D2 was rushed. We're already at 1.08 on D2. Some of those were significant updates. The expansion was even more rushed. What happened? 1.07 and 1.08 downloaded at the same time for D2X. Lovely. Why?
So Blizzard could meat their July 29th deadline for the game being on sale.
They rush things. Maybe not all but they still rush things.
I have to disagree. Diablo 2 has been out for quite some time and only in recent times did we see any significant work being done on boosting the realms with many realms not getting much of a boost until just before the expansion was released. That's why we had so many people from Asia and Europe playing on USEast and USWest - the performance was so awful on Asia and Europe realms that they just came here.
Even worse, D2 realms were completely awful for some time after the game was released. Then we had hacking problems, duping problems, etc. on the realms.
The D2 games are a prime example of Blizzard rushing. In D2 we had Barbarians' weapon mastery counting twice, bonuses not counting on bows and Corpse Explosion for the Nercomancer scaling up with monster HP (which would be nice now:P ). Fend was completely awful (and still is since it attacks at only range 1 even with a 5 range weapon), duel wielding for Barbarians didn't do a damn thing for Whirlwind.... the list goes on.
THIS is Blizzard quality? Then they rushed the expansion out to meet their deadling of first-half-2001 and, as soon as you went to play on the reamlms, were welcomed to 1.07 and 1.08.
We still have problems. A slapdash 50% physical resist with rather pathetic skills to compensate in some cases (the Druid... and good luck with getting the elemental spells to hit since most of the big spells hit an area randomly).
Blizzard may be okay at times but they've let some very large problems go for too long. There are some serious problems that Blizzard could be putting out fixes for now and worrying about firewall being too powerful later (like some bugs used to kill other players, particularly devestating in hardcore)
Some of the retro is cool. The games are great as I played them as a kid when they were new. It's nice to see some of the younger ones enjoying what we once did for hours on end in front of the t.v. (though Mame is still no replacement for wasting hours playing my Atari 5200 on my t.v.) The music mentioned, however, is not worth a damn. Meaningless pop has always been around, it just seems to get worse. Backstreet Boys are worthless. I'd take Slayer any day.
>IBM manages to drive OS/390, Linux, Windows, AIX, OS/400
IBM manages a lot more than that. They still support several other mainframe OS'es as well as IBM's PC-DOS. IBM also writes software that runs on more platforms than that.
>SGI manages to drive Irix, Windows, Linux
>HP manages to drive HP/UX, Windows, Linux
HP also has MPE. While I don't really expect the Slashdot crowd to even know it exists, it does and is supported (with plans to move to IA-64 eventually). Let's not forget that HP also writes software for more platforms than just those 4.
>Compaq manages to drive Tru64, Linux, Windows, VMS (or is VMS dead yet?)
OpenVMS is far from dead. Again, not something the mainstay of the Slashdot crowd seems interested in. Compaq also has Tandem which has NonStop OS which a former employer ran. Heard nothing but good things about this OS from those I talked to about it that had used it.
I was working full time to get money to pay for my college education. I ended up in a career in the IT field as a Unix admin. That isn't preventing me from continuing my education though.
It makes sense to me - I get to ride the wave of IT demand while it's hot and rack up a number of years of experience (not to mention experience in several big technologies). I'm making very good money which will allow me to buy my "toys", a nice car and even a house. All my experience keep me ahead of the pack long enough to allow me to get my degree at a relaxed pace. I take 1 or 2 classes a semester, rather slow, but it should easily get me a degree by the time I might actually need one (I also did a couple semesters of full-time schooling which got a lot of classes out of the way).
I don't see why this wouldn't be possible for others to do. Thus far I've had few scheduling problems - it's been quite easy to schedule maintenance around my school nights (especially since we do lots on the weekends or early mornings). I can see where programmers might miss class often due to crunch-time deadlines but it's certainly an option.
It's not an either/or situation. You can do both. I've known people to do web design on their own, make very good money doing it, and still go to school full-time. It can be done. I'd say this would be the way to go unless your dream company is one that demands that you have a degree. Even then, on-the-side consulting gigs can pay some pretty damn good money and get you real-world experience that you can add to that pretty little piece of paper.
In 20-40 years we'll send someone back in time to thwart these advances in AI. The machines will send a machine back to terminate that person but we shall succeed!
From what I've read, developers are having problems with the fact that the PS2 has less texture RAM available than the Dreamcast. Of course we've probably also all heard the articles about how the Dreamcast is easier to program for and such.
These are things that helped kill the Saturn. That and I haven't been all that impressed with anything on the PS2 so far. I don't care for Tekken at all and am rather bored with the FF series so there's not a lot that looks appealing to me vs. the Dreamcast.
Plus price. The Dreamcast will be at $150 and the PS2 at $300. While I'm sure all the game heads will go out and get one (I'll probably be one of them) the average consumer will notice that they can buy 2 Dreamcasts for the price of one PS2 or a Dreamcast, game, VMU and extra controller. That will probably allow the Dreamcast to get a pretty good presence in the 'states before Sony can do anything about it. Developers will see this and, whether due to frustration with PS2 development or something else, they will probably all take a serious look at the Dreamcast and, perhaps, favor it over the PS2. Fewer games will kill it, just ask Nintendo about that.
That may be so. But we can also look to some of the color religion has added to our lives. The Spanish Inquisition anyone? ("noooobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is supplies!")
I'm sure plenty of others will point out other such religious triumphs.
Good deal? I still can't buy a Mac that can do more than 1024x768 whereas I can buy a Dell PIII 650 with a 15.4" screen that can do 14xx (and looks good).
Besides, more PC laptops will be integrating 3d support into their laptops soon which means good Q3/Unreal performance even when I'm over at my parents or something (their little 200MMX just can't handle it;> )
Apple better get on the ball with their laptops. They seem to consistently be behind with portables now.
Any companies looking at SERIOUS HA/Failover clusters are looking for 1 major thing - is it supported? They could probably care less about the source code so long as they know that at 3am on Christmas morning they can call tech support and get someone on the phone that might have a clue as to what's going on. As long as companies can fork out $$ for "premier platinum gold ultra unlimited enterprise emergency super-dooper-tech-guy-living-at-your-data-center" levels of support they'll be happy. As long as it's supported well companies will jump on it. Otherwise, they'll be less inclined (though I'm sure plenty techies will push for it regardless).
Slightly off topic... I recall Veritas announcing they were porting software to Linux and I'm hoping their HA software goes too. It was pretty good stuff. I'd be happy running VxVM, VxFS and FirstWatch (or whatever they're calling it now) on my Linux hardware.
In all honesty I still am not very enthused about the UI. It's way too sugar coated and they still have that damn annoying-always-there tool bar at the top of the screen. I want my application toolbars in their OWN windows, not using some shared one! It wastes space that would otherwise be spent better on having another window situated behind a primary one (I tend to cascade my windows so I have instant access to them without having to alt-tab and remember which is which).
The application rest bar, while allowing live windows, seems less useful than the ones found in Windows NT 4/98/95/2000 or KDE. I generally keep my Windows "start bar" at 4-5 rows deep and always have plenty of room to see what application is what. I also generally know them by order.
Apple seems to just be going for more eye candy than it's competitors. I'm sure a lot of people will buy into it but it just seems more a waste in memory and CPU power than anything truly useful. How many people are going to realize that their little mac's shrunken windows are actually live mini versions? Better yet, is grandma (whom several users love to mention as being able to use this with ease) with her 17in screen setup for 800x600 because her sight is going) going to even be able to really see anything going on? Moreover is she even the least bit interested in running more than 1 or 2 apps at a time?
Lastly you still run into the same problem you always have with Mac's. Software availability. Can't get Roller Coaster Tycoon for Mac's. All that at a cost higher than that of a PC. Sure the g4's are fast but does "grandma" need a Mac that can run Quake III at 1280x1024x30fps with no slow down?
I use Linux. When I need to I use NT. Mac's don't even register.
After installing it I launched it... comes up much faster than 4.7 (on NT). Certainly faster than Mozilla or IE. Also, for those that haven't tried... copy your Netscape plugins directory contents into the Mozilla plugins directory. Quicktime works pretty well (it skips a little but wasn't that noticable on the X-Men preview). Flash is... "not entirely stable" (to steal from C3PO). Works on some sites and doesn't work on others (shockwave.com of all things)
RCT plus the expansion pack would be sweet! Plus maybe we wouldn't have those pesky "features" found in the winblows version (your recorded status is wiped out when changing time zones or swithing to/from daylight savings time).
That and Civ II: MPE would be sweet. For those times when I just don't feel like death matches.
Hmmmm. I can't decide if I'd rather dive into a swimming pool filled with double-edged razor blades or use the Mac interface.
There weren't too many screenshots but I sure hope they've solved that pesky "minimize window" thing (yeah, there's other tools that do it but why wasn't it built in?). They didn't quite seem to get it in OS X Server, at least in my tinkerings with it.
In all honesty, it really doesn't matter to me much anymore if Star Wars makes it onto DVD. I've got plenty of other movies I'd happily watch on DVD. Star Wars has dwindled in interest to me. Empire is still good and Star Wars is fun to watch but I wouldn't lose sleep over not seeing them much again. I've got plenty of other movies on DVD to keep me quite happy.
Get a contract in the Philippines from a company here. A friend of a friend has been down there a few years pulling in 60k USD per year (probably more now, he started this a few years ago). Housing and per diem included as well as a few trips back to the states each year.
A contract job in the Philippines actually sounds like fun. I might be looking into that in a few months.
Sad? Companies use closed hardware and software because they are reliable. That's why large companies still use things like mainframes, Tandem Himalaya's, HP 3000's and OpenVMS. They run. All it took was listening to our Daily Availability Meetings where I worked to realize that some of these closed source hardware and software certainly does the job.
I think that some people here need to understand that some companies are going to use the best solution regardless of whether or not it's "open".
Why are they wrong? What will they have to worry about? The system itself will be powerful enough to last them a while. They maybe upgrade the RAM or the hard drive. So? Maybe even bump up the processor. Do they really need to get rid of that Sound Blaster 16 clone and install a SB Live? Or change out that video card for the new Voodoo12? Of course not. They're a business. The graphics cards put out years ago would still suffice for what they're looking to use these computers for - office applications. By the time they decide to upgrade they can just discard them, donate them to charity, give them to employees, etc. etc. and buy new ones.
In many cases "finished" does mean solid. Take a look at something like MPE (HP) or NonStop OS (Tandem). Even VM/ESA or any of the other IBM mainframe OS'es. They're pretty damn sturdy and unless an admin does something screwy, they don't go down. Closed hardware and software works just fine.
With that said I think open source software is great but I'm not going to lose sleep if the software or hardware I'm using is "closed".
Blueprints are layouts for physical structures. Structures that people will, potentially be in. You're talking about source code to an application, nothing physical. Bit of a difference.
What is the problem in duplicating effort? We don't question why Burger King is around when we already have McDonalds. We don't question Honda for making cars when GM already makes them. Duplicating effort allows for different styles. One implementation might end up better suited for cases ABC while another is more suited for cases XYZ.
I still don't share your views on open sourcing. Sure, it's nice. If I run proprietary software, it doesn't bother me a bit. I'm more concerned with the end result. Does it do what I want?
Proprietary software does NOT restrict your ability to further the state of the art. You just sound upset because you have to start from scratch rather than tweaking someone else's work. That's life.
You're missing the point here. Does being the author of a program give you a right to restrict other people's right to share it? Conventional copyright law says yes. RMS says no. You need to distance yourself somewhat from the current legal framework to see the strength of RMS' arguments. A read through the GNU website is always worthwhile. Note the emphasis on the rights of the user, not the programmer. This is what Stallman cares about. You may not agree, but you can at least take the time to understand.
Yes, being the author of a program DOES give you the right to restrict other people's rights to share it. It in my software I put a contract stating that "if you open this software you agree not to redistribute it, etc. etc. etc." then by opening the package you are agreeing to those terms. If you don't like the terms. Return the softawre and find an alternative (or write it yourself).
Let's look at GNU's page...
The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
We're fine so far.
The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1).
Sorry, this is for the author to decide.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2)
Again, this is a choice for the author to make.
The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits. (freedom 3).
It's a nice idea. Still, the author choses whether or not his/her software will be released as such.
You're right. Stallman cares about the user. Doesn't seem, from this, that he gives a damn about the author(s) and the what rights they get.
Don't forget. It's becoming more common for a family to purchase DSL or a cable modem, buy a little hub at CompUSA or Fry's and have a little network for the main PC, the old one that went to the kids and the one the wife wanted because the other two were already in use all the time.
They may not always have the technical skill but they either have someone talk them through it or know someone that can do it for them.
Cable modems or DSL could be on the way. I'd like to see a third party do a 10BaseT or even 10/100 card for it if Sega doesn't. Can't be that difficult really and it would be great for those of us with DSL or the like that have hubs for multiple systems.
Slashdot Mirror
You obviously haven't played Diablo 2 yet.
D2 was rushed. We're already at 1.08 on D2. Some of those were significant updates. The expansion was even more rushed. What happened? 1.07 and 1.08 downloaded at the same time for D2X. Lovely. Why?
So Blizzard could meat their July 29th deadline for the game being on sale.
They rush things. Maybe not all but they still rush things.
I have to disagree. Diablo 2 has been out for quite some time and only in recent times did we see any significant work being done on boosting the realms with many realms not getting much of a boost until just before the expansion was released. That's why we had so many people from Asia and Europe playing on USEast and USWest - the performance was so awful on Asia and Europe realms that they just came here.
:P ). Fend was completely awful (and still is since it attacks at only range 1 even with a 5 range weapon), duel wielding for Barbarians didn't do a damn thing for Whirlwind.... the list goes on.
Even worse, D2 realms were completely awful for some time after the game was released. Then we had hacking problems, duping problems, etc. on the realms.
The D2 games are a prime example of Blizzard rushing. In D2 we had Barbarians' weapon mastery counting twice, bonuses not counting on bows and Corpse Explosion for the Nercomancer scaling up with monster HP (which would be nice now
THIS is Blizzard quality? Then they rushed the expansion out to meet their deadling of first-half-2001 and, as soon as you went to play on the reamlms, were welcomed to 1.07 and 1.08.
We still have problems. A slapdash 50% physical resist with rather pathetic skills to compensate in some cases (the Druid... and good luck with getting the elemental spells to hit since most of the big spells hit an area randomly).
Blizzard may be okay at times but they've let some very large problems go for too long. There are some serious problems that Blizzard could be putting out fixes for now and worrying about firewall being too powerful later (like some bugs used to kill other players, particularly devestating in hardcore)
Some of the retro is cool. The games are great as I played them as a kid when they were new. It's nice to see some of the younger ones enjoying what we once did for hours on end in front of the t.v. (though Mame is still no replacement for wasting hours playing my Atari 5200 on my t.v.) The music mentioned, however, is not worth a damn. Meaningless pop has always been around, it just seems to get worse. Backstreet Boys are worthless. I'd take Slayer any day.
>Microsoft manages to drive W2K, WinCe, W9.z
>IBM manages to drive OS/390, Linux, Windows, AIX, OS/400
IBM manages a lot more than that. They still support several other mainframe OS'es as well as IBM's PC-DOS. IBM also writes software that runs on more platforms than that.
>SGI manages to drive Irix, Windows, Linux
>HP manages to drive HP/UX, Windows, Linux
HP also has MPE. While I don't really expect the Slashdot crowd to even know it exists, it does and is supported (with plans to move to IA-64 eventually). Let's not forget that HP also writes software for more platforms than just those 4.
>Compaq manages to drive Tru64, Linux, Windows, VMS (or is VMS dead yet?)
OpenVMS is far from dead. Again, not something the mainstay of the Slashdot crowd seems interested in. Compaq also has Tandem which has NonStop OS which a former employer ran. Heard nothing but good things about this OS from those I talked to about it that had used it.
I was working full time to get money to pay for my college education. I ended up in a career in the IT field as a Unix admin. That isn't preventing me from continuing my education though.
It makes sense to me - I get to ride the wave of IT demand while it's hot and rack up a number of years of experience (not to mention experience in several big technologies). I'm making very good money which will allow me to buy my "toys", a nice car and even a house. All my experience keep me ahead of the pack long enough to allow me to get my degree at a relaxed pace. I take 1 or 2 classes a semester, rather slow, but it should easily get me a degree by the time I might actually need one (I also did a couple semesters of full-time schooling which got a lot of classes out of the way).
I don't see why this wouldn't be possible for others to do. Thus far I've had few scheduling problems - it's been quite easy to schedule maintenance around my school nights (especially since we do lots on the weekends or early mornings). I can see where programmers might miss class often due to crunch-time deadlines but it's certainly an option.
It's not an either/or situation. You can do both. I've known people to do web design on their own, make very good money doing it, and still go to school full-time. It can be done. I'd say this would be the way to go unless your dream company is one that demands that you have a degree. Even then, on-the-side consulting gigs can pay some pretty damn good money and get you real-world experience that you can add to that pretty little piece of paper.
-Matt
In 20-40 years we'll send someone back in time to thwart these advances in AI. The machines will send a machine back to terminate that person but we shall succeed!
From what I've read, developers are having problems with the fact that the PS2 has less texture RAM available than the Dreamcast. Of course we've probably also all heard the articles about how the Dreamcast is easier to program for and such.
These are things that helped kill the Saturn. That and I haven't been all that impressed with anything on the PS2 so far. I don't care for Tekken at all and am rather bored with the FF series so there's not a lot that looks appealing to me vs. the Dreamcast.
Plus price. The Dreamcast will be at $150 and the PS2 at $300. While I'm sure all the game heads will go out and get one (I'll probably be one of them) the average consumer will notice that they can buy 2 Dreamcasts for the price of one PS2 or a Dreamcast, game, VMU and extra controller. That will probably allow the Dreamcast to get a pretty good presence in the 'states before Sony can do anything about it. Developers will see this and, whether due to frustration with PS2 development or something else, they will probably all take a serious look at the Dreamcast and, perhaps, favor it over the PS2. Fewer games will kill it, just ask Nintendo about that.
That may be so. But we can also look to some of the color religion has added to our lives. The Spanish Inquisition anyone? ("noooobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is supplies!")
I'm sure plenty of others will point out other such religious triumphs.
Good deal? I still can't buy a Mac that can do more than 1024x768 whereas I can buy a Dell PIII 650 with a 15.4" screen that can do 14xx (and looks good).
;> )
Besides, more PC laptops will be integrating 3d support into their laptops soon which means good Q3/Unreal performance even when I'm over at my parents or something (their little 200MMX just can't handle it
Apple better get on the ball with their laptops. They seem to consistently be behind with portables now.
Any companies looking at SERIOUS HA/Failover clusters are looking for 1 major thing - is it supported? They could probably care less about the source code so long as they know that at 3am on Christmas morning they can call tech support and get someone on the phone that might have a clue as to what's going on. As long as companies can fork out $$ for "premier platinum gold ultra unlimited enterprise emergency super-dooper-tech-guy-living-at-your-data-center" levels of support they'll be happy. As long as it's supported well companies will jump on it. Otherwise, they'll be less inclined (though I'm sure plenty techies will push for it regardless).
Slightly off topic... I recall Veritas announcing they were porting software to Linux and I'm hoping their HA software goes too. It was pretty good stuff. I'd be happy running VxVM, VxFS and FirstWatch (or whatever they're calling it now) on my Linux hardware.
SCO Unix had minimized live windows years ago!
In all honesty I still am not very enthused about the UI. It's way too sugar coated and they still have that damn annoying-always-there tool bar at the top of the screen. I want my application toolbars in their OWN windows, not using some shared one! It wastes space that would otherwise be spent better on having another window situated behind a primary one (I tend to cascade my windows so I have instant access to them without having to alt-tab and remember which is which).
The application rest bar, while allowing live windows, seems less useful than the ones found in Windows NT 4/98/95/2000 or KDE. I generally keep my Windows "start bar" at 4-5 rows deep and always have plenty of room to see what application is what. I also generally know them by order.
Apple seems to just be going for more eye candy than it's competitors. I'm sure a lot of people will buy into it but it just seems more a waste in memory and CPU power than anything truly useful. How many people are going to realize that their little mac's shrunken windows are actually live mini versions? Better yet, is grandma (whom several users love to mention as being able to use this with ease) with her 17in screen setup for 800x600 because her sight is going) going to even be able to really see anything going on? Moreover is she even the least bit interested in running more than 1 or 2 apps at a time?
Lastly you still run into the same problem you always have with Mac's. Software availability. Can't get Roller Coaster Tycoon for Mac's. All that at a cost higher than that of a PC. Sure the g4's are fast but does "grandma" need a Mac that can run Quake III at 1280x1024x30fps with no slow down?
I use Linux. When I need to I use NT. Mac's don't even register.
After installing it I launched it... comes up much faster than 4.7 (on NT). Certainly faster than Mozilla or IE. Also, for those that haven't tried... copy your Netscape plugins directory contents into the Mozilla plugins directory. Quicktime works pretty well (it skips a little but wasn't that noticable on the X-Men preview). Flash is... "not entirely stable" (to steal from C3PO). Works on some sites and doesn't work on others (shockwave.com of all things)
RCT plus the expansion pack would be sweet! Plus maybe we wouldn't have those pesky "features" found in the winblows version (your recorded status is wiped out when changing time zones or swithing to/from daylight savings time).
That and Civ II: MPE would be sweet. For those times when I just don't feel like death matches.
There weren't too many screenshots but I sure hope they've solved that pesky "minimize window" thing (yeah, there's other tools that do it but why wasn't it built in?). They didn't quite seem to get it in OS X Server, at least in my tinkerings with it.
Phhht. I don't care as long as it works.
In all honesty, it really doesn't matter to me much anymore if Star Wars makes it onto DVD. I've got plenty of other movies I'd happily watch on DVD. Star Wars has dwindled in interest to me. Empire is still good and Star Wars is fun to watch but I wouldn't lose sleep over not seeing them much again. I've got plenty of other movies on DVD to keep me quite happy.
The first versions of AIX did run in VM. Not sure if the current versions do or not (I didn't think they did but I could be mistaken)
A contract job in the Philippines actually sounds like fun. I might be looking into that in a few months.
Well Sun has Veritas' VxFS (which I think they should just license and include with Solaris) -Matt
He said free x86 BSD.
I think that some people here need to understand that some companies are going to use the best solution regardless of whether or not it's "open".
Why are they wrong? What will they have to worry about? The system itself will be powerful enough to last them a while. They maybe upgrade the RAM or the hard drive. So? Maybe even bump up the processor. Do they really need to get rid of that Sound Blaster 16 clone and install a SB Live? Or change out that video card for the new Voodoo12? Of course not. They're a business. The graphics cards put out years ago would still suffice for what they're looking to use these computers for - office applications. By the time they decide to upgrade they can just discard them, donate them to charity, give them to employees, etc. etc. and buy new ones.
In many cases "finished" does mean solid. Take a look at something like MPE (HP) or NonStop OS (Tandem). Even VM/ESA or any of the other IBM mainframe OS'es. They're pretty damn sturdy and unless an admin does something screwy, they don't go down. Closed hardware and software works just fine.
With that said I think open source software is great but I'm not going to lose sleep if the software or hardware I'm using is "closed".
-Matt
What is the problem in duplicating effort? We don't question why Burger King is around when we already have McDonalds. We don't question Honda for making cars when GM already makes them. Duplicating effort allows for different styles. One implementation might end up better suited for cases ABC while another is more suited for cases XYZ.
I still don't share your views on open sourcing. Sure, it's nice. If I run proprietary software, it doesn't bother me a bit. I'm more concerned with the end result. Does it do what I want?
Proprietary software does NOT restrict your ability to further the state of the art. You just sound upset because you have to start from scratch rather than tweaking someone else's work. That's life.
-Matt
Yes, being the author of a program DOES give you the right to restrict other people's rights to share it. It in my software I put a contract stating that "if you open this software you agree not to redistribute it, etc. etc. etc." then by opening the package you are agreeing to those terms. If you don't like the terms. Return the softawre and find an alternative (or write it yourself).
Let's look at GNU's page...
The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
We're fine so far.
The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1).
Sorry, this is for the author to decide.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2)
Again, this is a choice for the author to make.
The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits. (freedom 3).
It's a nice idea. Still, the author choses whether or not his/her software will be released as such.
You're right. Stallman cares about the user. Doesn't seem, from this, that he gives a damn about the author(s) and the what rights they get.
-Matt
They may not always have the technical skill but they either have someone talk them through it or know someone that can do it for them.
Cable modems or DSL could be on the way. I'd like to see a third party do a 10BaseT or even 10/100 card for it if Sega doesn't. Can't be that difficult really and it would be great for those of us with DSL or the like that have hubs for multiple systems.