"Vary few technology companies ever debt finance (ie: through bonds) R&D" On this point I agree with you completely. OTOH though many forms of software are NOT R&D type products. Most information systems for example are much more akin to contracted construction of a known specification. By and large most IT system type development can be given an approximate time frame and associated cost. I guess what I'm trying to say is that for certain software this kind of funding is feasable, for others it is not. R&D isn't the only kind of software development that programmers do, even if it generally is what we prefer:).
"Isn't this why we have a "right to bear arms"?"
actually the right to bear arms was present to enforce the settler's military rights to the new world if I recall junior high history correctly. The main reason north american citizens were passed the right to bear arms was to allow them to defend their then still contested claim to the land, from Britain, Native Americans and other colonies.
Re:Foreign Programmers will do this for us.
on
Still in DMCA Prison
·
· Score: 1
Actually, by arresting a russian programmer based on an America only law I think a small portion of this kind of technical deficiency has already been set in motion. Look no further than Alan Cox decision to stop attending American based conferences. How many other foreign programmers has the DMCA now isolated American programmers from co-operating with and benefitting from the knowledge of? Too bad the effects of this kind of crippling won't become acutely noticed for a few years down the road as programmers in other countries are able to develop their skills unhindered.
I agree to some extent with how the line between news and entertainment is being blurred by today's 'news' coverage. However, what I see as a bigger problem is the way news casts more and more tend towards efforts to draw more viewers with feature articles. I can understand that newscasts need to find some way of funding themselves, but seeking news stories based on what they will do for the programs ratings is not the way to go.
I think what really set me off on this was the huge fallout after the Columbine shootings. Suddenly every news station had around the clock coverage on the aftermath and endless editorials on why these things happen. The entire over coverage of the incident really went beyond integrity into the realm of cashing in on the ratings that a Columbine special piece would bring. And don't even get me started on the people who decided to cash in with books and articles on how video game companies were immorally cashing in on violence, regardless of the results. The hypocratic nature of someone selling a book about such a tragedy, in which they condemn others they percieve to have been profitting from the tragedy is apalling. Dr. Liberman added a chapter to a book of his dedicated to how video games make kids into killers. Tell me it's pure coincidence he added this chapter after the shootings, and not as a means to increase the books sales. How distastefull is that! I'm getting too upset just writing this now.
The media needs to start trying to get back some of it's integrity and thus the respect of it's viewers. As is most people I know are highly critical of the various biases that underly news stories these days.
In the future I can really see a controller like this taking off. For fast paced fps games it won't work well, as the article says. For RTS games though where you use a lot of hotkeys to organize your units it would be ideal. I can really see something like this getting heavy use on console systems down the road. Game developers would have alot of uses for a customizable controller where you could draw your own icons for buttons, etc.
Which explains a big reason that the media content providers are pushing so hard for things like DMCA. If TV/VCR makers continue selling televisions that don't respect the copy protection schemes they use, they can sue them into compliance.
"Given their past history, anyone who uses.NET is either ignorant, foolish, or just doesn't care"
With general level of apathy in the user world and the high level of technical ignorance most people have I think MS is actually targetting a larger audience than you think. As much as I hate it most pc users out there are ignorant of MS's faults and don't care enough to take the effort to find out.
The reason to make this noticed is that although MS has been targetting the GPL for it's criticism, it has been constantly referring to the GPL as Open Source. Their deliberate attempts to paint Open Source in general as bad by railing on the GPL is a clear attempt to criticize Open Source in General, making using BSD code rather hypocritical. Or just revealing that they don't even believe their own complaints against Open Source.
It won't be having to watch commercials that will be the problem with all programming being setup on-demand. I'd figure that a system like this would enable cable companies to start pay-per-view like setups for most programs, with the extra control they would have customers will probably see all new payment plans that would likely result in higher pricing in the end.
With all the enemies Nvidia will make with this chip, Intel,Creative,Via... It seems like their steppin on the toes of most major players in the industry. I wonder how far the existance of unified drivers for linux would push them towards alientating MS as well. Unified motherboard,netwrok,video,and sound drivers in one install would certainly make large strides to an easily installable Linux distro atop a very xbox'ish equipped pc.
I'm trying to understand how this works. Gaming companies are profiting from making games which encourage violence. What then makes it any better for these people to sue because of the same violence for the same profit. Seems to me the side sending in their lawyers are far more directly trying to profit from the tragedy of what happened.
Slashdot Mirror
"Vary few technology companies ever debt finance (ie: through bonds) R&D" On this point I agree with you completely. OTOH though many forms of software are NOT R&D type products. Most information systems for example are much more akin to contracted construction of a known specification. By and large most IT system type development can be given an approximate time frame and associated cost. I guess what I'm trying to say is that for certain software this kind of funding is feasable, for others it is not. R&D isn't the only kind of software development that programmers do, even if it generally is what we prefer :).
"Isn't this why we have a "right to bear arms"?" actually the right to bear arms was present to enforce the settler's military rights to the new world if I recall junior high history correctly. The main reason north american citizens were passed the right to bear arms was to allow them to defend their then still contested claim to the land, from Britain, Native Americans and other colonies.
Actually, by arresting a russian programmer based on an America only law I think a small portion of this kind of technical deficiency has already been set in motion. Look no further than Alan Cox decision to stop attending American based conferences. How many other foreign programmers has the DMCA now isolated American programmers from co-operating with and benefitting from the knowledge of? Too bad the effects of this kind of crippling won't become acutely noticed for a few years down the road as programmers in other countries are able to develop their skills unhindered.
I agree to some extent with how the line between news and entertainment is being blurred by today's 'news' coverage. However, what I see as a bigger problem is the way news casts more and more tend towards efforts to draw more viewers with feature articles. I can understand that newscasts need to find some way of funding themselves, but seeking news stories based on what they will do for the programs ratings is not the way to go.
I think what really set me off on this was the huge fallout after the Columbine shootings. Suddenly every news station had around the clock coverage on the aftermath and endless editorials on why these things happen. The entire over coverage of the incident really went beyond integrity into the realm of cashing in on the ratings that a Columbine special piece would bring. And don't even get me started on the people who decided to cash in with books and articles on how video game companies were immorally cashing in on violence, regardless of the results. The hypocratic nature of someone selling a book about such a tragedy, in which they condemn others they percieve to have been profitting from the tragedy is apalling. Dr. Liberman added a chapter to a book of his dedicated to how video games make kids into killers. Tell me it's pure coincidence he added this chapter after the shootings, and not as a means to increase the books sales. How distastefull is that! I'm getting too upset just writing this now.
The media needs to start trying to get back some of it's integrity and thus the respect of it's viewers. As is most people I know are highly critical of the various biases that underly news stories these days.
In the future I can really see a controller like this taking off. For fast paced fps games it won't work well, as the article says. For RTS games though where you use a lot of hotkeys to organize your units it would be ideal. I can really see something like this getting heavy use on console systems down the road. Game developers would have alot of uses for a customizable controller where you could draw your own icons for buttons, etc.
Which explains a big reason that the media content providers are pushing so hard for things like DMCA. If TV/VCR makers continue selling televisions that don't respect the copy protection schemes they use, they can sue them into compliance.
"Given their past history, anyone who uses .NET is either ignorant, foolish, or just doesn't care"
With general level of apathy in the user world and the high level of technical ignorance most people have I think MS is actually targetting a larger audience than you think. As much as I hate it most pc users out there are ignorant of MS's faults and don't care enough to take the effort to find out.
The reason to make this noticed is that although MS has been targetting the GPL for it's criticism, it has been constantly referring to the GPL as Open Source. Their deliberate attempts to paint Open Source in general as bad by railing on the GPL is a clear attempt to criticize Open Source in General, making using BSD code rather hypocritical. Or just revealing that they don't even believe their own complaints against Open Source.
It won't be having to watch commercials that will be the problem with all programming being setup on-demand. I'd figure that a system like this would enable cable companies to start pay-per-view like setups for most programs, with the extra control they would have customers will probably see all new payment plans that would likely result in higher pricing in the end.
With all the enemies Nvidia will make with this chip, Intel,Creative,Via... It seems like their steppin on the toes of most major players in the industry. I wonder how far the existance of unified drivers for linux would push them towards alientating MS as well. Unified motherboard,netwrok,video,and sound drivers in one install would certainly make large strides to an easily installable Linux distro atop a very xbox'ish equipped pc.
Mod this up from Troll to to Informative. I'm also a Canadian and every law mentioned is true, the language laws in Quebec really are far out of hand.
I'm trying to understand how this works. Gaming companies are profiting from making games which encourage violence. What then makes it any better for these people to sue because of the same violence for the same profit. Seems to me the side sending in their lawyers are far more directly trying to profit from the tragedy of what happened.