Ummmm... nope. She's actually an ex-id employee. Who had quite a hand in their business development. And now runs a production company.
I'd write more, but I'm sure Carmack could correct this himself. You did know he reads this site, right?
I suppose if you insist on bashing KillCreek's not-so-impressive surgical augmentation, that's your thing. But ripping on Carmack's wife, in a thread about him? Man, that's low....
If you spent your life building something so popular, and saw twenty years' aggregate security problems coming to bear in the past year, you'd be pretty pissed too.
The idea of spring cleaning in a codebase doesn't surprise me at all. Hell, I spent two weeks doing that to one set of apps I developed, and it was only in place two years (a web-driven process control setup.)
I say, good for MS. I look forward to the service pack in April, when we should see the fruits of their labors.
As I recall (from the comment to Donovan about the Knights dying of "extreme old age") the water would prolong your life. Hence, continued consumption, not remaining in the chamber, would provide immortality.
As such, I think Indy would have at least picked up an extra fifty years...
If OSS and Linux are so superior to the MS offerings we use, then why do you want to use our office suite? If we Windows users suck so bad, then why would you want to run our software?
If you want a full-featured Office suite, write your own.
Point is, all that stuff is there and waiting when you need it. That convenience is worth something.
The vast majority of people do not wish to spend time looking for libraries, or downloading and compiling source, or any of that stuff. They want it all ready for them.
My freshman year, I had a C professor who watched my pitiful attempts to find the optimal solution to a sorting problem. This thing would be rarely used, and not all that critical, and not often executed. He told me, "Let it go. Programmer time is always more expensive than CPU time." Point is, you have to look at the optimal solution in terms of preserving what's valuable rather than what's technically superior. Make a person go through 5 minutes of work to save $.12 worth of hardware and they'll run away from your solution like it's coated in anthrax.
My time is far more valuable than the 25MB of hard drive space DirectX takes up. I'm glad it's installed by default in WinXP. I was able to get my XP box up and gaming in ten minutes. It's been a month, and I still can't get my Linux box to run quake3.
Yes, you're correct in that the problem lies in MS redirecting the funds to themselves. If we knew what this was actually costing MS (and I assure you, it's costing them something), we'd be better equipped to judge it.
I'm simply amazed by the number of people who think demolishing a cornerstone of the tech sector will at all benefit consumers.
It seems to me that all you guys want is a public lynching. You have no interest in finding the best possible settlement, and nothing short of completely destroying one of the largest companies in America, depressing the tech sector even further, devauling a significant portion of the country's stock portfolios, and leaving 95% of the desktop market without any company to provide support for them will satisfy your bloodlust.
Yes, this settlement needs work. But I would think that a billion dollars in final costs are somewhat excessive in this case. Do you really feel that you've all been damaged so thoroughly by this? Most of you don't even use Windows! You're probably out $35, tops, for your OEM license. And if you don't like what the OEM's are selling, start your own. No one's stopping Best Buy from stocking Penguin computers, are they?
If you want to make them shell out 300 million in hardware, then allow the schools to choose what OS goes on them, that's fine. Let them choose - don't make them accept RedHat or MS. I also don't agree with the 5yr expiration, but that could go away rather easily, I'm sure.
Do you honestly believe that the only way to solve this problem is to burn Microsoft's headquarters to the ground?
You'd have to reverse-engineer the BIOS, just like IBM did years ago. Then you'd have to modify Linux to act like XOS.
This doesn't sound like an easy thing... and you've still got to pay MS (which seems to go against most/.'ers principles). Just remember how long it took Compaq to crack IBM's bios. Look at the quote below (taken from a Cringley column on PBS.com)...
"Probably the most famous (and profitable) instance of reverse engineering was Compaq Computer's cloning of the original IBM PC. Would-be PC clone makers had to come up with a chip that would replace IBM's ROM-BIOS but do so without copying any IBM code. The way this is done is by looking at IBM's ROM-BIOS as a black box -- a mystery machine that does funny things to inputs and outputs. By knowing what data go into the black box -- the ROM -- and what data come out, programmers can make intelligent guesses about what happens to the data when they are inside the ROM. Reverse engineering is a matter of putting many of these guesses together and testing them until the cloned ROM-BIOS acts exactly like the target ROM-BIOS. It's a tedious and expensive process, and one that can be accomplished only by virgins -- programmers who could prove that they had never been exposed to IBM's ROM-BIOS code -- and good virgins are hard to find. Reverse engineering the IBM PC's ROM-BIOS took the efforts of 15 senior programmers over several months and cost Compaq $1 million. Such a deal."
Who's going to shell out the 1 million for this? And when you're done, don't you think the XBox games (which contain the XOS) are going to have some sort of EULA preventing this sort of thing? The legal issues alone would bury this.
So use Visual InterDev. I passed right by FrontPage for anything serious. And InterDev is quite usable for applications development on IIS, in my experience.
Install from bootable CD. Some text mode, but nothing awful, and it all was pretty easy to understand, with defaults that looked pretty good (I didn't have to change anything.)
After text mode finishes, system configures itself. Yes, it took a lot longer to do this than my RedHat 7.2 box did, but oh well. Big whoop.
After OS boots, install drivers from Web. Double-click Nvidia package, double-click Creative package, reboot. No activation, no BS. It's ready for me to move on to installing Office (which also went in quite smoothly.)
Machine is configured and ready for use.
Compare that driver part to the hell I'm going through installing Nvidia's drivers for Linux (the SRPM's just won't install, so it doesn't work.) No editing X86Config files. No loading kernel modules. Just run the two executables, reboot, and enjoy.
Just because the installer runs doesn't mean it's all good. There's a lot more to a computer than the OS, including drivers and software.
Why are all these people designing Web sites with MS software? They've only got a handful of HTML apps... why are so many sites made with so few tools?
"When Loki ports a game we don't use emulation or other tricks. We are creating a native Linux application. That's the only way to take advantage of the features and stability that Linux offers. No Windows software, no matter how well emulated, can do that... Linux users demand more than Windows software can offer."
Since when is Win32 software inherently unstable? Honestly, can it be proven that a Windows game is unstable just because it's a Windows game? I think not... Quake III is rock-solid on my machine. Through 3 CPU's, 3 OS' and 3 video cards, it's been great. I haven't had it crash on me at all this year. It starts when I start it (every time), it ends when I end it (without crashing).
What's so unstable about it? In fact, I have a grand total of three programs that crash on my machine (Max Payne and the two 3DMark programs). Sounds fine to me, since it's a grand total of ONE engine that crashes on me.
If you think this wouldn't kill a software company, you're dead wrong.
MS has been bad. But no company deserves this. It's not a jail term, it's exile.
A split might not hurt (3-way, preferably), nor would opening Windows. Not both, and not a "no Internet" mandate. Love it or hate it, MS has the right to release.net and let it succeed or fail.
AC-3 is NOT encrypted, unless it's been run through CSS. (At least not the last time I checked.) Therefore, this isn't a DMCA case. It's a patent litigation covering an algorithm. If it's a cleanroom implementation (which I assume it is, as I don't know of any tech docs on AC-3), then this should be cool.
Also, does Dolby have a product in the BSD space? If not, then this is a little unfair... besides, how big is the NetBSD market compared to Dolby's market anyways?
Slashdot Mirror
CowboyNeal.
Give us a hard one....
Including incorporate it into a proprietary product?
Corporations pay taxes too....
Ummmm... nope. She's actually an ex-id employee. Who had quite a hand in their business development. And now runs a production company.
I'd write more, but I'm sure Carmack could correct this himself. You did know he reads this site, right?
I suppose if you insist on bashing KillCreek's not-so-impressive surgical augmentation, that's your thing. But ripping on Carmack's wife, in a thread about him? Man, that's low....
If you spent your life building something so popular, and saw twenty years' aggregate security problems coming to bear in the past year, you'd be pretty pissed too.
The idea of spring cleaning in a codebase doesn't surprise me at all. Hell, I spent two weeks doing that to one set of apps I developed, and it was only in place two years (a web-driven process control setup.)
I say, good for MS. I look forward to the service pack in April, when we should see the fruits of their labors.
I get the joke, and I ran out of mod points a week ago.
As I recall (from the comment to Donovan about the Knights dying of "extreme old age") the water would prolong your life. Hence, continued consumption, not remaining in the chamber, would provide immortality.
As such, I think Indy would have at least picked up an extra fifty years...
I did respond. I wrote them and told them to go for the settlement as is.
You guys can wave your torches and pitchforks all you want. Some of us would like to see something come out of this matter, and get on with our lives.
Does this mean I can sue Coke for all that ink on the outside of the can I didn't want?
If you bought it, YOU BOUGHT IT. You paid their price. The fact that it was part of a package including a computer is inconsequential.
Besides, wouldn't the damages be limited to the price paid? How much, exactly, did Windows cost you? I doubt it's as much as you're wanting back...
If OSS and Linux are so superior to the MS offerings we use, then why do you want to use our office suite? If we Windows users suck so bad, then why would you want to run our software?
If you want a full-featured Office suite, write your own.
Ah, so you're a software pirate?
Mom and Dad must be proud.
Point is, all that stuff is there and waiting when you need it. That convenience is worth something.
The vast majority of people do not wish to spend time looking for libraries, or downloading and compiling source, or any of that stuff. They want it all ready for them.
My freshman year, I had a C professor who watched my pitiful attempts to find the optimal solution to a sorting problem. This thing would be rarely used, and not all that critical, and not often executed. He told me, "Let it go. Programmer time is always more expensive than CPU time." Point is, you have to look at the optimal solution in terms of preserving what's valuable rather than what's technically superior. Make a person go through 5 minutes of work to save $.12 worth of hardware and they'll run away from your solution like it's coated in anthrax.
My time is far more valuable than the 25MB of hard drive space DirectX takes up. I'm glad it's installed by default in WinXP. I was able to get my XP box up and gaming in ten minutes. It's been a month, and I still can't get my Linux box to run quake3.
Yes, you're correct in that the problem lies in MS redirecting the funds to themselves. If we knew what this was actually costing MS (and I assure you, it's costing them something), we'd be better equipped to judge it.
I'm simply amazed by the number of people who think demolishing a cornerstone of the tech sector will at all benefit consumers.
It seems to me that all you guys want is a public lynching. You have no interest in finding the best possible settlement, and nothing short of completely destroying one of the largest companies in America, depressing the tech sector even further, devauling a significant portion of the country's stock portfolios, and leaving 95% of the desktop market without any company to provide support for them will satisfy your bloodlust.
Yes, this settlement needs work. But I would think that a billion dollars in final costs are somewhat excessive in this case. Do you really feel that you've all been damaged so thoroughly by this? Most of you don't even use Windows! You're probably out $35, tops, for your OEM license. And if you don't like what the OEM's are selling, start your own. No one's stopping Best Buy from stocking Penguin computers, are they?
If you want to make them shell out 300 million in hardware, then allow the schools to choose what OS goes on them, that's fine. Let them choose - don't make them accept RedHat or MS. I also don't agree with the 5yr expiration, but that could go away rather easily, I'm sure.
Do you honestly believe that the only way to solve this problem is to burn Microsoft's headquarters to the ground?
Grand Theft Auto III. I'm sorry, but that title couldn't be as good as it is without the blood, sex, and black humor.
Just because it's bloody doesn't make it good, but it doesn't make it bad either.
You'd have to reverse-engineer the BIOS, just like IBM did years ago. Then you'd have to modify Linux to act like XOS.
/.'ers principles). Just remember how long it took Compaq to crack IBM's bios. Look at the quote below (taken from a Cringley column on PBS.com)...
This doesn't sound like an easy thing... and you've still got to pay MS (which seems to go against most
"Probably the most famous (and profitable) instance of reverse engineering was Compaq Computer's cloning of the original IBM PC. Would-be PC clone makers had to come up with a chip that would replace IBM's ROM-BIOS but do so without copying any IBM code. The way this is done is by looking at IBM's ROM-BIOS as a black box -- a mystery machine that does funny things to inputs and outputs. By knowing what data go into the black box -- the ROM -- and what data come out, programmers can make intelligent guesses about what happens to the data when they are inside the ROM. Reverse engineering is a matter of putting many of these guesses together and testing them until the cloned ROM-BIOS acts exactly like the target ROM-BIOS. It's a tedious and expensive process, and one that can be accomplished only by virgins -- programmers who could prove that they had never been exposed to IBM's ROM-BIOS code -- and good virgins are hard to find. Reverse engineering the IBM PC's ROM-BIOS took the efforts of 15 senior programmers over several months and cost Compaq $1 million. Such a deal."
Who's going to shell out the 1 million for this? And when you're done, don't you think the XBox games (which contain the XOS) are going to have some sort of EULA preventing this sort of thing? The legal issues alone would bury this.
So use Visual InterDev. I passed right by FrontPage for anything serious. And InterDev is quite usable for applications development on IIS, in my experience.
Here's my experience with XP:
Install from bootable CD. Some text mode, but nothing awful, and it all was pretty easy to understand, with defaults that looked pretty good (I didn't have to change anything.)
After text mode finishes, system configures itself. Yes, it took a lot longer to do this than my RedHat 7.2 box did, but oh well. Big whoop.
After OS boots, install drivers from Web. Double-click Nvidia package, double-click Creative package, reboot. No activation, no BS. It's ready for me to move on to installing Office (which also went in quite smoothly.)
Machine is configured and ready for use.
Compare that driver part to the hell I'm going through installing Nvidia's drivers for Linux (the SRPM's just won't install, so it doesn't work.) No editing X86Config files. No loading kernel modules. Just run the two executables, reboot, and enjoy.
Just because the installer runs doesn't mean it's all good. There's a lot more to a computer than the OS, including drivers and software.
Why are all these people designing Web sites with MS software? They've only got a handful of HTML apps... why are so many sites made with so few tools?
Perhaps because they're pretty good?
"When Loki ports a game we don't use emulation or other tricks. We are creating a native Linux application. That's the only way to take advantage of the features and stability that Linux offers. No Windows software, no matter how well emulated, can do that ... Linux users demand more than Windows software can offer."
Since when is Win32 software inherently unstable? Honestly, can it be proven that a Windows game is unstable just because it's a Windows game? I think not... Quake III is rock-solid on my machine. Through 3 CPU's, 3 OS' and 3 video cards, it's been great. I haven't had it crash on me at all this year. It starts when I start it (every time), it ends when I end it (without crashing).
What's so unstable about it? In fact, I have a grand total of three programs that crash on my machine (Max Payne and the two 3DMark programs). Sounds fine to me, since it's a grand total of ONE engine that crashes on me.
If you think this wouldn't kill a software company, you're dead wrong.
.net and let it succeed or fail.
MS has been bad. But no company deserves this. It's not a jail term, it's exile.
A split might not hurt (3-way, preferably), nor would opening Windows. Not both, and not a "no Internet" mandate. Love it or hate it, MS has the right to release
I prefer the old one, myself...
2 of those are Carmack games. He loves GL (can't remember what pissed him off about D3D, maybe he'd like to tell us?)
Tribes2 is multi-API. So are some other biggies (Unreal Tournament comes to mind.)
last I checked, 3ds max 4.0 is pretty shitty in D3D. Yes, I've tried both on a GeForce 2.
MAX is soooo much better on GL. I've never tried HEIDI or other such. I wonder what Maya would run like in D3D? Not so well, I imagine.
If it's cleanroom, tell 'em to fuck off directly.
If it's not, well, let that be a lesson to you.
AC-3 is NOT encrypted, unless it's been run through CSS. (At least not the last time I checked.) Therefore, this isn't a DMCA case. It's a patent litigation covering an algorithm. If it's a cleanroom implementation (which I assume it is, as I don't know of any tech docs on AC-3), then this should be cool.
Also, does Dolby have a product in the BSD space? If not, then this is a little unfair... besides, how big is the NetBSD market compared to Dolby's market anyways?
I wish, I wish, I wish I still had those 4 mod points I didn't use.
This is a fan-fucking-tastic idea.