So how does a small startup, not big enough to get recognized by Nintendo, publish on a popular handheld platform with a decent game-style input device?
> How is a developer supposed to design a Slash/Scoop/Nuke style board without storing the comments in a database?
I said "a database". Keep in mind that there are four main models of database structure: ad-hoc flat files, hierarchical, network, and relational. Here are some methods you suggested:
Store them in the file system
That's a hierarchical database, with keys called "paths" and "filenames". Some Wiki implementations do this, and I can see how it would work in a Slash clone. Here, the file system has to provide an atomic way to generate a new key. (mkstemp() is atomic; mktemp() and tempnam() are not.)
in a DBM file
"Data Base Manager"? Isn't much of MySQL just an SQL frontend to DBM?
in memory
Relying on memory as the main store of data fails the D (durability) in ACID. However, use of memory as a cache in front of a filesystem does provide useful gains.
or in an object database.
I'm not too familiar with object databases. To me, they seem to map the "network model" into a programming language's syntax. Right?
Relational databases are overkill for most web applications
I'll agree that heavyweight SQL databases are overkill for many uses that they're put to. Heck, the name "Oracle" almost sounds like "Overkill".
I did the site with no database whatsoever. Articles were stored in one XML format on disk, comments another.
So in other words, you stored the XML files in a hierarchical database called a "file system". Assuming one comment per file, how did you handle the half kilobyte of non-gzipable HTTP overhead that each XSLT-driven comment view incurs?
Assuming multiple comments per file, how did you handle locking the comment file so as to ensure that only one server process writes to a given file simultaneously?
GCC already compiles Ada, if this [gnu.org] is accurate.
I wasn't talking about GNAT, a GNU program that turns Ada code into machine code. That would be an Ada frontend for GCC, not a backend. I was talking about a program that would take C source code and output Ada, allowing a program written in C to be used on a system that allows only Ada.
Artists, we can place our works under the public domain, FDL or a creative commons license
That won't help artists in the face of precedents such as Bright Tunes v. Harrisongs (learn about it here or here), which make even "original" works potentially infringing. "So what if you published your work under a free public license? We claim that your work is a derivative of our work, and we have 10,000 times more money than you have to defend our claim in court."
I've got to wonder if anything that Disney/RIAA has used something that if applied to their own greed would place them in violation.
Disney's Pinocchio was released one year after the European copyright on Collodi's novel expired. Disney's The Jungle Book was released one year after the European copyright on Kipling's novel expired and eleven years after the U.S. copyright on Kipling's novel expired. Since then, copyright terms have been extended by far more than that.
Barrie's "Peter Pan" is still under copyright in the European Union, and Disney must pay royalties for every Region 2 "Peter Pan" or "Return to Never Land" disc sold in the EU.
And that this was just a measure to bring US law in synch with the EU.
And that this will be the loophole used to get the next term extension passed in the States.
Several of the European Union states do not have constitutional prohibitions on perpetual copyrights. If Rep. Mary Bono teams up with MPs and lobbyists in the EU, we'll see a bill introduced in the EU Parliament in 2005 that extends EU copyrights to life plus 100 years, and then Bono will claim that a corresponding "Chastity Bono Act of 2008" is necessary in the United States.
In fact, perpetual copyright has already happened in Britain. A children's hospital called GOSH receives a royalty every time "Peter Pan" or a derivative thereof is copied or performed in the UK, even by Eisner's company. The British Parliament could get away with this because the UK doesn't have a monolithic constitution with a provision prohibiting perpetual copyrights.
I find Marybono no less harmful to the public than Marlboro.
Inventions are not even covered by Copyrights. They are covered by Patents
How about making an analogy between copyright law and patent law? How about making an analogy between monopolies granted under Title 17, U.S. Code, and monopolies granted under Title 35, United States Code?
Patents which is handled by the USPTO not the Library of Congress (as copyrights are).
How about making an analogy between monopolies regulated by the LoC and monopolies regulated by the USPTO?
So, I guess what I'm asking, off-topic, is why the hell is Disney not re-issuing movies that were actually very good, instead of releasing crap every 4 months?
Actually, Disney does re-issue movies on VHS and DVD every few months. But Eisner still isn't getting any of my business unless and until Congress repeals the Bono Act.
Disney characters, such as Mickey Mouse, are also trademarked and therefore can never be used as long as Disney continues to maintain that Trademark.
Then why can I buy copies of Bugs Bunny cartoons at Walgreens? The front of the package reads "Bugs Bunny"; the back has language to the effect "This video cassette contains copies of public domain works and is not sponsored by Warner Bros. Pictures, the former copyright holder of these works." As long as a publisher goes out of his way not to use trademarks in such a way as to confuse buyers of the origin of the product, the publisher's use of another's trademarks tends to be fair.
they will build translators from whatever made up language they like to the language the machine does understand (i.e. compilers and virtual machines).
But the more translation layers there are between the source code and the hardware, the slower the code will run. Look at the difference in performance between C++ code, which is compiled directly to machine code, and Java code, which is compiled to JVM bytecodes and recompiled at runtime to machine code.
Do you really think you would want to write a GCC backend that emitted Ada source code?
First of all, did your "MDMA" web server support dynamic content at those rates?
In addition, I always thought MDMA stood for 3,4 Methylenedioxy-methamphetamine, or "Ecstasy" for short. Was ecstasy around back in 1994 when you named your server?
On RISC architectures, each instruction typically takes one cycle and fits in one 16- or 32-bit word. Thus, there's no speed or size difference between mov r4, #0 and xor r4, r4, r4.
The people who don't "get" xor ax, ax at first glance are primarily those whose first assembly language experience was on an architecture such as 6502 that can't do operations between registers and registers, only registers and memory.
The old swap trick a ^= b ^= a ^= b may have worked well on older architectures without a swap instruction, but modern processors can swap R1, R2 in one cycle as opposed to the three cycles a ^= b ^= a ^= b takes. In fact, GCC will optimize a ^= b ^= a ^= b to swap R1, R2 on such architectures.
So don't call it Red Hat. Call it "Aonaran Linux" and claim in the description that 1. the programs in Aonaran Linux x.x are identical to the programs in Red Hat Linux x.x, 2. Aonaran Linux is not a Red Hat product, and 3. Red Hat provides no warranty or support on Aonaran Linux. As long as you do nothing with Red Hat's trademark that could potentially cause confusion as to the origin or endorsement of your Aonaran Linux product, your use of Red Hat's trademark is probably fair.
So if Kazaa Lite could forward (to FastTrack) a query it receives from a non-FastTrack client, then return the FastTrack results to the non-FT client
Then Kazaa could push a new "security release" that kills Kazaa Lite clients, or at least the part of the Kazaa Lite client that forwards such queries.
As such, no license agreement is needed to use software.
This was true from 1976, when 17 USC 117 became law, until October 1998, when 17 USC 1201(a) (the DMCA's anticircumvention provision) became law.
Most applications for the Microsoft Windows platform must be "installed" before it can be used. Most installers are compressed and possibly encrypted; they decrypt themselves when you Agree to the on-screen EULA. To extract the files without running the installer and clicking through the EULA, you have to break the encryption on the installer. Because the installer ties the decryption to the EULA as an access control mechanism, you've violated the DMCA. Go directly to jail; do not pass Go; do not collect $200.
Given the recent Eldred decision, I don't see the Supreme Court striking down section 1201 or any other expansions of the copyright owner's government-granted monopoly power anytime soon.
Funny, when its Microsoft people start complaining about how restrictive their licenses are and squashing inovation etc etc, Apple do the same thing and its "Not their fault if you dont like their license"
A major difference between Microsoft Corporation and Apple Computer Inc. is that while Microsoft is a convicted monopolist, Apple is not. Convicted monopolists must play by different rules under United States antitrust law.
Does anyone know of any efforts to crack the FastTrack protocol by reverse-engineering KMD?
Well, there was giFT, but Kazaa killed giFT's FastTrack support by changing the protocol in the next client update. I assume that Kazaa will do the same thing in case of any attempt to crack future versions of the FastTrack protocol.
Slashdot Mirror
So how does a small startup, not big enough to get recognized by Nintendo, publish on a popular handheld platform with a decent game-style input device?
Snood survived with little or no advertizing and beceame a phenomonon.
Snood was a port of an arcade game called "Puzzle Bobble" aka "Bust-A-Move". It rode on the advertising of BAM.
> How is a developer supposed to design a Slash/Scoop/Nuke style board without storing the comments in a database?
I said "a database". Keep in mind that there are four main models of database structure: ad-hoc flat files, hierarchical, network, and relational. Here are some methods you suggested:
Store them in the file system
That's a hierarchical database, with keys called "paths" and "filenames". Some Wiki implementations do this, and I can see how it would work in a Slash clone. Here, the file system has to provide an atomic way to generate a new key. (mkstemp() is atomic; mktemp() and tempnam() are not.)
in a DBM file
"Data Base Manager"? Isn't much of MySQL just an SQL frontend to DBM?
in memory
Relying on memory as the main store of data fails the D (durability) in ACID. However, use of memory as a cache in front of a filesystem does provide useful gains.
or in an object database.
I'm not too familiar with object databases. To me, they seem to map the "network model" into a programming language's syntax. Right?
Relational databases are overkill for most web applications
I'll agree that heavyweight SQL databases are overkill for many uses that they're put to. Heck, the name "Oracle" almost sounds like "Overkill".
I did the site with no database whatsoever. Articles were stored in one XML format on disk, comments another.
So in other words, you stored the XML files in a hierarchical database called a "file system". Assuming one comment per file, how did you handle the half kilobyte of non-gzipable HTTP overhead that each XSLT-driven comment view incurs?
Assuming multiple comments per file, how did you handle locking the comment file so as to ensure that only one server process writes to a given file simultaneously?
on RISC archs you don't xor a register
Why wouldn't xor r3, r3, r3 or sub r3, r3, r3 work?
you gave the first register hard-wired to 0
SPARC and MIPS have a hardwired zero register. ARM doesn't. PowerPC apparently doesn't.
GCC already compiles Ada, if this [gnu.org] is accurate.
I wasn't talking about GNAT, a GNU program that turns Ada code into machine code. That would be an Ada frontend for GCC, not a backend. I was talking about a program that would take C source code and output Ada, allowing a program written in C to be used on a system that allows only Ada.
Artists, we can place our works under the public domain, FDL or a creative commons license
That won't help artists in the face of precedents such as Bright Tunes v. Harrisongs (learn about it here or here), which make even "original" works potentially infringing. "So what if you published your work under a free public license? We claim that your work is a derivative of our work, and we have 10,000 times more money than you have to defend our claim in court."
I've got to wonder if anything that Disney/RIAA has used something that if applied to their own greed would place them in violation.
Disney's Pinocchio was released one year after the European copyright on Collodi's novel expired. Disney's The Jungle Book was released one year after the European copyright on Kipling's novel expired and eleven years after the U.S. copyright on Kipling's novel expired. Since then, copyright terms have been extended by far more than that.
"Tarzan" is in the public domain.
No it's not, which is why all "Disney's Tarzan" material says "© Burroughs/Disney".
Barrie's "Peter Pan" is still under copyright in the European Union, and Disney must pay royalties for every Region 2 "Peter Pan" or "Return to Never Land" disc sold in the EU.
This is a call to civil disobedience.
And this is a response to your call. It violates the Bono Act and no other laws.
And that this was just a measure to bring US law in synch with the EU.
And that this will be the loophole used to get the next term extension passed in the States.
Several of the European Union states do not have constitutional prohibitions on perpetual copyrights. If Rep. Mary Bono teams up with MPs and lobbyists in the EU, we'll see a bill introduced in the EU Parliament in 2005 that extends EU copyrights to life plus 100 years, and then Bono will claim that a corresponding "Chastity Bono Act of 2008" is necessary in the United States.
In fact, perpetual copyright has already happened in Britain. A children's hospital called GOSH receives a royalty every time "Peter Pan" or a derivative thereof is copied or performed in the UK, even by Eisner's company. The British Parliament could get away with this because the UK doesn't have a monolithic constitution with a provision prohibiting perpetual copyrights.
I find Marybono no less harmful to the public than Marlboro.
Inventions are not even covered by Copyrights. They are covered by Patents
How about making an analogy between copyright law and patent law? How about making an analogy between monopolies granted under Title 17, U.S. Code, and monopolies granted under Title 35, United States Code?
Patents which is handled by the USPTO not the Library of Congress (as copyrights are).
How about making an analogy between monopolies regulated by the LoC and monopolies regulated by the USPTO?
Are you delusional or just trolling at +1?
How about C. making an analogy?
So, I guess what I'm asking, off-topic, is why the hell is Disney not re-issuing movies that were actually very good, instead of releasing crap every 4 months?
Actually, Disney does re-issue movies on VHS and DVD every few months. But Eisner still isn't getting any of my business unless and until Congress repeals the Bono Act.
Disney characters, such as Mickey Mouse, are also trademarked and therefore can never be used as long as Disney continues to maintain that Trademark.
Then why can I buy copies of Bugs Bunny cartoons at Walgreens? The front of the package reads "Bugs Bunny"; the back has language to the effect "This video cassette contains copies of public domain works and is not sponsored by Warner Bros. Pictures, the former copyright holder of these works." As long as a publisher goes out of his way not to use trademarks in such a way as to confuse buyers of the origin of the product, the publisher's use of another's trademarks tends to be fair.
they will build translators from whatever made up language they like to the language the machine does understand (i.e. compilers and virtual machines).
But the more translation layers there are between the source code and the hardware, the slower the code will run. Look at the difference in performance between C++ code, which is compiled directly to machine code, and Java code, which is compiled to JVM bytecodes and recompiled at runtime to machine code.
Do you really think you would want to write a GCC backend that emitted Ada source code?
Multithreaded Daemon For Multimedia Access (MDMA)
First of all, did your "MDMA" web server support dynamic content at those rates?
In addition, I always thought MDMA stood for 3,4 Methylenedioxy-methamphetamine, or "Ecstasy" for short. Was ecstasy around back in 1994 when you named your server?
Of course, it won't be able to if you do something stupid like put all your content into a database.
How is a developer supposed to design a Slash/Scoop/Nuke style board without storing the comments in a database?
On RISC architectures, each instruction typically takes one cycle and fits in one 16- or 32-bit word. Thus, there's no speed or size difference between mov r4, #0 and xor r4, r4, r4.
The people who don't "get" xor ax, ax at first glance are primarily those whose first assembly language experience was on an architecture such as 6502 that can't do operations between registers and registers, only registers and memory.
The old swap trick a ^= b ^= a ^= b may have worked well on older architectures without a swap instruction, but modern processors can swap R1, R2 in one cycle as opposed to the three cycles a ^= b ^= a ^= b takes. In fact, GCC will optimize a ^= b ^= a ^= b to swap R1, R2 on such architectures.
So don't call it Red Hat. Call it "Aonaran Linux" and claim in the description that 1. the programs in Aonaran Linux x.x are identical to the programs in Red Hat Linux x.x, 2. Aonaran Linux is not a Red Hat product, and 3. Red Hat provides no warranty or support on Aonaran Linux. As long as you do nothing with Red Hat's trademark that could potentially cause confusion as to the origin or endorsement of your Aonaran Linux product, your use of Red Hat's trademark is probably fair.
So if Kazaa Lite could forward (to FastTrack) a query it receives from a non-FastTrack client, then return the FastTrack results to the non-FT client
Then Kazaa could push a new "security release" that kills Kazaa Lite clients, or at least the part of the Kazaa Lite client that forwards such queries.
As such, no license agreement is needed to use software.
This was true from 1976, when 17 USC 117 became law, until October 1998, when 17 USC 1201(a) (the DMCA's anticircumvention provision) became law.
Most applications for the Microsoft Windows platform must be "installed" before it can be used. Most installers are compressed and possibly encrypted; they decrypt themselves when you Agree to the on-screen EULA. To extract the files without running the installer and clicking through the EULA, you have to break the encryption on the installer. Because the installer ties the decryption to the EULA as an access control mechanism, you've violated the DMCA. Go directly to jail; do not pass Go; do not collect $200.
Given the recent Eldred decision, I don't see the Supreme Court striking down section 1201 or any other expansions of the copyright owner's government-granted monopoly power anytime soon.
Funny, when its Microsoft people start complaining about how restrictive their licenses are and squashing inovation etc etc, Apple do the same thing and its "Not their fault if you dont like their license"
A major difference between Microsoft Corporation and Apple Computer Inc. is that while Microsoft is a convicted monopolist, Apple is not. Convicted monopolists must play by different rules under United States antitrust law.
Does anyone know of any efforts to crack the FastTrack protocol by reverse-engineering KMD?
Well, there was giFT, but Kazaa killed giFT's FastTrack support by changing the protocol in the next client update. I assume that Kazaa will do the same thing in case of any attempt to crack future versions of the FastTrack protocol.
By circumventing physical security, you gain access to the movie studio's library, and you can copy its original film masters.