Think how different things would be for the Catholic Church in Boston if the Bishop had excommunicated and turned over to authorities the priest who fondled altar boys the very first time he did it.
We probably can't prevent having Open-Source zealot-fundamentalists who will do great harm to others and to the Open-Source cause. What we can do is police ourselves well to make sure that the dangerous ones are brought to justice, and distance ourselves as far as possible from them and their actions.
By doing so, we can help prevent a major catastrophe, and we end up remaining the good guys.
"I don't think zealots are what we should be afraid of, what we should fear are fundamentalists."
With fundamentalist zealots being the kind that really do damage.
What the article suggests is a real potential problem, because any movement -- once they have enough supporters, and Open Source/Free Software definitely does at this point -- is going to have a large portion of zealots, and a large portion of fundamentalists. Get big enough, and these two sets intersect, along with a certain group that is essentially a criminal element. We Open-Source advocates must learn to deal with them.
Look at the environment. There are very few people who genuinely believe that the environment can be sacrificed for any advancement. There are definitely disagreements about how destructive certain activities are, sometimes with the facts clearly on one side and not the other.
A couple of months ago, a building next to me was burned down by a group called the E.L.F. They supposedly stand against urban sprawl, and burn down new developments in response. However:
1. The building they burned was in the middle of an urban area. 2. Any animals that would have lost their homes to the construction had already lost their homes two years ago. 3. The fire spewed several weeks' worth of ash into the air, polluting the air everywhere. 4. Any animals that were still in the neighborhood were chased off by a blaze so hot that it was too intense to stand as close as a quarter-mile away. 5. People who originally objected to the development became supporters -- the E.L.F. made the developer a victim, and so people who originally would have supported their cause are now against them.
In every sense, the act did more damage to the environment than the development itself.
My own religion provides another great example. If you believe the news we read, the typical Christian is a former alcoholic priest fondling altar boys, murdering abortion clinic doctors wearing a T-shirt that says "God hates fags." Of course only a handful of Christians fit any of those descriptions. But the actions of these few harm the way ALL Christians seem to be to the world.
But what hurt the Catholic Church more than anything wasn't merely a priest fondling a boy, but rather the church's apparent complicity in this, by reassigning rather than expelling the guilty party and turning him over to the authorities.
The moral of the story is this: We, the members of the Open Source/Free Software movement, will have our freaks; that's to be expected. It is also to be expected that people will judge us based on the actions of those freaks.
What is important is for us to police our own. When, not If, someone does something awful in the name of Open Source, we must be the first to condemn their actions. We can't say, "These people have the right idea, but they do the wrong thing..." We have to say, "These people are psycho nutcases, and they are against everything we stand for."
What the article says will happen, will happen. We must be prepared to do the right thing with the fundamentalist zealots who do our cause more harm than good.
"Why don't you steal your stuff like the other slashbots?"
How can I steal my own stuff? After all, it's mine, I wrote it, and I can do whatever the fuck I want to with it, including sharing it with whomever wants it.
"The fact that they do so anyway speaks volumes about both the relevance of the services music companies provide."
Most artists detest marketing. That's the primary reason any artist goes to a major label -- laziness.
"I am not aware of any band that became successful (as in, the average person knows they exist) without a record label."
When the major labels approached MC Hammer (who until then had been selling CD's out of the back of a van up and down the left coast), Hammer actually turned down their initial offer, because selling CD's out of the back of a van was making him more money than the contract would have. The label had to come back with a much more favorable (non-standard) contract, and he made $135 million in one year once that happened.
Apple's recent history has been to get things "right" first, and get performance improvements made later. Case in point: OS X, which began as a very slow OS, and with each successive cat (Jaguar, Panther) has become faster and more efficient.
So it's likely that Apple will release faster/smaller versions for Windows with time.
That's very true. You can burn a song to a CD an unlimited number of times; you can burn a playlist only something like 10 times -- but who needs more than 10 copies of the same CD? I mean, other than a thief? You can easily then rip the CD to another copy and re-burn it indefinitely if you so choose, of course.
The only thing that gives me pause is that Apple's license gives them the right to change the restrictions at any time. So these "rights" are by no means guaranteed, except by the good will of Apple Computer. Which just means that not only is CD burning these tunes legal, it's a good idea... Just In Case.
Well, what I do is I make sure that the money that goes to Hollywood is at -least- matched, dollar-for-dollar, with a contribution to the EFF. That way my desire for certain films (LotR) and bands (Rush) can be satiated, while at the same time I help to ensure my rights are defended.
"Now, finding good artists, recording them, and selling their music is the difficult part, and that's where the recording industry comes in."
Of course, the artists are charged by the recording industry for the recording costs. And selling? Well, that requires promotion, which is also charged to the artists. And the finding process begins with finding artists that are already promoting themselves to a certain level of success, because otherwise, the artists wouldn't even become a blip on the radar.
Oh yeah, there's marketing work. Which the artists and Apple already do without them, but then those two folks don't have contracts with Pepsi to put Britney Spears' face on a Pepsi can in China (true, I was there and I saw it myself). Granted most folks already knew who Britney Spears was by that time.
So what's the hard part that the recording industry does again? I've got some friends who have a band, and they'd really like to know.
You've got some great points. I'd played DOOM on the PC originally so I knew about the savegames; DOOM/DOOM II save the entire state of a level, every monster and treasure item, so it's understandable that they had a limitation to deal with. They would have had to redesign the levels to make a port you could play in short hiccups.
Your history lesson is the best point I've seen on this topic. I remember how difficult it was to get an online Duke Nukem 3D game going, along with most of the games of its generation, including Quake and QuakeWorld. Gamespy was a godsend in that day. Now we have decent meta-servers provided by the game companies themselves, but it took a few generations.
I agree with you that having online console games mature is a necessity. I think wireless adapters for consoles and the spread of wireless access points in the home will also prove very valuable, because I think mobility is still one of a console's strongest selling points. Also, the services need to be free. The only money I pay to play any game online that isn't an MMORPG is to my ISP; I am unwilling to pay an additional fee for games I may or may not want to play on a console.
At least with MMORPG's, the monthly fee makes sense for people like some friends of mine who were buying 3 games a month; they actually get more for their video game buck with an EQ subscription. But with a general service I might not even use every month, that uses an ISP connection I've already paid for, I'm not going to be as interested.
Aside: Why is it the quality of discussions on games.slashdot.org seem to be at such a higher level than not just the rest of Slashdot, but even than other game discussion boards?
Your basic point, that the culture of playing PC games vs. console games is different, is the first thing that came to my mind when I saw this.
I have a PC, two consoles, and a GameBoy Advance. I play games on all of them, but I play different games at different times for different reasons.
A PC is generally relegated to a spare bedroom, a closet, or a corner where work is done. An internet connection is a necessity. When you use it, you face away from the rest of the room, towards the monitor. It is generally a solo activity; two's a crowd.
The console is basically social. It sits in the living room, and controller cables have a long reach. It's compact and easily portable -- I can quickly disconnect it and take it to someone else's place to play games together. And even a single-player game is something I can watch while a friend plays.
The handheld goes with me where I go. When I need a break at work, I can go outside. When I'm on a long flight, I can play games there.
From the different styles, you can see what sort of games people are going to play. For example, Doom II is a great game, but on the GBA you have to complete an entire level to save your place, which can take 20-30 minutes. People don't necessarily have 20-30 minutes to play on their GBA, so Doom II doesn't work very well.
It's the same thing with the console. The console mentality -- something you just pick up to take over to your friend's, something that you play in the living room with other people -- doesn't fit the online mentality. It makes more sense to do it when you already have an internet connection, when you're locked up in a room and are looking for some kind of social interaction that isn't immediately available.
Add an IP logger. If the page gets loaded more than N times, all attempts to log in from that IP are banned for a week (dial 1-800-ISP-Mail for assistance!).
Take a look at the graphs on page 3 and 4, listing the concerns for Windows and Linux, respectively.
The scale for the two graphs is different.
Even though accountability is the #2 issue for Linux, it comes in at between 35%-40% of respondents. For Windows, even though it is fourth on the list, it comes in at right between 30%-40%.
In other words, it's no more significant an issue for one than for the other.
A telemarketer pays the phone company for the phone call. Junk mail pays the USPS for the service of having the mail delivered. Outdoor advertising pays the property owner for the space. A magazine is compensated for the space on its pages, and a television network is compensated for the time slice in its broadcast.
I and my ISP are the ones who pay for the bandwidth to deliver a spam e-mail message to me. Not the spammer.
So they are, in fact, pulling out my credit card and billing me.
Didn't the Christians behave the same way, believing that they alone held the truth?
Haven't the Chinese existed for millenia believing themselves to be the center of civilization?
Why single out the Jews when EVERYONE believes themselves superior?
You're ascribing to Judaism something which is appropriately ascribed to almost all races, religions, etc. You yourself, by vilifying the Jews, have done that very thing which you accuse Jews of doing.
I think what's really going on here is that you're blaming the world for your troubles rather than
1. recognizing that everyone faces those troubles, and 2. doing something proactive to make things better.
That's the one and only thing that's become clear from this discussion.
"Are we to believe that every civilization, since civilzation began, has been flawed?"
If they weren't flawed, why aren't they still around? You're not actually going to blame a tiny ethnic group on the collapse of all civilizations, are you? Even Chinese civilization has eaten itself multiple times without any help from Judaism.
I think the simpler explanation is that civilizations are flawed, rather than reverting to some kind of third-rate racism.
"So what competing technology is stepping in to take Bluetooth's place? It's low power, short range, and doesn't need a fancy access point."
802.11a/b/g don't need access points either in ad-hoc mode.
As for what will take its place, I think the issue is that by the time Bluetooth made it to mass market, something already had taken its place for one of its primary applications -- wireless networking. 802.11b was cheap, faster, had better range, and was established.
Linux isn't a threat to the IP paradigm at all!
on
The FSF, Linux's Hit Men
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Businesses which wish to develop proprietary technologies with closed source software should not use GPL code.
Actually, business that wish to develop proprietary technologies without releasing the source can still use GPL code. Take my company, Kiyon, for example. We're making a kernel module that, once installed into Linux, turns an embedded Linux device into an autonomic router that can do some really nifty things.
Now the only actual GPL-derived code we have is a modification to a driver to add functionality that hadn't been implemented yet. And of course, we'd have to surrender that code once our product is released. But nothing in there is proprietary -- that's just filling out the feature set of existing drivers to get our code to work.
Our actual code is derived from a BSD-style license. Since it's an LKM, we can comply fully with the GPL without having to release any of our proprietary source or trade secrets or IP or whatever you want to call it. You can build a system using all of our GPL-derived code, and it will compile and run -- but it just won't have the routing capabilities. The "secret" is safe.
In fact, this is one of the great benefits of Linux -- the LKM structure allows you to do this. You can build something that integrates into the kernel without needing to release the source for it -- e.g., Nvidia's graphics drivers. This makes Linux particularly business-friendly -- in fact, more business-friendly than WinCE!!!
How do you think that dynamic function call table works? That 'automagic' happens to simply be a jump table. A common assembly language technique developed long, long before oop was a catch phrase.
I know how it works. The point is that Smalltalk/C++/Java/etc provide language-level support for it, so that you don't have to reinvent the wheel every single time you want to do dynamic function calling. It also implements protection mechanisms so that if someone does something that would otherwise violate an invariant, the compiler lets him know right away. One such invariant would be calling function_table[7]() when there are only 4 functions in the table. An assembler can't check for this sort of error.
Probably the main reason OOP exists is that it provides a mechanism by which new code can be added to old code, without having to dig into the old code to find just the right spot to make the function call to the new code.
See, in your assembly language, if you want to add new code, you have to not only write the new code, you have to dig through your Asm to find the little tiny spot where you JSR (or whatever your opcode may be) to the new code.
In my C++/Java, I just subclass that puppy when I write the new code, and my code gets called automagically. (Well, actually via a dynamic function call table, but you knew that.)
It doesn't help so much on a small, one-man project. But once you have more than one person and more than a thousand or so lines of code, suddenly OOP gets really, really useful.
I saw one of those, too! I use an old-style GBA so I can't use one.
The market for that accessory and the market for the N-Gage may not intersect very much. Also, ten bucks is probably the max most would pay for that accessory -- it's not that valuable of a feature. So I don't think the existence of the market for this necessarily means that the N-Gage is doomed.
When mentioning PAM support his comment was "finally!". A crowd member picked up on this & asked "when you say 'PAM - finally!', who are you implying you are behind?".
In other words, the resellers are completely unaware just how far behind SCO UNIX is the state-of-the-art. These guys would probably discover wonderful improvements if they picked up XP (Microsoft, are you listening?).
I wholeheartedly agree with you. I don't want a cell phone that's going to limit me to only GSM providers, and frankly, I want my cell phone to be as small as possible and my portable gaming device to be a lot larger.
I think Nokia's ad campaign has offended a lot of people (including me), and that's a big reason right there for people like you and me, who really can't wait for this thing to sink. As a result, I think we've exaggerated the negative aspects of it. This guy thought you needed a screwdriver to switch games, for crying out loud! That's just moronic. It's only -slightly- less moronic than the evil N-gage skater dude picture.
Slashdot Mirror
Think how different things would be for the Catholic Church in Boston if the Bishop had excommunicated and turned over to authorities the priest who fondled altar boys the very first time he did it.
We probably can't prevent having Open-Source zealot-fundamentalists who will do great harm to others and to the Open-Source cause. What we can do is police ourselves well to make sure that the dangerous ones are brought to justice, and distance ourselves as far as possible from them and their actions.
By doing so, we can help prevent a major catastrophe, and we end up remaining the good guys.
"I don't think zealots are what we should be afraid of, what we should fear are fundamentalists."
With fundamentalist zealots being the kind that really do damage.
What the article suggests is a real potential problem, because any movement -- once they have enough supporters, and Open Source/Free Software definitely does at this point -- is going to have a large portion of zealots, and a large portion of fundamentalists. Get big enough, and these two sets intersect, along with a certain group that is essentially a criminal element. We Open-Source advocates must learn to deal with them.
Look at the environment. There are very few people who genuinely believe that the environment can be sacrificed for any advancement. There are definitely disagreements about how destructive certain activities are, sometimes with the facts clearly on one side and not the other.
A couple of months ago, a building next to me was burned down by a group called the E.L.F. They supposedly stand against urban sprawl, and burn down new developments in response. However:
1. The building they burned was in the middle of an urban area.
2. Any animals that would have lost their homes to the construction had already lost their homes two years ago.
3. The fire spewed several weeks' worth of ash into the air, polluting the air everywhere.
4. Any animals that were still in the neighborhood were chased off by a blaze so hot that it was too intense to stand as close as a quarter-mile away.
5. People who originally objected to the development became supporters -- the E.L.F. made the developer a victim, and so people who originally would have supported their cause are now against them.
In every sense, the act did more damage to the environment than the development itself.
My own religion provides another great example. If you believe the news we read, the typical Christian is a former alcoholic priest fondling altar boys, murdering abortion clinic doctors wearing a T-shirt that says "God hates fags." Of course only a handful of Christians fit any of those descriptions. But the actions of these few harm the way ALL Christians seem to be to the world.
But what hurt the Catholic Church more than anything wasn't merely a priest fondling a boy, but rather the church's apparent complicity in this, by reassigning rather than expelling the guilty party and turning him over to the authorities.
The moral of the story is this: We, the members of the Open Source/Free Software movement, will have our freaks; that's to be expected. It is also to be expected that people will judge us based on the actions of those freaks.
What is important is for us to police our own. When, not If, someone does something awful in the name of Open Source, we must be the first to condemn their actions. We can't say, "These people have the right idea, but they do the wrong thing..." We have to say, "These people are psycho nutcases, and they are against everything we stand for."
What the article says will happen, will happen. We must be prepared to do the right thing with the fundamentalist zealots who do our cause more harm than good.
"Why don't you steal your stuff like the other slashbots?"
How can I steal my own stuff? After all, it's mine, I wrote it, and I can do whatever the fuck I want to with it, including sharing it with whomever wants it.
"The fact that they do so anyway speaks volumes about both the relevance of the services music companies provide."
Most artists detest marketing. That's the primary reason any artist goes to a major label -- laziness.
"I am not aware of any band that became successful (as in, the average person knows they exist) without a record label."
When the major labels approached MC Hammer (who until then had been selling CD's out of the back of a van up and down the left coast), Hammer actually turned down their initial offer, because selling CD's out of the back of a van was making him more money than the contract would have. The label had to come back with a much more favorable (non-standard) contract, and he made $135 million in one year once that happened.
But don't take my word for it. Ask an artist who's been in the business for a while.
Apple's recent history has been to get things "right" first, and get performance improvements made later. Case in point: OS X, which began as a very slow OS, and with each successive cat (Jaguar, Panther) has become faster and more efficient.
So it's likely that Apple will release faster/smaller versions for Windows with time.
That's very true. You can burn a song to a CD an unlimited number of times; you can burn a playlist only something like 10 times -- but who needs more than 10 copies of the same CD? I mean, other than a thief? You can easily then rip the CD to another copy and re-burn it indefinitely if you so choose, of course.
The only thing that gives me pause is that Apple's license gives them the right to change the restrictions at any time. So these "rights" are by no means guaranteed, except by the good will of Apple Computer. Which just means that not only is CD burning these tunes legal, it's a good idea... Just In Case.
Well, what I do is I make sure that the money that goes to Hollywood is at -least- matched, dollar-for-dollar, with a contribution to the EFF. That way my desire for certain films (LotR) and bands (Rush) can be satiated, while at the same time I help to ensure my rights are defended.
"Now, finding good artists, recording them, and selling their music is the difficult part, and that's where the recording industry comes in."
Of course, the artists are charged by the recording industry for the recording costs. And selling? Well, that requires promotion, which is also charged to the artists. And the finding process begins with finding artists that are already promoting themselves to a certain level of success, because otherwise, the artists wouldn't even become a blip on the radar.
Oh yeah, there's marketing work. Which the artists and Apple already do without them, but then those two folks don't have contracts with Pepsi to put Britney Spears' face on a Pepsi can in China (true, I was there and I saw it myself). Granted most folks already knew who Britney Spears was by that time.
So what's the hard part that the recording industry does again? I've got some friends who have a band, and they'd really like to know.
You've got some great points. I'd played DOOM on the PC originally so I knew about the savegames; DOOM/DOOM II save the entire state of a level, every monster and treasure item, so it's understandable that they had a limitation to deal with. They would have had to redesign the levels to make a port you could play in short hiccups.
Your history lesson is the best point I've seen on this topic. I remember how difficult it was to get an online Duke Nukem 3D game going, along with most of the games of its generation, including Quake and QuakeWorld. Gamespy was a godsend in that day. Now we have decent meta-servers provided by the game companies themselves, but it took a few generations.
I agree with you that having online console games mature is a necessity. I think wireless adapters for consoles and the spread of wireless access points in the home will also prove very valuable, because I think mobility is still one of a console's strongest selling points. Also, the services need to be free. The only money I pay to play any game online that isn't an MMORPG is to my ISP; I am unwilling to pay an additional fee for games I may or may not want to play on a console.
At least with MMORPG's, the monthly fee makes sense for people like some friends of mine who were buying 3 games a month; they actually get more for their video game buck with an EQ subscription. But with a general service I might not even use every month, that uses an ISP connection I've already paid for, I'm not going to be as interested.
Aside: Why is it the quality of discussions on games.slashdot.org seem to be at such a higher level than not just the rest of Slashdot, but even than other game discussion boards?
Your basic point, that the culture of playing PC games vs. console games is different, is the first thing that came to my mind when I saw this.
I have a PC, two consoles, and a GameBoy Advance. I play games on all of them, but I play different games at different times for different reasons.
A PC is generally relegated to a spare bedroom, a closet, or a corner where work is done. An internet connection is a necessity. When you use it, you face away from the rest of the room, towards the monitor. It is generally a solo activity; two's a crowd.
The console is basically social. It sits in the living room, and controller cables have a long reach. It's compact and easily portable -- I can quickly disconnect it and take it to someone else's place to play games together. And even a single-player game is something I can watch while a friend plays.
The handheld goes with me where I go. When I need a break at work, I can go outside. When I'm on a long flight, I can play games there.
From the different styles, you can see what sort of games people are going to play. For example, Doom II is a great game, but on the GBA you have to complete an entire level to save your place, which can take 20-30 minutes. People don't necessarily have 20-30 minutes to play on their GBA, so Doom II doesn't work very well.
It's the same thing with the console. The console mentality -- something you just pick up to take over to your friend's, something that you play in the living room with other people -- doesn't fit the online mentality. It makes more sense to do it when you already have an internet connection, when you're locked up in a room and are looking for some kind of social interaction that isn't immediately available.
Add an IP logger. If the page gets loaded more than N times, all attempts to log in from that IP are banned for a week (dial 1-800-ISP-Mail for assistance!).
How about that?
Something interesting about "Accountability."
Take a look at the graphs on page 3 and 4, listing the concerns for Windows and Linux, respectively.
The scale for the two graphs is different.
Even though accountability is the #2 issue for Linux, it comes in at between 35%-40% of respondents. For Windows, even though it is fourth on the list, it comes in at right between 30%-40%.
In other words, it's no more significant an issue for one than for the other.
A telemarketer pays the phone company for the phone call. Junk mail pays the USPS for the service of having the mail delivered. Outdoor advertising pays the property owner for the space. A magazine is compensated for the space on its pages, and a television network is compensated for the time slice in its broadcast.
I and my ISP are the ones who pay for the bandwidth to deliver a spam e-mail message to me. Not the spammer.
So they are, in fact, pulling out my credit card and billing me.
Didn't the Christians behave the same way, believing that they alone held the truth?
Haven't the Chinese existed for millenia believing themselves to be the center of civilization?
Why single out the Jews when EVERYONE believes themselves superior?
You're ascribing to Judaism something which is appropriately ascribed to almost all races, religions, etc. You yourself, by vilifying the Jews, have done that very thing which you accuse Jews of doing.
I think what's really going on here is that you're blaming the world for your troubles rather than
1. recognizing that everyone faces those troubles, and
2. doing something proactive to make things better.
That's the one and only thing that's become clear from this discussion.
"Are we to believe that every civilization, since civilzation began, has been flawed?"
If they weren't flawed, why aren't they still around? You're not actually going to blame a tiny ethnic group on the collapse of all civilizations, are you? Even Chinese civilization has eaten itself multiple times without any help from Judaism.
I think the simpler explanation is that civilizations are flawed, rather than reverting to some kind of third-rate racism.
I still don't get it. Is this an envy thing?
I don't get the whole anti-semitism thing.
"So what competing technology is stepping in to take Bluetooth's place? It's low power, short range, and doesn't need a fancy access point."
802.11a/b/g don't need access points either in ad-hoc mode.
As for what will take its place, I think the issue is that by the time Bluetooth made it to mass market, something already had taken its place for one of its primary applications -- wireless networking. 802.11b was cheap, faster, had better range, and was established.
Actually, business that wish to develop proprietary technologies without releasing the source can still use GPL code. Take my company, Kiyon, for example. We're making a kernel module that, once installed into Linux, turns an embedded Linux device into an autonomic router that can do some really nifty things.
Now the only actual GPL-derived code we have is a modification to a driver to add functionality that hadn't been implemented yet. And of course, we'd have to surrender that code once our product is released. But nothing in there is proprietary -- that's just filling out the feature set of existing drivers to get our code to work.
Our actual code is derived from a BSD-style license. Since it's an LKM, we can comply fully with the GPL without having to release any of our proprietary source or trade secrets or IP or whatever you want to call it. You can build a system using all of our GPL-derived code, and it will compile and run -- but it just won't have the routing capabilities. The "secret" is safe.
In fact, this is one of the great benefits of Linux -- the LKM structure allows you to do this. You can build something that integrates into the kernel without needing to release the source for it -- e.g., Nvidia's graphics drivers. This makes Linux particularly business-friendly -- in fact, more business-friendly than WinCE!!!
Yup. $600 new. Now worth about $25. I still have a huge selection of custom sounds that I use when I write music to give it all that nice 80's feel.
I also have a HP LaserJet IIIP from '91 that still works and is cheaper per page than all those crappy inkjet printers.
I know how it works. The point is that Smalltalk/C++/Java/etc provide language-level support for it, so that you don't have to reinvent the wheel every single time you want to do dynamic function calling. It also implements protection mechanisms so that if someone does something that would otherwise violate an invariant, the compiler lets him know right away. One such invariant would be calling function_table[7]() when there are only 4 functions in the table. An assembler can't check for this sort of error.
Probably the main reason OOP exists is that it provides a mechanism by which new code can be added to old code, without having to dig into the old code to find just the right spot to make the function call to the new code.
See, in your assembly language, if you want to add new code, you have to not only write the new code, you have to dig through your Asm to find the little tiny spot where you JSR (or whatever your opcode may be) to the new code.
In my C++/Java, I just subclass that puppy when I write the new code, and my code gets called automagically. (Well, actually via a dynamic function call table, but you knew that.)
It doesn't help so much on a small, one-man project. But once you have more than one person and more than a thousand or so lines of code, suddenly OOP gets really, really useful.
I saw one of those, too! I use an old-style GBA so I can't use one.
The market for that accessory and the market for the N-Gage may not intersect very much. Also, ten bucks is probably the max most would pay for that accessory -- it's not that valuable of a feature. So I don't think the existence of the market for this necessarily means that the N-Gage is doomed.
In other words, the resellers are completely unaware just how far behind SCO UNIX is the state-of-the-art. These guys would probably discover wonderful improvements if they picked up XP (Microsoft, are you listening?).
I wholeheartedly agree with you. I don't want a cell phone that's going to limit me to only GSM providers, and frankly, I want my cell phone to be as small as possible and my portable gaming device to be a lot larger.
I think Nokia's ad campaign has offended a lot of people (including me), and that's a big reason right there for people like you and me, who really can't wait for this thing to sink. As a result, I think we've exaggerated the negative aspects of it. This guy thought you needed a screwdriver to switch games, for crying out loud! That's just moronic. It's only -slightly- less moronic than the evil N-gage skater dude picture.