I accept the fact that all laws are selectively enforced. Indeed, many states and munipalities in the US still have sodomy laws on the books (which usually ban oral and anal sex, in case you thought they didn't apply to you...) It's nice that these laws are not enforced, athough it would be nicer if they were not enacted. Even when created they were not intended to stop what went on behind closed doors, just to keep those activities behind closed doors.
I feel that laws should be enacted, as much as possible, to punish actual harms created by actual behavior. All laws like this do is to remove the hard problem of actually catching somebody that committed a crime.
After all, if we are so concerned about viruses, maybe we should make compilers and assemblers illegal as well. Heck, ban computers. --
If it's in email or real mail it's an announcement. And only then if it's spelled out clearly and in readable text. Any other kind of announcement is nice, but honestly, what's the last time you checked your ISP's home page? --
Unless you use AOL, in which case AOL is the largest spammer.
The Earthink abuse department is relatively helpful and they have the power to immediately cancel accounts which are used for spamming. A helpful email (full headers etc.) to abuse@earthlink.net can do wonders. --
I've had no complaints about the NNTP servers. They're comprehensive as far as I can tell, they keep articles for a good amount of time, a week or so in the heavy traffic newsgroups. And they are fast if you have a fast connection. They require a username and password to access but you can access them from any IP, which is convenient. --
From my limited experience with Digital Unix (supporting a professor's workstation) I can't see any real advantage to Digital Unix over, say Solaris, other than the fact that it runs on Alphas. It would seem foolish to port the OS to a radically different architecture that doesn't improve on the Alpha's strengths. Does anyone else have any insight in the matter? --
On Solaris GNU stuff mostly compiles without tweaking, on Irix it mostly doesn't. Heck, Solaris even provides a free GNU compiler that you can use for compiling your favorite compiler. --
It's not backlash pure and simple...that we reserve for Red Hat.
Loki sold us a game that we paid money for and which is only half-baked. We bought it to support a cool company and Linux, but we expected decent quality in return for the money. Or at least I did. Otherwise I would have just sent them $40. Now you're telling me that I am not faithful because I treat them with exactly the same suspicion I would treat any commercial entity that wants to get something for nothing?
I had the problem even when using CTP as my windowmanager and running no other processes. Clearly it is a memory related issue. Is it too much to ask that a simple game do ok in 64MB. Quake 3 plays fine after all. --
What happens if there are multiple applications for the same invention?
If a patent examiner discovers that another pending application involves the same invention, and that both inventions appear to qualify for a patent, the patent examiner will declare that a conflict (called an interference) exists between the two applications. In that event, a hearing is held to determine who is entitled to the patent.
Who gets the patent depends on such variables as who first conceived the invention and worked on it diligently, who first built and tested the invention and who filed the first provisional or regular patent application. Because of the possibility of a patent interference, it is wise to document all invention-related activities in a signed and witnessed inventor's notebook so that you can later prove the date the invention was conceived and the steps you took to build and test the invention or quickly file a patent application.
As is the greatest ego. I didn't say ego was the only reason, only a possible reason. I also did not say ego was wrong.
I didn't say is was wrong to compete, just questionable, since there are, IMHO, more rewarding outlets for any motivation one could have in participating in this contest.
When I make a move or change a view I want see the update immediately. I don't want to wait 10 seconds as the hard drive thrashes, the sound skips and the screen freezes. Go into space view in the later part of the game and tell me it's not slow.
As for bugs: preferences don't save, paratrooper moves can crash the game hard (e.g. paratrooping into an occupied square or city),
there's a bug list available from http://209.223.115.151/support/ which is remarkably slow at the moment.
Yes the bug list is a good thing, and no the bugs aren't a good thing. Not when I'm paying money.
Compare CTP 1.1 to say the latest patch of StarCraft. StarCraft is more playable under Wine than CTP running natively. The two games have similar levels of graphical complexity with CTP having more AI complexity, but also turns to do the processing in as opposed to real time.
As for revolutionarieness. No, a good game does not have to be revolutionary. But a good game is either revolutionary, glitzy, or solid. Great games can be all three. CTP is none of the above.
but I guess that's because my mind is in the gutter.
Have you noticed the they don't pronounce the name of the car in the adds. I guess they don't want to bring attenttion to it.
Of course naming things in an international marketplace is tough. Although the well known story of the failure of the Chevy Nova in Latin America is apparently apocryphal there are many pitfalls of international naming according to http://www.intuitive.com/taylor/gs/gs-ch ap5.html
CTP is a slow game with serious bugs that is barely playable on a Celeron 300 w/ 64 MB. All this for a 2D game that would have been revolutionary in the late 80's. Yes I paid my $40 bucks. Yes I wanted to support a cool company and Linux. And yes, I'm bitter.
Loki isn't all bad. Their developers field actual bug reports and there has been one patch set to cure some of the more serious problems. They are a new place and they might port or create a good game someday. Apparently a lot of the problems with CTP exist in the Windows version, so they might have been just dealt a bad hand.
That being said, the new contest they have created is a joke. Imagine if someone said to you, "you're a damn good programmer. I want you to spend some time doing some programming for us. No we won't pay you, but you might get a decent computer out of it and we get to keep your code and sell it."
Considering this, what are your incentives:
You really need that 'puter: A good C++ programmer can make enough money to buy the computer in what, a couple of days?
Pure altruism: Perhaps, but you would be probably increase your cosmic oneness more by contributing to an open source project.
Ego: Your kung fu is the best. You want everybody to know it. Well good luck, but here's a hint. If you're that good you should either be getting pay or serious recognition out of the deal, or possibly both.
A job at Loki: Ok, you want to work at Loki, this might be a good way to strut your stuff, but they are getting far more out of the deal than you. Companies typically pay thousands to track down and hire a qualified candidate for a job, without immediate benefit to themselves.
You really like CTP and want to see how it works: I don't agree, but curiousity is a valid reason for anything in life.
You really like CTP but the bugs annoy the crap out of you: There are probably lots of people that fit in this category. Probably enough to give Loki their computer's worth. Go a head, give the Man a hand. He'll make it worth your while.
Songmaster is by far my favorite Orson Scott Card book, with Ender's Game, Wyrms, and Prentice Alvin up there somewhere. I also enjoyed his recent fantasy/supernatural books, Treasure Chest and whatever the one I read yesterday was.
If you read in nested mode, which is nice over a fast link, but sucks on a slow one, you will reload much less often and thus be out of the top 20%. --
as you present no real arguments but resort to long words
And you do no better, except for the long words part. (Here I make the same mistake that you do, initiating my argument with an attack).
have already responded to your incorrect argument about the USPTO and their authority.
Yes I read your other post, and yes the Federal Courts do hear patent cases. This refutes the main thrust of the argument pertaining to a power grab by the USPTO, but it does not absolve the patent office from fufilling it's duty to make sure that the patents it grants are not obvious.
I had the most problem with the next paragraph. What things can obtain a patent? Things are obtaining patents now, it's worse than I thought.
How about traditional business models that have been extended to the computer industry?
How about them? I would think that most people would characterize such an extension as obvious and hence not patentable. Business models as a whole are only recently patentable. As you point out this is a court decision, not a patent office one, but it is a bad decision in any case.
Have you looked at any patent applications? Hint: The patent applications have many references to prior patents. The new patent is simply an extension of prior work. The tone here is a little combative for my taste, but the point is clear enough. New patents tend to extend old patents and are seldom revolutionary. While this is true, the change should be novel and not obvious to a skilled practitioner of the art in question. It should never be enough to simply extend an old patent with no ingenuity.
Patents are usually very specific in terms of thier applicability. What some ppl hope to benefit from patents is by obtaining one that is vague and all incompassing. An additional point that you might have made, but didn't, is that the claims on a patent always begin with absurd generality in the expectation that only the most specift claims will be accepted. Such a point, had it been made would have explained the apparent contradiction.
But, consider this. I have a great new concept for the internet. MS then figures that they also want this.
My good idea is gone. MS now has extended and embraced my idea. Ok, you have just made the point that patents are good for the holder of the patent. This is clearly true, otherwise there are millions of masochists and corporations that love losing money out there filing for patents left and right.
The issue is not what is good for the patent holder, or rather it is a means to an end. The issue is using law to maximize the societal benefits of innovation. Patents are a legal monopoly granted by the government in order to incentivize the production and publication of new ideas and technologies. They are not a right of the inventor. The only right the inventor has, under any reasonable conception of natural law, is to not have his actual property stolen, and to have his agreements with other parties adhered to. Patents allow the inventor to sell his product without worrying about enforcing individual non-disclosure agreements with each party. In this way they add to the efficiency and profitablity of invention and production.
The balance that must be struck is the encumberance that patents place on other inventors, every bit as inventive and productive as the first, who invent the same or similar technology or who wish to encorporate such a technology in their work, which in it's own right is beneficial to society. In the extreme patents might slow innovation to a halt as patent holders have no incentive to allow the transition to a better technology. While this is not the case, it is more of a threat the faster technology progresses. In the internet arena, patents should, at the very least, be drastically shorter than they are in the automotive hardware arena.
People use ebay because people use ebay. It's that simple. The more popular it is, the more useful it is. That's why it's one of the few internet companies that is making money and will probably continue to make money.
As for your other points, the user interface could certainly use improvement etc, but their backend is fairly solid notwithstanding the outages. I'd bet on ebay improving before a smaller, better rival takes it's place.
As for using IIS, oh well, IIS can't find out any more about you than your browser tells it, so get yourself a real browser and quit yer complaining. --
Back when John Cleese used to pimp for Magnavox, they advertised an ad blocking tv. I think it cut the volume during ads, probably with a fade to black detector.
Satelite latency isn't that bad for the latest bunch of LEO contellations (Iridium, Globalstar, Teledesic). It won't beat a direct fiber connection, but most of your latency isn't in transport delay anyway, it's in coding, switching, and processing delay. --
Slashdot Mirror
Make sure you don't think about the virus until you are out of Finland though. Otherwise you'll be transporting it.
--
I accept the fact that all laws are selectively enforced. Indeed, many states and munipalities in the US still have sodomy laws on the books (which usually ban oral and anal sex, in case you thought they didn't apply to you...) It's nice that these laws are not enforced, athough it would be nicer if they were not enacted. Even when created they were not intended to stop what went on behind closed doors, just to keep those activities behind closed doors.
I feel that laws should be enacted, as much as possible, to punish actual harms created by actual behavior. All laws like this do is to remove the hard problem of actually catching somebody that committed a crime.
After all, if we are so concerned about viruses, maybe we should make compilers and assemblers illegal as well. Heck, ban computers.
--
Well irregardless of what you think...
--
If it's in email or real mail it's an announcement. And only then if it's spelled out clearly and in readable text. Any other kind of announcement is nice, but honestly, what's the last time you checked your ISP's home page?
--
Unless you use AOL, in which case AOL is the largest spammer.
The Earthink abuse department is relatively helpful and they have the power to immediately cancel accounts which are used for spamming. A helpful email (full headers etc.) to abuse@earthlink.net can do wonders.
--
I've had no complaints about the NNTP servers. They're comprehensive as far as I can tell, they keep articles for a good amount of time, a week or so in the heavy traffic newsgroups. And they are fast if you have a fast connection. They require a username and password to access but you can access them from any IP, which is convenient.
--
From my limited experience with Digital Unix (supporting a professor's workstation) I can't see any real advantage to Digital Unix over, say Solaris, other than the fact that it runs on Alphas. It would seem foolish to port the OS to a radically different architecture that doesn't improve on the Alpha's strengths. Does anyone else have any insight in the matter?
--
On Solaris GNU stuff mostly compiles without tweaking, on Irix it mostly doesn't. Heck, Solaris even provides a free GNU compiler that you can use for compiling your favorite compiler.
--
It's not backlash pure and simple...that we reserve for Red Hat.
Loki sold us a game that we paid money for and which is only half-baked. We bought it to support a cool company and Linux, but we expected decent quality in return for the money. Or at least I did. Otherwise I would have just sent them $40. Now you're telling me that I am not faithful because I treat them with exactly the same suspicion I would treat any commercial entity that wants to get something for nothing?
--
I had the problem even when using CTP as my windowmanager and running no other processes. Clearly it is a memory related issue. Is it too much to ask that a simple game do ok in 64MB. Quake 3 plays fine after all.
--
Here's the lowdown from http://www.nolo.com/encyclo pedia/articles/pct/pct4.html
--
Makes you want to live in a dictatorship, doesn't it.
...as long as we're in charge. Wink Wink
--
ftp://ftp.funet.fi /pub/Linux/PEOPLE/Linus/SillySounds/english.au
I hear it as "Lee-nooks"
--
The greatest competition is within oneself.
As is the greatest ego. I didn't say ego was the only reason, only a possible reason. I also did not say ego was wrong.
I didn't say is was wrong to compete, just questionable, since there are, IMHO, more rewarding outlets for any motivation one could have in participating in this contest.
--
When I make a move or change a view I want see the update immediately. I don't want to wait 10 seconds as the hard drive thrashes, the sound skips and the screen freezes. Go into space view in the later part of the game and tell me it's not slow.
As for bugs:
preferences don't save,
paratrooper moves can crash the game hard (e.g. paratrooping into an occupied square or city),
there's a bug list available from
http://209.223.115.151/support/
which is remarkably slow at the moment.
Yes the bug list is a good thing, and no the bugs aren't a good thing. Not when I'm paying money.
Compare CTP 1.1 to say the latest patch of StarCraft. StarCraft is more playable under Wine than CTP running natively. The two games have similar levels of graphical complexity with CTP having more AI complexity, but also turns to do the processing in as opposed to real time.
As for revolutionarieness. No, a good game does not have to be revolutionary. But a good game is either revolutionary, glitzy, or solid. Great games can be all three. CTP is none of the above.
--
but I guess that's because my mind is in the gutter.
Have you noticed the they don't pronounce the name of the car in the adds. I guess they don't want to bring attenttion to it.
Of course naming things in an international marketplace is tough. Although the well known story of the failure of the Chevy Nova in Latin America is apparently apocryphal there are many pitfalls of international naming according to http://www.intuitive.com/taylor/gs/gs-ch ap5.html
--
CTP is a slow game with serious bugs that is barely playable on a Celeron 300 w/ 64 MB. All this for a 2D game that would have been revolutionary in the late 80's. Yes I paid my $40 bucks. Yes I wanted to support a cool company and Linux. And yes, I'm bitter.
Loki isn't all bad. Their developers field actual bug reports and there has been one patch set to cure some of the more serious problems. They are a new place and they might port or create a good game someday. Apparently a lot of the problems with CTP exist in the Windows version, so they might have been just dealt a bad hand.
That being said, the new contest they have created is a joke. Imagine if someone said to you, "you're a damn good programmer. I want you to spend some time doing some programming for us. No
we won't pay you, but you might get a decent computer out of it and we get to keep your code and sell it."
Considering this, what are your incentives:
You really need that 'puter:
A good C++ programmer can make enough money to buy the computer in what, a couple of days?
Pure altruism:
Perhaps, but you would be probably increase your cosmic oneness more by contributing to an open source project.
Ego:
Your kung fu is the best. You want everybody to know it. Well good luck, but here's a hint. If you're that good you should either be getting pay or serious recognition out of the deal, or possibly both.
A job at Loki:
Ok, you want to work at Loki, this might be a good way to strut your stuff, but they are getting far more out of the deal than you. Companies typically pay thousands to track down and hire a qualified candidate for a job, without immediate benefit to themselves.
You really like CTP and want to see how it works:
I don't agree, but curiousity is a valid reason for anything in life.
You really like CTP but the bugs annoy the crap out of you:
There are probably lots of people that fit in this category. Probably enough to give Loki their computer's worth. Go a head, give the Man a hand. He'll make it worth your while.
--
Songmaster is by far my favorite Orson Scott Card book, with Ender's Game, Wyrms, and Prentice Alvin up there somewhere. I also enjoyed his recent fantasy/supernatural books, Treasure Chest and whatever the one I read yesterday was.
--
I want to be able to edit posts. I think the complete original text should remain, or else there should be an option to see the original post.
--
If you read in nested mode, which is nice over a fast link, but sucks on a slow one, you will reload much less often and thus be out of the top 20%.
--
Slashdot existed without banner ads but it did not make a profit. I'm not certain Slashdot makes a profit even now, although it might.
--
as you present no real arguments but resort to long words
And you do no better, except for the long words part. (Here I make the same mistake that you do, initiating my argument with an attack).
have already responded to your incorrect argument about the USPTO and their authority.
Yes I read your other post, and yes the Federal Courts do hear patent cases. This refutes the main thrust of the argument pertaining to a power grab by the USPTO, but it does not absolve the patent office from fufilling it's duty to make sure that the patents it grants are not obvious.
I had the most problem with the next paragraph.
What things can obtain a patent?
Things are obtaining patents now, it's worse than I thought.
How about traditional business models that have been extended to the computer industry?
How about them? I would think that most people would characterize such an extension as obvious and hence not patentable. Business models as a whole are only recently patentable. As you point out this is a court decision, not a patent office one, but it is a bad decision in any case.
Have you looked at any patent applications? Hint: The patent applications have many references to prior patents. The new patent is simply an extension of prior work.
The tone here is a little combative for my taste, but the point is clear enough. New patents tend to extend old patents and are seldom revolutionary. While this is true, the change should be novel and not obvious to a skilled practitioner of the art in question. It should never be enough to simply extend an old patent with no ingenuity.
Patents are usually very specific in terms of thier applicability. What some ppl hope to benefit from patents is by obtaining one that is vague and all incompassing.
An additional point that you might have made, but didn't, is that the claims on a patent always begin with absurd generality in the expectation that only the most specift claims will be accepted. Such a point, had it been made would have explained the apparent contradiction.
But, consider this. I have a great new
concept for the internet. MS then figures that they also want this.
My good idea is gone. MS now has extended and embraced my idea.
Ok, you have just made the point that patents are good for the holder of the patent. This is clearly true, otherwise there are millions of masochists and corporations that love losing money out there filing for patents left and right.
The issue is not what is good for the patent holder, or rather it is a means to an end. The issue is using law to maximize the societal benefits of innovation. Patents are a legal monopoly granted by the government in order to incentivize the production and publication of new ideas and technologies. They are not a right of the inventor. The only right the inventor has, under any reasonable conception of natural law, is to not have his actual property stolen, and to have his agreements with other parties adhered to. Patents allow the inventor to sell his product without worrying about enforcing individual non-disclosure agreements with each party. In this way they add to the efficiency and profitablity of invention and production.
The balance that must be struck is the encumberance that patents place on other inventors, every bit as inventive and productive as the first, who invent the same or similar technology or who wish to encorporate such a technology in their work, which in it's own right is beneficial to society. In the extreme patents might slow innovation to a halt as patent holders have no incentive to allow the transition to a better technology. While this is not the case, it is more of a threat the faster technology progresses. In the internet arena, patents should, at the very least, be drastically shorter than they are in the automotive hardware arena.
--
People use ebay because people use ebay. It's that simple. The more popular it is, the more useful it is. That's why it's one of the few internet companies that is making money and will probably continue to make money.
As for your other points, the user interface could certainly use improvement etc, but their backend is fairly solid notwithstanding the outages. I'd bet on ebay improving before a smaller, better rival takes it's place.
As for using IIS, oh well, IIS can't find out any more about you than your browser tells it, so get yourself a real browser and quit yer complaining.
--
Back when John Cleese used to pimp for Magnavox, they advertised an ad blocking tv. I think it cut the volume during ads, probably with a fade to black detector.
--
Satelite latency isn't that bad for the latest bunch of LEO contellations (Iridium, Globalstar, Teledesic). It won't beat a direct fiber connection, but most of your latency isn't in transport delay anyway, it's in coding, switching, and processing delay.
--