I wondered throughout the trial and still wonder now if the presence and implication of 2600 is really helping the case. I mean, you have a group calling themself "2600 the hackers quarterly", a group who talked on many occasions about security breaches, how to exploit them and things like that. Did they really expect the judge to think they were the good guys?
The people reading/. KNOW that 2600 are trying to defend freedom of speech, thoughts and expression. But do the judge know? According to what I've read from the trial I sure don't think so. Try to see the case as if you were a total outsider knowing nothing about 2600 and not much about computers in general. Would you still think 2600 are right? At the first sight they look like the bad guy... and I am not sure that their involvment is helping that much...
Agreed. What is wrong IMHO is a coder who doesn't care about the code he has to produce for his company. It happened to me a few times that I was working on something I found so interesting that I did not care to stay a few extra hours at work. What is wrong is to see a programmer that spend his whole day looking at code only wishing the day could end so he can stop looking at that aweful code he has to work on.
Programmers working from 9 to 5 each day? I have no problems with that...
Programmers who cannot wait 5 to run away from the code they're working on? Now there's a problem... Those need to realize that they're are lots of other jobs with projects they might like more out there.
In the cathedral Engineering decision are often made by people who have no idea how to develop software, do not care how to develop software and would by no mean consider it appropriate to consult the coders before making decision.
Thus you end with administrative request about a near impossible feature to be implemented in an astoundingly short delay withouth enough resources. That added with the fact that a lot of programmers in the Cathedral are only waiting 5pm to go back home (and hack in code they really like??) forces people to cut around the corners and take shortcuts. After all the holy priests of the cathedrals do not care if the program is working fine... all that matters is if the feature is implemented and if the software has enough eye-candy to impress other priests in other cathedrals who will pay for our stuff.
Of course it might not be that way in all cathedrals... but the more I move from catehdral to cathedral the more I become atheist:o)
While I have to agree with the article on many points, I must say that IMHO RTS are really far from dying! In fact they are still one of the best selling type of games!
Sure, the gameplay is never really innovative (even if we are beggining to see a trend in bringing some roleplaying elements in RTS) but sometimes the storyline are really interesting and I must say I played starcraft for hours even in single players just to see what would happen to Kerrigan, Rainer and company.
We begin to see innovations on the gameplay too. The latest Warlord game brings some RP elements by making you choose a hero and develop it like you would develop a RPG character. Also Warcraft 3 is leaning in that direction if I am right.
I hardly think that any type of game will really die... we will just see them merge to create multi-type games.
I don't remember seeing a single cartoon brought to the movie that was cool. The Jetsons? the Flintstones? (ok... granted this was not an animated movie but anyway) South Park???
While I loved all of those cartoons I don't remember any of these movies being good.
Don't get me wrong, I really LOVE the Simpsons... but I'd rather watch 3 episodes in a row rather than to watch a 1h30 Simpson movie.
As I did with South Park I won't pay 10$ (+pop corn and all) to go see it in a movie theatre... I will wait to rent it with a couple of friends a few months later hoping it can be good anyway...
First, Microsoft is not doing the port, MainSoft is. Second they already have a really good set of tools to do it. They have remapped most of the Win32 APIs already so I don't think this port will be as hard as rewriting the whole software. They already made Internet Explorer and the Media Player run on Solaris and from what I have seen of their stuff it's pretty good.
I am not sure but I think Mainsoft is also working on a DCOM port for Linux... correct me if I am wrong...
Is it just me? Microsoft in no place seems to be denying the port of Internet Explorer and their Media Player. What they're saying is that office will not be ported to Linux.
So while the rumors were in part wrong, we have on one side Mainsoft saying that they are not porting office but IE and Media player and on the other side MS only saying that they are not porting Office...
Microsoft did not deny the possibility that some of its apps would be ported, they only said "WE are not doing it" and "not Office".
My first language is french and I learned English by myself. I don't think that programming languages would be much different if they would have been created by people speaking any occidental languages because all of these have really similar roots and mindsets.
Asian languages on the other hand are another thing. I used to work with a chinese guy and he told me that for him learning english is really hard because oriental and occidental languages have been created and developed with totally different mindsets. I guess this would have transgressed if for instance C or Perl had been developped by Asian people... I think all the paradigms and methodology that we take for granted in programming would be different. Hell we might not even have IFs statements! Who knows...
On the total opposite way I can say that programming has greatly affected the way I speak my native tongue (french). Sine I work in a professional environment I use english more and more and I sadly came to realize that sadly my french is much poorer than it was about 2 years ago. Has anyone else experienced the same kind of feeling? That you are UNlearning your own language because of your working environment?
That's why you can filter article by author on/.
You don't like it? Don't read it... And now you don't even need to see it! IMHO this would be a much better way to deal with your dislike of Katz and wht he writes than it is to flame in the comments... Don't you think?
You miss the point there. Napster did not create it's own record label and sign artist to ditribute them free over their service. They just created a way to distribute what wsa owned by the RIAA (and I am not begining a debate over if the RIAA SHOULD be able to own it, I'm just saying they currently DO own it) for free and for their own profit.
Imagine I create a corporation, write a good software allowing people to share their softwares (like MS Windows and stuff like that) and then try to make profit out of it... The concept of sharing behind that is great, the concept of making money by distributing other people's stuff for free isn't.
I don't think there is anything illegal in their practice... It could be considered an exchange of services something like "Write good reviews of my products and try to forget to review my competitor's product and I will give you goodies... ". Sure it is NOT ethically correct... but I don't think that there are any laws prohibiting this... After all how many MS (or even Linux for that matter) biased review are there out there on the web??
But I think we quickly forget that NvDIA is not the only one who's ethics should be questioned... doesnt' that make you wonder how many reviews you've read that were in fact biased by bribes? What sites have accepted bribes like that in the past and are still doing it? Sure it is easy to point nvdia as the bad guy in that story... but I would be curious to hear their version of the story. And I sure would like to know if some of the mentioned sites have accepted bribes like this in the past before deciding to blow the whole story...
Are you really not realizing that even if the suit was against my.mp3.com that it is after the whole mp3 concept that the RIAA has somethigns or did you just jumped on yet another chance to flame Katz?
The RIAA is trying to limit a whole concept... my.mo3.com was just the easiest way to attack this concept for now and they took that opportunity. Don't let the name of the author, or his way to approach a subject (the my.mp3.com suit) create your whole opinion of a column... a column is made to share ideas and opinions.
I like you idea that the one making the thing (be it a car, music or software or whatever gizmo you can think of) sets the price he thinks is right for his product/art. But sadly it is not the case with music...
Imagine a huge artist going to it's record company and saying "Hey! I had a great idea! We could just give my next CD for free to whoever wants to download it! This way it will help promote my art to those who do not know me yet and give me access to a broader public!!"
What do you think the record company would seriously answer??
I don't know if I am the only one thinking this way (reading the other comments I guess I am not...) But since I can download mp3s from everyone and their dog I have been buying even more CDs. Mp3 have helped me discover new artists and new genres that I would never even have heard of withouth mp3s!
Sure, the big names like Metallica and Dr Dre do not need this kind of free publicity and oportunity and I can (if I try very hard) understand to some point why they are mad at this new technology... but the RIAA has nothign to loose and much to win by helping a technology that will help opening doors to lots of younger new artists and help them to become known...
I was quite impressed with the speed of the Gecko engin in the last few releases. I must admit though that I still do not use it as my main browser (although I find myself using it more and more).
The Main question is to see if this browser is to become good enough so people will break their habit of using IE to go and take tiem to download another browser...
Try asking this question to Jeeves : "Does Jeeves have an evil twin?" and then click on the first "ask" button beside where that question will be written... lots of fun for the whole family
What if the purpose of this text (which I actually thought funny) was not as much to make people believe in (which I guess Hemos would not have done using the "that's funny" category of article) as much as to provide some entertainement on this April 1st?
Have we become so bored with april fool jokes that we can't even enjoy a simple text of humor withouth saying "pfff I could have done a better, subtler, funnier thing myself" ??
they soon returned to their roots as one of the largest purveyors of crap
Actually I do not agree... I really liked Legacy of Kain : Soul Reaver (porte from Playstation to PC) Both Thiefs kicked ass Omikron : the Nomad Soul has a hell of a concept and I had lots of fun with Commandos : Behind ennemy lines
Add to the the terrific Deus Ex project and that does not sound like a bunch of crap to me...
Just made me think about it... It could be cool to have a little new slashbox showing the slashdot booth in any event that is taking place currently whatever it may be. This way we could spy on the/. staff everytime there is an event!!!
Well I sure am really pleased with all the discussion I caused with my comment. It helped me (and some others I hope) clear my mind and realise that even if some of the kids involved are geeks and nerds there is much more at hand there. I suppose I first looked at all this with the disturbed point of view of someone looking at a tragedy, now that I had time to think more (and you helped me all on that) I realise that we should learn from what just happened as has been said above. I just hope people will not forget and that the scars left by that tragedy will stay long because it is from those wounds that we will learn how not to be hurt again...
"I'm here and I wonder if I'm lost cause I can't seem to understand the way I feel. I'm not here to be a creep I'm just feeling incomplete take me home..." Econoline Crush -- Home
Slashdot Mirror
I wondered throughout the trial and still wonder now if the presence and implication of 2600 is really helping the case. I mean, you have a group calling themself "2600 the hackers quarterly", a group who talked on many occasions about security breaches, how to exploit them and things like that. Did they really expect the judge to think they were the good guys?
/. KNOW that 2600 are trying to defend freedom of speech, thoughts and expression. But do the judge know? According to what I've read from the trial I sure don't think so. Try to see the case as if you were a total outsider knowing nothing about 2600 and not much about computers in general. Would you still think 2600 are right? At the first sight they look like the bad guy... and I am not sure that their involvment is helping that much...
The people reading
Agreed. What is wrong IMHO is a coder who doesn't care about the code he has to produce for his company. It happened to me a few times that I was working on something I found so interesting that I did not care to stay a few extra hours at work. What is wrong is to see a programmer that spend his whole day looking at code only wishing the day could end so he can stop looking at that aweful code he has to work on.
Programmers working from 9 to 5 each day? I have no problems with that...
Programmers who cannot wait 5 to run away from the code they're working on? Now there's a problem... Those need to realize that they're are lots of other jobs with projects they might like more out there.
Of course everything up there was IMHO
In the cathedral Engineering decision are often made by people who have no idea how to develop software, do not care how to develop software and would by no mean consider it appropriate to consult the coders before making decision.
:o)
Thus you end with administrative request about a near impossible feature to be implemented in an astoundingly short delay withouth enough resources. That added with the fact that a lot of programmers in the Cathedral are only waiting 5pm to go back home (and hack in code they really like??) forces people to cut around the corners and take shortcuts. After all the holy priests of the cathedrals do not care if the program is working fine... all that matters is if the feature is implemented and if the software has enough eye-candy to impress other priests in other cathedrals who will pay for our stuff.
Of course it might not be that way in all cathedrals... but the more I move from catehdral to cathedral the more I become atheist
While I have to agree with the article on many points, I must say that IMHO RTS are really far from dying! In fact they are still one of the best selling type of games!
Sure, the gameplay is never really innovative (even if we are beggining to see a trend in bringing some roleplaying elements in RTS) but sometimes the storyline are really interesting and I must say I played starcraft for hours even in single players just to see what would happen to Kerrigan, Rainer and company.
We begin to see innovations on the gameplay too. The latest Warlord game brings some RP elements by making you choose a hero and develop it like you would develop a RPG character. Also Warcraft 3 is leaning in that direction if I am right.
I hardly think that any type of game will really die... we will just see them merge to create multi-type games.
I don't remember seeing a single cartoon brought to the movie that was cool. The Jetsons? the Flintstones? (ok... granted this was not an animated movie but anyway) South Park???
While I loved all of those cartoons I don't remember any of these movies being good.
Don't get me wrong, I really LOVE the Simpsons... but I'd rather watch 3 episodes in a row rather than to watch a 1h30 Simpson movie.
As I did with South Park I won't pay 10$ (+pop corn and all) to go see it in a movie theatre... I will wait to rent it with a couple of friends a few months later hoping it can be good anyway...
First, Microsoft is not doing the port, MainSoft is. Second they already have a really good set of tools to do it. They have remapped most of the Win32 APIs already so I don't think this port will be as hard as rewriting the whole software. They already made Internet Explorer and the Media Player run on Solaris and from what I have seen of their stuff it's pretty good.
I am not sure but I think Mainsoft is also working on a DCOM port for Linux... correct me if I am wrong...
Is it just me? Microsoft in no place seems to be denying the port of Internet Explorer and their Media Player. What they're saying is that office will not be ported to Linux.
So while the rumors were in part wrong, we have on one side Mainsoft saying that they are not porting office but IE and Media player and on the other side MS only saying that they are not porting Office...
Microsoft did not deny the possibility that some of its apps would be ported, they only said "WE are not doing it" and "not Office".
My first language is french and I learned English by myself. I don't think that programming languages would be much different if they would have been created by people speaking any occidental languages because all of these have really similar roots and mindsets.
Asian languages on the other hand are another thing. I used to work with a chinese guy and he told me that for him learning english is really hard because oriental and occidental languages have been created and developed with totally different mindsets. I guess this would have transgressed if for instance C or Perl had been developped by Asian people... I think all the paradigms and methodology that we take for granted in programming would be different. Hell we might not even have IFs statements! Who knows...
On the total opposite way I can say that programming has greatly affected the way I speak my native tongue (french). Sine I work in a professional environment I use english more and more and I sadly came to realize that sadly my french is much poorer than it was about 2 years ago. Has anyone else experienced the same kind of feeling? That you are UNlearning your own language because of your working environment?
That's why you can filter article by author on /.
You don't like it? Don't read it... And now you don't even need to see it! IMHO this would be a much better way to deal with your dislike of Katz and wht he writes than it is to flame in the comments... Don't you think?
Am I the only one to think that the guy just reinvented the laptop computer but with a much more bulky case?
Oh well...
These are stuff I think could be interesting and stimulating for your students and provide some challenge to depending on their level of competence.
- Make them install a webserver and create a small webpage. If you use Linux/Apache the school won't even need to spend money on that one.
- Some small programming project like a small perl script or a small VB program.
- Assembling a computer from scratch.
- Install a small (2 or 3 computers) LAN with different OSes and comparing them.
Those things would have kept me interested when I was in high school and could have convinced me to actually take the computer science courses...
You miss the point there. Napster did not create it's own record label and sign artist to ditribute them free over their service. They just created a way to distribute what wsa owned by the RIAA (and I am not begining a debate over if the RIAA SHOULD be able to own it, I'm just saying they currently DO own it) for free and for their own profit.
Imagine I create a corporation, write a good software allowing people to share their softwares (like MS Windows and stuff like that) and then try to make profit out of it...
The concept of sharing behind that is great, the concept of making money by distributing other people's stuff for free isn't.
I don't think there is anything illegal in their practice... It could be considered an exchange of services something like "Write good reviews of my products and try to forget to review my competitor's product and I will give you goodies... ". Sure it is NOT ethically correct... but I don't think that there are any laws prohibiting this... After all how many MS (or even Linux for that matter) biased review are there out there on the web??
But I think we quickly forget that NvDIA is not the only one who's ethics should be questioned... doesnt' that make you wonder how many reviews you've read that were in fact biased by bribes? What sites have accepted bribes like that in the past and are still doing it? Sure it is easy to point nvdia as the bad guy in that story... but I would be curious to hear their version of the story. And I sure would like to know if some of the mentioned sites have accepted bribes like this in the past before deciding to blow the whole story...
Are you really not realizing that even if the suit was against my.mp3.com that it is after the whole mp3 concept that the RIAA has somethigns or did you just jumped on yet another chance to flame Katz?
The RIAA is trying to limit a whole concept... my.mo3.com was just the easiest way to attack this concept for now and they took that opportunity. Don't let the name of the author, or his way to approach a subject (the my.mp3.com suit) create your whole opinion of a column... a column is made to share ideas and opinions.
I like you idea that the one making the thing (be it a car, music or software or whatever gizmo you can think of) sets the price he thinks is right for his product/art. But sadly it is not the case with music...
Imagine a huge artist going to it's record company and saying "Hey! I had a great idea! We could just give my next CD for free to whoever wants to download it! This way it will help promote my art to those who do not know me yet and give me access to a broader public!!"
What do you think the record company would seriously answer??
I don't know if I am the only one thinking this way (reading the other comments I guess I am not...) But since I can download mp3s from everyone and their dog I have been buying even more CDs. Mp3 have helped me discover new artists and new genres that I would never even have heard of withouth mp3s!
Sure, the big names like Metallica and Dr Dre do not need this kind of free publicity and oportunity and I can (if I try very hard) understand to some point why they are mad at this new technology... but the RIAA has nothign to loose and much to win by helping a technology that will help opening doors to lots of younger new artists and help them to become known...
I was quite impressed with the speed of the Gecko engin in the last few releases. I must admit though that I still do not use it as my main browser (although I find myself using it more and more).
The Main question is to see if this browser is to become good enough so people will break their habit of using IE to go and take tiem to download another browser...
Try asking this question to Jeeves :
"Does Jeeves have an evil twin?"
and then click on the first "ask" button beside where that question will be written...
lots of fun for the whole family
What if the purpose of this text (which I actually thought funny) was not as much to make people believe in (which I guess Hemos would not have done using the "that's funny" category of article) as much as to provide some entertainement on this April 1st?
Have we become so bored with april fool jokes that we can't even enjoy a simple text of humor withouth saying "pfff I could have done a better, subtler, funnier thing myself" ??
Come on people what's this flaming Hemos thing today? April 1st is supposed to be fun!! Not to be about flaming people for whatever reasons...
they soon returned to their roots as one of the largest purveyors of crap
Actually I do not agree...
I really liked Legacy of Kain : Soul Reaver (porte from Playstation to PC)
Both Thiefs kicked ass
Omikron : the Nomad Soul has a hell of a concept
and I had lots of fun with Commandos : Behind ennemy lines
Add to the the terrific Deus Ex project and that does not sound like a bunch of crap to me...
As long as they do not delay Deus Ex everything is ok for me. Am I the only one who noticed this game?
Just made me think about it... It could be cool to have a little new slashbox showing the slashdot booth in any event that is taking place currently whatever it may be. This way we could spy on the /. staff everytime there is an event!!!
I send that URL to the management/sales/marketting team of our company. Let's hope this makes them realize a few things...
Well I sure am really pleased with all the discussion I caused with my comment. It helped me (and some others I hope) clear my mind and realise that even if some of the kids involved are geeks and nerds there is much more at hand there. I suppose I first looked at all this with the disturbed point of view of someone looking at a tragedy, now that I had time to think more (and you helped me all on that) I realise that we should learn from what just happened as has been said above. I just hope people will not forget and that the scars left by that tragedy will stay long because it is from those wounds that we will learn how not to be hurt again...
"I'm here and I wonder if I'm lost cause I can't seem to understand the way I feel.
I'm not here to be a creep I'm just feeling incomplete
take me home..."
Econoline Crush -- Home