So many things to pick at... damn straight. What sort of shitty "report" is this?
Using the word "cool" as a noun, and the word "briefest", quoting his mother,... my god, this is awful!
And, oh, by the way, is it really so cool, while we're at it?
So, why, again, was the Mac so much cooler? Oh, the CEO was a better public speaker. And? Uh, the system never crashes. Right, Windows has that, and? The plastics are prettier. Have you seen the XPS One? The Mac boots right up. That right? Shall we benchmark?
The word "cool" appears TWENTY FIVE TIMES in an eleven-page report.
This reads like a crappy fourth grade report. I'm ignoring the facts... just the writing alone really gets me.
The general public can grab Ubuntu which will offer to install Adobe Flash Player when you try to watch a YouTube video. That's free enough (for the general public) (for now).
You're selling a product to someone which has features in it designed specifically to break the product if its user isn't following whatever crazy rules they think of next. That is called a flaw. Products break, but any product which is designed to break when it doesn't otherwise have to is flawed.
The rules of DRM may change. They may become more or less restrictive, and the implementation may be closer and closer to the ideal DRM of "catching pirates but nobody else". But the fact is that any system which fails unnecessarily is a flawed system.
Wow that's an excellent point. I own a copy of Team Fortress 2 and because my brothers played it so much and I could never get on, they BOUGHT A SECOND COPY for a separate steam account.
We actually paid these bastards ANOTHER $30 just so we can play together. (I remember back in the days of, say, Warcraft II where you had a thing called "spawn" which actively allowed you to play with friends off the same CD).
Anyway, we have one copy of TF2 installed and either of us can log in and play. But with this CEG nonsense, we would have to install two separate copies.
How is Steam with CEG any less restrictive than Steam without CEG? (ie. Is this not just additional DRM, however mild, on top of the existing Steam DRM, however mild?)
On that particular topic, your opinion is just as valid as the opinion of those of us who choose to take them at their word. You have no evidence other than your gut feeling that they would renege, we have no evidence other than our gut feeling that the'll honor the promise.
That isn't a valid argument. There are two possible "outcomes" here, assuming Steam goes offline: Valve releases the unlock patch, or Valve doesn't release the patch.
GP says he doesn't trust that Valve will release a patch if Steam goes offline. That means he is not assuming either outcome. He can anticipate both outcomes: If they do release the patch, no problem. If they don't, problem for consumers. Since both outcomes are possible, and one is bad for consumers, it is fair for him to get up-in-arms.
You, however, do trust that Valve will release a patch if Steam goes offline. This means you have faith in a particular outcome, and it's the one which doesn't hurt consumers.
Only one of you has made an assumption.
His position is skeptical, unknown, he's saying he doesn't have any evidence they'll do it, so it could go either way. That isn't an opinion, it's fact that we have no proof, besides their word.
Your position is belief-centric. You believe that a particular outcome is guaranteed.
That's exactly right. I think there should be a law against this... basically, if you're going to use the word "buy" (as in "Buy It Now"), then you need to provide a good. That means you do not license the product to me. I own it.
If you use the word "rent" (even "Yours To Rent Forever!"), now we can start talking.
However, I'm still not happy... things should be goods unless you're actively providing a service to me. Artificially creating a service doesn't count.
For example, I need to pay someone to provide electricity every month and that's fine because electricity is a resource I am continually paying for. The toaster, however, is mine. I buy it, and now I own it. If you "sell" me a toaster which doesn't work without your agent coming in and re-activating it every month, then I don't own it. In a fair market, I could just buy someone else's toaster, but in the games market, I've got no choice -- all the damn toasters artificially require monthly servicing and the market is perfectly happy with it (or at least, would rather have toast than not have toast, on principle).
Yeah they're sharing these lists around like mad. While Conroy (the guy in charge of the Australian filter) may claim they're secure, and perhaps they are within Australia, the fact that there are lists of URLs going all around the world means leaksleaksleaks!
There is no actual filter in place at the moment. Only threats of $11,000 fines for linking to these sites.
The filtering trial is apparently going ahead (though I've heard nothing about it), so potentially someone participating in the trial could click on them to test, but as another person jocularly replied, this could result in severe penalties.
(Still, wouldn't hurt to try dentaldistinction.com.au, one of the blacklisted sites. I just went there, and in spite of a shockingly-awful Flash intro, it was a perfectly harmless dentist site).
I'm in Australia and haven't been able to get in all day.
I'm on Herdict now, and it looks like Wikileaks is being reported down for people all over the world. Just a lot more in Australia right now because we're pretty interested in it.
Let's not start overreacting and crying "filter!" We've got enough to cry about.
"Dungeon Plunderers 2" is the title of the second game. Its version number should be 1.0. I don't know of any game (commercial or non) which started the version number of the sequel with the series title.
"Dungeon Plunderers II" would mitigate this further:)
"Welcome to Dungeon Plunderers II: The Curse of the Dungeon's Sword, Version 1.0".
This is an interesting thought ("do we want all the noobs cramping our style"). The main pragmatic concern if Linux gets popular is we get all the viruses/malware/spyware, etc, though hopefully the fact that we install most software through the package system mostly makes that a non-issue.
The real reason though, why we as Linux users want more market share, is for compatibility. So once 50% or even 15% of the market is using Linux, suddenly we won't see these stupid Word document emails flying around, or have stupid online services like the BBC media player requiring "Windows or Mac".
We've already come a long way - would nVidia and Adobe have supplied us with graphics drivers / Flash player if Linux didn't have *some* substantial market share? These are things we as a community can't produce on our own.
So I think there is some good (more good than bad) in having as many people as possible at our fishing hole.
I've had that right click "bug" you describe a couple of times on Linux. But certainly not one in ten. I'm not sure if it's a bug.
It could just be that you're moving the mouse when you click. If the cursor lands on a menu item before you release the mouse button, it will perform the action, which may be open in new window or open in new tab.
Still, it could well be a bug, so you could report it.
I usually get upset when I hear about new powers being granted to the U.S, U.K, and Australia. However, all of those involve searches that violate the 4th amendment (U.S) and our privacy and do not have the checks and balances provided for by the judicial courts.
Uh, we don't have the 4th amendment in Australia...
Um, we do have NAP. It's conventionally called NULL, and much like NaN, it is up to the compiler implementor to pick a bit representation for it. Commonly, the binary value 0x00000000 is chosen.
NULL represents a pointer or reference that is intentionally not dereferenceable.
While the results of 1) dereferencing or 2) indexing based on the pointer are undefined in C, but in almost all modern implementations, will always result in a "Segmentation Fault" or other easily-recognisable error.
What is a zero pointer and why do I need one? If I program malloc to never allocate the memory cell at 0x00000000 (which almost all modern implementations do), then I never need a zero pointer and I never need to worry about distinguishing NULL from zero.
I think you missed the whole point of the discussion, which is that it's desirable to have languages with references which CANNOT possibly be null, to avoid someone passing NULL to a function which wasn't expecting it (thereby eliminating a particular class of runtime error). This has nothing to do with the overloaded representation in hardware of NULL and 0.
But an important detail you left out: The constant NULL is defined as the integer value 0. Therefore, casting NULL to a pointer results in the null pointer.
It's important (or is it?) to realise that the null pointer's bit pattern is not necessarily 0. It can be anything. But NULL is 0. If your C compiler decides for the null pointer's bit pattern to be nonzero, then the cast operation from an into to a pointer has to convert the integer value 0 to the null pointer's bit pattern.
Obviously, most C implementations, for simplicity, choose the same bit pattern as the integer 0 for the null pointer, so intpointer casts are no-ops.
Funny comment. But in all seriousness, this is part of the problem. The blacklist will definitely be a secret so that people like you can't check it over.
That raises serious concerns that we the public will have no clue what is being blocked (unlike all other forms of censorship in this country).
This exact patent is the example I use when people ask what's so bad about software patents. It is the most retarded patent I've seen. It's sillier than it seems at first glance.
If you read the Wiki, it explains that there are no patents on the basic 8.3 (DOS Filename) FAT itself, or even FAT32. It's a patent on the long filename support.
The basic problem is this: Assume you have a file system which only supports very short filenames. It has directory entries, which are a simple array of 32-byte entries. Setting a certain bit flag will cause the OS to ignore the directory entry.
You wish to add support for long filenames in a backwards-compatible way.
9 out of 10 software engineers, given this task, will tell you exactly this: "What you do is, you create the files as usual, but you also create dummy directory entries (with the "hidden" flag set), containing the extra characters of the filename."
THAT is what this is all about. That is trivial. It is not only not clever. It is obvious, and it is also not a "useful" invention - it's only useful given the horrible mess that is the existing FAT, which is only necessary because Microsoft has a monopoly.
The fact that we need to use this hack is an embarrassment to our industry. The fact that the hack itself is what MS thinks gives them the right to sue everybody else on the planet is laughable.
Slashdot Mirror
Wait, that should be...
We will have a CGI farm pretending to be a man pretending to be an actor pretending to be a robot pretending to be a man.
So many things to pick at ... damn straight. What sort of shitty "report" is this?
Using the word "cool" as a noun, and the word "briefest", quoting his mother, ... my god, this is awful!
The word "cool" appears TWENTY FIVE TIMES in an eleven-page report.
This reads like a crappy fourth grade report. I'm ignoring the facts ... just the writing alone really gets me.
The general public can grab Ubuntu which will offer to install Adobe Flash Player when you try to watch a YouTube video. That's free enough (for the general public) (for now).
It's time.
No, the concept of DRM is flawed.
You're selling a product to someone which has features in it designed specifically to break the product if its user isn't following whatever crazy rules they think of next. That is called a flaw. Products break, but any product which is designed to break when it doesn't otherwise have to is flawed.
The rules of DRM may change. They may become more or less restrictive, and the implementation may be closer and closer to the ideal DRM of "catching pirates but nobody else". But the fact is that any system which fails unnecessarily is a flawed system.
Wow that's an excellent point. I own a copy of Team Fortress 2 and because my brothers played it so much and I could never get on, they BOUGHT A SECOND COPY for a separate steam account.
We actually paid these bastards ANOTHER $30 just so we can play together. (I remember back in the days of, say, Warcraft II where you had a thing called "spawn" which actively allowed you to play with friends off the same CD).
Anyway, we have one copy of TF2 installed and either of us can log in and play. But with this CEG nonsense, we would have to install two separate copies.
How is Steam with CEG any less restrictive than Steam without CEG? (ie. Is this not just additional DRM, however mild, on top of the existing Steam DRM, however mild?)
That isn't a valid argument. There are two possible "outcomes" here, assuming Steam goes offline: Valve releases the unlock patch, or Valve doesn't release the patch.
GP says he doesn't trust that Valve will release a patch if Steam goes offline. That means he is not assuming either outcome. He can anticipate both outcomes: If they do release the patch, no problem. If they don't, problem for consumers. Since both outcomes are possible, and one is bad for consumers, it is fair for him to get up-in-arms.
You, however, do trust that Valve will release a patch if Steam goes offline. This means you have faith in a particular outcome, and it's the one which doesn't hurt consumers.
Only one of you has made an assumption.
His position is skeptical, unknown, he's saying he doesn't have any evidence they'll do it, so it could go either way. That isn't an opinion, it's fact that we have no proof, besides their word.
Your position is belief-centric. You believe that a particular outcome is guaranteed.
That's exactly right. I think there should be a law against this... basically, if you're going to use the word "buy" (as in "Buy It Now"), then you need to provide a good. That means you do not license the product to me. I own it.
If you use the word "rent" (even "Yours To Rent Forever!"), now we can start talking.
However, I'm still not happy ... things should be goods unless you're actively providing a service to me. Artificially creating a service doesn't count.
For example, I need to pay someone to provide electricity every month and that's fine because electricity is a resource I am continually paying for. The toaster, however, is mine. I buy it, and now I own it. If you "sell" me a toaster which doesn't work without your agent coming in and re-activating it every month, then I don't own it. In a fair market, I could just buy someone else's toaster, but in the games market, I've got no choice -- all the damn toasters artificially require monthly servicing and the market is perfectly happy with it (or at least, would rather have toast than not have toast, on principle).
Windows will be a thing of the past, come April 1...
He was referring to Microsoft Windows.
Yeah they're sharing these lists around like mad. While Conroy (the guy in charge of the Australian filter) may claim they're secure, and perhaps they are within Australia, the fact that there are lists of URLs going all around the world means leaksleaksleaks!
Wait, it's IBM who has the patent to use other patents to sue other companies.
There is no actual filter in place at the moment. Only threats of $11,000 fines for linking to these sites.
The filtering trial is apparently going ahead (though I've heard nothing about it), so potentially someone participating in the trial could click on them to test, but as another person jocularly replied, this could result in severe penalties.
(Still, wouldn't hurt to try dentaldistinction.com.au, one of the blacklisted sites. I just went there, and in spite of a shockingly-awful Flash intro, it was a perfectly harmless dentist site).
I'm in Australia and haven't been able to get in all day.
I'm on Herdict now, and it looks like Wikileaks is being reported down for people all over the world. Just a lot more in Australia right now because we're pretty interested in it.
Let's not start overreacting and crying "filter!" We've got enough to cry about.
GNU SLASH LINUX, you insensitive clod!
Warning: Microsoft bashing below
I can't believe someone on Slashdot was thoughtful enough to warn about Microsoft bashing.
They could just put that at the top of every page so this sort of thing would be unnecessary.
"Dungeon Plunderers 2" is the title of the second game. Its version number should be 1.0. I don't know of any game (commercial or non) which started the version number of the sequel with the series title.
"Dungeon Plunderers II" would mitigate this further :)
"Welcome to Dungeon Plunderers II: The Curse of the Dungeon's Sword, Version 1.0".
This is an interesting thought ("do we want all the noobs cramping our style"). The main pragmatic concern if Linux gets popular is we get all the viruses/malware/spyware, etc, though hopefully the fact that we install most software through the package system mostly makes that a non-issue.
The real reason though, why we as Linux users want more market share, is for compatibility. So once 50% or even 15% of the market is using Linux, suddenly we won't see these stupid Word document emails flying around, or have stupid online services like the BBC media player requiring "Windows or Mac".
We've already come a long way - would nVidia and Adobe have supplied us with graphics drivers / Flash player if Linux didn't have *some* substantial market share? These are things we as a community can't produce on our own.
So I think there is some good (more good than bad) in having as many people as possible at our fishing hole.
I've had that right click "bug" you describe a couple of times on Linux. But certainly not one in ten. I'm not sure if it's a bug.
It could just be that you're moving the mouse when you click. If the cursor lands on a menu item before you release the mouse button, it will perform the action, which may be open in new window or open in new tab.
Still, it could well be a bug, so you could report it.
So it's "I Am A Lecturer".
I thought you guys were counting Lines of Code. Was very concerned about the length of your lines.
Uh, we don't have the 4th amendment in Australia...
Um, we do have NAP. It's conventionally called NULL, and much like NaN, it is up to the compiler implementor to pick a bit representation for it. Commonly, the binary value 0x00000000 is chosen.
NULL represents a pointer or reference that is intentionally not dereferenceable.
While the results of 1) dereferencing or 2) indexing based on the pointer are undefined in C, but in almost all modern implementations, will always result in a "Segmentation Fault" or other easily-recognisable error.
What is a zero pointer and why do I need one? If I program malloc to never allocate the memory cell at 0x00000000 (which almost all modern implementations do), then I never need a zero pointer and I never need to worry about distinguishing NULL from zero.
I think you missed the whole point of the discussion, which is that it's desirable to have languages with references which CANNOT possibly be null, to avoid someone passing NULL to a function which wasn't expecting it (thereby eliminating a particular class of runtime error). This has nothing to do with the overloaded representation in hardware of NULL and 0.
This is correct.
But an important detail you left out: The constant NULL is defined as the integer value 0. Therefore, casting NULL to a pointer results in the null pointer.
It's important (or is it?) to realise that the null pointer's bit pattern is not necessarily 0. It can be anything. But NULL is 0. If your C compiler decides for the null pointer's bit pattern to be nonzero, then the cast operation from an into to a pointer has to convert the integer value 0 to the null pointer's bit pattern.
Obviously, most C implementations, for simplicity, choose the same bit pattern as the integer 0 for the null pointer, so intpointer casts are no-ops.
Funny comment. But in all seriousness, this is part of the problem. The blacklist will definitely be a secret so that people like you can't check it over.
That raises serious concerns that we the public will have no clue what is being blocked (unlike all other forms of censorship in this country).
This exact patent is the example I use when people ask what's so bad about software patents. It is the most retarded patent I've seen. It's sillier than it seems at first glance.
If you read the Wiki, it explains that there are no patents on the basic 8.3 (DOS Filename) FAT itself, or even FAT32. It's a patent on the long filename support.
The basic problem is this: Assume you have a file system which only supports very short filenames. It has directory entries, which are a simple array of 32-byte entries. Setting a certain bit flag will cause the OS to ignore the directory entry.
You wish to add support for long filenames in a backwards-compatible way.
9 out of 10 software engineers, given this task, will tell you exactly this: "What you do is, you create the files as usual, but you also create dummy directory entries (with the "hidden" flag set), containing the extra characters of the filename."
THAT is what this is all about. That is trivial. It is not only not clever. It is obvious, and it is also not a "useful" invention - it's only useful given the horrible mess that is the existing FAT, which is only necessary because Microsoft has a monopoly.
The fact that we need to use this hack is an embarrassment to our industry. The fact that the hack itself is what MS thinks gives them the right to sue everybody else on the planet is laughable.