Only way I can think of is to have a high speed internet (so that firing lots of data around doesn't destroy gameplay), massivley powerful central servers (well, lets say a cluster of interlinked servers each communicating and validating each other) and simple game clients. Here the idea would be that each of the users actions could be interogated by the servers to ensure consistency with the game world. The final step is to ensure that there is no data communicated outside the server ring except the actions of the client to the server (so if you can packet sniff the net as a whole or the subnet of an opponent your in....unless a strong encryption method is used). The server provides all data out on a need to know now basis so you can't know anything other than what the self validating server ring dicatates you must know. Or hey, option 2 is even easier, let all players simply run an X server that displays the game running on the central server. How big a cluster would that need to run 10000 player quake? (hey if all the graphics work is at the client end, how much worse would q]|[ be?). I ain't no expert, but surely the problem is an easy one to overcome.....build faster machines and a faster net. If I miss the point completely I look forward to reading the explanation.
It's simple, linux is a viable platform for most things, but NOT audio....yet I have a friend who amongst other things even sells linux boxes but he doesn't run it himself as he is a audio artist primarily, until he has a solid sequencer and soundforge type app he can't consider it (unless vmware). We need to plug this hole in our software soon otherwise the support Be is receiving as an audio platform (from Steinberg et al) will mean linux will never be acceptable as an audio platform. Not everyone needs high power audio capabilities, but if every home can use there PC with a simple midi controller as a piano type tool (with free software) thats yet another reason why joe bloggs will go there.
You are so, so, so lucky. A very good friend of mine also works constantly (well maybe only 18 hours a day) on graphical computer work (predominently 3d) and virtually always under NT. His Windows experiences of the last 3-4 years would scare the hell out of you. His brother is an incredible MSCE type, and without him he would have lost his entire system on no less than four occassions. He has got to the stage of trying to keep his system setup under 98 and NT simulatnaeously because he knows his NT could collapse again any moment (from having all his partition tables destroyed to simple unbootability), the constant reboots are but a trivial annoyance. I couldn't care less what Operating System you run, but I do care what operating system my best friend is running when he is broken, exhausted, frustrated and running the risk of bankruptcy while having to travel hundreds of miles back to the one person alive who might be able to save his life. You have been lucky if you have managed to keep working on the cutting edge on Windows without major disasters, many haven't. I just want to see the choice, so friends like mine can say NO, enough is enough and start to use Maya on Linux (or Lightwave on Be or Softimage on Amiga), instead of using Windows and hanging on by the skin of their teeth.
Did you not mean that Microsoft is not going to incorporate "freeely available" bugs when they have 65,000 of the best programming bugs on Earth in their code already?
I wonder if Microsoft will try/be able to forbid people running software on this? If it is as it sounds, I can forsee the battle commencing one of two ways:
A GPL library is released to develop cross-platform games including this console (perhaps/probably booting its own OS so you don't even have to install).
John Carmack (for example) decides that Quake IV will be twice as fast if he writes past whatever software M$ place on this, and writes a GL implementation that again boots its own system.
Apart from the obsolescnce of this console by release (and lets face it buy 2001 Sega will be talking about Dreamcast 2), the only way I can forsee M$ convincing people to develop for this is if they can run the same games on a PC, and if you can do that who is going to buy a deliberatly cut-down slow PC......definetly not the gamers of the planet. I guess this is really a way to try and get the technophobes to use a computer by putting it in a flashy box and letting them look at a TV instead of a monitor.
The last line of their full press release. Micro$oft.... any time, any place and on any device. OK, what about my Alpha, your mac, his N64, their Sparc and............
They make money twice. Once for the license on the player, then once again on the DVD media itself. No, they make money at least twice. Once on the DVD itself, once for each piece of hardware to use the DVD and finally once for each piece of software used to view the DVD. The question is will we have to pay for any "flash" hardware upgrades as each revision requires a new payment to the assholes (sorry, but giving them any name other than the Major Pricks After Anti-Trust just doesn't seem right)? And will each version of your DVD viewing software require a new license/payment? Is there any reason why a DVD cannot be produced WITHOUT using CSS? And if not, how long before Independant film makers, regional film makers (i.e. Bollywood) and many others choose NOT to use CSS as they would LOVE to be able to send one version of the media to anywhere on the planet? CSS only protects the rights of the Masturbating Practioners Association of America to try to milk money, lets see if America really the power to make the rest of the world follow if its legal system is stupid enough to allow it.
I hate the thought of unreasonable protectionism denying the common good, however it is the lack of understanding shown by people like yourself which forces the protectionistic attitude.
Trading audio from live shows is illegal (at least in my part of the world), however as analog foramts showed a depreciation in quality over generations the live acts did not mind the distribution, if someone wanted to hear them properly they had to pay them to enter a concert or buy an album. You are robbing the people whose music you wish to listen to of income by providing these files to anyone who wants them.
Secondly, If you wish to see more music available where you actually are allowed to receive it without payment, you will have to provide an incentive to the artist/distributor. If they cannot "force" you to download them from an official band-site or..... they have lost another source of income, advertising. What revenue could say Madonna receive by starting www.madonna.com to aquire her music, how many hits would she get and hence how much could she sell a banner for.
Decentralization is good, piracy is bad and copyright is essential. A shared worldwide music pool online containing anything any user cares to place into it will spell the end of the abandonment of record companies. If artists see their work being easily wholesale pirated by the planet they will return to the fold of the conglomerate commercial music empires for an insurance on income rather than cutting the middle-men and recieving more money buy selling more copies of the same products for less directly. If we all lobby for appropriatly priced direct music from the artists we love, and show that not only are we willing to do without a distribution media, but that we are happy to show our appreciation for their work in creating the music we want to listen to by giving them money, we will have cheaper music from better paid artist (who as I said will also be able to exploit the high level of connections their site should be receiving to subsidize the income they have to acquire from us).
If you persist in these legitimate uses, you will find that the battle will never end and the rich will be lawyers and suits...
You Dork! I just want my hardware to work, and work at 100%. How? Suppose kernel 2.4 appears tomorrow, how long before any updates required to the GF drivers are made? For each and every subsequent kernel update, would Nvidia bother fixing or optimising their driver? Will you be forced into choosing between the kernel you want or maximum graphics performance. If some of your other hardware requires an update for maximum performance.......... What about riva tnt support now? Will it be updated as the newest product is, or resigned to the scrapheap. Even if they open the source of a product when they consider it obsolete, a large amount of time would be required for the open source community to understand how the closed source developrs had worked, and how many hackers will be willing to plunge into a corporations source code for an "old" product? You can be sure that it will not be near as many as will attack the driver of the latest and greatest hardware. You say you are happy with Nvidia's route, and wish to use your hardware 100%, but what about dvd acceleration, video output and inputs. When are Nvidia going to address these issues? Never! Someday a new piece of hardware will appear which they will develop a driver for to provide these functions, but you'll have to upgrade. I hope you are a rich man, as you allegiance to a hardware manufacturer who is treating the open source movement with such disdain will see you spending vast amounts of money while you are frustrated by the choices closed from you by their lack of source distribution. In the meantime, those who can see beyond the surface and present case know that they will be best served by purchasing hardware which does not require propriety code. They will gain longterm stability, flexability and performance.
Some bad news for you, I had a Event Gina (Layla's little brother) and recently disposed of it as I would never have received any real use from it under linux (even if I could have hacked in a post win booting wave only setup). Event say they won't support linux and OSS et al also say they won't. End result lose the Layla to someone who is happy in doze land and hunt for the best linux audio card for you. It's a pity, the Event cards are SEXY, but Event are wasters.
For the entire passage of this millenium I have hunted all possible stores in two of Irelands largest cities (Dublin and Belfast) without finding a single copy of QIIIA for linux. I asked, I asked if they could order it, but I still cannot get it. I tried Game, Electronic Boutique, HMV, Virgin, Dixons, Easons and any other shop I saw with any games.
I do not want to buy this off the web, I want a person to hand it over to me and register that a human being does want to choose.
In the process of the hunt, I did find a lonely copy of Quake the Gathering and though what a perfect acquisition to go with Sant Carmachs GPL'd Quake, so I bought it and asked again about QIII.
If anyone can tell me where I can acquire Quake III in Ireland, please do.
>I have yet to see a new system for under 1000 bucks that comes without a winmodem There is a distributor in Ireland called Computer City who will sell a AMD K6 based machine with audio, modem etc. for IR£370 + VAT (about $560)
RedHat cannot take this on. However, I would suggest that GNU could, if this isn't an issue of software freedom I don't know what is!
GNU also does not have the financial risks of Redhat or any other true commercial organisation, and I would suggest that if required monetary support would be far easier for them to organise than any other body. It would certainly be an interesting test of both the principles of software freedom and the support of the FSF by the commercial linux interests.
"and the addition of limiting licensed software will only enchance the end user experience." OK, lets make sure all linux distros are not redistributable and contain swathes of closed software. The only way the FSF will win is to join its enemy!
Slashdot Mirror
Only way I can think of is to have a high speed internet (so that firing lots of data around doesn't destroy gameplay), massivley powerful central servers (well, lets say a cluster of interlinked servers each communicating and validating each other) and simple game clients. Here the idea would be that each of the users actions could be interogated by the servers to ensure consistency with the game world. The final step is to ensure that there is no data communicated outside the server ring except the actions of the client to the server (so if you can packet sniff the net as a whole or the subnet of an opponent your in....unless a strong encryption method is used). The server provides all data out on a need to know now basis so you can't know anything other than what the self validating server ring dicatates you must know.
Or hey, option 2 is even easier, let all players simply run an X server that displays the game running on the central server. How big a cluster would that need to run 10000 player quake? (hey if all the graphics work is at the client end, how much worse would q]|[ be?).
I ain't no expert, but surely the problem is an easy one to overcome.....build faster machines and a faster net. If I miss the point completely I look forward to reading the explanation.
It's simple, linux is a viable platform for most things, but NOT audio....yet
I have a friend who amongst other things even sells linux boxes but he doesn't run it himself as he is a audio artist primarily, until he has a solid sequencer and soundforge type app he can't consider it (unless vmware).
We need to plug this hole in our software soon otherwise the support Be is receiving as an audio platform (from Steinberg et al) will mean linux will never be acceptable as an audio platform. Not everyone needs high power audio capabilities, but if every home can use there PC with a simple midi controller as a piano type tool (with free software) thats yet another reason why joe bloggs will go there.
You are so, so, so lucky.
A very good friend of mine also works constantly (well maybe only 18 hours a day) on graphical computer work (predominently 3d) and virtually always under NT. His Windows experiences of the last 3-4 years would scare the hell out of you. His brother is an incredible MSCE type, and without him he would have lost his entire system on no less than four occassions. He has got to the stage of trying to keep his system setup under 98 and NT simulatnaeously because he knows his NT could collapse again any moment (from having all his partition tables destroyed to simple unbootability), the constant reboots are but a trivial annoyance.
I couldn't care less what Operating System you run, but I do care what operating system my best friend is running when he is broken, exhausted, frustrated and running the risk of bankruptcy while having to travel hundreds of miles back to the one person alive who might be able to save his life. You have been lucky if you have managed to keep working on the cutting edge on Windows without major disasters, many haven't. I just want to see the choice, so friends like mine can say NO, enough is enough and start to use Maya on Linux (or Lightwave on Be or Softimage on Amiga), instead of using Windows and hanging on by the skin of their teeth.
Did you not mean that Microsoft is not going to incorporate "freeely available" bugs when they have 65,000 of the best programming bugs on Earth in their code already?
If it is as it sounds, I can forsee the battle commencing one of two ways:
- A GPL library is released to develop cross-platform games including this console (perhaps/probably booting its own OS so you don't even have to install).
- John Carmack (for example) decides that Quake IV will be twice as fast if he writes past whatever software M$ place on this, and writes a GL implementation that again boots its own system.
Apart from the obsolescnce of this console by release (and lets face it buy 2001 Sega will be talking about Dreamcast 2), the only way I can forsee M$ convincing people to develop for this is if they can run the same games on a PC, and if you can do that who is going to buy a deliberatly cut-down slow PC......definetly not the gamers of the planet. I guess this is really a way to try and get the technophobes to use a computer by putting it in a flashy box and letting them look at a TV instead of a monitor.The last line of their full press release. .... any time, any place and on any device. OK, what about my Alpha, your mac, his N64, their Sparc and ............
Micro$oft
They make money twice. Once for the license on the player, then once again on the DVD media itself.
No, they make money at least twice. Once on the DVD itself, once for each piece of hardware to use the DVD and finally once for each piece of software used to view the DVD. The question is will we have to pay for any "flash" hardware upgrades as each revision requires a new payment to the assholes (sorry, but giving them any name other than the Major Pricks After Anti-Trust just doesn't seem right)? And will each version of your DVD viewing software require a new license/payment?
Is there any reason why a DVD cannot be produced WITHOUT using CSS? And if not, how long before Independant film makers, regional film makers (i.e. Bollywood) and many others choose NOT to use CSS as they would LOVE to be able to send one version of the media to anywhere on the planet? CSS only protects the rights of the Masturbating Practioners Association of America to try to milk money, lets see if America really the power to make the rest of the world follow if its legal system is stupid enough to allow it.
I hate the thought of unreasonable protectionism denying the common good, however it is the lack of understanding shown by people like yourself which forces the protectionistic attitude.
Trading audio from live shows is illegal (at least in my part of the world), however as analog foramts showed a depreciation in quality over generations the live acts did not mind the distribution, if someone wanted to hear them properly they had to pay them to enter a concert or buy an album. You are robbing the people whose music you wish to listen to of income by providing these files to anyone who wants them.
Secondly, If you wish to see more music available where you actually are allowed to receive it without payment, you will have to provide an incentive to the artist/distributor. If they cannot "force" you to download them from an official band-site or ..... they have lost another source of income, advertising. What revenue could say Madonna receive by starting www.madonna.com to aquire her music, how many hits would she get and hence how much could she sell a banner for.
Decentralization is good, piracy is bad and copyright is essential. A shared worldwide music pool online containing anything any user cares to place into it will spell the end of the abandonment of record companies. If artists see their work being easily wholesale pirated by the planet they will return to the fold of the conglomerate commercial music empires for an insurance on income rather than cutting the middle-men and recieving more money buy selling more copies of the same products for less directly. If we all lobby for appropriatly priced direct music from the artists we love, and show that not only are we willing to do without a distribution media, but that we are happy to show our appreciation for their work in creating the music we want to listen to by giving them money, we will have cheaper music from better paid artist (who as I said will also be able to exploit the high level of connections their site should be receiving to subsidize the income they have to acquire from us).
If you persist in these legitimate uses, you will find that the battle will never end and the rich will be lawyers and suits...
You Dork!
I just want my hardware to work, and work at 100%.
How? Suppose kernel 2.4 appears tomorrow, how long before any updates required to the GF drivers are made? For each and every subsequent kernel update, would Nvidia bother fixing or optimising their driver? Will you be forced into choosing between the kernel you want or maximum graphics performance. If some of your other hardware requires an update for maximum performance.......... What about riva tnt support now? Will it be updated as the newest product is, or resigned to the scrapheap. Even if they open the source of a product when they consider it obsolete, a large amount of time would be required for the open source community to understand how the closed source developrs had worked, and how many hackers will be willing to plunge into a corporations source code for an "old" product? You can be sure that it will not be near as many as will attack the driver of the latest and greatest hardware.
You say you are happy with Nvidia's route, and wish to use your hardware 100%, but what about dvd acceleration, video output and inputs. When are Nvidia going to address these issues? Never! Someday a new piece of hardware will appear which they will develop a driver for to provide these functions, but you'll have to upgrade.
I hope you are a rich man, as you allegiance to a hardware manufacturer who is treating the open source movement with such disdain will see you spending vast amounts of money while you are frustrated by the choices closed from you by their lack of source distribution. In the meantime, those who can see beyond the surface and present case know that they will be best served by purchasing hardware which does not require propriety code. They will gain longterm stability, flexability and performance.
Some bad news for you, I had a Event Gina (Layla's little brother) and recently disposed of it as I would never have received any real use from it under linux (even if I could have hacked in a post win booting wave only setup). Event say they won't support linux and OSS et al also say they won't. End result lose the Layla to someone who is happy in doze land and hunt for the best linux audio card for you.
It's a pity, the Event cards are SEXY, but Event are wasters.
For the entire passage of this millenium I have hunted all possible stores in two of Irelands largest cities (Dublin and Belfast) without finding a single copy of QIIIA for linux. I asked, I asked if they could order it, but I still cannot get it. I tried Game, Electronic Boutique, HMV, Virgin, Dixons, Easons and any other shop I saw with any games.
I do not want to buy this off the web, I want a person to hand it over to me and register that a human being does want to choose.
In the process of the hunt, I did find a lonely copy of Quake the Gathering and though what a perfect acquisition to go with Sant Carmachs GPL'd Quake, so I bought it and asked again about QIII.
If anyone can tell me where I can acquire Quake III in Ireland, please do.
>I have yet to see a new system for under 1000 bucks that comes without a winmodem
There is a distributor in Ireland called Computer City who will sell a AMD K6 based machine with audio, modem etc. for IR£370 + VAT (about $560)
RedHat cannot take this on. However, I would suggest that GNU could, if this isn't an issue of software freedom I don't know what is!
GNU also does not have the financial risks of Redhat or any other true commercial organisation, and I would suggest that if required monetary support would be far easier for them to organise than any other body. It would certainly be an interesting test of both the principles of software freedom and the support of the FSF by the commercial linux interests.
Use the Source Luke
"and the addition of limiting licensed software will only enchance the end user experience." OK, lets make sure all linux distros are not redistributable and contain swathes of closed software. The only way the FSF will win is to join its enemy!