivers, so the developers don't have to battle manufacturer indifference in addition to the technical challenges.
You're just making this up. I have the 'one-DVD' plan and have had at least 3 simultaneous streams going at once (at least one from a different IP - laptop at library).
Please try not to state your speculations as fact.
Dan Fogelberg? Kids?
Time to get back on your meds, pitchpipe. Fogelberg is soooo 1970's. You might as well throw in a few zoot suit references for good measure.
Oh, wait. Hula hoops.
You were meta-ranting.
Sorry.
Please carry on. I get it now.
Backwards? I certainly hope that developers are not expected to restrain themselves from creating new or improved technology (like an image format) without prior "user approval". That, IMHO, would be a huge step backwards (or sideways). I don't really think you understand what FLOSS is and what makes it work. FLOSS thrives on a D.I.Y., "scratch your own itch" mentality, with a little meritocracy and Darwinian natural selection mixed in. Requiring "permission" from some nebulous planning committee of "users" before moving ahead with new ideas would undermine the very thing that makes it viable.
Now, a smart developer might want to solicit feedback via a mechanism something like Request for Comments (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Request_for_Comments) in order to ensure a better design that meshes well with existing infrastructure, but that's different from what you're talking about.
Wow, you have it all figured out. Why haven't we done this already? It seems so easy and there are no apparent downsides. Let's ride the cracking whiplash into ... SPACE!
And they can all be enforced server-side to protect users from their own mistakes.
Very nice for multinational corporations who want to protect their trade secrets and monitor employee communications and can afford a BES. Not so nice for an individual who wants a personal device that respects their security and privacy. How does a private BB user enforce server-side permissions exactly? I don't recall seeing a free BES offered with my Blackberry mobile plan.
Your arguments are irrelevant to the current discussion and obsolete since RIM made concessions to allow monitoring of communications in repressive countries. Come back and discuss this again when private citizens can realistically and securely benefit from the advantages you espouse. Until then, you're entirely missing the point.
Any non-trivial app requires permissions to one or more of the following:
- Your location (coarse or fine grained)
- Full network capabilities
- Call status
- Your personal contacts
- Account information
And the big kahuna:
- Your SD card
Putatively for storage of application data, settings etc. But as far as I know, there is no mechanism to prevent an app from accessing ANY other information on the SD card once granted access. And just about every app requires read/write access to the SD card. Let the data-mining begin - high fives all around. I honestly have no idea why sane people do things like personal banking from their Android devices.
Apps should be limited to only their own sandboxed storage on the SD card or world-readable data. Everything else should require explicit permission from the user.
All good advice, except I don't think Dropbox is an absolute requirement, since you can store the same data on a personal computer or thumbdrive. Unless you live in an area where random search-and-seizures occur with regularity. But then your screwed in many other ways, so your phone security is trivial in comparison.
If there's anything that demands more suspicion than the mobile ecosystem, it's the cloud. Keep your most sensitive personal information away from there. Seriously.
No. What I was saying is that Android permissions aren't all that fine-grained and are seriously broken if protecting the user is the goal. What I didn't say is that they should be redesigned if personal security and personal privacy are a priority. I'm saying that now.
You, on the other hand seem to be implying that Blackberry is better for some unspecified reason. Since you obviously don't live in a Middle-eastern country where Blackberry caved and allowed personal communications of BB users to be monitored. So what was your point again?
Security is only valid if it's completely in the hands of the users at the endpoints of the desired communication, not the middleman who is managing it all while saying "trust me - you're completely secure, honestly".
To me, Android is much more secure than Blackberry, because at least I can root my android device and set up my own communications channel that has at least a chance of being secure. Don't really see that as an option for the dark fruit.
The problem with Android is that the permissions aren't in fact "fine grained" (though they might seem so to the 'TL;DR' generation). They are relatively course-grained with respect to what modern applications might require. Any non-trivial app will require permissions from the available pool that can be abused by malicious developers. The user has to fall back on trust when installing any non-trivial app.
Android needs something more like a sandbox environment for each application and a reasonable system where the user is asked for permission before accessing sensitive information.
Android permissions == FAIL, at least from a personal privacy and security perspective.
I'm totally in favor of model 2.
The problem lies in what 'reasonable' means, which IMHO is the basis for most of the conflict involving "intellectual property". Reasonable to me means fair compensation for those 'useful services' as they are rendered. The problem is that such compensation is continually being pushed towards "maximum compensation in perpetuity", which seems entirely unreasonable. Most people interpret the latter as "greed", particularly since the vast, vast majority of humanity is NOT compensated in perpetuity for the very useful services they provide, once they have done so. The evil is not the desire to receive fair compensation, the evil is continually demanding payment beyond the point where fair compensation has been delivered.
So what happens when some of those publications inevitably go out of business? We lose all of their works forever?
Let them vanish from the face of history. We can't preserve every jot and tittle of every utterance from every publication throughout history (yet), and using the attitudes of the parent companies as a filter seems like a decent way to filter out the kruft in via "natural selection" of information. Information sponsored by companies who have a genuine interest in adding to the historical record is preserved, information sponsored by companies only interested in short term profit is forgotten forever. Good riddance, I say.
No, the real question is why buzzword filled drivel like yours gets modded insightful.
I won't contest your "drivel" accusation - this is Slashdot after all, so you are quite correct (though horribly redundant). I'm having trouble picking out the buzzwords you accuse me of, however. Was it "question"? "Imagination?" "The?". Help me out here - I want to improve the quality of my writing.
The OP made a valid point - which you failed to address at all.
This may be too subtle, but: "When exploring the unknown, by definition you don't know what you will find." My point is that the act of exploration, of tackling difficult challenges, of seeking out new knowledge and experience quite often yields benefits that are unexpected and unanticipated. Judging the benefits of an activity in terms of a established framework or system alone doesn't take that into account. Negative arguments are easy when taking that approach. That's the lack of imagination I was referring to. The possible economic benefits for this kind of activity are very likely NOT going to be realized primarily in terms of things that are currently economically beneficial, but rather will come from new knowledge and experience gained as a result of trying.
Jingoism is no substitute to actual thought.
Jingoism is no substitute for actual thought. There, fixed that for you.
By the way - "jingoism"? Do you even know what that means? Because I'm not really detecting any "excessive patriotism" or "aggressive nationalism" anywhere in this thread.
The so-called 'l33t' name is actually my Quake 1 deathmatch name, which involved no more than 20 seconds or so of thought when during its selection. ("Hey - let's play some Quake deathmatch!". "Ok.". "Hurry up and pick a name - everyone is waiting!". "Ok - how about c0d3g33k?". "Awesome - let's play.") This happened to be the time I had to choose an online nick when signing up for Slashdot, and to my eternal regret, I chose my Quake nick. So as you can see, I'm really just a thoughtless dumbass, not the l33t master of all things trivial and arcane you think me to be. It's really that simple. Wait - did you see what I just did there? It's clear I am now its master. Fear me, dread apostrophe, for I have learned your arcane ways. Thanks, Mr. AC - I couldn't have done it without your help.
The real question is why you don't have enough imagination to figure out reasons why we might want to go up there. We wouldn't have those satellites in orbit at all if people approached things with your attitude. The opportunities always seem obvious in hindsight, but it takes a pioneering spirit to seek new ones out and make them real.
Ah, young padawan AC.
You should know Matt from his O'Reilly book: Running Linux (now in it's 5th edition).
If you want to know more, go to http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~mdw/
Hi AC,
Pedant=A pedant is a person who is excessively concerned with formalism and precision, or who makes a show of their learning.
While I appreciate your snarky cynicism, Mr. Landis, not every advance in the world is measured in miraculous breakthroughs. Some things are hard and just improve incrementally through the hard work of people that give a shit. They work hard and figure out how to make things better a bit at a time. That's in contrast to the people that just sit back and do nothing while waiting for the miraculous breakthroughs. While asshats the world over snicker because these solar cells are "slightly less lousy", the people that give a shit will continue to bust their asses to make things better until the day when they cross the line that defines a "massively viable" solar cell. Then the critics will jump on board and ride the wave as if they had everything to do with it and were believers all along. Now THAT'S depressing and worthy of cynicism.
And while I haven't finished the last one I've found them to be an enjoyable romp.
I wouldn't disagree with that. The books were enjoyable and fun enough. But part of the enjoyment (for me at least) was the anticipation of the full exposition of the ideas that were hinted at early on. That didn't happen, which leads to the aforementioned disappointment. This kind of thing seems to be quite common in recent years, for some reason. The Matrix Trilogy is a classic example, but television series seem to be particularly prone to this. The writers are skilled at setting up a story in a compelling way, but so many don't seem to be able to carry their big ideas through to a satisfying and self-consistent ending. Lost, Heroes and Battlestar Galactica come to mind.
Never read "His Dark Materials," heard it was good, though.
Sadly, you heard wrong. The trilogy could have been brilliant, but didn't quite live up to the promise of the first book. It's a good read, but somewhat of a muddled mess at times, with an unsatisfying ending. Quite disappointing.
I wasn't aware that the power providers in New London offered a green energy option. I'll have to look into that.
Yeah - I deserve it. Should have written my thesis about something useful like Buffy instead of molecular transport across cell membranes. What a waste of time that was. :-)
Joss Whedon is secretly laughing at all of you who are writing deep existential doctoral theses about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Oh, I don't know about that. The "high school as hell" metaphor that the show was based on seems pretty danged existential to me, so further analysis by the fans isn't a huge stretch. Besides, he wouldn't secretly laugh - he'd publicly make a snarky yet witty metaphorical comment about the whole Buffy Studies thing and maybe weave it into a future storyline.
You're clearly expecting the best of people (that's ok - I do too, and I'm happily justified in doing so much of the time. However ...). In the *real* real world, this "collaboration" you refer to often boils down to this: the folks that cheated their way through their educations ride on the backs of those who didn't. The former can't actually do the work their jobs require (or at least not at an expert level), so they rely on the latter to carry the load. A team context makes it easier for such people because they can share in the achievements of the team though individual contributions were highly unbalanced. This sucks, particularly if you're the one who gets to be the pack mule. I, for one, welcome our new calculator banning overlords.
It's a pity he settled, but given the corruption of the USA's court system compared to that of the free world, [*snip*] it's understandable.
Are the court systems of the 'free world' really that much less corrupt than that of the US? It seems to me they are all dysfunctional in one way or the other and could all stand to be improved. What I learned of the court system in Italy while watching a murder trial last year made me hope I never have to stand trial for a crime there. Free world or not, the best way to be assured of the potential of a fair trial is to avoid committing any offense - the fairness goes away once you actually set foot in a courtroom.