Have you SEEN PocketLinux and the similar competing handheld Linux flavors? This is NOT just a bastardhack -- it's quite usable. I'd rather code for PocketLinux than PalmOS any day (yes, I've coded for PalmOS, I know what it's like).
There's been a bit of fuss about this type of weapon as inhumane, but I'm not sure it's any more or less brutal than, say, a machine gun, a bayonette, or a grenade. In any case I doubt these will replace guns any time soon.
It's named the Apple Public Source License, not the Apple Free Software License, and it lives up to its name. Stallman rejects it (for good reasons), but was it ever intended to gain Stallman's support?
I'm wary of the APSL (and indeed any other custom license made by a big company so they can jump on the open source or free software bandwagon while still at least feeling like they're in control of the code), but Apple has done some good things with it. OpenPlay, for instance, will be a really neat networked gaming API once the Linux port is cleaned up a bit.
It's nice that Stallman took the time to review this license and provide intelligent commentary, but I don't think anyone should be surprised by his response.
Juries are more of a study in manipulative group psychology than in any honest judgement of what's right or wrong. After reading a bit on the subject (I'm minoring in psych at the moment), I'm truly frightened that one day such a group of people might judge me or a friend.
People tend to be so confident of their ability to see into others that they fail to realize they are being driven to a particular verdict -- even when they KNOW the lawyers are trying to do this. Most people think they can tell when someone else is lying, but this is almost never the case, and certainly not a reliable basis for judging someone's guilt or innocence.
In short, juries are seriously flawed, at least as they are presently implemented. Better than an arbitrary decision by a judge, perhaps -- but at least a judge is trained in the field and *usually* doesn't have a strong bias one way or another.
Handwriting recognition is being worked on:
http://www.patentburner.com/~overcode/glyphrec.p ng
Not quite usable yet, but pretty soon handwriting recognition will not be a problem under Linux. Several other projects have also written recognizers, but this one outperforms all of the ones I've seen. It requires very little memory (5k code, 20k database). And it's GPL:) We're currently reworking the algorithm to have a shot at Kanji recognition.
As for graphics output, the Linux framebuffer console does a great job, and it's a standard part of the kernel.
Today's PDA's are pretty damn powerful -- many have 32-bit processors (often MIPS- or SH3-based), and at least 8 megs of RAM. The MIPS kernel certainly needed some modifications to run on handhelds, but it's still recognizably Linux, as evidenced by some of the applications it's already running.
Many universities also forbid using their network resources for business-related activities. (I think this is an incredibly counterproductive policy for both the university and the students, but it's often in the contracts.)
As much as I hate the RIAA, you're incorrect. You purchase the physical media, but not the data. That's copyrighted. (This is the whole point of copyright.)
Knowing Congress, they'll probably comply with IDSA's request, in the interest of "protecting the children". As an avid gamer, I believe this is a crock of $#!+, but Congress is known to be unclueful about such things.
It might happen anyway, but perhaps a few hundred thousand letters from gamers might demonstrate that there's another side to this issue.
Some possible arguments (brainstorming for my own letter):
-Multiplayer games are essentially competitive sports, not much different from physical sports like football. They promote teamwork, cooperation, and perseverence.
-There is no evidence that violent games lead to real-world violence. In fact, many theorize that it does exactly the opposite, providing a channel for stressed people to let out their aggression in a safe way.
-Existing rating systems make it easy for parents to distinguish between violent and nonviolent games. For instance, the game _Soldier of Fortune_ bears a large red stop sign on the front of its box, containing a clear warning to parents. There is no possible way a parent could mistake this game for a harmless Disney adventure. SoF and other games also carry easy to read ESRB content ratings.
Mac OS X is supposed to be a user-friendly desktop OS. If anything I'd say it competes with BeOS, not Linux. Linux is supposed to be an open and free community project. OS X is not.
But what if it does win some ground for Linux? That's a good thing, isn't it? At least it's a solid technical effort, unlike some other mainstream OSes we used to toy with. It's derived from BSD UNIX, which despite everything is a largely open, well-documented, well-understood, and absurdly stable platform. I'd rejoice if OS X were to succeed, even if it meant some loss in Linux market share.
Look around Dallas, TX some time (:::Digital::Convergence:::'s home). They've put:Cue's (oh, it hurts to say it) in the Dallas Morning News ("swipe here for more info about this article"), and they advertise all over the place. So they're trying.
My CueCat has been idle on my desk for a long time, offering a mild red glow of CueCat warmth to its surroundings. Maybe I'll open it and remove the ID code some day. Hmmm. Or not.
You're a customer. Don't put up with this crap. I've bought one DVD in my life, and that was for the purpose of testing the Linux DVD players. The DVD CCA pisses me off, so they don't get my money.
Same goes with any manufacturer who supports SDMI (I've already returned one portable player). High-definition TV that limits my freedom to timeshift or make copies for friends is no different. A certain dorm room at Georgia Tech will not be equipped with one of these.
If enough people do this, it'll stop happening. If enough people don't do this (the likely case), we deserve what we get.
I bought a Dreamcast so I could work on the DC Linux project, but I've already bought two games for it and I intend to buy more. PC's beat the crap out of consoles in terms of graphics and speed. The whole point of having a console, other than the hack value, is to be able to put in a game and spend a few hours playing it without crashes, rebooting, compatibility problems, or someone killing your game by sending you an instant message. I'm willing to bet that nearly everyone involved in DC hacking also owns a few shrinkwrapped games. That's where Sega makes its money. Just because someone wants to hack a console doesn't mean they don't also want to have some mindless fun with Crazy Taxi or Armada.
There's nothing more frustrating than trying to code for a piece of hardware that lacks documentation, especially if it's for a non-technical reason (like nondisclosure paranoia).
These people wouldn't be volunteering patches if they didn't enjoy working with the stuff, and you could make it even more interesting by going out of your way to provide docs, specs, and development support. That's a good way to make sure that freelance developers stay loyal AND that your products are among the best supported.
Some companies are already good about this, more of them aren't.
Little-known but somewhat related fact: the Linux drivers for many 3Com cards are inferior to the Windows drivers, because 3Com declined to provide specifications for the "Parallel Tasking" feature of the cards. Open source drivers are forced to bypass this feature, resulting in lower performance.
It's true that the click-through rate on most ads is pretty miserable. Likewise, it's pretty rare to suddenly change your destination because you saw a billboard along the road.
Except for the small percentage of informed users who have implemented ad blocking systems (such as the list of about 50 blackholes I used to keep in my hosts file), I think banner ads DO work. They're just using the wrong metric to measure success. Hell, I don't know if you CAN measure success. An ad is designed to make an impression on the passer-by, so that they might remember a certain product or service later on. It's rare that something is so interesting that I immediately want to cancel my browsing destination just to check it out. But I frequently remember the names of companies I saw mentioned in a banner ad (for instance, when I was looking for a colocation provider, I thought of Rackspace, which advertises frequently on Andover).
First off, I don't speak for Loki here; these are my personal observations.
Quake3 came out as a boxed product for Windows before it came out as a boxed product for Linux (speaking of the full commercial game, not the demos). Many of the hardcore Quake people went out and bought the Windows version, knowing that that Linux binaries could be downloaded for free. How many people are going to wait an unknown amount of time for a possible boxed Linux product when the Windows version is readily available with easily downloadable Linux support?
Multiple versions and ever-changing kernels? Please. Ever-changing GL drivers, perhaps, but that was hardly a problem since Quake3 was THE driver benchmarking tool (and Carmack was somewhat involved in their development). Support was a nightmare? I thought Loki was handling the support for the Linux version.
The Linux gaming community will get over it. There's more impressive stuff coming out (like Tribes 2). We'll get our gaming fix.
How 'bout SDL? There's been some discussion about this on the SDL mailing list lately. It's not too terribly difficult to add support for new architectures to SDL, and it does a good job of abstracting possible hardware acceleration features where they exist. It also has support for creating OpenGL contexts.
If someone would port OpenGL to the Dreamcast (does it exist?), SDL could take care of the rest in short order.
Most humans can remember 7 to 9 items offhand; anything longer usually has to be memorized. It's a basic fact of human memory. You can prove it to yourself by trying to quickly remember a list of 5 random numbers, then adding numbers until you have trouble.
11 or 12 digit phone numbers will be much harder to deal with, and not just proportionally so. A better solution would be to introduce a wider variety of symbols, but that would mean upgrading all of the phone hardware in the country.
GNOME+Sawfish is, quite frankly, much more stable.
I don't like the environment as much (I think their core technologies are great though), but it's more usable than KDE simoply because of its stability.
I spent about 5 months writing a book in SGML, but ended up converting to LaTeX because SGML was becoming an enormous headache. The separation between content and presentation sounds good in theory, but the present implementation just doesn't work too well when it comes time to generate presentable output. (I'm thinking of Jade here.)
SGML and XML are great for writing technical documents that need to be presented in a variety of formats, but it's usually not a good idea to use it for documents that are intended for traditional printing (or even online publication in.pdf or.ps format). LaTeX has given me much more control over my book than I ever had with SGML. Presentation is PART of writing a book - try as you might to separate the two, you'll end up with a work of inferior quality if you ignore presentation while you write.
LaTeX is a pleasure to work with. Its (TeX-based) syntax is concise, it has a powerful set of pre-defined environments, and I especially like the ability to easily define my own macros for just about any type of document convention (warning/note boxes, code listings, etc).
I'll also point out that the whole intent of LaTeX is to allow for a separation between content and presentation; plain TeX is at the opposite extreme (it's a raw formatting language with more features than Microsoft's finest bloatware and no known bugs since 1989). Properly used, LaTeX specifies only content and semantics, with all of the formatting contained in a set of macros.
-John
(a very happy LaTeX user)
FWIW, the document in question is at http://www.lokigames.com/%7Eovercode/lgp/lgp.pdf. It's formatted with pdflatex and about two pages of custom macros. I'd be happy to send my macro file to anyone who's interested.
Perfection? Yes. Practicality? That's probably a better question.
The FSF has done a hell of a lot of good as the lone "voice of freedom" in the software industry, so being a bit extremist isn't necessarily a bad thing. RMS is the perfect leader for the FSF - he's not willing to compromise the FSF's ideals for anything. It would be a very flimsy and untrustworthy organization otherwise.
If this were the case, would you be able to give the (obsolete) record to a friend after obtaining a CD copy? Could you keep it? Would you have to destroy it?
Slashdot Mirror
Have you SEEN PocketLinux and the similar competing handheld Linux flavors? This is NOT just a bastardhack -- it's quite usable. I'd rather code for PocketLinux than PalmOS any day (yes, I've coded for PalmOS, I know what it's like).
-John
Ack, I should have read the article more closely. It's not the type of weapon I was thinking of.
-John
There's been a bit of fuss about this type of weapon as inhumane, but I'm not sure it's any more or less brutal than, say, a machine gun, a bayonette, or a grenade. In any case I doubt these will replace guns any time soon.
-John
Would the USPTO get scrambled too? and would the DMCA cease to exist? If not, recomputerizing the world would be a real mess.
-John
http://www.patentburner.com is my little cache of tools. (And yes, I actually use them to view DVDs I've purchased.)
:)
It was mildly uplifting to see DST's mention of the Scheme version I hacked together
-John
It's named the Apple Public Source License, not the Apple Free Software License, and it lives up to its name. Stallman rejects it (for good reasons), but was it ever intended to gain Stallman's support?
I'm wary of the APSL (and indeed any other custom license made by a big company so they can jump on the open source or free software bandwagon while still at least feeling like they're in control of the code), but Apple has done some good things with it. OpenPlay, for instance, will be a really neat networked gaming API once the Linux port is cleaned up a bit.
It's nice that Stallman took the time to review this license and provide intelligent commentary, but I don't think anyone should be surprised by his response.
-John
Juries are more of a study in manipulative group psychology than in any honest judgement of what's right or wrong. After reading a bit on the subject (I'm minoring in psych at the moment), I'm truly frightened that one day such a group of people might judge me or a friend.
People tend to be so confident of their ability to see into others that they fail to realize they are being driven to a particular verdict -- even when they KNOW the lawyers are trying to do this. Most people think they can tell when someone else is lying, but this is almost never the case, and certainly not a reliable basis for judging someone's guilt or innocence.
In short, juries are seriously flawed, at least as they are presently implemented. Better than an arbitrary decision by a judge, perhaps -- but at least a judge is trained in the field and *usually* doesn't have a strong bias one way or another.
-John
Handwriting recognition is being worked on:p ng
:) We're currently reworking the algorithm to have a shot at Kanji recognition.
http://www.patentburner.com/~overcode/glyphrec.
Not quite usable yet, but pretty soon handwriting recognition will not be a problem under Linux. Several other projects have also written recognizers, but this one outperforms all of the ones I've seen. It requires very little memory (5k code, 20k database). And it's GPL
As for graphics output, the Linux framebuffer console does a great job, and it's a standard part of the kernel.
Today's PDA's are pretty damn powerful -- many have 32-bit processors (often MIPS- or SH3-based), and at least 8 megs of RAM. The MIPS kernel certainly needed some modifications to run on handhelds, but it's still recognizably Linux, as evidenced by some of the applications it's already running.
-John
Many universities also forbid using their network resources for business-related activities. (I think this is an incredibly counterproductive policy for both the university and the students, but it's often in the contracts.)
-John
As much as I hate the RIAA, you're incorrect. You purchase the physical media, but not the data. That's copyrighted. (This is the whole point of copyright.)
IANAL, so keep a few grains of salt handy.
-John
Knowing Congress, they'll probably comply with IDSA's request, in the interest of "protecting the children". As an avid gamer, I believe this is a crock of $#!+, but Congress is known to be unclueful about such things.
It might happen anyway, but perhaps a few hundred thousand letters from gamers might demonstrate that there's another side to this issue.
Some possible arguments (brainstorming for my own letter):
-Multiplayer games are essentially competitive sports, not much different from physical sports like football. They promote teamwork, cooperation, and perseverence.
-There is no evidence that violent games lead to real-world violence. In fact, many theorize that it does exactly the opposite, providing a channel for stressed people to let out their aggression in a safe way.
-Existing rating systems make it easy for parents to distinguish between violent and nonviolent games. For instance, the game _Soldier of Fortune_ bears a large red stop sign on the front of its box, containing a clear warning to parents. There is no possible way a parent could mistake this game for a harmless Disney adventure. SoF and other games also carry easy to read ESRB content ratings.
-John
Mac OS X is supposed to be a user-friendly desktop OS. If anything I'd say it competes with BeOS, not Linux. Linux is supposed to be an open and free community project. OS X is not.
But what if it does win some ground for Linux? That's a good thing, isn't it? At least it's a solid technical effort, unlike some other mainstream OSes we used to toy with. It's derived from BSD UNIX, which despite everything is a largely open, well-documented, well-understood, and absurdly stable platform. I'd rejoice if OS X were to succeed, even if it meant some loss in Linux market share.
-John
Look around Dallas, TX some time (:::Digital::Convergence:::'s home). They've put :Cue's (oh, it hurts to say it) in the Dallas Morning News ("swipe here for more info about this article"), and they advertise all over the place. So they're trying.
My CueCat has been idle on my desk for a long time, offering a mild red glow of CueCat warmth to its surroundings. Maybe I'll open it and remove the ID code some day. Hmmm. Or not.
-John
You're a customer. Don't put up with this crap. I've bought one DVD in my life, and that was for the purpose of testing the Linux DVD players. The DVD CCA pisses me off, so they don't get my money.
Same goes with any manufacturer who supports SDMI (I've already returned one portable player). High-definition TV that limits my freedom to timeshift or make copies for friends is no different. A certain dorm room at Georgia Tech will not be equipped with one of these.
If enough people do this, it'll stop happening. If enough people don't do this (the likely case), we deserve what we get.
-John
I bought a Dreamcast so I could work on the DC Linux project, but I've already bought two games for it and I intend to buy more. PC's beat the crap out of consoles in terms of graphics and speed. The whole point of having a console, other than the hack value, is to be able to put in a game and spend a few hours playing it without crashes, rebooting, compatibility problems, or someone killing your game by sending you an instant message. I'm willing to bet that nearly everyone involved in DC hacking also owns a few shrinkwrapped games. That's where Sega makes its money. Just because someone wants to hack a console doesn't mean they don't also want to have some mindless fun with Crazy Taxi or Armada.
-John
There's nothing more frustrating than trying to code for a piece of hardware that lacks documentation, especially if it's for a non-technical reason (like nondisclosure paranoia).
These people wouldn't be volunteering patches if they didn't enjoy working with the stuff, and you could make it even more interesting by going out of your way to provide docs, specs, and development support. That's a good way to make sure that freelance developers stay loyal AND that your products are among the best supported.
Some companies are already good about this, more of them aren't.
Little-known but somewhat related fact: the Linux drivers for many 3Com cards are inferior to the Windows drivers, because 3Com declined to provide specifications for the "Parallel Tasking" feature of the cards. Open source drivers are forced to bypass this feature, resulting in lower performance.
-John
It's true that the click-through rate on most ads is pretty miserable. Likewise, it's pretty rare to suddenly change your destination because you saw a billboard along the road.
Except for the small percentage of informed users who have implemented ad blocking systems (such as the list of about 50 blackholes I used to keep in my hosts file), I think banner ads DO work. They're just using the wrong metric to measure success. Hell, I don't know if you CAN measure success. An ad is designed to make an impression on the passer-by, so that they might remember a certain product or service later on. It's rare that something is so interesting that I immediately want to cancel my browsing destination just to check it out. But I frequently remember the names of companies I saw mentioned in a banner ad (for instance, when I was looking for a colocation provider, I thought of Rackspace, which advertises frequently on Andover).
-John
First off, I don't speak for Loki here; these are my personal observations.
Quake3 came out as a boxed product for Windows before it came out as a boxed product for Linux (speaking of the full commercial game, not the demos). Many of the hardcore Quake people went out and bought the Windows version, knowing that that Linux binaries could be downloaded for free. How many people are going to wait an unknown amount of time for a possible boxed Linux product when the Windows version is readily available with easily downloadable Linux support?
Multiple versions and ever-changing kernels? Please. Ever-changing GL drivers, perhaps, but that was hardly a problem since Quake3 was THE driver benchmarking tool (and Carmack was somewhat involved in their development). Support was a nightmare? I thought Loki was handling the support for the Linux version.
The Linux gaming community will get over it. There's more impressive stuff coming out (like Tribes 2). We'll get our gaming fix.
-John [badly in need of a faster 3D card for T2]
How 'bout SDL? There's been some discussion about this on the SDL mailing list lately. It's not too terribly difficult to add support for new architectures to SDL, and it does a good job of abstracting possible hardware acceleration features where they exist. It also has support for creating OpenGL contexts.
If someone would port OpenGL to the Dreamcast (does it exist?), SDL could take care of the rest in short order.
-John (an SDL zealot)
Most humans can remember 7 to 9 items offhand; anything longer usually has to be memorized. It's a basic fact of human memory. You can prove it to yourself by trying to quickly remember a list of 5 random numbers, then adding numbers until you have trouble.
11 or 12 digit phone numbers will be much harder to deal with, and not just proportionally so. A better solution would be to introduce a wider variety of symbols, but that would mean upgrading all of the phone hardware in the country.
-John
GNOME+Sawfish is, quite frankly, much more stable.
I don't like the environment as much (I think their core technologies are great though), but it's more usable than KDE simoply because of its stability.
-John
I spent about 5 months writing a book in SGML, but ended up converting to LaTeX because SGML was becoming an enormous headache. The separation between content and presentation sounds good in theory, but the present implementation just doesn't work too well when it comes time to generate presentable output. (I'm thinking of Jade here.)
.pdf or .ps format). LaTeX has given me much more control over my book than I ever had with SGML. Presentation is PART of writing a book - try as you might to separate the two, you'll end up with a work of inferior quality if you ignore presentation while you write.
SGML and XML are great for writing technical documents that need to be presented in a variety of formats, but it's usually not a good idea to use it for documents that are intended for traditional printing (or even online publication in
LaTeX is a pleasure to work with. Its (TeX-based) syntax is concise, it has a powerful set of pre-defined environments, and I especially like the ability to easily define my own macros for just about any type of document convention (warning/note boxes, code listings, etc).
I'll also point out that the whole intent of LaTeX is to allow for a separation between content and presentation; plain TeX is at the opposite extreme (it's a raw formatting language with more features than Microsoft's finest bloatware and no known bugs since 1989). Properly used, LaTeX specifies only content and semantics, with all of the formatting contained in a set of macros.
-John
(a very happy LaTeX user)
FWIW, the document in question is at http://www.lokigames.com/%7Eovercode/lgp/lgp.pdf. It's formatted with pdflatex and about two pages of custom macros. I'd be happy to send my macro file to anyone who's interested.
KDE 2.0 is nice, but it needs improved stability much more than it needs improved eye candy.
I look forward to the day when I can use KDE 2.0 as my desktop without frequent bug encounters.
-John
Perfection? Yes. Practicality? That's probably a better question.
The FSF has done a hell of a lot of good as the lone "voice of freedom" in the software industry, so being a bit extremist isn't necessarily a bad thing. RMS is the perfect leader for the FSF - he's not willing to compromise the FSF's ideals for anything. It would be a very flimsy and untrustworthy organization otherwise.
-John
If this were the case, would you be able to give the (obsolete) record to a friend after obtaining a CD copy? Could you keep it? Would you have to destroy it?
-John