Free as in speech has become the same as free as in beer.
I think that's one of the areas where RMS's plans have gone wrong. Based on most of thier position information, they advocate the Free Speech part, but not nessisarily the Free Beer part. But, how many people running stuff under Linux even consider the idea of buying something they can download (YES, there are some. Just not most Linux users. Even I've bought one RedHat distro back in the 5.x days, and I'm not a heavy duty Linux user.) But, it's also an inherent 'flaw' in the GPL (depending on how you look at it, it can be a flaw or benefit.)
Personally I think the best solution would be a licens that is basically a open source licens but makes it possible for the authors to charge for the softwares USE. In other words, you get the source, you may modify it however you want to but you have to pay for it if you use it.
Not a bad thought, but, I see one serious problem - license enforcement. How do you enforce a license like that? You can't do monitoring - lord knows I wouldn't run the app if you did. If you distributed the source, then any monitoring or other systems you put in place for it can be easily removed. And redistribution would be a PITA (IE, someone modifies it and passes it to someone else) and quite a few other scenarios would really put a kink in things.
Such a license should have one other clause, IMHO - if you quit selling, supporting, or distributing a version of the software, it becomes public domain within a year. To me, that's one of the reasons I support the GPL (and similar licenses) - if someone quits developing it, and I've been using it, then I can continue to develop the software to further meet my needs, and others can benefit from my changes (and I can benefit from thiers.) I've been looking at such a clause for a license I've been working on for the games I write. (Yes, I know - Yet Another License. Well, I want something that fits both my ethical needs (giving the software I write a future even if I abandon it - customers should always have the right to pick up where I leave off!) and my financial needs (getting PAID to develop games!))
HEY! We aren't the only insane ones!
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Fling-A-Keg
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Too cool - we aren't the only ones who are completely nuts!:-) Me and 6 other friends are getting our siege engine (a smaller one) ready for a competition here in the Midwest. However, instead of one of the giant siege engines, we are building an Onager that looks quite a bit like the Baby Onager listed there (ours is about half again as large as the one there). This is our first attempt at building at building one, so I convinced everyone that we needed to start small. Next year, well start to build the full sized Onager to start flinging the big stuff really far...:-) Luckly, the competition is an accuracy competition for the most part, so we actually stand a chance with a smaller onager.
Siege weapons - fun to build, but even more fun to fire!
I agree with ya - I make $42k at my day job before any overtime or bonuses. I live almost dead center of the US where the cost of living is fairly cheap (except for gas at the moment.) My idea of vacation (the first REAL non-working vacation in years) was to go to Colorado, and I could barely afford it. And I've got a second income from my game company!
He lived it up and partied on the idea that the stock options were going to be worth a fortune, or that somehow he was going to end up with an even higher salary. Well, I'm sure he's learned his lesson well enough now:-)
GEOS under a new name - NewDeal
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MenuetOS Debuts
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Actually, GEOS was *purchased* by a zealous group of GEOS users and renamed to NewDeal... www.newdealinc.com
Well, I tried to download the demo, and they aparently are having some MS-SQL problems. Ya know, I'm going to have to play with this a bit - I always liked GEOS the first time around. NewDeal may be worth a look. Unluckly, that's probably all it's going to be worth.:-( I can't exactly see there being much support for it, application wise.
But, you HAVE to love the requirements for running it:
286 CPU or faster (386 recommended)
CGA Display (SVGA with VESA compatible 256 color capability or recommended for Web access)
640KB RAM (2-4 megabytes recommended for optimum performance)
9 Megabytes free HD space
As many as there are hackers for...
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MenuetOS Debuts
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Firstly I've got to say congratz for knocking this one out. But to be honest how many more Operating Systems do we need?
It's not really a matter of need, as in how many Operating Systems do we need to try and push on people's desktops. Instead, it becomes a matter of people trying different methods of OS Development and different design philosophies. Think about it for a minute - if only 4 or 5 groups created all Operating Systems that are out there, it would be unlikely that new ideas in OS development would be fully explored.
You might want to look around and check out all the Operating Systems there are out there that researchers and hobbiests (sometimes there doesn't seem to be THAT much of a jump between the two;-) have spent tons of time on. Sometimes they are developed just to 'scratch an itch', sometimes they are developed to see an idea all the way to completion to see how well it works out.
Don't knock these guys for trying to develop a new OS - sometime or another the ideas they come up with may end up in Linux, *BSD, etc. (Of course, in the interest of full disclosure, I work with an alternative OS project that somewhat died, and just got resurected this week.;-)
Unluckly, due to lack of time I've quit reading the books for about the last 6 months or so. I also REALLY enjoyed the New Frontier series with the Excalibur and it's crew members. Think Worf was a badass security officer? The Excalibur's security officer makes him look like a pansy - the guy is made of stone (I believe the name of his race was Brikar or something like that - they are living stone creatures.) All the characters on that ship are just... strange, but cool to learn about. Plus, they also have some characters from the TNG series - Morgan Lefler (her mom is also interesting), the gal that wanted Riker's job for awhile is the first officer, and the CMO is from the TNG series.
Granted, with the ST book series there have been some real dogs. There's a couple of the TNG books that I consider to be worse than the worse TNG episodes. But all in all, you are right - the ST books in general are of higher quality, and offer the opportunity for the characters to be explored much more deeply.
For those thinking about reading any of the books, here's a 'must read' list: Vendetta, Imzadi II, the entire New Frontier series, Prime Directive, Dark Mirror, and anything Peter David writes in the different series.:-)
As for the Voyager books... well, they really don't seem to improve on the series any with some exceptions. Still not a Voyager fan (which is horrible when ya consider I think I've seen all of them. Sheesh.)
Oh, certainly. In the end, "It's The Writing, Stupid!" The vehicle only matters in that it allows the good writers to do good work. Having one alternative humanity is okay, but infinite multiple alternative humanities -- a la "Sliders" (a show that took advantage of its premise less often than "Star Trek") -- has possibilities.
I totally agree. Even if they had the best plot setup in the world, writers could still screw it up and totally miss the possible moral issues that could be explored. Conversely, they could have a crap setup for the show, and the writers could still use it to explore deep moral issues and to hold up the mirror to humanity and force ourselves to take a closer look. And I'd prefer the later to the former.
Think about it. If one alternative future can come back and mess around with the past...what's to keep any number of alternative futures from trying the same?:)
Take that one step further, and you have a very strange (and potentially intersting scenario.) Have a universe where alternate futures keep traveling back into the past to change history - and end up fighting each other. A war torn past where the futures spend more time in the past fighting each other than accomplishing thier goals. Which, of course, would end up really screwing up the future. Now that could be a bizzare premise for a book / series...
It seems to me that this plot is too contrived to be taken seriously. "evil mirror-villains from the future"??
Gee, isn't a much richer plotline and a sense of deeper continuity a good part of what people said made Bab5 such a great show? Seems like P'mont is "getting it" this time, and trying the same tricks. Sounds like a perfectly good idea to me!
The other shows all had simple, realistic premises-the Enterprise is exploring the universe, Voyager is trying to get back home, the Enterprise is exploring the universe with a much crappier crew.
Well, for ST:TNG if you take the first episode and the last episode they used to try and tie up the entire series with, then the plot becomes a bit larger than just exploring the universe. It's humanity's trial by fire by a much greater power that sees potental within us. Q tells Picard at the begining we are on trial. At the end, Q give Picard both the power to destroy ourselves as a species, and gives him the power to expand his abilities beyond the human norm, to experience the universe ever so slightly like the Q does. Picard managed wrap his mind around the situation finally (but never completely understands it) and humanity (with Picard as it's representative) makes it past it's trial by fire.
Too bad they never followed up on it at all in the movies or other series. They really could have had fun with humanity beinging to awaken it's self, instead of relying on technology solely.
(In TNG's final episode, if you want to try and search to find deeper meaning, you can. But ya gotta try really hard - pretty much streaching it and giving the writers more credit than is really due. I'm definitely not going to give that synopsis here on Slashdot to have it picked through;-)
Anyway, the point of this is that clearly the plot is degenerating as new shows are produced. This obviously means that each successive "Star Trek" show is worse than the last. This means that Kirk is much, much better than Picard. QED.
I'm dying to watch Enterprise. While I've heard a couple of people say it's gonna suck, I really think it's possible it may end up being the best Trek yet.
The future isnt' so far way in Enterprise - it's going to be easier, IMHO, to relate to the universe in the Enterprise series than it was in ST:TNG (and definitely easier to relate to than Voyager. Blah.) I also think they may have a chance to make statements about humanity in general again. Voyager pretty much never did it, and DS9 didn't make much of an effort.
But, of course, that's just my opinion. No matter how good or bad it is, someone is gonna say it sucks compaired to (TOS, TNG, DS9, V, TAS;-)
The bad guys however - this could be interesting. I do hope they are used sparingly like they did the Borg for a while, instead of every episode centering around trying to duke it out with them.
Everyone cross your fingers, and hope they manage to get this series right!
It wasn't. But it was covered in a damned good book - Dark Mirror. So, yeah, the statement made above was somewhat incorrect.
If you haven't read Dark Mirror, or don't read most Star Trek books in general - go ahead and read it. It's a very good story that I would have loved to have seen done in the series, or better yet, as a movie!
Ya know, lots of people will say (and are saying here already;-) that Russia can't afford it. Well, they are probably right.
But, damnit - I wanna see it happen! I want to see tourism in space, I want to see commerical enterprises get a chance to really have some room to try and make use of a space station. Movies made in space, what have you. I want to see it ALL happen.
Why? Because if one group - ANY GROUP - shows that it's possible to make a profit putting people up in space either through tourism or what have you, it's going to open up so many doors*. I'd love to see VC's getting as excited over space travel and space stations as they did DotComs. Granted, the stakes are probably a bit higher, and not as many VC's will be able to afford the investment. But if it gets started, there will be those who innovate, and find better ways of getting from 'here' to 'there'. The leap to things like colonizing the moon (yuck - not THAT attractive, but kinda cool) becomes a lot shorter.
(* - Yes, I know. Even if they put something up there doesn't mean it's going to be profitable. But if Russia can dream of putting up a station and mostly supporting it on tourism and such, well, I can dream of the idea of it actually being PROFITABLE:-)
The 25x concept looks like it could really a damned interesting idea. But one of the questions in my mind is where you want to head with it? Is this something that is to be used for very specialized research and scientiffic applications, or is this something that you envision for a general 'desktop' computer for normal people eventually?
Secondly, if you are considering the 25x for a desktop machine that would be accessable by people that aren't full-time geeks, what about software? Forth is a lost development art for many people (It's probably been 10 years since I even looked at any Fourh code) and porting current C and C++ application would be impossible - or would it? Is there a potential way to minimize the 'pain' of completely re-writing a C++ app to colorForth for the 25x machines, which could help to speed adoption of a platform?
This one would probably require a bit more time to answer than you probably have available, but a quick rundown would be cool: Where do you see programming languages headed -vs- where do you think they SHOULD be headed? Java, C#, and some of the other 'newer' languages seem to be a far cry from Fourth, but are languages headed (in your opinion) in the proper direction?
BeOS has Dx layer, alowing Dx games to be easly ported to the BeOS.
Ported. That's the problem here - most developers really don't seem to be that interested porting thier games to other operating system (note I said MOST, not all). A nitche operating system designed for multimedia and games already happened - and BeOS didn't get that many developers porting thier games over. Binary compatability, IE - no recompile or porting, would make for a very popular alternative OS for gamers. (but, again, probably won't happen;-)
why not include a DirectX emulation ?? it would be easier on his OS since its not tied to X and input devices are not a seperately controlled.. if he could do that could this be the next gaming platform ?? now that would be serious competition..
I'd love to see that. A nice, tight Gaming OS that's Windows compatable with full DirectX emulation would be friggin' awsome. Probably never happen, unluckly - that's A LOT of bloody work to do to get even enough Windows compatibility to run games. (And, well - I was involved in a project to do something like that once. Long ago... the project in question (Freedows) appears to be dead and gone now...) None of the projects that have set out to do something like that have flopped so far. Doesn't mean it's IMPOSSIBLE, just damned hard.
But if it ever happened - I'd have me an MS free game machine built very quickly:-) (And no, a Linux box doesn't count as an MS free game machine - most of the games I want to play don't have Linux versions:-/ )
Another poster mentioned the idea that you were considering moving AtheOS to a different license. Is that the case?
Secondly, if you are considering putting it under a different license, why? And, why did you select GPL licensing for AtheOS as opposed to a number of different licensing choices out there? (Reguardless of if you are or aren't moving AtheOS from a GPL license.)
The first network I ever owned...
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The funny thing is -- that everybody's acting like "Peer to Peer" is some recent buzzword that was created in this new age of unwashed idiot internet users.
Strange how that works, eh?
It wasn't coined recently. It's been around forever. It's just that nobody ever bothered saying "Yes, this network is peer to peer..." or "...this one has a server."
Concerning the Internet, yeah. For networking in general, the term was out there. Even MS was making the distinctions in thier manuals for Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (insert flashback to much worse days... WfW 3.11 *SHUDDER*) The term has been kicked around for a long time, but, now with this new 'peer to peer' networking thinggy on the Internet, it introduced quite a few people to the term. And, as someone else pointed out, Peer to Peer means Napster or some other evil technology these days it seems. *SIGH*
I remember hooking up two Amigas with a parallel cable and running that nifty little tool called "Parnet". It was supposed to create a "Peer to Peer" network of... uh... two computers.
hehehe - man I remember this. I built that stupid bidirectional parallel cable and hooked up the two 1000's. (IIRC, there was a slight difference between the 1000's and the 2000's parallel port that screwed hooking up to the 2000 - which had a bigger HD) I thought that was like the coolest thing... then realized I had almost nothing useful to do with it!;-)
Not really - Client / Server communications...
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I don't know what the big fuss is all about. Hasn't the Internet always been peer-to-peer? Why even come up with a new name for it?
Not really - try Client / Server instead. For instance, you don't send email to someone directly - instead you send it to you server, which then talks to another server, and the end client downloads the email from the server.
Browsers talk to servers - you are the client. FTP clients talk to servers. It goes on and on... most of the Internet has been (and probably will continue to be) Client - Server comminications, not Peer to Peer communications.
Looking at the filename for the link provide shows it as being "z-027-20 largest for website.wgp.pdf" Seeing the double extension, my first thought after having been flooded with SirCam emails was 'Oh jeeze... another victim of the SirCam virus...';-) Anyone else starting to have this odd reaction to various files?:-)
Ok, since like 1/3rd of the comments have been from people who read the story, and assumed it was correct, from the TuxRacer.com front page:
Despite what some (very misleading) news articles have recently reported, the retail version of Tux Racer will be released for both Linux and Windows (and most likely the Macintosh); the binaries for all versions will be on the same CD. Don't believe the hype!
These news articles are referring to an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) deal which is in the works, which (although the details have not been finalized) is for Windows only. Getting a Linux version added onto the OEM CD is something that we have considered and will try to do. The only obstacle to this is the fact that our OEM agent only supports Windows products. We will keep you posted.
All is cool here.
As for respecting thier wishes on an Open Source version of TuxRacer - why shouldn't he? He talked with them, told them what up, and they would prefer not to have to complete with a free game that is identical. Gee, seems reasonable to me - if someone gave me the opportunity to say if I had to compete against a free product or not, I'd sure be quick to say I'd like the free product to have a different direction than mine. Why, as a commercial developer, would you ENCOURAGE someone to write a completely free version of the game you are trying to sell on shelves and OEM bundles?
Despite what some (very misleading) news articles have recently reported, the retail version of Tux Racer will be released for both Linux and Windows (and most likely the Macintosh); the binaries for all versions will be on the same CD. Don't believe the hype!
These news articles are referring to an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) deal which is in the works, which (although the details have not been finalized) is for Windows only. Getting a Linux version added onto the OEM CD is something that we have considered and will try to do. The only obstacle to this is the fact that our OEM agent only supports Windows products. We will keep you posted.
See - no problem. Just a large missunderstanding. Move along, nothing to see or flame here...
When was the last time your Microsoft Windows server lasted a week without re-booting? I know people who re-boot their machines daily, "just in case."
Been quite a while - the last 'reboot' was an unintentional shutdown due to hardware failure. It's been up 3 months since that failure - and no, it's not suseptable to the CodeRed worm, since I see no need to run unused services on my machine (in this case, the Index service is where the voulnerability is at - and it's turned ON by default.)
If someone markets this properly, they could have something going for them. Most geeks won't use it (or will they - not sure if I find it interesting enough to buy it, but conceptually I like the idea of getting a workout while I play games:-) It would never be a huge hit, IMHO, but if they bundle the proper games with it, and hit the heath and weight loss crowds with it, they could make some bucks... Just my opinion, of course. Which is pretty much worthless;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Free as in speech has become the same as free as in beer.
I think that's one of the areas where RMS's plans have gone wrong. Based on most of thier position information, they advocate the Free Speech part, but not nessisarily the Free Beer part. But, how many people running stuff under Linux even consider the idea of buying something they can download (YES, there are some. Just not most Linux users. Even I've bought one RedHat distro back in the 5.x days, and I'm not a heavy duty Linux user.) But, it's also an inherent 'flaw' in the GPL (depending on how you look at it, it can be a flaw or benefit.)
Personally I think the best solution would be a licens that is basically a open source licens but makes it possible for the authors to charge for the softwares USE. In other words, you get the source, you may modify it however you want to but you have to pay for it if you use it.
Not a bad thought, but, I see one serious problem - license enforcement. How do you enforce a license like that? You can't do monitoring - lord knows I wouldn't run the app if you did. If you distributed the source, then any monitoring or other systems you put in place for it can be easily removed. And redistribution would be a PITA (IE, someone modifies it and passes it to someone else) and quite a few other scenarios would really put a kink in things.
Such a license should have one other clause, IMHO - if you quit selling, supporting, or distributing a version of the software, it becomes public domain within a year. To me, that's one of the reasons I support the GPL (and similar licenses) - if someone quits developing it, and I've been using it, then I can continue to develop the software to further meet my needs, and others can benefit from my changes (and I can benefit from thiers.) I've been looking at such a clause for a license I've been working on for the games I write. (Yes, I know - Yet Another License. Well, I want something that fits both my ethical needs (giving the software I write a future even if I abandon it - customers should always have the right to pick up where I leave off!) and my financial needs (getting PAID to develop games!))
Too cool - we aren't the only ones who are completely nuts! :-) Me and 6 other friends are getting our siege engine (a smaller one) ready for a competition here in the Midwest. However, instead of one of the giant siege engines, we are building an Onager that looks quite a bit like the Baby Onager listed there (ours is about half again as large as the one there). This is our first attempt at building at building one, so I convinced everyone that we needed to start small. Next year, well start to build the full sized Onager to start flinging the big stuff really far... :-) Luckly, the competition is an accuracy competition for the most part, so we actually stand a chance with a smaller onager.
Siege weapons - fun to build, but even more fun to fire!
Hmm - ok, well, it apparently was a very good idea after all! (Quickly jots down boot name to add to the 'to read' list ;-)
I agree with ya - I make $42k at my day job before any overtime or bonuses. I live almost dead center of the US where the cost of living is fairly cheap (except for gas at the moment.) My idea of vacation (the first REAL non-working vacation in years) was to go to Colorado, and I could barely afford it. And I've got a second income from my game company!
He lived it up and partied on the idea that the stock options were going to be worth a fortune, or that somehow he was going to end up with an even higher salary. Well, I'm sure he's learned his lesson well enough now :-)
Actually, GEOS was *purchased* by a zealous group of GEOS users and renamed to NewDeal... www.newdealinc.com
Well, I tried to download the demo, and they aparently are having some MS-SQL problems. Ya know, I'm going to have to play with this a bit - I always liked GEOS the first time around. NewDeal may be worth a look. Unluckly, that's probably all it's going to be worth. :-( I can't exactly see there being much support for it, application wise.
But, you HAVE to love the requirements for running it:
Firstly I've got to say congratz for knocking this one out. But to be honest how many more Operating Systems do we need?
It's not really a matter of need, as in how many Operating Systems do we need to try and push on people's desktops. Instead, it becomes a matter of people trying different methods of OS Development and different design philosophies. Think about it for a minute - if only 4 or 5 groups created all Operating Systems that are out there, it would be unlikely that new ideas in OS development would be fully explored.
You might want to look around and check out all the Operating Systems there are out there that researchers and hobbiests (sometimes there doesn't seem to be THAT much of a jump between the two ;-) have spent tons of time on. Sometimes they are developed just to 'scratch an itch', sometimes they are developed to see an idea all the way to completion to see how well it works out.
Don't knock these guys for trying to develop a new OS - sometime or another the ideas they come up with may end up in Linux, *BSD, etc. (Of course, in the interest of full disclosure, I work with an alternative OS project that somewhat died, and just got resurected this week. ;-)
Unluckly, due to lack of time I've quit reading the books for about the last 6 months or so. I also REALLY enjoyed the New Frontier series with the Excalibur and it's crew members. Think Worf was a badass security officer? The Excalibur's security officer makes him look like a pansy - the guy is made of stone (I believe the name of his race was Brikar or something like that - they are living stone creatures.) All the characters on that ship are just... strange, but cool to learn about. Plus, they also have some characters from the TNG series - Morgan Lefler (her mom is also interesting), the gal that wanted Riker's job for awhile is the first officer, and the CMO is from the TNG series.
Granted, with the ST book series there have been some real dogs. There's a couple of the TNG books that I consider to be worse than the worse TNG episodes. But all in all, you are right - the ST books in general are of higher quality, and offer the opportunity for the characters to be explored much more deeply.
For those thinking about reading any of the books, here's a 'must read' list: Vendetta, Imzadi II, the entire New Frontier series, Prime Directive, Dark Mirror, and anything Peter David writes in the different series. :-)
As for the Voyager books... well, they really don't seem to improve on the series any with some exceptions. Still not a Voyager fan (which is horrible when ya consider I think I've seen all of them. Sheesh.)
Oh, certainly. In the end, "It's The Writing, Stupid!" The vehicle only matters in that it allows the good writers to do good work. Having one alternative humanity is okay, but infinite multiple alternative humanities -- a la "Sliders" (a show that took advantage of its premise less often than "Star Trek") -- has possibilities.
I totally agree. Even if they had the best plot setup in the world, writers could still screw it up and totally miss the possible moral issues that could be explored. Conversely, they could have a crap setup for the show, and the writers could still use it to explore deep moral issues and to hold up the mirror to humanity and force ourselves to take a closer look. And I'd prefer the later to the former.
Think about it. If one alternative future can come back and mess around with the past...what's to keep any number of alternative futures from trying the same? :)
Take that one step further, and you have a very strange (and potentially intersting scenario.) Have a universe where alternate futures keep traveling back into the past to change history - and end up fighting each other. A war torn past where the futures spend more time in the past fighting each other than accomplishing thier goals. Which, of course, would end up really screwing up the future. Now that could be a bizzare premise for a book / series...
Bring back Que!
Just a small note: it's 'Q', not 'Que'. But I gotta agree, Q was a cool ass character. Most of my favorite TNG episodes involved Q.
I also somewhat agree with you comments about the 'sexual tension'.
It seems to me that this plot is too contrived to be taken seriously. "evil mirror-villains from the future"??
Gee, isn't a much richer plotline and a sense of deeper continuity a good part of what people said made Bab5 such a great show? Seems like P'mont is "getting it" this time, and trying the same tricks. Sounds like a perfectly good idea to me!
The other shows all had simple, realistic premises-the Enterprise is exploring the universe, Voyager is trying to get back home, the Enterprise is exploring the universe with a much crappier crew.
Well, for ST:TNG if you take the first episode and the last episode they used to try and tie up the entire series with, then the plot becomes a bit larger than just exploring the universe. It's humanity's trial by fire by a much greater power that sees potental within us. Q tells Picard at the begining we are on trial. At the end, Q give Picard both the power to destroy ourselves as a species, and gives him the power to expand his abilities beyond the human norm, to experience the universe ever so slightly like the Q does. Picard managed wrap his mind around the situation finally (but never completely understands it) and humanity (with Picard as it's representative) makes it past it's trial by fire.
Too bad they never followed up on it at all in the movies or other series. They really could have had fun with humanity beinging to awaken it's self, instead of relying on technology solely.
(In TNG's final episode, if you want to try and search to find deeper meaning, you can. But ya gotta try really hard - pretty much streaching it and giving the writers more credit than is really due. I'm definitely not going to give that synopsis here on Slashdot to have it picked through ;-)
Anyway, the point of this is that clearly the plot is degenerating as new shows are produced. This obviously means that each successive "Star Trek" show is worse than the last. This means that Kirk is much, much better than Picard. QED.
Troll. Really.
I'm dying to watch Enterprise. While I've heard a couple of people say it's gonna suck, I really think it's possible it may end up being the best Trek yet.
The future isnt' so far way in Enterprise - it's going to be easier, IMHO, to relate to the universe in the Enterprise series than it was in ST:TNG (and definitely easier to relate to than Voyager. Blah.) I also think they may have a chance to make statements about humanity in general again. Voyager pretty much never did it, and DS9 didn't make much of an effort.
But, of course, that's just my opinion. No matter how good or bad it is, someone is gonna say it sucks compaired to (TOS, TNG, DS9, V, TAS ;-)
The bad guys however - this could be interesting. I do hope they are used sparingly like they did the Borg for a while, instead of every episode centering around trying to duke it out with them.
Everyone cross your fingers, and hope they manage to get this series right!
It wasn't. But it was covered in a damned good book - Dark Mirror. So, yeah, the statement made above was somewhat incorrect.
If you haven't read Dark Mirror, or don't read most Star Trek books in general - go ahead and read it. It's a very good story that I would have loved to have seen done in the series, or better yet, as a movie!
Ya know, lots of people will say (and are saying here already ;-) that Russia can't afford it. Well, they are probably right.
But, damnit - I wanna see it happen! I want to see tourism in space, I want to see commerical enterprises get a chance to really have some room to try and make use of a space station. Movies made in space, what have you. I want to see it ALL happen.
Why? Because if one group - ANY GROUP - shows that it's possible to make a profit putting people up in space either through tourism or what have you, it's going to open up so many doors*. I'd love to see VC's getting as excited over space travel and space stations as they did DotComs. Granted, the stakes are probably a bit higher, and not as many VC's will be able to afford the investment. But if it gets started, there will be those who innovate, and find better ways of getting from 'here' to 'there'. The leap to things like colonizing the moon (yuck - not THAT attractive, but kinda cool) becomes a lot shorter.
(* - Yes, I know. Even if they put something up there doesn't mean it's going to be profitable. But if Russia can dream of putting up a station and mostly supporting it on tourism and such, well, I can dream of the idea of it actually being PROFITABLE :-)
The 25x concept looks like it could really a damned interesting idea. But one of the questions in my mind is where you want to head with it? Is this something that is to be used for very specialized research and scientiffic applications, or is this something that you envision for a general 'desktop' computer for normal people eventually?
Secondly, if you are considering the 25x for a desktop machine that would be accessable by people that aren't full-time geeks, what about software? Forth is a lost development art for many people (It's probably been 10 years since I even looked at any Fourh code) and porting current C and C++ application would be impossible - or would it? Is there a potential way to minimize the 'pain' of completely re-writing a C++ app to colorForth for the 25x machines, which could help to speed adoption of a platform?
This one would probably require a bit more time to answer than you probably have available, but a quick rundown would be cool: Where do you see programming languages headed -vs- where do you think they SHOULD be headed? Java, C#, and some of the other 'newer' languages seem to be a far cry from Fourth, but are languages headed (in your opinion) in the proper direction?
BeOS has Dx layer, alowing Dx games to be easly ported to the BeOS.
Ported. That's the problem here - most developers really don't seem to be that interested porting thier games to other operating system (note I said MOST, not all). A nitche operating system designed for multimedia and games already happened - and BeOS didn't get that many developers porting thier games over. Binary compatability, IE - no recompile or porting, would make for a very popular alternative OS for gamers. (but, again, probably won't happen ;-)
why not include a DirectX emulation ?? it would be easier on his OS since its not tied to X and input devices are not a seperately controlled.. if he could do that could this be the next gaming platform ?? now that would be serious competition..
I'd love to see that. A nice, tight Gaming OS that's Windows compatable with full DirectX emulation would be friggin' awsome. Probably never happen, unluckly - that's A LOT of bloody work to do to get even enough Windows compatibility to run games. (And, well - I was involved in a project to do something like that once. Long ago... the project in question (Freedows) appears to be dead and gone now...) None of the projects that have set out to do something like that have flopped so far. Doesn't mean it's IMPOSSIBLE, just damned hard.
But if it ever happened - I'd have me an MS free game machine built very quickly :-) (And no, a Linux box doesn't count as an MS free game machine - most of the games I want to play don't have Linux versions :-/ )
Greetings...
Another poster mentioned the idea that you were considering moving AtheOS to a different license. Is that the case?
Secondly, if you are considering putting it under a different license, why? And, why did you select GPL licensing for AtheOS as opposed to a number of different licensing choices out there? (Reguardless of if you are or aren't moving AtheOS from a GPL license.)
The funny thing is -- that everybody's acting like "Peer to Peer" is some recent buzzword that was created in this new age of unwashed idiot internet users.
Strange how that works, eh?
It wasn't coined recently. It's been around forever. It's just that nobody ever bothered saying "Yes, this network is peer to peer..." or "...this one has a server."
Concerning the Internet, yeah. For networking in general, the term was out there. Even MS was making the distinctions in thier manuals for Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (insert flashback to much worse days... WfW 3.11 *SHUDDER*) The term has been kicked around for a long time, but, now with this new 'peer to peer' networking thinggy on the Internet, it introduced quite a few people to the term. And, as someone else pointed out, Peer to Peer means Napster or some other evil technology these days it seems. *SIGH*
I remember hooking up two Amigas with a parallel cable and running that nifty little tool called "Parnet". It was supposed to create a "Peer to Peer" network of ... uh ... two computers.
hehehe - man I remember this. I built that stupid bidirectional parallel cable and hooked up the two 1000's. (IIRC, there was a slight difference between the 1000's and the 2000's parallel port that screwed hooking up to the 2000 - which had a bigger HD) I thought that was like the coolest thing... then realized I had almost nothing useful to do with it! ;-)
I don't know what the big fuss is all about. Hasn't the Internet always been peer-to-peer? Why even come up with a new name for it?
Not really - try Client / Server instead. For instance, you don't send email to someone directly - instead you send it to you server, which then talks to another server, and the end client downloads the email from the server.
Browsers talk to servers - you are the client. FTP clients talk to servers. It goes on and on... most of the Internet has been (and probably will continue to be) Client - Server comminications, not Peer to Peer communications.
Looking at the filename for the link provide shows it as being "z-027-20 largest for website.wgp.pdf" Seeing the double extension, my first thought after having been flooded with SirCam emails was 'Oh jeeze... another victim of the SirCam virus...' ;-) Anyone else starting to have this odd reaction to various files? :-)
Ok, since like 1/3rd of the comments have been from people who read the story, and assumed it was correct, from the TuxRacer.com front page:
Despite what some (very misleading) news articles have recently reported, the retail version of Tux Racer will be released for both Linux and Windows (and most likely the Macintosh); the binaries for all versions will be on the same CD. Don't believe the hype!
These news articles are referring to an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) deal which is in the works, which (although the details have not been finalized) is for Windows only. Getting a Linux version added onto the OEM CD is something that we have considered and will try to do. The only obstacle to this is the fact that our OEM agent only supports Windows products. We will keep you posted.
All is cool here.
As for respecting thier wishes on an Open Source version of TuxRacer - why shouldn't he? He talked with them, told them what up, and they would prefer not to have to complete with a free game that is identical. Gee, seems reasonable to me - if someone gave me the opportunity to say if I had to compete against a free product or not, I'd sure be quick to say I'd like the free product to have a different direction than mine. Why, as a commercial developer, would you ENCOURAGE someone to write a completely free version of the game you are trying to sell on shelves and OEM bundles?
From the TuxRacer.com front page:
Despite what some (very misleading) news articles have recently reported, the retail version of Tux Racer will be released for both Linux and Windows (and most likely the Macintosh); the binaries for all versions will be on the same CD. Don't believe the hype!
These news articles are referring to an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) deal which is in the works, which (although the details have not been finalized) is for Windows only. Getting a Linux version added onto the OEM CD is something that we have considered and will try to do. The only obstacle to this is the fact that our OEM agent only supports Windows products. We will keep you posted.
See - no problem. Just a large missunderstanding. Move along, nothing to see or flame here...
When was the last time your Microsoft Windows server lasted a week without re-booting? I know people who re-boot their machines daily, "just in case."
Been quite a while - the last 'reboot' was an unintentional shutdown due to hardware failure. It's been up 3 months since that failure - and no, it's not suseptable to the CodeRed worm, since I see no need to run unused services on my machine (in this case, the Index service is where the voulnerability is at - and it's turned ON by default.)
If someone markets this properly, they could have something going for them. Most geeks won't use it (or will they - not sure if I find it interesting enough to buy it, but conceptually I like the idea of getting a workout while I play games :-) It would never be a huge hit, IMHO, but if they bundle the proper games with it, and hit the heath and weight loss crowds with it, they could make some bucks... Just my opinion, of course. Which is pretty much worthless ;-)