Bleh. Wish I had had more time to read the article more closely before posting... Apparently it does in fact download everything in the background and then notifies you when it is ready to watch. This sounds really cool. Hopefully it can actually get a substantial userbase and gain some momentum. I still don't think it will put a dent in the TV network's userbase but hey, one can always hope:-)
Heh. I knew that post would got moderated into oblivion but it was definitely a serious comment. I'm not just some anti-java nut. There are applications I would love to use on a regular basis but because they are written in Java it's just too painful. This is a reality regardless of whether people who like Java want to admit it or not.
It's good to have goals that aim a bit high but realistically nothing like this is going to kill TV. There's just too much money in it for it to go away anytime soon.
This does sound like a really cool thing though. One thing I'm wondering about is whether this will actually work or not. I'm sure they must have done a fair bit of testing to have gotten this far with it but I have to wonder if something like BitTorrent would actually work for streaming video at consistently acceptable speeds. Don't get me wrong, BitTorrent is awesome and very often gives me great speeds but it just as often goes incredibly slow. As in 1-2KB/s slow.
There is only one platform that can stand toe-to-toe with Windows, and that's the combination of OS X and Java.
Please... Please... For the love of God... Not Java.
Is there anything more bloated and slow? This p4 loads firefox in about 2 seconds yet most Java apps still bring it to its knees without even doing anything special! It's truly incredible.
I normally don't agree with ICANN's position on many things but it seems to me that they could be taking the right stance on this. I'm not sure I would prefer tighter restrictions on domain names and TLDs but wouldn't it be nice if everyone stuck to a consistent naming convention? Imagine something a lot like what we have with newsgroups.
Who said anything about patenting only mundane stuff? Patents are defensive by nature. That's why they exist. They allow potential inventors some security when investing time and money to create something. How anxious would you be to invent something if you knew that all your hard work was just going to be stolen by someone else?
My point was simply that they aren't patenting everything they can in order to go on the offensive and actively take down other companies just because they can. For the most part, companies like this gather patents in order to protect their work.
Don't forget what IBM is. They're still a business and businesses exist to do one thing: Make money. Just because they've become a knight in shining armor for the open source community doesn't mean that they aren't still acting for their own benefit. It just so happens that they saw a way to both benefit and help the community. There was a time when IBM was not such a friendly entity in the community and there's no guarantee things won't change again. In fact, it's just the opposite. Change is inevitable so don't put too much faith in IBM always acting benevolently.
Companies like MSFT and IBM patent every itty-bitty thing they do in the hopes of using it to crush competition.
You're certainly correct that large companies like Microsoft and IBM patent anything and everything they can but the reason for this is usually less malicious than you think. Most of the time these companies try to attain so many patents as a defense mechanism. The hope is that by holding enough patents they will be able to deter other companies from using their patents against them out of fear of retaliation. It's a situation very much like what we saw during the Cold War with nuclear weapons, though obviously much less serious.
You're mostly right but there's a bit more to the process than that. Not every idea out there should be patented at all so it is important that someone look at the supposed invention itself and determine what kind of merit it has. Of course, a search for prior art _first_ could certainly kill a lot of frivolous patents before they wasted any extra time.
Largest patent owner in the world thinks there should be reform...
This is EXACTLY what we need to happen. These are the types of companies that actually have the ability to change things. The fact that they happen to hold a lot of patents themselves and still want reform just adds more weight to the argument that the current system is fscked.
"There are others who believe that no software patents are valid," he added. We certainly don't believe in that, because we have many thousands of software patents and customers trust us to be the true owners of those, so we believe it is somewhere in the middle that is appropriate for laws to govern behaviour around patents."
It's nice to see a large company choosing the middle path. Patents aren't entirely a bad thing (although I would rather do away with them altogether than keep the current system) and as with most arguments there are certainly two or more legitimate sides to this. One thing is for sure, we definitely need better review of patents and it certainly seems to me that they are right about the community being willing to help find prior art.
How many people do you know still play DOS games? After 10 years support for the API's and the old hardware disappears. Realisticly most people dont want to put up with the issues of playing older games, so if steam disapears most people wont care.
Key words: most people
What about those of us that do still play these older games? At least we have the option of doing a bit of work and still playing these games. With systems like Steam we don't even have the choice.
I did notice that the site mentioned the problem only being on 64 bit systems (although this was after I posted my previous comment) but I seem to recall eveb using it on a 64 bit system. Has anyone else had any experience with this?
That's interesting that they list Photoshop CS 8.0 among the programs that don't work with SP2. I happen to have used this version of Photoshop on several machines running SP2 without any problems whatsoever.
I also defocus my eyes from time to time in order to give them a rest so perhaps there is something to what you say. I know that a lot of it has to do with genetics (although my dad had glasses by 4th grade) but I also believe that your eyes, like every other muscle in your body, require both excercise and then rest in order to be strong and perform at their best. If you don't use those muscles your body naturally stops producing and maintaining them as you are telling it that you don't need them. BTW, the same is true for your brain, so stop reading slashdot and go pick up a book!;-)
I'm probably an exception and just generally have strong eyes but I've spent the better part of my life behind CRTs and still have perfect vision. I'm very sure that sitting in front of a computer screen (of any kind) isn't good for your eyes but I still haven't developed any problems from it. I do seem to be getting carpal tunnel though:-\
Does anyone know if this new version addresses all the annoying problems in the previous versions? Things like the terrible inaccuracy of the shooting, jittery movement of both vehicles and players, and weird glitches like random vehicles being found stuck half-way in the ground. I've been waiting for multiplayer GTA for quite a while now but last time I tried multitheftauto it still had a long way to go.
Pretty soon good old fasioned postal service will be the only way to truly privately communicate.
This is precisely why tools such as PGP are so important. Without them how could you possibly have any notion that your communications are actually private?
They do actually say in the product details that the modem is only partially supported. This seems like an awfully strange choice of hardware given the circumstances. I know modems are nearly uesless these days with all the wifi networks everywhere but not only did they not include a wireless nic but I have to wonder what kind of company would sell a $4000 laptop with hardware that isn't fully supported by the pre-installed operating system. Pretty stupid if you ask me.
I myself certainly believe that some systems are more secure than others by design as well as by the default settings they choose. However, let's not forget that the human factor is almost always the weakest link with regards to security. In cases where a particular system is especially geared towards those users that are not technologically savvy you are always going to have a lot problems with security. There really is no way to avoid this aside from a massive campaign to educate users. Unfortunately it is my belief that the vast majority of people are rather lazy-brained and most just don't care about computers or security. Alas, I think this is something we're always going to be stuck with.
Did it worry you when the previous administration said exactly the same things?
Yes, actually it did. However, for some reason the Bush administration worries me even more... Gee... I wonder why that is. Take a look at everything Bush has done since he has been in office. I don't know about you but it seems to me that the stakes have been raised just a bit since Clinton's time.
It always worries me when I see the current administration saying things like this...
highly vulnerable to terrorist and criminal attacks."
fundamentally new approaches are needed to address the more serious structural weaknesses of the IT infrastructure
It isn't that they aren't right... It's just that whenever they go on and on about terrorists threatening our way of life it seems all they really want is to implement new ways of taking away our rights without actually protecting us at all.
The main focus of our efforts and the most important benefits that customers will see is improved usability and significantly improved interoperability with Microsoft Office formats. This addresses the day-to-day needs of many more end users and makes OpenOffice.org/StarOffice a real alternative.
I really hope they mean this. Dealing with MS Office formats has got to be insanely difficult and as of yet no one has really been able to do it well (not even Microsoft!). Life would be so much better if there was another office suite that could handle all the MS formats without choking on everything but the simplest of documents. I've got great hopes for OO.org 2.0 but you'll have to excuse me if I'm still a bit skeptical.
My ignorant boss is still going to want me to support all the way back to Netscape 4.
Ya know... such a decision may not be entirely based in ignorance although I don't doubt that your boss is in fact ignorant (most are). There will always be people using old systems and software and those of us that want our stuff to be available to a wide audience will always be stuck supporting it. Hell, even Microsoft has a huge problem with this. A lot of the broken stuff in their products remains broken not because they don't know about it or don't want to fix it. It remains broken because people come to depend on this behavior because they've already encountered it and have had to work around it. This is just the nature of software development I'm afraid.
Slashdot Mirror
Bleh. Wish I had had more time to read the article more closely before posting... Apparently it does in fact download everything in the background and then notifies you when it is ready to watch. This sounds really cool. Hopefully it can actually get a substantial userbase and gain some momentum. I still don't think it will put a dent in the TV network's userbase but hey, one can always hope :-)
Heh. I knew that post would got moderated into oblivion but it was definitely a serious comment. I'm not just some anti-java nut. There are applications I would love to use on a regular basis but because they are written in Java it's just too painful. This is a reality regardless of whether people who like Java want to admit it or not.
It's good to have goals that aim a bit high but realistically nothing like this is going to kill TV. There's just too much money in it for it to go away anytime soon.
This does sound like a really cool thing though. One thing I'm wondering about is whether this will actually work or not. I'm sure they must have done a fair bit of testing to have gotten this far with it but I have to wonder if something like BitTorrent would actually work for streaming video at consistently acceptable speeds. Don't get me wrong, BitTorrent is awesome and very often gives me great speeds but it just as often goes incredibly slow. As in 1-2KB/s slow.
There is only one platform that can stand toe-to-toe with Windows, and that's the combination of OS X and Java.
Please... Please... For the love of God... Not Java.
Is there anything more bloated and slow? This p4 loads firefox in about 2 seconds yet most Java apps still bring it to its knees without even doing anything special! It's truly incredible.
I normally don't agree with ICANN's position on many things but it seems to me that they could be taking the right stance on this. I'm not sure I would prefer tighter restrictions on domain names and TLDs but wouldn't it be nice if everyone stuck to a consistent naming convention? Imagine something a lot like what we have with newsgroups.
Who said anything about patenting only mundane stuff? Patents are defensive by nature. That's why they exist. They allow potential inventors some security when investing time and money to create something. How anxious would you be to invent something if you knew that all your hard work was just going to be stolen by someone else?
My point was simply that they aren't patenting everything they can in order to go on the offensive and actively take down other companies just because they can. For the most part, companies like this gather patents in order to protect their work.
Don't forget what IBM is. They're still a business and businesses exist to do one thing: Make money. Just because they've become a knight in shining armor for the open source community doesn't mean that they aren't still acting for their own benefit. It just so happens that they saw a way to both benefit and help the community. There was a time when IBM was not such a friendly entity in the community and there's no guarantee things won't change again. In fact, it's just the opposite. Change is inevitable so don't put too much faith in IBM always acting benevolently.
Companies like MSFT and IBM patent every itty-bitty thing they do in the hopes of using it to crush competition.
You're certainly correct that large companies like Microsoft and IBM patent anything and everything they can but the reason for this is usually less malicious than you think. Most of the time these companies try to attain so many patents as a defense mechanism. The hope is that by holding enough patents they will be able to deter other companies from using their patents against them out of fear of retaliation. It's a situation very much like what we saw during the Cold War with nuclear weapons, though obviously much less serious.
You're mostly right but there's a bit more to the process than that. Not every idea out there should be patented at all so it is important that someone look at the supposed invention itself and determine what kind of merit it has. Of course, a search for prior art _first_ could certainly kill a lot of frivolous patents before they wasted any extra time.
Largest patent owner in the world thinks there should be reform...
This is EXACTLY what we need to happen. These are the types of companies that actually have the ability to change things. The fact that they happen to hold a lot of patents themselves and still want reform just adds more weight to the argument that the current system is fscked.
"There are others who believe that no software patents are valid," he added. We certainly don't believe in that, because we have many thousands of software patents and customers trust us to be the true owners of those, so we believe it is somewhere in the middle that is appropriate for laws to govern behaviour around patents."
It's nice to see a large company choosing the middle path. Patents aren't entirely a bad thing (although I would rather do away with them altogether than keep the current system) and as with most arguments there are certainly two or more legitimate sides to this. One thing is for sure, we definitely need better review of patents and it certainly seems to me that they are right about the community being willing to help find prior art.
How many people do you know still play DOS games? After 10 years support for the API's and the old hardware disappears. Realisticly most people dont want to put up with the issues of playing older games, so if steam disapears most people wont care.
Key words: most people
What about those of us that do still play these older games? At least we have the option of doing a bit of work and still playing these games. With systems like Steam we don't even have the choice.
The US is a constitutional republic, which is in a sense a restricted form of democracy.
Aren't we often closer to being a facist government these days?
I did notice that the site mentioned the problem only being on 64 bit systems (although this was after I posted my previous comment) but I seem to recall eveb using it on a 64 bit system. Has anyone else had any experience with this?
That's interesting that they list Photoshop CS 8.0 among the programs that don't work with SP2. I happen to have used this version of Photoshop on several machines running SP2 without any problems whatsoever.
I also defocus my eyes from time to time in order to give them a rest so perhaps there is something to what you say. I know that a lot of it has to do with genetics (although my dad had glasses by 4th grade) but I also believe that your eyes, like every other muscle in your body, require both excercise and then rest in order to be strong and perform at their best. If you don't use those muscles your body naturally stops producing and maintaining them as you are telling it that you don't need them. BTW, the same is true for your brain, so stop reading slashdot and go pick up a book! ;-)
I'm probably an exception and just generally have strong eyes but I've spent the better part of my life behind CRTs and still have perfect vision. I'm very sure that sitting in front of a computer screen (of any kind) isn't good for your eyes but I still haven't developed any problems from it. I do seem to be getting carpal tunnel though :-\
Does anyone know if this new version addresses all the annoying problems in the previous versions? Things like the terrible inaccuracy of the shooting, jittery movement of both vehicles and players, and weird glitches like random vehicles being found stuck half-way in the ground. I've been waiting for multiplayer GTA for quite a while now but last time I tried multitheftauto it still had a long way to go.
Either way, keep up the good work guys!
Pretty soon good old fasioned postal service will be the only way to truly privately communicate.
This is precisely why tools such as PGP are so important. Without them how could you possibly have any notion that your communications are actually private?
They do actually say in the product details that the modem is only partially supported. This seems like an awfully strange choice of hardware given the circumstances. I know modems are nearly uesless these days with all the wifi networks everywhere but not only did they not include a wireless nic but I have to wonder what kind of company would sell a $4000 laptop with hardware that isn't fully supported by the pre-installed operating system. Pretty stupid if you ask me.
I myself certainly believe that some systems are more secure than others by design as well as by the default settings they choose. However, let's not forget that the human factor is almost always the weakest link with regards to security. In cases where a particular system is especially geared towards those users that are not technologically savvy you are always going to have a lot problems with security. There really is no way to avoid this aside from a massive campaign to educate users. Unfortunately it is my belief that the vast majority of people are rather lazy-brained and most just don't care about computers or security. Alas, I think this is something we're always going to be stuck with.
Did it worry you when the previous administration said exactly the same things?
Yes, actually it did. However, for some reason the Bush administration worries me even more... Gee... I wonder why that is. Take a look at everything Bush has done since he has been in office. I don't know about you but it seems to me that the stakes have been raised just a bit since Clinton's time.
(And no, I'm not a Clinton fan either.)
It always worries me when I see the current administration saying things like this...
:-\
highly vulnerable to terrorist and criminal attacks."
fundamentally new approaches are needed to address the more serious structural weaknesses of the IT infrastructure
It isn't that they aren't right... It's just that whenever they go on and on about terrorists threatening our way of life it seems all they really want is to implement new ways of taking away our rights without actually protecting us at all.
Sure wish I could actually read the article.
The main focus of our efforts and the most important benefits that customers will see is improved usability and significantly improved interoperability with Microsoft Office formats. This addresses the day-to-day needs of many more end users and makes
OpenOffice.org/StarOffice a real alternative.
I really hope they mean this. Dealing with MS Office formats has got to be insanely difficult and as of yet no one has really been able to do it well (not even Microsoft!). Life would be so much better if there was another office suite that could handle all the MS formats without choking on everything but the simplest of documents. I've got great hopes for OO.org 2.0 but you'll have to excuse me if I'm still a bit skeptical.
My ignorant boss is still going to want me to support all the way back to Netscape 4.
Ya know... such a decision may not be entirely based in ignorance although I don't doubt that your boss is in fact ignorant (most are). There will always be people using old systems and software and those of us that want our stuff to be available to a wide audience will always be stuck supporting it. Hell, even Microsoft has a huge problem with this. A lot of the broken stuff in their products remains broken not because they don't know about it or don't want to fix it. It remains broken because people come to depend on this behavior because they've already encountered it and have had to work around it. This is just the nature of software development I'm afraid.