If you started designing a computer program around the computers available at the beginning of the design process, or designed the program on your prediction of the computers available at the end of the development process, the latter would be the better product - suited to the technology available at the time the consumers were ready to use it.
I hate to nitpick, but that's not so. Indeed, that's a large part of what killed the Ultima series of games. The final two were targeted to systems that would only just be on the market when the games were released... and even then those computers were barely adequate. Most folks decided not to upgrade just for those games and by the time they did upgrade the games were stale.
Worse, because the developers didn't have access to the kind of systems on which the game would actually be played, they weren't able to adequately test for either bugs or playability. This led to design errors that weren't noticed until it was far too late to fix them.
Engineering systems to the existing state of the art has the benefit that you can prototype and test the designs immediately and find out if they work. You can't do that when engineering against a theoretical construct; you have to guess and when you guess you often guess wrong.
Exactly; you don't join or leave an open source project. There are no membership rolls. You just write code and if other people like your code, they use it.
1. Can I do it with Linux today (GPL2) and tomorrow (GPL3)?
Yes, however you will have to provide the sources for the exact copy of Linux you use. The easiest way to do this is to simply provide a DVD along with the product the contains all of the sources.
2. Can I statically link the code with Linux libraries? (My own experience shows that dynamic linking is too much to bear.)
No, not unless you want to distribute your code under the GPL as well. If you're selling an embedded box where you control which and where libraries are present, what exactly is the hangup with dynamic linking? In the scenario you describe, its downright trivial.
3. Can I obfuscate my code (e.g. encode it)?
Yes, unless you're required to distribute it under the GPL. You'll find, however, that its not worth the effort. If the box you're distributing can decode it then so can any hacker in posession of the box... Assuming they want to. If they don't want to, they'll never decompile your code anyway.
4. Could I be forced to publish this code by some 3-d party?
That depends on how you approach the problem in legal proceedings. If you agree that you're bound by the GPL then you will be compelled to release the code. If you do not agree then you are never so compelled, however you could then be liable for infringement of the copyrights owned by the folks who wrote the software yours touches since your only right to use it derives from accepting the GPL.
5. Am I correct that programming in and selling BSD-based boxes won't raise any of the above problems?
Its not that simple. The core kernel and basic system libraries are in fact licensed in way that permits you to take them closed source. However, a great deal of GPL software is available to and used on BSD machines. If you pick it over the system with a fine tooth comb and carefully exclude all of the GPL software, you may no longer have a system which does what you want.
I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice but as a commercial software developer, I have dealt with this issue before.
Yeah, really. Even if there wasn't a law, you could send a letter advising that calling XYZ Corp employees on company time was a service and that any further calls from their company would be billed at $10 per call plus $1 per minute. Company may accept the offer by calling any XYZ Corp number or reject the offer by making no further calls.
If their attorney can't think of any recourse, he's not a very good attorney.
Don't pick a vendor, pick particular models and standardize on them for the life of that model. There are several benefits to this:
1. You can create a Norton Ghost install image so that deploying a new machine is easy. 2. Joe doesn't get upset because Suzy has a better PC. 3. When its time to buy the next model (after a couple years you'll typically have 2 or 3 in production at once) you can compete the major vendors for the best price and hardware.
Fingerprinting is very common for applicants for a job involving the public trust. For example, try getting a job for the Federal government without first getting fingerprinted. Its so common, in fact, that many jurisdictions have a specific police station designated as the place to go to get your fingerprints done.
Thanks. That'll work fine for one of my searches. I want a particular chip part number and there's one irritating seller who insists on including a general inventory list in every single auction.
My own account has been open since January 2000 and I've managed a 99.7% feedback: 1 negative and no neutrals in 400 feedbacks (300 unique individuals, 600 transactions). I buy more than I sell, but I do some of both. The single negative was from a seller I paid late. I took the lesson to heart: don't bid on a cashiers' check auction unless you're willing to go to the bank the next day.
I should qualify that regardless of a seller's rating, I rarely bid before scanning through the feedback. I read the withdrawns and the neutrals. I also get to see the messages like, "Slow shipping but it got here," and "Sent wrong item but made it right." That improves my comfort level. Things go wrong. I like to see someone who does what it takes to fix it.
I've yet to run in to a bad hundred percenter though if you'd like to share a story I'll be happy to listen. Its damn hard to get to hundreds of feedbacks without running afoul of a newbie who doesn't care about dropping a negative on you if you do him wrong.
As for the 98 percenters, I read their feedback and its usually the same: 4 weeks and no part! Arrived broken! Sent wrong item! Poor communication! Outrageous shipping! So maybe its only 1 transaction in 50 that goes wrong. More likely its 1 in 10 but not so wrong that the other 4 will risk their ratings by making a negative feedback. So, that 98 percenter probably has 1 transaction in 10 go wrong. I'm spending $100 on an item for work. I expect my employer to reimburse me. I don't want to be the 1 of 10 where the transaction goes wrong.
I'll rarely have a problem with the 99 percenters. Even if the transaction goes wrong, the strong odds are they'll do what it takes to fix it.
As for Amazon, I've bought from there exactly 3 times, and then only for items I just couldn't track down elsewhere. I'm not especially afraid of fraud, but the way they spam me afterwards pisses me off. I create and subsequently delete an email box just to deal with them those few times I have to.
If you communicate well, pack well, ship promptly and take responsibility when the item doesn't arrive or arrives damaged, its pretty easy to stay over 99%. Screw up one of those areas and you'll rapidly drop below it.
eBay isn't Best Buy. I expect better service from the eBay sellers I deal with than I get at Best Buy. By setting my cutoff at 99%, I get that service.
And anyway, what's your problem? If you're a ninety-eight percenter, I won't buy from you whether I see your auctions or not. Do you feel the need to thrust your ads in front of me anyway? Its exactly that sort of anti-customer attitude that earned you the sub-99% feedback ratio in the first place.
Does it let me "ignore" sellers by name, feedback ratio and feedback quantity so I never see their listings? If it does, I'll download it right now. There are half a dozen or so "power sellers" who flood the search terms I regularly look for with auctions I wouldn't bid on in a million years. And then there are all the 98.2% positive feedback guys who I wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole (99% is my normal cutoff) and all the obviously re-registered accounts that are too slick to legitimately have only 8 feedbacks.
A DRAFT Open Letter to Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith
Dear Mr. Smith:
My name is ______. I am the maintainer for Linux kernel 2.6. I package its various components for general distribution.
It has come to my attention that that you allege the Linux kernel infringes 42 Microsoft patents. It is my emphatic belief that the Linux 2.6 kernel infringes no intellectual properties, least of all Microsoft's patents. Nevertheless, I will rigorously investigate any bona fide infringement claim and take appropriate remedial action.
Accordingly, I ask that you specify the 42 patents you allege to be infringed. Please include concise technical descriptions of the allegedly infringing components of the Linux kernel and the claims which you believe each component violates. For the sake of everyone's peace of mind, I ask that you do so no later than July 1, 2007.
Until such a time as you have done so, I insist that you refrain from making further potentially slanderous remarks to members of the press regarding the legality of the Linux kernel and thus of my behavior as its maintainer.
Microsoft won't list the alleged violations for a more straightforward reason: they know the OSS community won't pay.
The OSS community will either debunk the claims, challenge the patents' validity or where the patents are valid, code around them. None of these activities benefits Microsoft. Brad Smith knows this, so he's keeping the list of alleged violations under wraps and using the empty threat of a lawsuit to push risk-conscious suckers in large business to pay up.
If we in the community want to kill this off, here's what we have to do:
1. Ask the key software maintainers to make a pledge to replace any code discovered to infringe a Microsoft patent in a timely manner and for free. 2. Find an insurance company willing to insure big business against liability to Microsoft for patents based on that pledge. Specificly, find one willing to insure them for less money than Microsoft wants.
I'll buy from a service that costs about the same as netflix ($2/movie) and lets me burn the show to a standard non-DRMed DVD the same way iTunes costs $1 and lets me burn the song to a standard CD. Services that are more restricted are doomed to failure because lets face it: that's crappy service and as a consumer I'm wise to it.
I too would love it if someone would do my job for me while I continued to get paid for it.
Its a journalist's job to reformat and present information in the inverted pyramid format. If everybody did that to begin with, what need would we have for journalists?
And by the way, the journalist who did the Wikipedia writeup for the inverted pyramid format did a lousy job. The explanation I got in high school was much clearer.
But an accusation of fraud, purposely falsifying results, is itself an appeal to motive.
Hardly. No judgement is offered as to why the experimenter falsified results; the accusation is merely that the results have been falsified. It can be directly demonstrated true or false by repeating the experiment per the notes and observing those results. If nothing even vaguely like the experimenter's claimed results appear in the new experiment then the original results were false. After ruling out other potential causes (e.g. unrecorded error in one of the experiments) you're left with fraud.
Your own mistake is making a false argument, "Big red flag in my book", funny actually.
In a different context, it would be. As it happens, I was neither arguing for nor against the claim that Taleyarkhan committed fraud. I really don't know that answer. I was merely expressing my distaste at Taleyarkhan's use of false arguments in his defense when a more direct path should have been available.
This will be my last post on the subject. I would encourage you to research the subject of logical fallacy, as the understanding which you have expressed in this thread is deeply flawed.
How is it different again? I think you are making arbitrary distinctions.
The first statement presents facts which if correct directly refute the accusation. It is straightforward and provably true or false.
The second statemtent, the one Taleyarkhan actually made, slides right past that refutation and instead asks the reader to envision the accuser as a corrupt politician whose statements cannot be taken seriously. Its argumentum ad hominem, specifically an appeal to motive. Its a false argument; the accusation of fraud is either true or false, regardless of who made it or why.
No, an accusation of fraud boils down to a claim that you lied. You said X but when we checked it was really Y.
Here, let me clarify:
Not appeal to motive: "Rep. Miller's office intentionally omitted the positive findings and supporting evidence."
Appeal to motive: "Why did this memo/letter from Rep. Miller's office intentionally omit ANY/ALL mention of the positive findings and supporting evidence? [...] Is this the American system we are to follow, or is it just politics as usual?"
1. If the primaries are all on the same day, a candidate zeroing in on the primary can't speak to Florida's concerns or North Dakota's concerns. He has to speak to the lowest-common-denominator concerns across the nation. Spreading the primaries apart encourages candidates to get to know something about each of the states they hope to represent so that they can focus their message for the folks in those states.
2. Holding the primaries the same day encourages candidates to zero in on big states and battleground states instead of addressing every state in turn. Candidates will campaign in North Dakota if its the only primary that week, but they'll be in California for National Primary Day. That's fine if you live in California, but it means they don't pay attention to you if you live somewhere else.
But they lack the power to change it, and their bosses don't want to.
That brings to mind my first rule of systems administration: Give me the authority and the resources to prevent the problem and if it breaks anyway I'll work 20 hour days to fix it. Get in my way and stop me from preventing the problem and I'm headed home at 5:00 whether you're in a frothing panic or not.
Most places I've worked liked the display of initiative and steped back to let me do my thing. They liked the results too: 20 hour days were very very rare.
What keeps the most important and powerful communication tool since the telephone from being universally embraced?
1. Cost is a red herring. Telephones and televisions cost a lot too until the technology became ubiquitous... And today's $500 PCs aren't especially more expensive than the $300 TVs.
2. Complexity is a red herring. With early TVs you danced with the antenna and tweaked the tuner to get a decent signal. Computers are a little more diffcult, but only a little.
3. Intrusion. The rise of telemarketing happened long after telephones were ubiquitous and early TV advertising was usually a quick pitch by the same live show host who was entertaining you. If you're not already online, Viagra spam is an excellent reason to stay away. Not that you understand you'll get Viagra spam... But you do understand that "porn" will be pushed at you whether you like it or not.
4. Insecurity. If you don't get the whole updates thing before you go online, your Winblows machine is quickly annexed in to a botnet. You may not expect that in particular, but you get that you'll be pwned.
The building engineers where I work tied our computer room air conditioners to the building's environmental control system: they can remotely monitor their operation and shut them off in a failure scenario. The monitoring system was a Windows PC.
So, the controls folks came in and did a software upgrade. It was a nice day out so they figured they could shut off all the A/C systems for a couple hours and it wouldn't be a problem.
Worlds Away was jinxed. It started life as "Habitat," a partnership between Lucasfilm Games and Quantum Computer Corporation, aka Quantum Link. After a brilliant beta test, Quantum gutted it and released something called "Club Caribe" with the game engine. It turns out they wanted to reclaim space on the mainframe for America Online v1.0.
Lucas also produced a standalone game with the engine: Maniac Mansion.
The codebase for Worlds Away is now owned by a tiny operator called Vzones. They operate several worlds but get their primary revenue from the pornographic one.
Slashdot Mirror
If you started designing a computer program around the computers available at the beginning of the design process, or designed the program on your prediction of the computers available at the end of the development process, the latter would be the better product - suited to the technology available at the time the consumers were ready to use it.
I hate to nitpick, but that's not so. Indeed, that's a large part of what killed the Ultima series of games. The final two were targeted to systems that would only just be on the market when the games were released... and even then those computers were barely adequate. Most folks decided not to upgrade just for those games and by the time they did upgrade the games were stale.
Worse, because the developers didn't have access to the kind of systems on which the game would actually be played, they weren't able to adequately test for either bugs or playability. This led to design errors that weren't noticed until it was far too late to fix them.
Engineering systems to the existing state of the art has the benefit that you can prototype and test the designs immediately and find out if they work. You can't do that when engineering against a theoretical construct; you have to guess and when you guess you often guess wrong.
Exactly; you don't join or leave an open source project. There are no membership rolls. You just write code and if other people like your code, they use it.
You don't have to do this with an IBM Model M: The keycaps easily pop off and can be run through the dishwasher WITH soap.
1. Can I do it with Linux today (GPL2) and tomorrow (GPL3)?
Yes, however you will have to provide the sources for the exact copy of Linux you use. The easiest way to do this is to simply provide a DVD along with the product the contains all of the sources.
2. Can I statically link the code with Linux libraries? (My own experience shows that dynamic linking is too much to bear.)
No, not unless you want to distribute your code under the GPL as well. If you're selling an embedded box where you control which and where libraries are present, what exactly is the hangup with dynamic linking? In the scenario you describe, its downright trivial.
3. Can I obfuscate my code (e.g. encode it)?
Yes, unless you're required to distribute it under the GPL. You'll find, however, that its not worth the effort. If the box you're distributing can decode it then so can any hacker in posession of the box... Assuming they want to. If they don't want to, they'll never decompile your code anyway.
4. Could I be forced to publish this code by some 3-d party?
That depends on how you approach the problem in legal proceedings. If you agree that you're bound by the GPL then you will be compelled to release the code. If you do not agree then you are never so compelled, however you could then be liable for infringement of the copyrights owned by the folks who wrote the software yours touches since your only right to use it derives from accepting the GPL.
5. Am I correct that programming in and selling BSD-based boxes won't raise any of the above problems?
Its not that simple. The core kernel and basic system libraries are in fact licensed in way that permits you to take them closed source. However, a great deal of GPL software is available to and used on BSD machines. If you pick it over the system with a fine tooth comb and carefully exclude all of the GPL software, you may no longer have a system which does what you want.
I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice but as a commercial software developer, I have dealt with this issue before.
Yeah, really. Even if there wasn't a law, you could send a letter advising that calling XYZ Corp employees on company time was a service and that any further calls from their company would be billed at $10 per call plus $1 per minute. Company may accept the offer by calling any XYZ Corp number or reject the offer by making no further calls.
If their attorney can't think of any recourse, he's not a very good attorney.
Don't pick a vendor, pick particular models and standardize on them for the life of that model. There are several benefits to this:
1. You can create a Norton Ghost install image so that deploying a new machine is easy.
2. Joe doesn't get upset because Suzy has a better PC.
3. When its time to buy the next model (after a couple years you'll typically have 2 or 3 in production at once) you can compete the major vendors for the best price and hardware.
Fingerprinting is very common for applicants for a job involving the public trust. For example, try getting a job for the Federal government without first getting fingerprinted. Its so common, in fact, that many jurisdictions have a specific police station designated as the place to go to get your fingerprints done.
Thanks. That'll work fine for one of my searches. I want a particular chip part number and there's one irritating seller who insists on including a general inventory list in every single auction.
My own account has been open since January 2000 and I've managed a 99.7% feedback: 1 negative and no neutrals in 400 feedbacks (300 unique individuals, 600 transactions). I buy more than I sell, but I do some of both. The single negative was from a seller I paid late. I took the lesson to heart: don't bid on a cashiers' check auction unless you're willing to go to the bank the next day.
I should qualify that regardless of a seller's rating, I rarely bid before scanning through the feedback. I read the withdrawns and the neutrals. I also get to see the messages like, "Slow shipping but it got here," and "Sent wrong item but made it right." That improves my comfort level. Things go wrong. I like to see someone who does what it takes to fix it.
I've yet to run in to a bad hundred percenter though if you'd like to share a story I'll be happy to listen. Its damn hard to get to hundreds of feedbacks without running afoul of a newbie who doesn't care about dropping a negative on you if you do him wrong.
As for the 98 percenters, I read their feedback and its usually the same: 4 weeks and no part! Arrived broken! Sent wrong item! Poor communication! Outrageous shipping! So maybe its only 1 transaction in 50 that goes wrong. More likely its 1 in 10 but not so wrong that the other 4 will risk their ratings by making a negative feedback. So, that 98 percenter probably has 1 transaction in 10 go wrong. I'm spending $100 on an item for work. I expect my employer to reimburse me. I don't want to be the 1 of 10 where the transaction goes wrong.
I'll rarely have a problem with the 99 percenters. Even if the transaction goes wrong, the strong odds are they'll do what it takes to fix it.
As for Amazon, I've bought from there exactly 3 times, and then only for items I just couldn't track down elsewhere. I'm not especially afraid of fraud, but the way they spam me afterwards pisses me off. I create and subsequently delete an email box just to deal with them those few times I have to.
98.2% positive feedback? What's wrong with that?
If you communicate well, pack well, ship promptly and take responsibility when the item doesn't arrive or arrives damaged, its pretty easy to stay over 99%. Screw up one of those areas and you'll rapidly drop below it.
eBay isn't Best Buy. I expect better service from the eBay sellers I deal with than I get at Best Buy. By setting my cutoff at 99%, I get that service.
And anyway, what's your problem? If you're a ninety-eight percenter, I won't buy from you whether I see your auctions or not. Do you feel the need to thrust your ads in front of me anyway? Its exactly that sort of anti-customer attitude that earned you the sub-99% feedback ratio in the first place.
Does it let me "ignore" sellers by name, feedback ratio and feedback quantity so I never see their listings? If it does, I'll download it right now. There are half a dozen or so "power sellers" who flood the search terms I regularly look for with auctions I wouldn't bid on in a million years. And then there are all the 98.2% positive feedback guys who I wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole (99% is my normal cutoff) and all the obviously re-registered accounts that are too slick to legitimately have only 8 feedbacks.
I'd very much like an "ignore" option.
A DRAFT Open Letter to Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith
Dear Mr. Smith:
My name is ______. I am the maintainer for Linux kernel 2.6. I package its various components for general distribution.
It has come to my attention that that you allege the Linux kernel infringes 42 Microsoft patents. It is my emphatic belief that the Linux 2.6 kernel infringes no intellectual properties, least of all Microsoft's patents. Nevertheless, I will rigorously investigate any bona fide infringement claim and take appropriate remedial action.
Accordingly, I ask that you specify the 42 patents you allege to be infringed. Please include concise technical descriptions of the allegedly infringing components of the Linux kernel and the claims which you believe each component violates. For the sake of everyone's peace of mind, I ask that you do so no later than July 1, 2007.
Until such a time as you have done so, I insist that you refrain from making further potentially slanderous remarks to members of the press regarding the legality of the Linux kernel and thus of my behavior as its maintainer.
Respectfully Yours,
X
Microsoft won't list the alleged violations for a more straightforward reason: they know the OSS community won't pay.
The OSS community will either debunk the claims, challenge the patents' validity or where the patents are valid, code around them. None of these activities benefits Microsoft. Brad Smith knows this, so he's keeping the list of alleged violations under wraps and using the empty threat of a lawsuit to push risk-conscious suckers in large business to pay up.
If we in the community want to kill this off, here's what we have to do:
1. Ask the key software maintainers to make a pledge to replace any code discovered to infringe a Microsoft patent in a timely manner and for free.
2. Find an insurance company willing to insure big business against liability to Microsoft for patents based on that pledge. Specificly, find one willing to insure them for less money than Microsoft wants.
I'll buy from a service that costs about the same as netflix ($2/movie) and lets me burn the show to a standard non-DRMed DVD the same way iTunes costs $1 and lets me burn the song to a standard CD. Services that are more restricted are doomed to failure because lets face it: that's crappy service and as a consumer I'm wise to it.
I too would love it if someone would do my job for me while I continued to get paid for it.
Its a journalist's job to reformat and present information in the inverted pyramid format. If everybody did that to begin with, what need would we have for journalists?
And by the way, the journalist who did the Wikipedia writeup for the inverted pyramid format did a lousy job. The explanation I got in high school was much clearer.
But an accusation of fraud, purposely falsifying results, is itself an appeal to motive.
Hardly. No judgement is offered as to why the experimenter falsified results; the accusation is merely that the results have been falsified. It can be directly demonstrated true or false by repeating the experiment per the notes and observing those results. If nothing even vaguely like the experimenter's claimed results appear in the new experiment then the original results were false. After ruling out other potential causes (e.g. unrecorded error in one of the experiments) you're left with fraud.
Your own mistake is making a false argument, "Big red flag in my book", funny actually.
In a different context, it would be. As it happens, I was neither arguing for nor against the claim that Taleyarkhan committed fraud. I really don't know that answer. I was merely expressing my distaste at Taleyarkhan's use of false arguments in his defense when a more direct path should have been available.
This will be my last post on the subject. I would encourage you to research the subject of logical fallacy, as the understanding which you have expressed in this thread is deeply flawed.
How is it different again? I think you are making arbitrary distinctions.
The first statement presents facts which if correct directly refute the accusation. It is straightforward and provably true or false.
The second statemtent, the one Taleyarkhan actually made, slides right past that refutation and instead asks the reader to envision the accuser as a corrupt politician whose statements cannot be taken seriously. Its argumentum ad hominem, specifically an appeal to motive. Its a false argument; the accusation of fraud is either true or false, regardless of who made it or why.
No, an accusation of fraud boils down to a claim that you lied. You said X but when we checked it was really Y.
Here, let me clarify:
Not appeal to motive: "Rep. Miller's office intentionally omitted the positive findings and supporting evidence."
Appeal to motive: "Why did this memo/letter from Rep. Miller's office intentionally
omit ANY/ALL mention of the positive findings and supporting evidence? [...] Is this the American system we are to follow, or is it just politics as usual?"
The correct response is, "If my research is correct it will be independently validated and these resurrected charges will prove moot."
Instead Taleyarkhan responded with an Appeal to motive, a logical fallacy. Big red flag in my book.
The obvious answer two obvious problems:
1. If the primaries are all on the same day, a candidate zeroing in on the primary can't speak to Florida's concerns or North Dakota's concerns. He has to speak to the lowest-common-denominator concerns across the nation. Spreading the primaries apart encourages candidates to get to know something about each of the states they hope to represent so that they can focus their message for the folks in those states.
2. Holding the primaries the same day encourages candidates to zero in on big states and battleground states instead of addressing every state in turn. Candidates will campaign in North Dakota if its the only primary that week, but they'll be in California for National Primary Day. That's fine if you live in California, but it means they don't pay attention to you if you live somewhere else.
But they lack the power to change it, and their bosses don't want to.
That brings to mind my first rule of systems administration: Give me the authority and the resources to prevent the problem and if it breaks anyway I'll work 20 hour days to fix it. Get in my way and stop me from preventing the problem and I'm headed home at 5:00 whether you're in a frothing panic or not.
Most places I've worked liked the display of initiative and steped back to let me do my thing. They liked the results too: 20 hour days were very very rare.
What keeps the most important and powerful communication tool since the telephone from being universally embraced?
1. Cost is a red herring. Telephones and televisions cost a lot too until the technology became ubiquitous... And today's $500 PCs aren't especially more expensive than the $300 TVs.
2. Complexity is a red herring. With early TVs you danced with the antenna and tweaked the tuner to get a decent signal. Computers are a little more diffcult, but only a little.
3. Intrusion. The rise of telemarketing happened long after telephones were ubiquitous and early TV advertising was usually a quick pitch by the same live show host who was entertaining you. If you're not already online, Viagra spam is an excellent reason to stay away. Not that you understand you'll get Viagra spam... But you do understand that "porn" will be pushed at you whether you like it or not.
4. Insecurity. If you don't get the whole updates thing before you go online, your Winblows machine is quickly annexed in to a botnet. You may not expect that in particular, but you get that you'll be pwned.
The building engineers where I work tied our computer room air conditioners to the building's environmental control system: they can remotely monitor their operation and shut them off in a failure scenario. The monitoring system was a Windows PC.
So, the controls folks came in and did a software upgrade. It was a nice day out so they figured they could shut off all the A/C systems for a couple hours and it wouldn't be a problem.
Worlds Away was jinxed. It started life as "Habitat," a partnership between Lucasfilm Games and Quantum Computer Corporation, aka Quantum Link. After a brilliant beta test, Quantum gutted it and released something called "Club Caribe" with the game engine. It turns out they wanted to reclaim space on the mainframe for America Online v1.0.
Lucas also produced a standalone game with the engine: Maniac Mansion.
The codebase for Worlds Away is now owned by a tiny operator called Vzones. They operate several worlds but get their primary revenue from the pornographic one.
You could also have the ftp home directory be somewhere other than the web document root.