The lack of software is still sort of the problem, but I think this mainly comes down to games
There are lots of games that will run in Linux:
There exist native ports of every major id Software first-person shooter.
The games packed in with Windows, such as minesweeper, solitaire, and freecell, have been cloned on both GNOME and KDE.
Some popular Windows 95 games such as Starcraft and Half-Life work nicely in even stock Wine.
Hook up a GB or GBA cart reader to your PC and spaceshift your carts, or stick a PS1 disc in your CD-ROM drive, and start legitimately emulating your favorite games. That's a couple thousand games right there.
because Word and Photoshop don't run on it except in the execrable WINE
"Word", short for "word processor", is a generic term referring to software more powerful than a text editor but less powerful than professional page-layout software. Therefore, word runs natively. Microsoft brand word doesn't.
Photoshop, on the other hand, is a trademark of Adobe Systems. However, the most significant thing GIMP can't do that the Photoshop brand image editor can is pre-press color image processing, which isn't useful if you will primarily be doing web or game art. As for the "easy to learn" factor, my six-year-old cousin picked up the basics of GIMP rather quickly.
Nintendo has always tried to keep their software clean (Bubble Bath Babes notwithstanding).
Bubble Bath Babes was published by Hacker and Panesian, both independent console software publishers not affiliated with NCL or NOA.
The original Mortal Kombat had sweat, rather than blood (although I believe there was a code to turn the sweat red.)
It was a Game Genie code on the Super NES, a Super Game Boy code on the Game Boy, and a keypress code on the Sega Genesis (A B A C A B B for basic, Down Up Left Left A Right Down for advanced, entered at the "secret code?" screen) and Game Gear (2 1 2 Down Up, entered at the "secret code?" screen).
Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! became just plain ol' Punch-Out!!, and Mike Tyson became Mr. Dream
No, that's because the Tyson licensing deal fell through between the first pressing of Punch-Out!! and the second pressing.
They have relaxed their policies
This came after Nintendo fans defected to the Sega Genesis because the Genesis version of Mortal Kombat 1 had a blood code and the original fatalities. Thus, Nintendo relaxed its policies, and Mortal Kombat II was the first 17-rated game for the Super NES. (The first M-rated game published by Nintendo was Conker's Bad Fur Day for N64.)
However, I didn't find any censorship in the Back to the Future 1 game for NES that I rented once because I didn't get very far. It wasn't all that fun, and I gave up on it and went back to Mario.
I can't remember the last time I heard anyone say "I found [insert whatever] on inktomi" at least not in the last 6 years.
Have you heard "found $foo on hotbot"? Until recently, when HotBot switched to a choice of four different engines, HotBot used Inktomi as its search engine. HotBot still offers Inktomi as its default search engine.
I can't begin to name the number of computers I see with google.com as their homepage (more than slashdot).
EarthLink Network gives its subscribers start.earthlink.net by default, which has a nice Google searchbox right in the middle of the page.
I wonder why they don't do similar edits and remove the Nazis from World War II movies.
Actually, in some video games, they have. Hitler shaved off his mustache and became the Staatmeister in Wolfenstein 3D for Super NES. (id Software was so frustrated at the actions of Nintendo's censors that id sold a Wolf3d engine license to Wisdom Tree, an independent console software publisher, in retaliation.) The USA version of Bionic Commando for the NES had "Badds" instead of "Nazis".
Actually, Lik Sang does manufacture a few devices such as the excellent MBV2 cable, which connects a Game Boy Advance system to a PC in much the same way that Nintendo's cable connects a GBA to a GameCube console. The MBV2 cable lets you run homebrew software on the GBA by copying a binary from the PC into the GBA's 288 KB of internal RAM. But because proprietary commercial games are 2 MB to 8 MB in size, the MBV2 won't let you play those on a GBA. Thus, Nintendo turned a blind eye turned to the MBV2 cable and let Lik Sang continue to sell it.
Plug: Tetanus On Drugs, a homebrew falling tetramino game for GBA. Works with MBV2 cable.
It's not available at USA brick-and-mortar stores (Wal-Mart, Meijer, Toys "Ya" Us, Best Buy, Circuit City), and it's not advertised on USA national TV. Thus it won't have any brand recognition in the average American gamer's mind, not near what the name "Game Boy" evokes. Because it doesn't have the brand recognition, none of my neighbors will own one. And if none of my neighbors own one, I won't be able to play multiplayer games.
And how good are its official titles?
This little handheld game has a much bigger screen than the GBA
But its video is a dumb frame buffer, which means you have to do 2D in software, unlike on the GBA where you get hardware acceleration for 2D and simplistic 3D graphics.
And how long do eight AA cells power the GP32? Eight AA cells will power the GBA for 40 to 60 hours (4 x (2 x AA) = 4 x 10 to 15 hours), or even longer for "battery-friendly" GBA software such as Tetanus On Drugs that loads itself mostly into the system's 288 KB of work RAM instead of taking the power-drain hit of constantly accessing the cartridge.
is that I can't find game demos anywhere for the [Nintendo GameCube] system.
There's always blockbuster. Or do you live in a country where the copyright law lets the publisher ban rental on console games, like the USA does for PC games?
Listen, only two consoles have EVER been sold at a loss, the xbox and the dreamcast.
The cost of building a console, especially when it is new, is much more than the mere cost of parts and labor involved in its manufacture. Under one way of looking at it, the first unit that rolls off the assembly line is always sold at a loss because of the cost of research and development and the cost of promotion on major television networks. Even if you spread R&D and the initial ad campaign across the first three months of console sales, you may still total a loss.
Slow? SWF can be much smaller than a PNG image in some cases because while PNG is a raster format (essentially gzipped.bmp), SWF is a vector format. Sure, there's SVG, but more people have SWF viewers than SVG viewers, and silent SWF doesn't seem to have significant patent problems.
use flash for displaying beautiful unreadable anti-aliased text
Actually, it's unreadable not because it's anti-aliased but because 1. it's anti-aliased without moving the control points to pixel boundaries (either automatically or via hints in the font), because 2. it's often displayed on top of a busy background, but most importantly because 3. the text is too dang SMALL. Most web pages that specify a text style specify glyphs somewhere between 12 and 16 pixels tall; designers who care little about usability often size SWF text that's a paragraph or longer at about 9 pixels or so.
other than those downsides flash can be used for good and not evil
The only reason Microsoft ever got a foothold in the proprietary software industry is that the company published (not developed, published) the operating system that came packed in with a personal computer sold by what was at the time the best-known computer company.
If you provide those services with them under the impression that you're guaranteeing a "consistent viewing experience"
So what if a client demands both a "consistent viewing experience" and Flash animation on the same web page? Have you lost a client to your fraudulent competition?
Didn't you know that you can have Quicktime in Linux?... MPlayer
Sure, it will play Radius Cinepak video and older Sorenson video natively, but last time I checked, it needed the Windows QuickTime DLLs to play the newer version of Sorenson video used by default in QuickTime 5 and 6 or to play QDesign audio. However, Windows QuickTime DLLs work only on x86 architecture, and the user needs a copy of Microsoft Windows ($150 for OEM single copy) to extract them from the installer.
The term "crown" referring to a monetary unit comes from the fact that some old coins had a bas-relief crown stamped into them. It's analogous to the term "Benjamin" referring to a 100 USD note, which carries a picture of Benjamin Franklin.
simple checking the box that agrees to their TOS including verbage such as "I hereby swear and affirm that..."?
If it turns out that I screwed up, I may be liable/guilty not only of copyright infringement but also of perjury. The problem is that I seem to be under a delusion that I don't even have enough evidence to reassure myself that what I write is original, let alone other parties.
Unless a proprietary (patented) technology becomes indispensible to the user population as a whole, Microsoft seems vulnerable to attacks from low cost/no cost alternatives.
If the CBDTPA bill passes, Microsoft will have a monopoly on operating systems for new personal computers sold in the United States of America. The wording of the CBDTPA seems to require general purpose computers to come with an operating system that can enforce digital restrictions management. Microsoft holds the essential patent on such operating systems, and Intertrust holds other patents in the area. This is yet another reason to oppose the CBDTPA bill.
If the CBDTPA bill passes, expect Canada and Mexico to tighten their immigration policies as thousands of disgruntled Americans flow across their borders.
Why don't they just make "extensions" for copyrights.
Treating the copyright term like the trademark registration term, renewable every ten years, would not work because countries other than the one that allows term renewals would be free not to recognize any copyright term extensions beyond the life plus 50 years that the Berne Convention guarantees. Even Sonny Bono never got to Canada (a tree got in the way).
Why not have a limit on the copyright that says that the copyright holder must keep the work available to the public for a reasonable fee or the copyright is void?
Requiring works to remain in print or lose their copyright would violate international treaties such as the Berne Convention, which requires that contracting nations recognize copyright on a work regardless of whether or not the work is still in print.
What about people born via C-section - don't they have rights too?
They have rights too. Heck, I was almost a C-section baby. But your definition of "natural-born" is not the real definition used in law:
Music that is used by natural-born persons in the United States
Aside from the joke made in the parent comment, the "natural" in "natural-born" means the same as it does in "naturalized". The term "natural-born" describes individual persons born on United States soil who, by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, become U.S. citizens approximately nine months into their life, at the moment of birth.
As to how one verifies that I didn't unconsciously plagiarize another song, that's stupid too. In this case, the burden of proof is on any accuser.
Unless the allegedly infringing songwriter does not have the income to afford a legal defense.
Besides, the contracts that bands sign with independent music promotion services such as mp3.com tend to require the band to guarantee that both the sound recording and the underlying musical work are original. How can I meet this requirement? Does there exist a form of copyright liability insurance for songwriters, designed for such a situation?
I'm making two separate replies to this comment because it appears that we have raised two separate issues that would best be discussed separately so as not to confuse anybody.
What reason would the Government of the United States of America have to get involved with something stupid like this. Not only paying songwriters, but setting a specific price by law? WTF? In 50 years when inflation makes that worth even less than it is now, will congress change the law to 20 cents?
That doesn't mean that a songwriter has to get paid at all. It just says that 8 cents is the most he or she can charge.
I apologize for writing my comment in such a misleading way. Yes, 8c/copy is only a cap on what copyright owners can demand. However, professional songwriters who regularly license musical works to recording studios typically demand the full eight cents per copy.
Does my shitty indy band have to contact Somerville & company, or pay up to $0.08 for every song pressed?
To obtain rights to perform and publish a cover recording of a television show theme song, yes, you have to contact the copyright owner some time in advance (section 115 makes an exception for copyright owners whose contact information in the copyright registration is outdated) and pay royalties (either at the 8c/copy cap or at a negotiated rate) for every phonorecord distributed, whether on CD or even in OGG format, whether for free or for pay.
unlike a radio broadcast (to which this statute does not apply) when you share via MP3, a new, permanent copy is made. But how is this different from me tape recording the song off of the radio (which is legal, I believe because of time shifting rulings, please correct me if I'm wrong)? Does a songwriter technically have to get a royalty off of that too?
The differences: For one thing, when the "performance" is on demand, it's not a "broadcast" and therefore not a "public performance" of the musical work. For another thing, the sound recording copyright owner has an additional right to control "public performances" through a digital transmission.
but you just announced thate a release candidate is almost ready?
How about "FreeBSD 5.0 RC2 will probably be available for download by the time you step back into your cubicle this coming Monday"? Is that any better?
Slashdot Mirror
The lack of software is still sort of the problem, but I think this mainly comes down to games
There are lots of games that will run in Linux:
because Word and Photoshop don't run on it except in the execrable WINE
"Word", short for "word processor", is a generic term referring to software more powerful than a text editor but less powerful than professional page-layout software. Therefore, word runs natively. Microsoft brand word doesn't.
Photoshop, on the other hand, is a trademark of Adobe Systems. However, the most significant thing GIMP can't do that the Photoshop brand image editor can is pre-press color image processing, which isn't useful if you will primarily be doing web or game art. As for the "easy to learn" factor, my six-year-old cousin picked up the basics of GIMP rather quickly.
What will the USA Drug Enforcement Agency think about making cocaine, known on the street as "snow", from potato starch?
Nintendo has always tried to keep their software clean (Bubble Bath Babes notwithstanding).
Bubble Bath Babes was published by Hacker and Panesian, both independent console software publishers not affiliated with NCL or NOA.
The original Mortal Kombat had sweat, rather than blood (although I believe there was a code to turn the sweat red.)
It was a Game Genie code on the Super NES, a Super Game Boy code on the Game Boy, and a keypress code on the Sega Genesis (A B A C A B B for basic, Down Up Left Left A Right Down for advanced, entered at the "secret code?" screen) and Game Gear (2 1 2 Down Up, entered at the "secret code?" screen).
Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! became just plain ol' Punch-Out!!, and Mike Tyson became Mr. Dream
No, that's because the Tyson licensing deal fell through between the first pressing of Punch-Out!! and the second pressing.
They have relaxed their policies
This came after Nintendo fans defected to the Sega Genesis because the Genesis version of Mortal Kombat 1 had a blood code and the original fatalities. Thus, Nintendo relaxed its policies, and Mortal Kombat II was the first 17-rated game for the Super NES. (The first M-rated game published by Nintendo was Conker's Bad Fur Day for N64.)
However, I didn't find any censorship in the Back to the Future 1 game for NES that I rented once because I didn't get very far. It wasn't all that fun, and I gave up on it and went back to Mario.
I can't remember the last time I heard anyone say "I found [insert whatever] on inktomi" at least not in the last 6 years.
Have you heard "found $foo on hotbot"? Until recently, when HotBot switched to a choice of four different engines, HotBot used Inktomi as its search engine. HotBot still offers Inktomi as its default search engine.
I can't begin to name the number of computers I see with google.com as their homepage (more than slashdot).
EarthLink Network gives its subscribers start.earthlink.net by default, which has a nice Google searchbox right in the middle of the page.
I wonder why they don't do similar edits and remove the Nazis from World War II movies.
Actually, in some video games, they have. Hitler shaved off his mustache and became the Staatmeister in Wolfenstein 3D for Super NES. (id Software was so frustrated at the actions of Nintendo's censors that id sold a Wolf3d engine license to Wisdom Tree, an independent console software publisher, in retaliation.) The USA version of Bionic Commando for the NES had "Badds" instead of "Nazis".
Hate Dubya? Vote Libertarian-Nazi-Green in 2004!
Lik-Sang is neither a hardware manufacturer
Actually, Lik Sang does manufacture a few devices such as the excellent MBV2 cable, which connects a Game Boy Advance system to a PC in much the same way that Nintendo's cable connects a GBA to a GameCube console. The MBV2 cable lets you run homebrew software on the GBA by copying a binary from the PC into the GBA's 288 KB of internal RAM. But because proprietary commercial games are 2 MB to 8 MB in size, the MBV2 won't let you play those on a GBA. Thus, Nintendo turned a blind eye turned to the MBV2 cable and let Lik Sang continue to sell it.
Plug: Tetanus On Drugs, a homebrew falling tetramino game for GBA. Works with MBV2 cable.
Gamepark GP32
It's not available at USA brick-and-mortar stores (Wal-Mart, Meijer, Toys "Ya" Us, Best Buy, Circuit City), and it's not advertised on USA national TV. Thus it won't have any brand recognition in the average American gamer's mind, not near what the name "Game Boy" evokes. Because it doesn't have the brand recognition, none of my neighbors will own one. And if none of my neighbors own one, I won't be able to play multiplayer games.
And how good are its official titles?
This little handheld game has a much bigger screen than the GBA
But its video is a dumb frame buffer, which means you have to do 2D in software, unlike on the GBA where you get hardware acceleration for 2D and simplistic 3D graphics.
And how long do eight AA cells power the GP32? Eight AA cells will power the GBA for 40 to 60 hours (4 x (2 x AA) = 4 x 10 to 15 hours), or even longer for "battery-friendly" GBA software such as Tetanus On Drugs that loads itself mostly into the system's 288 KB of work RAM instead of taking the power-drain hit of constantly accessing the cartridge.
Everybody knows that you can get the DLLs anywhere.
On any architecture other than i586, the Windows QuickTime DLLs run way too slow to play a movie in real time.
is that I can't find game demos anywhere for the [Nintendo GameCube] system.
There's always blockbuster. Or do you live in a country where the copyright law lets the publisher ban rental on console games, like the USA does for PC games?
Listen, only two consoles have EVER been sold at a loss, the xbox and the dreamcast.
The cost of building a console, especially when it is new, is much more than the mere cost of parts and labor involved in its manufacture. Under one way of looking at it, the first unit that rolls off the assembly line is always sold at a loss because of the cost of research and development and the cost of promotion on major television networks. Even if you spread R&D and the initial ad campaign across the first three months of console sales, you may still total a loss.
use flash for fancy and slow site navigation
Slow? SWF can be much smaller than a PNG image in some cases because while PNG is a raster format (essentially gzipped .bmp), SWF is a vector format. Sure, there's SVG, but more people have SWF viewers than SVG viewers, and silent SWF doesn't seem to have significant patent problems.
use flash for displaying beautiful unreadable anti-aliased text
Actually, it's unreadable not because it's anti-aliased but because 1. it's anti-aliased without moving the control points to pixel boundaries (either automatically or via hints in the font), because 2. it's often displayed on top of a busy background, but most importantly because 3. the text is too dang SMALL. Most web pages that specify a text style specify glyphs somewhere between 12 and 16 pixels tall; designers who care little about usability often size SWF text that's a paragraph or longer at about 9 pixels or so.
other than those downsides flash can be used for good and not evil
WE DRINK RITALIN!
but only in moderation
Interesting.
er...
The only reason Microsoft ever got a foothold in the proprietary software industry is that the company published (not developed, published) the operating system that came packed in with a personal computer sold by what was at the time the best-known computer company.
If you provide those services with them under the impression that you're guaranteeing a "consistent viewing experience"
So what if a client demands both a "consistent viewing experience" and Flash animation on the same web page? Have you lost a client to your fraudulent competition?
Didn't you know that you can have Quicktime in Linux? ... MPlayer
Sure, it will play Radius Cinepak video and older Sorenson video natively, but last time I checked, it needed the Windows QuickTime DLLs to play the newer version of Sorenson video used by default in QuickTime 5 and 6 or to play QDesign audio. However, Windows QuickTime DLLs work only on x86 architecture, and the user needs a copy of Microsoft Windows ($150 for OEM single copy) to extract them from the installer.
There aren't even that many kings in Denmark!
Aside from the joke...
The term "crown" referring to a monetary unit comes from the fact that some old coins had a bas-relief crown stamped into them. It's analogous to the term "Benjamin" referring to a 100 USD note, which carries a picture of Benjamin Franklin.
simple checking the box that agrees to their TOS including verbage such as "I hereby swear and affirm that..."?
If it turns out that I screwed up, I may be liable/guilty not only of copyright infringement but also of perjury. The problem is that I seem to be under a delusion that I don't even have enough evidence to reassure myself that what I write is original, let alone other parties.
bizarre headsets (with no apparent function)
Of course the headsets have function. They provide real-time auralization of what's going on at the remote end. Remember that story about interpreting ping results with audio frequencies?
Unless a proprietary (patented) technology becomes indispensible to the user population as a whole, Microsoft seems vulnerable to attacks from low cost/no cost alternatives.
If the CBDTPA bill passes, Microsoft will have a monopoly on operating systems for new personal computers sold in the United States of America. The wording of the CBDTPA seems to require general purpose computers to come with an operating system that can enforce digital restrictions management. Microsoft holds the essential patent on such operating systems, and Intertrust holds other patents in the area. This is yet another reason to oppose the CBDTPA bill.
If the CBDTPA bill passes, expect Canada and Mexico to tighten their immigration policies as thousands of disgruntled Americans flow across their borders.
Why don't they just make "extensions" for copyrights.
Treating the copyright term like the trademark registration term, renewable every ten years, would not work because countries other than the one that allows term renewals would be free not to recognize any copyright term extensions beyond the life plus 50 years that the Berne Convention guarantees. Even Sonny Bono never got to Canada (a tree got in the way).
Why not have a limit on the copyright that says that the copyright holder must keep the work available to the public for a reasonable fee or the copyright is void?
Requiring works to remain in print or lose their copyright would violate international treaties such as the Berne Convention, which requires that contracting nations recognize copyright on a work regardless of whether or not the work is still in print.
What about people born via C-section - don't they have rights too?
They have rights too. Heck, I was almost a C-section baby. But your definition of "natural-born" is not the real definition used in law:
Music that is used by natural-born persons in the United States
Aside from the joke made in the parent comment, the "natural" in "natural-born" means the same as it does in "naturalized". The term "natural-born" describes individual persons born on United States soil who, by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, become U.S. citizens approximately nine months into their life, at the moment of birth.
As to how one verifies that I didn't unconsciously plagiarize another song, that's stupid too. In this case, the burden of proof is on any accuser.
Unless the allegedly infringing songwriter does not have the income to afford a legal defense.
Besides, the contracts that bands sign with independent music promotion services such as mp3.com tend to require the band to guarantee that both the sound recording and the underlying musical work are original. How can I meet this requirement? Does there exist a form of copyright liability insurance for songwriters, designed for such a situation?
I'm making two separate replies to this comment because it appears that we have raised two separate issues that would best be discussed separately so as not to confuse anybody.
What reason would the Government of the United States of America have to get involved with something stupid like this. Not only paying songwriters, but setting a specific price by law? WTF? In 50 years when inflation makes that worth even less than it is now, will congress change the law to 20 cents?
CARP does that regularly. See 17 USC section 115, chapter 8, and a history of mechanical license royalty rates. The law seems to specify that CARP keep royalties roughly in step with the Consumer Price Index.
That doesn't mean that a songwriter has to get paid at all. It just says that 8 cents is the most he or she can charge.
I apologize for writing my comment in such a misleading way. Yes, 8c/copy is only a cap on what copyright owners can demand. However, professional songwriters who regularly license musical works to recording studios typically demand the full eight cents per copy.
Does my shitty indy band have to contact Somerville & company, or pay up to $0.08 for every song pressed?
To obtain rights to perform and publish a cover recording of a television show theme song, yes, you have to contact the copyright owner some time in advance (section 115 makes an exception for copyright owners whose contact information in the copyright registration is outdated) and pay royalties (either at the 8c/copy cap or at a negotiated rate) for every phonorecord distributed, whether on CD or even in OGG format, whether for free or for pay.
unlike a radio broadcast (to which this statute does not apply) when you share via MP3, a new, permanent copy is made. But how is this different from me tape recording the song off of the radio (which is legal, I believe because of time shifting rulings, please correct me if I'm wrong)? Does a songwriter technically have to get a royalty off of that too?
The differences: For one thing, when the "performance" is on demand, it's not a "broadcast" and therefore not a "public performance" of the musical work. For another thing, the sound recording copyright owner has an additional right to control "public performances" through a digital transmission.
but you just announced thate a release candidate is almost ready?
How about "FreeBSD 5.0 RC2 will probably be available for download by the time you step back into your cubicle this coming Monday"? Is that any better?