I think it derives from the days when peer-to-peer networks all involved centralized servers to some respect - only the transfers themselves were peer-to-peer; searching for particular files and/or for sources of a particular file were all done by interaction with a central server, and therefore the programs which did all that were clients for that server.
Technically that's still true with BitTorrent, it's just that the "finding particular files" part has been taken out of the P2P program itself and moved into the "things you do before launching your transferring program" category. Under this scenario, the BitTorrent tracker would be the server, and the seeds and peers would be clients of that server; it's a bit thin compared to the established client/server image, but it does work.
That's not such a stupid idea in principle; it just depends on how it's implemented.
At my workplace, desktop workstations are named according to the pattern 'XX-location-barcode' - where XX is the building/facility code number, the "location" part is freeform (decided by the building tech admin rather than by the user) but can't contain a hyphen, the barcode is unique, and the hyphens are mandatory. It does a fairly good job of making it possible to locate a machine based on its name without needing to keep a mental list of all the hundreds of desktops in use.
The same probably wouldn't work nearly as well for servers, though, and indeed we don't name our servers by the same rule.
I bet that's aimed at the comp.lang.lisp crowd:-) "Nah, there's no library for X, but why does it matter when it only takes a few hundred lines to implement X in Lisp?"
My brain keeps wanting to interpret those "X" es as the X Window System... and powerful as Lisp may be, I quite sinceriously doubt that it can do the full X Window System in less than a few thousand lines. ^_^
...unless, of course, that's just a mistaken observation on my part by virtue of never having bothered to run with a non-restricted account while Administrator had a password. (I somehow failed to think of this possibility before posting.)
UAC is essentially like sudo, except that when you run in an administrator account, there is no password prompt, only a Allow/Cancel choice. This is only true if the built-in Administrator account has no password. If you enable the built-in Administrator account (which can apparently be done any of several ways, but the one I've always used is 'net user administrator/active:yes') and then give it a password, the UAC dialog will thereafter have a password prompt. This has always been the first thing I do on any Vista machine I've had to configure (which fortunately has not been many).
I also remove sudo from every *nix box I admin; 'su -c' does just fine, and since it requires the root password it does not leave room for know-nothing-user mistakes the way sudo does. Anyone who should be making changes which require root access already has the root password anyway.
The addition of an effective admin-privileges model and at least some of what is needed to enforce it is one of the few things I would consider an improvement in Vista as compared to XP - and note that I'm generally anti-Microsoft, and dislike Vista significantly more than I do XP. Why, having added such a model, Microsoft then chose to cripple it by not only hiding the root user, and not only automatically creating an admin-level account, but not automatically creating a non-admin account is something which I have never been able to figure out; nothing about it makes the least bit of sense to me.
It is not in fact an Iron Chef game, but an Iron Chef America game. I would be rather interested in the former, much as I am interested in the original Japanese show; I would not be at all interested in the latter, just as I am actively uninterested in the Americanized edition of the show.
I choose to look at it as: Microsoft is colluding with the content providers to place restrictions on the users.
Or, to take a slightly less negative view, Microsoft is cooperating with the content providers' attempt to place restrictions on the users.
Without Microsoft's assistance (and that of the hardware manufacturers who support e.g. HDCP), the providers would have the choice between making the content available without restrictions, attempting to add their own independent restrictions at whatever degree of inconvenience and cost, and not making the content available at all. The first option is good; the second is difficult for them and has the potential for marketing and PR downsides directed at them specifically; the third does not make them money.
With that assistance, the providers have the additional choice of making the content available with this already-prepared type of restriction. This costs them significantly less than adding their own restrictions, puts them at much less risk of being targeted specifically since they are "merely" using an existing set of restrictions rather than creating new ones, and still leaves the possibility of making them money.
By making it easier for the providers to place restrictions on their content, Microsoft (like others who are doing such things) *is* responsible here. If you knowingly and intentionally help someone do something wrong, you are yourself doing something wrong.
This was my own first thought. The games were well beyond me when I first played them (at something between the ages of eight and fourteen), but what I could handle of them was undeniably fun; I've never quite gotten them working in the modern day, but I look back on them with at least as much fondness as I do Pirates!.
...and since we've already had a modern sequel to that one...
I had the same thought (or what I presume is the same thought) myself; upon reading the "this only works in IE" bits of the article, the first thing that popped to mind was that article, also on the front page of Slashdot at the time, on how the BBC (? The sentence is a little ungrammatical) says people should avoid using IE.
The "overview" and "detailed" changes links lead to the same URL, which seems either mistaken or redundant. It might be advisable to either correct whichever doesn't lead to its intended target or, if there is only one relevant changes list, cut it down to just one link.
I just want to know what the appeal is in backwards compatibility in a CONSOLE. Quite honestly, it means shit. The PS1 will not be developed for in 12 months, and then who will even want the old software anymore? Only people that have a PS1 already.
--Xenex
Not quite true. Take a hypothetical scenario or two.
A person who has neither a PSX nor a PS2 comes across a PSX game they think sounds really great, and they decide they want to play it. Which system will they buy? Assuming they have enough money and the game will run on it, the clear choice is the PS2, since it not only lets them play PSX games but also PS2 games and DVDs. Without backwards compatibility, a person who wanted to be able to play games for both systems would have to buy both systems - a considerable difference in expense, especially when such a person might not want to play more than one or two games on the older system.
A person who has a PS2 hears about a PSX game they think sounds really great. Without backwards compatibility, they would have to buy either a PSX or a functioning emulator (and nice as they may be, such emulators also have their limits); with it, however, all they need to buy is the game, at considerably less expense.
Either of these situations (and yes, I admit they're actually pretty similar) would be enough to make the backwards compatibility look fairly good. I expect that such situations may actually crop up fairly often, at least within a certain time frame after system release - i.e., after no new PSX games are being made, but before they become utterly obsolete (at which point they'll probably be thoroughly emulated anyway). There are surprisingly large numbers of people out there who haven't played, say, Final Fantasy VII* (and whatever someone may personally think of it, they have to admit that huge numbers of people loved the game), who may eventually decide to have a go at it and run into such a problem as I describe above.
Regardless, if it means one less game system up above my TV to worry about (I have four there already, and at least two to go), in my opinion it's probably worth it.
I do agree with your final (unquoted) sentence, on the problems with attempting to maintain backwards compatibility. I say, when it reaches the point where you're sacrificing progress to maintain it, dump the old stuff; but as long as it doesn't hurt, why not keep it?
*Used as an example only. There are many other wonderful PSX games out there, many of which are far less known and popular than they by rights should be; if it makes you feel better, feel free to substitute any one of these in the same spot. You'll get mostly the same result as far as the scenario is concerned.
The court system isn't supposed to be swayed by public opinion.
Hmm... Silly me, I thought that the U.S. laws were meant to reflect the views of the people. Then again, I could be wrong.
Yes, the U.S. laws are meant to reflect the views of the people.But that's got nothing to do with the court system. The legislative system is supposed to be swayed by public opinion (theoretically...don't get me started). The judicial system, however, is not. It happens anyway at times; sometimes the result is even all to the good. But it isn't the way it was intended.
This has officially been halfway offtopic. Thank you for listening to WZZZ-Online. (No copyright infringement intended.)
Slashdot Mirror
I think it derives from the days when peer-to-peer networks all involved centralized servers to some respect - only the transfers themselves were peer-to-peer; searching for particular files and/or for sources of a particular file were all done by interaction with a central server, and therefore the programs which did all that were clients for that server.
Technically that's still true with BitTorrent, it's just that the "finding particular files" part has been taken out of the P2P program itself and moved into the "things you do before launching your transferring program" category. Under this scenario, the BitTorrent tracker would be the server, and the seeds and peers would be clients of that server; it's a bit thin compared to the established client/server image, but it does work.
That's not such a stupid idea in principle; it just depends on how it's implemented.
At my workplace, desktop workstations are named according to the pattern 'XX-location-barcode' - where XX is the building/facility code number, the "location" part is freeform (decided by the building tech admin rather than by the user) but can't contain a hyphen, the barcode is unique, and the hyphens are mandatory. It does a fairly good job of making it possible to locate a machine based on its name without needing to keep a mental list of all the hundreds of desktops in use.
The same probably wouldn't work nearly as well for servers, though, and indeed we don't name our servers by the same rule.
I bet that's aimed at the comp.lang.lisp crowd :-) "Nah, there's no library for X, but why does it matter when it only takes a few hundred lines to implement X in Lisp?"
My brain keeps wanting to interpret those "X" es as the X Window System... and powerful as Lisp may be, I quite sinceriously doubt that it can do the full X Window System in less than a few thousand lines. ^_^
Proportionately to the price of the other versions of Windows as sold separately, would be my guess.
...unless, of course, that's just a mistaken observation on my part by virtue of never having bothered to run with a non-restricted account while Administrator had a password. (I somehow failed to think of this possibility before posting.)
I also remove sudo from every *nix box I admin; 'su -c' does just fine, and since it requires the root password it does not leave room for know-nothing-user mistakes the way sudo does. Anyone who should be making changes which require root access already has the root password anyway.
The addition of an effective admin-privileges model and at least some of what is needed to enforce it is one of the few things I would consider an improvement in Vista as compared to XP - and note that I'm generally anti-Microsoft, and dislike Vista significantly more than I do XP. Why, having added such a model, Microsoft then chose to cripple it by not only hiding the root user, and not only automatically creating an admin-level account, but not automatically creating a non-admin account is something which I have never been able to figure out; nothing about it makes the least bit of sense to me.
It is not in fact an Iron Chef game, but an Iron Chef America game. I would be rather interested in the former, much as I am interested in the original Japanese show; I would not be at all interested in the latter, just as I am actively uninterested in the Americanized edition of the show.
I choose to look at it as: Microsoft is colluding with the content providers to place restrictions on the users.
Or, to take a slightly less negative view, Microsoft is cooperating with the content providers' attempt to place restrictions on the users.
Without Microsoft's assistance (and that of the hardware manufacturers who support e.g. HDCP), the providers would have the choice between making the content available without restrictions, attempting to add their own independent restrictions at whatever degree of inconvenience and cost, and not making the content available at all. The first option is good; the second is difficult for them and has the potential for marketing and PR downsides directed at them specifically; the third does not make them money.
With that assistance, the providers have the additional choice of making the content available with this already-prepared type of restriction. This costs them significantly less than adding their own restrictions, puts them at much less risk of being targeted specifically since they are "merely" using an existing set of restrictions rather than creating new ones, and still leaves the possibility of making them money.
By making it easier for the providers to place restrictions on their content, Microsoft (like others who are doing such things) *is* responsible here. If you knowingly and intentionally help someone do something wrong, you are yourself doing something wrong.
...and since we've already had a modern sequel to that one...
Now, now, this isn't offtopic.
I had the same thought (or what I presume is the same thought) myself; upon reading the "this only works in IE" bits of the article, the first thing that popped to mind was that article, also on the front page of Slashdot at the time, on how the BBC (? The sentence is a little ungrammatical) says people should avoid using IE.
Er...
The "overview" and "detailed" changes links lead to the same URL, which seems either mistaken or redundant. It might be advisable to either correct whichever doesn't lead to its intended target or, if there is only one relevant changes list, cut it down to just one link.
I just want to know what the appeal is in backwards compatibility in a CONSOLE. Quite honestly, it means shit. The PS1 will not be developed for in 12 months, and then who will even want the old software anymore? Only people that have a PS1 already.
--Xenex
Not quite true. Take a hypothetical scenario or two.
A person who has neither a PSX nor a PS2 comes across a PSX game they think sounds really great, and they decide they want to play it. Which system will they buy? Assuming they have enough money and the game will run on it, the clear choice is the PS2, since it not only lets them play PSX games but also PS2 games and DVDs. Without backwards compatibility, a person who wanted to be able to play games for both systems would have to buy both systems - a considerable difference in expense, especially when such a person might not want to play more than one or two games on the older system.
A person who has a PS2 hears about a PSX game they think sounds really great. Without backwards compatibility, they would have to buy either a PSX or a functioning emulator (and nice as they may be, such emulators also have their limits); with it, however, all they need to buy is the game, at considerably less expense.
Either of these situations (and yes, I admit they're actually pretty similar) would be enough to make the backwards compatibility look fairly good. I expect that such situations may actually crop up fairly often, at least within a certain time frame after system release - i.e., after no new PSX games are being made, but before they become utterly obsolete (at which point they'll probably be thoroughly emulated anyway). There are surprisingly large numbers of people out there who haven't played, say, Final Fantasy VII* (and whatever someone may personally think of it, they have to admit that huge numbers of people loved the game), who may eventually decide to have a go at it and run into such a problem as I describe above.
Regardless, if it means one less game system up above my TV to worry about (I have four there already, and at least two to go), in my opinion it's probably worth it.
I do agree with your final (unquoted) sentence, on the problems with attempting to maintain backwards compatibility. I say, when it reaches the point where you're sacrificing progress to maintain it, dump the old stuff; but as long as it doesn't hurt, why not keep it?
*Used as an example only. There are many other wonderful PSX games out there, many of which are far less known and popular than they by rights should be; if it makes you feel better, feel free to substitute any one of these in the same spot. You'll get mostly the same result as far as the scenario is concerned.
Hmm... Silly me, I thought that the U.S. laws were meant to reflect the views of the people. Then again, I could be wrong.
Yes, the U.S. laws are meant to reflect the views of the people.But that's got nothing to do with the court system. The legislative system is supposed to be swayed by public opinion (theoretically...don't get me started). The judicial system, however, is not. It happens anyway at times; sometimes the result is even all to the good. But it isn't the way it was intended.
This has officially been halfway offtopic. Thank you for listening to WZZZ-Online. (No copyright infringement intended.)