Heh. Maybe that will lead to more MMORPGs that demand actual playerskills, in the way a good FPS does.
Neocron was a nice step in that direction, and I'm playing it despite some technical shortcomings. But I'm still hoping for a MMORPG-FPS with combat at the quality level of HalfLife 1 or DeusEX.
Good points, and I'd like to add that greater marketshare will put more pressure on hardware vendors to cooperate in driver development.
If ATI, for instance, loses enough customers over its substandard and difficult to install drivers, they might reconsider opening the sources. Which would pave the way for a (hopefully) better driver that can be made into a kernel module and shipped as part of distributions.
Problems with marginal RAM can be hard to detect, if the memory fails only occasionally. Think one or two crashes per day, in an environment where it might as well be the software. I have seen this before, and it lead to a long search for the problem. Upon buying new brand RAM the situation improved, so I am pretty sure the problem was with the old RAM. But we still had no real proof, because the defects could not be reproduced in a short demonstration. A recalcitrant vendor could have refused replacement and gotten away with it. So even for a private user, the value of the wasted time can easily exceed the premium for brand RAM (and you might still end up paying for the latter). Besides, quality RAM is not that expensive. In my own computers, I run Kingston Value RAM with ECC. Right now, the difference to the cheapest no-names without ECC is 18 Euros per 512 MByte module (DDR 400, CL3) at my preferred reseller: http://www.alternate.de/
Actually, after six month the burden of proof shifts to the buyer. But this was not my point. I was trying to point out that doing a reliable memory test may take more than just plugging the stick into your mainboard and running a test program. So it may be a good idea to buy from a company that does it's own testing, hopefully to professional standards.
Then you still might end up with some marginal RAM that happens to work fine during your test, but fails under slightly less favorable conditions. Like the next hot summer (the performance of digital circuitry degrades with high temperatures).
When the german C't magazine did a RAM test a few years ago, they worked with a company that specializes in such tests. The used test environment can reportedly (IIRC) simulate borderline conditions and test the module under these. It does also cost a lot more than a PC.
The formats are as open as any other proprietory format, and more open than 99% of them. You can reverse-engineer your own files without a spec - just look at the XML. Or, if you want the complete IP delivered in a nutshell onto your lap, you have to sign an agreement.
Third possibility: Maybe Microsoft will be forced to release the specs by the EU without such an agreement. The penalties in the antitrust case include that Microsoft has to release the specs to competitors. See also http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6167721/ or google for more reports, there are plenty.
There is still a dispute going on about the conditions for releasing the specs. The EU may or may not accept Microsofts current practice of demanding an additional agreement, which may be considered incompatible with open source development. OpenOffice, at least, does certainly count as competition.
Have you tried giving.rtf files to the Word users you were working with? While it is not perfect either,.rtf-based document exchange between Word and OpenOffice works better than.doc
Not in a desktop that runs mostly Office. Besides, few games can use SMP yet. But in a server that has to handle multiple users, things might look different. I think AMD's choice to go for the server market first with their dual cores was a smart one.
At the point where you use filtering to promote or discourage certain values and opinions. Let me answer with two examples of my own this time:
1) Imagine the access points block every second site at random. This would be rather stupid but not censorship, because there is no bias in the blocking.
2) Imagine the access points "generously" allow access to pro-abortion web sites but not to anti-abortion websites (opposite of what I would really expect from conservative texans). This would be censorship because internet users get to see the arguments of one group but not the arguments of the other. Or maybe you would prefer to call it "state sponsored propaganda", if you insist on the point that access is added instead of taken away.
Either way, it does not mix with the idea that a democratic country should not try to tell its citizens what to read and view.
I can steal my neighbors ISP line now!!! You could do that with Wi-Fi before, at least in Suburbia. With a range of up to 100 meters, it will easily reach your immediate neighbours' acess points.
Imagine they had set up these wifi spots just to allow you to connect to state information services, official traffic report web sites and so on. Clearly that would have been perfectly fine, no different from them putting out leaflets about state services at truck stops.
If they decide to go further and allow limited general-internet access, then they are adding to the flow of informationavailable to you, not limiting it.
Only allowing access to official traffic report web sites and such would be fine from a civil rights point of view.
But as soon as you allow some general-internet access but filter out other content, you engage in a form of censorship. While it is not quite the same as banning access for all internet connections, it is an attempt to control what people look at. If only by exploiting the fact that some people might not understand how the access only shows part of the internet (otherwise they might get unfiltered access elsewhere).
A big no-no for a country that considers itself the home of free speech (from a dictatorship like the chinese government I would expect it)
The first amendment is an expression of the idea that the state should not prevent you from speaking, not that the state is obliged to in any way help people hear you. If you want people to see your pron at truckstops, set up your own wifi infrastructure.
So far, so good. But if the state provides a service, it should do so without discrimination. Especially in a medium that has no inherent limitations on the accessible content.
It depends a lot on how repetitive the game gets when you play it again.
Homeworld, for instance, is great fun when you play it for the first time. But playing the same missions again, when you already know how to crack them, becomes old pretty fast.
Civilisation has the great advantage of offering a random map that you have to re-discover in every new game.
And Counterstrike has the human element: while the maps are static, your opponents might come up with new and surprising tactics.
Good point. I have not played Civ 3 for quite a while, but there are a few details I would like to see rebalanced. Most importantly, there are some cases where gaining a new technology forces you to switch to more expensive but not superior military units.
The difference here is it's not 'just some older guy'. It is an AOL employee specifically hired to prevent exactly what went on.
So he failed to do what his employer expected him to do. He might be fired for that.
But I fail to see how this creates a valid court case. AOL does not have the authority to change legal standards, and if the girl was above the age of legal consent, there should be no grounds for a lawsuit.
I'd say it depends a lot on the environment, hardware and applications. NT4 on an isolated network, with hardware that has mature drivers, might be perfectly stable and secure.
Of course, once the current hardware needs to be replaced with new and different models, all bets are off. Lumpy might find that there are no NT4 drivers at all for some of the shiny new components...
Microsoft gives us the impression that the company has a sloppy management style supervising coders who are not given enough time to do a good job. If you don't install SP2, you are not giving Microsoft the opportunity to fix some of its bugs. Someone once said that the Microsoft motto was "The whole world is our beta test site." According to that, Windows XP SP2 is just the first release version of Windows XP. We had many, many time-consuming problems with the pre-SP1 version; in our opinion, it was not ready for release; it could be made to work, but it was a time-waster. Maybe it's foolish to believe that two billionaires could care what happens to the less rich.
I got the same expression from earlier versions of Windows (have not touched XP yet because I dislike the idea of "activation").
Considering the motivation of Microsoft management, I think it is simple profit maximizing, coupled with a bit of shortsightedness. So far, they could get away with releasing software that has only beta quality, so why spend more money and time on debugging?
Of course, this can backfire when serious competition appears, and seems to do so in the server market by now. At least, I frequently read about studies that show rapid growth of server-side Linux.
My proposal would protect the manufacturer from a lawsuit for patent infringement, yes. But the end-user who bought the product could still sue if it does not work as promised. Sue because he was (fraudulently) sold a worthless product, not because any of his patents have been infringed.
Depends on what they give away. Win98 could compete for many home users with older PCs, but it would run into trouble on newer ones. The limitations on FAT and RAM (max.512 MB RAM) alone preclude it from fully utilizing a high-end machine. Let alone the security issues in professional use.
Windows 2000, on the other hand, would do the job nicely. But it is also good enough that a free and un-crippled version would seriously hurt the Win XP business.
...and the performance shrinked to almost nothing.
Kidding aside: Swapping is a good way to avoid an immediate crash when your applications demand more memory than your system has RAM. But working wih a swapping computer is no fun, and when a 256 MByte module is available at something like $30, the limitation to 128 Mbyte becomes really stupid.
As for RAM... Win2K ran/runs acceptably in 128MB for daily office tasks such as reading mail, browsing, writing small documents. I'd guess that XP wouldn't perform much differently.
OK, but now try the following: -Dabble in programming, let's take Delphi 6 as an example because I have it running at the moment. 46.788 KB according to task manager -and run some virus protection in the background. Here: McShield.exe, 19.340 KB according to task manager
A very reasonable usage, but if you add it to the 70 MB or so Windows takes just for itself, you will exceed the 128 MBytes.
If the GRB only lasts for a few seconds, the opposite side of the planet will be protected from direct irradiation. Of course, side effects like a damaged ozone layer could spread to that side, but I fail to see how all life could be suddenly wiped out.
If you sell products that don't work, this falls under false advertising and maybe outright fraud. People can be sued for that, which is OK.
What I was proposing is to delete patents that were issued despite a bogus implementation in the patent application. Based grandparent's suggestion that a working implementation must be part if a patent application
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Heh. Maybe that will lead to more MMORPGs that demand actual playerskills, in the way a good FPS does.
Neocron was a nice step in that direction, and I'm playing it despite some technical shortcomings. But I'm still hoping for a MMORPG-FPS with combat at the quality level of HalfLife 1 or DeusEX.
Good points, and I'd like to add that greater marketshare will put more pressure on hardware vendors to cooperate in driver development.
If ATI, for instance, loses enough customers over its substandard and difficult to install drivers, they might reconsider opening the sources. Which would pave the way for a (hopefully) better driver that can be made into a kernel module and shipped as part of distributions.
Problems with marginal RAM can be hard to detect, if the memory fails only occasionally. Think one or two crashes per day, in an environment where it might as well be the software.
I have seen this before, and it lead to a long search for the problem. Upon buying new brand RAM the situation improved, so I am pretty sure the problem was with the old RAM. But we still had no real proof, because the defects could not be reproduced in a short demonstration. A recalcitrant vendor could have refused replacement and gotten away with it. So even for a private user, the value of the wasted time can easily exceed the premium for brand RAM (and you might still end up paying for the latter).
Besides, quality RAM is not that expensive. In my own computers, I run Kingston Value RAM with ECC. Right now, the difference to the cheapest no-names without ECC is 18 Euros per 512 MByte module (DDR 400, CL3) at my preferred reseller:
http://www.alternate.de/
Actually, after six month the burden of proof shifts to the buyer.
But this was not my point. I was trying to point out that doing a reliable memory test may take more than just plugging the stick into your mainboard and running a test program. So it may be a good idea to buy from a company that does it's own testing, hopefully to professional standards.
Then you still might end up with some marginal RAM that happens to work fine during your test, but fails under slightly less favorable conditions. Like the next hot summer (the performance of digital circuitry degrades with high temperatures).
When the german C't magazine did a RAM test a few years ago, they worked with a company that specializes in such tests. The used test environment can reportedly (IIRC) simulate borderline conditions and test the module under these. It does also cost a lot more than a PC.
The formats are as open as any other proprietory format, and more open than 99% of them. You can reverse-engineer your own files without a spec - just look at the XML. Or, if you want the complete IP delivered in a nutshell onto your lap, you have to sign an agreement.
Third possibility:
Maybe Microsoft will be forced to release the specs by the EU without such an agreement. The penalties in the antitrust case include that Microsoft has to release the specs to competitors. See also
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6167721/
or google for more reports, there are plenty.
There is still a dispute going on about the conditions for releasing the specs. The EU may or may not accept Microsofts current practice of demanding an additional agreement, which may be considered incompatible with open source development. OpenOffice, at least, does certainly count as competition.
Have you tried giving .rtf files to the Word users you were working with? .rtf-based document exchange between Word and OpenOffice works better than .doc
While it is not perfect either,
Not in a desktop that runs mostly Office. Besides, few games can use SMP yet.
But in a server that has to handle multiple users, things might look different. I think AMD's choice to go for the server market first with their dual cores was a smart one.
At the point where you use filtering to promote or discourage certain values and opinions. Let me answer with two examples of my own this time:
1) Imagine the access points block every second site at random. This would be rather stupid but not censorship, because there is no bias in the blocking.
2) Imagine the access points "generously" allow access to pro-abortion web sites but not to anti-abortion websites (opposite of what I would really expect from conservative texans).
This would be censorship because internet users get to see the arguments of one group but not the arguments of the other. Or maybe you would prefer to call it "state sponsored propaganda", if you insist on the point that access is added instead of taken away.
Either way, it does not mix with the idea that a democratic country should not try to tell its citizens what to read and view.
I can steal my neighbors ISP line now!!!
You could do that with Wi-Fi before, at least in Suburbia. With a range of up to 100 meters, it will easily reach your immediate neighbours' acess points.
Imagine they had set up these wifi spots just to allow you to connect to state information services, official traffic report web sites and so on. Clearly that would have been perfectly fine, no different from them putting out leaflets about state services at truck stops.
If they decide to go further and allow limited general-internet access, then they are adding to the flow of informationavailable to you, not limiting it.
Only allowing access to official traffic report web sites and such would be fine from a civil rights point of view.
But as soon as you allow some general-internet access but filter out other content, you engage in a form of censorship.
While it is not quite the same as banning access for all internet connections, it is an attempt to control what people look at. If only by exploiting the fact that some people might not understand how the access only shows part of the internet (otherwise they might get unfiltered access elsewhere).
A big no-no for a country that considers itself the home of free speech (from a dictatorship like the chinese government I would expect it)
The first amendment is an expression of the idea that the state should not prevent you from speaking, not that the state is obliged to in any way help people hear you. If you want people to see your pron at truckstops, set up your own wifi infrastructure.
So far, so good.
But if the state provides a service, it should do so without discrimination. Especially in a medium that has no inherent limitations on the accessible content.
It depends a lot on how repetitive the game gets when you play it again.
Homeworld, for instance, is great fun when you play it for the first time. But playing the same missions again, when you already know how to crack them, becomes old pretty fast.
Civilisation has the great advantage of offering a random map that you have to re-discover in every new game.
And Counterstrike has the human element:
while the maps are static, your opponents might come up with new and surprising tactics.
Good point. I have not played Civ 3 for quite a while, but there are a few details I would like to see rebalanced. Most importantly, there are some cases where gaining a new technology forces you to switch to more expensive but not superior military units.
The difference here is it's not 'just some older guy'. It is an AOL employee specifically hired to prevent exactly what went on.
So he failed to do what his employer expected him to do. He might be fired for that.
But I fail to see how this creates a valid court case. AOL does not have the authority to change legal standards, and if the girl was above the age of legal consent, there should be no grounds for a lawsuit.
I'd say it depends a lot on the environment, hardware and applications. NT4 on an isolated network, with hardware that has mature drivers, might be perfectly stable and secure.
Of course, once the current hardware needs to be replaced with new and different models, all bets are off. Lumpy might find that there are no NT4 drivers at all for some of the shiny new components...
Microsoft gives us the impression that the company has a sloppy management style supervising coders who are not given enough time to do a good job. If you don't install SP2, you are not giving Microsoft the opportunity to fix some of its bugs. Someone once said that the Microsoft motto was "The whole world is our beta test site." According to that, Windows XP SP2 is just the first release version of Windows XP. We had many, many time-consuming problems with the pre-SP1 version; in our opinion, it was not ready for release; it could be made to work, but it was a time-waster. Maybe it's foolish to believe that two billionaires could care what happens to the less rich.
I got the same expression from earlier versions of Windows (have not touched XP yet because I dislike the idea of "activation").
Considering the motivation of Microsoft management, I think it is simple profit maximizing, coupled with a bit of shortsightedness. So far, they could get away with releasing software that has only beta quality, so why spend more money and time on debugging?
Of course, this can backfire when serious competition appears, and seems to do so in the server market by now. At least, I frequently read about studies that show rapid growth of server-side Linux.
IANAL, but maybe they could launch a class-action suit against the manufacturer?
My proposal would protect the manufacturer from a lawsuit for patent infringement, yes.
But the end-user who bought the product could still sue if it does not work as promised. Sue because he was (fraudulently) sold a worthless product, not because any of his patents have been infringed.
Depends on what they give away. Win98 could compete for many home users with older PCs, but it would run into trouble on newer ones. The limitations on FAT and RAM (max.512 MB RAM) alone preclude it from fully utilizing a high-end machine. Let alone the security issues in professional use.
Windows 2000, on the other hand, would do the job nicely. But it is also good enough that a free and un-crippled version would seriously hurt the Win XP business.
...and the performance shrinked to almost nothing.
Kidding aside:
Swapping is a good way to avoid an immediate crash when your applications demand more memory than your system has RAM.
But working wih a swapping computer is no fun, and when a 256 MByte module is available at something like $30, the limitation to 128 Mbyte becomes really stupid.
Good point, but it would be inconsistent with their recent policy of making pirating Windows more difficult (online activation and such).
They cannot have it both ways, as in stopping Windows pirating AND "competing" against Linux with easily pirated versions.
As for RAM... Win2K ran/runs acceptably in 128MB for daily office tasks such as reading mail, browsing, writing small documents. I'd guess that XP wouldn't perform much differently.
OK, but now try the following:
-Dabble in programming, let's take Delphi 6 as an example because I have it running at the moment. 46.788 KB according to task manager
-and run some virus protection in the background. Here: McShield.exe, 19.340 KB according to task manager
A very reasonable usage, but if you add it to the 70 MB or so Windows takes just for itself, you will exceed the 128 MBytes.
If the GRB only lasts for a few seconds, the opposite side of the planet will be protected from direct irradiation.
Of course, side effects like a damaged ozone layer could spread to that side, but I fail to see how all life could be suddenly wiped out.
I think we're talking about different things.
If you sell products that don't work, this falls under false advertising and maybe outright fraud. People can be sued for that, which is OK.
What I was proposing is to delete patents that were issued despite a bogus implementation in the patent application. Based grandparent's suggestion that a working implementation must be part if a patent application