This snippit from the article (emphasis mine) shows that this is a slippery slope already...
The agreements resulted from an eight-month investigation and sting operation in which undercover agents from Mr. Cuomo's office, posing as subscribers, complained to Internet providers that they were allowing child pornography to proliferate online, despite customer service agreements that discouraged such activity. Verizon, for example, warns its users that they risk losing their service if they transmit or disseminate sexually exploitative images of children.
After the companies ignored the investigators' complaints, the attorney general's office surfaced, threatening charges of fraud and deceptive business practices. The companies agreed to cooperate and began weeks of negotiations. Sorry, folks, but you can't have it both ways. Either no one is allowed to deceive, or everyone is. Don't lie to someone and then be pissed when they lie to you. In addition, has anyone thought about whether the "agents" in this situation were actually "under cover"? Perhaps the ISP was merely ignoring a constant stream of abuse from obvious (or known) fake subscribers...
We use imperfect solutions where people's lives are at stake--what makes this situation so special that imperfect solutions are unacceptable? I'm sorry, I missed the part where people's lives are at stake over kiddie porn on the intartubes... where did it say that? I mean, I'm all for banning censorship (is that a contradiction in terms?) but I'm not sure whether this case has any merits whatsoever. Watch that knee-jerk reaction, there, you'll spill my drink.
Can you point out where anyone's life is at risk over whether Joe Sixpack downloads little girls or whatnot? And please don't give me any crap about how if he downloads pics, he's gonna be a kidnapper/rapist. In all fairness, we could also make the argument that if he *can't* download the pics, he'll go kidnap someone to make his own.
Why is it that [the] most religious people I meet are Atheists? I don't really have time to give this a good answer, but here's my two cents:
Atheists are persecuted by religious zealots, simply for not conforming to the locally-accepted religious dogma. Atheists have accepted the truth that there is no God, and they are punished for this every time they slip up and let some God-fearing person know that. Atheists are harassed and ridiculed for their beliefs, but this seems to be OK, because "they don't believe in God, so they have no religion to have freedom of." That's the position of the courts, as well.
Atheists are vehement because you stupid Christians won't leave us alone in our unbelief. Yeah, go ahead, bristle at me for calling you stupid. Anyone who believes that a cosmic jewish zombie who endorses ritualized cannibalism can save their (non-existant, or at least unprovable) "soul" for use in happy slavery later (have you *read* your precious Bible? I didn't make any of this up!) is a complete and utter moron, and gullible to boot. Go ahead, be upset that I called you a moron. Now, taste the irony when you get mad at me for "hate speech", when I'm only pissed in the first place because you cussed me out for not believing in your psychotic mythology, and for having the gall to mow my grass on Sunday.
Wow. This was supposed to be a simple explanation of why Atheists are so violently opposed to religion in general, and it turned into a ranting diatribe against Christianity. Looks like I need to dial back the anger a bit.
On the other hand,
It is awesome that so many of you who bash this organization are probably also big time 1st amendment thumpers. I guess if someone has a different opinion than you, you don't support THEIR 1st amendment rights. Or maybe we are just tired of defending ourselves against oppressive religions that don't believe in our right to be left alone, free of all the God-fearing mumbo-jumbo, free of unearned guilt, freedom to think our own thoughts.
I have a serious question for you. Why is it that we're not allowed to blame God when bad things occur, but we should praise him for random good things happening? Either it's his fault or it's not, eh? When you have an actual answer for that question (no, I want one that makes sense, I don't wanna hear about genderless winged people that can impregnate a middle-aged "virgin" with a mythical man-in-the-sky's love child after tricking a poor farmer into letting them sleep with his wife), then we can talk about the rest of the list.
One of the biggest issues I have with the Christian mythology is that we're supposed to accept things on faith... kinda like a 2,000 year old "who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" Makes you seem like a gullible sap, if you think about it too long, so don't do it if you value your faith.
The other big issue, to me, is the "love your neighbor, or we'll fucking kill you" bit. The only religious zealots more violent than Christians are Muslims, and (coincidence?) those two have been fighting each other for a couple thousand years.
Actually the BSA doesnt the Mormon church that runs the hate all not mormon part of it. I'm sorry, could you repeat that in english? I tried, I really did, and I'm usually awesome at understanding typoese... this just doesn't compute in any way, shape, or form.
No, really. But try typing the words in a sentence, this time. With, I don't know... grammar, and stuff.
You haven't looked at the price of a leased line in the UK recently, have you?
(Hint: You can take the price of a residential broadband connection and multiply it by at least 10, probably 20 or 30). Not sure about the UK, but in the US, I can get broadband for $50/month, or I can get "business" broadband (same stuff, but without dropping my packets on ports 80, 110, etc. and supposedly more reliable) for about $300/month. So take your 10-30 times as expensive, and call it 6.
No, I haven't looked at the prices in the UK. I don't live there, and so have no reason to.
Leasing your own line probably makes it easier to track you down too. Whereas a (potentially) mobile, wireless connection would be much harder to track, and is simple to implement. Of course, a stationary base station is still required to tie it into the internet, but that doesn't even have to be yours. The more wireless saturates the urban environment, the better off we all are, from a "communications freedom" standpoint.
I'm a linux nub, and I was able to peel off a public wireless connection on my LAN, without giving it any access to my local network. iptables is extremely helpful.
Wireless networking: the new freedom to communicate. Tell your friends, and help them set up secure internet access points.
by your argument dangerous substances would become legal. And they should. If that large a population wants to take drugs, let them. We're supposedly living in free societies. Indeed. As a matter of fact, California law states that one can be prescribed THC, in any form. The federal government sees it differently, although it's a states' rights issue... Lots of people are a bit upset that the feds busted them for filling their legal (and legally acquired) prescriptions.
What it comes down to is money. 1% of the populace controls 99% of the wealth, and so us peons are starting to chafe at the power distribution. A little wealth redistribution might help with that, but for some reason, none of the people who have all that money want to give any of it up.
Only if the monitor the content can they tell if what I am uploading is legal or illegal at which point they become partly responsible for it... And how, pray tell, can you determine whether that mp3 of (insert song) is illegal simply by determining it exists? Perhaps I just ripped it from the CD I legally purchased, and am now uploading it to my personal, access-restricted webserver, so that I can listen to it at leisure from any of my multiple points of internet access? Or maybe I did just steal it from the intartubes... but again, how can you tell that from looking at the file?
This same argument is being used to "inspect" ipods, laptops, etc at the borders, now, with the same question being asked... how can you tell, by looking at a file, that it has come from an illegitimate source?
Think about how horrible it would be if you could take classic films (like Star Wars), and add tons of CG effects, and resell them. You mean like Lucas Arts did? Yeah, that was horrible!
Then why haven't AT&T, Verizon, and QWest been sued by the RIAA members for facilitating copyright infringement when they should be filtering, monitoring, and blocking? Because they *do* qualify under the "Safe Harbor" Act. Literacy and reading comprehension ftw! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act
The more of this kind of activity I read about, the more it seems like we need to take the power to regulate/intimidate/manipulate our information systems away from those without the common sense to understand that my information is mine, and when I send it to someone, I expect it to arrive unadulterated.
Perhaps we should move to a wireless infrastructure, and avoid the "intartubes" all together?
To answer your immediate outburst: No, I haven't really thought this through. On the other hand, It's obvious that the ISPs aren't thinking through their reality-twisting plans, either... so why should I?
In that case, let me quickly bring you up to speed.
Several major internet service providers have been making noises to the tune of "we're tired of our customers actually using the 'unlimited*' bandwidth we sell them". ComCast just rolled out its pilot program in eastern Texas, wherein they charge based on the bandwidth consumed. The party line is that "illegal" torrents are causing network issues for other subscribers, with 5% of the customer base eating 90% of the bandwidth.
The general Slashdot response seems to be a mixture of "Yeah! Evil pirates suck!" and "Why am I paying for unlimited bandwidth if I'll be penalized for actually saturating my pipe?", with liberal sprinklings of misinformation (such as the widespread misconception that "Common Carrier" status has anything to do with ISPs (they're more likely to fall under the "Safe Harbor" Act, and practically none of them (at least in the internet "subsidiary holding" of the main company) have anything to do with anything that "Common Carrier" status would even apply to).
To make a long story short, it seems like every major corporation out there is trying to eat a larger slice of an ever-shrinking pie, and the consumer is getting the bill.
Ya know, when I throw the synopsis together like that, it makes me wonder why corporations seem to have so much power... then I remember the Golden Rule, "He who has the gold makes the rules."
This was not an attempt at sarcasm or a personal attack; merely my musings on the subject, and an attempt to learn something by explaining it to someone else (which, surprisingly enough, sometimes actually works).
Are ISPs going in the same direction as the media industry and the lovely RIAA? Of course they are! Have you been hiding under a rock for the past year and a half?
To make matters worse, browsers for good reason won't cache data received over SSL, so each page view sees much more data having to be served. Thus raising the rates for the serving entity... and, now that the ISPs are going to start metering consumer internet usage, raising the costs for consumers. Also, this will increase the amount of traffic on the web exponentially, as every server that wants to be seen as "worth its salt" will begin encrypting their data stream to thwart the spam and misdirection of the internet service providers. This will lead directly to the infrastructure being overwhelmed, since the metering of internet usage is part of the plan to make money with what they already have, rather than improving the infrastructure to support what they've already sold.
And to tie these subjects together, I applaud the ISPs for taking on the spammers directly. See, if the spammers (including the ISP, with this DPI stuff) are sending me unsolicited data, and my bandwidth usage is being monitored so they can charge me for it, then they're literally stealing money from me. Last I checked, theft was still a crime in every country in the world... some of them even consider it a capital offense. Spammers already fear exposure because they annoy the crap out of people... what do you think will happen when their "annoying crap" becomes "expensive, annoying crap"?
With metered internet usage, these injected ads become, if not theft, then at the very least outright fraud. It would be like having a water company guy come to your house and poke a hole in your pipe, causing a leak... and then billing you for the excess water usage. This throws the ball into a whole new court, since you are not legally required to pay for fraudulent claims... and the credit card companies tend to be rather vigilant about tracking down fraudsters. It will make many people very happy to see the CEOs of ISPs getting shoved into the back of a squad car for defrauding customers, I would think. It would certainly bring a smile to *my* face.
I, for one, welcome our metered information supplying overlords... but will not accept them until they can prove to me beyond a reasonable doubt that I intentionally downloaded everything they say I did. And none of their baby-killing (charity-replacing) ads, either!
Imagine if the electric and cable companies showed up, uninvited, at your house with a huge television. They then plug the television into your power, and start showing you their favorite commercials, right on your front lawn... and then they present a bill for this unsolicited "service", in addition to the electric company charging you for the electricity required. The outrage would be immense, and justified. The cry of "Get off my lawn!" would be audible for several city blocks. What makes the internet service providers think it would be any different to do the exact same thing in everyone's browsers?
A large amount of.NET programs will "just run" on Windows CE. And an absurdly large number won't. To be frank, I'm wondering just which programs you're referring to, because damn near nothing runs on my ARM-based WindowsCE-running device without *major* tweaking (read that as "practically rewritten from the ground up"). Yeah, yeah, anecdotal whatsis, but my current office project is porting some old code to WinCE, via Visual Studio 2008. It's absolutely amazing how many things *aren't* supported "out of the box" under the.NET Compact Framework. Menus, for instance. Tooltips, for another.
I'm sorry, did you have a point, or were you just being an ass? Oh, I see; You just wanted to bitch about something. Congratulations, you managed to find someone who found one of English's completely screwed-up rules, and went the wrong way with it.
Why is "noone" not a word, but "nobody" is? Especially when we have an "everyone" and an "everybody"?
Yeah, yeah. Like you never misspelled *anything*, *ever*. Get a life, or at least pay attention to the topic at hand, rather than someone's minor spelling/grammatical mistakes.
Sheesh. It's almost like you're attacking the spelling issues because you're afraid we'll think you're a paedophiliac if you don't speak up about *something*.
-- Grammar Nazis have nothing better to do, and nothing to add to the discussion.
I keep hearing about AVG, but I'm an Avast! user, myself. I don't know about the technical end, but AVG looks kinda amateur, in comparison (from a strictly graphical/interface standpoint).
On the other hand, I also have an XP machine that was installed on October 14th, 2007, is used almost daily, and sits on an open internet connection - and is still whining that I haven't installed antivirus on it (because it actually doesn't have any, not because the one I installed was broken, or something). I scan it weekly with another machine, and have yet to find any malware other than a few tracking cookies.
Bottom line, your usage is what gets you virus-infected.
Oh, I also run a 760k hosts file. Might that have something to do with it?
I think we're working at cross purposes, here, when we don't need to. I wasn't attacking the idea, so much as critiquing it. If you'll read more than the first few sentences of my post, you'll see that in addition to pointing out some flaws, I mentioned some ideas that would make this arguably a Good Thing(tm).
For instance, the increased performance due to not having umpty-bazillion other processes running in the background while you're just wanting the highest FPS and lowest latency you can get so you and 30 or so of your closest friends can frag each other.
An upside for the developers might be making sure we don't cheat at their game, by simply not giving us a web-browser (or other dev tools) on the standard disk. Of course, the pirates/hackers/crackers will figure a way around this, too, but it'll be one more hoop for Joe Sixpack to jump through before he can seriously break the game, or share it with his friends.
Now, to attack the big problems in earnest:
The major downside, as I see it, is having to elevate the game programmer to the level of OS developer. I will again point out the huge diversity in hardware, and ask how much knowledge it requires just to get a system to do more than POST when you're writing your own operating system. Snitching the Windows(tm) drivers might work for your hardware interface (assuming the base-level coding is there to support adding a Windows(tm) driver to the stack), but when you talk about snagging non-free code (such as the Windows(tm) operating system itself), you get into all kinds of licensing/legal issues... not to mention that not everyone runs Windows(tm) on their gaming rig, or even has a legally-licensed copy of Redmond's wallet-snatching piece of^W^W^W^W a Microsoft OS just laying around.
I don't personally want to reboot my pc to play a game or launch an app, but I can definitely see the benefits of doing so. I can also see that it would drastically increase development time, unless someone makes a F/OSS operating system specifically for this purpose... in which case, our incredible developer diversity is not a boon. We would need to standardize on something, or each game-producing company is going to be reinventing the wheel... which costs them money, thereby decreasing their incentive to produce - not to mention potentially adding years to the development cycle.
Speaking from my viewpoint as a Linux user (read "not a Linux developer"), the biggest challenge for Linux in the gaming market that I see is that Microsoft(tm) Windows(tm) already has a system designed to make developing games "just work" on a wide variety of hardware. They call it "DirectX(tm)", and the game developers seem to like it an awful lot (check my work, here - go to Wal-Mart, or your favorite software shop, and scan the list of titles that "support" DirectX - and then see how many you can find for OpenGL. Before you get up in arms about my choice of distributor, ask Joe Sixpack where he buys his games). Don't take this as a personal affront; see it as more of a challenge or call-to-arms. A good, workable solution might be for a bunch of Linux developers to come up with something akin to DirectX(tm), but without tying it to a specific (non-free) OS - or rather, come up with an OS that is absurdly easy to develop games for (ala Windows(tm) with DirectX(tm)), and release it to the public so everyone benefits.
As for your comment,
Creating a bootable version of a game should be optional and would benefit hardcore gamers that want to get the most FPS they could.
I think it already is optional. I don't personally know how to do it (nor do I have the time to look it up at the moment), but I'm fairly sure that you can make a LiveCD of your favorite distro, with whatever software you want on it. You might find that the performance isn't quite what you were expecting, running from CD/DVD, but "them's the breaks". Perhaps you should just make a partition with a clean OS install on
Take this a step further... Why can't apps be bootable? Why not just ship a bootable DVD with your app, that fires up an OS and runs your application only?
My immediate response is "because I don't want to wait for my system to reboot every time I want to run a different app/game".
On the other hand, this would eliminate gaming performance issues caused by malware, too many other processes running, etc. It could also give the game developer complete (software) control over the OS, or simply eliminate the chance that Joe Sixpack is going to be able to look up a walkthrough, run cracks/hacks/cheats, etc.
Kinda a mixed basket of potentials, here, but I think that the basic response to this is simply "Why don't we all run linux from LiveCDs?"
Hardware divirsity and a little thought about potential issues kills this idea, but thank you for reminding me of the "good ole' days", when I would reboot with a floppy so I could play my DOS-mode games without all the extra drivers and stuff eating up my base memory. Ah, the good old days. Now get off my lawn.
Interesting concept. Perhaps this could be used in computing to increase the available cpu speed, without necessarily having to invest in further silicon research? We're talking orders of magnitudes higher frequency than current cpus, yes?
This is purely theoretical, and I actually have no idea what I'm talking about.
Slashdot Mirror
This snippit from the article (emphasis mine) shows that this is a slippery slope already... The agreements resulted from an eight-month investigation and sting operation in which undercover agents from Mr. Cuomo's office, posing as subscribers, complained to Internet providers that they were allowing child pornography to proliferate online, despite customer service agreements that discouraged such activity. Verizon, for example, warns its users that they risk losing their service if they transmit or disseminate sexually exploitative images of children.
After the companies ignored the investigators' complaints, the attorney general's office surfaced, threatening charges of fraud and deceptive business practices. The companies agreed to cooperate and began weeks of negotiations. Sorry, folks, but you can't have it both ways. Either no one is allowed to deceive, or everyone is. Don't lie to someone and then be pissed when they lie to you. In addition, has anyone thought about whether the "agents" in this situation were actually "under cover"? Perhaps the ISP was merely ignoring a constant stream of abuse from obvious (or known) fake subscribers...
Can you point out where anyone's life is at risk over whether Joe Sixpack downloads little girls or whatnot? And please don't give me any crap about how if he downloads pics, he's gonna be a kidnapper/rapist. In all fairness, we could also make the argument that if he *can't* download the pics, he'll go kidnap someone to make his own.
Atheists are persecuted by religious zealots, simply for not conforming to the locally-accepted religious dogma. Atheists have accepted the truth that there is no God, and they are punished for this every time they slip up and let some God-fearing person know that. Atheists are harassed and ridiculed for their beliefs, but this seems to be OK, because "they don't believe in God, so they have no religion to have freedom of." That's the position of the courts, as well.
Atheists are vehement because you stupid Christians won't leave us alone in our unbelief. Yeah, go ahead, bristle at me for calling you stupid. Anyone who believes that a cosmic jewish zombie who endorses ritualized cannibalism can save their (non-existant, or at least unprovable) "soul" for use in happy slavery later (have you *read* your precious Bible? I didn't make any of this up!) is a complete and utter moron, and gullible to boot. Go ahead, be upset that I called you a moron. Now, taste the irony when you get mad at me for "hate speech", when I'm only pissed in the first place because you cussed me out for not believing in your psychotic mythology, and for having the gall to mow my grass on Sunday.
Wow. This was supposed to be a simple explanation of why Atheists are so violently opposed to religion in general, and it turned into a ranting diatribe against Christianity. Looks like I need to dial back the anger a bit.
On the other hand, It is awesome that so many of you who bash this organization are probably also big time 1st amendment thumpers. I guess if someone has a different opinion than you, you don't support THEIR 1st amendment rights. Or maybe we are just tired of defending ourselves against oppressive religions that don't believe in our right to be left alone, free of all the God-fearing mumbo-jumbo, free of unearned guilt, freedom to think our own thoughts.
I have a serious question for you. Why is it that we're not allowed to blame God when bad things occur, but we should praise him for random good things happening? Either it's his fault or it's not, eh? When you have an actual answer for that question (no, I want one that makes sense, I don't wanna hear about genderless winged people that can impregnate a middle-aged "virgin" with a mythical man-in-the-sky's love child after tricking a poor farmer into letting them sleep with his wife), then we can talk about the rest of the list.
One of the biggest issues I have with the Christian mythology is that we're supposed to accept things on faith... kinda like a 2,000 year old "who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" Makes you seem like a gullible sap, if you think about it too long, so don't do it if you value your faith.
The other big issue, to me, is the "love your neighbor, or we'll fucking kill you" bit. The only religious zealots more violent than Christians are Muslims, and (coincidence?) those two have been fighting each other for a couple thousand years.
Ok, so my 2 cents turned into a nickel. So?
No, really. But try typing the words in a sentence, this time. With, I don't know... grammar, and stuff.
(Hint: You can take the price of a residential broadband connection and multiply it by at least 10, probably 20 or 30). Not sure about the UK, but in the US, I can get broadband for $50/month, or I can get "business" broadband (same stuff, but without dropping my packets on ports 80, 110, etc. and supposedly more reliable) for about $300/month. So take your 10-30 times as expensive, and call it 6.
No, I haven't looked at the prices in the UK. I don't live there, and so have no reason to.
I'm a linux nub, and I was able to peel off a public wireless connection on my LAN, without giving it any access to my local network. iptables is extremely helpful.
Wireless networking: the new freedom to communicate.
Tell your friends, and help them set up secure internet access points.
What it comes down to is money. 1% of the populace controls 99% of the wealth, and so us peons are starting to chafe at the power distribution. A little wealth redistribution might help with that, but for some reason, none of the people who have all that money want to give any of it up.
Perhaps I just ripped it from the CD I legally purchased, and am now uploading it to my personal, access-restricted webserver, so that I can listen to it at leisure from any of my multiple points of internet access?
Or maybe I did just steal it from the intartubes... but again, how can you tell that from looking at the file?
This same argument is being used to "inspect" ipods, laptops, etc at the borders, now, with the same question being asked... how can you tell, by looking at a file, that it has come from an illegitimate source?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act
The more of this kind of activity I read about, the more it seems like we need to take the power to regulate/intimidate/manipulate our information systems away from those without the common sense to understand that my information is mine, and when I send it to someone, I expect it to arrive unadulterated.
Perhaps we should move to a wireless infrastructure, and avoid the "intartubes" all together?
To answer your immediate outburst: No, I haven't really thought this through. On the other hand, It's obvious that the ISPs aren't thinking through their reality-twisting plans, either... so why should I?
In that case, let me quickly bring you up to speed.
Several major internet service providers have been making noises to the tune of "we're tired of our customers actually using the 'unlimited*' bandwidth we sell them". ComCast just rolled out its pilot program in eastern Texas, wherein they charge based on the bandwidth consumed. The party line is that "illegal" torrents are causing network issues for other subscribers, with 5% of the customer base eating 90% of the bandwidth.
The general Slashdot response seems to be a mixture of "Yeah! Evil pirates suck!" and "Why am I paying for unlimited bandwidth if I'll be penalized for actually saturating my pipe?", with liberal sprinklings of misinformation (such as the widespread misconception that "Common Carrier" status has anything to do with ISPs (they're more likely to fall under the "Safe Harbor" Act, and practically none of them (at least in the internet "subsidiary holding" of the main company) have anything to do with anything that "Common Carrier" status would even apply to).
To make a long story short, it seems like every major corporation out there is trying to eat a larger slice of an ever-shrinking pie, and the consumer is getting the bill.
Ya know, when I throw the synopsis together like that, it makes me wonder why corporations seem to have so much power... then I remember the Golden Rule, "He who has the gold makes the rules."
This was not an attempt at sarcasm or a personal attack; merely my musings on the subject, and an attempt to learn something by explaining it to someone else (which, surprisingly enough, sometimes actually works).
Ooh, I hadn't thought of that one... the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act could make things very ticklish...
And to tie these subjects together, I applaud the ISPs for taking on the spammers directly. See, if the spammers (including the ISP, with this DPI stuff) are sending me unsolicited data, and my bandwidth usage is being monitored so they can charge me for it, then they're literally stealing money from me. Last I checked, theft was still a crime in every country in the world... some of them even consider it a capital offense. Spammers already fear exposure because they annoy the crap out of people... what do you think will happen when their "annoying crap" becomes "expensive, annoying crap"?
With metered internet usage, these injected ads become, if not theft, then at the very least outright fraud. It would be like having a water company guy come to your house and poke a hole in your pipe, causing a leak... and then billing you for the excess water usage. This throws the ball into a whole new court, since you are not legally required to pay for fraudulent claims... and the credit card companies tend to be rather vigilant about tracking down fraudsters. It will make many people very happy to see the CEOs of ISPs getting shoved into the back of a squad car for defrauding customers, I would think. It would certainly bring a smile to *my* face.
I, for one, welcome our metered information supplying overlords... but will not accept them until they can prove to me beyond a reasonable doubt that I intentionally downloaded everything they say I did. And none of their baby-killing (charity-replacing) ads, either!
Imagine if the electric and cable companies showed up, uninvited, at your house with a huge television. They then plug the television into your power, and start showing you their favorite commercials, right on your front lawn... and then they present a bill for this unsolicited "service", in addition to the electric company charging you for the electricity required. The outrage would be immense, and justified. The cry of "Get off my lawn!" would be audible for several city blocks. What makes the internet service providers think it would be any different to do the exact same thing in everyone's browsers?
OMG ROFL
I wish I had mod points, I don't care if it's an AC.
I need a new keyboard, and a towel for my monitor.
So, which programs "just run"?
I'm sorry, did you have a point, or were you just being an ass? Oh, I see; You just wanted to bitch about something. Congratulations, you managed to find someone who found one of English's completely screwed-up rules, and went the wrong way with it.
Why is "noone" not a word, but "nobody" is? Especially when we have an "everyone" and an "everybody"?
Yeah, yeah. Like you never misspelled *anything*, *ever*. Get a life, or at least pay attention to the topic at hand, rather than someone's minor spelling/grammatical mistakes.
Sheesh. It's almost like you're attacking the spelling issues because you're afraid we'll think you're a paedophiliac if you don't speak up about *something*.
--
Grammar Nazis have nothing better to do, and nothing to add to the discussion.
I keep hearing about AVG, but I'm an Avast! user, myself. I don't know about the technical end, but AVG looks kinda amateur, in comparison (from a strictly graphical/interface standpoint).
On the other hand, I also have an XP machine that was installed on October 14th, 2007, is used almost daily, and sits on an open internet connection - and is still whining that I haven't installed antivirus on it (because it actually doesn't have any, not because the one I installed was broken, or something). I scan it weekly with another machine, and have yet to find any malware other than a few tracking cookies.
Bottom line, your usage is what gets you virus-infected.
Oh, I also run a 760k hosts file. Might that have something to do with it?
I think we're working at cross purposes, here, when we don't need to. I wasn't attacking the idea, so much as critiquing it. If you'll read more than the first few sentences of my post, you'll see that in addition to pointing out some flaws, I mentioned some ideas that would make this arguably a Good Thing(tm).
For instance, the increased performance due to not having umpty-bazillion other processes running in the background while you're just wanting the highest FPS and lowest latency you can get so you and 30 or so of your closest friends can frag each other.
An upside for the developers might be making sure we don't cheat at their game, by simply not giving us a web-browser (or other dev tools) on the standard disk. Of course, the pirates/hackers/crackers will figure a way around this, too, but it'll be one more hoop for Joe Sixpack to jump through before he can seriously break the game, or share it with his friends.
Now, to attack the big problems in earnest:
The major downside, as I see it, is having to elevate the game programmer to the level of OS developer. I will again point out the huge diversity in hardware, and ask how much knowledge it requires just to get a system to do more than POST when you're writing your own operating system. Snitching the Windows(tm) drivers might work for your hardware interface (assuming the base-level coding is there to support adding a Windows(tm) driver to the stack), but when you talk about snagging non-free code (such as the Windows(tm) operating system itself), you get into all kinds of licensing/legal issues... not to mention that not everyone runs Windows(tm) on their gaming rig, or even has a legally-licensed copy of Redmond's wallet-snatching piece of^W^W^W^W a Microsoft OS just laying around.
I don't personally want to reboot my pc to play a game or launch an app, but I can definitely see the benefits of doing so. I can also see that it would drastically increase development time, unless someone makes a F/OSS operating system specifically for this purpose... in which case, our incredible developer diversity is not a boon. We would need to standardize on something, or each game-producing company is going to be reinventing the wheel... which costs them money, thereby decreasing their incentive to produce - not to mention potentially adding years to the development cycle.
Speaking from my viewpoint as a Linux user (read "not a Linux developer"), the biggest challenge for Linux in the gaming market that I see is that Microsoft(tm) Windows(tm) already has a system designed to make developing games "just work" on a wide variety of hardware. They call it "DirectX(tm)", and the game developers seem to like it an awful lot (check my work, here - go to Wal-Mart, or your favorite software shop, and scan the list of titles that "support" DirectX - and then see how many you can find for OpenGL. Before you get up in arms about my choice of distributor, ask Joe Sixpack where he buys his games). Don't take this as a personal affront; see it as more of a challenge or call-to-arms. A good, workable solution might be for a bunch of Linux developers to come up with something akin to DirectX(tm), but without tying it to a specific (non-free) OS - or rather, come up with an OS that is absurdly easy to develop games for (ala Windows(tm) with DirectX(tm)), and release it to the public so everyone benefits.
As for your comment,
Creating a bootable version of a game should be optional and would benefit hardcore gamers that want to get the most FPS they could.
I think it already is optional. I don't personally know how to do it (nor do I have the time to look it up at the moment), but I'm fairly sure that you can make a LiveCD of your favorite distro, with whatever software you want on it. You might find that the performance isn't quite what you were expecting, running from CD/DVD, but "them's the breaks". Perhaps you should just make a partition with a clean OS install on
Take this a step further... Why can't apps be bootable? Why not just ship a bootable DVD with your app, that fires up an OS and runs your application only?
My immediate response is "because I don't want to wait for my system to reboot every time I want to run a different app/game".
On the other hand, this would eliminate gaming performance issues caused by malware, too many other processes running, etc. It could also give the game developer complete (software) control over the OS, or simply eliminate the chance that Joe Sixpack is going to be able to look up a walkthrough, run cracks/hacks/cheats, etc.
Kinda a mixed basket of potentials, here, but I think that the basic response to this is simply "Why don't we all run linux from LiveCDs?"
Hardware divirsity and a little thought about potential issues kills this idea, but thank you for reminding me of the "good ole' days", when I would reboot with a floppy so I could play my DOS-mode games without all the extra drivers and stuff eating up my base memory. Ah, the good old days. Now get off my lawn.
Interesting concept. Perhaps this could be used in computing to increase the available cpu speed, without necessarily having to invest in further silicon research? We're talking orders of magnitudes higher frequency than current cpus, yes?
This is purely theoretical, and I actually have no idea what I'm talking about.