Open source has its place. The hobby community will accomplish things that commercial development will never pay for using Open Source.
That said, it's never going to be the predominant model for software development, nor will Open Source programs ever be the prevailing supply of software for businesses. Why? Businesses like dealing with other businesses. When things fuck up (and they do), it's nice to have someone to blame, someone who has a responsibility to back up their product.
No IT staffer will want their server support to come solely from the community. And the Linux IPO's are all hype - they're not a serious alternative.
In short, it's not MS's OS that everyone's buying - it's the support. Granted, Win2000 is an excellent OS, but that's not why it gets bought.
Win2000 drivers are good for the NVIDIA series of cards, and I haven't heard any complaints from the 3dfx crowd. Matrox is getting there, as I hear, and ATI is doing alright from my experiences with a friend's Rage 128.
Excellent, so anyone running a DNS should send a bill to NSI? I guess that's why NSI's business seems like it's pure profit - other people are providing the service that NSI is being paid for.
In my opinion? YES. You're helping them out. DNS servers should be subsidized from registration fees. That'd make sure that there's always DNS boxes up, and that they stay current. It's an incentive thing.
You pay these people to resolve a domain name to your IP address. The address is like the phone number (that's the only analogy I can use to explain it to people anymore anyway), and a company provides a layer linking your friendly name to an address.
Therefore, how NSI runs its business should be entirely up to NSI. I'm not against a little intervention; after all, the Internet is well on its way to being a utility similar to the phone system, but it doesn't mean that they aren't property. They're just the property of NSI.
Look at all that goes into a professional game. It takes a year of thirty people's lives. That means money. Lots of it.
It's not just programmers, either. It's artists (texture and model), designers, a story writer, level designers, a production staff, and a support structure for those people.
There's no Open Source on 3D Models.
Now, what about the Mod community, you say? What about Counter-Strike?
I say, what about Counter-Strike? They're doing a great job. Beta 7 rocks my world. But they're creating an addon to a game that's been out for a year, on a well-documented engine that's been around since I was in high school. And it's still taken them a substantial amount of time to get to where they are. Imagine if they were developing Quake III Arena!
In short, there's simply no way to create a professional-quality game without some sort of financial backing. And I thank the guys that do have the balls to step up and make entertaining me their job. Ya know how I thank them? I walk down to my local software store and lay down my hard-earned money for their unabashedly closed-source products.
As a developer, I want the toold that let me do my job the easiest and best way I know possible. That's Windows NT and Visual Studio.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the company I work for buys me what I need, regardless of whether or not a passingly similar open source alternative is available. You know why? Because they know that I need the tools I'm most familiar with, and they need to be able to support it after I move on. That means Windows, because it's what they're most familiar with.
Furthermore, while all you penguin-whores whine on about how much WinNT sucks, I know that it works. I can make it work. If you guys aren't competent enough to run NT without BSOD'ing it, then going to an OS you modify yourself isn't going to fix the basic problem - it's between the keyboard and the chair.
Just because Microsoft continues to perpetuate that steaming turd known now as WinME upon an unsuspecting public does not mean that their advanced OS (Win2k) is automatically crap.
If you'd actually bother trying it out, you might find that it really is a great improvement... but that would go against your narrow-minded FUD ethic.
The thing about id is that the people managing (Graeme, Todd, both Carmacks) are geeks, hackers, and whatnot. And guess what? They also happen to be effective managers (except when they fire the best low-poly modeler in the biz, but that's one fuckup among many good decisions...)
Point is, let's not eliminate management - let's get managers who understand the biz.
Please, God, let this be the one question the band themselves hear. Let them connect to the fans I know they love and realize what their manager and lawyers are doing to us and them. This is all we really need.
Yes, you do. If you own a copy of the music, you hold a license to it.
That's why it irritates me that copying technology is so restricted after a new format is released. I'd like to get all of my old material copied onto the new format as soon as possible, and such restrictions only serve to hold me back.
As for my Metallica MP3's, I hold licenses to all of them. I own an original copy of everything Metallica's released in the U.S., except for some videos which I will not purchase until they are made available on DVD. In short, I have a right to my music in any form I choose.
I believe Looking Glass was the originator of the first-person 3d genre with Ultima Underworld. Granted, the guns were all id, but the game was LG (then Blue Sky, before they got totally mixed-up with Origin)
It's the same thing. People were selling Black Lotuses for hundreds of dollars, sometimes a couple thousand, just for one card. Anyone ever thumb through an issue of Scrye? How about nowadays? Those cards aren't worth so much anymore, huh?
The creator of Magic, Richard Garfield, had this to say about people who bought the game's powerful items using vast amounts of real-world cash: "I think you'll find that if your rich neighbor doesn't play very well, his hundred-dollar box of boosters should be nothing more than a free source of cards for you."
If you buy something in game and don't have the skills to earn it, it will be quickly and judiciously taken from you by a superior player.
Sorry about that... slipped and hit the enter key too soon. Probably can kiss karma goodbye for that little screwup... watch my accidental blank post get moderated straight to hell.
Molyneux is undoubtedly one of the top designers on this earth, and one of the few left who can consistenly deliver. Magic Carpet remains to this day a favorite, and I'm desparately hoping that someday we'll see a third game in the series. Imagine Magic Carpet on a GeForce DDR... sweet. And with the possibilities opened up with all these CPU cycles, we could have truly modeled creature behavior.
And that to me seems to be what Molyneux is about... modeling an initial system and allowing the user to make changes to it. Kind of a proactive version of SimEverythingunderthesun.
And yeah, this is definitely: 1. News for Nerds. I'm a nerd, and I care deeply about such things. 2. Stuff that matters. When Molyneux speaks, a lot of people still listen. If it were Carmack, would you still scream "Off-Topic"?
I have an idea. All you Slashdotters who are parents, tell your children you love them. It just might work.
I am a geek. I was physically assaulted at least twice weekly in school by my "peers". I was a social outcast. I had few friends. In many respects, I resembled these killers.
I've played Doom since I was thirteen. I played all the violent games since; Duke, Quake, etc... I even played Operation Body Count, fer chrissakes.
And I've never killed anyone. I'm actually decently proficient with a gun, and could land eight hits with eight rounds on a target the size of the head and upper torso.
This is all because my parents love me, and raised me to be a decent human being. Maybe if some of these parents tried it, we'd have fewer shootings.
well, I hate replying to my own posts, but in regards to the moderation, this is NOT offtopic. I'm sick off all this MS-bashing. It's getting to the point where I can't even come here without being screamed down by the pro-Linuxers here for using NT. So much for the tolerant geeks. But it's not offtopic. The topic I'm discussing is how you treat non-Linuxers. It's not totally related, true, but it's something that's been borne out in the comments. And to the person who posted the Goatse.cx crap - it's getting old. I've seen the stretched asshole picture before. It's about as entertaining as hot grits, or FIRST POST, or any of the other crap. Fucking trolls.
Now that British is gone, they can let Origin descend into hell. I hope Andy Hollis runs while he can. After all, no one points out that he was the one on the Privateer project that just got canned. With Chris Roberts at Microsoft, Garriot leaving for unknown territory, Warren Spector over at Ion Storm (and the rest of Looking Glass at Eidos), and Erin Roberts following Chris, they've only got one talented designer left, and that's Andy Hollis. If I were him, I would have cut and run a long time ago. Of course, I say that of all of them. Time to pull a Peter Molyneux. Let all the designers leave and allow the company to flounder. Does anyone even see Origin still alive three years from now? EA will probably simply swallow them up and integrate UO into its in-house studios. Without Garriot to resist corporate HQ, Origin Systems is doomed.
I mean, come on already, where is this going? The Government doesn't understand the issues involved, Microsoft will not settle for an effective solution, and nothing's going to happen out of this. What MS is really worried about it that ruling. They know it means civil suits for years that will cost billions to fight. If they can keep delaying that ruling, they'll win. But there's no way the government can win. Either way, we get nothing. There will be NO effective solution. The DoJ can't come up with one, period. If Microsoft were to be closely monitored (and everyone else, let's be fair) then this would work out great. But there's no one at the DoJ who could monitor this industry. None of them get it.
And just why not? I work very hard at my bleak outlook, and depressing people around me by espousing it, so I damn well deserve some credit for it. Besides, when the sky does fall, us pessimists will have been right all along.
How about this... Step 1. Release Office Linux. Give it the functionality of Office 98. Step 2. Upgrade it to Office 2000 functionality. To do this, you have to add a few key extensions. Step 3. Lock down the shell. Ok, we'll use MS's linux shell. Step 4. They've go ttheir hooks in Linux, and can now develop for it and affect the community while they finish up their consumer OS project. Step 5. abandon Linux totally for the next version of WinNT? Drag the customers along with? Who knows what MS is up to? Doesn't matter to me, I already use NT. I don't care what some MS marketing geek, some Open Source zealot, or some twerpy l33t script kiddie tells me - I'll use what works for me. But this is right up their alley...
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Open source has its place. The hobby community will accomplish things that commercial development will never pay for using Open Source.
That said, it's never going to be the predominant model for software development, nor will Open Source programs ever be the prevailing supply of software for businesses. Why? Businesses like dealing with other businesses. When things fuck up (and they do), it's nice to have someone to blame, someone who has a responsibility to back up their product.
No IT staffer will want their server support to come solely from the community. And the Linux IPO's are all hype - they're not a serious alternative.
In short, it's not MS's OS that everyone's buying - it's the support. Granted, Win2000 is an excellent OS, but that's not why it gets bought.
Win2000 drivers are good for the NVIDIA series of cards, and I haven't heard any complaints from the 3dfx crowd. Matrox is getting there, as I hear, and ATI is doing alright from my experiences with a friend's Rage 128.
In short, the drivers for Win2000 are just fine.
Excellent, so anyone running a DNS should send a bill to NSI? I guess that's why NSI's business seems like it's pure profit - other people are providing the service that NSI is being paid for.
In my opinion? YES. You're helping them out. DNS servers should be subsidized from registration fees. That'd make sure that there's always DNS boxes up, and that they stay current. It's an incentive thing.
But hey, I'm not in charge.
Hey, that's cool. I'm not trying to say that Linux has no place. I'm just trying to stop people from saying the same about NT.
You pay these people to resolve a domain name to your IP address. The address is like the phone number (that's the only analogy I can use to explain it to people anymore anyway), and a company provides a layer linking your friendly name to an address.
Therefore, how NSI runs its business should be entirely up to NSI. I'm not against a little intervention; after all, the Internet is well on its way to being a utility similar to the phone system, but it doesn't mean that they aren't property. They're just the property of NSI.
They're like any other IPO... they fucking bleed cash.
Look at all that goes into a professional game. It takes a year of thirty people's lives. That means money. Lots of it.
It's not just programmers, either. It's artists (texture and model), designers, a story writer, level designers, a production staff, and a support structure for those people.
There's no Open Source on 3D Models.
Now, what about the Mod community, you say? What about Counter-Strike?
I say, what about Counter-Strike? They're doing a great job. Beta 7 rocks my world. But they're creating an addon to a game that's been out for a year, on a well-documented engine that's been around since I was in high school. And it's still taken them a substantial amount of time to get to where they are. Imagine if they were developing Quake III Arena!
In short, there's simply no way to create a professional-quality game without some sort of financial backing. And I thank the guys that do have the balls to step up and make entertaining me their job. Ya know how I thank them? I walk down to my local software store and lay down my hard-earned money for their unabashedly closed-source products.
No they won't!
As a developer, I want the toold that let me do my job the easiest and best way I know possible. That's Windows NT and Visual Studio.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the company I work for buys me what I need, regardless of whether or not a passingly similar open source alternative is available. You know why? Because they know that I need the tools I'm most familiar with, and they need to be able to support it after I move on. That means Windows, because it's what they're most familiar with.
Furthermore, while all you penguin-whores whine on about how much WinNT sucks, I know that it works. I can make it work. If you guys aren't competent enough to run NT without BSOD'ing it, then going to an OS you modify yourself isn't going to fix the basic problem - it's between the keyboard and the chair.
Just because Microsoft continues to perpetuate that steaming turd known now as WinME upon an unsuspecting public does not mean that their advanced OS (Win2k) is automatically crap.
If you'd actually bother trying it out, you might find that it really is a great improvement... but that would go against your narrow-minded FUD ethic.
The thing about id is that the people managing (Graeme, Todd, both Carmacks) are geeks, hackers, and whatnot. And guess what? They also happen to be effective managers (except when they fire the best low-poly modeler in the biz, but that's one fuckup among many good decisions...) Point is, let's not eliminate management - let's get managers who understand the biz.
If I end up in their ill-concieved lawsuit, you'd better believe my lawyer will be on their ass.
As they once said, Fight Fire With Fire.
AWESOME FUCKING IDEA.
I wish the bands would think of this. Get the hit off the album out and let everyone hear it.
Please, God, let this be the one question the band themselves hear. Let them connect to the fans I know they love and realize what their manager and lawyers are doing to us and them. This is all we really need.
Yes, you do. If you own a copy of the music, you hold a license to it.
That's why it irritates me that copying technology is so restricted after a new format is released. I'd like to get all of my old material copied onto the new format as soon as possible, and such restrictions only serve to hold me back.
As for my Metallica MP3's, I hold licenses to all of them. I own an original copy of everything Metallica's released in the U.S., except for some videos which I will not purchase until they are made available on DVD. In short, I have a right to my music in any form I choose.
C'mon, you've never used a piece of placeholder code? Ever?
They made an honest mistake not to take the code out. They'll have it fixed soon enough. Let's wait and see what they do before rushing to judgment.
I believe Looking Glass was the originator of the first-person 3d genre with Ultima Underworld. Granted, the guns were all id, but the game was LG (then Blue Sky, before they got totally mixed-up with Origin)
It's the same thing. People were selling Black Lotuses for hundreds of dollars, sometimes a couple thousand, just for one card. Anyone ever thumb through an issue of Scrye? How about nowadays? Those cards aren't worth so much anymore, huh?
The creator of Magic, Richard Garfield, had this to say about people who bought the game's powerful items using vast amounts of real-world cash:
"I think you'll find that if your rich neighbor doesn't play very well, his hundred-dollar box of boosters should be nothing more than a free source of cards for you."
If you buy something in game and don't have the skills to earn it, it will be quickly and judiciously taken from you by a superior player.
Preferably one who has been playing Thief.
Sorry about that... slipped and hit the enter key too soon. Probably can kiss karma goodbye for that little screwup... watch my accidental blank post get moderated straight to hell.
Molyneux is undoubtedly one of the top designers on this earth, and one of the few left who can consistenly deliver. Magic Carpet remains to this day a favorite, and I'm desparately hoping that someday we'll see a third game in the series. Imagine Magic Carpet on a GeForce DDR... sweet. And with the possibilities opened up with all these CPU cycles, we could have truly modeled creature behavior.
And that to me seems to be what Molyneux is about... modeling an initial system and allowing the user to make changes to it. Kind of a proactive version of SimEverythingunderthesun.
And yeah, this is definitely:
1. News for Nerds. I'm a nerd, and I care deeply about such things.
2. Stuff that matters. When Molyneux speaks, a lot of people still listen. If it were Carmack, would you still scream "Off-Topic"?
...before somebody thinks of blaming us.
I have an idea. All you Slashdotters who are parents, tell your children you love them. It just might work.
I am a geek. I was physically assaulted at least twice weekly in school by my "peers". I was a social outcast. I had few friends. In many respects, I resembled these killers.
I've played Doom since I was thirteen. I played all the violent games since; Duke, Quake, etc... I even played Operation Body Count, fer chrissakes.
And I've never killed anyone. I'm actually decently proficient with a gun, and could land eight hits with eight rounds on a target the size of the head and upper torso.
This is all because my parents love me, and raised me to be a decent human being. Maybe if some of these parents tried it, we'd have fewer shootings.
well, I hate replying to my own posts, but in regards to the moderation, this is NOT offtopic. I'm sick off all this MS-bashing. It's getting to the point where I can't even come here without being screamed down by the pro-Linuxers here for using NT. So much for the tolerant geeks. But it's not offtopic. The topic I'm discussing is how you treat non-Linuxers. It's not totally related, true, but it's something that's been borne out in the comments. And to the person who posted the Goatse.cx crap - it's getting old. I've seen the stretched asshole picture before. It's about as entertaining as hot grits, or FIRST POST, or any of the other crap. Fucking trolls.
Now that British is gone, they can let Origin descend into hell. I hope Andy Hollis runs while he can. After all, no one points out that he was the one on the Privateer project that just got canned. With Chris Roberts at Microsoft, Garriot leaving for unknown territory, Warren Spector over at Ion Storm (and the rest of Looking Glass at Eidos), and Erin Roberts following Chris, they've only got one talented designer left, and that's Andy Hollis. If I were him, I would have cut and run a long time ago. Of course, I say that of all of them. Time to pull a Peter Molyneux. Let all the designers leave and allow the company to flounder. Does anyone even see Origin still alive three years from now? EA will probably simply swallow them up and integrate UO into its in-house studios. Without Garriot to resist corporate HQ, Origin Systems is doomed.
I mean, come on already, where is this going? The Government doesn't understand the issues involved, Microsoft will not settle for an effective solution, and nothing's going to happen out of this. What MS is really worried about it that ruling. They know it means civil suits for years that will cost billions to fight. If they can keep delaying that ruling, they'll win. But there's no way the government can win. Either way, we get nothing. There will be NO effective solution. The DoJ can't come up with one, period. If Microsoft were to be closely monitored (and everyone else, let's be fair) then this would work out great. But there's no one at the DoJ who could monitor this industry. None of them get it.
And just why not? I work very hard at my bleak outlook, and depressing people around me by espousing it, so I damn well deserve some credit for it. Besides, when the sky does fall, us pessimists will have been right all along.
If they ever add an "Intelligent Thought" category (almost as bad as goat pr0n, folks), then we're all gonna be banned.
How about this... Step 1. Release Office Linux. Give it the functionality of Office 98. Step 2. Upgrade it to Office 2000 functionality. To do this, you have to add a few key extensions. Step 3. Lock down the shell. Ok, we'll use MS's linux shell. Step 4. They've go ttheir hooks in Linux, and can now develop for it and affect the community while they finish up their consumer OS project. Step 5. abandon Linux totally for the next version of WinNT? Drag the customers along with? Who knows what MS is up to? Doesn't matter to me, I already use NT. I don't care what some MS marketing geek, some Open Source zealot, or some twerpy l33t script kiddie tells me - I'll use what works for me. But this is right up their alley...