Funny you should mention ftp.exe as I was just looking at it before I read your post. I don't think that Microsoft stole any GPL'ed code (if it even is GPL'ed), they probably just cloned the existing user interface that UNIX has had for years. The underlying code is probably very different (the differences between win2k's ftp.exe and cygwin's ftp.exe is about 200kb.). There is nothing wrong with just cloning the interface AFAIK.
You've returned their mailing, so now they know you read whatever they send to you. Do you expect to get less mail from them? No! They'll sell your name to a list as a person who actually reads their mail!
How are they going to get your name and address from returning a prepaid envelope? You're not going to put that information on the front are you? Yes, what you just described is somewhat true for spammers using email, but not for snail mail.
playing a few games at night will get you killed in a FPS. There are other people with WAY too much time on their hands with very low latency connections as well. You'll get killed because you don't play often enough.
in addition to the disk caches, it uses a memory cache like NS4.x does. So if you've been browsing for a half an hour, then go back to a blank webpage, your memory usage will go down, but won't drop back to the level it was at before. You paid for that RAM right? It might as well be used for something.
The MAC address is a good idea and has been used before, but what if you don't have a NIC? I hope one will be included in the Whistler box (at no cost to me) so that I can at least use the OS if I choose to buy it. It would not be a good thing to sell a product that doesn't work out of the box, then force the user into putting hardware into their computers that they won't use for anything, other than a unique ID for M$.
The Pentium III ID won't work either because this processor isn't widespread enough. I wonder where this unique ID in hardware will come from?
I doubt that M$ will ever give away their OS for no cost, but I would agree that a discount is in order. Seriously, looking at NECX now:
Microsoft Windows ME: $173.95
Microsoft Windows 2000: $278.95
Windows isn't worth that kind of money. You can still find legitimate copies that are cheaper, but the point is that this is just way too expensive. Especially now that Linux is starting to make entry into the desktop market, people won't continue to shell out this kind of money for an OS that is so intrusive. I've put up with a lot of crap from M$ in the past, but this entire licensing system is where I'll probably draw the line. I refuse to register with such a service.
But back to the cost of the OS, if they sold it for $50 or so, this would be more reasonable. Not only would they sell more copies at a lower price, but there would also be an increase in the percentage of legit copies floating around. By charging this much just for an OS, I hope M$ isn't surprised by the number of piracy.
You're correct in saying that the comparison between the M$ copy protection and the Q3A copy protection is not accurate, but I have to add that you have a major problem if the master server goes down for any reason in a game like Q3A. When the master server goes down, clients can no longer authenticate, so they can not join ANY games, anywhere. Granted the master server doesn't go down often, but it has happened to me a couple of times. I only play quake3 a few times a month also...
There is no way we'll be using CD-RW discs ten years from now. We'll probably still be using 1.4MB floppies:) Anyway, the reason CD-RW disks won't catch on is that you need a multiread CD-ROM drive to read and write to them. In case you haven't noticed, these are not widespread and will probably never be. Just look at how long 1.4MB floppies have been around, that's an obsolete standard.
Don't get me wrong, floppies are still useful for certain things, but CD-R (recordable, NOT rewritable) disks have almost replaced them for high capacity removable storage. CD-ROM drives still aren't as widespread as floppy drives, but it's the next best thing we've got for a standard.
Yes, but if you already have an Intel system, this could be a good option. I have an ASUS CUSL2 + celeron 433mhz system and I would probably consider something like this for an upgrade in 3 months or so when the price starts to fall and the availability is better. So anyways, I like my motherboard and really don't plan on changing it for a few years, so something like the duron doesn't work for me
Now if you're building a system from scratch, this celeron processor doesn't make much sense since according to the article, a duron 600mhz matches the performance of this celeron 800mhz (for q3 at least). The prices on the Duron are much lower as well.
It seems like we're stuck with the decision of going with:
1. A small, solid-state player that is smaller than a pack of smokes, but yet doesn't have enough capacity to hold a full CD.
OR
2. A larger, heavier hard disk player that is bigger than a portable CD player, but yet has enough capacity to hold most people's entire mp3 collection.
Neither one is great, but the technology is relatively new and I'm sure we'll see better, cheaper models in 2001.
tomshardware reviewed the Nomad as well. One of the cool things in their article is that they detail the steps necessary to hack your Nomad. 6GB is never enough right?
This looks pretty cool, but it's still a bit out of my price range. It isn't a solid-state player either, but I might be able to live with that if I was convinced this thing could endure the shock and abuse associated with a portable music player. Also, the battery life isn't that great (~4 hours?) but it's still much better than all of those 64MB players out there that can't hold a full CD.
You might be right, but if you plan out your keyboard layout correctly, you won't have to worry about the weapon select keys being out of reach of the primary, movement keys. I don't use the wasd config you are referring to, but mine is similar I'm sure. Basically the left side of the keyboard is full of weapon switching and movement binds, whereas the right side is basically team messages (for CTF). The only problem I would have with this half-keyboard it is when you are out of quake, you'd have to use it for your regular typing too:/
A Linux truly designed for the desktop should include... A conservative roster of applications, including an email client; a Web browser; office tools such as a word processor, a spreadsheet, and presentation apps; an image editor; a media player; an HTML editor; Telnet, FTP, and other network utilities
And lets not forget text manipulation tools. One of the big reasons people use linux is for the text manipulation tools. If I just wanted the applications listed above, I'd use windows. As I'm sure many other people have pointed out, the unix philosophy calls for many small applications that do one thing only and do it well. For example, take WMP7 for example. How many applications are all rolled into one, huge program here?
- mp3 player (mpg123)
- graphical interface (xmms)
- playlist manager (perl script)
- ripper (cdparanoia)
- encoder (lame)
- id3 tag manager (id3ed)
- streaming audio (?)
- streaming video (?)
- movie player (?)
I'm sure there are others (I haven't used WMP7 that much), but the point is that it's probably at least eight or nine applications rolled into one, big windows program. It's just a difference in structure that's all. Most people who run linux should expect differences from windows.
It could, it raises many issues that some schools could address. Where I'm going to school, it was brought up in a computer ethics class. The argument is that many colleges are funded by the state, and if the state dumps money into an Internet connection for the college's students, it should be used for education, not surfing for porn. It's a tough issue that I think all colleges will consider, unfortunately.
Solidstate players are good, but I feel the problem with them is the memory costs. The only way I would buy one is if they had at least 128MB of memory and the memory sticks were cheap enough so that you could afford to purchase a few. At 192kbps CBR, 128MB will store a little more than one normal audio CD which is what normal, compact disc players are limited to now. These 32MB solidstate players just don't work for me. Even at 128kbps CBR, that's only about 30 minutes. Then you have to take the whole player back to your PC and upload more music.
I would have to agree. Trying to play quake on a console is painful after you have played using a computer for so long. However, there are some very good FPS games for consoles such as 007 golden eye for N64. This game owns with single player, and it's probably the best single player FPS game I've ever played for any platform (except for maybe halflife).
In golden eye, you aim by holding down, IIRC, R1. This allows you to look around while keeping your fingers at the fire button. It works very well considering that you don't have a mouse / keyboard for the console. The only problem is that you can't move while aiming this way, but that's just one of the drawbacks of the single controller interface.
UDF filesystem support is in 2.4.0-test11 right now and it even works:| It's pretty cool, but I'm not sure if I'd trust my backups to DirectCD. Since CDs are so cheap now, you're better off just cutting your losses and burning a CD-R once a month of your important data, then chucking the old CD in the trash can. This way, your CD-R backup will work in 99% of the CD-ROMs out there, instead of just working with multiread CD-ROM drives.
I believe there is also a limit to the number of times you can burn to a CD-RW before the disk becomes unusable (1000 maybe?).
Even if M$ would make their own distro, nobody would use it. Think about it, people run linux for a few major reasons.
1. it's free.
2. it's better than the alternatives.
3. it's not made by M$
anybody running linux would use another distro, like Debian. I really doubt that M$ could shut down all linux distros since non-commercial ones such as Debian could never be bought out. I think that if Microsoft were to purchase Redhat and create their own linux distro they would still keep Windows around. So you might as well run Windows instead...
Crack Falls Down [2:03 AM EDT]
The official announcement that Dave Taylor mentioned in an earlier.plan update of what's up with Crack and the Golgotha source has worked its way through the net. On the subject of the source, a later.plan update points out, "To those of you grabbing the source, you only need golgotha_src.zip to get started. Also, we goofed on the music name, it's "Helsinki, Finland", not "Helsinki, Sweden". *blush*" Here's the whole sad tale, told in good spirits:
WHAT: Crack dot Com is closing its doors.
WHY: Ran out of cash.
REALLY WHY: Lot of reasons, but then again, there are a lot of reasons that we got as far as we did. I think the killer reason, though, was that Golgotha was compared by publishers primarily to Battlezone and Uprising, and those titles sold really poorly.
WHAT NOW?: Now we file articles of dissolution w/ the secretary of state, and we file bankruptcy.
IS THAT IT?!: No.
WHAT ELSE?: We're releasing the Golgotha source code, and data to the public domain.
HELL YES! WHERE'S THE SOURCE CODE?: I want to personally thank everyone who supported & rooted for us. That was really nice of you.
YEAH YEAH, BLAH BLAH, WHERE'S THE SOURCE?: I want to apologize to the fans and business partners we've let down.
BOO HOO! WE CARE. OUT WITH IT!: Thanks for your patience. The source & data can be found at http://www.crack.com/golgotha_release. And of course, the ex-Crack developers are up to new & interesting things which you can follow at the web site.
WAIT A MINUTE. IS THIS STUFF FREE BECAUSE IT SUCKS?: No. Even if you thought the code sucked, there are 15 gorgeous pieces of music, 100 cool sound effects, and over 2000 hi-resolution textures. But trust me, even the code is cool. It's an ultra-modular outdoor 3D engine, and it does WAY more than Battlezone or Uprising even came close to. Check out the features page. You should definitely check it out if you've ever wanted a public domain, competetive, outdoor 3D engine.
I barely remember that company also. IIRC, they were working on a FPS when they ran out of money and had to shut the entire project down. They released the code to the community so someone could finish the game for them. But that was years ago, I imagine that someone has done something with this by now.
- First you'll need one of those 'free' PCs that they gave away a couple of years ago. They only run windows, have parts soldered to their motherboards, and have an advertising banner that can't be turned off around the windows interface.
- next, sign up for a 'free' ISPs. You'll have zero cost 56k access, but you'll have another advertising banner across the bottom of your screen.
- make sure you use this version of opera to do your web surfing with its advertising banner at the top of your screen. That brings the total to 3 banners!
- then, make sure you view sites which have excessive advertising such as computer shopper or zdnet. Your 'free' system will be complete, with 95% of your screen consumed by adversiting.
I disagree with this. I use netscape 4.76 exclusively and I can tell you that these points don't hold up.
unstable
it isn't unstable under Windows unless your Windows box or netscape profile is screwed up. Although I would agree that it's unstable under linux. On Linux, mozilla is much better and stable.
weak interface
What does a weak interface mean? If you mean that it doesn't look like a Windows program, you're right. But why does that make the UI weak? Netscape runs on many different platforms including windows, mac, and unix and so a universal interface that looks exactly the same on any platform has some significant advantages. Lets say Netscape 4.76 had a proprietary MFC toolbar, html help file, and some other M$ specific widgets. How is this going to port well to other systems?
bloated
netscape 4.7 isn't bloated either. you have to remember that it's more than a browser. netscape 4.76 includes composer, messenger, an address book, and a browser. All of this loads when you start netscape. After netscape is loaded, all of these components listed above load instantly.
weak security
the only major security problem netscape has had recently (AFAIK) has been the java hole. I don't know very much about IE, but if I remember correctly it has problems with both java and activeX scripts.
slow
again, it's not slow. netscape would load a lot faster if it was just a browser, but it's actually a suite of communication programs bundled together. As for rendering speed, they seem to be about equal to me.
I couldn't find it in a two week old nightly of mozilla. But maybe the options for adding an ldap directory is hidden somewhere since it's still in development. I downloaded the binary on their website, not the source. Does anybody know where you can add these directories?
Opera is VERY fast. The UI really does suck and the rendering wasn't that great either. But it's proprietary software with huge restrictions. Heh, I thought that when I downloaded the tarball that I'd have the source. Instead it was just a crippled binary with a timebomb:(
Slashdot Mirror
Funny you should mention ftp.exe as I was just looking at it before I read your post. I don't think that Microsoft stole any GPL'ed code (if it even is GPL'ed), they probably just cloned the existing user interface that UNIX has had for years. The underlying code is probably very different (the differences between win2k's ftp.exe and cygwin's ftp.exe is about 200kb.). There is nothing wrong with just cloning the interface AFAIK.
How are they going to get your name and address from returning a prepaid envelope? You're not going to put that information on the front are you? Yes, what you just described is somewhat true for spammers using email, but not for snail mail.
playing a few games at night will get you killed in a FPS. There are other people with WAY too much time on their hands with very low latency connections as well. You'll get killed because you don't play often enough.
in addition to the disk caches, it uses a memory cache like NS4.x does. So if you've been browsing for a half an hour, then go back to a blank webpage, your memory usage will go down, but won't drop back to the level it was at before. You paid for that RAM right? It might as well be used for something.
well, in NS4.x you do this with CTRL+H (might work in mozilla?). IE isn't the only browser with this feature.
The MAC address is a good idea and has been used before, but what if you don't have a NIC? I hope one will be included in the Whistler box (at no cost to me) so that I can at least use the OS if I choose to buy it. It would not be a good thing to sell a product that doesn't work out of the box, then force the user into putting hardware into their computers that they won't use for anything, other than a unique ID for M$.
The Pentium III ID won't work either because this processor isn't widespread enough. I wonder where this unique ID in hardware will come from?
I doubt that M$ will ever give away their OS for no cost, but I would agree that a discount is in order. Seriously, looking at NECX now:
Microsoft Windows ME: $173.95
Microsoft Windows 2000: $278.95
Windows isn't worth that kind of money. You can still find legitimate copies that are cheaper, but the point is that this is just way too expensive. Especially now that Linux is starting to make entry into the desktop market, people won't continue to shell out this kind of money for an OS that is so intrusive. I've put up with a lot of crap from M$ in the past, but this entire licensing system is where I'll probably draw the line. I refuse to register with such a service.
But back to the cost of the OS, if they sold it for $50 or so, this would be more reasonable. Not only would they sell more copies at a lower price, but there would also be an increase in the percentage of legit copies floating around. By charging this much just for an OS, I hope M$ isn't surprised by the number of piracy.
You're correct in saying that the comparison between the M$ copy protection and the Q3A copy protection is not accurate, but I have to add that you have a major problem if the master server goes down for any reason in a game like Q3A. When the master server goes down, clients can no longer authenticate, so they can not join ANY games, anywhere. Granted the master server doesn't go down often, but it has happened to me a couple of times. I only play quake3 a few times a month also...
There is no way we'll be using CD-RW discs ten years from now. We'll probably still be using 1.4MB floppies :) Anyway, the reason CD-RW disks won't catch on is that you need a multiread CD-ROM drive to read and write to them. In case you haven't noticed, these are not widespread and will probably never be. Just look at how long 1.4MB floppies have been around, that's an obsolete standard.
Don't get me wrong, floppies are still useful for certain things, but CD-R (recordable, NOT rewritable) disks have almost replaced them for high capacity removable storage. CD-ROM drives still aren't as widespread as floppy drives, but it's the next best thing we've got for a standard.
Yes, but if you already have an Intel system, this could be a good option. I have an ASUS CUSL2 + celeron 433mhz system and I would probably consider something like this for an upgrade in 3 months or so when the price starts to fall and the availability is better. So anyways, I like my motherboard and really don't plan on changing it for a few years, so something like the duron doesn't work for me
Now if you're building a system from scratch, this celeron processor doesn't make much sense since according to the article, a duron 600mhz matches the performance of this celeron 800mhz (for q3 at least). The prices on the Duron are much lower as well.
It seems like we're stuck with the decision of going with:
1. A small, solid-state player that is smaller than a pack of smokes, but yet doesn't have enough capacity to hold a full CD.
OR
2. A larger, heavier hard disk player that is bigger than a portable CD player, but yet has enough capacity to hold most people's entire mp3 collection.
Neither one is great, but the technology is relatively new and I'm sure we'll see better, cheaper models in 2001.
This looks pretty cool, but it's still a bit out of my price range. It isn't a solid-state player either, but I might be able to live with that if I was convinced this thing could endure the shock and abuse associated with a portable music player. Also, the battery life isn't that great (~4 hours?) but it's still much better than all of those 64MB players out there that can't hold a full CD.
You might be right, but if you plan out your keyboard layout correctly, you won't have to worry about the weapon select keys being out of reach of the primary, movement keys. I don't use the wasd config you are referring to, but mine is similar I'm sure. Basically the left side of the keyboard is full of weapon switching and movement binds, whereas the right side is basically team messages (for CTF). The only problem I would have with this half-keyboard it is when you are out of quake, you'd have to use it for your regular typing too :/
And lets not forget text manipulation tools. One of the big reasons people use linux is for the text manipulation tools. If I just wanted the applications listed above, I'd use windows. As I'm sure many other people have pointed out, the unix philosophy calls for many small applications that do one thing only and do it well. For example, take WMP7 for example. How many applications are all rolled into one, huge program here?
- mp3 player (mpg123)
- graphical interface (xmms)
- playlist manager (perl script)
- ripper (cdparanoia)
- encoder (lame)
- id3 tag manager (id3ed)
- streaming audio (?)
- streaming video (?)
- movie player (?)
I'm sure there are others (I haven't used WMP7 that much), but the point is that it's probably at least eight or nine applications rolled into one, big windows program. It's just a difference in structure that's all. Most people who run linux should expect differences from windows.
It could, it raises many issues that some schools could address. Where I'm going to school, it was brought up in a computer ethics class. The argument is that many colleges are funded by the state, and if the state dumps money into an Internet connection for the college's students, it should be used for education, not surfing for porn. It's a tough issue that I think all colleges will consider, unfortunately.
Solidstate players are good, but I feel the problem with them is the memory costs. The only way I would buy one is if they had at least 128MB of memory and the memory sticks were cheap enough so that you could afford to purchase a few. At 192kbps CBR, 128MB will store a little more than one normal audio CD which is what normal, compact disc players are limited to now. These 32MB solidstate players just don't work for me. Even at 128kbps CBR, that's only about 30 minutes. Then you have to take the whole player back to your PC and upload more music.
I would have to agree. Trying to play quake on a console is painful after you have played using a computer for so long. However, there are some very good FPS games for consoles such as 007 golden eye for N64. This game owns with single player, and it's probably the best single player FPS game I've ever played for any platform (except for maybe halflife).
In golden eye, you aim by holding down, IIRC, R1. This allows you to look around while keeping your fingers at the fire button. It works very well considering that you don't have a mouse / keyboard for the console. The only problem is that you can't move while aiming this way, but that's just one of the drawbacks of the single controller interface.
UDF filesystem support is in 2.4.0-test11 right now and it even works :| It's pretty cool, but I'm not sure if I'd trust my backups to DirectCD. Since CDs are so cheap now, you're better off just cutting your losses and burning a CD-R once a month of your important data, then chucking the old CD in the trash can. This way, your CD-R backup will work in 99% of the CD-ROMs out there, instead of just working with multiread CD-ROM drives.
I believe there is also a limit to the number of times you can burn to a CD-RW before the disk becomes unusable (1000 maybe?).
1. it's free.
2. it's better than the alternatives.
3. it's not made by M$
anybody running linux would use another distro, like Debian. I really doubt that M$ could shut down all linux distros since non-commercial ones such as Debian could never be bought out. I think that if Microsoft were to purchase Redhat and create their own linux distro they would still keep Windows around. So you might as well run Windows instead...
Crack Falls Down [2:03 AM EDT] The official announcement that Dave Taylor mentioned in an earlier .plan update of what's up with Crack and the Golgotha source has worked its way through the net. On the subject of the source, a later .plan update points out, "To those of you grabbing the source, you only need golgotha_src.zip to get started. Also, we goofed on the music name, it's "Helsinki, Finland", not "Helsinki, Sweden". *blush*" Here's the whole sad tale, told in good spirits:
WHAT: Crack dot Com is closing its doors.
WHY: Ran out of cash.
REALLY WHY: Lot of reasons, but then again, there are a lot of reasons that we got as far as we did. I think the killer reason, though, was that Golgotha was compared by publishers primarily to Battlezone and Uprising, and those titles sold really poorly.
WHAT NOW?: Now we file articles of dissolution w/ the secretary of state, and we file bankruptcy.
IS THAT IT?!: No.
WHAT ELSE?: We're releasing the Golgotha source code, and data to the public domain.
HELL YES! WHERE'S THE SOURCE CODE?: I want to personally thank everyone who supported & rooted for us. That was really nice of you.
YEAH YEAH, BLAH BLAH, WHERE'S THE SOURCE?: I want to apologize to the fans and business partners we've let down.
BOO HOO! WE CARE. OUT WITH IT!: Thanks for your patience. The source & data can be found at http://www.crack.com/golgotha_release. And of course, the ex-Crack developers are up to new & interesting things which you can follow at the web site.
WAIT A MINUTE. IS THIS STUFF FREE BECAUSE IT SUCKS?: No. Even if you thought the code sucked, there are 15 gorgeous pieces of music, 100 cool sound effects, and over 2000 hi-resolution textures. But trust me, even the code is cool. It's an ultra-modular outdoor 3D engine, and it does WAY more than Battlezone or Uprising even came close to. Check out the features page. You should definitely check it out if you've ever wanted a public domain, competetive, outdoor 3D engine.
THANKS!: Welcome. Have a happy.
I barely remember that company also. IIRC, they were working on a FPS when they ran out of money and had to shut the entire project down. They released the code to the community so someone could finish the game for them. But that was years ago, I imagine that someone has done something with this by now.
- First you'll need one of those 'free' PCs that they gave away a couple of years ago. They only run windows, have parts soldered to their motherboards, and have an advertising banner that can't be turned off around the windows interface.
- next, sign up for a 'free' ISPs. You'll have zero cost 56k access, but you'll have another advertising banner across the bottom of your screen.
- make sure you use this version of opera to do your web surfing with its advertising banner at the top of your screen. That brings the total to 3 banners!
- then, make sure you view sites which have excessive advertising such as computer shopper or zdnet. Your 'free' system will be complete, with 95% of your screen consumed by adversiting.
unstable it isn't unstable under Windows unless your Windows box or netscape profile is screwed up. Although I would agree that it's unstable under linux. On Linux, mozilla is much better and stable.
weak interface What does a weak interface mean? If you mean that it doesn't look like a Windows program, you're right. But why does that make the UI weak? Netscape runs on many different platforms including windows, mac, and unix and so a universal interface that looks exactly the same on any platform has some significant advantages. Lets say Netscape 4.76 had a proprietary MFC toolbar, html help file, and some other M$ specific widgets. How is this going to port well to other systems?
bloated netscape 4.7 isn't bloated either. you have to remember that it's more than a browser. netscape 4.76 includes composer, messenger, an address book, and a browser. All of this loads when you start netscape. After netscape is loaded, all of these components listed above load instantly.
weak security the only major security problem netscape has had recently (AFAIK) has been the java hole. I don't know very much about IE, but if I remember correctly it has problems with both java and activeX scripts.
slow again, it's not slow. netscape would load a lot faster if it was just a browser, but it's actually a suite of communication programs bundled together. As for rendering speed, they seem to be about equal to me.
I couldn't find it in a two week old nightly of mozilla. But maybe the options for adding an ldap directory is hidden somewhere since it's still in development. I downloaded the binary on their website, not the source. Does anybody know where you can add these directories?
Opera is VERY fast. The UI really does suck and the rendering wasn't that great either. But it's proprietary software with huge restrictions. Heh, I thought that when I downloaded the tarball that I'd have the source. Instead it was just a crippled binary with a timebomb :(