Then Richard started announcing additional requirements nobody had ever heard about
before, including prohibitions on certain kinds of license termination clauses and on clauses
requiring changes to the code to be disclosed to the vendor.
Tell me you're joking, Eric. These requirements are implicit. However, if you want them to be explicit, look no further than "What is Free Software?":
You should also have the freedom to make modifications and use them privately in your own work or play,
without even mentioning that they exist. If you do publish your changes, you should not be required to notify anyone in particular, or in any particular way.
...
In order for these freedoms to be real, they must be irrevocable as long as you do nothing wrong; if the developer of the software has the power to revoke the license, even though you have not given cause, the software is not free.
I don't think those paragraphs were added in reaction to the OSD.
Your diatribes about the "general public virus" notwithstanding, RMS has always been candid about the different kinds of free software.
Even as the community was in an uproar over the QPL "open patch" fiasco, RMS pronounced it a free software license.
My folks work at a university with a heterogeneous computing environment: Windows, Mac, Unix, Word, WordPerfect, etc. They recently "standardized" on Eudora for email. The computing advisory board wants to standardize on Windows and Microsoft Office to make sharing files easier. Can you say, "PHB"?
Meanwhile, this has not turned their help desk into an oracle of sage advice. The morons distribute buggy, proprietary dialup software to access the modem pool, which uses standard PPP.
you don't have to pull cable through the whole building (again)
I'm not so sure about that.
My PC at work doesn't have a direct connection to the computer room (the logical place you'd put all these PCs).
I go through a hub, a bridge, and maybe a switch on the other side.
Unless C-Link is layered over Ethernet, it's probably not compatible with your network topology.
Black Box sells a similar device called the ServSwitch Multi.
You put a PCI card in the computer that connects to the KVM switch via Cat5 (not sure whether it uses Ethernet).
You use a combination of serial, AT, PS/2, and VGA to connect the K, V, and M to the switch.
I'm sure the Black Box engineers are working on a USB version.
I evaluated the ServSwitch Multi, but rejected it because it's wicked expensive.
We went with a ServSwitch Matrix, which is simpler and cheaper.
It will be interesting to see whether the final announcement mentions the patent.
Oops, I should have kept reading.
The Report on the Development of the AES does have a statement that seems to indirectly reference Hitachi's patent claim: "After comments were analyzed, and the review process was completed, IP was not a factor in NIST's selection of the proposed AES algorithm."
You can read Hitachi 's letter in the Round 2 Comments section of the AES site.
It's clear from the IP Issues forum that this was a concern.
It will be interesting to see whether the final announcement mentions the patent.
I don't know whether the other algorithms actually infringe; I suspect it's a case of CYA, given NIST's "Speak now or forever be sued" note regarding IP.
Scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, and you'll see the patent does, in fact, reference RFC 1631.
They're not patenting NAT, they're patenting "an adaptive security algorithm" for use with NAT.
You know, there are a number of arguments that have already been stated against this hacking contest
Bruce Schneier made a pretty good argument argument against cracking contests, in general, in one of his Cryto-Grams.
In particular, he notes that "Contest prizes are rarely good incentives.... Taken at a conservative $125 an hour for a competent cryptanalyst, a $10K prize pays for two weeks of work." The contest runs three weeks, and you only get paid if you win.
Of course, the contest isn't targeted at "competent cryptanalysts," but isn't that a point worth making?
If you're looking for more ammo for a Slashdot post ridiculing a cracking contest (did I say that out loud?), Bruce links to commentary by Gene Spafford in Electronic CIPHER.
there isn't any [SIMD optimizations] the id codebase
The AnandTech article implied that there were.
I could have sworn I'd read elsewhere that there were, but maybe it was another AnandTech article.
I did find a cameo interview with Carmack at FiringSquad that paraphrases to what you said:
Most of the Katmai optimizations [for Quake
3] are in the OpenGL drivers. We may have
some loops in the main code Katmai
optimized, but it is a low priority. Because up
to 75% of the execution time of the game is
in the graphics driver, most of the burden of
optimization is theirs.
By the way, you keep comparing 3DNow to MMX. Are you including SSE in MMX?
Quake III is heavily optimized for SSE, but not for 3DNow. Unless the software you use is similarly optimized, the Q3 benchmarks are a little skewed in Intel's favor.
Hardware reviews rely too heavily on the Quake benchmarks. AMD cleverly helped id and 3dfx optimize Quake II for 3DNow. A K6-2 and a Voodoo 2 with all the right drivers and patches made for a great Quake II system. The average DirectX game, though, revealed the weakness of the K6-2 FPU.
Now the tables are turned and Intel uses SSE to make up for a FPU disadvantage in Quake III.
Personally, I'll take a solid FPU over SIMD extensions any day.
the same game played against human opponents
becomes a puzzle when played against game-playing (AI) routines
How about this? Single-player Quake is a game. Multi-player Quake is a sport. Single-player Quake III is a sport the way NBA Live is a sport.
There is such a thing as Quake skill or ability. It's how Thresh got the money to buy himself not one, but two dweeby web sites and I'm just posting on Slashdot. I think it's different from getting to the end of Pac Man or Dragon's Lair. Same thing for driving games. The spread of lap times at GPLRank convinces me that there's such a thing as sim racing talent.
[The FPS] should be combined with the good elements from the 'old' adventure games.
Have you read Ernest Adams's articles at Gamasutra?
In "It's Time to Bring Back Adventure Games," he makes the point that
"3D engines have just as much to contribute to adventure games as they do to other genres."
Quake does not represent the state of the art in gameplay. Thanfully, id sells the engine to more ambitious game developers.
However, I have to agree with OMM. The good old games weren't always good. In "Three Problems for Interactive Storytellers," Ernest talks about the problem of amnesia in adventure games:
You don't
know what's going to happen to you, so for safety's
sake, you pick up everything you see, and you end up
carrying around a collection of objects that make you
look like a demented bag lady. (Consider the original
Adventure: a lamp, a birdcage, a wooden rod, an
axe, some gold coins, a bottle of oil...)
Jane Jensen didn't invent the asinine puzzle.
Computer games are linear. Half-Life, StarCraft, Diablo 2, Grim Fandango, System Shock 2. Anything that "tells a story" tells one story from beginning to end. I hope the next-generation adventure game is also the next-generation FPS and RPG.
Agreed. Blending images with the background is a sign of a purely visual site. It's a good bet you'll also find pixel-based alignment (so I see narrow columns on a big monitor, but have to scroll side to side on a small monitor), screwy fonts, and not much more than a hundred words per page.
(Yes, I see the rounded borders on Slashdot. Don't even get me started on Slashdot's design.)
Epic Systems of Madison, WI develops a suite of medical software that handles medical records, accounts receivable, scheduling, and probably a lot more since the last time I looked at it. It's based on their proprietary Chronicles DBMS, which runs on M. M is a DBMS / language / operating environment developed almost exclusively by InterSystems of Cambridge, MA. InterSystems Caché (the most recent incarnation of M) runs on Linux.
One of Epic's biggest competitors is IDX, of Burlington, VT. Their product is also based on M.
This is not cheap stuff. If you're concerned about the price of Windows, you probably can't afford it. You'll pay the most for the medical software and support contracts, then for the underlying DBMS (e.g., M, Oracle, SQL Server), then for the hardware (e.g., 8-way SPARC with gobs of RAID storage), then for the OS. Don't forget the salary of the local staff to support the system.
If you're serious about this, you might consider talking to a salesperson at a major DBMS vendor and asking for a referral to one of their VARs (value-added resellers).
Big database software installations, especially medical software, are a pain. At Epic, a six-month install was considered impossibly short. The sales process alone usually took that long, involving a five-hundred-page RFP (request for proposals) from the customer, a thousand-page response from Epic, and a meeting of the lawyers to sign the contract.
If the secret to individual success is "underpromise and overdeliver," the secret to corporate success is the exact opposite. Sales will say, "of course we can do that." After you've signed the contract, Development and Support will say, "are you nuts?" A month later, after $400 / hr. of custom programming, it will sort of work. Bring a systems analyst to the sales meetings--someone who can kick the tires, ask questions, and understand the answers.
I've felt for a long time that database software is a good candidate for free software development, because many of the customers already employ a large technical staff, including developers. If you stick to the standards (SQL, etc.), you'll have a stable base and a large community. Most of all, nobody cares about the product as much as the customer. Epic, IDX, and InterSystems are for-profit companies that sell proprietary solutions in competition with other such companies. They care about the product insofar as you'll buy theirs instead of someone else's.
A standard book has zero DETERMINISM, IMPROVISATION, FREEDOM. A choose-your-own-adventure book (remember those?) has all three.
Adventure, StarCraft, Grim Fandango, Half-Life, System Shock 2. Decent games, but all entirely linear. Team Fortress (which was very well implemented in Half-Life as TFC) redefined multi-player gaming with the simple introduction of classes.
The next Half-Life could redefine the single-player experience by introducing the simple two- and three-way choices of choose your own adventure. Let me choose good or evil. Let me make a non-fatal mistake.
Half-Life's strength was its production value, not its gameplay or story. Ditto StarCraft and Grim Fandango. Bonus points for System Shock 2 for its RPG-style classes.
Make a good choose your own adventure and you'll make a million bucks.
Ditto. My system came with a #9 Motion 771, which used the S3 Vision968. This chip had a horrific bug: it used memory it didn't say it used. This caused all sorts of problems. Can you find any mention of it on the S3 or #9 site? No. I found out about it from a Voodoo2 installation note (the problem actually occurred with a USB controller).
I wasn't thrilled with the card anyway, because each driver kit was worse than the last. #9 taught me to never delete an old driver kit, a lesson that helped me to survive the Voodoo3.
You're right: we shouldn't attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by profit motive. Allaire has released the equivalent of a user-contributed enhancement for a proprietary product under yet-another-open-source-license, which probably doesn't even meet the open source definition:
Allaire grants you a...
nontransferable license.... End users of your applications must obtain their own licensed copies of ColdFusion from Allaire or an authorized reseller.
(Emphasis added.) See clauses 1, 7, and 8 of the OSD.
Now, "open source" doesn't mean anything in particular, but I dare you to port the code to PHP and see how open the source is with a nontransferable license.
The biggest difference between PHP and Cold Fusion is that the latter has a marketing department. Anyone can say that PHP/ASP/Cold Fusion slices and dices, but you'll get more mileage out of a proof of concept. Look at your current constraints; e.g., must run with IIS and SQL Server on this W2K box. See if PHP fits. If so, spend a day or two rewriting some of your CF pages.
One caveat I'd mention right now is that you'll get the best performance out of mod_php or the ISAPI module. If you have to use the CGI executable, PHP is at an immediate disadvantage. You also may get a slight boost from using persistent database connections.
I would think that the best thing that developers of free software could do is to publish their techniques so that they can be seen as prior art.
Agreed. However, I wouldn't mind seeing a coherent implementation of Mutual Defense Against Software Patents. Fight copyright with copyleft. Fight patents with mutual defense.
Slashdot Mirror
Tell me you're joking, Eric. These requirements are implicit. However, if you want them to be explicit, look no further than "What is Free Software?":
I don't think those paragraphs were added in reaction to the OSD.Your diatribes about the "general public virus" notwithstanding, RMS has always been candid about the different kinds of free software. Even as the community was in an uproar over the QPL "open patch" fiasco, RMS pronounced it a free software license.
Meanwhile, this has not turned their help desk into an oracle of sage advice. The morons distribute buggy, proprietary dialup software to access the modem pool, which uses standard PPP.
I'm not so sure about that. My PC at work doesn't have a direct connection to the computer room (the logical place you'd put all these PCs). I go through a hub, a bridge, and maybe a switch on the other side. Unless C-Link is layered over Ethernet, it's probably not compatible with your network topology.
Black Box sells a similar device called the ServSwitch Multi. You put a PCI card in the computer that connects to the KVM switch via Cat5 (not sure whether it uses Ethernet). You use a combination of serial, AT, PS/2, and VGA to connect the K, V, and M to the switch. I'm sure the Black Box engineers are working on a USB version.
I evaluated the ServSwitch Multi, but rejected it because it's wicked expensive. We went with a ServSwitch Matrix, which is simpler and cheaper.
Oops, I should have kept reading. The Report on the Development of the AES does have a statement that seems to indirectly reference Hitachi's patent claim: "After comments were analyzed, and the review process was completed, IP was not a factor in NIST's selection of the proposed AES algorithm."
It's clear from the IP Issues forum that this was a concern. It will be interesting to see whether the final announcement mentions the patent.
I don't know whether the other algorithms actually infringe; I suspect it's a case of CYA, given NIST's "Speak now or forever be sued" note regarding IP.
Scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, and you'll see the patent does, in fact, reference RFC 1631. They're not patenting NAT, they're patenting "an adaptive security algorithm" for use with NAT.
Bruce Schneier made a pretty good argument argument against cracking contests, in general, in one of his Cryto-Grams. In particular, he notes that "Contest prizes are rarely good incentives.... Taken at a conservative $125 an hour for a competent cryptanalyst, a $10K prize pays for two weeks of work." The contest runs three weeks, and you only get paid if you win. Of course, the contest isn't targeted at "competent cryptanalysts," but isn't that a point worth making?
If you're looking for more ammo for a Slashdot post ridiculing a cracking contest (did I say that out loud?), Bruce links to commentary by Gene Spafford in Electronic CIPHER.
The AnandTech article implied that there were. I could have sworn I'd read elsewhere that there were, but maybe it was another AnandTech article. I did find a cameo interview with Carmack at FiringSquad that paraphrases to what you said:
By the way, you keep comparing 3DNow to MMX. Are you including SSE in MMX?
Quake III is heavily optimized for SSE, but not for 3DNow. Unless the software you use is similarly optimized, the Q3 benchmarks are a little skewed in Intel's favor.
Hardware reviews rely too heavily on the Quake benchmarks. AMD cleverly helped id and 3dfx optimize Quake II for 3DNow. A K6-2 and a Voodoo 2 with all the right drivers and patches made for a great Quake II system. The average DirectX game, though, revealed the weakness of the K6-2 FPU. Now the tables are turned and Intel uses SSE to make up for a FPU disadvantage in Quake III.
Personally, I'll take a solid FPU over SIMD extensions any day.
How about this? Single-player Quake is a game. Multi-player Quake is a sport. Single-player Quake III is a sport the way NBA Live is a sport.
There is such a thing as Quake skill or ability. It's how Thresh got the money to buy himself not one, but two dweeby web sites and I'm just posting on Slashdot. I think it's different from getting to the end of Pac Man or Dragon's Lair. Same thing for driving games. The spread of lap times at GPLRank convinces me that there's such a thing as sim racing talent.
Have you read Ernest Adams's articles at Gamasutra? In "It's Time to Bring Back Adventure Games," he makes the point that "3D engines have just as much to contribute to adventure games as they do to other genres." Quake does not represent the state of the art in gameplay. Thanfully, id sells the engine to more ambitious game developers.
However, I have to agree with OMM. The good old games weren't always good. In "Three Problems for Interactive Storytellers," Ernest talks about the problem of amnesia in adventure games:
Jane Jensen didn't invent the asinine puzzle.Computer games are linear. Half-Life, StarCraft, Diablo 2, Grim Fandango, System Shock 2. Anything that "tells a story" tells one story from beginning to end. I hope the next-generation adventure game is also the next-generation FPS and RPG.
Agreed. Blending images with the background is a sign of a purely visual site. It's a good bet you'll also find pixel-based alignment (so I see narrow columns on a big monitor, but have to scroll side to side on a small monitor), screwy fonts, and not much more than a hundred words per page.
(Yes, I see the rounded borders on Slashdot. Don't even get me started on Slashdot's design.)
One of Epic's biggest competitors is IDX, of Burlington, VT. Their product is also based on M.
This is not cheap stuff. If you're concerned about the price of Windows, you probably can't afford it. You'll pay the most for the medical software and support contracts, then for the underlying DBMS (e.g., M, Oracle, SQL Server), then for the hardware (e.g., 8-way SPARC with gobs of RAID storage), then for the OS. Don't forget the salary of the local staff to support the system.
If you're serious about this, you might consider talking to a salesperson at a major DBMS vendor and asking for a referral to one of their VARs (value-added resellers).
Big database software installations, especially medical software, are a pain. At Epic, a six-month install was considered impossibly short. The sales process alone usually took that long, involving a five-hundred-page RFP (request for proposals) from the customer, a thousand-page response from Epic, and a meeting of the lawyers to sign the contract.
If the secret to individual success is "underpromise and overdeliver," the secret to corporate success is the exact opposite. Sales will say, "of course we can do that." After you've signed the contract, Development and Support will say, "are you nuts?" A month later, after $400 / hr. of custom programming, it will sort of work. Bring a systems analyst to the sales meetings--someone who can kick the tires, ask questions, and understand the answers.
I've felt for a long time that database software is a good candidate for free software development, because many of the customers already employ a large technical staff, including developers. If you stick to the standards (SQL, etc.), you'll have a stable base and a large community. Most of all, nobody cares about the product as much as the customer. Epic, IDX, and InterSystems are for-profit companies that sell proprietary solutions in competition with other such companies. They care about the product insofar as you'll buy theirs instead of someone else's.
That's a cool site. Like most lints, it's more noise than anything. Of course, I checked slashdot.org--it didn't do as well as olympics.com.
Adventure, StarCraft, Grim Fandango, Half-Life, System Shock 2. Decent games, but all entirely linear. Team Fortress (which was very well implemented in Half-Life as TFC) redefined multi-player gaming with the simple introduction of classes.
The next Half-Life could redefine the single-player experience by introducing the simple two- and three-way choices of choose your own adventure. Let me choose good or evil. Let me make a non-fatal mistake.
Half-Life's strength was its production value, not its gameplay or story. Ditto StarCraft and Grim Fandango. Bonus points for System Shock 2 for its RPG-style classes.
Make a good choose your own adventure and you'll make a million bucks.
Hmm ...
A patent is issued for a limited time. A trademark does not expire until the owner stops defending it.
Ditto. My system came with a #9 Motion 771, which used the S3 Vision968. This chip had a horrific bug: it used memory it didn't say it used. This caused all sorts of problems. Can you find any mention of it on the S3 or #9 site? No. I found out about it from a Voodoo2 installation note (the problem actually occurred with a USB controller).
I wasn't thrilled with the card anyway, because each driver kit was worse than the last. #9 taught me to never delete an old driver kit, a lesson that helped me to survive the Voodoo3.
Now, "open source" doesn't mean anything in particular, but I dare you to port the code to PHP and see how open the source is with a nontransferable license.
The biggest difference between PHP and Cold Fusion is that the latter has a marketing department. Anyone can say that PHP/ASP/Cold Fusion slices and dices, but you'll get more mileage out of a proof of concept. Look at your current constraints; e.g., must run with IIS and SQL Server on this W2K box. See if PHP fits. If so, spend a day or two rewriting some of your CF pages.
One caveat I'd mention right now is that you'll get the best performance out of mod_php or the ISAPI module. If you have to use the CGI executable, PHP is at an immediate disadvantage. You also may get a slight boost from using persistent database connections.
BTW, here's a list of High-Profile sites running PHP. Do you get more hits than Volvo?
Agreed. However, I wouldn't mind seeing a coherent implementation of Mutual Defense Against Software Patents. Fight copyright with copyleft. Fight patents with mutual defense.