Actually, it's a little known fact that Rotor, the port of the CLI and C# compilers (which are parts of.NET) to FreeBSD 4.7, Mac OS X 10.2 and (if you're clever about it) Linux, was done by Corel.
So it wasn't so much that they were planning to port.NET, they pretty much did. The shared libraries (which, along with the CLR constitute the.NET Framework) weren't ported or recreated for the platform which makes sense, since Microsoft wants Windows to have some sort of advantage, but armed with the CLR and the C# compiler, one could still do.NET work, and if they were careful or clever, come up with a C# program which would compile on all platforms. The lack of libraries though pretty much meant the Mono and Portable.NET projects weren't in vain.
And how ironic that this morning I started watching A Private Little War, the Star Trek episode from the original series that was a direct stab at the (then ongoing) Vietnam war.
Perhaps they want Google to buy them. It's not a horrible idea - they come up with a good idea, they implement it, they even have a Google-ish name, so Google buys it off of them.
Of course this is the way technology has headed with Microsoft (people do stuff just to have MS buy it), and it's killing innovation.
And of course Google would probably do something like this in-house, with their own people and coding practices. I think the best these guys could hope for is one of those "polite" cease-and-desist letters.
This made me think of something - I used to hear that the Library of Congress has "2 copies of every book ever printed". Nowadays I know more than I did then so I figure this can't be 100% true. But lots of books have LOC numbers, so is this duplicating the efforts of the LOC over the last several years? Or is it supplanting it? Could the LOC even help?
How far back are we talking?
on
An IMDb for Books
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· Score: 5, Insightful
The imdb has an easier task in this respect - movies have only been around maybe a century or so. But books have been printed for thousands of years. So, how far back are we talking? I presume you can submit a book as old as you want, but how far back is the goal?
Fiction, Nonfiction, both?
What about textbooks? Do we want those too?
How about programming books? Manuals? At what stage of public availability do we want to consider? If it's on a shelf at Barnes & Noble that's one thing, but are we talking Congressional Review here?
Had one like that. Friend of mine from college who I even lived with at one point came over to visit. The Wife is out of town and he's just hanging out until he meets someone else. So at one point he asks if he can show me a video - saying that he's going to show this tape to the person he's meeting and if that meeting falls through then at least he can still write the trip off as a business expense. Seems odd, but okay - this guy was always a little off anyway.
The video is for QuikStar (sp?), which is this deal where you start your own web business selling things like soap and toilet paper. Or something. At this point I of course realized I was being pseudo-scammed.
Since this guy was a friend and it was my house, it's not like I could leave. So I sat there and asked him why I would buy soap and toilet paper online instead of Wal-Mart and he had some sorta valid reasonings (like bulk) but I really don't want to plan out my soap buying that far in advance. When I asked him how it is that so many online businesses could succeed against each other (see Herbalife) he kept diverting the question.
I basically let the conversation die without giving him a yes or no answer as to whether this would be something I'd want to do. A friend of mine got into it with him (the contact he was in town to meet, I think) and shortly thereafter was doing everything in his power to get out of it.
Back when I was in college I was in an organization called the Corps of Cadets (think JROTC), so the people I was in a dorm with weren't total strangers, we were all in an outfit together. When ICQ first hit big, the first instinct everyone had was not only to get everyone else hooked up with it, but to then get everyone in the dorm on your ICQ list. Whenever someone would try to get me on their list though I'd always deny them saying I LIVE IN THE SAME FUCKING BUILDING AS YOU! IF YOU WANT TO CHAT THEN CALL ME ON THE PHONE OR WALK DOWN HERE BUT DON'T WASTE MY TIME ICQ'ING ME! I probably would have been politer if I'd ever been ICQ'd with anything other than useless bullshit from my non-savvy friends.
Of course now we're all graduated and spread out all over the place so I kinda wish I had let them on my list and vice versa, but oh well. Granted, last I checked (and it's been a while), ICQ didn't have server side buddy lists, so I don't think my buddy list would have survived all the upgrades and reformats over the years anyway. Plus no one uses ICQ anymore anyways.
On a related note, you know how Google is scared of "Google" becoming a verb or generic term? Isn't it funny how "ICQ" was becoming a verb ("I ICQ'd him") but now ICQ is pretty much a forgotten program? I mean, I have all the Trillian accounts lit up and I used to know lots of people on ICQ, but in the last few years I've gotten maybe three or four ICQ messages, and they've all been those random spam bots advertising necrobeastialanalbuttsex.
I notice this is a Microsoft Logo topic (though it's "Your Rights Online"). And of course the logo is the "Evil Bill Gates" logo. Meaning that since Microsoft is tangentally involved, we'll use that logo.
Seriously, though - isn't this an "evil stupid BSA" topic? We'e had a dozen or so "evil stupid BSA" stories in the last few months - why not make an "evil stupid BSA" logo? Since "BSA" is also the initials of the Boy Scouts of America, why not make it like a three fingered salute with a big "NO!" slash through it?
Then again, after hundreds of stores on Google there's still not a Google Topic, so maybe you have to piss of Slashdot before you get your own topic. I'd say you have to advertise on Slashdot, but Google already does that (with those little, yellow, different server rack accessories).
They (id) used DirectX for everything on Quake 3 minus graphics, but word is that they're using their own code completely for DOOM III - their own sound, input, etc.
The creators of the game probably did nothing more than avoid windows-specific coding techniques
It also helps that it's a 2-D game that doesn't require lots of hardware wrangling. If Warcraft III can do WineX, then surely this little space-Excel can work.
Unreal Tournament 2003 runs on linux right out of the box, but it doesn't mention linux at all on the box as I recall
According to the developers it's because the boxes, manuals, etc. were printed before the game went gold and they didn't know Linux support was going to be included yet. Not sure why it doesn't have it on subsequent printings, though - perhaps to not confuse people?
Actually I did just read the letter and it says that it needs to take into account the trademark - so "googling" doesn't have to be removed, just amended to note that "Google" is a copyright.
And yeah it didn't sound like a cease-and-desist letter in the "little prick" sense of the word.
...is that it becomes a term, and they lose their trademark on it. For example, Thermos is a noun but it used to be a trademark of the Aladdin corporation.
Google is just fine with Josh on The West Wing telling Donna to "go Google it", but they're terrified once it goes into print.
What I wonder is this - did Google ever just ask the site to take it down nicely? Did they just go straight to the cease-and-desist order? And if they did, is this for some indisputable legal "we'll look like dicks, but..." reason? I'd hate to see a chink in the "we're all for them" online armor they have right now.
This is also a general Slashdot question - I see lots of different attempts to discern smam from regular email using algorithms and such. Of course all the spammers have to do is get smarter and do things the algorithms aren't capable of, so then the algorithms have to get smarter - a game of leapfrog. Of course the ideal solution would then be an algorithm that corrects itself (and I am unfamiliar with these algorithms, so perhaps this is already out there), so that the algorithm competes with the spammers.
So if you write algorithms that can keep up with and try to surpass human intelligence (or lack thereof, since these are spammers we're dealing with), could self-improving spam detection algorithms lead to better artificial intelligence? And would this be good or bad?
...perhaps I missed it, but if the new file format of Office 11 documents is all XML-based, then how is it they can "restrict" the documents? Isn't it all just text?
Sony bought Connectix to bury their Virtual GameStation product, which allowed PSX games to run on Mac and PC. It's kinda scary and sad when the only good commercial emulators are bought by those in which they emulate in order to smash them.
Or perhaps Microsoft will do something good this time...
First off, ever notice how when people do stuff in TV shows and movies they're always doing tons of typing? Even when no typed words are on the screen they're typing like crazy. Sure, the actors are playing to a blank screen and it's the effects people who come along later but still, lay off the keyboards, man!
Second, and this is something I noticed recently, ever notice how when you see "game developers!" on TV, they always show people modeling enemies and stuff. They never show people coding. It just doesn't make for good television. Carmack sitting at a million likes of DOOM III code isn't interesting (though in an id Software promo video I did see this for a few seconds). Someone making another bad guy is interesting.
I'd say that for the most part programmers/developers aren't portrayed at all - it's the people with eye candy jobs that are.
Shall we define well respected? Dragon's Lair was never a good game, just memorable since it used full animated cartoons and had a story in a time in which no one questioned why the yellow circle eating dots. Dragon's Lair 3D didn't do anything to the legacy in my opinion.
Slashdot Mirror
So it wasn't so much that they were planning to port .NET, they pretty much did. The shared libraries (which, along with the CLR constitute the .NET Framework) weren't ported or recreated for the platform which makes sense, since Microsoft wants Windows to have some sort of advantage, but armed with the CLR and the C# compiler, one could still do .NET work, and if they were careful or clever, come up with a C# program which would compile on all platforms. The lack of libraries though pretty much meant the Mono and Portable.NET projects weren't in vain.
And how ironic that this morning I started watching A Private Little War , the Star Trek episode from the original series that was a direct stab at the (then ongoing) Vietnam war.
well they own Blogger now. But I could think of a hundred worse fates than being owned by Google.
Of course this is the way technology has headed with Microsoft (people do stuff just to have MS buy it), and it's killing innovation.
And of course Google would probably do something like this in-house, with their own people and coding practices. I think the best these guys could hope for is one of those "polite" cease-and-desist letters.
This made me think of something - I used to hear that the Library of Congress has "2 copies of every book ever printed". Nowadays I know more than I did then so I figure this can't be 100% true. But lots of books have LOC numbers, so is this duplicating the efforts of the LOC over the last several years? Or is it supplanting it? Could the LOC even help?
Fiction, Nonfiction, both?
What about textbooks? Do we want those too?
How about programming books? Manuals? At what stage of public availability do we want to consider? If it's on a shelf at Barnes & Noble that's one thing, but are we talking Congressional Review here?
Suggest some boundaries!
The video is for QuikStar (sp?), which is this deal where you start your own web business selling things like soap and toilet paper. Or something. At this point I of course realized I was being pseudo-scammed.
Since this guy was a friend and it was my house, it's not like I could leave. So I sat there and asked him why I would buy soap and toilet paper online instead of Wal-Mart and he had some sorta valid reasonings (like bulk) but I really don't want to plan out my soap buying that far in advance. When I asked him how it is that so many online businesses could succeed against each other (see Herbalife) he kept diverting the question.
I basically let the conversation die without giving him a yes or no answer as to whether this would be something I'd want to do. A friend of mine got into it with him (the contact he was in town to meet, I think) and shortly thereafter was doing everything in his power to get out of it.
Ironically, Quikstar is associated with Amway.
Of course now we're all graduated and spread out all over the place so I kinda wish I had let them on my list and vice versa, but oh well. Granted, last I checked (and it's been a while), ICQ didn't have server side buddy lists, so I don't think my buddy list would have survived all the upgrades and reformats over the years anyway. Plus no one uses ICQ anymore anyways.
On a related note, you know how Google is scared of "Google" becoming a verb or generic term? Isn't it funny how "ICQ" was becoming a verb ("I ICQ'd him") but now ICQ is pretty much a forgotten program? I mean, I have all the Trillian accounts lit up and I used to know lots of people on ICQ, but in the last few years I've gotten maybe three or four ICQ messages, and they've all been those random spam bots advertising necrobeastialanalbuttsex.
I'd like to take this opportunity to state that I am an excellent programmer with excellent hygene and social skills. Resume at link below.
Seriously, though - isn't this an "evil stupid BSA" topic? We'e had a dozen or so "evil stupid BSA" stories in the last few months - why not make an "evil stupid BSA" logo? Since "BSA" is also the initials of the Boy Scouts of America, why not make it like a three fingered salute with a big "NO!" slash through it?
Then again, after hundreds of stores on Google there's still not a Google Topic, so maybe you have to piss of Slashdot before you get your own topic. I'd say you have to advertise on Slashdot, but Google already does that (with those little, yellow, different server rack accessories).
They (id) used DirectX for everything on Quake 3 minus graphics, but word is that they're using their own code completely for DOOM III - their own sound, input, etc.
my bad, Dictionary.com says "Originally a Trademark" - which I took to mean "used to be a trademark".
Actually I did just read the letter and it says that it needs to take into account the trademark - so "googling" doesn't have to be removed, just amended to note that "Google" is a copyright. And yeah it didn't sound like a cease-and-desist letter in the "little prick" sense of the word.
Google is just fine with Josh on The West Wing telling Donna to "go Google it", but they're terrified once it goes into print.
What I wonder is this - did Google ever just ask the site to take it down nicely? Did they just go straight to the cease-and-desist order? And if they did, is this for some indisputable legal "we'll look like dicks, but..." reason? I'd hate to see a chink in the "we're all for them" online armor they have right now.
So if you write algorithms that can keep up with and try to surpass human intelligence (or lack thereof, since these are spammers we're dealing with), could self-improving spam detection algorithms lead to better artificial intelligence? And would this be good or bad?
...perhaps I missed it, but if the new file format of Office 11 documents is all XML-based, then how is it they can "restrict" the documents? Isn't it all just text?
my bad, they just bought VGE and buried it.
Actually in this case it's called LindowsOS.
Or perhaps Microsoft will do something good this time...
Second, and this is something I noticed recently, ever notice how when you see "game developers!" on TV, they always show people modeling enemies and stuff. They never show people coding. It just doesn't make for good television. Carmack sitting at a million likes of DOOM III code isn't interesting (though in an id Software promo video I did see this for a few seconds). Someone making another bad guy is interesting.
I'd say that for the most part programmers/developers aren't portrayed at all - it's the people with eye candy jobs that are.
Shall we define well respected? Dragon's Lair was never a good game, just memorable since it used full animated cartoons and had a story in a time in which no one questioned why the yellow circle eating dots. Dragon's Lair 3D didn't do anything to the legacy in my opinion.
oops - must have gotten those two mixed up. Still, it's not patent violations.