That's a little harsh, Bruce. Fine sentiments, but it might be a little more fun to ask them questions about why. Do they have a long term stratagy? What do they hope to achieve and what will they do if (though some horror) they win? What will they do if they lose? How is this helping their shareholders? In short, I think I've just rephrased your question:
What do you think you are doing?!
Sure, they won't give an honest answer, if they respond at all. That too is information useful to those still invested or working for them.
It's amazing that they can't or won't turn around and do something useful. Why is it that they can't act more like Red Hat?
It demonstrates the power of free.
on
Duke3d in Linux
·
· Score: 1
Could someone explain why this is 'News'?
Releasing the source to an age-old DOS game and making it work under Linux is news because?
It is embarrasing to see this happen. It is embarrasing that a release of a game should constitute news on/. Even if it is for Linux. This only goes to show that most game producers couldn't care less about Linux.
No news is good news for you?
In another universe, the original company did not care at all about free software and destroyed the source code to Duke3D. In this universe someone cared, knew they would have no more sales for an old game and released the source. So today, instead of the waste of closed source software, you have a game to play on free software, Linux. It may have it's quirks yet there it is, a resource has been created. Where there are resrouces, there is money to be made.
Summary: Releasing the source brought publicity and saved lots of work. If you don't like it, don't use it or see if you can get your old DOS floppies to work.
His name is Mike, not that that matters. If he's lucky he'll get better "support" than the kind that left Kevin locked up for five years. All the good will to Kevin will be funneled this way. It took five years for people to even learn about Mitnick, this time it's not going to happen.
How can any conservative group support TIA? How can anyone who believes in small unobtrusive government support an effor that will make the post office look small? What person in their right mind wants government clerks pouring over the details of corporate management and personal lives? These are the views of a statist.
One thing September 11th proved conclusively was the inability of the Federal Government to use the information it already had. Most of the terrorists were wanted for immigration and other violations, yet they used their own names. TIA will not help. It will not force government agencies to share what they know with each other, if such a thing is technically possible.
The fourth amendment is technology independent. It raises the bar of government intrusion to sworn testimony in an open court that proves reasonable concern of actual criminal activity and a warrent is only granted for a specific time and place. TIA violates that and until computers can take the place of judges Luddites like me will oppose it.
Ekephart noticed that comercial softare is not perfect either. That's right and Marius has missed a few things in this sweeping statement of his:
Too much Free Software? And you thought people were complaining about a lack of applications which makes them stick with Microsoft Windows. Well, they're right. On Linux, there's no decent movie player and no working sound recorder (like the one in Windows 95) shipped as the default by GNOME, but hey, there are more than 385 text editors! Choice is good, but it's frustrating when none of the alternatives works properly.
There are two gross misrepresentations here, one that all text editors are as broken as sound recorders and the other that there's anything that can be done about hardware caused problems.
First, let me say that I'm quite satisfied with the state of free text editors. All the versions of VI, emacs, GNOME, KDE, ash, nano, in fact any text editor I've ever used worked perfectly. I've never had a text editor fail, seize my computer, or in any other way malfunction besides Microsoft Word. Hey, I'm even typing this post in a text editor! How about a call to ispell or aspell, Slashdot? Mozilla? Hmmm, should I stand in line at the big comitte meeting or fix it myself? Ah, ha! Now I see something, do you Marius who favors big "united" efforts and corporate sponsorship? In any case, the text editor like all others work because text is within the control of the programer.
There's nothing the programer can do about the multitude of propriatory sound cards. This is a land mine that Microsoft and hardware vendors laid long ago. Microsoft knew it would be imposible for another software company to "support" all the sound cards in the world but had the power to make them all support Microsoft. Hardware vendors knew that their hardware would only sell if it worked with Windoze and wrote drivers for Microsoft. A percieved side benifit was that they could sell new cards by not writing new drivers. The side benifit has worked to a certian extent in that perfectly useful sound cards get thrown out with "obsolete" PCs. In any case, no reasonable hardware standard exists for sound cards and so no programer at the GNOME level can know what to expect. Oustide of the hardware there's all sorts of fantastic software to analyze and manipulate the sound in ways that comercial software should be very afraid of. The situation will change radically as soon as hardware makers see the futility of supporting Microsoft, and that is already happening.
One thing is for sure, code sharing happens and works. While some readers may not be impressed by the text manipulation, most people are impressed by graphics and there free software shines. Marius noticed the GIMP. How about Eye of GNOME, Electric Eyes, XPaint, Data Explorer, FreeUSP, and the hoards of other graphics and image manipulation programs out there? How about their shared libraries such as Imagemagick?
Bah! Free software rocks because there is no freaking central comitte governing who works on what. People simply solve problems and share the results. It's getting to the point where ordinary users are able to understand and the tipping point is not far away. Hopefully, developers will continue doing as they do and ignore siren songs like Marius has.
A Slashdot poster was sued today for providing free code to a new Napster like network and massive copyright violation.
The exact method was not forclosed, for fear of embarasment, but it involved a random search of the web and cataloging Captian Hook's own bounty of MP3's, OGGs, Wave files, porn and all forms of information under all types of copyright terms including public domain. "It's not as fast as the Napster Music Sharing Comunity ^H^H^H^H^H? Pirate Network used to be, but it gets there" a computer expert said.
"The Court outlawed Napster and we are going to jail this bastard, Twitter" claimed an RIAA press release.
"To add insult to injury, he just gave the idea away.", fumed Rosen when asked for a comment, "We know where you live, how much you weigh and what food you don't like and we are going to get you for figuring out a way to share. This rand() function is costing us billions!"
The bands you want to sample still don't have websites?
As if a practical search for "new music that I like" existed. Not even the mighty Google can make that one work. I might as well use rand() to find samples of new bands. Nah, I'll just drive to New Orleans that's quicker.
So how are they going to handle an infinite number of variables? Oh right, dont worry... Someone else's problem?
Yes. With an infinite number of universes, there are an infinite number of you typing the code. Most of you will get it right and the computer will average the correct answer for you. So there, an infinite number of monkeys CAN write Shakespere, GUIs or anything else they please.
Microsoft has been working on this for a long time with their robot code from thier IDE. It still looks random and does not work quite right because they have not figured out how to make regular digital logic uncertian. When they figure that out, they will have it.
0 posts, and already slashdotted? the subscribers must've gotten to that one early!
And what's with the java comment, PHP is pretty much nothing like java. It has different uses, different strengths, and different semmantics. When are they going to properly fix PHP like making it stable? (*gasp*)
What a great troll. You admit that you have have not read the article in question, complain about how Slashdot sucks and then complain about the subject. Nice work, you know nothing but you cast dispersions on everything. Comments like this contribute nothing and get in the way of inteligent discusion, so piss off.
Of course a large portion of the "slashdot effect" comes from the trolls who post slashdotted posts. Nasty little bastards with their silly bots hammering away to prevent information exchange. What a waste of time because it's a game that can't be won. There are too many people who want to share for the few disruptive morons.
Yep, this is the second time I'm posting this. Eat me, troll.
Applying Occam's Razor to the situation, the most likely reason for the guy to do this is because he didn't have a single good photo, and it would be easier to Photoshop it instead of setting up another photo.
No, the easiest explaination is that the photographer wanted a picture that's more dramatic than reality.
May all your TP be eaten by silverfish and cockroaches, wherever you live, work and play.
If the poster really wants his own personal rollercoaster ride, I suggest an easier alternative would be to try getting a job in the IT industry right now.
It's supposed to be for your kids. Mine is too young to notice.
You see what they did to hotmail? I suppose the only thing better than Dog Food is more Dog Food! Woof woof, adverts, spam and Passport, how's that for a mail service? You can do the same for a search engine too! Wow, double the revenue untill they lose half their users.
M$ has had a search site for years and rigged their browser to go to it. No one goes there again after they see something better. It was so bad even a New York Times reporter described the auto product placement as anoying and the search engine itself as "mediocre". In short, it has not worked yet.
The only way for M$ to defeat Google is to make their browser crash or diddle around with Google and that will only prove the M$ software is quirky. Most people do remember Netscape and Word Perfect and they remember them fondly. It's easy to get them to try Mozilla. It's also easy to get them to look at free software too these days. If M$ wants to deprive their users of Google, fine, that's one more nail in their coffin.
Post: Just out of curiosity, is Micro$oft required to release the source of MS-DOS 1.0 when/if the copyright expires, or does just the binary form become public domain? The source is copyright too, no?
Reply: Why does copyright law apply at all? It's not as if MS ever published the source for any of its DOS versions.
Voice of Reason: Copyright law applies because it's what keeps me from publishing unauthorized coppies of DOS and other M$ junk. It's what puts you in jail. In a hundred years or so, DOS will pass into the public domain and you will be able to make coppies of that binary nightmare.
The situation highlights the absurdity of copyright law as it exists. First, the time period of copyright is long enough to make it perpetual. A 100 year copyright insures that most publications will perish before they enter the public domain. Second, the application of copyright laws to non human readable work is absurd. 100 years ago, player piano rolls enjoyed no such protection. Something very odd happened to project such "protection" onto machine instructions. As machine instructions are essentially collections of numerical algorithms and business methods understood only by machines, it's hard to consider them a proper subject of copyright. Licensing is about as far as the power of software companies should go. It should not be criminal to copy software, because it's essentially a breach of a private contract. If coppies of DOS exist 100 years from now, they will be more usless than any obsolete technical publication ever dreamed of being. The whole basis of copyright law is to encourage the arts and extend the public domain. As M$'s current position depends on unauthorized copy, we can see that the public's right to share information is being violated to no useful purpose.
The RIAA won't make that argument because it wants to pocket the royalty.
The US Government may make the argument after they finish making copyright perpetual. They can claim the royalties will fund the "protection" of currently published works and public archives, aka libraries.
It won't take that much change of public opinion for that to fly. It's obvious that copyright no longer serves to encourage publishing, the expansion of the public domain, or reward artists. People who put up with fewer than 2% of published works being available destpite nearly costless electronic duplication might deserve such govenment. We are closer to it than you think.
The guy was an LA Times photographer. Nowhere does he state that he has any affiliation with the government. The modification in question does not actually change much in the photo
How do you know how many paychecks are recieved? It's hard to make a living as a photographer. The US does have an Office of Missinformation of sorts that was used to create UFO sighting sorries to cover up flights of expereimental aircraft. It's doubtful that the photographer was paid, but it's not beyond the US Government to create false impressions benificial to itself.
Adding extra people to a photo changes the meaning a great deal. It creates the impression of a crowd where none exists. The dummy might have gotten away with it if he had taken images of different people from different photos, and he would have also been truer to what he saw. What he did was rubber stamp the same people!
Thanks for the Python example. For a minute there, I thought that things had gotten really bad. Can you imagine a world so poor that M$ has to actually invent standards to embrace, extend and extinguish? It's a good thing they can only kill things on their own platforms.
They mention that this weapon can take all manner of current M16 "accessories" such as a bayonet. That's rich for a gun that's supposed to be able to shoot for 60 days. I wonder what happens if you clog the lens with blood then pump a few 2kW pulses thrugh it.
Most Michigan businesses (and probably most government offices) use NAT or proxy servers for their internet connections. I believe a zealous prosecutor could interpret proxy servers as hiding the specifics of the computer that is making the requests for connections.
They will only be breaking the law if they refuse to pay the new NAT fee to the ISP and use the ISP's new complient NAT that tracks the user's every browse and email. Gotchaaa! Carnivore and profit all in one swoop.
This article tries so hard to be polite that it distorts reality and misses some fundamentals. Why bother being nice to greed heads who want to squeze a captive audience? More importantly, why not distingush them from more reasonable service providers? I'll put up a few examples. Finally, where is a mention of alternatives such as Locusworks?
This is the general pattern of the defeat of permanet by nearlynet. In the context of any given system, permanet is the pattern that makes communication ubiquitous. For a plane ride, the airphone is permanet, always available but always expensive, while the cell phone is nearlynet, only intermittently connected but cheap and under the user's control.
For some reason, most people percieve their cell phones as being only intermittently disconnected, like on plan flights.
Because 3G requires licensed spectrum, the artificial scarcity created by treating the airwaves like physical property guarantees limited competition among 3G providers.
Wow, they said it but it completly contradicts their artificial distiction system. The "upfront" costs here are everybit as artificial as that system and they know it. The real lesson to be learned is that greedy shcemes don't make money.
Finally Microsoft has a fix to slow down the spread of Code Red and other MS related worms and virii.
All worms? I think not! The dreaded FORTRAN worm, with it's one time memory alocation, pass by reference only and spritish math library will make mince meat of all the usual holes. Ha!
Why do so many people jump to attribute unexplained natural events to a [God]
Your view of God is not mine.
Sometimes, when I'm very surprised by something and I think that it might kill me, I think of God. Why? Becasue times like that remind me of how small I am and because I don't want my last thoughts to be something like, "Oh Shit!". Which thoughs to you want to carry off to your maker?
Slashdot Mirror
What do you think you are doing?!
Sure, they won't give an honest answer, if they respond at all. That too is information useful to those still invested or working for them.
It's amazing that they can't or won't turn around and do something useful. Why is it that they can't act more like Red Hat?
Releasing the source to an age-old DOS game and making it work under Linux is news because?
It is embarrasing to see this happen. It is embarrasing that a release of a game should constitute news on /. Even if it is for Linux. This only goes to show that most game producers couldn't care less about Linux.
No news is good news for you?
In another universe, the original company did not care at all about free software and destroyed the source code to Duke3D. In this universe someone cared, knew they would have no more sales for an old game and released the source. So today, instead of the waste of closed source software, you have a game to play on free software, Linux. It may have it's quirks yet there it is, a resource has been created. Where there are resrouces, there is money to be made.
Summary: Releasing the source brought publicity and saved lots of work. If you don't like it, don't use it or see if you can get your old DOS floppies to work.
His name is Mike, not that that matters. If he's lucky he'll get better "support" than the kind that left Kevin locked up for five years. All the good will to Kevin will be funneled this way. It took five years for people to even learn about Mitnick, this time it's not going to happen.
How many of these damn letters do I have to get before they learn to read their own lists?
Heather MacDonald and TIA
Heather MacDonald was quoted and represented strangely by Wired News:
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,58332,0 0.html
How can any conservative group support TIA? How can anyone who believes in small unobtrusive government support an effor that will make the post office look small? What person in their right mind wants government clerks pouring over the details of corporate management and personal lives? These are the views of a statist.
One thing September 11th proved conclusively was the inability of the Federal Government to use the information it already had. Most of the terrorists were wanted for immigration and other violations, yet they used their own names. TIA will not help. It will not force government agencies to share what they know with each other, if such a thing is technically possible.
The fourth amendment is technology independent. It raises the bar of government intrusion to sworn testimony in an open court that proves reasonable concern of actual criminal activity and a warrent is only granted for a specific time and place. TIA violates that and until computers can take the place of judges Luddites like me will oppose it.
Too much Free Software? And you thought people were complaining about a lack of applications which makes them stick with Microsoft Windows. Well, they're right. On Linux, there's no decent movie player and no working sound recorder (like the one in Windows 95) shipped as the default by GNOME, but hey, there are more than 385 text editors! Choice is good, but it's frustrating when none of the alternatives works properly.
There are two gross misrepresentations here, one that all text editors are as broken as sound recorders and the other that there's anything that can be done about hardware caused problems.
First, let me say that I'm quite satisfied with the state of free text editors. All the versions of VI, emacs, GNOME, KDE, ash, nano, in fact any text editor I've ever used worked perfectly. I've never had a text editor fail, seize my computer, or in any other way malfunction besides Microsoft Word. Hey, I'm even typing this post in a text editor! How about a call to ispell or aspell, Slashdot? Mozilla? Hmmm, should I stand in line at the big comitte meeting or fix it myself? Ah, ha! Now I see something, do you Marius who favors big "united" efforts and corporate sponsorship? In any case, the text editor like all others work because text is within the control of the programer.
There's nothing the programer can do about the multitude of propriatory sound cards. This is a land mine that Microsoft and hardware vendors laid long ago. Microsoft knew it would be imposible for another software company to "support" all the sound cards in the world but had the power to make them all support Microsoft. Hardware vendors knew that their hardware would only sell if it worked with Windoze and wrote drivers for Microsoft. A percieved side benifit was that they could sell new cards by not writing new drivers. The side benifit has worked to a certian extent in that perfectly useful sound cards get thrown out with "obsolete" PCs. In any case, no reasonable hardware standard exists for sound cards and so no programer at the GNOME level can know what to expect. Oustide of the hardware there's all sorts of fantastic software to analyze and manipulate the sound in ways that comercial software should be very afraid of. The situation will change radically as soon as hardware makers see the futility of supporting Microsoft, and that is already happening.
One thing is for sure, code sharing happens and works. While some readers may not be impressed by the text manipulation, most people are impressed by graphics and there free software shines. Marius noticed the GIMP. How about Eye of GNOME, Electric Eyes, XPaint, Data Explorer, FreeUSP, and the hoards of other graphics and image manipulation programs out there? How about their shared libraries such as Imagemagick?
Bah! Free software rocks because there is no freaking central comitte governing who works on what. People simply solve problems and share the results. It's getting to the point where ordinary users are able to understand and the tipping point is not far away. Hopefully, developers will continue doing as they do and ignore siren songs like Marius has.
The exact method was not forclosed, for fear of embarasment, but it involved a random search of the web and cataloging Captian Hook's own bounty of MP3's, OGGs, Wave files, porn and all forms of information under all types of copyright terms including public domain. "It's not as fast as the Napster Music Sharing Comunity ^H^H^H^H^H? Pirate Network used to be, but it gets there" a computer expert said.
"The Court outlawed Napster and we are going to jail this bastard, Twitter" claimed an RIAA press release.
"To add insult to injury, he just gave the idea away.", fumed Rosen when asked for a comment, "We know where you live, how much you weigh and what food you don't like and we are going to get you for figuring out a way to share. This rand() function is costing us billions!"
The bands you want to sample still don't have websites?
As if a practical search for "new music that I like" existed. Not even the mighty Google can make that one work. I might as well use rand() to find samples of new bands. Nah, I'll just drive to New Orleans that's quicker.
Yes. With an infinite number of universes, there are an infinite number of you typing the code. Most of you will get it right and the computer will average the correct answer for you. So there, an infinite number of monkeys CAN write Shakespere, GUIs or anything else they please.
Microsoft has been working on this for a long time with their robot code from thier IDE. It still looks random and does not work quite right because they have not figured out how to make regular digital logic uncertian. When they figure that out, they will have it.
A gold star for you.
"That's not film melting, that's the screen saver!"
And what's with the java comment, PHP is pretty much nothing like java. It has different uses, different strengths, and different semmantics. When are they going to properly fix PHP like making it stable? (*gasp*)
What a great troll. You admit that you have have not read the article in question, complain about how Slashdot sucks and then complain about the subject. Nice work, you know nothing but you cast dispersions on everything. Comments like this contribute nothing and get in the way of inteligent discusion, so piss off.
Of course a large portion of the "slashdot effect" comes from the trolls who post slashdotted posts. Nasty little bastards with their silly bots hammering away to prevent information exchange. What a waste of time because it's a game that can't be won. There are too many people who want to share for the few disruptive morons.
Yep, this is the second time I'm posting this. Eat me, troll.
No, the easiest explaination is that the photographer wanted a picture that's more dramatic than reality.
May all your TP be eaten by silverfish and cockroaches, wherever you live, work and play.
It's supposed to be for your kids. Mine is too young to notice.
In Mr.Shourie's India, SOFTWARE BUYS YOU.
You see what they did to hotmail? I suppose the only thing better than Dog Food is more Dog Food! Woof woof, adverts, spam and Passport, how's that for a mail service? You can do the same for a search engine too! Wow, double the revenue untill they lose half their users.
The only way for M$ to defeat Google is to make their browser crash or diddle around with Google and that will only prove the M$ software is quirky. Most people do remember Netscape and Word Perfect and they remember them fondly. It's easy to get them to try Mozilla. It's also easy to get them to look at free software too these days. If M$ wants to deprive their users of Google, fine, that's one more nail in their coffin.
Reply: Why does copyright law apply at all? It's not as if MS ever published the source for any of its DOS versions.
Voice of Reason: Copyright law applies because it's what keeps me from publishing unauthorized coppies of DOS and other M$ junk. It's what puts you in jail. In a hundred years or so, DOS will pass into the public domain and you will be able to make coppies of that binary nightmare.
The situation highlights the absurdity of copyright law as it exists. First, the time period of copyright is long enough to make it perpetual. A 100 year copyright insures that most publications will perish before they enter the public domain. Second, the application of copyright laws to non human readable work is absurd. 100 years ago, player piano rolls enjoyed no such protection. Something very odd happened to project such "protection" onto machine instructions. As machine instructions are essentially collections of numerical algorithms and business methods understood only by machines, it's hard to consider them a proper subject of copyright. Licensing is about as far as the power of software companies should go. It should not be criminal to copy software, because it's essentially a breach of a private contract. If coppies of DOS exist 100 years from now, they will be more usless than any obsolete technical publication ever dreamed of being. The whole basis of copyright law is to encourage the arts and extend the public domain. As M$'s current position depends on unauthorized copy, we can see that the public's right to share information is being violated to no useful purpose.
The US Government may make the argument after they finish making copyright perpetual. They can claim the royalties will fund the "protection" of currently published works and public archives, aka libraries.
It won't take that much change of public opinion for that to fly. It's obvious that copyright no longer serves to encourage publishing, the expansion of the public domain, or reward artists. People who put up with fewer than 2% of published works being available destpite nearly costless electronic duplication might deserve such govenment. We are closer to it than you think.
How do you know how many paychecks are recieved? It's hard to make a living as a photographer. The US does have an Office of Missinformation of sorts that was used to create UFO sighting sorries to cover up flights of expereimental aircraft. It's doubtful that the photographer was paid, but it's not beyond the US Government to create false impressions benificial to itself.
Adding extra people to a photo changes the meaning a great deal. It creates the impression of a crowd where none exists. The dummy might have gotten away with it if he had taken images of different people from different photos, and he would have also been truer to what he saw. What he did was rubber stamp the same people!
They mention that this weapon can take all manner of current M16 "accessories" such as a bayonet. That's rich for a gun that's supposed to be able to shoot for 60 days. I wonder what happens if you clog the lens with blood then pump a few 2kW pulses thrugh it.
They will only be breaking the law if they refuse to pay the new NAT fee to the ISP and use the ISP's new complient NAT that tracks the user's every browse and email. Gotchaaa! Carnivore and profit all in one swoop.
The future looks worse every day.
This is the general pattern of the defeat of permanet by nearlynet. In the context of any given system, permanet is the pattern that makes communication ubiquitous. For a plane ride, the airphone is permanet, always available but always expensive, while the cell phone is nearlynet, only intermittently connected but cheap and under the user's control.
For some reason, most people percieve their cell phones as being only intermittently disconnected, like on plan flights.
Because 3G requires licensed spectrum, the artificial scarcity created by treating the airwaves like physical property guarantees limited competition among 3G providers.
Wow, they said it but it completly contradicts their artificial distiction system. The "upfront" costs here are everybit as artificial as that system and they know it. The real lesson to be learned is that greedy shcemes don't make money.
All worms? I think not! The dreaded FORTRAN worm, with it's one time memory alocation, pass by reference only and spritish math library will make mince meat of all the usual holes. Ha!
Your view of God is not mine.
Sometimes, when I'm very surprised by something and I think that it might kill me, I think of God. Why? Becasue times like that remind me of how small I am and because I don't want my last thoughts to be something like, "Oh Shit!". Which thoughs to you want to carry off to your maker?