Who are you to say they can't have a system like this because of *your* political and economic beliefs?
Are you for real? How does criticizing their business model equate to stopping their business?
Or... maybe it's not just their business but your business? It's hard to tell with Anonymous Coward posters.
mmm, subscription based gaming, hmmm, monthly fees. Where have I heard this before? Ummm, Ev... Ever... Everquest! Nah, it'll never work.
So are you saying Sony is making their Everquest players put a sub-standard PC under their television and play there? Is the game only distributed online, and loaded over the network every time you play?
Or, surprise of all surprises, do you play the game (most often installed from store-bought CDROMs) on your existing PC, possibly over a narrowband connection?
Do you see how Everquest isn't at all relevant for the Infinium business plan?
It would seem that you have adopted someting of a Luddite mentality. It is people such as yourself which impede technical progress.
You mean we go around smashing computers because they take away our jobs? Idiot, we are computer professionals, the computers give us jobs!
Please read up on what a Luddite is.
As for DRM,/. criticizes it because we are consumers, and "DRM" takes away consumer rights - so it's more like "Digital Rights Massacre" instead of "Management".
Subscription based software delivery via high-speed data pipes *is* the future.
No, it's one of many business models, and/.ers are pointing out that Infinium have faults in their business model. Are you saying you redefine "Luddite" to be someone who criticizes someone's business model? If you have a PC you can get subscription-based downloads today, without adding an extra semi-PC which is present in their faulty business model.
The Phantom is a cross between a console without the console's advantages, and a set-top box without the set-top-box' advantages.
Anyhoo, people have since gotten their hands on physical Phantom console prototypes... which are useless pieces of plastic because the server infrastructure isn't there.
Infinium are trying to pull off something very difficult from a business perspective
Promising the moon to fish money out of investors' pockets is apparently not as hard as you imply.
For instance. Flat world. That was SCIENCE stance long time ago. And catholic church made that part of the religion instead of taking what bible said. Earth is ROUND.
Utter nonsense. The Catholic Church based their science on Aristotle and other Greeks, and the Greeks knew the Earth was spherical. What you probably think of is the Earth-centric view that the Sun and the stars revolve around Earth. THAT was what the Church sternly defended as dogma.
Flat Earth theories predate science. When science got interested in the problem - and not before - did they discover that is was spherical. Same as with every other scientific discovery.
Instead of seeing that if some FAIL the theory then theory must have flaws.
You have no idea what you're talking about. You're just repeating the attacks on science common in dogmatic creationist circles. The idea that evolution takes million of years is of course alien to people who "know" the Earth in 6000 years old. But some scientists are advocating "instant" evolution as an alternative.
See? New ideas emerge to compete with old theories, like the discovery that heat wasn't an element, or the discovery of oxygen.
All this without being burned for "heresy", too.
There are plenty of symbiotic animals, which happened first, the symbiot found WHICH of the symbiots adapted to other first?
That doesn't make sense. You are basically asking how Daimler and Benz could have invented the car before Ford invented his production line.
Now what started the big bang?
Why do you think the Big Bang theory is the only cosmic theory in science? And nothing needs to "start" the Big Bang.
I believe in God
You have been told to believe in God. And who created God anyway?
Science has plenty of theories and debate them, same as religions. The difference is that scientific theories proven false are thrown out, while religious dogma remains. "Virgin birth" my ass.
It has happened before: FAST (Fast Search And Transfer) had some Java technology for compressing and streaming video. For some reason they stopped the development; however, the demo I managed to see a couple of years ago was good, though small-scale.
Then again, SuSE == Novell these days, and that name has a good rep in the corporate world, from back when Microsoft didn't care that PCs could be networked, and left all of that to third parties like Banyan, Sun, various universities and especially Novell.
The third-party market practically died with Windows 95, but still.
There are more to choose from, including TWO parties dedicated to the reinstatement of Prohibition, and four socialist ones. The Christian Phanalgist party is luckily out of the race, though.
Java, by an order of magnitude, has the worst first impression of them all. Try writing "Hello world!" in a Swing window as your #1 tutorial. The start-up time, memory use and whatnot makes it seem like a dog.
How do you write a graphical "Hello world" in, say, C++? I mean without using a GUI builder. And, that's right, C++ doesn't have a standard GUI library, so you need to pick one first.
Sorry, but that's untrue; there has been at least one feature added to Java that Sun was against. All Sun has is a permanent seat on the JCP Executive Comittee, and the same veto any other member (like IBM) has.
vendor-independent standards... that are vague because of the politicking in the comittees. "Left to the implementation", anyone? "Left for further study"? That's not a spec, that's a suggestion. And I won't even mention SQL, which is almost actively ignored as a standard.
it's not open source
Nor are AT&T's C or C++ implementations. Does that mean they cannot include GCC? The major difference is that C++ isn't trademarked, so you can call anything C++ and get away with it. My, how "standard".
Why must Sun's implementation be open-sourced? Isn't that just the OSS community saying "woe is us, we can't write a good implementation of the FREELY AVAILABLE SPECIFICATIONS, plz help us"?
a little more painful on clients for client applications
No, it's just as easy to make installers for Java apps as for "native" apps; Vise, InstallShield and InstallAnywhere all have flavours for making Java installers if you don't want to use Java WebStart.
ava has no function pointers. If you want to include callbacks in your data structures, you need to do hideous things with interfaces and virtual functions.
No, you use the Command or Strategy patterns to solve the problem the function pointer "hack" is used for in C/C++.
Java doesn't have function pointers because it's not C. I am sorry if anything non-C frightens you, but it's time to move on. If language A doesn't have feature B of language C, it means you need to learn something new instead of just apply the knowledge of C to everything.
C is just assembly that has put on finer clothes, trying to look like a higher-level programming language.
Look, for example, at Eclipse IDE. Eclipse is a Java app, and its extremely powerful and not very slow. Why? They use their own widgets that have less overhead, they are not using Swing widgets.
And then you use Borland's JBuilder, which is a Swing app, and see it's not slow either. It's not the library that's the problem, it's how you use it.
some programmers use it to store session-specific data
Then they are only pretending to be Java programmers. Session state is kept in the session object - what the hack do they think it's for? Servlets shall be stateless, possibly unless declared single-threaded, but noone is that stupid.
If they're going to launch a subscrription games service and they're going to be just making even on the console itself, why not just have a subscription service for regular PCs?
Already exists, if you are willing to sort between the drek to find the few titles that are actually fun, and willing to use Internet Explorer.
I think you have that confused with another case, where Borland sued Microsoft for patent infringements. In addition to the settlement sum, they did buy non-voting stock, but AFAIK that was in addition to the compensation.
Anytime the company wants to prevent you from working for someone else, they must continue to pay you the average of your last three full month's salary for as long as they want you prohibited from working.
AIUI, that's the only kind of "non-compete" that is legal here in Norway. "We will pay you for a year, but you're not allowed to come to work or speak to company people in that time".
The idea being, after a year, whatever inside information you had is either public or worthless.
You are thinking only of external threats; but "attacks" might just as well come from inside a company, for instance. If D. Isgruntled is fired and is able to log in as a user of some privilege, he can cause quite some damage.
Slashdot Mirror
Who are you to say they can't have a system
like this because of *your* political and economic beliefs?
Are you for real? How does criticizing their business model equate to stopping their business?
Or... maybe it's not just their business but your business? It's hard to tell with Anonymous Coward posters.
mmm, subscription based gaming, hmmm, monthly
fees. Where have I heard this before? Ummm, Ev...
Ever... Everquest! Nah, it'll never work.
So are you saying Sony is making their Everquest players put a sub-standard PC under their television and play there? Is the game only distributed online, and loaded over the network every time you play?
Or, surprise of all surprises, do you play the game (most often installed from store-bought CDROMs) on your existing PC, possibly over a narrowband connection?
Do you see how Everquest isn't at all relevant for the Infinium business plan?
It would seem that you
/. criticizes it because we are consumers, and "DRM" takes away consumer rights - so it's more like "Digital Rights Massacre" instead of "Management".
/.ers are pointing out that Infinium have faults in their business model. Are you saying you redefine "Luddite" to be someone who criticizes someone's business model? If you have a PC you can get subscription-based downloads today, without adding an extra semi-PC which is present in their faulty business model.
have adopted someting of a Luddite mentality. It
is people such as yourself which impede technical
progress.
You mean we go around smashing computers because they take away our jobs? Idiot, we are computer professionals, the computers give us jobs!
Please read up on what a Luddite is.
As for DRM,
Subscription based software delivery
via high-speed data pipes *is* the future.
No, it's one of many business models, and
The Phantom is a cross between a console without the console's advantages, and a set-top box without the set-top-box' advantages.
Anyhoo, people have since gotten their hands on physical Phantom console prototypes ... which are useless pieces of plastic because the server infrastructure isn't there.
Infinium are trying to pull off something very difficult from a business perspective
Promising the moon to fish money out of investors' pockets is apparently not as hard as you imply.
Soldier rapes woman, woman gives birth. Do the math.
For instance. Flat world. That was SCIENCE stance long time ago. And catholic church made that part of the religion instead of taking what bible said. Earth is ROUND.
Utter nonsense. The Catholic Church based their science on Aristotle and other Greeks, and the Greeks knew the Earth was spherical. What you probably think of is the Earth-centric view that the Sun and the stars revolve around Earth. THAT was what the Church sternly defended as dogma.
Flat Earth theories predate science. When science got interested in the problem - and not before - did they discover that is was spherical. Same as with every other scientific discovery.
Instead of seeing that if some FAIL the theory then theory must have flaws.
You have no idea what you're talking about. You're just repeating the attacks on science common in dogmatic creationist circles. The idea that evolution takes million of years is of course alien to people who "know" the Earth in 6000 years old. But some scientists are advocating "instant" evolution as an alternative.
See? New ideas emerge to compete with old theories, like the discovery that heat wasn't an element, or the discovery of oxygen.
All this without being burned for "heresy", too.
There are plenty of symbiotic animals, which happened first, the symbiot found WHICH of the symbiots adapted to other first?
That doesn't make sense. You are basically asking how Daimler and Benz could have invented the car before Ford invented his production line.
Now what started the big bang?
Why do you think the Big Bang theory is the only cosmic theory in science? And nothing needs to "start" the Big Bang.
I believe in God
You have been told to believe in God. And who created God anyway?
Science has plenty of theories and debate them, same as religions. The difference is that scientific theories proven false are thrown out, while religious dogma remains. "Virgin birth" my ass.
What VM version? The Java console should say; I recommend either the latest 1.4.2 release, or the 1.5.0 beta (RC2).
It has happened before: FAST (Fast Search And Transfer) had some Java technology for compressing and streaming video. For some reason they stopped the development; however, the demo I managed to see a couple of years ago was good, though small-scale.
Mind you, the Star Trek movies' Genesis project really didn't fail until Star Trek III: The Search For Plot. Spock, I mean.
There's also Activision Anthology (with their Atari VCS games) and Midway Arcade Treasures (Joust, Defender, Gauntlet et al), both for the PS2.
*shrug* So you cannot boot Windows from an USB device. There are other, nicer OSes out there, you know.
Then again, SuSE == Novell these days, and that name has a good rep in the corporate world, from back when Microsoft didn't care that PCs could be networked, and left all of that to third parties like Banyan, Sun, various universities and especially Novell.
The third-party market practically died with Windows 95, but still.
There are more to choose from, including TWO parties dedicated to the reinstatement of Prohibition, and four socialist ones. The Christian Phanalgist party is luckily out of the race, though.
Java, by an order of magnitude, has the worst first impression of them all. Try writing "Hello world!" in a Swing window as your #1 tutorial. The start-up time, memory use and whatnot makes it seem like a dog.
How do you write a graphical "Hello world" in, say, C++? I mean without using a GUI builder. And, that's right, C++ doesn't have a standard GUI library, so you need to pick one first.
if Sun doesn't like it, it's dead.
... that are vague because of the politicking in the comittees. "Left to the implementation", anyone? "Left for further study"? That's not a spec, that's a suggestion. And I won't even mention SQL, which is almost actively ignored as a standard.
Sorry, but that's untrue; there has been at least one feature added to Java that Sun was against. All Sun has is a permanent seat on the JCP Executive Comittee, and the same veto any other member (like IBM) has.
vendor-independent standards
it's not open source
Nor are AT&T's C or C++ implementations. Does that mean they cannot include GCC? The major difference is that C++ isn't trademarked, so you can call anything C++ and get away with it. My, how "standard".
Why must Sun's implementation be open-sourced? Isn't that just the OSS community saying "woe is us, we can't write a good implementation of the FREELY AVAILABLE SPECIFICATIONS, plz help us"?
a little more painful on clients for client applications
No, it's just as easy to make installers for Java apps as for "native" apps; Vise, InstallShield and InstallAnywhere all have flavours for making Java installers if you don't want to use Java WebStart.
ava has no function pointers. If you want to include callbacks in your data structures, you need to do hideous things with interfaces and virtual functions.
No, you use the Command or Strategy patterns to solve the problem the function pointer "hack" is used for in C/C++.
Java doesn't have function pointers because it's not C. I am sorry if anything non-C frightens you, but it's time to move on. If language A doesn't have feature B of language C, it means you need to learn something new instead of just apply the knowledge of C to everything.
C is just assembly that has put on finer clothes, trying to look like a higher-level programming language.
Look, for example, at Eclipse IDE. Eclipse is a Java app, and its extremely powerful and not very slow. Why? They use their own widgets that have less overhead, they are not using Swing widgets.
And then you use Borland's JBuilder, which is a Swing app, and see it's not slow either. It's not the library that's the problem, it's how you use it.
some programmers use it to store session-specific data
Then they are only pretending to be Java programmers. Session state is kept in the session object - what the hack do they think it's for? Servlets shall be stateless, possibly unless declared single-threaded, but noone is that stupid.
If they're going to launch a subscrription games service and they're going to be just making even on the console itself, why not just have a subscription service for regular PCs?
Already exists, if you are willing to sort between the drek to find the few titles that are actually fun, and willing to use Internet Explorer.
A better use of "fuck".
MS would sue Slashdot if they did for copyright/trademark infringement!
How is that any different from using the Debian, Compaq, Corel etc. logos that are on that page?
ID papers are so last century. What you need is to operate positionable biometric chips into people's hands.
Yes, I did watch Demolition Man yesterday, why do you ask? Greetings and salutations, citizen, and a happy day to you.
I think you have that confused with another case, where Borland sued Microsoft for patent infringements. In addition to the settlement sum, they did buy non-voting stock, but AFAIK that was in addition to the compensation.
Anytime the company wants to prevent you from working for someone else, they must continue to pay you the average of your last three full month's salary for as long as they want you prohibited from working.
AIUI, that's the only kind of "non-compete" that is legal here in Norway. "We will pay you for a year, but you're not allowed to come to work or speak to company people in that time".
The idea being, after a year, whatever inside information you had is either public or worthless.
You are thinking only of external threats; but "attacks" might just as well come from inside a company, for instance. If D. Isgruntled is fired and is able to log in as a user of some privilege, he can cause quite some damage.
Are they any more abusive of thier employees and customers than any other?
Probably not - if you compare with cocaine drug barons and Mexican border slave-farms.
Be entlightened, ignorant one!