Open source (excuse me, FREE SOFTWARE) programmers don't do it for the money. If you're in it for the money, apply to Microsoft and leave us alone. Free software is about the love of the art, and helping other people with your skills. That may sound cheesy, but it's true, and I think it's damn honorable.
They've already threatened Vorbis. Apparently their claims have very little basis (the Vorbis team, from what I've seen, is very mathematically competent; they know exactly what they're doing), but it's something to watch out for.
Who needs the right of way when you have a 500 pound gorilla behind you?
Really, if Thomson says you owe them money, and the other option is a costly lawsuit, you're screwed either way. Might as well pay up, unless you're bigger than they are.
I encourage everyone to go to http://www.xiph.org RIGHT NOW and pick up a Vorbis player plugin. It's available for UNIX or Windows. Then write a quick script to rip and encode your CDs. And enjoy life without MP3, or Thomson.
It's a fast chip, but it has some brain dead limitations. Its lighting is not perspective correct, which can look very bad in some situations, and large geometry can cause problems if it's not tesselated. Just takes a little extra effort to squeeze good rendering out of the PS2; it's not impossible.
The PS1 has a very unimpressive processor (about 486 caliber) and 2 megs of RAM. Fine for some very specific uses, but at $100, it's not all that amazing.
The PS2, on the other hand, is an incredibly powerful box. The graphics chip is not great compared to the current line of PC graphics cards, but everything else in the box screams, especially for 3D stuff (two vector processors). At close to $300, it's a bit pricey, though, and it only has 24 megs of RAM.
What, so now I have to sign an NDA to get chip programming manuals, if I can get them at all?
No thanks... nVidia is one of the least-open companies out there, repeatedly denying requests for programming information. They finally did produce Linux drivers for their cards, but they are binary-only. How would you like binary-only kernel support for your CPU?
Or maybe they would support Linux. It's a fairly lucrative market in the server area, at least. But based on their past attitude I wouldn't count on it.
A hard drive would be nice and all... but I'd rather they spent the extra engineering effort on equipping the PS2 with more than 4 megs of texture memory and a rasterizer that can do perspective correct lighting, and I'd rather spend my extra money on more games. I have a PC for my Web browsing.
Seriously, consoles are good because you can buy a box for a couple hundred bucks, pop in games, and play them till your eyes pop out. I don't WANT a hard drive or a Web browser. Maybe a network card would be nice so you could play networked games at LAN parties, but even that's pushing it. C'mon, give me a cheap console with decent graphics, and forget about the rest of this crap.
Check to see if the amount they owe you is under the limit for small claims court in the state of the contract. In California I believe it's around $5000.
IANAL, of course, and thankfully I've never brought someone to small claims, but it exists for this type of situation.
If I write a program to do my math homework for me, is it my work?
I really didn't feel like calculating a bunch of series for an assignment back in high school, so I wrote a script to do it, and turned the script in as well as the answers. The teacher had no problem with this; writing the program required a thorough understanding of the techniques in question.
Based on this, I would argue that an artist/programmer who writes software to create art certainly is responsible for that art. Machines are tools, nothing more. If you can create a machine that embodies your sense of creativity, then the art it creates is from your mind, albeit indirectly.
In the amount of time you've spent bitching about Michael Sims, you could have done something a lot more productive, like putting the site back up under a different domain.
Please, shut up. We don't care. Stupid political tensions and dick sizing contests fuck over a LOT of projects -- it's unfortunate, but it's nothing new.
-John
Online too much... so he wrote a book
on
Virtual Addiction
·
· Score: 1
Sounds like an interesting read actually. But I just finished writing a book, and it did NOT decrease the amount of time I spent online!
"Argh! How am I going to fit (topic) in... Bah!"
::alt-f2 xchat enter::
No, I'm not addicted! Noooo! Hey, give my back my xchat!
Interesting. Can you support that claim?
I think a tightly controlled OS is exactly what the world doesn't need, including the gaming industry -- it allows the maintainer of the OS to become complacent and not fix major problems.
Rather than a tightly controlled OS, perhaps what we need are tightly controlled INTERFACES, so that people are free to improve the implementations without making life difficult for those who have to use the development environment.
Personally, I think Linux *is* the right OS for gaming. Gamers frequently report better framerates and stability under Linux than under Windows. It is true that the selection of supported 3D hardware is smaller, but the major players (currently ATI and Nvidia) are there en force.
With decent video drivers (which now exist thanks to the DRI project and Nvidia), solid multimedia toolkits (SDL and OpenGL), superior networking code (I think Linux can take Windows to task on that one ANY day), and other niceties like SMP support (which 98 lacks), there is really nothing that makes Linux less capable as a gaming platform than Windows.
My e-mail address is on all of my Slashdot posts, so it's reasonable to assume it was already in his database.
That goes for anyone thinking of using my address for advertising. Don't. You have been given notice.
-John
Messages sent in compliance with e-mail regulations are not a problem; they're easy to filter out, and I never see most of them (nor do I want to). But these account for a minority of the junk mail I receive on my several e-mail accounts.
A random sampling of subject headings from the crap I've received over the past few days (from my Spam folder):
"Triggers POWERFUL sexual responses"
"You decide 9089"
"Time to refinance"
"Your saving is here 27514"
"You deserve a vacation now______"
"Make the right choice 3703"
All of these were sent from addresses that appear to be randomly generated (frequently from Japan). Do I have any reason to believe that the unsubscribe address is actually valid? I've received about 40 such messages in the past week.
This is why spam has (and deserves) a bad name. I argue that the majority of unsolicited commercial e-mail not sent in accordance with any guidelines. Isn't it actually illegal to spoof your return address through someone else's mail server?
There are some days when I seriously want to punch the bastard who sent the most recent round of junk mail. You (UltraBot2K1) are not the sort of person I'd be upset with -- I really don't mind the stuff clearly marked with ADV: and with a valid unsubscribe address (I just filter it out).
I live on a college campus (Georgia Tech), and I am inundated with marketing every day. One company (TribHub.com -- THEY SUCK, DON'T USE THEM) actually posted flyers in the dorm restrooms, even though GT housing is marked No Solicitation. BigWords.com (THEY ALSO SUCK, AND THEY'RE NOW OUT OF BUSINESS) was almost as obnoxious, but they at least didn't break laws in the process.
Personally, I thought it was rather tasteless, and not particularly funny or clever. But I don't see how MasterCard has any legal basis for complaining about this.
A better option is perhaps to develop with SDL + OpenGL and just compile natively. SDL is a thin wrapper, so there is very little if any performance loss for doing so.
Agreed. While a transcendant vocabulary is laudable, one must be eternally careful so that the calculated objective of communication does not become ensconsed in obscurity.
In other words, eschew obfuscation.
(ripped from the fortune file)
Slashdot Mirror
Open source (excuse me, FREE SOFTWARE) programmers don't do it for the money. If you're in it for the money, apply to Microsoft and leave us alone. Free software is about the love of the art, and helping other people with your skills. That may sound cheesy, but it's true, and I think it's damn honorable.
-John
They've already threatened Vorbis. Apparently their claims have very little basis (the Vorbis team, from what I've seen, is very mathematically competent; they know exactly what they're doing), but it's something to watch out for.
-John
Who needs the right of way when you have a 500 pound gorilla behind you?
Really, if Thomson says you owe them money, and the other option is a costly lawsuit, you're screwed either way. Might as well pay up, unless you're bigger than they are.
I encourage everyone to go to http://www.xiph.org RIGHT NOW and pick up a Vorbis player plugin. It's available for UNIX or Windows. Then write a quick script to rip and encode your CDs. And enjoy life without MP3, or Thomson.
-John
It's a fast chip, but it has some brain dead limitations. Its lighting is not perspective correct, which can look very bad in some situations, and large geometry can cause problems if it's not tesselated. Just takes a little extra effort to squeeze good rendering out of the PS2; it's not impossible.
-John
The PS1 has a very unimpressive processor (about 486 caliber) and 2 megs of RAM. Fine for some very specific uses, but at $100, it's not all that amazing.
The PS2, on the other hand, is an incredibly powerful box. The graphics chip is not great compared to the current line of PC graphics cards, but everything else in the box screams, especially for 3D stuff (two vector processors). At close to $300, it's a bit pricey, though, and it only has 24 megs of RAM.
-John
It's not the OpenGL implementation I'm concerned about -- they refuse to give ANY programming information whatsoever.
-John
What, so now I have to sign an NDA to get chip programming manuals, if I can get them at all?
No thanks... nVidia is one of the least-open companies out there, repeatedly denying requests for programming information. They finally did produce Linux drivers for their cards, but they are binary-only. How would you like binary-only kernel support for your CPU?
Or maybe they would support Linux. It's a fairly lucrative market in the server area, at least. But based on their past attitude I wouldn't count on it.
-John
A hard drive would be nice and all... but I'd rather they spent the extra engineering effort on equipping the PS2 with more than 4 megs of texture memory and a rasterizer that can do perspective correct lighting, and I'd rather spend my extra money on more games. I have a PC for my Web browsing.
Seriously, consoles are good because you can buy a box for a couple hundred bucks, pop in games, and play them till your eyes pop out. I don't WANT a hard drive or a Web browser. Maybe a network card would be nice so you could play networked games at LAN parties, but even that's pushing it. C'mon, give me a cheap console with decent graphics, and forget about the rest of this crap.
-John
MyLinux PLW project
-John
Check to see if the amount they owe you is under the limit for small claims court in the state of the contract. In California I believe it's around $5000.
IANAL, of course, and thankfully I've never brought someone to small claims, but it exists for this type of situation.
-John
...then I'd be a really happy geek, for inventing an artificially intelligent homework solver. In Tcl, no less!
-John
If I write a program to do my math homework for me, is it my work?
I really didn't feel like calculating a bunch of series for an assignment back in high school, so I wrote a script to do it, and turned the script in as well as the answers. The teacher had no problem with this; writing the program required a thorough understanding of the techniques in question.
Based on this, I would argue that an artist/programmer who writes software to create art certainly is responsible for that art. Machines are tools, nothing more. If you can create a machine that embodies your sense of creativity, then the art it creates is from your mind, albeit indirectly.
-John
A good book it is indeed. I saw it at the bookstore last night. But mine will clearly 0wn!
(if it ever gets out of proofreading... yeesh!)
-John
In the amount of time you've spent bitching about Michael Sims, you could have done something a lot more productive, like putting the site back up under a different domain.
Please, shut up. We don't care. Stupid political tensions and dick sizing contests fuck over a LOT of projects -- it's unfortunate, but it's nothing new.
-John
Sounds like an interesting read actually. But I just finished writing a book, and it did NOT decrease the amount of time I spent online!
"Argh! How am I going to fit (topic) in... Bah!"
::alt-f2 xchat enter::
No, I'm not addicted! Noooo! Hey, give my back my xchat!
-John
Interesting. Can you support that claim?
I think a tightly controlled OS is exactly what the world doesn't need, including the gaming industry -- it allows the maintainer of the OS to become complacent and not fix major problems.
Rather than a tightly controlled OS, perhaps what we need are tightly controlled INTERFACES, so that people are free to improve the implementations without making life difficult for those who have to use the development environment.
OpenGL, OpenAL, and SDL are three such systems.
-John
Personally, I think Linux *is* the right OS for gaming. Gamers frequently report better framerates and stability under Linux than under Windows. It is true that the selection of supported 3D hardware is smaller, but the major players (currently ATI and Nvidia) are there en force.
With decent video drivers (which now exist thanks to the DRI project and Nvidia), solid multimedia toolkits (SDL and OpenGL), superior networking code (I think Linux can take Windows to task on that one ANY day), and other niceties like SMP support (which 98 lacks), there is really nothing that makes Linux less capable as a gaming platform than Windows.
Not speaking for Loki here; just my opinion.
-John
My e-mail address is on all of my Slashdot posts, so it's reasonable to assume it was already in his database. That goes for anyone thinking of using my address for advertising. Don't. You have been given notice. -John
Please count this as notice to not send unsolicited mail to my address. Thanks.
-John
Messages sent in compliance with e-mail regulations are not a problem; they're easy to filter out, and I never see most of them (nor do I want to). But these account for a minority of the junk mail I receive on my several e-mail accounts.
A random sampling of subject headings from the crap I've received over the past few days (from my Spam folder):
"Triggers POWERFUL sexual responses"
"You decide 9089"
"Time to refinance"
"Your saving is here 27514"
"You deserve a vacation now______"
"Make the right choice 3703"
All of these were sent from addresses that appear to be randomly generated (frequently from Japan). Do I have any reason to believe that the unsubscribe address is actually valid? I've received about 40 such messages in the past week.
This is why spam has (and deserves) a bad name. I argue that the majority of unsolicited commercial e-mail not sent in accordance with any guidelines. Isn't it actually illegal to spoof your return address through someone else's mail server?
There are some days when I seriously want to punch the bastard who sent the most recent round of junk mail. You (UltraBot2K1) are not the sort of person I'd be upset with -- I really don't mind the stuff clearly marked with ADV: and with a valid unsubscribe address (I just filter it out).
I live on a college campus (Georgia Tech), and I am inundated with marketing every day. One company (TribHub.com -- THEY SUCK, DON'T USE THEM) actually posted flyers in the dorm restrooms, even though GT housing is marked No Solicitation. BigWords.com (THEY ALSO SUCK, AND THEY'RE NOW OUT OF BUSINESS) was almost as obnoxious, but they at least didn't break laws in the process.
Allright, back to cleaning my inbox.
-John
Personally, I thought it was rather tasteless, and not particularly funny or clever. But I don't see how MasterCard has any legal basis for complaining about this.
-John
A better option is perhaps to develop with SDL + OpenGL and just compile natively. SDL is a thin wrapper, so there is very little if any performance loss for doing so.
-John
Agreed. While a transcendant vocabulary is laudable, one must be eternally careful so that the calculated objective of communication does not become ensconsed in obscurity.
In other words, eschew obfuscation.
(ripped from the fortune file)
-John
For double irony, use this number as your encryption key.
-John
Space Quest 3 runs nicely under dosemu. I don't see why the others wouldn't.
Anyone know of an abandonware site that might have some of these games? I never got to finish Quest for Glory III back in the day...
-John