But if I recall correctly, and I could be wrong of course, the court was discussing M$'s bundling practices (Netscape and OS) of the past 10 years, before Linux was a choice, while OS/2 was still a contender, and when Netscape was still a solvent, independent company.
Now the landscape is radically different. It makes no sense to talk about today's situation in the context of yester-year's behaviors.
Don't forget, there was OS/2, Windows, Linux, etc.
M$ has a per PC tax that applies to *all* PC shipped by the big companies, and many small companies, regardless of whether it's a clean machine, a Linux machine, etc.
IBM isn't the only manufacturer of PCs, where Apple is.
Apple is not a monopoly in PC space though. It shares the field with M$.
If confined to PPC space, it can be charged with being a monopoly, but it actually created that space, and owns that space. It's a tough call if any sort of regulation can be thrown at them, since there really isn't any competition.
So we must all agree first what constitutes damage to the consumer.
How about this: Lack of choice for the consumer. Not being able to chose best of breed web browsers, through bundling and other practices. Netscape, specifically, and not being able to sell PCs with Netscape, as dictated by MS.
Or how about not being able to chose the best of breed graphics and 3d for PCs. We get direct3d at the expense of openGL, when openGL was mature and well defined, and direct3d was just a poorly design upgrade to Windows. Stuck with poor performance, poor implementation, poor design and poor product for 6 iterations now.
What else? How about their pricing policies, essentially the M$ tax? Every PC comes with M$ Windows, and you pay for it, even if you don't need it? It's similar to bundling child car seats with every car, and charging for it. It's not even a selling feature, it's mandatory with every PC that Compaq or Dell had to sell.
There are other things, and I'm not going to try to research it. But M$ has done some bad things (not that any other corporation hasn't!) Apple, of course, does very similar things-but Apple isn't a monopoly, and M$ is.
If the tv image is bright enough, won't that prevent dilation?
And if the image is dark, then dilation won't really hurt, right?
Dilation is something that is self-adjusting according to brightness I think. So I don't know that 'more' or 'less' radiation is allowed in. I don't know at what point the pupil will dilate, but I do know that my monitor right now is bright that I can see across my room, with lights off.
I too look at the sun sometimes. It isn't really yellow or orange or white;
It looks like a brilliant blue disk towards white in the center, and a yellow ring around it.
Looking at the sun is no more or less dangerous than just being in the sun. The problem is that the sun gives off a tremendous amount of UV light, which can cook skin, eyes, retina, lens, etc. So just *looking* at it isn't a problem, it's the associated 'sunburn' that comes with basking in it that may hurt.
So the sun can cook you, if you allow it to. It can harden your lenses, denature your pigmentation and other proteins, etc.
I have heard carrots *do* have compounds essential for the visual system. I dunno if they help, but they certainly don't hurt!
TV is it's own light source. The only thing additional light can do is reduce the contrast of the image on the screen, I think.</ramble>
So please clue me in on the advancing nature of Direct3d.
At least, I'm separating DirectX from Direct3d, because comparing the sound libraries of DirectX is meaningless.
If I'm not mistaken, all of the progress in Direct3d, from v1-v6 was to *catch* up to OpenGL.
Which means, as of D3d6, MS is starting to reach parity with OpenGL.
Which features are you talking about, in terms of GL, is M$ overtaking them? GL does rely on vendor extensions because it makes sense; each vendor will *want* to supply optimizations and features that they have, and when everyone else has those features, the GL board will increment the version number and include that feature into the set.
M$'s way is to implement in software mode, what isn't found in hardware, isn't it? That's not terribly useful, actually, if software can't keep up, and if software can keep up, then there is no need for there to be vendor implementations, right? So software supplied multi-pass texture is useless in this light.
So as far as I can tell, GL isn't behind and M$ isn't actually doing all that much.
I'm looking for someone to create the ultimate co-op game.
I don't think I've found a good one yet; Diablo and other such games have some of the flavor, but don't quite have the teamwork or shared experience that Doom [12] did.
Multiplayer deathmatch games are too haphazard and uncoordinated, whereas tight storydriven games are too delicate. Is there a way to create a *shared* experience game? I guess a war sim, with players a soldiers in a platoon, might do it.
I think it just requires the proper matching of story, plot, and gameplay to do it, and that it isn't impossible, even if it hasn't quite been done yet either. Think of movies that have group dynamics, and try to capture some of that in a game. I guess I'm rambling now.
Still, I'm looking forward to Doom3, if only to see what ID puts out this time...
Without the 'technology as game phase' we wouldn't have the Half Lifes and Hexens, would we?
ID does what it does well, and everyone else mooches off them. If no one is doing what you need, in terms of games, then go do the noble, honorable, open source thing, and go scratch your itch. Buy a copy of Quake[123] and go brew your own game. Code your own logic, make your own models, map your own levels, monsters, weapons, stories, etc. And then release it/sell it/distribute it. Because others are just as weary as you are, and will give you much praise/wealth/accolades for your contribution to their life.
GPL is meant to allow people the freedom of using code. It means anyone anywhere anytime can use and hack and play with the code to suit their needs, to scratch their itches.
It just so happens that GPL would not help id. It would not even help the community, I think, because anyone who can casually jump in and 'browse' and edit and play with the code, would probably be able to write this kind of stuff from scratch in the first place. It's highly specialized, highly tuned, highly precise code to do things tight and fast.
I guess it would benefit non-owners/writers of code if we could look through it and learn from it, but that is almost exactly why he GPLs his old out of date code. It's more useful as training material than it is for release/sales.
If someone wants a GPL high performance 3d engine, there is Crystal Space. Otherwise, ID owns Quake3, and can decide *when* and *if* to GPL it. No one else.
If the users could 'rank' sites as well, the the criteria of 'getting the best results' would be fulfilled pretty quickly, regardless of search-sorting.
If all the users get are Coca-cola sites, no matter how they search, and these are not relevent sites, then they will get devalued to the point of non-existence.
So any gross abuse gets moderated by the user population.
Thus any useless site, no matter how hard they try, will not be able to maintain a high rank.
Increase relevence points if a link is followed
Decrease relevence points if a link is ignored(next is hit, instead)
Decrease relevence points if a new search is defined(none of the prior search were sufficient)
Increase relevence points if 'similar pages' is followed
It should behave something like what you propose, without additional cookies, work, voting, or otherwise. Other than normal behavior!
You don't need cookies or privacy violating initiatives to improve searches at all!
Imagine a different criteria;
If you do a search and within some time limit hit the 'next' link at Google, the search engine should knock a few criteria points off the first page of returned links, under the concept that those were not accurate enough matches.
If you do a new search with a variant/refinement of the original search, then knock off points from all the pages that were browsed as irrelevent.
If you use the 'related pages' then add points to the page that was found.
Every link that is followed should have added points, under the concept that they were good enough, on inspection, to be useful.
At no time does the server ever need to place a cookie to keep track of you, other than session ID or something like that!
Some really good points by previous posters that I want to recap:
If you open up the criteria such that *everyone* exploits the criteria, then there is no discrimination. When the criteria is closed, only those who have found the exploits can get increased exposure, making it inherently unfair.
Another issue is that what a search engine wants you to see is different than what you want the search engine to give you, in some cases.
We want the union of two criteria; the results that give the search engine the most use/reuse(usefulness of the search) and the results that give the search engine the most financial recompense(so that the search engine can grow, get better, get faster, etc)
They may not be correlated, but they are both very important. The most useful pages may not give them the most money, and the pages that pay them the most may not generate enough repeat use for them either.
Perhaps the best search algorithm is two step:
Rank according to links (the more links to a page, the more useful the page)
Count repeat use (the more times a search has to be refined, the less useful the pages returned)
Rank according to links already occurs at Altavista and Google.
I don't know that anyone does the second.
Say you do a search on Google; if you hit the next button, then the pages that were generated get knocked a few points. If you hit Google again a few minutes later with a variant search, then knock a few points to *all* the pages that got listed in the previous search. If a user goes back, and hits 'related' pages, increase the points to that page, and all the related pages. Repeat the above algorithm for every hit to Google.
I don't disagree that containment is likely to lead to loss of information. But I have to stress that the term containment is used loosely; something/someone/somehow it must be contained so that it can be transferred. It is this 'containing' process that renders information useful. Having raw information is sorta like having a room full of N2 gas, whereas 'contained' information is like having the N2 gas condensed into liquid nitrogen; it can be used and carried and stored. The usefulness of the product, whether it be LiNi or information, is fully dependent on how much portability and transfer it has. Information, unlike LiNi, can be spread easily, without much hazard containers and carefully used gear.
And about the money point; forget legal tender and such. Think of it descriptually, how it is used and how it exists. Money is a pointer, a value, used to represent an object, and as such, is a simple interpretation of said object. A Coke is $0.5, or $0.5 is a Coke. Money *is* a social legal construct to enable the useful transfer of goods and 'information' without too much extra knowledge of said objects or infrastructure.
Information is something similar, in that it is 'meta' objects used to describe an object or reality, without actually having to dig too much into the real object. Statistical information, for example, talks about large groups of events without having to look at the events themselves. Both money and information are descriptors of the objects and the reality, without being the reality itself.
My intent with that statement, that information by it's existence violates the 2nd law was intended to convey the fact that information is equivalent to your N2 bunched together into the corner of the room; unless more energey is used than the information is worth, the information will dissapear. And this energy has to be maintained for the information to stay useful. If information is made free in the way your analogy would suggest, and in an uncontained way, it would disappear, degrade into the noise.
I argue usefulness by the very fact that someone is willing to absorb and transmit information; if it is useless information, it will disappear back into the noise, and no one will know about it.
Money==information *is* valid. Money *can* be copied. Interest rates, banks, printing presses, mints, counterfeiters, are all avenues by which money gets created. The cost of creating money is much less than the money is worth, a lot like mp3s, knowledge, etc.
Information is simply a pattern that is subject to interpretation; I disagree. Information is already interpreted. Without interpretation, it is just noise.
And to further my money argument, money is simply a acknowledgement of value-by itself it is worthless unless someone accepts that value. Much like 'information' becomes noise unless someone values that information
The problem is that whether you like it or not, the music shared on Napster is someone else's property.
Um, who's property?
The artist's property?
The distributor's property?
The owner's property?
Question is, is it fair use to share? If so, then is anything wrong occuring? I think so-artist's aren't being compensated for generating 'value'. Distributors need not get anything because they aren't distributing. Owner's can share freely *because* they own it. However, they run against the rights of distributors to distribute; an artist never gave this 'right' to *us*, but technology does. The problem then is how to use this technology to compensate the artist.
So if you wrote the software, you should have control over it; it's distribution should follow your desires, legally, and not the law, not the desires of corporations, etc.
Taking something against another's desires does make someone something of a thief, I admit. But it's not wrong to take from RIAA; it's wrong to take it from the artist who wrote it.
I think it's important to separate the issues of ownership and rights, and distribution and rights. In this age, artists should be able to control their own distribution due to the capability of technology.
Slashdot Mirror
That's certainly true *now*.
But if I recall correctly, and I could be wrong of course, the court was discussing M$'s bundling practices (Netscape and OS) of the past 10 years, before Linux was a choice, while OS/2 was still a contender, and when Netscape was still a solvent, independent company.
Now the landscape is radically different. It makes no sense to talk about today's situation in the context of yester-year's behaviors.
The nick is a joke! Really!
Don't forget, there was OS/2, Windows, Linux, etc.
M$ has a per PC tax that applies to *all* PC shipped by the big companies, and many small companies, regardless of whether it's a clean machine, a Linux machine, etc.
IBM isn't the only manufacturer of PCs, where Apple is.
The nick is a joke! Really!
Apple is not a monopoly in PC space though. It shares the field with M$.
If confined to PPC space, it can be charged with being a monopoly, but it actually created that space, and owns that space. It's a tough call if any sort of regulation can be thrown at them, since there really isn't any competition.
The nick is a joke! Really!
Heres the problem then:
Splitting up the company *is* slapping them hard. That's hard to disagree with.
Splitting up the company into either competitive components or complementary components *also* prevents many of the anti-competitive practices.
Is there a better way? The DOJ lawyers didn't think so!
At least you aren't disagreeing with the fact that M$ did harm and needs to make amends.
The nick is a joke! Really!
So we must all agree first what constitutes damage to the consumer.
How about this: Lack of choice for the consumer. Not being able to chose best of breed web browsers, through bundling and other practices. Netscape, specifically, and not being able to sell PCs with Netscape, as dictated by MS.
Or how about not being able to chose the best of breed graphics and 3d for PCs. We get direct3d at the expense of openGL, when openGL was mature and well defined, and direct3d was just a poorly design upgrade to Windows. Stuck with poor performance, poor implementation, poor design and poor product for 6 iterations now.
What else? How about their pricing policies, essentially the M$ tax? Every PC comes with M$ Windows, and you pay for it, even if you don't need it? It's similar to bundling child car seats with every car, and charging for it. It's not even a selling feature, it's mandatory with every PC that Compaq or Dell had to sell.
There are other things, and I'm not going to try to research it. But M$ has done some bad things (not that any other corporation hasn't!) Apple, of course, does very similar things-but Apple isn't a monopoly, and M$ is.
The nick is a joke! Really!
If the tv image is bright enough, won't that prevent dilation?
And if the image is dark, then dilation won't really hurt, right?
Dilation is something that is self-adjusting according to brightness I think. So I don't know that 'more' or 'less' radiation is allowed in. I don't know at what point the pupil will dilate, but I do know that my monitor right now is bright that I can see across my room, with lights off.
The nick is a joke! Really!
I too look at the sun sometimes. It isn't really yellow or orange or white;
It looks like a brilliant blue disk towards white in the center, and a yellow ring around it.
Looking at the sun is no more or less dangerous than just being in the sun. The problem is that the sun gives off a tremendous amount of UV light, which can cook skin, eyes, retina, lens, etc. So just *looking* at it isn't a problem, it's the associated 'sunburn' that comes with basking in it that may hurt.
So the sun can cook you, if you allow it to. It can harden your lenses, denature your pigmentation and other proteins, etc.
I have heard carrots *do* have compounds essential for the visual system. I dunno if they help, but they certainly don't hurt!
TV is it's own light source. The only thing additional light can do is reduce the contrast of the image on the screen, I think.</ramble>
The nick is a joke! Really!
the Matrix?
Not to diss the Matrix, I actually did like it a lot. More then SWeI!
The nick is a joke! Really!
Well, GL hasn't been sitting still, either. GL was released 1.0 on 1992. 1.1 in 1997, and 1.2 came out in 1999.
1.2 adds 3d texture mapping, multi-texturing, new pixel formats, specular lighting, level-of-detail etc.
V1.3 is under proposal, though I can't find anything concrete about it.
But this is why I asked; what is D3D doing that's surpassing OpenGL?
The nick is a joke! Really!
So please clue me in on the advancing nature of Direct3d.
At least, I'm separating DirectX from Direct3d, because comparing the sound libraries of DirectX is meaningless.
If I'm not mistaken, all of the progress in Direct3d, from v1-v6 was to *catch* up to OpenGL.
Which means, as of D3d6, MS is starting to reach parity with OpenGL.
Which features are you talking about, in terms of GL, is M$ overtaking them? GL does rely on vendor extensions because it makes sense; each vendor will *want* to supply optimizations and features that they have, and when everyone else has those features, the GL board will increment the version number and include that feature into the set.
M$'s way is to implement in software mode, what isn't found in hardware, isn't it? That's not terribly useful, actually, if software can't keep up, and if software can keep up, then there is no need for there to be vendor implementations, right? So software supplied multi-pass texture is useless in this light.
So as far as I can tell, GL isn't behind and M$ isn't actually doing all that much.
The nick is a joke! Really!
I'm looking for someone to create the ultimate co-op game.
I don't think I've found a good one yet; Diablo and other such games have some of the flavor, but don't quite have the teamwork or shared experience that Doom [12] did.
Multiplayer deathmatch games are too haphazard and uncoordinated, whereas tight storydriven games are too delicate. Is there a way to create a *shared* experience game? I guess a war sim, with players a soldiers in a platoon, might do it.
I think it just requires the proper matching of story, plot, and gameplay to do it, and that it isn't impossible, even if it hasn't quite been done yet either. Think of movies that have group dynamics, and try to capture some of that in a game. I guess I'm rambling now.
Still, I'm looking forward to Doom3, if only to see what ID puts out this time...
The nick is a joke! Really!
Without the 'technology as game phase' we wouldn't have the Half Lifes and Hexens, would we?
ID does what it does well, and everyone else mooches off them. If no one is doing what you need, in terms of games, then go do the noble, honorable, open source thing, and go scratch your itch. Buy a copy of Quake[123] and go brew your own game. Code your own logic, make your own models, map your own levels, monsters, weapons, stories, etc. And then release it/sell it/distribute it. Because others are just as weary as you are, and will give you much praise/wealth/accolades for your contribution to their life.
The nick is a joke! Really!
Though it may be worthy of trolling or flamebait.
GPL is meant to allow people the freedom of using code. It means anyone anywhere anytime can use and hack and play with the code to suit their needs, to scratch their itches.
It just so happens that GPL would not help id. It would not even help the community, I think, because anyone who can casually jump in and 'browse' and edit and play with the code, would probably be able to write this kind of stuff from scratch in the first place. It's highly specialized, highly tuned, highly precise code to do things tight and fast.
I guess it would benefit non-owners/writers of code if we could look through it and learn from it, but that is almost exactly why he GPLs his old out of date code. It's more useful as training material than it is for release/sales.
If someone wants a GPL high performance 3d engine, there is Crystal Space. Otherwise, ID owns Quake3, and can decide *when* and *if* to GPL it. No one else.
The nick is a joke! Really!
Because CmdrTaco plays it!
The nick is a joke! Really!
If the users could 'rank' sites as well, the the criteria of 'getting the best results' would be fulfilled pretty quickly, regardless of search-sorting.
If all the users get are Coca-cola sites, no matter how they search, and these are not relevent sites, then they will get devalued to the point of non-existence.
So any gross abuse gets moderated by the user population.
Thus any useless site, no matter how hard they try, will not be able to maintain a high rank.
The nick is a joke! Really!
Rather than an additional step, use prior behavior to collect such information; see my
previous posts on the idea.
The nick is a joke! Really!
Why not...:
Increase relevence points if a link is followed
Decrease relevence points if a link is ignored(next is hit, instead)
Decrease relevence points if a new search is defined(none of the prior search were sufficient)
Increase relevence points if 'similar pages' is followed
It should behave something like what you propose, without additional cookies, work, voting, or otherwise. Other than normal behavior!
The nick is a joke! Really!
If you visit the link, add more relevence points to it.
If you hit 'next', decrease the relevence points for all the pages returned to the user.
If you hit 'similar pages' then increase the relevence points even higher for this hit!
If the user refines the search, reduce the rp for all pages that were previously generated.
Of course, I don't see any search engines using this criteria, yet!
The nick is a joke! Really!
You don't need cookies or privacy violating initiatives to improve searches at all!
Imagine a different criteria;
If you do a search and within some time limit hit the 'next' link at Google, the search engine should knock a few criteria points off the first page of returned links, under the concept that those were not accurate enough matches.
If you do a new search with a variant/refinement of the original search, then knock off points from all the pages that were browsed as irrelevent.
If you use the 'related pages' then add points to the page that was found.
Every link that is followed should have added points, under the concept that they were good enough, on inspection, to be useful.
At no time does the server ever need to place a cookie to keep track of you, other than session ID or something like that!
The nick is a joke! Really!
Some really good points by previous posters that I want to recap:
If you open up the criteria such that *everyone* exploits the criteria, then there is no discrimination. When the criteria is closed, only those who have found the exploits can get increased exposure, making it inherently unfair.
Another issue is that what a search engine wants you to see is different than what you want the search engine to give you, in some cases.
We want the union of two criteria; the results that give the search engine the most use/reuse(usefulness of the search) and the results that give the search engine the most financial recompense(so that the search engine can grow, get better, get faster, etc)
They may not be correlated, but they are both very important. The most useful pages may not give them the most money, and the pages that pay them the most may not generate enough repeat use for them either.
Perhaps the best search algorithm is two step:
Rank according to links (the more links to a page, the more useful the page)
Count repeat use (the more times a search has to be refined, the less useful the pages returned)
Rank according to links already occurs at Altavista and Google.
I don't know that anyone does the second.
Say you do a search on Google; if you hit the next button, then the pages that were generated get knocked a few points. If you hit Google again a few minutes later with a variant search, then knock a few points to *all* the pages that got listed in the previous search. If a user goes back, and hits 'related' pages, increase the points to that page, and all the related pages. Repeat the above algorithm for every hit to Google.
The nick is a joke! Really!
that Dell and IBM sell notebooks that have wireless ethernet support available...
Not that I can prove it, but it's something that is easy enough to verify ^^
The nick is a joke! Really!
Clothes and fashionionable items; purses, jackets, pants, etc. A new season, a new color!
Cars; a new season, restyled front bumper, a new set of colors, different trim, a HP boost in the engine. Sound familiar?
PCs; a new season, slightly bigger HD, slightly faster CPU, slightly more ram!
The nick is a joke! Really!
I don't disagree that containment is likely to lead to loss of information. But I have to stress that the term containment is used loosely; something/someone/somehow it must be contained so that it can be transferred. It is this 'containing' process that renders information useful. Having raw information is sorta like having a room full of N2 gas, whereas 'contained' information is like having the N2 gas condensed into liquid nitrogen; it can be used and carried and stored. The usefulness of the product, whether it be LiNi or information, is fully dependent on how much portability and transfer it has. Information, unlike LiNi, can be spread easily, without much hazard containers and carefully used gear.
And about the money point; forget legal tender and such. Think of it descriptually, how it is used and how it exists. Money is a pointer, a value, used to represent an object, and as such, is a simple interpretation of said object. A Coke is $0.5, or $0.5 is a Coke. Money *is* a social legal construct to enable the useful transfer of goods and 'information' without too much extra knowledge of said objects or infrastructure.
Information is something similar, in that it is 'meta' objects used to describe an object or reality, without actually having to dig too much into the real object. Statistical information, for example, talks about large groups of events without having to look at the events themselves. Both money and information are descriptors of the objects and the reality, without being the reality itself.
The nick is a joke! Really!
Sorry, over-dramatic words.
My intent with that statement, that information by it's existence violates the 2nd law was intended to convey the fact that information is equivalent to your N2 bunched together into the corner of the room; unless more energey is used than the information is worth, the information will dissapear. And this energy has to be maintained for the information to stay useful. If information is made free in the way your analogy would suggest, and in an uncontained way, it would disappear, degrade into the noise.
I argue usefulness by the very fact that someone is willing to absorb and transmit information; if it is useless information, it will disappear back into the noise, and no one will know about it.
Money==information *is* valid. Money *can* be copied. Interest rates, banks, printing presses, mints, counterfeiters, are all avenues by which money gets created. The cost of creating money is much less than the money is worth, a lot like mp3s, knowledge, etc.
Information is simply a pattern that is subject to interpretation; I disagree. Information is already interpreted. Without interpretation, it is just noise.
And to further my money argument, money is simply a acknowledgement of value-by itself it is worthless unless someone accepts that value. Much like 'information' becomes noise unless someone values that information
The nick is a joke! Really!
The problem is that whether you like it or not, the music shared on Napster is someone else's property.
Um, who's property?
The artist's property?
The distributor's property?
The owner's property?
Question is, is it fair use to share? If so, then is anything wrong occuring? I think so-artist's aren't being compensated for generating 'value'. Distributors need not get anything because they aren't distributing. Owner's can share freely *because* they own it. However, they run against the rights of distributors to distribute; an artist never gave this 'right' to *us*, but technology does. The problem then is how to use this technology to compensate the artist.
So if you wrote the software, you should have control over it; it's distribution should follow your desires, legally, and not the law, not the desires of corporations, etc.
Taking something against another's desires does make someone something of a thief, I admit. But it's not wrong to take from RIAA; it's wrong to take it from the artist who wrote it.
I think it's important to separate the issues of ownership and rights, and distribution and rights. In this age, artists should be able to control their own distribution due to the capability of technology.
The nick is a joke! Really!