While I enjoyed seeing the responses of someone who understands the problems involved with our current copyright situation, I would really like to see a supporter of the DMCA answer questions on this site. I want to see someone respond to the questions this law has created from a perspective out side the standard slashdot "DMCA SUCKS!". Considering that most major news outlets are owned by companies that are strongly pro-DMCA, the debate about it in the mainstream was woefully lacking, and the coverage here was definately skewed toward the anti-DMCA stance.
On the other hand, asking a pro-DMCA person to respond to questions on slashdot is a bit like inviting Ghandi over for a steak dinner. The invitation wont be accepted. I think the DMCA is a piece of garbage, but I still would like to see a different perspective on it.
The worst part of what happened to ICQ is what they have done to the servers. If you logon with 2000b, then logoff, and log on with another program (IE Licq), it wont let you log on. You have to play server swap bingo, and put an actual IP address in the server list, and hope it hasnt locked you into icq 2000b (The LICQ homepage has info on it). The ads suck, but complete reconfiguration on AOL's whim sucks even more
Creative is a strange company, parts of it want to be open, IE the live and dxr2 drivers for linux. On the other hand, you have the legal killing of Aureal, and now this. Some real split personality problems in that company.
Eww.... Gameday's last good version was 98. After that, the series went to the trash. I hope sega ports the NFL series to PS2, because Madden needs some competition. Trust me , dont try Gameday on the PS2, its just short of making me projectile vomit. Its sad too, because the original Gameday was one of the reasons I bought a Playstation at launch. Still, as one of those now orphaned dreamcast owners, I will prolly buy NFL2k2 and Jet Grind 2 and Crazy Taxi 2. Just because the console wont be made anymore, doesnt mean I'll stop playing it.
I am sick of people assuming that the dreamcast automatically runs WinCE. Only certain games use it. Very few in fact, sega rally, and some vegas gambling game are the only two I know of. If you look on the dreamcast it says COMPATIBLE with WinCE. Not powered by. Most of the games use sega's proprietary OS, like jet grind radio, NFL2k1, Crazy Taxi, pretty much all of the major games out. So, to run dreamcast games, you'd have to emulate 2 different OS's. I think it would be just cheaper to put a SH-4 and a Power VR chip in it, use them as your display and main processor and be done with it. The cost of just slapping them on the side, or having hardware fast enough for emulation would be ridiculous, especially for a low cost set top box. Hell, with a 40gig hd, your gonna have to cut costs somewhere, so just use the same chips.
This sounds like a step back for sega, instead of doing some marketing, which they sorely need (I have many casual gamer friends who when I brought out my Dreamcast, had no idea that sega still made a console.) they are going to a segment in which even less people will be able to use their machine. Obviously this thing is broadband only, which is a very small portion of the US and UK. They had better keep the original model around, cause this machine is a niche player if I've ever seen one. Sega missed a golden opportunity, a media blitz right after the PS2 launch could have catapulted the system. Sony got ya down, cant get a PS2? Take a look at us, we got better games, the same level of graphics, and we can actually ship enough out to meet demand, at half the price too.
With all of these content restrictions, wont HDTV pretty much be dead? I mean really, are you gonna tell me what I cant video tape? It really sounds like the big corporate giants want to kill it, from the bitching about broadcasting at 1080i, the content controls, the slowness with which it is being rolled out, I get the distinct feeling that the broadcast industry just created this HDTV thing to get the free bandwidth, and not to actually improve TV. My thoughts? Take back the spectrum, and auction it. These jokers dont seem to be in any hurry to use it.
Actually, the discrimination has more to do with the management positions. Not too many african american head coaches in the NFL (dennis green at Minnesota is the only one I can think of right now), only a couple hispanic and black managers in baseball. Same with the NBA. As you go higher up, into positions such as General Manager, or any sort of business operations, the amount of minorities are even less. Basically, most of the time that people are talking about racism in sports, its about the fact that the managerial positions dont reflect the racial balance of the players in the league.
Two small problem with your arguement. The dreamcast bears a logo that states Compatible with WinCE, not powered by. Secondly WinCE games for the dreamcast are extremely few and far between. WinCE on dreamcast has a reputation for slow loading times, and wasting alot of resources.
The only game I can think of that runs WinCE on the dreamcast is some vegas gambling game. Think Shenmue, Jet Grind Radio, or NFL2K1 run WinCE underneath? Nope. Now, you are right, bsod's on dreamcasts are few and far between. But it has little to do with Microsoft. Prolly 95% of the games for it have nothing to do with WinCE, and wont load it. I'm all for giving Microsoft credit when they deserve it, but the dreamcast's success has little to do with them.
The stock price manipulation is much more important than just that. As someone mentioned in a previous article, those stock benefits come at the cost of shareholders. If the stock slips, not only do they lose their work force, they also fall down a very slippery slope. If it starts to really slide, like down to the $20-30 range, having stock options given to every joe blow at MS becomes a serious threat to shareholder value. Then MS has to pay their employees better, and on top of that, they lose that really slick tax break they get for employee stock options. If MS goes, it will go down quick and hard.
Now as far as when that will happen, ESR predicting the fall is a bit like the CIA trying to predict when the Soviet Union would collapse. Open Source advocates just have too much involved in trying to make MS collapse for them to make any rational predictions as to when or if it will occur.
Did anyone else get the feeling that Paul felt like he was stumbling towards a take over of the empire? In the book, I felt his triumph over the empire was part of a grand plan, a great campaign. In the miniseries, it was like "Well I guess he wants to be emperor, so we better let him marry Irulan". Oh well, parts of it were good, parts of it sucked. To expect a fabulous miniseries that perfectly followed the book is ridiculous.
I used to do tech support for a certain sound card manufacturer (hint: they liked to sue aureal alot). Now while they weren't anywhere near as draconian as pac bell sounds, there were certainly several situation that made me extremely angry about the company in general. I worked in email support, and as a result had some autonomy. We were expected to experiment with our hardware, to understand whats going on. Well, a new set of NT drivers are release. So we test it out on our NT machines. Install, watch BSOD appear. It wont even boot now. We try with several other machines, same thing. We run over to test lab to show them, and they have no idea whats causing it. In fact they never figured it out. Instead, they pull the drivers, and leave me to explain to all the NT customers that we cant help them unless they have their emergency repair disks. The company also had a tuition reimbursement program, however getting HR to get you on the program. After 2 years of working for $7.00 an hour on the hope that I could get them to pay for some of my computer science classes, I burned out. False benefits, and poorly tested products are no way to keep competent tech support.
Before we all start saying that the open source business model doesnt work, simply because redhat is laying off people, there is a company that does make money at this. Its called Suse. The open source model for a software business can work, now whether redhat can make it work or not remains to be seen. I think redhat's problems have more to do with overextending itself with acquisitions, and the fact that there are so many other linux distros that are better. I dont want this to be distro flame war, so if redhat works for you, great, I'm happy for. I just prefer debian or mandrake.
Alright, so what if I could vote online. Will that suddenly change voting patterns? I wouldnt bet on it. Personally, we need to explore other forms of voting. I'd like to see us ditch the whole just plain one vote system. I like the Borda count, but I'd prefer a ranked style system in which instant runoffs become possible. Simply eliminate the lowest vote getter, and place that persons vote for the next highest ranked person on the list. I havent done the math, it may end up the same as a simple borda count. Still, this sort of setup prevents the Nader-Gore dilemma, and allows me to vote for my 3rd party of choice but still influence the main party choice. It also prevents the problem with the vote for whoever is qualified setup, that being, you cant choose between the kinda qualified, and the nowhere near qualified. I couldn't say that I even though I dont like any of them, I'd still prefer bush or gore to Buchanan.
he comes from a state in which their constitution does not allow atheists to hold office or even be official citizen. Think I'm joking, read the Texas constitution.
this is one of my beefs with quake 3, that the physics of a game depend on framerate. I remember reading that the 1.25 first beta fixed this, but the old physics code was put back in the latest beta. oh well. People will bitch no matter what. People whined when id said they were taking out the damage through walls. Of course I bitch about the stupidity of strafe jumping, so I am one of those that will be bitching about id no matter what.
I honestly think that is not a fair representation of socialism at all. Yes economically Communism and Socialism are the similar, but there is a huge difference in them inherently. Communism, with its belief in revolution, spreads a thought that killing for this higher economic good is a good thing. Hence people such as Pol Pot and Stalin have no problem wasting half of their population. Socialism plays within the current political system. They want to be elected, and killing your constituents is not a good way to get reelected, and hence they are still accountable to the people. Socialistic policies have done well in many countries such as the Sweden, Norway, and to a lesser extent Canada. They arent perfect, and in some cases they may need to be replaced, but the politicians are still held accountable. That is the problem with communism, the lack of accountability inherent in a totalitarian state. So get your facts straight. Saying Communism equals Socialism is about as responsible as saying Facism equals the Republican party.
A concept I have done some thought on is that of an in between language, specifically tuned for the needs of machine translation. I think the only plausable way to do it at this point would be for the writer to actually know the language to begin with, as translating from english to machine, and then to whatever the user wanted would be just as problematic as our current state. Would this be feasable? Do you think it would be worth learning another language for that? Or would it be another Esperanto?
I used KDE 1 for along time, it was fast, stable and easy to use. But KDE 2 took out one of my favorite features, the taskbar being separate from the launch bar. It was in the early betas, and even had a configuration option for it even after they removed it. I loved that part of kde, but its gone now. I moved to gnome awhile ago, to see if I could get my separate taskbar. I got it there but stayed because of the nice intergration of the palm pilot. That being said, KDE is a nice environment, and kudos for them for releasing it.
there are more than a few game styles that have really benefitted from new technology. Take Gran Turismo, at its heart, its pole position. But with all the 3d graphics, and more complex physics, it has become much more addictive and fun. Tony Hawk Pro Skater is another example. At its heart its just Skate or Die or 720. However with the larger environments and more varied tricks, its 20 times better than either of those games. That being said, there are truly great games out there that will always be good. Tetris, Super Mario Bros., the first Zelda, are all examples of just plain good gaming that are still good today. Its like a movie in many respects. Just because Star Wars is almost 25 years old, doesnt make it dated. So what I'm trying to say is games benefit from the tech, but the tech alone does not make a great game.
Ok, one of the threats of the open source is that it will for. We've all seen the forks in bsd, and it certainly hasnt killed that. Why not a fork for big iron machines. It doesn't even have to be maintained by Linus. We have crypto patches, and the AC patches, hows about a big ass computer patch.
Slashdot Mirror
While I enjoyed seeing the responses of someone who understands the problems involved with our current copyright situation, I would really like to see a supporter of the DMCA answer questions on this site. I want to see someone respond to the questions this law has created from a perspective out side the standard slashdot "DMCA SUCKS!". Considering that most major news outlets are owned by companies that are strongly pro-DMCA, the debate about it in the mainstream was woefully lacking, and the coverage here was definately skewed toward the anti-DMCA stance.
On the other hand, asking a pro-DMCA person to respond to questions on slashdot is a bit like inviting Ghandi over for a steak dinner. The invitation wont be accepted. I think the DMCA is a piece of garbage, but I still would like to see a different perspective on it.
The worst part of what happened to ICQ is what they have done to the servers. If you logon with 2000b, then logoff, and log on with another program (IE Licq), it wont let you log on. You have to play server swap bingo, and put an actual IP address in the server list, and hope it hasnt locked you into icq 2000b (The LICQ homepage has info on it). The ads suck, but complete reconfiguration on AOL's whim sucks even more
Creative is a strange company, parts of it want to be open, IE the live and dxr2 drivers for linux. On the other hand, you have the legal killing of Aureal, and now this. Some real split personality problems in that company.
Eww.... Gameday's last good version was 98. After that, the series went to the trash. I hope sega ports the NFL series to PS2, because Madden needs some competition. Trust me , dont try Gameday on the PS2, its just short of making me projectile vomit. Its sad too, because the original Gameday was one of the reasons I bought a Playstation at launch. Still, as one of those now orphaned dreamcast owners, I will prolly buy NFL2k2 and Jet Grind 2 and Crazy Taxi 2. Just because the console wont be made anymore, doesnt mean I'll stop playing it.
I am sick of people assuming that the dreamcast automatically runs WinCE. Only certain games use it. Very few in fact, sega rally, and some vegas gambling game are the only two I know of. If you look on the dreamcast it says COMPATIBLE with WinCE. Not powered by. Most of the games use sega's proprietary OS, like jet grind radio, NFL2k1, Crazy Taxi, pretty much all of the major games out. So, to run dreamcast games, you'd have to emulate 2 different OS's. I think it would be just cheaper to put a SH-4 and a Power VR chip in it, use them as your display and main processor and be done with it. The cost of just slapping them on the side, or having hardware fast enough for emulation would be ridiculous, especially for a low cost set top box. Hell, with a 40gig hd, your gonna have to cut costs somewhere, so just use the same chips.
This sounds like a step back for sega, instead of doing some marketing, which they sorely need (I have many casual gamer friends who when I brought out my Dreamcast, had no idea that sega still made a console.) they are going to a segment in which even less people will be able to use their machine. Obviously this thing is broadband only, which is a very small portion of the US and UK. They had better keep the original model around, cause this machine is a niche player if I've ever seen one. Sega missed a golden opportunity, a media blitz right after the PS2 launch could have catapulted the system. Sony got ya down, cant get a PS2? Take a look at us, we got better games, the same level of graphics, and we can actually ship enough out to meet demand, at half the price too.
With all of these content restrictions, wont HDTV pretty much be dead? I mean really, are you gonna tell me what I cant video tape? It really sounds like the big corporate giants want to kill it, from the bitching about broadcasting at 1080i, the content controls, the slowness with which it is being rolled out, I get the distinct feeling that the broadcast industry just created this HDTV thing to get the free bandwidth, and not to actually improve TV. My thoughts? Take back the spectrum, and auction it. These jokers dont seem to be in any hurry to use it.
Actually, the discrimination has more to do with the management positions. Not too many african american head coaches in the NFL (dennis green at Minnesota is the only one I can think of right now), only a couple hispanic and black managers in baseball. Same with the NBA. As you go higher up, into positions such as General Manager, or any sort of business operations, the amount of minorities are even less. Basically, most of the time that people are talking about racism in sports, its about the fact that the managerial positions dont reflect the racial balance of the players in the league.
Two small problem with your arguement. The dreamcast bears a logo that states Compatible with WinCE, not powered by. Secondly WinCE games for the dreamcast are extremely few and far between. WinCE on dreamcast has a reputation for slow loading times, and wasting alot of resources.
The only game I can think of that runs WinCE on the dreamcast is some vegas gambling game. Think Shenmue, Jet Grind Radio, or NFL2K1 run WinCE underneath? Nope. Now, you are right, bsod's on dreamcasts are few and far between. But it has little to do with Microsoft. Prolly 95% of the games for it have nothing to do with WinCE, and wont load it. I'm all for giving Microsoft credit when they deserve it, but the dreamcast's success has little to do with them.
The stock price manipulation is much more important than just that. As someone mentioned in a previous article, those stock benefits come at the cost of shareholders. If the stock slips, not only do they lose their work force, they also fall down a very slippery slope. If it starts to really slide, like down to the $20-30 range, having stock options given to every joe blow at MS becomes a serious threat to shareholder value. Then MS has to pay their employees better, and on top of that, they lose that really slick tax break they get for employee stock options. If MS goes, it will go down quick and hard.
Now as far as when that will happen, ESR predicting the fall is a bit like the CIA trying to predict when the Soviet Union would collapse. Open Source advocates just have too much involved in trying to make MS collapse for them to make any rational predictions as to when or if it will occur.
Did anyone else get the feeling that Paul felt like he was stumbling towards a take over of the empire? In the book, I felt his triumph over the empire was part of a grand plan, a great campaign. In the miniseries, it was like "Well I guess he wants to be emperor, so we better let him marry Irulan". Oh well, parts of it were good, parts of it sucked. To expect a fabulous miniseries that perfectly followed the book is ridiculous.
I used to do tech support for a certain sound card manufacturer (hint: they liked to sue aureal alot). Now while they weren't anywhere near as draconian as pac bell sounds, there were certainly several situation that made me extremely angry about the company in general. I worked in email support, and as a result had some autonomy. We were expected to experiment with our hardware, to understand whats going on. Well, a new set of NT drivers are release. So we test it out on our NT machines. Install, watch BSOD appear. It wont even boot now. We try with several other machines, same thing. We run over to test lab to show them, and they have no idea whats causing it. In fact they never figured it out. Instead, they pull the drivers, and leave me to explain to all the NT customers that we cant help them unless they have their emergency repair disks. The company also had a tuition reimbursement program, however getting HR to get you on the program. After 2 years of working for $7.00 an hour on the hope that I could get them to pay for some of my computer science classes, I burned out. False benefits, and poorly tested products are no way to keep competent tech support.
Actually they opened up their finacials to the press in June 1999. Just do a search on google about it.
Before we all start saying that the open source business model doesnt work, simply because redhat is laying off people, there is a company that does make money at this. Its called Suse. The open source model for a software business can work, now whether redhat can make it work or not remains to be seen. I think redhat's problems have more to do with overextending itself with acquisitions, and the fact that there are so many other linux distros that are better. I dont want this to be distro flame war, so if redhat works for you, great, I'm happy for. I just prefer debian or mandrake.
Alright, so what if I could vote online. Will that suddenly change voting patterns? I wouldnt bet on it. Personally, we need to explore other forms of voting. I'd like to see us ditch the whole just plain one vote system. I like the Borda count, but I'd prefer a ranked style system in which instant runoffs become possible. Simply eliminate the lowest vote getter, and place that persons vote for the next highest ranked person on the list. I havent done the math, it may end up the same as a simple borda count. Still, this sort of setup prevents the Nader-Gore dilemma, and allows me to vote for my 3rd party of choice but still influence the main party choice. It also prevents the problem with the vote for whoever is qualified setup, that being, you cant choose between the kinda qualified, and the nowhere near qualified. I couldn't say that I even though I dont like any of them, I'd still prefer bush or gore to Buchanan.
he comes from a state in which their constitution does not allow atheists to hold office or even be official citizen. Think I'm joking, read the Texas constitution.
this is one of my beefs with quake 3, that the physics of a game depend on framerate. I remember reading that the 1.25 first beta fixed this, but the old physics code was put back in the latest beta. oh well. People will bitch no matter what. People whined when id said they were taking out the damage through walls. Of course I bitch about the stupidity of strafe jumping, so I am one of those that will be bitching about id no matter what.
Gentlemen... I think we've been trolled.
I honestly think that is not a fair representation of socialism at all. Yes economically Communism and Socialism are the similar, but there is a huge difference in them inherently. Communism, with its belief in revolution, spreads a thought that killing for this higher economic good is a good thing. Hence people such as Pol Pot and Stalin have no problem wasting half of their population. Socialism plays within the current political system. They want to be elected, and killing your constituents is not a good way to get reelected, and hence they are still accountable to the people. Socialistic policies have done well in many countries such as the Sweden, Norway, and to a lesser extent Canada. They arent perfect, and in some cases they may need to be replaced, but the politicians are still held accountable. That is the problem with communism, the lack of accountability inherent in a totalitarian state. So get your facts straight. Saying Communism equals Socialism is about as responsible as saying Facism equals the Republican party.
A concept I have done some thought on is that of an in between language, specifically tuned for the needs of machine translation. I think the only plausable way to do it at this point would be for the writer to actually know the language to begin with, as translating from english to machine, and then to whatever the user wanted would be just as problematic as our current state. Would this be feasable? Do you think it would be worth learning another language for that? Or would it be another Esperanto?
I used KDE 1 for along time, it was fast, stable and easy to use. But KDE 2 took out one of my favorite features, the taskbar being separate from the launch bar. It was in the early betas, and even had a configuration option for it even after they removed it. I loved that part of kde, but its gone now. I moved to gnome awhile ago, to see if I could get my separate taskbar. I got it there but stayed because of the nice intergration of the palm pilot. That being said, KDE is a nice environment, and kudos for them for releasing it.
there are more than a few game styles that have really benefitted from new technology. Take Gran Turismo, at its heart, its pole position. But with all the 3d graphics, and more complex physics, it has become much more addictive and fun. Tony Hawk Pro Skater is another example. At its heart its just Skate or Die or 720. However with the larger environments and more varied tricks, its 20 times better than either of those games. That being said, there are truly great games out there that will always be good. Tetris, Super Mario Bros., the first Zelda, are all examples of just plain good gaming that are still good today. Its like a movie in many respects. Just because Star Wars is almost 25 years old, doesnt make it dated. So what I'm trying to say is games benefit from the tech, but the tech alone does not make a great game.
On top of that, isnt the 2.5 series supposed to end in 3.0?
I dont fuck goats, I'm from montana. we fuck sheep.
Ok, one of the threats of the open source is that it will for. We've all seen the forks in bsd, and it certainly hasnt killed that. Why not a fork for big iron machines. It doesn't even have to be maintained by Linus. We have crypto patches, and the AC patches, hows about a big ass computer patch.