We *just got* two browsers (Mozilla 0.8.1 and IE 5) to do a reasonably good job of displaying HTML, CSS and Javascript similarly, after years of effort. This is not the time to replace the current system.
Another client-side language sounds like a great idea, and I'm all for it, especially if it makes certain kinds of things easier. However, there is something to be said for stable, mature technologies, and building something new usually means several years of debugging and learning curves.
Can any of this work be contributed to the *current* languages, to see if they can be improved?
Remember the sudden "discovery" of the market for sub-$1000 computers? Perhaps the move to open source, or maybe more specifically, *less expensive* software is just the same thing that happened for the PC market.
Its nice when the average person (or company) can afford to buy solid, high-quality applications, like those available for Linux (Office suites, development tools, network tools), without spending four figures.
This might continue even if there isn't a recession. People just can't afford this constant "thousands of dollars a year" upgrade cycle. Its too much, and its really unnecessary.
Could someone explain when the Copyright Laws were amended? I don't remember the term "dual-copyright" *ever* being mentioned by anyone.
I don't believe that copyright can be assigned without explicit written permission, and I'm almost sure there is no such thing as dual-copyright. Copyright belongs to the author, and it can be licensed, but dual-ownership is, as far as I can tell, not mentioned.
Game development in the current business model is problematic even for Windows platforms. The problem is not the games or the technology, it is that there is no viable business model for any game other than the top ten. Its that simple.
By the time the boxes get to the retail shelf, the developers and publishers have dug a hole so deep that they have to sell hundreds of thousands of units just to break even. Those numbers aren't there for any games except the top ten and perhaps one unlikely left-field surprise. Everyone else loses their shirts. This is the fundamental problem in computer games.
Until this problem: the business model, is fixed, nothing is going to improve. Fixing the business model will mean that some difficult decisions will have to be made, but at some point, the game industry is going to have to face reality:
1. Re-invention of a "state of the art" engine for every single title will have to stop.
2. Standard platforms and APIs will have to be developed and *adhered to* for five years at a time or more. Accomplishing #1 will help here.
3. Games will have to become simpler, in order to encourage casual players to buy more games.
4. More companies will have to get involved and be able to succeed.
Otherwise, its just going to be one expensive project after another with "worse than bad" sales, while the game press whines about the lack of originality and how the game industry isn't enough like Hollywood and that the engine and graphics look "dated," and the players complain that every game is a clone of some other game, and everyone else wonders why someone would spend $3500 upgrading their computer so they can get some game to run faster.
When a good game can be developed for a couple hundred thousand dollars, then it will become possible to make money developing primarily for Linux, because selling 20,000 units at $30 means there is some profit to be had. If it costs $5 million, its not going to happen, unless it is a cross-platform effort, and even then, it won't get funded, because the break-even number is just too high.
It might also be nice if some new "genres" of games could be developed and/or some games from the semi-forgotten genres like puzzle, adventure and interactive fiction could be developed. A good sign would be a wildly successful game that doesn't neatly fit into a particular section of PC Gamer.
FWIW, our company fully intends to continue developing for Linux.
One would think releasing a 1.0 product would be cause for celebration rather than a round of layoffs.
What is going on here?? Five months ago, the world was called Utopia, and now everyone is selling pencils? Come on. Someone else in this thread said something about FUD. I think there's a bit of it going around in this "economic downturn" or whatever the hype-phrase of the week is.
Clearing houses have been used to facilitate many-to-many licensing for radio stations to play copyrighted music for years. Why can't the same approach be taken here? Individual licensing of each particular copyrighted work is impractical and not in the interests of anyone involved.
However, there is no reason why a clearing house could not be set up to license large amounts of intellectual "property" under broad, unrestrictive terms, then make those licenses available at predictable rates to someone wishing to use that property in a commercial venture, or clear the use in a non-commercial, non-competitive way.
This would probably make everyone happy, and would probably be an excellent business model for some company.
Once again, fair use is being ignored. Its already part of the law. What happens when two laws are passed that don't agree with each other?
Its already almost a given that people think using a sound or piece of music or a graphic image of a television show or whatever is "illegal," even if it meets most if not all of the fair use tests.
At the very least, it will probably generate a letter from a lawyer somewhere saying "this is a violation of our copyrights," when in fact, it probably isn't.
Somewhere along the line, there has to be some legally precedent-setting case law or some commentary on some of these issues before any more laws are passed. Fair Use has to remain part of the law.
Hmmm. So according to this ruling, if I "sufficiently transform" copyrighted material, it becomes permissible under fair use? I didn't see that in the fair use provisions.
Does anyone know the basis for this ruling? Is there case law on this somewhere? I would think that use of copyrighted material, unless it met most of the fair use provisions, would still require some kind of permission.
I think the game industry is trying really really hard to be like the movie industry, but, being a product of another era, it will not succeed.
The movie "industry" was born in an industrial age, and the characteristics of "building" a movie seem similar to building anything else: Get a whole bunch of money, spend the money to build something, sell the something at a profit, return the capital + some profit to the investors, keep the remaining profit.
The problem with this model is that there is only so much capital to go around, which creates a barrier for would-be builders.
Add to that the current wisdom in building computer games which says: invest 10,000 man-hours to come up with the world's greatest graphics engine, and the remaining 20,000 man-hours to debug it. Then, spend an afternoon on the gameplay and copy it to a CD.
This is the movie industry equivalent of inventing the camera, film, sound equipment, editing facilities and building a soundstage before starting work on the actual film. I suggest movies would be far lower quality if this were necessary in each case.
If the computer game industry is to succeed, the reinvention must be reduced considerably. Using Open Source or Free Software to make good game engine technology available to the game industry at large would make it possible for games to be constructed where the majority of hours are spent on gameplay and quality. If Open Source or Free Software were unavailable, then perhaps the engines could be licensed.
In any case, spending construction time on gameplay and quality would have a positive effect on computer games.
Closer and closer to what I would really like to have: a flat, paper-size web client, with wireless, high-speed internet access. (Running Linux, of course).
Some combination of this "electronic paper" and a touch-screen could very easily replace some computers. It definitely wouldn't work for programming, but it would be really useful where 100 lbs. of paper copies are generally required.
I was particularly amused by the fact the contract makes it so Yahoo isn't responsible for the content of the page...
...but they still have the rights to the content.
So somewhere somebody makes a contract that says: "We get everything, and you get five MB of free web space." Fantastic.
How many other people can't wait for the day when everyone with Linux can host their own fully-capable web site right from their desktop? You can have all the cgi programs you want, all the mailboxes, all the space, all the bandwidth, etc. That will be really cool.
Emacs, I am sure, took longer than a weekend to write. I wonder what the author of this article wrote last weekend that can compete with Emacs?
Why must technology be new in order to be acceptable?
Old technology works. New technology has bugs.
This will be so for a long time, so we better learn to deal with it.
What is the fascination with abandoning technology? The internal combustion engine is decades old. The basic design hasn't changed considerably from the original. Numerous other machines (like the helicopter) wouldn't have been possible without it, yet few people have suggested we abandon it even if newer technology is available to replace it.
Also, is it possible that Linux and the open-source idea are closer to democracy? If a majority of programmers prefer a certain approach, it becomes a part of the system, yet all programmers have a voice.
I read somewhere that "If it can't be described on one 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper, it cannot be understood." This seems to apply to documentation as well.
Generally speaking, the only person who reads pages 2-50 of a 50-page "document" is the person who wrote it.
Slashdot Mirror
We *just got* two browsers (Mozilla 0.8.1 and IE 5) to do a reasonably good job of displaying HTML, CSS and Javascript similarly, after years of effort. This is not the time to replace the current system.
Another client-side language sounds like a great idea, and I'm all for it, especially if it makes certain kinds of things easier. However, there is something to be said for stable, mature technologies, and building something new usually means several years of debugging and learning curves.
Can any of this work be contributed to the *current* languages, to see if they can be improved?
Remember the sudden "discovery" of the market for sub-$1000 computers? Perhaps the move to open source, or maybe more specifically, *less expensive* software is just the same thing that happened for the PC market.
:)
Its nice when the average person (or company) can afford to buy solid, high-quality applications, like those available for Linux (Office suites, development tools, network tools), without spending four figures.
This might continue even if there isn't a recession. People just can't afford this constant "thousands of dollars a year" upgrade cycle. Its too much, and its really unnecessary.
My $0.02
Could someone explain when the Copyright Laws were amended? I don't remember the term "dual-copyright" *ever* being mentioned by anyone.
I don't believe that copyright can be assigned without explicit written permission, and I'm almost sure there is no such thing as dual-copyright. Copyright belongs to the author, and it can be licensed, but dual-ownership is, as far as I can tell, not mentioned.
Game development in the current business model is problematic even for Windows platforms. The problem is not the games or the technology, it is that there is no viable business model for any game other than the top ten. Its that simple.
:)
By the time the boxes get to the retail shelf, the developers and publishers have dug a hole so deep that they have to sell hundreds of thousands of units just to break even. Those numbers aren't there for any games except the top ten and perhaps one unlikely left-field surprise. Everyone else loses their shirts. This is the fundamental problem in computer games.
Until this problem: the business model, is fixed, nothing is going to improve. Fixing the business model will mean that some difficult decisions will have to be made, but at some point, the game industry is going to have to face reality:
1. Re-invention of a "state of the art" engine for every single title will have to stop.
2. Standard platforms and APIs will have to be developed and *adhered to* for five years at a time or more. Accomplishing #1 will help here.
3. Games will have to become simpler, in order to encourage casual players to buy more games.
4. More companies will have to get involved and be able to succeed.
Otherwise, its just going to be one expensive project after another with "worse than bad" sales, while the game press whines about the lack of originality and how the game industry isn't enough like Hollywood and that the engine and graphics look "dated," and the players complain that every game is a clone of some other game, and everyone else wonders why someone would spend $3500 upgrading their computer so they can get some game to run faster.
When a good game can be developed for a couple hundred thousand dollars, then it will become possible to make money developing primarily for Linux, because selling 20,000 units at $30 means there is some profit to be had. If it costs $5 million, its not going to happen, unless it is a cross-platform effort, and even then, it won't get funded, because the break-even number is just too high.
It might also be nice if some new "genres" of games could be developed and/or some games from the semi-forgotten genres like puzzle, adventure and interactive fiction could be developed. A good sign would be a wildly successful game that doesn't neatly fit into a particular section of PC Gamer.
FWIW, our company fully intends to continue developing for Linux.
Just our $0.02
lol
Send Grandma to Tower Records with a copy protected CD and let her spend the afternoon...
oh, that's funny....
They did mention a couple of adventure game developers, but what happened to Infocom?
Don't mean to be repetitive, but adventures were the first computer games. Might be a *little* influential, perhaps...
One would think releasing a 1.0 product would be cause for celebration rather than a round of layoffs.
What is going on here?? Five months ago, the world was called Utopia, and now everyone is selling pencils? Come on. Someone else in this thread said something about FUD. I think there's a bit of it going around in this "economic downturn" or whatever the hype-phrase of the week is.
Clearing houses have been used to facilitate many-to-many licensing for radio stations to play copyrighted music for years. Why can't the same approach be taken here? Individual licensing of each particular copyrighted work is impractical and not in the interests of anyone involved.
However, there is no reason why a clearing house could not be set up to license large amounts of intellectual "property" under broad, unrestrictive terms, then make those licenses available at predictable rates to someone wishing to use that property in a commercial venture, or clear the use in a non-commercial, non-competitive way.
This would probably make everyone happy, and would probably be an excellent business model for some company.
Once again, fair use is being ignored. Its already part of the law. What happens when two laws are passed that don't agree with each other?
Its already almost a given that people think using a sound or piece of music or a graphic image of a television show or whatever is "illegal," even if it meets most if not all of the fair use tests.
At the very least, it will probably generate a letter from a lawyer somewhere saying "this is a violation of our copyrights," when in fact, it probably isn't.
Somewhere along the line, there has to be some legally precedent-setting case law or some commentary on some of these issues before any more laws are passed. Fair Use has to remain part of the law.
Hmmm. So according to this ruling, if I "sufficiently transform" copyrighted material, it becomes permissible under fair use? I didn't see that in the fair use provisions.
Does anyone know the basis for this ruling? Is there case law on this somewhere? I would think that use of copyrighted material, unless it met most of the fair use provisions, would still require some kind of permission.
I think the game industry is trying really really hard to be like the movie industry, but, being a product of another era, it will not succeed.
The movie "industry" was born in an industrial age, and the characteristics of "building" a movie seem similar to building anything else: Get a whole bunch of money, spend the money to build something, sell the something at a profit, return the capital + some profit to the investors, keep the remaining profit.
The problem with this model is that there is only so much capital to go around, which creates a barrier for would-be builders.
Add to that the current wisdom in building computer games which says: invest 10,000 man-hours to come up with the world's greatest graphics engine, and the remaining 20,000 man-hours to debug it. Then, spend an afternoon on the gameplay and copy it to a CD.
This is the movie industry equivalent of inventing the camera, film, sound equipment, editing facilities and building a soundstage before starting work on the actual film. I suggest movies would be far lower quality if this were necessary in each case.
If the computer game industry is to succeed, the reinvention must be reduced considerably. Using Open Source or Free Software to make good game engine technology available to the game industry at large would make it possible for games to be constructed where the majority of hours are spent on gameplay and quality. If Open Source or Free Software were unavailable, then perhaps the engines could be licensed.
In any case, spending construction time on gameplay and quality would have a positive effect on computer games.
Just a thought or two.
No, no, you have to add the echo:
"I will not sit by and watch you debate
endlessly in this committee - itee - itee - itee"
:)
Closer and closer to what I would really like to have: a flat, paper-size web client, with wireless, high-speed internet access. (Running Linux, of course).
Some combination of this "electronic paper" and a touch-screen could very easily replace some computers. It definitely wouldn't work for programming, but it would be really useful where 100 lbs. of paper copies are generally required.
I was particularly amused by the fact the contract makes it so Yahoo isn't responsible for the content of the page...
...but they still have the rights to the content.
So somewhere somebody makes a contract that says: "We get everything, and you get five MB of free web space." Fantastic.
How many other people can't wait for the day when everyone with Linux can host their own fully-capable web site right from their desktop?
You can have all the cgi programs you want, all the mailboxes, all the space, all the bandwidth, etc. That will be really cool.
Just a thought.
Emacs, I am sure, took longer than a weekend to write. I wonder what the author of this article wrote last weekend that can compete with Emacs?
Why must technology be new in order to be acceptable?
Old technology works.
New technology has bugs.
This will be so for a long time, so we better learn to deal with it.
What is the fascination with abandoning technology? The internal combustion engine is decades old. The basic design hasn't changed considerably from the original. Numerous other machines (like the helicopter) wouldn't have been possible without it, yet few people have suggested we abandon it even if newer technology is available to replace it.
Also, is it possible that Linux and the open-source idea are closer to democracy? If a majority of programmers prefer a certain approach, it becomes a part of the system, yet all programmers have a voice.
Just a thought.
The Cat
He will definitely be missed.
Star Trek wouldn't have been the same without Dr. McCoy.
I read somewhere that "If it can't be described on one 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper, it cannot be understood." This seems to apply to documentation as well.
Generally speaking, the only person who reads pages 2-50 of a 50-page "document" is the person who wrote it.
Just a thought.
The seller is responsible to pay sales tax, and, (I believe) sales tax can only be collected if the buyer receives the product in the state.