Here go all my karma points but the only thing I have to say is:
NYAH!
I think I speak for everyone in saying it's nice to see Rambus get theirs. I can't stand sleazy corporations and Rambus set new standards. IP law doesn't have to be evil, it's good to hear the courts agree (at least sometimes!)
Please, did you think Apple was the Open-Source messiah? Apple has always been as closed and proprietary as Microsoft, they have barely showed the flexibility of an underdog. Anyone who is suprised that Apple hasn't truly embraced open source is a moron -- their previous track record proves they are vehemently AGAINST the freedom of software. That having been said I will still cheer them on as a capitalistic counterbalance to Microsoft. I would prefer the market was dominated by Free Software proponents, otherwise I'll gladly vote for two monopolists over one. ---
Sure this is off-topic but I have to support Hemos' assertion that PCs run off fairy-dust. Where does fairy-dust come from? Why, Asia of course! After all, my local computer retailers are all Asian and have no problem getting any hideous combination of hardware functional. Me? I try to replace a hard drive and smoke starts billowing from my GeForce.
Now I'm a reasonably intelligent man, yet it seems every foray into my PC case ends up in boot errors, bloody knuckles, and the invention of new and creative swear words. You may contend that most PCs are incapable of engaging in sexual relations with their mother, but you wouldn't know it to hear me yelling.
I'm a decent web developer, I can code in PERL, I've administered Linux and MySQL. I know the difference between baud and bps and have dabbled in Assembler. But am I the only geek who can't open his case without dropping a screw into the power supply? Help!
PS - Does this mean Thomas Pabst is actually Asian? He's all a-glitter in pixie dust...
Won't find any? Wow, you really go through life with blinders on, don't you? I work for a pharmaceutical company and without the short-term monopoly provided by patent law we wouldn't research or market products. Our company spends billions a year on R&D and you can rest assured that without patent protection we would withdraw from the market altogether. You say you want economic evidence that patent law works: Duh, without patent law our company wouldn't spend on R&D. And without R&D, scientists (AKA geeks) wouldn't have jobs and hence no dinners on the table. Or had you forgotten that companies not only make money, they also spend it??? ---
Hmmm, can't say I agree with you. The issues with Rambus have nothing to do with the fact that they have lots of patents. The issues are that:
1. Many feel their patents are tenative, covering broad, sweeping areas of technology
2. Their licensing agreements hurt consumers and stifle innovation
3. They are being sued for sitting on a standards body and not disclosing patented technologies that ended up in the final standard, then charged steep licensing fees.
I don't think you can broadly discount patents as a bad thing. Intellectual property law is very important and has proven for many years to promote innovation. For instance, without intellectual property laws the GPL wouldn't exist. Why? Because you'd have no ability to dictate how someone else used your ideas. They could extend your code, charge a gajillion dollars for it, and refuse to release source. It's not IP that's bad, it's when it's abused that there's an issue.
This is a page from the Microsoft trick book
on
XBox Tidbits
·
· Score: 2
The Nintendo letter is absolutely right, the Microsoft Xbox is too far out to be of great importance right now, but Microsoft still wants people to abstain from buying. This is one of their classic tricks. Sow a seed of doubt in people's minds so they don't buy from a competitor. They don't even have to release good product if this strategy succeeds! Some examples:
Microsoft SMS. Versions 1.0 and 1.2 were absolute garbage and hideously behind schedule, but Microsoft kept harping on how fantastic Hermes AKA SMS was and to abstain from buying competing products from Intel, IBM and others. People played it safe and didn't buy from either of these two in favour of an unreleased product. Why make it good when you can prevent people from buying from the competition?
NetPC. Larry Ellison had the computing world abuzz and Microsoft was worried. So together with Intel they announced NetPC -- a thin client PC. People decided to wait on the NC in favour of the NC. Microsoft could then safely kill the product and claim there was no market. Intel actually showed up at our company to demo the NetPC with a gray lunchbox with stickers on the inside printed like circuit boards!!! "This is what it will look like," they said! I was shocked!
And finally a cross-platform operating system like Windows NT. Support a few different processor types long enough to save face, but restrict any good software for them and eventually pull support for all except Intel and Alpha (which they're contractually bound to support).
XBox more of the same? How could you think otherwise...
This is a step too far in protecting intellectual property, and is made the more frustrating when you consider that many countries don't even consider software patentable. So not only are the United States taking unreasonable steps to protect intellectual property, it's debatable whether these properties should be protected at all! Obviously stealing source code or hardware designs has to be prevented, but the tech. industry is no different from any other and people's freedom to switch jobs shouldn't be arbitrarily taken away.
Absolutely. Like some others have said I'd be willing to pay for Slashdot even *with* the ads. (This is not to say I want to see them, I just believe in supporting a company whose management is obviously dedicated to preserving the top-notch content and community they've managed to build over all these years.) I'd love the opportunity to see Slashdot ad-free and know that my donation is helping support a great site.
However I'm still a geek so I expect payment to be easy and point-and-click. I tried to donate to Penny Arcade but the Paypal system was so cumbersome for non-USA residents that I gave up in exasperation.!
Wow, this article was great! It was nice to see a neutral observer critique the whole OSS / Proprietary Software debate. The courts brought up many new ideas that I tend to agree with, and challenged some of the precepts I most firmly believe in. I'm glad the UK court made this decision, and am doubly glad to see that did it with such dignified thought and contemplation.
Strangely the article makes this technology out to be groundbreaking and original. This is just a docbroker a-la Documentum Workspace that features encryption and the ability to delete files that haven't been checked out of the docbase properly (or legally). There's nothing too original about this.
I think the implication to most users is no different than most proprietary software and file formats. This is a proprietary system that you need to volutarily subscribe to that imposes restrictions on you as a user using an obscured client and protocol. If you opt to use the system, you agree to its restrictions. There are free alternatives (Ogg Vorbis?) -- if you really want to make a difference you'll cast your vote in favour of these.
Sorry. I'm 30 years old and as I said I can afford to pay for music, literature, and software that is reasonably priced. I make very good money and have been a software developer for many years. I'm not a punk, I'm just some guy who thinks artists and publishers shouldn't arbitrarily choose prices for their product. Products should cost what they're worth, not the maximum the publisher can get away with charging. ---
Ooo, you must be embarassed. Your ignorance is showing. Let me take you on a stroll down music pricing lane. Cassette tapes are recorded, not pressed. They typically sell for $9.00 or so here in Canada. CDs are pressed, not recorded. They typically sell for $14 here in Canada. Pressed media are FAR less expensive to make than recordings, yet somehow CDs (which cost less to produce) cost over 50% more than cassettes. Perhaps the recording industry isn't charging us what the product is worth, maybe they're charging us what they know we will pay.
If the RIAA had made online MP3 downloads available for $1 each we all would gladly have paid. But their Borg brains are so hardwired to only accept an increase in profit margin, that they would hear nothing of this venture that would have netted them BILLIONS. Instead they fought to restrict electronic distribution until they could exert monopoly control on it. Boo! I say. If taking music for free is all that will teach them how the market works, then I will do it happily. I am tired of being stolen from without an army of crooked lawyers to protect me like the RIAA.
You got it. I am stealing and I don't feel bad at all. In the past 3 years I've spent well over $20k on video games because I am a collector. But since I don't like to open the shrink-wrap I always download a warez copy off the net.
Is it stealing? Yes. Do I feel bad? No freaking way. I pay the salaries of artists and "people like you" every day, but I'm tired of being taken advantage of. If that means you lose your free lunch because you've aligned yourself with monopolies who are cheating you out of your hard-earned money, then so be it. I don't weep for starving artists, learn to program...
One thing Harlan fails to acknowledge is that we're not all thieves, and we're not all boycotting artists. I use Napster, not because I'm not perfectly willing (and able) to pay for music, but because a distribution monopoly is forcing me to pay unreasonable prices for music and is restricting access to alternate, more economical distribution channels.
Do I steal music? Yes. Do I do it to get something for nothing? No. Do I do it to screw artists? No. Do I pay for any and all reasonably-priced software, games, music, and literature? You betcha. But I am boycotting the music / literature / entertainment monopolies that are charging me a fortune just to keep their stock prices high. If an artist falls by the wayside then I feel justified in knowing that I did it to offer freedom to 10x more artists in the future.
> I think there are a lot of people that would leave Windows behind entirely if a few more games were released in non-Windows versions.
I agree completely but let's not discount M$ Office. I switched to Linux a couple years ago and was pleasantly surprised to learn that ICQ, Quake, e-mail, and IRC had equal or superior clients using Linux. However I was man-handled into switching back to Windoze because I rely on an Access-97 database on a daily basis.
Very frustrating, Linux is 95% of the way to being the perfect end-user operating system, but the last hurdle is unsurmountable due to proprietary software...
This provides even more support for the government moving to open source. If an open source model was adopted for this type of project then the system would have sufficient security that examination of the source ideally would not be an issue of national security. Who knows what backdoors the hacker has uncovered?
I couldn't help but notice one of the banner ads running on Copyright.net looked an awful lot like the trademark of the gaming company Terminal Reality. Here's a comparison for you:
Perhaps we should report these guys to themselves?
---
I can only afford an amber monitor, pander to me..
on
The Modem Lives On
·
· Score: 2
Here, here! I totally agree on this one. I don't have broadband in my area and game companies aren't designing games specifically for me. Sure, Quake III included bots so I could enjoy DeatchMatch for the first time, and sure the network code was specifically tweaked to take the best advantage of a modem connection as possible, but what I expect of id Software is that they magically transform my 28.8k modem into a T1. That is what I want and I am the customer! I'm not going to yell at the Telcos for gouging me, or my parents for refusing to ante up their hard-earned money for cable modem. Instead, I'll target someone who has absolutely no control over the speed of my connection!
And while you're at it, Half-Life runs like ass on my IBM XT, can someone look into it?
If you expect jurors to be experts in the field in which the alleged crime took place, then you are by definition introducing prejudices into the process. If you stack a jury in an MP3 copyright-infringement case with Slashdot readers, you're only looking at one side of the coin.
Also, remember that in countries like Canada, defendents get to choose between trial by judge or jury, so it's not really possible to say judges only fill one role. ---
This doesn't come as a surprise at all. Law is a knowledge-based industry, just like information technology. I would think any wise judge knows his own limits and welcomes impartial outside expert opinions. Just as a programmer couldn't possibly have the same depth of understanding of the law as a judge, so too a judge must be able to recognize when he's over his head in technical jargon. A very common practise, but it's still re-assuring to see that it's working.
Everyone knows one of their primary strategies is to sit on standards bodies just long enough to extend the standard with proprietary hooks. "Embrace, extend, destroy." Any license that forces proprietary changes become part of the public code base is completely at odds with the way Microsoft defaces... er... I mean embraces... standards. ---
I agree wholeheartedly with your message except for the following:
>This is the internet, we aren't going to pay for something that is already free.
I think this is a dangerous sentiment. Internet or not, you've got to be willing to pay an artist a fair price for a hard day's work. Unfortunately the RIAA cronies are so entrenched in protecting their monopoly that they refuse to sell me a song (unlimited license) for $1 a pop. Had they done so they would be trillionaires, but their minds are hard-wired to refuse anything that doesn't have a guaranteed increase in profit margin, regardless of revenue. People would gladly pay just for the sheer convenience. However the old, grey, small-minded monopolists decided to steal from us, and the internet community decided to steal back. Now they get nothing, and I'm happy. I know I've bought my last music until the system is changed. The RIAA will not get $20 per CD from me, nor will they even get my $1 a pop for an unlimited license. Am I wasting my time? I bet the first Napster subscriber thought the same...
The director of elementary education argued, "A science fair is not the way we choose to discuss race relations."
If a scientific forum isn't the place to discuss race relations, then what is? A riot? A lynch mob? If a young girl can't take a mature, scientific look at a major problem in our society, then how on earth is it supposed to be discussed? Please, oh please, can someone who agrees with this school director explain to me what is a more appropriate forum to discuss the issue than a (somewhat) scientific study? Sheesh...
Really now, don't people have better things to do with their time than sit on the sidelines and try to make professional game developers sign "chastity agreements?" Technology sells, kids, and these people are trying to feed their kids the occasional steak instead of the daily beenie-weenies w/ ketchup
That's like insisting open source developers agree to only write satellite-tracking software because it's "true" programming, whereas the unwashed masses keep asking for ignorant things like word processors and expense tracking software. This person really needs to get out from behind the computer screen for a while and realize game developers can write whatever they want.
If you want to read a developer's manifesto, play his games. That will tell you what he thinks is important -- getting games into people's hands that they will enjoy. If that means specular lighting, bump mapping, and 3DNow! support, so be it.
Slashdot Mirror
Here go all my karma points but the only thing I have to say is:
NYAH!
I think I speak for everyone in saying it's nice to see Rambus get theirs. I can't stand sleazy corporations and Rambus set new standards. IP law doesn't have to be evil, it's good to hear the courts agree (at least sometimes!)
---
Please, did you think Apple was the Open-Source messiah? Apple has always been as closed and proprietary as Microsoft, they have barely showed the flexibility of an underdog. Anyone who is suprised that Apple hasn't truly embraced open source is a moron -- their previous track record proves they are vehemently AGAINST the freedom of software. That having been said I will still cheer them on as a capitalistic counterbalance to Microsoft. I would prefer the market was dominated by Free Software proponents, otherwise I'll gladly vote for two monopolists over one.
---
Sure this is off-topic but I have to support Hemos' assertion that PCs run off fairy-dust. Where does fairy-dust come from? Why, Asia of course! After all, my local computer retailers are all Asian and have no problem getting any hideous combination of hardware functional. Me? I try to replace a hard drive and smoke starts billowing from my GeForce.
Now I'm a reasonably intelligent man, yet it seems every foray into my PC case ends up in boot errors, bloody knuckles, and the invention of new and creative swear words. You may contend that most PCs are incapable of engaging in sexual relations with their mother, but you wouldn't know it to hear me yelling.
I'm a decent web developer, I can code in PERL, I've administered Linux and MySQL. I know the difference between baud and bps and have dabbled in Assembler. But am I the only geek who can't open his case without dropping a screw into the power supply? Help!
PS - Does this mean Thomas Pabst is actually Asian? He's all a-glitter in pixie dust...
---
Won't find any? Wow, you really go through life with blinders on, don't you? I work for a pharmaceutical company and without the short-term monopoly provided by patent law we wouldn't research or market products. Our company spends billions a year on R&D and you can rest assured that without patent protection we would withdraw from the market altogether. You say you want economic evidence that patent law works: Duh, without patent law our company wouldn't spend on R&D. And without R&D, scientists (AKA geeks) wouldn't have jobs and hence no dinners on the table. Or had you forgotten that companies not only make money, they also spend it???
---
Hmmm, can't say I agree with you. The issues with Rambus have nothing to do with the fact that they have lots of patents. The issues are that:
1. Many feel their patents are tenative, covering broad, sweeping areas of technology
2. Their licensing agreements hurt consumers and stifle innovation
3. They are being sued for sitting on a standards body and not disclosing patented technologies that ended up in the final standard, then charged steep licensing fees.
I don't think you can broadly discount patents as a bad thing. Intellectual property law is very important and has proven for many years to promote innovation. For instance, without intellectual property laws the GPL wouldn't exist. Why? Because you'd have no ability to dictate how someone else used your ideas. They could extend your code, charge a gajillion dollars for it, and refuse to release source. It's not IP that's bad, it's when it's abused that there's an issue.
---
Frankly I think this stinks like day-old Kraft® Singles® -- which both taste great and are great for you! Now I can't even escape into a furious, fast-paced game of Final Fantasy XII© by visionary game developers Squaresoft® without being inundated by ads for cold, refreshing Coca-Cola® I'm putting my Dual Shock© controller away, packing up the Playstation2® and going outside to enjoy something that hasn't been commercialized. Hell, it'll do me good to get some Sun®
---
The Nintendo letter is absolutely right, the Microsoft Xbox is too far out to be of great importance right now, but Microsoft still wants people to abstain from buying. This is one of their classic tricks. Sow a seed of doubt in people's minds so they don't buy from a competitor. They don't even have to release good product if this strategy succeeds! Some examples:
Microsoft SMS. Versions 1.0 and 1.2 were absolute garbage and hideously behind schedule, but Microsoft kept harping on how fantastic Hermes AKA SMS was and to abstain from buying competing products from Intel, IBM and others. People played it safe and didn't buy from either of these two in favour of an unreleased product. Why make it good when you can prevent people from buying from the competition?
NetPC. Larry Ellison had the computing world abuzz and Microsoft was worried. So together with Intel they announced NetPC -- a thin client PC. People decided to wait on the NC in favour of the NC. Microsoft could then safely kill the product and claim there was no market. Intel actually showed up at our company to demo the NetPC with a gray lunchbox with stickers on the inside printed like circuit boards!!! "This is what it will look like," they said! I was shocked!
And finally a cross-platform operating system like Windows NT. Support a few different processor types long enough to save face, but restrict any good software for them and eventually pull support for all except Intel and Alpha (which they're contractually bound to support).
XBox more of the same? How could you think otherwise...
---
This is a step too far in protecting intellectual property, and is made the more frustrating when you consider that many countries don't even consider software patentable. So not only are the United States taking unreasonable steps to protect intellectual property, it's debatable whether these properties should be protected at all! Obviously stealing source code or hardware designs has to be prevented, but the tech. industry is no different from any other and people's freedom to switch jobs shouldn't be arbitrarily taken away.
---
Absolutely. Like some others have said I'd be willing to pay for Slashdot even *with* the ads. (This is not to say I want to see them, I just believe in supporting a company whose management is obviously dedicated to preserving the top-notch content and community they've managed to build over all these years.) I'd love the opportunity to see Slashdot ad-free and know that my donation is helping support a great site.
However I'm still a geek so I expect payment to be easy and point-and-click. I tried to donate to Penny Arcade but the Paypal system was so cumbersome for non-USA residents that I gave up in exasperation.!
---
Wow, this article was great! It was nice to see a neutral observer critique the whole OSS / Proprietary Software debate. The courts brought up many new ideas that I tend to agree with, and challenged some of the precepts I most firmly believe in. I'm glad the UK court made this decision, and am doubly glad to see that did it with such dignified thought and contemplation.
---
Strangely the article makes this technology out to be groundbreaking and original. This is just a docbroker a-la Documentum Workspace that features encryption and the ability to delete files that haven't been checked out of the docbase properly (or legally). There's nothing too original about this.
I think the implication to most users is no different than most proprietary software and file formats. This is a proprietary system that you need to volutarily subscribe to that imposes restrictions on you as a user using an obscured client and protocol. If you opt to use the system, you agree to its restrictions. There are free alternatives (Ogg Vorbis?) -- if you really want to make a difference you'll cast your vote in favour of these.
---
Sorry. I'm 30 years old and as I said I can afford to pay for music, literature, and software that is reasonably priced. I make very good money and have been a software developer for many years. I'm not a punk, I'm just some guy who thinks artists and publishers shouldn't arbitrarily choose prices for their product. Products should cost what they're worth, not the maximum the publisher can get away with charging.
---
If the RIAA had made online MP3 downloads available for $1 each we all would gladly have paid. But their Borg brains are so hardwired to only accept an increase in profit margin, that they would hear nothing of this venture that would have netted them BILLIONS. Instead they fought to restrict electronic distribution until they could exert monopoly control on it. Boo! I say. If taking music for free is all that will teach them how the market works, then I will do it happily. I am tired of being stolen from without an army of crooked lawyers to protect me like the RIAA.
---
You got it. I am stealing and I don't feel bad at all. In the past 3 years I've spent well over $20k on video games because I am a collector. But since I don't like to open the shrink-wrap I always download a warez copy off the net.
Is it stealing? Yes. Do I feel bad? No freaking way. I pay the salaries of artists and "people like you" every day, but I'm tired of being taken advantage of. If that means you lose your free lunch because you've aligned yourself with monopolies who are cheating you out of your hard-earned money, then so be it. I don't weep for starving artists, learn to program...
---
One thing Harlan fails to acknowledge is that we're not all thieves, and we're not all boycotting artists. I use Napster, not because I'm not perfectly willing (and able) to pay for music, but because a distribution monopoly is forcing me to pay unreasonable prices for music and is restricting access to alternate, more economical distribution channels.
Do I steal music? Yes. Do I do it to get something for nothing? No. Do I do it to screw artists? No. Do I pay for any and all reasonably-priced software, games, music, and literature? You betcha. But I am boycotting the music / literature / entertainment monopolies that are charging me a fortune just to keep their stock prices high. If an artist falls by the wayside then I feel justified in knowing that I did it to offer freedom to 10x more artists in the future.
This is a moral stand, not a financial one.
---
> I think there are a lot of people that would leave Windows behind entirely if a few more games were released in non-Windows versions.
I agree completely but let's not discount M$ Office. I switched to Linux a couple years ago and was pleasantly surprised to learn that ICQ, Quake, e-mail, and IRC had equal or superior clients using Linux. However I was man-handled into switching back to Windoze because I rely on an Access-97 database on a daily basis.
Very frustrating, Linux is 95% of the way to being the perfect end-user operating system, but the last hurdle is unsurmountable due to proprietary software...
---
This provides even more support for the government moving to open source. If an open source model was adopted for this type of project then the system would have sufficient security that examination of the source ideally would not be an issue of national security. Who knows what backdoors the hacker has uncovered?
---
I couldn't help but notice one of the banner ads running on Copyright.net looked an awful lot like the trademark of the gaming company Terminal Reality. Here's a comparison for you:
12k GIF
Perhaps we should report these guys to themselves?
---
Here, here! I totally agree on this one. I don't have broadband in my area and game companies aren't designing games specifically for me. Sure, Quake III included bots so I could enjoy DeatchMatch for the first time, and sure the network code was specifically tweaked to take the best advantage of a modem connection as possible, but what I expect of id Software is that they magically transform my 28.8k modem into a T1. That is what I want and I am the customer! I'm not going to yell at the Telcos for gouging me, or my parents for refusing to ante up their hard-earned money for cable modem. Instead, I'll target someone who has absolutely no control over the speed of my connection!
And while you're at it, Half-Life runs like ass on my IBM XT, can someone look into it?
---
If you expect jurors to be experts in the field in which the alleged crime took place, then you are by definition introducing prejudices into the process. If you stack a jury in an MP3 copyright-infringement case with Slashdot readers, you're only looking at one side of the coin.
Also, remember that in countries like Canada, defendents get to choose between trial by judge or jury, so it's not really possible to say judges only fill one role.
---
This doesn't come as a surprise at all. Law is a knowledge-based industry, just like information technology. I would think any wise judge knows his own limits and welcomes impartial outside expert opinions. Just as a programmer couldn't possibly have the same depth of understanding of the law as a judge, so too a judge must be able to recognize when he's over his head in technical jargon. A very common practise, but it's still re-assuring to see that it's working.
---
Everyone knows one of their primary strategies is to sit on standards bodies just long enough to extend the standard with proprietary hooks. "Embrace, extend, destroy." Any license that forces proprietary changes become part of the public code base is completely at odds with the way Microsoft defaces... er... I mean embraces... standards.
---
I agree wholeheartedly with your message except for the following:
>This is the internet, we aren't going to pay for something that is already free.
I think this is a dangerous sentiment. Internet or not, you've got to be willing to pay an artist a fair price for a hard day's work. Unfortunately the RIAA cronies are so entrenched in protecting their monopoly that they refuse to sell me a song (unlimited license) for $1 a pop. Had they done so they would be trillionaires, but their minds are hard-wired to refuse anything that doesn't have a guaranteed increase in profit margin, regardless of revenue. People would gladly pay just for the sheer convenience. However the old, grey, small-minded monopolists decided to steal from us, and the internet community decided to steal back. Now they get nothing, and I'm happy. I know I've bought my last music until the system is changed. The RIAA will not get $20 per CD from me, nor will they even get my $1 a pop for an unlimited license. Am I wasting my time? I bet the first Napster subscriber thought the same...
---
The director of elementary education argued, "A science fair is not the way we choose to discuss race relations."
If a scientific forum isn't the place to discuss race relations, then what is? A riot? A lynch mob? If a young girl can't take a mature, scientific look at a major problem in our society, then how on earth is it supposed to be discussed? Please, oh please, can someone who agrees with this school director explain to me what is a more appropriate forum to discuss the issue than a (somewhat) scientific study? Sheesh...
---
Really now, don't people have better things to do with their time than sit on the sidelines and try to make professional game developers sign "chastity agreements?" Technology sells, kids, and these people are trying to feed their kids the occasional steak instead of the daily beenie-weenies w/ ketchup
That's like insisting open source developers agree to only write satellite-tracking software because it's "true" programming, whereas the unwashed masses keep asking for ignorant things like word processors and expense tracking software. This person really needs to get out from behind the computer screen for a while and realize game developers can write whatever they want.
If you want to read a developer's manifesto, play his games. That will tell you what he thinks is important -- getting games into people's hands that they will enjoy. If that means specular lighting, bump mapping, and 3DNow! support, so be it.
---