Does that mean Microsoft is going to call Longhorn "Windows XB"?
Since the Xbox is basically a PC, and the games are basically Windows games using DirectX, this isn't a stretch of the imagination.
The Xbox 1 has NVIDIA graphics. Requiring an Xbox 2 compatible video card for whatever version of DirectX comes with Longhorn would pretty much hand the video card market to NVIDIA. Watch the next administration (that is, without AG A$$croft) breakup such a monopolistic action.
The idea of boot-n-play and standard controller really makes standard PC an excellent game console
The PC still lacks in three important factors that keep it from being a serious game console: 1. TV-out standard rather than as an extra-cost option (I don't like to have four players huddled around a 17 inch monitor), 2. native game designs that work well on a display as blurry as a TV (no tiny details to squint at), and 3. fan and HD noise. My GameCube console has a fan but is still much quieter than my Dell PC.
I just thought on how cool it would be to play quake against you with a ps/2 mouse!
Yeah, but the game after Quake 1 in the line-up isn't Quake 3 or Counter-strike but rather Puyo Puyo. Let's see how well you fare at that with a mouse!
Personally, I would be quite happy if I could just grab console games and play them without having to drop another $200-300 on console hardware.
Then buy a Flash Advance Linker ($40 or so) and several Game Boy Advance game paks. With those, you can legitimately run your favorite GBA games, including ports of old NES and Super NES classics, in nearly perfect emulation.
What law? The DMCA? That applies only when you (quote the law here). To which "work protected under this title" (Title 17, U.S. Code) would the suit relate?
you know how people use DES 3 times and called it 3DES? Why not use ROT-13+ 3 times and call it 3ROT-13?
ROT-n is a closed associative binary operation. That is, two composed ROT-i and ROT-j make a ROT-k. This is not true of DES, which is why DES E(i) D(j) E(i) provides 112 bits of effective key length.
So this strategy [of copying one's competitor's user interface] got MS on the top, and it can as well work work again.
Though this is legal in the United States as of this writing (Lotus v. Borland), it won't be if Microsoft manages to close the door behind itself. That's a common corporate tactic with respect to copyrights: Disney adapted stories immediately after they had fallen into worldwide PD (Pinocchio, The Jungle Book, etc) and then closed the door behind itself by lobbying for the Bono Act. Likewise, Microsoft could copy user interfaces and then close the door behind itself by lobbying for copyright restrictions on user interfaces.
but I think SO is a pretty good rip-off of M$ office. And costs nil too
Not exactly nil because 80 percent of home users are still behind dial-up. A CD of OpenOffice.org software (which : SO 6:: Mozilla : Netscape 7) apparently costs $2.50 shipped in the United States. Though it's not nil, it's still a couple orders of magnitude less than the price per seat of Microsoft Office software.
Without money, if you eat, you must steal, and if you steal, you are likely to get caught, and if you get caught, the government will FORCE you into jail.
students who have used nothing but Microsoft products and really have no urge to learn how a UN*X system works will avoid computer laboratories and library systems.
Or they will just be told at computer orientation to choose the "MSWROWM"[1] at the login menu.
800kbits per second. To get this, your radio stations have to be about 800 kHz apart
You don't need 800 kHz of bandwidth to transmit 800 kbps. By increasing the number of levels of amplitude modulation, you can trade more bits per second for noise tolerance. For instance, v.90 modulation sends up to 53 Kbps on a 4 KHz channel.
And you don't need 800 kbps for CD quality either; you can get that from Ogg Vorbis audio coding at 192 kbps or so, which should be relatively easy to squeeze into about 70 Hz of bandwidth.
Which would provide a bandwidth of only 0.0002 MHz, or 200 Hz. Under theoretical best conditions, this can carry only 400 words per second, and noise sources such as thermal noise and leakage from other stations limit the signal-to-noise ratio, which determines the theoretical best word length.
right now, it's impossible. In the future, you could (but why would ya want to?)
Precisely. Such narrowband transmissions are theoretically possible but hardly practical.
he can always whisper it to his neighbour, who can pass it along, rather than standing up and bellowing at the top of his voice.
Have you ever actually played the telephone game? It's too easy for a message to get corrupted by accident. Though error-correction solves this in practice, that doesn't eliminate the possibility of a malicious conspiracy of men in the middle from f*ing with the network.
Then how can Python code be sent through a channel that does not preserve indentation, other than through something like uuencode (which would trip the lameness filter)?
but talks acts like he had some kind of legal right. WTF?
Until the book is published, he does have the right to distribute advance copies to reviewers under condition that they publish no spoilers, not through copyright but through "trade secret" law.
Because the artist, inventor, or whatever has an estate, heirs, a family to support
That's why there's something called life insurance. Why does Congress seem to feel that the Copyright Office needs to compete with New York Life? And even under an assumption of copyright as life insurance, isn't ten years enough for the heirs to find wage jobs?
Ad companies
Red herring? I understand your point about use of a dead celebrity to endorse a product during the first couple dozen or so years of his afterlife, but that applies only to works containing performances by the celebrity (i.e. only sound recordings, film, and TV) and has nothing to do with copyrights on other works (such as novels, plays, and sheet music) being treated as a life insurance policy. Why does there need to be a "life plus" term at all for those works?
For corporations
Partnerships and corporations are both businesses. That's why USA copyright law speaks of "works made for hire" rather than works of corporate authorship.
What if the head researcher made a massive discovery and died the next day?
That's why patents are limited to 20 years with no "life plus" provision.
That being said, I think the current terms are, indeed, far too long.
So do you think a copyright should last 20 years like a patent? And have you expressed these views to your representatives in the legislature (Parliament, Congress, Diet, whatever they call it in your country)?
It boggles the mind how the admins who choose passwords like "password" or "1234" can keep a job.
Problem is that the "admins" in this case are those who administer their own home computers. I see no reason why sub-$10/hr employees of Wal*Mart or Wendy's would have any appreciable connection between administering their home computers and their standing with their employers.
No system should be cracked by a worm that searches for the sort of passwords you'd expect an idiot (or President Scroob) to have on their luggage.
Then how does anybody prevent idiots from connecting their home machines to the Internet?
a simple "file://attackeripaddy" in a browser window results in around 80% success using either no username/password, or a simple "guest" username with no password.
The guest account in NT is a feature, analogous to "anonymous FTP". You just have to make sure that group "Guests" is denied write privileges outside of the temp folder and denied read privileges of any sensitive information.
Slashdot Mirror
compatibility between Loghorn and Xbox2.
Does that mean Microsoft is going to call Longhorn "Windows XB"?
Since the Xbox is basically a PC, and the games are basically Windows games using DirectX, this isn't a stretch of the imagination.
The Xbox 1 has NVIDIA graphics. Requiring an Xbox 2 compatible video card for whatever version of DirectX comes with Longhorn would pretty much hand the video card market to NVIDIA. Watch the next administration (that is, without AG A$$croft) breakup such a monopolistic action.
Either your loading the whole game into RAM, *shudder*
That's what PS1 and PS2 games do. They load a basic OS into RAM and then mount the CD drive read-only.
or it will include a program to automatically install when you run the game, and uninstall the program when you finish.
That's pretty much what Xbox games do.
The idea of boot-n-play and standard controller really makes standard PC an excellent game console
The PC still lacks in three important factors that keep it from being a serious game console: 1. TV-out standard rather than as an extra-cost option (I don't like to have four players huddled around a 17 inch monitor), 2. native game designs that work well on a display as blurry as a TV (no tiny details to squint at), and 3. fan and HD noise. My GameCube console has a fan but is still much quieter than my Dell PC.
I just thought on how cool it would be to play quake against you with a ps/2 mouse!
Yeah, but the game after Quake 1 in the line-up isn't Quake 3 or Counter-strike but rather Puyo Puyo. Let's see how well you fare at that with a mouse!
I just thought on how cool it would be to play quake with the nintendo 64 controller.
Want cool? Buy it now.
I personally prefer using PS1 controllers with the EMS USB2 adapter.
Personally, I would be quite happy if I could just grab console games and play them without having to drop another $200-300 on console hardware.
Then buy a Flash Advance Linker ($40 or so) and several Game Boy Advance game paks. With those, you can legitimately run your favorite GBA games, including ports of old NES and Super NES classics, in nearly perfect emulation.
Computers already have standard controllers included. They're called the keyboard and mouse.
I haven't seen one PC game that allows use of two keyboards for two players on one machine.
I can't see the keyboard mouse combo going anywhere anytime soon..
Try playing Street Fighter II with a keyboard and mouse. Watch me whip you with a PS1 controller connected to the PC through an EMS USB2 adapter.
Try connecting more than one keyboard and mouse to one computer. One computer per player is much too expensive.
because it's an "intention" of breaking the law
What law? The DMCA? That applies only when you (quote the law here). To which "work protected under this title" (Title 17, U.S. Code) would the suit relate?
you know how people use DES 3 times and called it 3DES? Why not use ROT-13+ 3 times and call it 3ROT-13?
ROT-n is a closed associative binary operation. That is, two composed ROT-i and ROT-j make a ROT-k. This is not true of DES, which is why DES E(i) D(j) E(i) provides 112 bits of effective key length.
So this strategy [of copying one's competitor's user interface] got MS on the top, and it can as well work work again.
Though this is legal in the United States as of this writing (Lotus v. Borland), it won't be if Microsoft manages to close the door behind itself. That's a common corporate tactic with respect to copyrights: Disney adapted stories immediately after they had fallen into worldwide PD (Pinocchio, The Jungle Book, etc) and then closed the door behind itself by lobbying for the Bono Act. Likewise, Microsoft could copy user interfaces and then close the door behind itself by lobbying for copyright restrictions on user interfaces.
but I think SO is a pretty good rip-off of M$ office. And costs nil too
Not exactly nil because 80 percent of home users are still behind dial-up. A CD of OpenOffice.org software (which : SO 6 :: Mozilla : Netscape 7) apparently costs $2.50 shipped in the United States. Though it's not nil, it's still a couple orders of magnitude less than the price per seat of Microsoft Office software.
An offer of money is not force.
Without money, if you eat, you must steal, and if you steal, you are likely to get caught, and if you get caught, the government will FORCE you into jail.
No one has mentioned MEMENTO yet
Apparently, you can't hold a memory for two hours. Remember Sammy Jenkis?
[echelon.com] where the technology is already imbedded in millions of consumer devices
Why? So the government can spy on everything we transmit over the Internet?
students who have used nothing but Microsoft products and really have no urge to learn how a UN*X system works will avoid computer laboratories and library systems.
Or they will just be told at computer orientation to choose the "MSWROWM"[1] at the login menu.
[1] Microsoft Windows Rip-Off Window Manager
800kbits per second. To get this, your radio stations have to be about 800 kHz apart
You don't need 800 kHz of bandwidth to transmit 800 kbps. By increasing the number of levels of amplitude modulation, you can trade more bits per second for noise tolerance. For instance, v.90 modulation sends up to 53 Kbps on a 4 KHz channel.
And you don't need 800 kbps for CD quality either; you can get that from Ogg Vorbis audio coding at 192 kbps or so, which should be relatively easy to squeeze into about 70 Hz of bandwidth.
the difference between 24.567 and 24.5668 MHz
Which would provide a bandwidth of only 0.0002 MHz, or 200 Hz. Under theoretical best conditions, this can carry only 400 words per second, and noise sources such as thermal noise and leakage from other stations limit the signal-to-noise ratio, which determines the theoretical best word length.
right now, it's impossible. In the future, you could (but why would ya want to?)
Precisely. Such narrowband transmissions are theoretically possible but hardly practical.
he can always whisper it to his neighbour, who can pass it along, rather than standing up and bellowing at the top of his voice.
Have you ever actually played the telephone game? It's too easy for a message to get corrupted by accident. Though error-correction solves this in practice, that doesn't eliminate the possibility of a malicious conspiracy of men in the middle from f*ing with the network.
Have you reported this? Part of what the FCC is there for is to fix this sort of problem.
In the United States. But grandparent is in the UK. What's the British counterpart to the American FCC?
Then how can Python code be sent through a channel that does not preserve indentation, other than through something like uuencode (which would trip the lameness filter)?
but talks acts like he had some kind of legal right. WTF?
Until the book is published, he does have the right to distribute advance copies to reviewers under condition that they publish no spoilers, not through copyright but through "trade secret" law.
Because the artist, inventor, or whatever has an estate, heirs, a family to support
That's why there's something called life insurance. Why does Congress seem to feel that the Copyright Office needs to compete with New York Life? And even under an assumption of copyright as life insurance, isn't ten years enough for the heirs to find wage jobs?
Ad companies
Red herring? I understand your point about use of a dead celebrity to endorse a product during the first couple dozen or so years of his afterlife, but that applies only to works containing performances by the celebrity (i.e. only sound recordings, film, and TV) and has nothing to do with copyrights on other works (such as novels, plays, and sheet music) being treated as a life insurance policy. Why does there need to be a "life plus" term at all for those works?
For corporations
Partnerships and corporations are both businesses. That's why USA copyright law speaks of "works made for hire" rather than works of corporate authorship.
What if the head researcher made a massive discovery and died the next day?
That's why patents are limited to 20 years with no "life plus" provision.
That being said, I think the current terms are, indeed, far too long.
So do you think a copyright should last 20 years like a patent? And have you expressed these views to your representatives in the legislature (Parliament, Congress, Diet, whatever they call it in your country)?
It boggles the mind how the admins who choose passwords like "password" or "1234" can keep a job.
Problem is that the "admins" in this case are those who administer their own home computers. I see no reason why sub-$10/hr employees of Wal*Mart or Wendy's would have any appreciable connection between administering their home computers and their standing with their employers.
No system should be cracked by a worm that searches for the sort of passwords you'd expect an idiot (or President Scroob) to have on their luggage.
Then how does anybody prevent idiots from connecting their home machines to the Internet?
a simple "file://attackeripaddy" in a browser window results in around 80% success using either no username/password, or a simple "guest" username with no password.
The guest account in NT is a feature, analogous to "anonymous FTP". You just have to make sure that group "Guests" is denied write privileges outside of the temp folder and denied read privileges of any sensitive information.