Despite this being Slashdot's lame April Fools posting spree, I feel compelled to answer.
I seriously doubt MS has broken the GPL if for no other reason than that they would be in an ungodly amount of trouble if they did and it was discovered. Even if the code never leaks, a disgruntled employee could use that as ammunition against his former company. Besides, MS has the money to just throw a few programmers at a problem and have their own code for it. They *want* to reinvent the wheel to prevent getting sued.:)
I agree that MS gets attacked unduly at times, but people have vastly differing experiences. My Abit BP6 was nothing but trouble under Win2k (b2 and release, never used SP1). I crashed on a daily basis, frequently crashing the task manager when I tried to kill a process. Since moving it to linux I have had nearly zero problems (other than diving headfirst into Debian with no prior linux knowledge, haha!)
I will not deny that the majority of people have had a great experience with Win2K, I'm just not one of them.:)
How big of a backbone does Usen have to carry all this bandwidth their users are getting to the outside world? If you have 100mbits of bandwidth and at the switch it all gets stopped dead that's not very fast...
128MB SDRAM - 1 DIMM
iMac 600MHz
40GB Ultra ATA drive
CD-RW Drive
10/100BASE-T Ethernet
56K internal modem
Two USB ports
Two FireWire ports
VGA video mirroring
Harman Kardon speakers
Apple Pro Keyboard
Apple Pro Mouse
For $1500. More expensive than a PC, yes.:) But hey, wouldn't you rather get a G4 Powerbook anyway? It's much more competitive pricewise compared to PC laptops.;)
I think he meant classic MacOS, not OS X. Classic MacOS wasn't limited to one thing at a time either though. It used cooperative multithreading (which didn't work very well, but did allow multiple processes to run at once at least, hehe)
Doesn't seem to be a big deal then. I realize some people are going to say "but this is just the beginning, soon they'll be " but the information collected *seems* benign (based on the information Earthlink provided) at this time. Hell, I'd love to see what information they've collected, I'm interested in the statistics on those items.;)
"Sega once made an unsuccessful attempt at something similar. Remeber the Sega Saturn? Well, it has its arcade counterpart, the Sega Titan hardware, which a number of games were based off of (example: Die Hard Arcade, Batman, Winter Heat). But it failed to catch firew, and a small number of games were targeted to the Titan platform (which had an easy route to make the games work on the Saturn). "
Sega did the same thing with the Dreamcast and their Naomi hardware for arcades. It was mildly successful, but we all know what happened with the Dreamcast in the end:(
The RIAA had to show to the world what it really exists for eventually : money. They don't care about artists or helping anyone or anything unless it will line their pockets a little bit more. This simply disgusts me.
Well they can address the cheats as they come out (which is the way it usually has to be done) or they can try to do all sorts of elaborate checks of data validity to slow down any would-be cheaters.
For example, Counterstrike 1.1 just came out and addresses most of the cheats. Many will probably come back, but some will most likely not be possible anymore. Also, Valve fixed the speed cheat that had been plaguing all of the halflife community with a server patch.
Of course all this won't stop people, since there will always be people who want to cheat and ruin the game for others and there will always be those who have the skills to make that possible (whether or not that is their actual intent).
Perhaps it's considered a published work? And public schools don't really have first amendment protection either, once you step on school grounds you give up all sorts of rights.
So basically the school's administrators called them in and (while they may have been rude about it) figured out that they were in error *after* they called the police? It is sad that a student can get a "file" on him because he fits some preset profile, but I fail to see how the administrators acted incorrectly with regards to the rules. They questioned them and contacted the police as a precaution, and when they found their error they only gave punishment for a totally unrelated item that the students would have been punished for anyway (which was probably clearly stated in their code of conduct).
The article is unclear on this point: it is the cops who acted incorrectly in this instance, not necessarily the private school officials (the merit of the private school's rules not being considered)...
Sony once dropped one of its suits (which was already truncated to only 2 of the 9 original charges), only to bring a new one the next day. Of course, they only brought that suit after an appeals court decided to reverse the first ruling and declare VGS "fair use". Now they've lost in the last piece of litigation against Connectix. Is it finally over?! Maybe they'll just file yet another suit with a slight difference to continue to harass Connectix. And what about that other company Sony sued? How does this affect them?
"Industrial designers poked fun at virtually all facets of computers and other electronic gadgets, and the Apple iMac--displayed in PowerPoint presentations in its groovy new shades--bore the brunt of scorn and jokes about how fashion has superseded functionality. "
Huh? The iMac and other Apple designs (although controversial) consistently win industrial design awards from many places...what industrial designers are these? Even those who think its dumb have to acknowledge that colored computers have been wildly successful for Apple at least. As for fashion superceding functionality, what about when an engineer puts functionality over usability?:)
"One presenter went so far as to blame the non-intuitive, non-human oriented design of desktop computers for the current economic slowdown that has ravaged the broader technology sector."
He what? Someone please enlighten me how these computers that were designed by humans for humans and (in general) with extensive human interface group research are non-human oriented. The evolution of the GUI since it *began* has been to more and more intuitive and user friendly interfaces (once again, in general)...
(Flamebait): Why are engineers ragging on CS when they are responsible for more UI idiocy than most? Engineers tend to want to make UIs that favor the knowledgeable and competent person, not make it easy to use for anyone.
One More Sierra Game Playable On Linux
on
Leisure Suit Unix
·
· Score: 1
You appear to have lost your "u" key, please locate it immediately;)
Seriously though, this just allows the linux apps (of which there are many for PPC, most things are not written in asm and are therefore (generally) easily portable) to work.
Running a high bandwidth site like mame.dk wouldn't be cheap to host. Not $24000 expensive (unless the host was absolutely horrendous), but certainly not cheap. Of course I doubt mame.dk ever made that much (I don't recall the logs saying they were owed that much, maybe another site).
As for SA, the amount of content that is/was placed on there daily is more than someone doing it as a hobby could ever hope to produce. If they make something popular why can't it be their job? I have no qualms with allowing others to be successful because they make things that entertain me.
The "graphical limitations" aren't really that bad. Sure it's no 3D powerhouse, but it is powerful enough for basically perfect ports of SNES games, as well as enhancements of NES games. Imagine Donkey Kong Country (Rare's finest hour IMHO) in perfect form on a handheld.
As for Pokemon, it doesn't hurt you if Pokemon is on the system, just don't buy it. Pokemon hurts no one except the anti-fan.
Funny, I never thought a company with more than $3 billion in cash reserves was close to death, but I guess that shows what I know...
Also, in case you missed it Apple is shipping 667 and 733mhz G4s this month now (announced at MWSF).
And finally, there's no denying that Apple got the idea of the GUI from Xerox's PARC, but Apple also gave Xerox quite a bit of stock in exchange (can anyone provide a URL to verify this? I can't seem to find one so I can't definitively say this).
The last few generations of Macs and PBs have all had built in ethernet so there is no need for a PCMCIA ethernet card. Your point is quite valid though...there's only one kind of ethernet for them to test since it is the same one that comes with ALL TiBooks...so why didn't they test it?
Anybody know if NetPliance is planning on liquidating their i-openers without requiring an ISP contract while they restructure? I could sure use an LCD screen and a new linux box;)
Slashdot Mirror
Despite this being Slashdot's lame April Fools posting spree, I feel compelled to answer.
:)
I seriously doubt MS has broken the GPL if for no other reason than that they would be in an ungodly amount of trouble if they did and it was discovered. Even if the code never leaks, a disgruntled employee could use that as ammunition against his former company. Besides, MS has the money to just throw a few programmers at a problem and have their own code for it. They *want* to reinvent the wheel to prevent getting sued.
I agree that MS gets attacked unduly at times, but people have vastly differing experiences. My Abit BP6 was nothing but trouble under Win2k (b2 and release, never used SP1). I crashed on a daily basis, frequently crashing the task manager when I tried to kill a process. Since moving it to linux I have had nearly zero problems (other than diving headfirst into Debian with no prior linux knowledge, haha!)
:)
I will not deny that the majority of people have had a great experience with Win2K, I'm just not one of them.
How big of a backbone does Usen have to carry all this bandwidth their users are getting to the outside world? If you have 100mbits of bandwidth and at the switch it all gets stopped dead that's not very fast...
Yeah, that's me. I presume you mustr be one of our three readers! :)
You can get an iMac with this config:
:) But hey, wouldn't you rather get a G4 Powerbook anyway? It's much more competitive pricewise compared to PC laptops. ;)
128MB SDRAM - 1 DIMM
iMac 600MHz
40GB Ultra ATA drive
CD-RW Drive
10/100BASE-T Ethernet
56K internal modem
Two USB ports
Two FireWire ports
VGA video mirroring
Harman Kardon speakers
Apple Pro Keyboard
Apple Pro Mouse
For $1500. More expensive than a PC, yes.
OS X also supports the scroll wheel in many applications. IE, Omniweb, etc. Not within the Finder itself though. At least not yet! :)
I think he meant classic MacOS, not OS X. Classic MacOS wasn't limited to one thing at a time either though. It used cooperative multithreading (which didn't work very well, but did allow multiple processes to run at once at least, hehe)
How many residents of third world countries can afford a $1500 computer?
That'll teach me to preview...I meant to say "but this is just the beginning, soon they'll be (insert random conspiracy theory here)". Oops.
Doesn't seem to be a big deal then. I realize some people are going to say "but this is just the beginning, soon they'll be " but the information collected *seems* benign (based on the information Earthlink provided) at this time. Hell, I'd love to see what information they've collected, I'm interested in the statistics on those items. ;)
"Sega once made an unsuccessful attempt at something similar. Remeber the Sega Saturn? Well, it has its arcade counterpart, the Sega Titan hardware, which a number of games were based off of (example: Die Hard Arcade, Batman, Winter Heat). But it failed to catch firew, and a small number of games were targeted to the Titan platform (which had an easy route to make the games work on the Saturn). "
:(
Sega did the same thing with the Dreamcast and their Naomi hardware for arcades. It was mildly successful, but we all know what happened with the Dreamcast in the end
The RIAA had to show to the world what it really exists for eventually : money. They don't care about artists or helping anyone or anything unless it will line their pockets a little bit more. This simply disgusts me.
Well they can address the cheats as they come out (which is the way it usually has to be done) or they can try to do all sorts of elaborate checks of data validity to slow down any would-be cheaters.
For example, Counterstrike 1.1 just came out and addresses most of the cheats. Many will probably come back, but some will most likely not be possible anymore. Also, Valve fixed the speed cheat that had been plaguing all of the halflife community with a server patch.
Of course all this won't stop people, since there will always be people who want to cheat and ruin the game for others and there will always be those who have the skills to make that possible (whether or not that is their actual intent).
Perhaps it's considered a published work? And public schools don't really have first amendment protection either, once you step on school grounds you give up all sorts of rights.
They'll take away my precious debian when they pry the hard drive from my cold dead fingers! Code on you Debian Project Gods! ;)
So basically the school's administrators called them in and (while they may have been rude about it) figured out that they were in error *after* they called the police? It is sad that a student can get a "file" on him because he fits some preset profile, but I fail to see how the administrators acted incorrectly with regards to the rules. They questioned them and contacted the police as a precaution, and when they found their error they only gave punishment for a totally unrelated item that the students would have been punished for anyway (which was probably clearly stated in their code of conduct).
The article is unclear on this point: it is the cops who acted incorrectly in this instance, not necessarily the private school officials (the merit of the private school's rules not being considered)...
Sony once dropped one of its suits (which was already truncated to only 2 of the 9 original charges), only to bring a new one the next day. Of course, they only brought that suit after an appeals court decided to reverse the first ruling and declare VGS "fair use". Now they've lost in the last piece of litigation against Connectix. Is it finally over?! Maybe they'll just file yet another suit with a slight difference to continue to harass Connectix. And what about that other company Sony sued? How does this affect them?
"Industrial designers poked fun at virtually all facets of computers and other electronic gadgets, and the Apple iMac--displayed in PowerPoint presentations in its groovy new shades--bore the brunt of scorn and jokes about how fashion has superseded functionality. "
:)
Huh? The iMac and other Apple designs (although controversial) consistently win industrial design awards from many places...what industrial designers are these? Even those who think its dumb have to acknowledge that colored computers have been wildly successful for Apple at least. As for fashion superceding functionality, what about when an engineer puts functionality over usability?
"One presenter went so far as to blame the non-intuitive, non-human oriented design of desktop computers for the current economic slowdown that has ravaged the broader technology sector."
He what? Someone please enlighten me how these computers that were designed by humans for humans and (in general) with extensive human interface group research are non-human oriented. The evolution of the GUI since it *began* has been to more and more intuitive and user friendly interfaces (once again, in general)...
(Flamebait): Why are engineers ragging on CS when they are responsible for more UI idiocy than most? Engineers tend to want to make UIs that favor the knowledgeable and competent person, not make it easy to use for anyone.
You forgot this one. :)
No one should be deprived the simple joy of using the mp5 for mass murder.
You appear to have lost your "u" key, please locate it immediately ;)
Seriously though, this just allows the linux apps (of which there are many for PPC, most things are not written in asm and are therefore (generally) easily portable) to work.
Running a high bandwidth site like mame.dk wouldn't be cheap to host. Not $24000 expensive (unless the host was absolutely horrendous), but certainly not cheap. Of course I doubt mame.dk ever made that much (I don't recall the logs saying they were owed that much, maybe another site).
As for SA, the amount of content that is/was placed on there daily is more than someone doing it as a hobby could ever hope to produce. If they make something popular why can't it be their job? I have no qualms with allowing others to be successful because they make things that entertain me.
The "graphical limitations" aren't really that bad. Sure it's no 3D powerhouse, but it is powerful enough for basically perfect ports of SNES games, as well as enhancements of NES games. Imagine Donkey Kong Country (Rare's finest hour IMHO) in perfect form on a handheld. As for Pokemon, it doesn't hurt you if Pokemon is on the system, just don't buy it. Pokemon hurts no one except the anti-fan.
Funny, I never thought a company with more than $3 billion in cash reserves was close to death, but I guess that shows what I know... Also, in case you missed it Apple is shipping 667 and 733mhz G4s this month now (announced at MWSF). And finally, there's no denying that Apple got the idea of the GUI from Xerox's PARC, but Apple also gave Xerox quite a bit of stock in exchange (can anyone provide a URL to verify this? I can't seem to find one so I can't definitively say this).
The last few generations of Macs and PBs have all had built in ethernet so there is no need for a PCMCIA ethernet card. Your point is quite valid though...there's only one kind of ethernet for them to test since it is the same one that comes with ALL TiBooks...so why didn't they test it?
Anybody know if NetPliance is planning on liquidating their i-openers without requiring an ISP contract while they restructure? I could sure use an LCD screen and a new linux box ;)