Another drawback is Borland's attitude towards bug fixing. There have been a few really embarassing cases of indifference towards known bugs (sorry, can't find the links right now). This does not make Borland worse than, for instance, Microsoft, who have their own history of ignoring known problems. But I do keep an eye on Free Pascal, in the hope that it will eventually deliver the quality Borland seems not to care about any more. With a slightly guilty conscience because I have so far done no work on improving Free Pascal myself.
I've been to several LAN parties where the kids had their own machines. Does of course not work for the poor part of the population, but from a game publishers' view there are enough well-off families where the kids have their own computers.
Self-publishing works for the PC. No need to have a bootloader signed. And why do you need same-screen multiplayer on PCs? The LAN party where everyone brings his own machine is a well established concept.
Oh well. Nothing surprises me anymore. I just hope kids remain indifferent enough that they don't buy into this. And I hope the parents will tell the kids not to just give away their intellectual property to Microsoft. Upon reading the "Thought Thieves Entry Form", I think that the "terms acceptable to Microsoft" should (at the very least) be made clear in advance. Without that, I would not be willing to sign the form as a parent.
Have your admins ever considered re-creating the master image from a clean installation? While I agree that Win98 is a failure security-wise, not even wiping known malware is really stupid.
The government regularly funds things that are privately owned. In addition, it has NEVER been a requisite of any grant given to a public university that the authors of scientific works have no control over their own copyrights! The mere notion of that is somewhat ludicrous. Government subsidies are frequently a bad idea. In general, I believe that the EU and Germany should seriously cut back on that kind of expenses.
Considering the issue of copyright, employees at private companies do usually NOT get to keep copyright on the things they create on the job. Why should the public accept that the work results of its employees go to some journal corporation that has not invested in the creation of said results? Actually, if free access is realized under some kind of creative commons license, the researchers would still profit more than employees at private companies: While they would not get to keep the copyrights, they would be free to reuse the published stuff as they like. Which I, for instance, am not allowed to do with the stuff created at my employer ($BigCorp).
The journals are substantial organizations that filter content. This is a VERY time demanding job, and people that work in it already are poorly compensated for their expertise. AFAIK they are frequently NOT paid at all. As some other posters said, the review is usually done pro bono. The magazines collect the money but do not share it with the reviewers. So if the reviewers volunteer for commercial magazines today, they might as well volunteer to do peer reviews on the internet tomorrow. And I could not care less about a "ranking system by journal".
Thanks for this information. It shows that there should be some more political pressure behind the move to freely available publications. Maybe through legislation that assures public access to the work results of tax money-paid researchers.
Side note: Must check out the existing legislation for employees at German corporations. I was under the impression that my work results belong to the company and I could not sign the copyright over to a journal, even if I wanted to. Am I wrong, and if not, does not the same apply to university professors?
Don't know much about the states, but here in Germany the taxpayer funds most research. The wages of the professors are most certainly paid for by the "gubermunt". Third parties (read: corporations) fund some projects, but I have never read about a case where a scientific journal funded research. I don't mind if the employers of the researchers get some kind of preferred access to the results. But if they are employed by the taxpayers, the results of their research should be public.
Of course, if there are redundant projects for a certain task, developers will concentrate on the most attractive one. Thus, redundant projects will lead to some projects being abandoned. But in each area, there is usually at least one thriving project.
Or a BIOS chip where a new address range is programmed for each update, with the option to revert to an older version. You'd be limited to a certain number of BIOS upgrades (10? 100?), but if the upgrade fails, you could get back to the last version.
Apple has the only protected audio format that works. The pressure should be on them to open it up to licensees.
Quite frankly, I don't give a shit. On the contrary: The more DRM is hampered by non-compatibility between the various vendors, the less danger that DRMed formats will completely replace free formats. So if Apple and the RIAA can't agree on formats, this is a Good Thing.
If you're looking for a webserver and webserver only, this sort of comparison makes sense. BTW, the german C't magazine did a test like this once, with IIS on the newly released Windows 2000 versus Apache on Linux with a beta release of Kernel 2.4. They did quite a variety of tests, with Apache/Linux looking slightly better in the overall result. But the difference in performance was not large, so other considerations like price, support and security should have decided your choice if you wanted a web server back then.
Well, the processors on the IBM were slower than in the benchmark. For a server with the 1.9 GHz processors from the benchmark, you have to call some IBM sales rep which I didn't bother to do. Another interesting point is that Sun also offers the same Fire V40z with dual-core Opterons, which makes it a four processor, eight core machine. Price is $38,995.00 for that version
The Itanium with 9 MB Cache must be rather expensive to manufacture, so I got curious and wondered what a server with these would cost.
A quick check for prices gave the following results:
HP Integrity rx4640-8 Server: 56,795.00 $ (HP online store) Four processor machine, 2 GByte RAM, 73 GByte Harddisk. A full blown server with massive upgrade capability, but the 57,000 $ will only give you minimum RAM and harddisk space.
IBM Server p5 595: Here I could not find a fixed price, but the IBM online store has the eServer p5 570 with "smaller" 1.5 GHz processors. For best comparability, we look at the 4-way version including 8GB of memory and two 73.4GB hot-swappable disk drives: $35,290.00.
Opteron 252: For best comparability, we look at the 4-way Sun Fire V40z (Sun Online Store): 4 processors, 16GB of memory and two 73GB harddisks for $31,595.00.
While this is a rather quick and dirty comparison, the Itanium server seems to be more expensive than its competition.
But it would be premature to say that they won the dual-core war. Anandtech has an interesting article http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2252 that mentions future dual-core versions of the Pentium M. That should at least take care of the heat problems that dual-core Prescotts have. Once these chips are out, they might be much more serious competition than Intel's current offerings.
Which would mean the output of Word would not match the specification of the format. Technically a violation of the laws grandparent suggested, practically a reason for goverment offices NOT to buy Microsoft Word. Even for a giant company like M$, there are some limits. Right now, the EU seems to run out of patience...
Neocron does this. And yes, they have problems with balancing the avatar classes and discouraging senseless PKing. There is a sort of "dishonor" system (Soullight) but it lacks a reasonable mechanism to distinguish between accidents and griefplay. The economy also seems "too easy".
But to all of these problems reasonable solutions have been posted to the Neocron forums, so they seem solvable. Now if Reakktor could only get it done...
"Secure Startup protects users against offline attacks, blocking access to the computer if the content of the hard drive is compromised. This prevents a laptop thief from booting up the system from a floppy disk to circumvent security features or swapping out the hard drive."
And what exactly keeps the thief from reading the harddisk in a non-TPM computer (unless it is encrypted)? This is even more stupid than it looks at first, assuming the data are more valuable than the hardware.
Good point. I'd like to add once cheap mass production seems in range, venture capital will show up: Cables like this might far outperform copper as winding in electric motors or loudspeakers. That is a big, existing market where better cable could make an immediate difference.
If one of the libraries gets killed (by whatever), future generations will still have a chance to obtain the content from the other one. So different libraries in different places under different jurisdictions are good.
Actually, on the "normal" versions of Windows 2000 and Windows XP applications will only have 2 GByte of adress space available. So if you want to run One Big App that consumes all the memory, limitations on 32 bit Windows will start at 2 GByte. About Linux, I'm not sure...but someone else might help out with that question.
In practice, 512 MByte are comfortable for typical desktop use. My private PC has 1GByte and I still count that as a luxury.
I guess this depends on the laguage of the license contract between manufacturer and "HD-DVD commitee". If the "commitee" does not have a contract clause that allows them to rescind the license, they would be asking for a lawsuit.
I think the concepts can coexist in one game. While I'm in favour of turning the combat part into a skill based shooter, I'm not saying that the other aspects like socializing and crafting should disappear.
Neocron and Project Entropia are a good combination of FPS and traditional MMORPGs (and I'm playing the former), but they still could improve on the shooter part.
Right now most MMORPGs are based on chance. But that could change. With increasing bandwidths on the internet and increasing computing power, what stops MMORPGs from turning into large, skill based shooters?
Maybe with some kind of puzzle game to influence crafting results. The possibilities are endless.
Yes, a misunderstanding. Grandparent was pointing out that Sony online are not making a new game NOW. I was saying that the legal issues with gambling might force developers to put more value on player skill in the future. Which would be a good thing because the current "click and wait" fighting in most MMORPGs is boring.
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Another drawback is Borland's attitude towards bug fixing. There have been a few really embarassing cases of indifference towards known bugs (sorry, can't find the links right now).
This does not make Borland worse than, for instance, Microsoft, who have their own history of ignoring known problems.
But I do keep an eye on Free Pascal, in the hope that it will eventually deliver the quality Borland seems not to care about any more. With a slightly guilty conscience because I have so far done no work on improving Free Pascal myself.
I've been to several LAN parties where the kids had their own machines. Does of course not work for the poor part of the population, but from a game publishers' view there are enough well-off families where the kids have their own computers.
Self-publishing works for the PC. No need to have a bootloader signed.
And why do you need same-screen multiplayer on PCs?
The LAN party where everyone brings his own machine is a well established concept.
Oh well. Nothing surprises me anymore. I just hope kids remain indifferent enough that they don't buy into this.
And I hope the parents will tell the kids not to just give away their intellectual property to Microsoft. Upon reading the "Thought Thieves Entry Form", I think that the "terms acceptable to Microsoft" should (at the very least) be made clear in advance.
Without that, I would not be willing to sign the form as a parent.
Have your admins ever considered re-creating the master image from a clean installation? While I agree that Win98 is a failure security-wise, not even wiping known malware is really stupid.
The government regularly funds things that are privately owned. In addition, it has NEVER been a requisite of any grant given to a public university that the authors of scientific works have no control over their own copyrights! The mere notion of that is somewhat ludicrous.
Government subsidies are frequently a bad idea. In general, I believe that the EU and Germany should seriously cut back on that kind of expenses.
Considering the issue of copyright, employees at private companies do usually NOT get to keep copyright on the things they create on the job. Why should the public accept that the work results of its employees go to some journal corporation that has not invested in the creation of said results? Actually, if free access is realized under some kind of creative commons license, the researchers would still profit more than employees at private companies:
While they would not get to keep the copyrights, they would be free to reuse the published stuff as they like. Which I, for instance, am not allowed to do with the stuff created at my employer ($BigCorp).
The journals are substantial organizations that filter content. This is a VERY time demanding job, and people that work in it already are poorly compensated for their expertise.
AFAIK they are frequently NOT paid at all. As some other posters said, the review is usually done pro bono. The magazines collect the money but do not share it with the reviewers. So if the reviewers volunteer for commercial magazines today, they might as well volunteer to do peer reviews on the internet tomorrow.
And I could not care less about a "ranking system by journal".
Thanks for this information. It shows that there should be some more political pressure behind the move to freely available publications. Maybe through legislation that assures public access to the work results of tax money-paid researchers.
Side note:
Must check out the existing legislation for employees at German corporations. I was under the impression that my work results belong to the company and I could not sign the copyright over to a journal, even if I wanted to.
Am I wrong, and if not, does not the same apply to university professors?
Don't know much about the states, but here in Germany the taxpayer funds most research. The wages of the professors are most certainly paid for by the "gubermunt".
Third parties (read: corporations) fund some projects, but I have never read about a case where a scientific journal funded research. I don't mind if the employers of the researchers get some kind of preferred access to the results. But if they are employed by the taxpayers, the results of their research should be public.
Of course, if there are redundant projects for a certain task, developers will concentrate on the most attractive one. Thus, redundant projects will lead to some projects being abandoned.
But in each area, there is usually at least one thriving project.
Or a BIOS chip where a new address range is programmed for each update, with the option to revert to an older version.
You'd be limited to a certain number of BIOS upgrades (10? 100?), but if the upgrade fails, you could get back to the last version.
Apple has the only protected audio format that works. The pressure should be on them to open it up to licensees.
Quite frankly, I don't give a shit. On the contrary:
The more DRM is hampered by non-compatibility between the various vendors, the less danger that DRMed formats will completely replace free formats. So if Apple and the RIAA can't agree on formats, this is a Good Thing.
If you're looking for a webserver and webserver only, this sort of comparison makes sense.
BTW, the german C't magazine did a test like this once, with IIS on the newly released Windows 2000 versus Apache on Linux with a beta release of Kernel 2.4.
They did quite a variety of tests, with Apache/Linux looking slightly better in the overall result. But the difference in performance was not large, so other considerations like price, support and security should have decided your choice if you wanted a web server back then.
Well, the processors on the IBM were slower than in the benchmark. For a server with the 1.9 GHz processors from the benchmark, you have to call some IBM sales rep which I didn't bother to do.
Another interesting point is that Sun also offers the same Fire V40z with dual-core Opterons, which makes it a four processor, eight core machine. Price is $38,995.00 for that version
The Itanium with 9 MB Cache must be rather expensive to manufacture, so I got curious and wondered what a server with these would cost.
A quick check for prices gave the following results:
HP Integrity rx4640-8 Server: 56,795.00 $ (HP online store)
Four processor machine, 2 GByte RAM, 73 GByte Harddisk. A full blown server with massive upgrade capability, but the 57,000 $ will only give you minimum RAM and harddisk space.
IBM Server p5 595: Here I could not find a fixed price, but the IBM online store has the eServer p5 570 with "smaller" 1.5 GHz processors.
For best comparability, we look at the 4-way version including 8GB of memory and two 73.4GB hot-swappable disk drives: $35,290.00.
Opteron 252:
For best comparability, we look at the 4-way Sun Fire V40z (Sun Online Store):
4 processors, 16GB of memory and two 73GB harddisks for $31,595.00.
While this is a rather quick and dirty comparison, the Itanium server seems to be more expensive than its competition.
But it would be premature to say that they won the dual-core war. Anandtech has an interesting article
http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2252
that mentions future dual-core versions of the Pentium M. That should at least take care of the heat problems that dual-core Prescotts have. Once these chips are out, they might be much more serious competition than Intel's current offerings.
Which would mean the output of Word would not match the specification of the format.
Technically a violation of the laws grandparent suggested, practically a reason for goverment offices NOT to buy Microsoft Word.
Even for a giant company like M$, there are some limits. Right now, the EU seems to run out of patience...
Neocron does this.
And yes, they have problems with balancing the avatar classes and discouraging senseless PKing. There is a sort of "dishonor" system (Soullight) but it lacks a reasonable mechanism to distinguish between accidents and griefplay.
The economy also seems "too easy".
But to all of these problems reasonable solutions have been posted to the Neocron forums, so they seem solvable. Now if Reakktor could only get it done...
"Secure Startup protects users against offline attacks, blocking access to the computer if the content of the hard drive is compromised. This prevents a laptop thief from booting up the system from a floppy disk to circumvent security features or swapping out the hard drive."
And what exactly keeps the thief from reading the harddisk in a non-TPM computer (unless it is encrypted)?
This is even more stupid than it looks at first, assuming the data are more valuable than the hardware.
Good point. I'd like to add once cheap mass production seems in range, venture capital will show up:
Cables like this might far outperform copper as winding in electric motors or loudspeakers. That is a big, existing market where better cable could make an immediate difference.
If one of the libraries gets killed (by whatever), future generations will still have a chance to obtain the content from the other one.
So different libraries in different places under different jurisdictions are good.
Actually, on the "normal" versions of Windows 2000 and Windows XP applications will only have 2 GByte of adress space available. So if you want to run One Big App that consumes all the memory, limitations on 32 bit Windows will start at 2 GByte.
About Linux, I'm not sure...but someone else might help out with that question.
In practice, 512 MByte are comfortable for typical desktop use. My private PC has 1GByte and I still count that as a luxury.
I guess this depends on the laguage of the license contract between manufacturer and "HD-DVD commitee". If the "commitee" does not have a contract clause that allows them to rescind the license, they would be asking for a lawsuit.
I think the concepts can coexist in one game. While I'm in favour of turning the combat part into a skill based shooter, I'm not saying that the other aspects like socializing and crafting should disappear.
Neocron and Project Entropia are a good combination of FPS and traditional MMORPGs (and I'm playing the former), but they still could improve on the shooter part.
Right now most MMORPGs are based on chance. But that could change. With increasing bandwidths on the internet and increasing computing power, what stops MMORPGs from turning into large, skill based shooters?
Maybe with some kind of puzzle game to influence crafting results. The possibilities are endless.
Yes, a misunderstanding. Grandparent was pointing out that Sony online are not making a new game NOW.
I was saying that the legal issues with gambling might force developers to put more value on player skill in the future. Which would be a good thing because the current "click and wait" fighting in most MMORPGs is boring.