It basically becomes your perogative as to what gets updated and when.
If you're wondering what LFS's primary use is though...or what it seems to get used for a lot, is the creation of new distributions. People will build an LFS system, and from that you end up with Yoper or GoboLinux, to name but two.
I know a lot of people seem to have difficulty understanding the value of new distributions, but there are many reasons why they are valuable. The first is that for people who are sufficiently technically inclined and proactive, if none of the existing distributions fits their needs for a given purpose, (and yes, it still can and does happen) LFS gives them the ability to put together something exactly the way they want it...with everything they do want, and nothing they don't.
Another benefit of this system is that it encourages people to be self-sufficient, rather than relying on corporations to provide what they need...corporations who generally care far more about their own interests than those of the user anyway.
Yet another plus is that it stimulates and encourages technological progress. I've covered this topic before, but anyone who has read Darwin will know that in order for anything to advance according to the evolutionary model, there needs to be a lot of different instances of a given thing...the process needs to experiment with a lot of different mutations before it is decided which mutations are permanently integrated into new generations of the organism. The more different distributions and forms of Linux exist, the more this process in encouraged.
I think the reason why people dislike the idea of new distributions is because they look at things from a Microsoft-like perspective of usability, which unfortunately involves a couple of extremely negative assumptions.
1) That the end user is a drooling imbecile, who needs to have things made easy to the point of them being rote. Intellectual participation in computer use is seen as more anathema than anything else.
2) Because of the deep level of retardation that is assumed in the end user, it is therefore also assumed that the level of usability exists in inverse proportion to the level of diversity. That is, in order to keep things usable it is necessary to minimise the number of different possible solutions to a given problem, or software programs, as much as possible in order to avoid users becoming overwhelmed.
The problem is that if these two points are adhered to and followed, a number of other very bad things happen. One is that technological advancement grinds to a screeching halt, as we have seen in the current state of Microsoft's software. Because innovation is very difficult when these two points are adhered to, we then get security problems of the kind that we have also seen. The other bad thing that this causes is that it promotes the idea that intellectual laziness is not only acceptable, but that it's actually a good thing...when the opposite is in fact true.
People need to realise that having new distributions isn't going to by definition hurt anyone, and that it is actually very good for Linux as a whole. If you only want to use one distro yourself without deviation, that's fine. But IMHO it is wrong to try and impose your own desire for uniformity, lack of diversity, and stagnation on the rest of the world.
I have suspected for a long time that Red Hat have had aspirations about being the Microsoft of the Linux world.
There are plenty of other distributions available which are not only technologically superior, but also more open than Red Hat's offerings. I think anyone who uses a Red Hat product in future also needs to think about what they are contributing to with their money as well...This does not seem to be a company with the best of intentions.
In short, I definitely recommend a boycott of Red Hat's products. You'll be doing yourself a favour in terms of just about any other distro out there being more technically sound, and you'll be doing Linux as a whole a favour by not giving money to a commercialist who wants to take the OS in a direction which is the opposite of what most of us stand for.
On a related issue, we need to find a way to do something about Red Hat's having moved the development of several GNU projects to their own servers as well, IMHO. This is a company in urgent need of a reminder that it surely is desirable to give back rather than just take.
I will confess that the blogosphere is a largely unknown entity to me...although if the blog's contribution is representative of puerile line noise such as this, it would seem I'm not missing very much.
Schwartz has simply declared himself to be just another corporate lapdog...this is the sort of garbage that gets churned out on a routine basis by ZDNet in particular...Maybe he should work for them, if he isn't already.
As for his moronic and completely oblivious assertion...I've been telling the sheep here on/. for a while now that I don't think Debian "is" Linux, and it goes without saying that I'm not going to think Dead Rat is Linux's exclusive or most important representative either.
Dead Rat exist primarily for the benefit of the corporate world. Yes, they've made some contributions to the more honest group that use Linux, but their primary purpose is to demonstrate to the mindless denizens of the corporate landscape that yes, it IS possible to make a cracker with Linux. So for the purpose of unutterably stupid androids such as Schwartz, I suppose Dead Rat could be looked at as a focal point of Linux.
The thing we know and he doesn't though (or doesn't care about, take your pick) is that Dead Rat are one among many. They most definitely are not all there is...and their contributions notwithstanding, thank God for that.
In terms also of blogging being the next wave of journalism...again, if this is the sort of material that blogs customarily produce, then that is entirely possible. It would at least be consistent with the rest of journalistic history, if nothing else.
On reading this I'm sorely tempted to write to Rusty and outline to him in very precise and specific terms exactly why I think the company he works for gives capitalism a bad name. I wouldn't actually do it for the purposes of being purely vindictive, either. I don't necessarily want EA destroyed, because I really value the work of some of the assimilated companies. (Maxis, Origin)
What I *do* want however is for them to get a clue in a very big way, particularly as far as MMORPGs are concerned. UO is still headed for the gurgler and gaining speed, and The Sims Online has become an online sex pests' paradise, when the game was not originally intended for anything even remotely like that.
Electronic Arts needs radical reform...at the core ideological level. That article on here a few weeks back by the college professor showed me that...when he talked about EA's execs thinking of the company as being simply a vendor of boxes. If they don't get that reform, then they *will* sink. It won't happen overnight perhaps, but it will gradually happen. They need to start innovating again, and they need to prevent the soulless bean-counters from being in charge. There is more to games...and life itself...than *just* money...and if you don't realise that, eventually you'll get to a point where you're not making money either.
>This is a story of corruption, of not having any >fail safe mechanisms or adequate safety measures, >of negligence, of politicians willingly selling >their souls and of those who they represent and of >a system which failed to protect its own.
In other words, the sort of thing that happens all the time. Welcome to the End Times<tm>, where governmental corruption is routine, where Shrub rules the world and has managed to dupe a sizable number of people into thinking that's actually a good thing, and where the only thing 98% of the population cares about is money...to the point where they even care about it more than whether or not their means of getting it will leave them alive in order to be able to spend it. Have a *nice* day.
There's one thing I've been saying for a long time.
IBM has never fundamentally understood the personal computer. Sure, they helped bring it to market...but the entire reason why Microsoft were originally able to get ahead of IBM with DOS was because at the time, IBM still had doubts that the PC was ever going to go anywhere. I remember when I installed OS/2 once...there were tons of communications protocols for connecting to *mainframes.* The only protocol for inter-PC communication that I saw just about was TCP/IP itself.
IBM were originally a mainframe company...that is what brought about their heyday...it's what they've been doing since the second world war...it's primarily what they know. In that sense, their length of history with mainframes was working against them...they were so used to mainframes being the answer, that as ESR might say, on a gut level they just didn't truly grok the concept of the PC.
This is still a sad day however, because they were instrumental to the contemporary PC's adoption...Even if most of the time it was probably in spite of themselves.
Maybe I should clarify something here. I don't see Stallman as a "baby eater." I think for the most part, from what I've seen, his motives are very good. But alongside the good motives, the desire to spread positive ideas etc, there is at times also a certain level of dogmatism and an attitude of, "Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but my opinion is the only *right* one." That, for the most part, is what I have issues with. It is also true I think what ESR and others have said that he does have something of a martyr complex...he wants to be seen as this glorious leader...which is something that I find rather nauseating.
I will admit to always having been worried about the size of the IP stockpile that RMS is essentially sitting on due to the GPL. Although I realise that having that degree of power no doubt suits *him* just fine, I find it considerably more disquieting.
This is another of the objections I've tended to have to the GPL as opposed to some other licenses...Namely that from what I've read about Stallman I tend to find it very difficult not to see him as a megalomaniac. The problem with benevolent dictatorship is that regardless of how *benevolent* it might be, it's still a *dictatorship.* The way I look at it is that if we want to remain beholden to unwittingly help fulfill some American charismatic narcissist's "vision," we might as well keep using Windows. Gates might be more morally degenerate in some people's minds, but in my view he's actually considerably less boorish than Stallman. Given a choice though, I go for the third option...Not putting Stallman, Gates, or Linus on a pedestal, but putting *myself* up there.;-) (What I mean by that is that I tend to think that if people put as much energy into their own self-image as they instead put into other people's, they might be a lot better off)
There is also an irony in that I remember with the concessions he made with the LGPL, it could be argued that he basically did exactly the same thing he earlier accused the XFree86 group of doing. ("I wanted to make a restrictive license, but it's not as popular as I'd hoped, so I'd better release another one which is a bit less restrictive in the hopes that it will also be more popular.")
Remove Stallman's personality from the equation, and in reasonably broad terms I'll agree with anyone who says that the FSF have done some good things. But I think it's worth also having our eyes open about the FSF's fearless leader as well, because I have for a while tended to suspect that he is not quite as great a man as he would have everyone believe.
To me, this is deranged and unnecessary. I can't see how it could help either humans or animals. It also makes me worry that they could actually end up developing a true human/animal hybrid...As bizarre as it sounds, things like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles might not be such radical (no pun intended) fiction as we once may have thought...at least broadly speaking.
I know it's going to get a lot worse, too...there are a lot of scientists out there who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a laboratory...and they're going to create things which have previously only existed in Trent Reznor's and HR Giger's wet dreams...and they're going to do it not because it will benefit anyone (it'll actually do the reverse, I suspect) but simply because they can.
>Remember, Richard Stallman loves you. He coded for >your sins.
I understand that this is supposed to be a joke...but the ironic and truly unfortunate thing is just how close it seriously is to the truth. From everything I've ever seen, Stallman DOES want people worshipping him...From that point of view, him being an atheist makes sense... "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."
are made by the authors of this report, I'm guessing.
First of all, that the gaming industry really gives two shits about their opinion...and secondly, that it even *should*.
The thing that never ceases to amaze me about such hypocrites is that they themselves were most likely all loyal Bush voters in the last election. Have America (and by extension, other parts of the planet) run by a cabal of inhuman, genocidal fascist monsters, and that's fine. A hundred thousand dead civilians in Iraq is perfectly acceptable, (and necessary, according to the types I suspect this group are comprised of) and yet they take exception to some 14 year old disassembling pixels on a screen?
Until they feel like doing something about the whale-sized camel in Iraq, they can leave straining FPS gnats for someone who cares. I'd prefer to listen to someone who is interested in dealing with the big, genuinely important issues first, before going after small stuff like this.
>The tool that I never see mentioned is a nice >and handy little tooll called rpmbuild >--rebuild, which you use with.src.rpms. This >will enable you to take, say, a.src.rpm for >RedHat, and rebuild an rpm on a Mandrake system, >and install it easily.
Not entirely...You still have to hope there wasn't a retarded chimpanzee at the keyboard at the time the specfile got written...which seems to be the case more often than not, unfortunately.
The bottom line is...rpm is broken...very very broken. People need to stop using almost-sorta-kinda solutions to problems which they think they'll just be able to hold together with chewing gum, fishing line and prayer simply because they're too darn lazy to find something else which actually works.
I have no problem with a package management standard at all, as long as the standard is *NOT* rpm. From a purely technical standpoint, I truly do not know what the LSB peeps were smoking when they included rpm as part of their specification...I can only assume it happened because Dead Rat/SUSE etc were the people paying the bills. Once again, a triumph of dollars over sense.
I don't care what anyone says...rpm sucks gangrenous, dried sweat encrusted goat's testicles. The specfile format is one big invite to write sloppy code, (and that's even assuming you can get your own macros to work) the practice of splitting libs up into normal and "devel" versions invites all sorts of evil behaviour on the part of the corps involved. I also don't need to go into the "dependency hell" issues...it sounds like people are far too familiar with those already. Yet another thing I hate about rpm is that on most rpm based distros, the makers of such will actually intentionally screw things up so that via rpm is the ONLY way you can install anything...try compiling, and configure won't find libs it needs in many cases. I think that's the single main reason why I dislike it, actually...it allows and encourages corporate sabotage of the operating system. Apt isn't *quite* as bad from what I've seen...but it's close.
I've often wondered why there haven't been more attempts to adapt ports for Linux...presumably there are two reasons:-
1) The few people who might otherwise have been sufficiently intelligent to care are already using gentoo, and it is close enough for what they want in most instances, and
2) The binary-only "apt-get and drool" crowd can't see any incentive or reason for such a thing at all, for the most part.
I wouldn't know how many times I've seen messages about Debian starting off with the prefix, "When I'm feeling lazy, I use apt." This is exactly the problem...if you're feeling that lazy, go back to XP until the feeling passes. Don't insist on doing bad things to Linux which will only recreate Windows' problems here.
>What could be less harmful to society than me lying >by the river on a sunny day puffing a joint and >reading a book?
It won't harm society at all, but it might harm you less if you read said book *without* said joint.
Don't get me wrong...I've smoked weed myself and thus am not going to be one of the idiots who tries to prevent anyone from smoking it...if you want to cause your brain to decompose inside your head, that's your business. I gave it up because despite enjoying smoking it, I also value my neurological health.
I'm for the right to choose whether or not to smoke as much as anyone...but what I *do* wish stoners would stop doing is trying to claim that marijuana isn't neurologically harmful purely because they want to smoke it themselves. If you want to smoke, smoke...but don't mislead other people by trying to claim that weed is harmless, or worse yet, actually beneficial...because it is neither.
Sure, RFID tags might have some benign uses...that's exactly what the fascists who want to tag us all like penguins will try and sell us on. The idea is to gradually break down resistance to the concept by using them in other areas first where they genuinely might be a convenience, in order to try and condition people into thinking that they're "really not so bad."
The only question you need to ask about this technology though is this: If they're not so bad...if they're really so benign and harmless...then why are some governmental and commercial groups so passionately, unrelentingly determined to bring about a scenario where we are all using them?
My own belief with this sort of technology is that it is unfortunately somewhat inevitable that it will be adopted by people to some degree...as we're seeing in certain American schools. No matter what setbacks politicans experience in this area, they keep trying...precisely because they know that once people are using them, governments will have a completely unprecedented level of control and knowledge about where people are and what they are doing, at all times.
I'm not even against some possible uses for biotechnology, myself...but RFID tags are possibly the only technology I've heard of which I believe should be universally and completely banned. The potential for abuse in my mind far outweighs potential conveniences...especially when a non-critical convenience is all they are likely to be.
Governments must not be allowed access to technologies which have the potential to render them immune to revolution.
"2004: Year of the PC Game" ?? I'm assuming this expression came from GameSpot in particular...they have a particular tendency to come up with such pretentious, hype-laden phrases at times.
a) Doom 3 - AKA Glorified graphics patch.
I read reviews of this on a couple of sites that fortunately DON'T rate everything that comes out of id at 9.8/10 whether said game actually deserves it or not, and the results were telling. The average score seemed to be about 7.5, and I suspect that while these sites weren't engaging in the aforementioned id whoring, they *were* still trying to be somewhat kind. The *only* thing this game apparently had going for it *at all* was the graphics. The game itself was fundamentally the same as what we first played in 1993, and network play was also almost entirely non-existent...which finally conclusively proves what I've been saying about id Software for years. They're strictly graphics people. Yes, they're very, very, very talented graphics people...but graphics alone do not a game make. The main reason why they managed to get away with it with Doom and the original Quake was because they originated said genre...so at the time we were all so busy being awed by the graphics that we paid no heed to other areas of the game/s being somewhat lacking. That was something which (to me, anywayz) was becoming rather noticeable by the time Quake 2 reached us...and Epic pretty much completely dethroned them fairly shortly afterwards. (Note: This is not meant to be exclusively an id bashing session. They *are* an extraordinarily talented group of people, IMHO. I'm just asking for a slightly more balanced perspective regarding them than what I'm used to seeing)
b) HL 2, while not being as much a complete retread as Doom 3, is still extremely conservative from what I've read...which is especially disappointing given how much ground the first game broke. The AI in the game is actually something of a step backward from the original. I don't blame Valve at all for this, however...I lay any and all blame for HL 2's lack of originality squarely on the shoulders of Vivendi, who seem to be the usual class of corporate SS. (Soulless Suits, not to be confused with Himmler's group;-))
So to be blunt, I don't think this year's been the greatest for gaming that I've ever seen...not by any stretch of the imagination. Possibly in terms of *quantity*, yes...but some of us look at such things in terms of quality, as well.
They're going to criminalise P2P, are they? Interesting...Software piracy has been a crime for probably as long as I've been alive, yet I don't see IRC carrying warez movement going anywhere any time soon. The problem for WIPO and the rest of the associated idiots is that such laws are largely unenforceable...possibly 5%-20% of the people involved in such activities are prosecuted, tops.
These laws are utterly futile...and they are futile for several reasons. For one thing, they are completely dehumanising...they are counter to human nature and human desire. For another, because they are largely unenforceable, they rely on the laughable expectation that they will be willingly obeyed.
As I've said earlier, we keep getting more and more evidence that we are now genuinely in the Aquarian era, and it ain't going to be how the song from that stupid musical Hair described it. Initially anyway, we are in for a period of truly mammoth conflict. Uranus and Saturn, or to use imagery which people are more familiar with...the elderly vs the young and the new...Science, intellectualism, altruism, and the desire for genuine freedom colliding with tyranny, willful ignorance and stupidity, commercialism and fear...Smith vs Neo.
Unfortunately for Ashcroft, Hatch, Vilenti and the other Smith wannabes of the world however, although they may do some damage in the short term, long term they don't have a prayer of getting anywhere with their ambitions. They're too stupid, too greedy, too fearful, and therefore largely self-defeating. At times I pity them, because if they could learn to change their own mindset and behaviour they also could benefit from the future that the rest of us are busy creating.
If you step in chewing gum, it will cause your shoes to stick to the ground to a minor degree, but not ultimately enough to cause you anything more than inconvenience. Also, despite how tenacious said chewing gum may be in remaining on the soles of your shoes, it can and will be eventually scraped off...and then you continue walking. Humanity is still going to ultimately get where it wants to go...Bush and his friends might try and set up roadblocks, as have other such individuals throughout history...but ultimately all they amount to are potholes.
Valve care too much about this game, and so do a lot of other people, IMHO.
Although I loved the first game, I'm not going to be going anywhere near this one, for a couple of different reasons.
a) I don't have the money to pay for what is from what I've read primarily a glorified graphics patch, in more or less the same sense Doom 3 was.
b) My taste in games has changed a lot over the last few years. I bought the Sims 2 and SC4 recently, both of which I thoroughly enjoy...but the most recent FPS I play with any regularity is the original UT. I think CounterStrike fans are juvenile, superficial idiots to be totally honest...I really don't understand what people see in that game at all. Reminds me of some of the stories I've read about southeast Asian PC baangs...I also knew a guy a couple of years ago who played a lot of CS and Action Quake 2 and ended up committing suicide. No, I don't believe the games contributed to why he did it, but he was a reckless idiot in a lot of other ways...CS/AQ2 were *symptoms* of that in his case, not contributing causes.
c) Although I don't have broadband and am not really interested in online FPSing anywayz, if Valve think I'm going to use some fascist DRM service, they're welcome to go and do something anatomically impossible with a shovel, with my blessing. Although to be honest, I somehow doubt very much that the fascist elements of Steam were Valve's idea...I suspect it is far more likely that Vivendi are responsible for that. The actual developers of a game normally don't advocate those sorts of measures, from what I've seen. They tend to be the product of brain-dead baby boomer business executives. (Wow, a lot of b's there;-))
Where are my mod points when I really need them? I've lost count of the number of comments on this article that would get modded Overrated or Redundant if I had some right now.
Anyway, the lamers aside...compiling from source can have a number of advantages...the main one to my mind is stack protection. I also like knowing that what is in the tarball I've downloaded is what is going into my binary...that there hasn't been a download/script kiddie backdoor add/compile to binary package procedure. It's like how I don't tend to go to McDonald's any more because I don't like the possibility of one of the people who work there spitting in my burger before it gets to me...same kind of thing.
I realise however that I'm trying to use rationality here to counter irrationality. The only reason why people here *really* don't like compiling from source is because it is clashes with the completely mindless, apt-getting "Debian IS Linux!" groupthink that I tend to observe on an almost daily basis around here.
I've often wondered why Slashdot's bias is so heavily tilted towards Debian in particular, actually. I'm assuming that for many of you it has a lot more to do with Debian having explicitly received Pope RMS's blessing than because of any genuine technical superiority. I find that deeply pathetic.
I didn't know there was such a thing as an Australian game coder in existence.;-)
I'm in Australia myself...and while I wouldn't call myself a *coder* in that sense by any means, I have been really into messing around with UnrealED for a number of years. My specialties have been probably lighting and botpathing in particular...I'm actually fairly good at putting down effective pathnode nets in maps. I generally don't build maps from scratch I will confess as I'm not very strong on architecture in particular, but I find I'm able to do things like adding WarpZones as well as the botpathing...which a lot of people seem to have had problems with, from what I've read...they are tricky.
"Probably the most surprising thing I learned about EA is that its leaders, including its creative leaders, describe it as a packaged goods company like Proctor and Gamble or Nabisco."
This, in a nutshell, with extreme eloquence sums up EA's fundamental problem...and from the sounds of things it is very fundamental to them. There is no possible way that a company with this mentality can hope to run an MMORPG in particular...because a boxed product is the direct opposite of what an MMORPG is. A more appropriate conventional metaphor, or one which boomers would at least be more comfortable with, would be to think of an MMORPG as a virtual theme park or wildlife reserve. Expansion packs therefore, rather than being end products in themselves, should be thought of as visitor passes to previously roped off/undeveloped areas of the park. This analogy actually works very well with UO in particular...as using a client older than Age of Shadows for example after AoS's release meant that a person could not go to Malas or Ilshenar, for example.
If EA want to really break into the MMORPG space, (and they haven't substantially yet; UO is going downhill at a rate of knots, and The Sims Online is still well below target population) they're going to have to stop thinking purely in terms of being box-sellers, and start thinking in terms of being virtual park rangers. (or in the case of The Sims Online, even a virtual government)
An MMORPG is NOT something you can put in a box, throw out the door, and then heave a big sigh of relief because it's finished. They need continual maintenance, and if they are to do well they need continual maintenance by someone who actually has a clue about how to do it.
Even for single-player games however, this type of thinking is creatively barren and disastrously toxic. It might work fine for the annual regurgitation of a football game, (like Madden, and what Unreal Tournament sadly seems to be in danger of becoming) since football does not fundamentally change over time, (although on that score UT has absolutely no excuse) but with virtually any other genre, all it will ensure is that rehashes and regurgitations of the same tired old formulas get trucked out the door every year...Innovation comes to a standstill. I truly hope that for EA's sake they have in mind to change this philosophy, because they're signing their own commercial death certificate if they don't. Sure, it makes good commercial sense to go with the tried and true, (at least for maybe the first couple of sequels as far as games go) but there should I think be a dual approach. While you're assuring that the bills get paid today, you should also be focussed on staking out as much new creative territory as possible...because that's the only way to make sure that the bills also get paid tomorrow. Trying to get EA to put an emphasis on creativity is futile...They're a company, and their primary interest is to generate as high a margin as possible. But I wish we could encourage the company somehow to at least be halfway intelligent and forward-thinking when it comes to making money as well.
Said gorilla has been losing rather a lot of blood recently. The only thing that they really have going for them is George W being in the White House, as far as the US is concerned, anywayz...in the EU they don't really have any advantages at all. They've also been having to make massive court settlements recently, while their revenue model continues to decline.
In short, Microsoft are finished. Oh, sure it'll take time, purely due to the company's size...the Microsoft ship started sinking in around September 1997, and it'll take a while yet. Bill also is not going to take his medicine willingly...The IP storm is going to come. But I think eventually (particularly in the EU, where the will of the people still actually counts for something, to a degree) the court of global public opinion is going to judge both Gates and his sick "vision" and find them sorely wanting.
Suddenly, caught by the level beams, Frodo saw the old king's head: it was lying rolled away by the roadside. "Look Sam!" he cried, startled into speech. "Look! The king has got a crown again!"
The eyes were hollow and the carven beard was broken, but about the high stern forehead there was a coronal of silver and gold. A trailing plant with flowers like small white stars had bound itself across the brows as if in reverence for the fallen king, and in the crevices of his stony yellow hair yellow stonecrop gleamed.
"They cannot conquer forever!" said Frodo. And then suddenly the brief glimpse was gone. The Sun dipped and vanished, and as if at the shuttering of a lamp, black night fell.
It's times like these when those Americans and people in the rest of the world who are suffering as a result of the recent "election" result, can and should take hope. Evil is, by its very nature and definition, contrary to life and the continuation of it...and therefore if life is to continue, imbalances such as the current one can, should, and will eventually be rectified. The main thing that both watching the Two Towers, and Linux itself has managed to help me remember was that contrary to what the bastards have tried to indoctrinate us with, resistance is not futile. Night may come, and with it a blackness sufficiently deep that we may no longer be able to see our hand in front of our face, or temporarily remember our direction...but as night comes, so too eventually must the dawn.
The rest of Bush's administration should see Ashcroft's passing as a harbinger of what they themselves ultimately can expect, and like all the other tyrants of human history, they will be remembered only as a source of death and misery, and an obstruction to genuine justice and human progress.
It sounds like a few peeps have been a bit confused by what this article says Microsoft are doing with this. I could be wrong, but here's my take on it:-
1) Microsoft either definitely *don't* have patents for the core protocols talked about here, or there is sufficient controversy that the IETF is likely to resist fairly strongly to the idea that they do.
2) Because of this, the goal of this licensing is *not* to try and make use of patents that Microsoft definitely has. What the goal is, is to cause people who are ignorant of the issue to *think* that Microsoft owns patents for these protocols. If people *think* Microsoft owns patents for these protocols, then they will be intimidated into using Microsoft's non-open implementations...even though Microsoft does not in fact own patents for them! So yes...it's fraud.
3) Considering that the US is likely to be the main battleground for this particular issue, it's worth noting that the Bush administration is extremely unlikely to come to the aid of the public interest here in any way, unlike the attempt of the Clinton DOJ to charge Microsoft under the Sherman Act. Bush has, as one of his central principles, the idea of giving moral and legal impunity to his friends...completely irrespective of how illegal/immoral the activities of said friends might otherwise be. If Microsoft contributes financially to keeping Bush in power, (which they have) they can openly violate the Sherman Act or whatever other laws they like...Bush and his cronies in the judiciary will quite happily look the other way. This is a very significant point when considering TCP/IP in particular, unfortunately...as those protocols were developed by Americans. Doing things like preventing software patents from becoming law in Europe might be a positive goal, but because so much of the early work on the net was done by Cerf and the others (who are American) the legal wellbeing of the Internet's base protocols arguably rests with the American government...or at least, it would govern any legal issues concerning them...which, given the hands said government is in right now, is an extremely frightening prospect for those of us who value Internet use.
Slashdot Mirror
It basically becomes your perogative as to what gets updated and when.
If you're wondering what LFS's primary use is though...or what it seems to get used for a lot, is the creation of new distributions. People will build an LFS system, and from that you end up with Yoper or GoboLinux, to name but two.
I know a lot of people seem to have difficulty understanding the value of new distributions, but there are many reasons why they are valuable. The first is that for people who are sufficiently technically inclined and proactive, if none of the existing distributions fits their needs for a given purpose, (and yes, it still can and does happen) LFS gives them the ability to put together something exactly the way they want it...with everything they do want, and nothing they don't.
Another benefit of this system is that it encourages people to be self-sufficient, rather than relying on corporations to provide what they need...corporations who generally care far more about their own interests than those of the user anyway.
Yet another plus is that it stimulates and encourages technological progress. I've covered this topic before, but anyone who has read Darwin will know that in order for anything to advance according to the evolutionary model, there needs to be a lot of different instances of a given thing...the process needs to experiment with a lot of different mutations before it is decided which mutations are permanently integrated into new generations of the organism. The more different distributions and forms of Linux exist, the more this process in encouraged.
I think the reason why people dislike the idea of new distributions is because they look at things from a Microsoft-like perspective of usability, which unfortunately involves a couple of extremely negative assumptions.
1) That the end user is a drooling imbecile, who needs to have things made easy to the point of them being rote. Intellectual participation in computer use is seen as more anathema than anything else.
2) Because of the deep level of retardation that is assumed in the end user, it is therefore also assumed that the level of usability exists in inverse proportion to the level of diversity. That is, in order to keep things usable it is necessary to minimise the number of different possible solutions to a given problem, or software programs, as much as possible in order to avoid users becoming overwhelmed.
The problem is that if these two points are adhered to and followed, a number of other very bad things happen. One is that technological advancement grinds to a screeching halt, as we have seen in the current state of Microsoft's software. Because innovation is very difficult when these two points are adhered to, we then get security problems of the kind that we have also seen.
The other bad thing that this causes is that it promotes the idea that intellectual laziness is not only acceptable, but that it's actually a good thing...when the opposite is in fact true.
People need to realise that having new distributions isn't going to by definition hurt anyone, and that it is actually very good for Linux as a whole. If you only want to use one distro yourself without deviation, that's fine. But IMHO it is wrong to try and impose your own desire for uniformity, lack of diversity, and stagnation on the rest of the world.
I have suspected for a long time that Red Hat have had aspirations about being the Microsoft of the Linux world.
There are plenty of other distributions available which are not only technologically superior, but also more open than Red Hat's offerings. I think anyone who uses a Red Hat product in future also needs to think about what they are contributing to with their money as well...This does not seem to be a company with the best of intentions.
In short, I definitely recommend a boycott of Red Hat's products. You'll be doing yourself a favour in terms of just about any other distro out there being more technically sound, and you'll be doing Linux as a whole a favour by not giving money to a commercialist who wants to take the OS in a direction which is the opposite of what most of us stand for.
On a related issue, we need to find a way to do something about Red Hat's having moved the development of several GNU projects to their own servers as well, IMHO. This is a company in urgent need of a reminder that it surely is desirable to give back rather than just take.
I will confess that the blogosphere is a largely unknown entity to me...although if the blog's contribution is representative of puerile line noise such as this, it would seem I'm not missing very much.
/. for a while now that I don't think Debian "is" Linux, and it goes without saying that I'm not going to think Dead Rat is Linux's exclusive or most important representative either.
Schwartz has simply declared himself to be just another corporate lapdog...this is the sort of garbage that gets churned out on a routine basis by ZDNet in particular...Maybe he should work for them, if he isn't already.
As for his moronic and completely oblivious assertion...I've been telling the sheep here on
Dead Rat exist primarily for the benefit of the corporate world. Yes, they've made some contributions to the more honest group that use Linux, but their primary purpose is to demonstrate to the mindless denizens of the corporate landscape that yes, it IS possible to make a cracker with Linux. So for the purpose of unutterably stupid androids such as Schwartz, I suppose Dead Rat could be looked at as a focal point of Linux.
The thing we know and he doesn't though (or doesn't care about, take your pick) is that Dead Rat are one among many. They most definitely are not all there is...and their contributions notwithstanding, thank God for that.
In terms also of blogging being the next wave of journalism...again, if this is the sort of material that blogs customarily produce, then that is entirely possible. It would at least be consistent with the rest of journalistic history, if nothing else.
On reading this I'm sorely tempted to write to Rusty and outline to him in very precise and specific terms exactly why I think the company he works for gives capitalism a bad name. I wouldn't actually do it for the purposes of being purely vindictive, either. I don't necessarily want EA destroyed, because I really value the work of some of the assimilated companies. (Maxis, Origin)
What I *do* want however is for them to get a clue in a very big way, particularly as far as MMORPGs are concerned. UO is still headed for the gurgler and gaining speed, and The Sims Online has become an online sex pests' paradise, when the game was not originally intended for anything even remotely like that.
Electronic Arts needs radical reform...at the core ideological level. That article on here a few weeks back by the college professor showed me that...when he talked about EA's execs thinking of the company as being simply a vendor of boxes. If they don't get that reform, then they *will* sink. It won't happen overnight perhaps, but it will gradually happen. They need to start innovating again, and they need to prevent the soulless bean-counters from being in charge. There is more to games...and life itself...than *just* money...and if you don't realise that, eventually you'll get to a point where you're not making money either.
>This is a story of corruption, of not having any
>fail safe mechanisms or adequate safety measures,
>of negligence, of politicians willingly selling
>their souls and of those who they represent and of
>a system which failed to protect its own.
In other words, the sort of thing that happens all the time. Welcome to the End Times<tm>, where governmental corruption is routine, where Shrub rules the world and has managed to dupe a sizable number of people into thinking that's actually a good thing, and where the only thing 98% of the population cares about is money...to the point where they even care about it more than whether or not their means of getting it will leave them alive in order to be able to spend it. Have a *nice* day.
There's one thing I've been saying for a long time.
IBM has never fundamentally understood the personal computer. Sure, they helped bring it to market...but the entire reason why Microsoft were originally able to get ahead of IBM with DOS was because at the time, IBM still had doubts that the PC was ever going to go anywhere. I remember when I installed OS/2 once...there were tons of communications protocols for connecting to *mainframes.* The only protocol for inter-PC communication that I saw just about was TCP/IP itself.
IBM were originally a mainframe company...that is what brought about their heyday...it's what they've been doing since the second world war...it's primarily what they know. In that sense, their length of history with mainframes was working against them...they were so used to mainframes being the answer, that as ESR might say, on a gut level they just didn't truly grok the concept of the PC.
This is still a sad day however, because they were instrumental to the contemporary PC's adoption...Even if most of the time it was probably in spite of themselves.
Maybe I should clarify something here. I don't see Stallman as a "baby eater." I think for the most part, from what I've seen, his motives are very good. But alongside the good motives, the desire to spread positive ideas etc, there is at times also a certain level of dogmatism and an attitude of, "Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but my opinion is the only *right* one." That, for the most part, is what I have issues with. It is also true I think what ESR and others have said that he does have something of a martyr complex...he wants to be seen as this glorious leader...which is something that I find rather nauseating.
I will admit to always having been worried about the size of the IP stockpile that RMS is essentially sitting on due to the GPL. Although I realise that having that degree of power no doubt suits *him* just fine, I find it considerably more disquieting.
;-) (What I mean by that is that I tend to think that if people put as much energy into their own self-image as they instead put into other people's, they might be a lot better off)
This is another of the objections I've tended to have to the GPL as opposed to some other licenses...Namely that from what I've read about Stallman I tend to find it very difficult not to see him as a megalomaniac. The problem with benevolent dictatorship is that regardless of how *benevolent* it might be, it's still a *dictatorship.* The way I look at it is that if we want to remain beholden to unwittingly help fulfill some American charismatic narcissist's "vision," we might as well keep using Windows. Gates might be more morally degenerate in some people's minds, but in my view he's actually considerably less boorish than Stallman. Given a choice though, I go for the third option...Not putting Stallman, Gates, or Linus on a pedestal, but putting *myself* up there.
There is also an irony in that I remember with the concessions he made with the LGPL, it could be argued that he basically did exactly the same thing he earlier accused the XFree86 group of doing. ("I wanted to make a restrictive license, but it's not as popular as I'd hoped, so I'd better release another one which is a bit less restrictive in the hopes that it will also be more popular.")
Remove Stallman's personality from the equation, and in reasonably broad terms I'll agree with anyone who says that the FSF have done some good things. But I think it's worth also having our eyes open about the FSF's fearless leader as well, because I have for a while tended to suspect that he is not quite as great a man as he would have everyone believe.
To me, this is deranged and unnecessary. I can't see how it could help either humans or animals. It also makes me worry that they could actually end up developing a true human/animal hybrid...As bizarre as it sounds, things like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles might not be such radical (no pun intended) fiction as we once may have thought...at least broadly speaking.
I know it's going to get a lot worse, too...there are a lot of scientists out there who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a laboratory...and they're going to create things which have previously only existed in Trent Reznor's and HR Giger's wet dreams...and they're going to do it not because it will benefit anyone (it'll actually do the reverse, I suspect) but simply because they can.
>Remember, Richard Stallman loves you. He coded for
>your sins.
I understand that this is supposed to be a joke...but the ironic and truly unfortunate thing is just how close it seriously is to the truth. From everything I've ever seen, Stallman DOES want people worshipping him...From that point of view, him being an atheist makes sense...
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me."
are made by the authors of this report, I'm guessing.
First of all, that the gaming industry really gives two shits about their opinion...and secondly, that it even *should*.
The thing that never ceases to amaze me about such hypocrites is that they themselves were most likely all loyal Bush voters in the last election. Have America (and by extension, other parts of the planet) run by a cabal of inhuman, genocidal fascist monsters, and that's fine. A hundred thousand dead civilians in Iraq is perfectly acceptable, (and necessary, according to the types I suspect this group are comprised of) and yet they take exception to some 14 year old disassembling pixels on a screen?
Until they feel like doing something about the whale-sized camel in Iraq, they can leave straining FPS gnats for someone who cares. I'd prefer to listen to someone who is interested in dealing with the big, genuinely important issues first, before going after small stuff like this.
>The tool that I never see mentioned is a nice .src.rpms. This .src.rpm for
>and handy little tooll called rpmbuild
>--rebuild, which you use with
>will enable you to take, say, a
>RedHat, and rebuild an rpm on a Mandrake system,
>and install it easily.
Not entirely...You still have to hope there wasn't a retarded chimpanzee at the keyboard at the time the specfile got written...which seems to be the case more often than not, unfortunately.
The bottom line is...rpm is broken...very very broken. People need to stop using almost-sorta-kinda solutions to problems which they think they'll just be able to hold together with chewing gum, fishing line and prayer simply because they're too darn lazy to find something else which actually works.
I have no problem with a package management standard at all, as long as the standard is *NOT* rpm. From a purely technical standpoint, I truly do not know what the LSB peeps were smoking when they included rpm as part of their specification...I can only assume it happened because Dead Rat/SUSE etc were the people paying the bills. Once again, a triumph of dollars over sense.
I don't care what anyone says...rpm sucks gangrenous, dried sweat encrusted goat's testicles. The specfile format is one big invite to write sloppy code, (and that's even assuming you can get your own macros to work) the practice of splitting libs up into normal and "devel" versions invites all sorts of evil behaviour on the part of the corps involved. I also don't need to go into the "dependency hell" issues...it sounds like people are far too familiar with those already. Yet another thing I hate about rpm is that on most rpm based distros, the makers of such will actually intentionally screw things up so that via rpm is the ONLY way you can install anything...try compiling, and configure won't find libs it needs in many cases. I think that's the single main reason why I dislike it, actually...it allows and encourages corporate sabotage of the operating system. Apt isn't *quite* as bad from what I've seen...but it's close.
I've often wondered why there haven't been more attempts to adapt ports for Linux...presumably there are two reasons:-
1) The few people who might otherwise have been sufficiently intelligent to care are already using gentoo, and it is close enough for what they want in most instances, and
2) The binary-only "apt-get and drool" crowd can't see any incentive or reason for such a thing at all, for the most part.
I wouldn't know how many times I've seen messages about Debian starting off with the prefix, "When I'm feeling lazy, I use apt." This is exactly the problem...if you're feeling that lazy, go back to XP until the feeling passes. Don't insist on doing bad things to Linux which will only recreate Windows' problems here.
>What could be less harmful to society than me lying >by the river on a sunny day puffing a joint and >reading a book?
It won't harm society at all, but it might harm you less if you read said book *without* said joint.
Don't get me wrong...I've smoked weed myself and thus am not going to be one of the idiots who tries to prevent anyone from smoking it...if you want to cause your brain to decompose inside your head, that's your business. I gave it up because despite enjoying smoking it, I also value my neurological health.
I'm for the right to choose whether or not to smoke as much as anyone...but what I *do* wish stoners would stop doing is trying to claim that marijuana isn't neurologically harmful purely because they want to smoke it themselves. If you want to smoke, smoke...but don't mislead other people by trying to claim that weed is harmless, or worse yet, actually beneficial...because it is neither.
Sure, RFID tags might have some benign uses...that's exactly what the fascists who want to tag us all like penguins will try and sell us on. The idea is to gradually break down resistance to the concept by using them in other areas first where they genuinely might be a convenience, in order to try and condition people into thinking that they're "really not so bad."
The only question you need to ask about this technology though is this: If they're not so bad...if they're really so benign and harmless...then why are some governmental and commercial groups so passionately, unrelentingly determined to bring about a scenario where we are all using them?
My own belief with this sort of technology is that it is unfortunately somewhat inevitable that it will be adopted by people to some degree...as we're seeing in certain American schools. No matter what setbacks politicans experience in this area, they keep trying...precisely because they know that once people are using them, governments will have a completely unprecedented level of control and knowledge about where people are and what they are doing, at all times.
I'm not even against some possible uses for biotechnology, myself...but RFID tags are possibly the only technology I've heard of which I believe should be universally and completely banned. The potential for abuse in my mind far outweighs potential conveniences...especially when a non-critical convenience is all they are likely to be.
Governments must not be allowed access to technologies which have the potential to render them immune to revolution.
"2004: Year of the PC Game" ?? I'm assuming this expression came from GameSpot in particular...they have a particular tendency to come up with such pretentious, hype-laden phrases at times.
;-))
a) Doom 3 - AKA Glorified graphics patch.
I read reviews of this on a couple of sites that fortunately DON'T rate everything that comes out of id at 9.8/10 whether said game actually deserves it or not, and the results were telling. The average score seemed to be about 7.5, and I suspect that while these sites weren't engaging in the aforementioned id whoring, they *were* still trying to be somewhat kind. The *only* thing this game apparently had going for it *at all* was the graphics. The game itself was fundamentally the same as what we first played in 1993, and network play was also almost entirely non-existent...which finally conclusively proves what I've been saying about id Software for years. They're strictly graphics people. Yes, they're very, very, very talented graphics people...but graphics alone do not a game make. The main reason why they managed to get away with it with Doom and the original Quake was because they originated said genre...so at the time we were all so busy being awed by the graphics that we paid no heed to other areas of the game/s being somewhat lacking. That was something which (to me, anywayz) was becoming rather noticeable by the time Quake 2 reached us...and Epic pretty much completely dethroned them fairly shortly afterwards.
(Note: This is not meant to be exclusively an id bashing session. They *are* an extraordinarily talented group of people, IMHO. I'm just asking for a slightly more balanced perspective regarding them than what I'm used to seeing)
b) HL 2, while not being as much a complete retread as Doom 3, is still extremely conservative from what I've read...which is especially disappointing given how much ground the first game broke. The AI in the game is actually something of a step backward from the original. I don't blame Valve at all for this, however...I lay any and all blame for HL 2's lack of originality squarely on the shoulders of Vivendi, who seem to be the usual class of corporate SS. (Soulless Suits, not to be confused with Himmler's group
So to be blunt, I don't think this year's been the greatest for gaming that I've ever seen...not by any stretch of the imagination. Possibly in terms of *quantity*, yes...but some of us look at such things in terms of quality, as well.
They're going to criminalise P2P, are they? Interesting...Software piracy has been a crime for probably as long as I've been alive, yet I don't see IRC carrying warez movement going anywhere any time soon. The problem for WIPO and the rest of the associated idiots is that such laws are largely unenforceable...possibly 5%-20% of the people involved in such activities are prosecuted, tops.
These laws are utterly futile...and they are futile for several reasons. For one thing, they are completely dehumanising...they are counter to human nature and human desire. For another, because they are largely unenforceable, they rely on the laughable expectation that they will be willingly obeyed.
As I've said earlier, we keep getting more and more evidence that we are now genuinely in the Aquarian era, and it ain't going to be how the song from that stupid musical Hair described it. Initially anyway, we are in for a period of truly mammoth conflict. Uranus and Saturn, or to use imagery which people are more familiar with...the elderly vs the young and the new...Science, intellectualism, altruism, and the desire for genuine freedom colliding with tyranny, willful ignorance and stupidity, commercialism and fear...Smith vs Neo.
Unfortunately for Ashcroft, Hatch, Vilenti and the other Smith wannabes of the world however, although they may do some damage in the short term, long term they don't have a prayer of getting anywhere with their ambitions. They're too stupid, too greedy, too fearful, and therefore largely self-defeating. At times I pity them, because if they could learn to change their own mindset and behaviour they also could benefit from the future that the rest of us are busy creating.
If you step in chewing gum, it will cause your shoes to stick to the ground to a minor degree, but not ultimately enough to cause you anything more than inconvenience. Also, despite how tenacious said chewing gum may be in remaining on the soles of your shoes, it can and will be eventually scraped off...and then you continue walking. Humanity is still going to ultimately get where it wants to go...Bush and his friends might try and set up roadblocks, as have other such individuals throughout history...but ultimately all they amount to are potholes.
I used to drink Wild Turkey a few years back, but stopped partially due to how harsh it was. (At least the cheapest version of it)
I found myself wondering if this method would work for that, or if it is better suited for something which is primarily water based, like vodka?
Valve care too much about this game, and so do a lot of other people, IMHO.
;-))
Although I loved the first game, I'm not going to be going anywhere near this one, for a couple of different reasons.
a) I don't have the money to pay for what is from what I've read primarily a glorified graphics patch, in more or less the same sense Doom 3 was.
b) My taste in games has changed a lot over the last few years. I bought the Sims 2 and SC4 recently, both of which I thoroughly enjoy...but the most recent FPS I play with any regularity is the original UT. I think CounterStrike fans are juvenile, superficial idiots to be totally honest...I really don't understand what people see in that game at all. Reminds me of some of the stories I've read about southeast Asian PC baangs...I also knew a guy a couple of years ago who played a lot of CS and Action Quake 2 and ended up committing suicide. No, I don't believe the games contributed to why he did it, but he was a reckless idiot in a lot of other ways...CS/AQ2 were *symptoms* of that in his case, not contributing causes.
c) Although I don't have broadband and am not really interested in online FPSing anywayz, if Valve think I'm going to use some fascist DRM service, they're welcome to go and do something anatomically impossible with a shovel, with my blessing. Although to be honest, I somehow doubt very much that the fascist elements of Steam were Valve's idea...I suspect it is far more likely that Vivendi are responsible for that. The actual developers of a game normally don't advocate those sorts of measures, from what I've seen. They tend to be the product of brain-dead baby boomer business executives. (Wow, a lot of b's there
Where are my mod points when I really need them? I've lost count of the number of comments on this article that would get modded Overrated or Redundant if I had some right now.
Anyway, the lamers aside...compiling from source can have a number of advantages...the main one to my mind is stack protection.
I also like knowing that what is in the tarball I've downloaded is what is going into my binary...that there hasn't been a download/script kiddie backdoor add/compile to binary package procedure. It's like how I don't tend to go to McDonald's any more because I don't like the possibility of one of the people who work there spitting in my burger before it gets to me...same kind of thing.
I realise however that I'm trying to use rationality here to counter irrationality. The only reason why people here *really* don't like compiling from source is because it is clashes with the completely mindless, apt-getting "Debian IS Linux!" groupthink that I tend to observe on an almost daily basis around here.
I've often wondered why Slashdot's bias is so heavily tilted towards Debian in particular, actually. I'm assuming that for many of you it has a lot more to do with Debian having explicitly received Pope RMS's blessing than because of any genuine technical superiority. I find that deeply pathetic.
I didn't know there was such a thing as an Australian game coder in existence. ;-)
I'm in Australia myself...and while I wouldn't call myself a *coder* in that sense by any means, I have been really into messing around with UnrealED for a number of years. My specialties have been probably lighting and botpathing in particular...I'm actually fairly good at putting down effective pathnode nets in maps. I generally don't build maps from scratch I will confess as I'm not very strong on architecture in particular, but I find I'm able to do things like adding WarpZones as well as the botpathing...which a lot of people seem to have had problems with, from what I've read...they are tricky.
(From the PDF)
"Probably the most surprising thing I learned about EA is that its leaders, including its creative leaders, describe it as a packaged goods company like Proctor and Gamble or Nabisco."
This, in a nutshell, with extreme eloquence sums up EA's fundamental problem...and from the sounds of things it is very fundamental to them. There is no possible way that a company with this mentality can hope to run an MMORPG in particular...because a boxed product is the direct opposite of what an MMORPG is. A more appropriate conventional metaphor, or one which boomers would at least be more comfortable with, would be to think of an MMORPG as a virtual theme park or wildlife reserve. Expansion packs therefore, rather than being end products in themselves, should be thought of as visitor passes to previously roped off/undeveloped areas of the park. This analogy actually works very well with UO in particular...as using a client older than Age of Shadows for example after AoS's release meant that a person could not go to Malas or Ilshenar, for example.
If EA want to really break into the MMORPG space, (and they haven't substantially yet; UO is going downhill at a rate of knots, and The Sims Online is still well below target population) they're going to have to stop thinking purely in terms of being box-sellers, and start thinking in terms of being virtual park rangers. (or in the case of The Sims Online, even a virtual government)
An MMORPG is NOT something you can put in a box, throw out the door, and then heave a big sigh of relief because it's finished. They need continual maintenance, and if they are to do well they need continual maintenance by someone who actually has a clue about how to do it.
Even for single-player games however, this type of thinking is creatively barren and disastrously toxic. It might work fine for the annual regurgitation of a football game, (like Madden, and what Unreal Tournament sadly seems to be in danger of becoming) since football does not fundamentally change over time, (although on that score UT has absolutely no excuse) but with virtually any other genre, all it will ensure is that rehashes and regurgitations of the same tired old formulas get trucked out the door every year...Innovation comes to a standstill. I truly hope that for EA's sake they have in mind to change this philosophy, because they're signing their own commercial death certificate if they don't. Sure, it makes good commercial sense to go with the tried and true, (at least for maybe the first couple of sequels as far as games go) but there should I think be a dual approach. While you're assuring that the bills get paid today, you should also be focussed on staking out as much new creative territory as possible...because that's the only way to make sure that the bills also get paid tomorrow. Trying to get EA to put an emphasis on creativity is futile...They're a company, and their primary interest is to generate as high a margin as possible. But I wish we could encourage the company somehow to at least be halfway intelligent and forward-thinking when it comes to making money as well.
>Microsoft is an 800lb gorilla
Said gorilla has been losing rather a lot of blood recently. The only thing that they really have going for them is George W being in the White House, as far as the US is concerned, anywayz...in the EU they don't really have any advantages at all. They've also been having to make massive court settlements recently, while their revenue model continues to decline.
In short, Microsoft are finished. Oh, sure it'll take time, purely due to the company's size...the Microsoft ship started sinking in around September 1997, and it'll take a while yet. Bill also is not going to take his medicine willingly...The IP storm is going to come. But I think eventually (particularly in the EU, where the will of the people still actually counts for something, to a degree) the court of global public opinion is going to judge both Gates and his sick "vision" and find them sorely wanting.
Suddenly, caught by the level beams, Frodo saw the old king's head: it was lying rolled away by the roadside. "Look Sam!" he cried, startled into speech. "Look! The king has got a crown again!"
The eyes were hollow and the carven beard was broken, but about the high stern forehead there was a coronal of silver and gold. A trailing plant with flowers like small white stars had bound itself across the brows as if in reverence for the fallen king, and in the crevices of his stony yellow hair yellow stonecrop gleamed.
"They cannot conquer forever!" said Frodo. And then suddenly the brief glimpse was gone. The Sun dipped and vanished, and as if at the shuttering of a lamp, black night fell.
It's times like these when those Americans and people in the rest of the world who are suffering as a result of the recent "election" result, can and should take hope. Evil is, by its very nature and definition, contrary to life and the continuation of it...and therefore if life is to continue, imbalances such as the current one can, should, and will eventually be rectified. The main thing that both watching the Two Towers, and Linux itself has managed to help me remember was that contrary to what the bastards have tried to indoctrinate us with, resistance is not futile. Night may come, and with it a blackness sufficiently deep that we may no longer be able to see our hand in front of our face, or temporarily remember our direction...but as night comes, so too eventually must the dawn.
The rest of Bush's administration should see Ashcroft's passing as a harbinger of what they themselves ultimately can expect, and like all the other tyrants of human history, they will be remembered only as a source of death and misery, and an obstruction to genuine justice and human progress.
It sounds like a few peeps have been a bit confused by what this article says Microsoft are doing with this. I could be wrong, but here's my take on it:-
1) Microsoft either definitely *don't* have patents for the core protocols talked about here, or there is sufficient controversy that the IETF is likely to resist fairly strongly to the idea that they do.
2) Because of this, the goal of this licensing is *not* to try and make use of patents that Microsoft definitely has. What the goal is, is to cause people who are ignorant of the issue to *think* that Microsoft owns patents for these protocols. If people *think* Microsoft owns patents for these protocols, then they will be intimidated into using Microsoft's non-open implementations...even though Microsoft does not in fact own patents for them! So yes...it's fraud.
3) Considering that the US is likely to be the main battleground for this particular issue, it's worth noting that the Bush administration is extremely unlikely to come to the aid of the public interest here in any way, unlike the attempt of the Clinton DOJ to charge Microsoft under the Sherman Act. Bush has, as one of his central principles, the idea of giving moral and legal impunity to his friends...completely irrespective of how illegal/immoral the activities of said friends might otherwise be. If Microsoft contributes financially to keeping Bush in power, (which they have) they can openly violate the Sherman Act or whatever other laws they like...Bush and his cronies in the judiciary will quite happily look the other way. This is a very significant point when considering TCP/IP in particular, unfortunately...as those protocols were developed by Americans. Doing things like preventing software patents from becoming law in Europe might be a positive goal, but because so much of the early work on the net was done by Cerf and the others (who are American) the legal wellbeing of the Internet's base protocols arguably rests with the American government...or at least, it would govern any legal issues concerning them...which, given the hands said government is in right now, is an extremely frightening prospect for those of us who value Internet use.