Where did he say Argentina was better/worse than the US?
Stupid laws are funny. Humor, ya know? Ha ha ha? Laughing and smiling and things. Yeah.
My favorite "dumb law" comes from home: In central GA, a woman wearing a short skirt can be held responsible for any auto accident caused because the drivers were looking at her legs instead of the road.
The new Gameboy will plug into the upcoming Cube to act as a controller... a controller with a seperate screen. Wonder if you could use this to set up a second view? (i.e., rear mirror in a racing game)
Judging a video card based on framerates is as flawed as judging a processor based soley on the marketed clockspeed. The GPU also handles common effects such as anti-alaising, lighting, fog, textures, and bump maps. High polygon counts and framerates are great, having extra cycles left over to make them look good is even better.
(But I do agree with you in principle. My $90 GF2 MX card will serve me well for the next 2 years.)
I find it funny hearing people whine about how long the development is taking. I know several hundred people who have been waiting for this game for over six years.
NWN was one of the first fully graphical multiplayer Internet games. This little 16 color game developed one of the strongest communities I've ever seen. Forget Everquest, I knew people who were spending $600 a month on Neverwinter Nights (back when you still paid your ISP by the hour).
NeverWinter Museum - Screenshots and memorials from the old game. One of the screenshots (page 5) even shows my character. And of course if had to be a shot of me getting Feebleminded.;p
You misread me. I'm not saying it can't be an intriguing and challenging game. I meant only to say that this is Bioware/Interplay's NWN, not SSI/AOL's NWN. Nevertheless, I am excited about the game (and the fact that I can run it under Linux).
The original Neverwinter Nights was one of the first graphical multiplayer games. I want to say it came out around 1988, but I'm no good with dates. Built by SSI, it had gameplay similar to Pools of Radiance, but allowed up to 500 people to connect to a central game server (run by AOL).
NWN was a 16-color DOS-based game that was simply amazing. It was a RPG, but the storyline was rather limited. That didn't matter though, the players stepped in and carried the roleplaying far beyond anything the designers ever intended. This was the first game I ever saw recognise player run guilds and clans.
PVP combat in NWN was nothing like PKing in any other RPG. There was a strategic element that I've never seen in any other game. It wasn't just reaction time or first strike, you actually had to plan your actions.
After AOL moved away from hourly rates they found they could make more money off chat rooms than gaming. Even though it was still running at max capacity almost every night, AOL shut NWN down.
I still know people from that game. Some of them are still members of the same guilds they were in 10+ years ago. We've been waiting for a remake of NWN for a long long time. This will not be that game. This will not be anything close to that game. But it will be nice to revisit the old days. To stroll once more through Triboar and Port Luskan.
Wonder if this thing would be sophisticated enough for defusing a bomb? Or scale it down to work on objects too small for human fingers to handle. Gem cutting and surgery spring to mind. Sure robotics already allow this to a degree, but think of the versatility and control.
Then again, I have enough trouble keeping my joystick calibrated...;)
My mother lives on welfare right now, waiting on a settlement from her disability case (factory accident). Four months ago she saved and bought a used Pentium 133 when a neighbor upgraded. Cost her $60. A whopping $10 a month for Net access.
My mother is an aging hippy, a flower child. Absolutely no technical education or training. No one to help her. I live 2000 miles away, so other than the occasional tip over the phone, I wasn't any use.
Yet she's got her Hotmail account running. She E-mailed me saying she liked my web page. She reformatted her hard drive and reinstalled Windows 95 after a bad crash, and has been asking how she can try out that "Linux thing you do."
God forbid she ever downloads ICQ, I'll never get anything done!
It is still a VERY broad statement. He didn't claim "initiative in expanding the Internet," he said "in creating the Internet." Its a very general statement, easily taken out of context. Kind of like saying:
"...in 1990, before 99% of Slashdot readers even knew about the Internet..."
While the old farts may be scarce, there were still a couple million of us who got online in the middle to late 1980s. More than a single percent I daresay.;>
We could answer your questions better if we knew more about your software.
If you are aiming at a large enough market, it is quite possible to get the benefits of open source without giving up the benefits ($$$) of non-free software. Put the source on the CD, shrink wrap the box, and stick it on the shelf in all the chain stores. It'll sell same as any other commercial product. After all, source code's only useful to programers, and we're a very small slice of the pie.
Likewise, if your taget market is very narrow, what do you lose? Chances are you were only going to make a few hundred sales, and in most cases those would be from larger businesses. In this case, you go on a support model.
Will some unscrupulous bastard give it away online? Sure. That'll happen with or without you opening the source. But by opening the source you've developed a rapport with the Open Source community, with all the benefits therein.
The only place I can't see Open Source non-free software working is in the mid-sized markets, but those are rarely where you find big money anyways.
It seems that the DMCA is the most menacing of the two laws, since according to the law, the only way service providers and institutions can avoid liability in lawsuits like Metallica's is if they bar software that could transmit copyrighted material.
Hopefully Katz is poorly paraphrasing the law, cause wouldn't that include web browsers? Neu
I was walking through the mall the other day. Saw about twenty guys standing around quietly waiting their turn to play Unreal Tournament in the Mall's new isolation booth kiosks.
Not two hundred feet away I saw about twenty women of various ages pushing, shoving, and cursing while standing in line with their kids (who were more behaved than the mothers) to get their pictures taken with the Easter Bunny.
On a side note: After spending the last six months playing Quake II, Unreal, Half-Life, etc., I'd probably get pretty annoyed too if forced to endure a couple hours of Wolfenstien 3D.
Slashdot Mirror
Stupid laws are funny. Humor, ya know? Ha ha ha? Laughing and smiling and things. Yeah.
My favorite "dumb law" comes from home: In central GA, a woman wearing a short skirt can be held responsible for any auto accident caused because the drivers were looking at her legs instead of the road.
D
Neu
Judging a video card based on framerates is as flawed as judging a processor based soley on the marketed clockspeed. The GPU also handles common effects such as anti-alaising, lighting, fog, textures, and bump maps. High polygon counts and framerates are great, having extra cycles left over to make them look good is even better.
(But I do agree with you in principle. My $90 GF2 MX card will serve me well for the next 2 years.)
Neurosis
NWN was one of the first fully graphical multiplayer Internet games. This little 16 color game developed one of the strongest communities I've ever seen. Forget Everquest, I knew people who were spending $600 a month on Neverwinter Nights (back when you still paid your ISP by the hour).
NeverWinter Museum - Screenshots and memorials from the old game. One of the screenshots (page 5) even shows my character. And of course if had to be a shot of me getting Feebleminded. ;p
"Neurosis is stupid."
Neurosis
You misread me. I'm not saying it can't be an intriguing and challenging game. I meant only to say that this is Bioware/Interplay's NWN, not SSI/AOL's NWN. Nevertheless, I am excited about the game (and the fact that I can run it under Linux).
The original Neverwinter Nights was one of the first graphical multiplayer games. I want to say it came out around 1988, but I'm no good with dates. Built by SSI, it had gameplay similar to Pools of Radiance, but allowed up to 500 people to connect to a central game server (run by AOL).
NWN was a 16-color DOS-based game that was simply amazing. It was a RPG, but the storyline was rather limited. That didn't matter though, the players stepped in and carried the roleplaying far beyond anything the designers ever intended. This was the first game I ever saw recognise player run guilds and clans.
PVP combat in NWN was nothing like PKing in any other RPG. There was a strategic element that I've never seen in any other game. It wasn't just reaction time or first strike, you actually had to plan your actions.
After AOL moved away from hourly rates they found they could make more money off chat rooms than gaming. Even though it was still running at max capacity almost every night, AOL shut NWN down.
I still know people from that game. Some of them are still members of the same guilds they were in 10+ years ago. We've been waiting for a remake of NWN for a long long time. This will not be that game. This will not be anything close to that game. But it will be nice to revisit the old days. To stroll once more through Triboar and Port Luskan.
Neurosis
Then again, I have enough trouble keeping my joystick calibrated... ;)
The other day some kid asked me for a quarter at Chik-Fil-A. I was feeling generous, I gave them a buck.
Philantropy baby!
Neu
My mother lives on welfare right now, waiting on a settlement from her disability case (factory accident). Four months ago she saved and bought a used Pentium 133 when a neighbor upgraded. Cost her $60. A whopping $10 a month for Net access.
My mother is an aging hippy, a flower child. Absolutely no technical education or training. No one to help her. I live 2000 miles away, so other than the occasional tip over the phone, I wasn't any use.
Yet she's got her Hotmail account running. She E-mailed me saying she liked my web page. She reformatted her hard drive and reinstalled Windows 95 after a bad crash, and has been asking how she can try out that "Linux thing you do."
God forbid she ever downloads ICQ, I'll never get anything done!
Well, I can't match those processors. Or the RAM. Or the drive space. Or... hey, wait a minute, only 139 swap? Those losers, I can top that!
=repartitions=
"Yeah, I saw that system on Slashdot. What a piece of crap, my P150 has more swap than that...!"
"...in 1990, before 99% of Slashdot readers even knew about the Internet..."
While the old farts may be scarce, there were still a couple million of us who got online in the middle to late 1980s. More than a single percent I daresay. ;>
> I'd be curious to see Slashdot interview him.
Definately! Hell, I can already see it now:
Question (Score:5, Funny)
So tell us, did they do it?
We could answer your questions better if we knew more about your software.
If you are aiming at a large enough market, it is quite possible to get the benefits of open source without giving up the benefits ($$$) of non-free software. Put the source on the CD, shrink wrap the box, and stick it on the shelf in all the chain stores. It'll sell same as any other commercial product. After all, source code's only useful to programers, and we're a very small slice of the pie.
Likewise, if your taget market is very narrow, what do you lose? Chances are you were only going to make a few hundred sales, and in most cases those would be from larger businesses. In this case, you go on a support model.
Will some unscrupulous bastard give it away online? Sure. That'll happen with or without you opening the source. But by opening the source you've developed a rapport with the Open Source community, with all the benefits therein.
The only place I can't see Open Source non-free software working is in the mid-sized markets, but those are rarely where you find big money anyways.
Neu
Hopefully Katz is poorly paraphrasing the law, cause wouldn't that include web browsers? Neu
Not two hundred feet away I saw about twenty women of various ages pushing, shoving, and cursing while standing in line with their kids (who were more behaved than the mothers) to get their pictures taken with the Easter Bunny.
On a side note: After spending the last six months playing Quake II, Unreal, Half-Life, etc., I'd probably get pretty annoyed too if forced to endure a couple hours of Wolfenstien 3D.
Neu