The whole point of Free Software is that the user is the one in control
Going wildly offtopic for a moment, that may be the *intention*, but it's not generally the case. In practice, if the user is a developer who is skilled in the relevant area, then they are in control - they can hack bits in and/or out to their heart's content.
Where the user is not skilled in the appropriate area, or is semi- or non-technical, they have no more control than they do with any other OS. They can tweak settings here and there, and that's it. For everything else (patches, new features, etc) they must rely on a third party, most likely the software vendor.
Apart from that, I agree with you. Just because a company contribute code to the kernel, doesn't mean they control anything. They can't take it away again at a later date, and (assuming the maintiner is awake) they can't slip malicious features in either. At worst, they can cease development of the free version, at which point we either pick up the slack, replace it, or just do without.
What prevents Chinese speaking players from playing on their country's servers?
I don't play WoW (or any other game with a monthly subscription), but I've played a fair amount of FPSs online - Quake 3, Half Life, the UT games, etc. I frequently used to play on non-English speaking servers, simply because the ping times were good and there were a decent number of players. (Well, I say non-English speaking servers - I often wasn't the only English speaker on there, but they were *primarily* non-English)
I dare say it's different for MMORPGs, but there are plenty of valid reasons for playing on foreign-language servers.
Also, downloads don't count all the uses, I know in my work enviroment, we downloaded it once, but its on over 500 machines.
On the other hand, I've downloaded it something in excess of a dozen times, for the various versions for teh various machines I use, and I very much doubt that I'm the only one.
I'm not saying that they're over counting, or that they're under counting - just that they're counting downloads, not users.
The fact of the matter is that several intel products (the P4 anyone?) were notorious running benchmarks and not much else.
That can be clearly seen in the mother of all CPU charts on Tom's Hardware. Generally, and especially in the gaming benchmarks, the AMD chips take most of the top spots - apart from some of the synthetic benchmarks (3DMark05 Futuremark especially), in which the first dozen or so places go to Intel chips.
Se for example the 3dMark Futuremark, which Intel utterly owns, and the Far Cry or UT 2004 benchmarks, which AMD dominate. (The Doom 3 benchmarks are a little more neck-and-neck)
You do not understand the scientific method, nor what a science is.
The problem is that using theories, that are just theories and not provably correct
No theory is provably correct. All you can do is fail to disprove them. All you can ever say is that a theory explains the observable results as we can measure them, and that we have been unable to make any observations that run contrary to the theory.
In time, it may be that we improve our measurement-making capacity and find that the theory is *not* correct - this is essentially what happened to Newtonian mechanics. At very small scales and/or very high velocities Newtonian mechanics is wrong, and we need quantum mechanics (for the small) and relativistic mechanics (for the fast).
At no point, however, do we get to sit back, relax, and say "that's that - this one is proven to be correct". Science just doesn't work like that. The closest we get is "this one has survived many attempts to disprove it, so we can be pretty confident in it, but who knows what the future may bring?"
There are a number of reasons; here are some, in no particular order:
1) There are people whose job it is to edit and approve submissions; these people are paid to do this. Some people find it annoying when people are apparently not doing a very good job of something.
2) Every dupe posted is a potential new and interesting article rejected.
3) Some people pay a subscription to the site; some of these people feel (rightly or wrongly) that as they're paying money, they have a right to expect a certain level of quality and profesionalism, and feel that the number and frequency of dupes does not meet this level.
4) It's primarily a technical problem, and the audience is tech-heavy; thus many of us can think of (and sometimes suggest) potential solutions, and it's frustrating that nothing seems to be being done about it
5) Many of us think (rightly or wrongly) that the major strength of the site is in the discussions that the articles generate - that is, in the comments that we post. Some people think (rightly or wrongly) that as they therefore provide most of the value of the site, they should have some kind of say in how it works, or at least have their concerns and complaints acknowledged.
6) As you note, there are many, many complaints about dupe articles, yet I have not seen any official reply to any of these. While it's entirely possible that I've just missed it, it does seem that our comments are falling on deaf ears. People don't like to feel ignored.
Now, there's no excuse for all the vitriol, but some people are really getting frustrated about things. Between the lack of any apparent action or even response about dupes (and **Beatles-Beatles posts, apparent moderation abuse, Roland P, etc), some people are over-reacting and lashing out. The rest of us, well, we just wish that something would be done about it, or at least that there would be a public announcement (or a even FAQ entry) stating the official position of the editors, and what (if anything) they intend to do about it.
Ah, but there's the rub - many people wouldn't see a publicly hosted server as being something that is "privately run". In fact, a lot of people think that there should be a clause in the GPL that allows access to the source of GPLed server code - eg for websites that use GPLed bulletin board software.
As to the other part of the question, of course you could still charge for access to the game, regardless of the GPL status of the code. What you couldn't do would be prevent someone from setting up their own competing service.
If I were to set up a MMORPG or similar and GPL some of it, I'd probably GPL the code but keep the copyright on the content (ie sounds, graphics, etc). That's what id do when they GPL their old games - just because you can now get the source of Quake 3 doesn't mean you can legally distribute the content that it requires.
Actually it's the application of a specific property of prime numbers and "clock" algebra. It is non-trivial and was a specific work to make encryption from available tools.
It took lots of work by 3 very very clever people and if you honestly believe that YOU could have done it then by all means don't grant that patent.
By that standard, almost every advance in science for the last couple of hundred years should be patentable. I fail to see how you can make a distinction between pure research in physics and pure research in mathematics. but that's what you'd have to do to allow things like RSA encryption to be patentable without allowing patenting of things like the theory of relativity, or a particular equation.
I buy myself an Xbox (200$), PS2 (180$), and a GameCube (120$). That costs me $500. A GeForce 6800 GT costs the same amount.
I bought a 6800GT shortly after they were released here in the UK; then, it cost me about £250. Right now, a year later, a decent XBox bundle will set you back about £200. I have absolutely no idea how you managed to pay so much for your GT - even the new 7800GTs can be had for less than that...
You can adequately light a large room with about 200 W of incandescent light.
Now multiply that by the number of such rooms world-wide that are lit at any given time. Sure, your 200W isn't going to make any difference, but all of them together will.
The point is that if everyone turned off the lights in rooms when the last person left and they shut off all computer monitors that weren't being used, it wouldn't make a dent in electrical energy consumption.
It'll make some difference, and ever little helps. I worked on a computer help desk at a major UK university college once (Imperial College, London), and went along to a few centre meetings. At one, it was announced that it had been calculated that leaving monitors on screensaver rather than switching them off cost the college about 30,000GBP/year. Sure, it's a drop in the ocean compared to the college's total budget or to world-wide energy consumption, but so what? I don't know anyone who empties out their wallet or purse and throws away all the low denomination coins, so why waste even a little bit of energy if you don't need to?
We may not know all the best ways to get at it yet
Hence the problem - and if we use up all the stuff we can get at before we work out how to get at the rest of it, we're stuffed. So why not hit the off switch when walking out of a room, rather than just leaving the lights on?
It doesn't matter how much you case-mod your Winbox, you'll still be on the patch-and-virus treadmill
I've not had a virus since my Amiga days, and allowing Automatic Updates to install patches once every few weeks is hardly a treadmill.
still have the same risk of BSODs as someone using a POS white box
Under XP, system crashes are mostly due to crappy hardware and third party drivers for it; in that sense, people using "POS white boxes" are at more risk of BSODs.
Apart from that, I agree with you - Apple is going a long, long way to making computing look gorgeous and just work. If it weren't for the relative cost and lack of software, my next computer would be a Mac. (I use my computer for four things: programming, email, web/internet stuff and games. I need a Windows box for the games, and can't justify the cost or space required for a dedicated gaming box)
Not that you asked, but I don't have one and I don't want one - although that's only because I already have an iRiver. My fiancée *does* have an iPod though, and when she was looking for an MP3 player, that was what she wanted, not one of the alternatives.
First of all, I'm always curious and a little suspicious when anything is a winner of a competition, "next generation computer design sponsored by Microsoft." My gut reaction to MS sponsored design is that the winner is going to be more about something Microsoft will leverage and much less about what is good for the consumer.
Can you name any company-sponsored competition or event that wasn't about furthering the company's own agenda?
Of the four definitions for leverage at the Cambridge Dictionaries Online website, only one (the last) is a verb, and that doesn't mean "use".
Just because a lot of people use a word in a particular way doesn't mean that it's correct. Given time, it will *become* correct usage (because languages evolve), but right now it isn't and (imho, of course) it sounds bloody stupid.
a market that's almost as big as the PC market (that's a guess, but probably true)
Don't be rediculous. Think of all the PCs used in companies, medical facilities, homes, kiosks, point of sale installations (eg tills), etc, both desktops and servers.
I know people who own four or five PCs, and one or no media players. Media players *require* a PC, yet not every PC owner owns a media player, and many people have access to multiple PCs; even ignoring non-desktop machines, the PC market dwarfs the media player market.
(In case you're wondering, here I'm using "PC" as "personal computer", rather than "100% IBM PC-compatbile")
Because GPUs are specifically designed to perform operations required in rendering 3d graphics, and CPUs aren't. To get the same performance when swapping a GPU for a CPU, the CPU needs to be much faster than the GPU you're replacing.
If you have some proof that IE is "deep in kernel", I'd like to see it. If not, you might want to think twice before stooping to MS's level by spreading your own FUD.
it's more important to discuss some vulnerabilities in a music player
The iPod is far and away the best selling personal music player; this is due in no small part to the seamless integration with iTunes and ITMS. No, there aren't as many iTunes users as Windows users, but it's still a significant userbase. I know people who use iTunes who don't own iPods.
The only sites that all windows machines access on a regular basis are Microsoft's.
I assume that you're thinking of Windows Update, but at a guess I'd imagine that most (recent) Windows machines get most of their updates via automatic updates, or not at all. I'd be very surprised if "all Windows machines" visit any given site on a regular basis.
(In fact it's trivially easy to disprove your assertion - I have access to 3 XP machines, and none of them visit any of MS's sites on anything approaching a regular basis, but that's beside the point)
This seems to be only useful if MS itself wanted to use it. Use your imagination as to what they'd do with it. I can think of all kinds of things.
I can't think of a single thing that would be worth it. An attack like that would be discovered and traced back to them, and they'd be crucified for it. Unless they could achieve their aim before that happened, there'd be no point, and short of taking over the world, I can't think of anything that would be worth it. Even if they could think of a way to make money using it, the courts would sieze it all anyway.
They tell me I'm not even allowed to put my songs on an Ipod.. even though the law says it's my right.
That may be the case where you are, but technically here in the UK (which the story is about) I believe that actually is illegal. As I read the relevant statute, we have no right to format shift or even to create a backup of a purchased copyrighted work. Specifically, there is no "fair use" clause; there is something about "reasonable use", but it's rather poorly defined. I don't suppose that anyone's ever going to be sued over it (let alone successfully sued), but there it is.
If there are any lawyers reading this who know UK law and who can settle this one way or the other, I'd be grateful. Either way, it isn't going to stop me ripping everything to my IRiver, but it would be nice not to be breaking the law...
Hey DJs.. just play your damn music and FIGHT it in court if you get 'caught'.
No offence, but that's easy to say when it's not you that'll be up in court.
Perhaps iPod owners actually download music from p2p networks *more*, and just lie about it when asked? No, I don't think it's likely either, but please, if you consider this survey proof of anything your standards are way too low.
Since they won't be able to claim that their evil DRM works for everyone (they silently ignore Unices), judges/govt monkeys will be more likely to see that DRM as something wrong.
That's wishful thinking, I'm afraid. The content industry is pushing very hard for DRM, and something as trivial as only being viewable on ~95% of home desktop computers won't worry them and therefore it won't worry the judges.
Besides, as long as MS don't make it impossible for competing DRM solutions to exist and work under Windows (and I can't see how they could) they can have no quarrel with it - after all, the various trials haven't had a problem with WMV or even with WMP itself, just with WMP being bundled in such a way as to try to close out competition.
So? Why can't they ship the downloadable uninstaller with the product and provide a shortcut to it from the program's Start menu entry, like every other program does?
I don't doubt that the software is both complex and well designed and written, but that's no reason not to provide correct uninstall functionality. If anything, you'd expect them to be *better* at that sort of thing if the rest of the software is so good...
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The whole point of Free Software is that the user is the one in control
Going wildly offtopic for a moment, that may be the *intention*, but it's not generally the case. In practice, if the user is a developer who is skilled in the relevant area, then they are in control - they can hack bits in and/or out to their heart's content.
Where the user is not skilled in the appropriate area, or is semi- or non-technical, they have no more control than they do with any other OS. They can tweak settings here and there, and that's it. For everything else (patches, new features, etc) they must rely on a third party, most likely the software vendor.
Apart from that, I agree with you. Just because a company contribute code to the kernel, doesn't mean they control anything. They can't take it away again at a later date, and (assuming the maintiner is awake) they can't slip malicious features in either. At worst, they can cease development of the free version, at which point we either pick up the slack, replace it, or just do without.
What prevents Chinese speaking players from playing on their country's servers?
I don't play WoW (or any other game with a monthly subscription), but I've played a fair amount of FPSs online - Quake 3, Half Life, the UT games, etc. I frequently used to play on non-English speaking servers, simply because the ping times were good and there were a decent number of players. (Well, I say non-English speaking servers - I often wasn't the only English speaker on there, but they were *primarily* non-English)
I dare say it's different for MMORPGs, but there are plenty of valid reasons for playing on foreign-language servers.
Also, downloads don't count all the uses, I know in my work enviroment, we downloaded it once, but its on over 500 machines.
On the other hand, I've downloaded it something in excess of a dozen times, for the various versions for teh various machines I use, and I very much doubt that I'm the only one.
I'm not saying that they're over counting, or that they're under counting - just that they're counting downloads, not users.
The fact of the matter is that several intel products (the P4 anyone?) were notorious running benchmarks and not much else.
That can be clearly seen in the mother of all CPU charts on Tom's Hardware. Generally, and especially in the gaming benchmarks, the AMD chips take most of the top spots - apart from some of the synthetic benchmarks (3DMark05 Futuremark especially), in which the first dozen or so places go to Intel chips.
Se for example the 3dMark Futuremark, which Intel utterly owns, and the Far Cry or UT 2004 benchmarks, which AMD dominate. (The Doom 3 benchmarks are a little more neck-and-neck)
You do not understand the scientific method, nor what a science is.
The problem is that using theories, that are just theories and not provably correct
No theory is provably correct. All you can do is fail to disprove them. All you can ever say is that a theory explains the observable results as we can measure them, and that we have been unable to make any observations that run contrary to the theory.
In time, it may be that we improve our measurement-making capacity and find that the theory is *not* correct - this is essentially what happened to Newtonian mechanics. At very small scales and/or very high velocities Newtonian mechanics is wrong, and we need quantum mechanics (for the small) and relativistic mechanics (for the fast).
At no point, however, do we get to sit back, relax, and say "that's that - this one is proven to be correct". Science just doesn't work like that. The closest we get is "this one has survived many attempts to disprove it, so we can be pretty confident in it, but who knows what the future may bring?"
There are a number of reasons; here are some, in no particular order:
1) There are people whose job it is to edit and approve submissions; these people are paid to do this. Some people find it annoying when people are apparently not doing a very good job of something.
2) Every dupe posted is a potential new and interesting article rejected.
3) Some people pay a subscription to the site; some of these people feel (rightly or wrongly) that as they're paying money, they have a right to expect a certain level of quality and profesionalism, and feel that the number and frequency of dupes does not meet this level.
4) It's primarily a technical problem, and the audience is tech-heavy; thus many of us can think of (and sometimes suggest) potential solutions, and it's frustrating that nothing seems to be being done about it
5) Many of us think (rightly or wrongly) that the major strength of the site is in the discussions that the articles generate - that is, in the comments that we post. Some people think (rightly or wrongly) that as they therefore provide most of the value of the site, they should have some kind of say in how it works, or at least have their concerns and complaints acknowledged.
6) As you note, there are many, many complaints about dupe articles, yet I have not seen any official reply to any of these. While it's entirely possible that I've just missed it, it does seem that our comments are falling on deaf ears. People don't like to feel ignored.
Now, there's no excuse for all the vitriol, but some people are really getting frustrated about things. Between the lack of any apparent action or even response about dupes (and **Beatles-Beatles posts, apparent moderation abuse, Roland P, etc), some people are over-reacting and lashing out. The rest of us, well, we just wish that something would be done about it, or at least that there would be a public announcement (or a even FAQ entry) stating the official position of the editors, and what (if anything) they intend to do about it.
Grab your +5 comments here for some instant karma. Well, the editors dupe the articles, we might as well dupe the comments...
Ah, but there's the rub - many people wouldn't see a publicly hosted server as being something that is "privately run". In fact, a lot of people think that there should be a clause in the GPL that allows access to the source of GPLed server code - eg for websites that use GPLed bulletin board software.
As to the other part of the question, of course you could still charge for access to the game, regardless of the GPL status of the code. What you couldn't do would be prevent someone from setting up their own competing service.
If I were to set up a MMORPG or similar and GPL some of it, I'd probably GPL the code but keep the copyright on the content (ie sounds, graphics, etc). That's what id do when they GPL their old games - just because you can now get the source of Quake 3 doesn't mean you can legally distribute the content that it requires.
Actually it's the application of a specific property of prime numbers and "clock" algebra. It is non-trivial and was a specific work to make encryption from available tools.
It took lots of work by 3 very very clever people and if you honestly believe that YOU could have done it then by all means don't grant that patent.
By that standard, almost every advance in science for the last couple of hundred years should be patentable. I fail to see how you can make a distinction between pure research in physics and pure research in mathematics. but that's what you'd have to do to allow things like RSA encryption to be patentable without allowing patenting of things like the theory of relativity, or a particular equation.
I buy myself an Xbox (200$), PS2 (180$), and a GameCube (120$). That costs me $500. A GeForce 6800 GT costs the same amount.
I bought a 6800GT shortly after they were released here in the UK; then, it cost me about £250. Right now, a year later, a decent XBox bundle will set you back about £200. I have absolutely no idea how you managed to pay so much for your GT - even the new 7800GTs can be had for less than that...
You can adequately light a large room with about 200 W of incandescent light.
Now multiply that by the number of such rooms world-wide that are lit at any given time. Sure, your 200W isn't going to make any difference, but all of them together will.
The point is that if everyone turned off the lights in rooms when the last person left and they shut off all computer monitors that weren't being used, it wouldn't make a dent in electrical energy consumption.
It'll make some difference, and ever little helps. I worked on a computer help desk at a major UK university college once (Imperial College, London), and went along to a few centre meetings. At one, it was announced that it had been calculated that leaving monitors on screensaver rather than switching them off cost the college about 30,000GBP/year. Sure, it's a drop in the ocean compared to the college's total budget or to world-wide energy consumption, but so what? I don't know anyone who empties out their wallet or purse and throws away all the low denomination coins, so why waste even a little bit of energy if you don't need to?
We may not know all the best ways to get at it yet
Hence the problem - and if we use up all the stuff we can get at before we work out how to get at the rest of it, we're stuffed. So why not hit the off switch when walking out of a room, rather than just leaving the lights on?
It doesn't matter how much you case-mod your Winbox, you'll still be on the patch-and-virus treadmill
I've not had a virus since my Amiga days, and allowing Automatic Updates to install patches once every few weeks is hardly a treadmill.
still have the same risk of BSODs as someone using a POS white box
Under XP, system crashes are mostly due to crappy hardware and third party drivers for it; in that sense, people using "POS white boxes" are at more risk of BSODs.
Apart from that, I agree with you - Apple is going a long, long way to making computing look gorgeous and just work. If it weren't for the relative cost and lack of software, my next computer would be a Mac. (I use my computer for four things: programming, email, web/internet stuff and games. I need a Windows box for the games, and can't justify the cost or space required for a dedicated gaming box)
Not that you asked, but I don't have one and I don't want one - although that's only because I already have an iRiver. My fiancée *does* have an iPod though, and when she was looking for an MP3 player, that was what she wanted, not one of the alternatives.
First of all, I'm always curious and a little suspicious when anything is a winner of a competition, "next generation computer design sponsored by Microsoft." My gut reaction to MS sponsored design is that the winner is going to be more about something Microsoft will leverage and much less about what is good for the consumer.
Can you name any company-sponsored competition or event that wasn't about furthering the company's own agenda?
Of the four definitions for leverage at the Cambridge Dictionaries Online website, only one (the last) is a verb, and that doesn't mean "use".
Just because a lot of people use a word in a particular way doesn't mean that it's correct. Given time, it will *become* correct usage (because languages evolve), but right now it isn't and (imho, of course) it sounds bloody stupid.
a market that's almost as big as the PC market (that's a guess, but probably true)
Don't be rediculous. Think of all the PCs used in companies, medical facilities, homes, kiosks, point of sale installations (eg tills), etc, both desktops and servers.
I know people who own four or five PCs, and one or no media players. Media players *require* a PC, yet not every PC owner owns a media player, and many people have access to multiple PCs; even ignoring non-desktop machines, the PC market dwarfs the media player market.
(In case you're wondering, here I'm using "PC" as "personal computer", rather than "100% IBM PC-compatbile")
Because GPUs are specifically designed to perform operations required in rendering 3d graphics, and CPUs aren't. To get the same performance when swapping a GPU for a CPU, the CPU needs to be much faster than the GPU you're replacing.
hi2u IE deep in kernel
If you have some proof that IE is "deep in kernel", I'd like to see it. If not, you might want to think twice before stooping to MS's level by spreading your own FUD.
it's more important to discuss some vulnerabilities in a music player
The iPod is far and away the best selling personal music player; this is due in no small part to the seamless integration with iTunes and ITMS. No, there aren't as many iTunes users as Windows users, but it's still a significant userbase. I know people who use iTunes who don't own iPods.
The only sites that all windows machines access on a regular basis are Microsoft's.
I assume that you're thinking of Windows Update, but at a guess I'd imagine that most (recent) Windows machines get most of their updates via automatic updates, or not at all. I'd be very surprised if "all Windows machines" visit any given site on a regular basis.
(In fact it's trivially easy to disprove your assertion - I have access to 3 XP machines, and none of them visit any of MS's sites on anything approaching a regular basis, but that's beside the point)
This seems to be only useful if MS itself wanted to use it. Use your imagination as to what they'd do with it. I can think of all kinds of things.
I can't think of a single thing that would be worth it. An attack like that would be discovered and traced back to them, and they'd be crucified for it. Unless they could achieve their aim before that happened, there'd be no point, and short of taking over the world, I can't think of anything that would be worth it. Even if they could think of a way to make money using it, the courts would sieze it all anyway.
They tell me I'm not even allowed to put my songs on an Ipod.. even though the law says it's my right.
That may be the case where you are, but technically here in the UK (which the story is about) I believe that actually is illegal. As I read the relevant statute, we have no right to format shift or even to create a backup of a purchased copyrighted work. Specifically, there is no "fair use" clause; there is something about "reasonable use", but it's rather poorly defined. I don't suppose that anyone's ever going to be sued over it (let alone successfully sued), but there it is.
If there are any lawyers reading this who know UK law and who can settle this one way or the other, I'd be grateful. Either way, it isn't going to stop me ripping everything to my IRiver, but it would be nice not to be breaking the law...
Hey DJs.. just play your damn music and FIGHT it in court if you get 'caught'.
No offence, but that's easy to say when it's not you that'll be up in court.
Perhaps iPod owners actually download music from p2p networks *more*, and just lie about it when asked? No, I don't think it's likely either, but please, if you consider this survey proof of anything your standards are way too low.
Since they won't be able to claim that their evil DRM works for everyone (they silently ignore Unices), judges/govt monkeys will be more likely to see that DRM as something wrong.
That's wishful thinking, I'm afraid. The content industry is pushing very hard for DRM, and something as trivial as only being viewable on ~95% of home desktop computers won't worry them and therefore it won't worry the judges.
Besides, as long as MS don't make it impossible for competing DRM solutions to exist and work under Windows (and I can't see how they could) they can have no quarrel with it - after all, the various trials haven't had a problem with WMV or even with WMP itself, just with WMP being bundled in such a way as to try to close out competition.
So? Why can't they ship the downloadable uninstaller with the product and provide a shortcut to it from the program's Start menu entry, like every other program does?
I don't doubt that the software is both complex and well designed and written, but that's no reason not to provide correct uninstall functionality. If anything, you'd expect them to be *better* at that sort of thing if the rest of the software is so good...