RMS, the author of the GPL, has said many times for many years that it's OK, if a bit unusual, to charge for GPL'd software. Whatever else can be said about the man, I would think he's a suitable authority on what "the spirit of the GPL" is, given that he, you know, wrote the thing.
In other words, there is no betrayal. This is just a bunch of baw from someone who apparently forgot -or perhaps never understood- that the Free Software movement and the GPL from which it sprang have always, at their very core, been about freedom, not price. What these guys are doing is perfectly kosher.
Hatred of Microsoft is indeed a problem. A healthy mistrust of them and everything they put their stamp on, however, is not only rational but frankly quite prudent. After everything Microsoft has done to this industry, having done so little for it, they have a lot to prove. They have not yet proven it to my satisfaction, or apparently ot a lot of people's..
Adapting CSS to work for UI skinning is a good idea. It leverages very common knowledge and works based on a powerful model.
Implementing this by shoehorning an entire Web rendering engine into a window manager is not a good idea. By definition it means including a huge amount of unrelated and unneeded functionality, any or all of which could contain bugs. Witness the lessons of Display PostScript in NeXTStep, which introduced security problems due in no small part to including far more than was needed for the job (a lesson that Quartz and its descendants have avoided by sticking to the more limited, but also more task-appropriate, PDF model).
Swiping the CSS parser from WebKit is a good idea: it's a mature technology with solid performance. Cramming all of WebKit into the window manager is a bad idea: most of it would, for this specific purpose, be meaningless bloat that stands to do a lot more harm than good.
Certainly there is something publishers can do to kill the used-game market: download-only consoles. Without an object to give to the store (like a cartridge or disc) you have no way to sell your old games, and if you can't sell them, other people can't buy them. That's how you kill a market.
The PSP GO is the first step. If the market tolerates it, there will be more. The answer is simple: don't tolerate it, and persuade as many other people not to tolerate it as you can.
Bingo. My post was about marketing. More than a few of the greatest games ever made use engines originally made for other games, but very few of them advertise that fact.
A person wants to use the GPL because they want to get paid? Where does the GPL say the programmer has to be paid. I may be wrong but I don't recall anything like that in the license.
The GPL doesn't say that. What's in the GPL is that if you aren't willing to contribute back your changes, then the GPL license doesn't apply to you, and therefore if you still want to use the software, you need another license. When you go back to the developer (Zed in this case) for a different license, that lets you lock up the code, the developer charges for it. That is what says the programmer has to be paid; either you get the software under the GPL for free and obey the GPL, or you get the software under another license for money and obey that license.
This is the trick: you still need a license to use GPL software. It's just that instead of paying for the license with money, you pay with code: namely, your changes. If you have no applicable code (i.e. you haven't made any changes or derivatives), then the license lets that slide and you can use it for free as long as you still have no code. But once you have code, you have to pay.
One word, my friend: marketing. A shiny trailer, or a few nifty pics for reviewers to reference, will get the core gaming market to eat your game up like candy, with very little concern for anything else. It's an easy cash-in.
Oh, for crying out loud; if you're going to use Slashdot UIDs as some kind of reverse e-peen where smaller is better, then would both of you kindly tremble in awe at my imposing UID and cut the silly seniority crap out?
I was speaking from the notion that threads, too, are a kind of process. Yes, they do in fact have the same 'one process can't hog the CPU' advantage that using multiple complete system processes does. They do not, however, have the same reliability advantage, which is why I continued by pointing out that "if the browser is stable" was still a very big if.
I'd apologize for being unclear in my wording, but upon misreading what I wrote, you decided to jump to conclusions and go directly to flame mode without passing Go, collecting $200, or asking me for clarification. So instead I think I'll just point out that you flamed me for nothing.
Yes, back in the days when a bad web page would crash your browser this was bad, but I have not seen those crashes recently.
Do you run a lot of plug-ins, by any chance? Browser makers don't control plug-in code (other than the code for their own plug-ins, of course), but this code is still capable of taking out a browser process if it goes bad.
If the browser is stable, what benefit do multi-processes have?
The other big benefit is that one process can't hog the CPU: even if one page gets into a ridiculously tight JavaScript loop that bogs that page down, the others should continue to load.
Still, the "if the browser is stable" issue is a very big if, and as I mentioned above, it's not completely under the browser maker's control.
Also, and maybe I should read the details, but if I am authenticated to a website in one tab, does that authentication carry over to other tabs using other processes?
It depends on how the browser is written, but it can be done.
Forking a process on unix-like systems if fairly lightweight but for Windows this will not scale well at all.
The Microsoft folks don't seem concerned about this, at least not concerned enough to implement it in IE. While I don't doubt that Windows processes are fairly heavyweight, I doubt that they're big enough to cause trouble until the user has hundreds of tabs open.
Why not just have rendering worker threads? Have I missed something?
Although working in multiple threads can increase performance in much the same way that multiple processes can, that's not the major benefit of the multi-process architecture. The big benefit to multiple processes is that if one of them dies for some reason, the other processes don't go down, and so the user can (mostly) continue to work. Threads can't do this, because all the threads are still part of a single process.
Think about it: according to this judge, an IP address identifies a computer (as others have pointed out, "network endpoint" would be a more correct term), not the person behind it. Although this makes it easier for the **AA to collect IP-address information, it also makes such information a lot less useful, because by itself it leaves a hole big enough to establish reasonable doubt. The IP address can establish what computer was used, but it does not prove that the defendant was the one operating the computer in that capacity. Especially in an age of botnets and malware, there's a lot of doubt here unless you can establish a stronger link, and the IP address won't help you on that score.
That leaves open the question: does this really strengthen the **AA, or does it actually hamstring their tactics? This may remain to be seen.
So not counting Microsoft (which has had nothing to say on the matter, and therefore cannot be counted one way or another), the only party blocking this is Apple, and they're blocking it based solely on a trumped-up and prima facie invalid argument, and furthermore, an argument that has never once impeded any of Apple's past actions. In other words, "BAWWWWW they din pik my pet codec BAWWWWW i wants every1 usin only my codec BAWWWWW BAWWWWW BAWWWWW!"
Seriously, folks; QuickTime uses a plug-in architecture for a reason. If Apple were truly concerned about Theora and patents, all they'd need to do is implement it as a plug-in -something they should have absolutely no trouble doing, as it's their own architecture- which could then be trivially removed if the need ever arose. But no; this is a step back towards the bad old days of Not-Invented-Here syndrome at Apple.
But... but then how will aspiring fratboys "prove" their "maturity" to themselves without that sweet, sweet hormonal rush? Everyone knows these are rated M because playing them makes you mature.
There's something of a chicken-and-egg problem here: a standard has to have implementations before it's accepted as a standard. This is how the W3C and WHAT-WG both work, and there are good reasons for it: the attempt to implement a standard often produces extremely valuable feedback for how the standard should work, which in turn prompts revisions.
In most cases, however, IE has not "implemented a version of those standards before they were standards." More often, IE used rejected ideas or even made stuff up that it never proposed, all for the sake of messing up compatibility and thus promoting lock-in.
The fact is, the people who pay for Firefox to be developed (call this "fund" or "contribute" or whatever you like) are in return making a profit from Firefox. As a previous poster said, non-profitness is just a legal construct, but the author of TFA was implying that it was somehow "amazing" that a non-profit company captured 25% of the market share from the likes of Microsoft.
Are they? How does that work, especially now that, with Chrome on the scene, Google is actually funding one of its own competitors?
I have to admit that there is some truth to what you say. Regardless of how much money was involved, should his punishment really exceed that of a murderer?
Why not? Certainly it is not as harmful to steal the life savings of one person as it would be to murder one person, but is it less harmful to steal the life savings of thousands of people as it would be to murder one person? Before Madoff, this might have been considered a reductio ad absurdum fallacy, but this is humanity we're talking about: we face the absurd on almost a daily basis, and here we have just such a case.
To put it in terms Madoff might understand, what his crimes lack in margin they make up in volume.
The alleged "greater precision" of button-mashers is imaginary; a side effect of someone afraid to learn a new skill. People said exactly the same thing about analog sticks, and D-pads before them, and both times they were wrong. They are wrong again.
As for gratuitous complexity, which the author (like many others) have mistaken for "depth," this is a harmful thing. It has driven far more people away from gaming than it ever attracted, creating shallow and unrewarding experiences for most with very little actual gain in game quality: a childish domination fantasy, nothing more. This is just someone who wants to keep people out of gaming, and like other kinesophobes he deserves exactly two options: take the plunge or don't play. His attitude is harmful to the industry and ultimately, it's unhealthy to himself. He doesn't need more games; he needs professional help.
Sure, disassembling hard drives is time-intensive. But the real reward is that you can salvage a bunch of really powerful magnets for mad-science experiments.
Who did cain and abel fuck since god created adam the first man, and eve the first woman.
No word on whether the concept would really apply to Abel, but presumably Adam and Eve had daughters as well. Bootstrapping a population can require unusual measures.
Then lets look at the brothers of jesus and the way they were fucking human women and having half-breed babies.
That holds unless Jesus' brothers were natural children of Mary and Joseph (which I suppose would technically make them half-brothers, but the languages of the time didn't make that distinction). Not all sects believe that Mary remained a virgin all her life: once Jesus was born, why would it matter anymore?
The examine the old testament, where it clearly says jesus and satan are the sons of god.
Along with everyone else, yes.
So there had to be inbreeding you invisible sky wizard believing sack of AC shit. I fucking hate idiots.
Using terms like 'invisible sky wizard' doesn't speak particularly well to your intelligence either.
Slashdot Mirror
RMS, the author of the GPL, has said many times for many years that it's OK, if a bit unusual, to charge for GPL'd software. Whatever else can be said about the man, I would think he's a suitable authority on what "the spirit of the GPL" is, given that he, you know, wrote the thing.
In other words, there is no betrayal. This is just a bunch of baw from someone who apparently forgot -or perhaps never understood- that the Free Software movement and the GPL from which it sprang have always, at their very core, been about freedom, not price. What these guys are doing is perfectly kosher.
Hatred of Microsoft is indeed a problem. A healthy mistrust of them and everything they put their stamp on, however, is not only rational but frankly quite prudent. After everything Microsoft has done to this industry, having done so little for it, they have a lot to prove. They have not yet proven it to my satisfaction, or apparently ot a lot of people's..
Adapting CSS to work for UI skinning is a good idea. It leverages very common knowledge and works based on a powerful model.
Implementing this by shoehorning an entire Web rendering engine into a window manager is not a good idea. By definition it means including a huge amount of unrelated and unneeded functionality, any or all of which could contain bugs. Witness the lessons of Display PostScript in NeXTStep, which introduced security problems due in no small part to including far more than was needed for the job (a lesson that Quartz and its descendants have avoided by sticking to the more limited, but also more task-appropriate, PDF model).
Swiping the CSS parser from WebKit is a good idea: it's a mature technology with solid performance. Cramming all of WebKit into the window manager is a bad idea: most of it would, for this specific purpose, be meaningless bloat that stands to do a lot more harm than good.
Certainly there is something publishers can do to kill the used-game market: download-only consoles. Without an object to give to the store (like a cartridge or disc) you have no way to sell your old games, and if you can't sell them, other people can't buy them. That's how you kill a market.
The PSP GO is the first step. If the market tolerates it, there will be more. The answer is simple: don't tolerate it, and persuade as many other people not to tolerate it as you can.
Bingo. My post was about marketing. More than a few of the greatest games ever made use engines originally made for other games, but very few of them advertise that fact.
Is that like a game based on historical ancient Japan involving battles with a giant enemy crab?
If your game touts the fact that it uses another game's engine as a principal marketing point, it might be generic.
A person wants to use the GPL because they want to get paid? Where does the GPL say the programmer has to be paid. I may be wrong but I don't recall anything like that in the license.
The GPL doesn't say that. What's in the GPL is that if you aren't willing to contribute back your changes, then the GPL license doesn't apply to you, and therefore if you still want to use the software, you need another license. When you go back to the developer (Zed in this case) for a different license, that lets you lock up the code, the developer charges for it. That is what says the programmer has to be paid; either you get the software under the GPL for free and obey the GPL, or you get the software under another license for money and obey that license.
This is the trick: you still need a license to use GPL software. It's just that instead of paying for the license with money, you pay with code: namely, your changes. If you have no applicable code (i.e. you haven't made any changes or derivatives), then the license lets that slide and you can use it for free as long as you still have no code. But once you have code, you have to pay.
One word, my friend: marketing. A shiny trailer, or a few nifty pics for reviewers to reference, will get the core gaming market to eat your game up like candy, with very little concern for anything else. It's an easy cash-in.
Oh, for crying out loud; if you're going to use Slashdot UIDs as some kind of reverse e-peen where smaller is better, then would both of you kindly tremble in awe at my imposing UID and cut the silly seniority crap out?
I was speaking from the notion that threads, too, are a kind of process. Yes, they do in fact have the same 'one process can't hog the CPU' advantage that using multiple complete system processes does. They do not, however, have the same reliability advantage, which is why I continued by pointing out that "if the browser is stable" was still a very big if.
I'd apologize for being unclear in my wording, but upon misreading what I wrote, you decided to jump to conclusions and go directly to flame mode without passing Go, collecting $200, or asking me for clarification. So instead I think I'll just point out that you flamed me for nothing.
I meant to say that they weren't concerned enough to implement IE8's architecture using threads, as opposed to processes.
Yes, back in the days when a bad web page would crash your browser this was bad, but I have not seen those crashes recently.
Do you run a lot of plug-ins, by any chance? Browser makers don't control plug-in code (other than the code for their own plug-ins, of course), but this code is still capable of taking out a browser process if it goes bad.
If the browser is stable, what benefit do multi-processes have?
The other big benefit is that one process can't hog the CPU: even if one page gets into a ridiculously tight JavaScript loop that bogs that page down, the others should continue to load.
Still, the "if the browser is stable" issue is a very big if, and as I mentioned above, it's not completely under the browser maker's control.
Also, and maybe I should read the details, but if I am authenticated to a website in one tab, does that authentication carry over to other tabs using other processes?
It depends on how the browser is written, but it can be done.
Forking a process on unix-like systems if fairly lightweight but for Windows this will not scale well at all.
The Microsoft folks don't seem concerned about this, at least not concerned enough to implement it in IE. While I don't doubt that Windows processes are fairly heavyweight, I doubt that they're big enough to cause trouble until the user has hundreds of tabs open.
Why not just have rendering worker threads? Have I missed something?
Although working in multiple threads can increase performance in much the same way that multiple processes can, that's not the major benefit of the multi-process architecture. The big benefit to multiple processes is that if one of them dies for some reason, the other processes don't go down, and so the user can (mostly) continue to work. Threads can't do this, because all the threads are still part of a single process.
Think about it: according to this judge, an IP address identifies a computer (as others have pointed out, "network endpoint" would be a more correct term), not the person behind it. Although this makes it easier for the **AA to collect IP-address information, it also makes such information a lot less useful, because by itself it leaves a hole big enough to establish reasonable doubt. The IP address can establish what computer was used, but it does not prove that the defendant was the one operating the computer in that capacity. Especially in an age of botnets and malware, there's a lot of doubt here unless you can establish a stronger link, and the IP address won't help you on that score.
That leaves open the question: does this really strengthen the **AA, or does it actually hamstring their tactics? This may remain to be seen.
They have a say because they're the ones writing the standards.
So not counting Microsoft (which has had nothing to say on the matter, and therefore cannot be counted one way or another), the only party blocking this is Apple, and they're blocking it based solely on a trumped-up and prima facie invalid argument, and furthermore, an argument that has never once impeded any of Apple's past actions. In other words, "BAWWWWW they din pik my pet codec BAWWWWW i wants every1 usin only my codec BAWWWWW BAWWWWW BAWWWWW!"
Seriously, folks; QuickTime uses a plug-in architecture for a reason. If Apple were truly concerned about Theora and patents, all they'd need to do is implement it as a plug-in -something they should have absolutely no trouble doing, as it's their own architecture- which could then be trivially removed if the need ever arose. But no; this is a step back towards the bad old days of Not-Invented-Here syndrome at Apple.
But... but then how will aspiring fratboys "prove" their "maturity" to themselves without that sweet, sweet hormonal rush? Everyone knows these are rated M because playing them makes you mature.
There's something of a chicken-and-egg problem here: a standard has to have implementations before it's accepted as a standard. This is how the W3C and WHAT-WG both work, and there are good reasons for it: the attempt to implement a standard often produces extremely valuable feedback for how the standard should work, which in turn prompts revisions.
In most cases, however, IE has not "implemented a version of those standards before they were standards." More often, IE used rejected ideas or even made stuff up that it never proposed, all for the sake of messing up compatibility and thus promoting lock-in.
The fact is, the people who pay for Firefox to be developed (call this "fund" or "contribute" or whatever you like) are in return making a profit from Firefox. As a previous poster said, non-profitness is just a legal construct, but the author of TFA was implying that it was somehow "amazing" that a non-profit company captured 25% of the market share from the likes of Microsoft.
Are they? How does that work, especially now that, with Chrome on the scene, Google is actually funding one of its own competitors?
...will it have sidetalkin'?
I have to admit that there is some truth to what you say. Regardless of how much money was involved, should his punishment really exceed that of a murderer?
Why not? Certainly it is not as harmful to steal the life savings of one person as it would be to murder one person, but is it less harmful to steal the life savings of thousands of people as it would be to murder one person? Before Madoff, this might have been considered a reductio ad absurdum fallacy, but this is humanity we're talking about: we face the absurd on almost a daily basis, and here we have just such a case.
To put it in terms Madoff might understand, what his crimes lack in margin they make up in volume.
The alleged "greater precision" of button-mashers is imaginary; a side effect of someone afraid to learn a new skill. People said exactly the same thing about analog sticks, and D-pads before them, and both times they were wrong. They are wrong again.
As for gratuitous complexity, which the author (like many others) have mistaken for "depth," this is a harmful thing. It has driven far more people away from gaming than it ever attracted, creating shallow and unrewarding experiences for most with very little actual gain in game quality: a childish domination fantasy, nothing more. This is just someone who wants to keep people out of gaming, and like other kinesophobes he deserves exactly two options: take the plunge or don't play. His attitude is harmful to the industry and ultimately, it's unhealthy to himself. He doesn't need more games; he needs professional help.
Sure, disassembling hard drives is time-intensive. But the real reward is that you can salvage a bunch of really powerful magnets for mad-science experiments.
Who did cain and abel fuck since god created adam the first man, and eve the first woman.
No word on whether the concept would really apply to Abel, but presumably Adam and Eve had daughters as well. Bootstrapping a population can require unusual measures.
Then lets look at the brothers of jesus and the way they were fucking human women and having half-breed babies.
That holds unless Jesus' brothers were natural children of Mary and Joseph (which I suppose would technically make them half-brothers, but the languages of the time didn't make that distinction). Not all sects believe that Mary remained a virgin all her life: once Jesus was born, why would it matter anymore?
The examine the old testament, where it clearly says jesus and satan are the sons of god.
Along with everyone else, yes.
So there had to be inbreeding you invisible sky wizard believing sack of AC shit. I fucking hate idiots.
Using terms like 'invisible sky wizard' doesn't speak particularly well to your intelligence either.