iD is a great example of a company which knows how to please it's target audience.
Simply put, their products work well, and they sell well. They sell well; other game developers notice this, and they license their technology.
They please the geeks by releasing linux versions of their products, as well as releasing source code to their old engines which no longer pull in any cash for the company (after all, what good IS the source doing on a dusty pile of old disks in the closet?). They also release game sources for mod developers and such: once again, they help themselves by helping others, but they aren't loosing anything by doing this (have ANY 3rd-party games incorporated the QuakeII engine since the release of the QuakeIII engine?) This generates a highly positive image for the company.
Now only if they could please the overprotective parents!
I just estimated in my head. As for the adoption rate. I have no clue how many internet users live near me. I just know that in a survey showed that well over three quarters of the population in my area had internet access.
Do you know that these cells work nicely when overlapping? Some cells don't play nice when doing this, especilly when sending out two distinctly different signals.
I hope that most of you do realize that the high bandwidth offered by these services isn't it's biggest feature.
DSL has a max throughput of somewhere around 10mbps. Virtually all ISPS cap it at 1.5mbps or lower.
Cable is a bit different: sometimes it's capped at a set rate, or it's evenly distributed throughout all the active users (evenly in theory... somehow, it doesn't seem to work out that way). Even so, it maxes out at around 10mbps as well.
T1 is.... awesome. Unfortunately it's quite expensive to run, even though it's available virtually everywhere (remember that the T-1 system has existed for well over 20 years).
The other factor is the 12.5 gigaBYTE limit. Is the article wrong: most network transmissions are measured in bits. If it is in bits, you only get 1ish gigabytes per second.
Simply put, the 12.5 gigabyte limit may be for everybody within the 15-mile radius of the antenna. If so, users will be severely limited. If each user has 12.5 gigabytes, it will definitely be capped. SLASHDOT probably couldn't handle that much load (poor fellow whose server gets slashdotted by thousands of users on 12gigabyte connections). Think about it, there are about 20,000 people living 15 miles from my home. The article says it's 1,000 T1 lines. that's 1/20 of a T1 for home users. FYI, that's slower then 56k.
Finally, how expensive will this be? Will it go through walls? Will it be fixed-point (ie. you must be aimed directly at the antenna, making use of this with laptops/pdas/phones impossible.).
High-frequency transmission equipment is expensive. Possibly this would use a one-way connection with a 3G type system as the upstream connection.
In conclusion, I must add that ISPS need to realize that they don't have to cap bandwidth for their users if they simply provide services (ftp mirrors, gaming servers, etc) to their LOCAL networks so that their users can have fast internet for those services without having to cap their bandwidth or waste excess bandwidth over the backbone.
I'm not sure if this really has to do with this, but I got that DVD at my local supermarket for about $10 (I honestly forget the exact number, but I brought the DVD and 12 cans of soda and the whole order totalled $15).
This is definitely the cheapest I've ever seen a DVD movie sell for, especially when it's a new release, a 2-disk set, and is a major movie actually worth seeing (sure, UHF was great, but I don't think it was a major movie, nor is it new)
Unfortunately, as it stands now, the easiest thing to do seems to be to get a USB to serial/parallel converter, as serial and parallel devices are much easier to construct.
Of course, you could disassemble the converter to intergrate it into whatever you are building, as well as tapping the power current from the USB port.
Think of it this way: it's like building a SCSI mouse (sidenote: I own a compaq scsi keyboard... strangest contraption ever built:) ).
I really don't think USB is suited for this task. It's just too complicated, and parallel and serial seem to work just fine for now, as they use much simpler communication mechanisms (if USB were simple, it would have been invented a long time ago. duh!)
I'm suprised that nobody saw this coming sooner. On a recent shipment of IBM PCs (before the announcement), I noticed that all of their hard drives were made by Maxtor.
I certainly hope that this closure does not effect IBM's R&D on some of their next-gen storage devices (extremely-high-density hard disks, holographic storage, microdrive, etc). Those devices showed promise, and IBM is probably the only company capable of continuing such efforts (Their efforts could have equaled those of PARC)
While I agree with you on every aspect here, I find it necessary to add another point:
While some of the dot-coms had a great sales force, they lacked an actual useful product. Just look at all the dot-coms which advertised at the super bowl.
Look at AOL. Do they have a good product? Sure, we see their ads everywhere (tv, radio, mail, billboards, milk cartons, and the list goes on), but how many AOL users are even aware that alternatives exist? Those who do usually end up switching ISPs. Does Dell really make computers which are superior to the ones made by my local OEM - are they actually easier to use?
On the flipside, look at TiVo. They have a revolutionary product which wasn't marketed as good as it could have (I was skeptical about it until I actually used one, and then got one for myself). Definitely a marketing failure.
Same thing with AMD processors, which are in many ways (but not all) superior to Pentium chips - AMD only made ONE television ad, which I believe did caused a sales increase. Until last year, most people had never even heard of an athlon, or simply dismissed it as worthless crap (god, I hate people who make judgments such as that so quickly without thought). Intel runs ads for their chips (which advertise features of their CPUS which either don't exist, or have existed for over 4 years (processor that enhances the internet.... plllleeaaase)
A good example of a company which has successfully intergrated their marketing department and programmers is apple. They run a healthy amount of advertising, create an appealing product, as well as creating a good, useful, quality product. Look how apple has been working its way back into the mainstream since Jobs took over - when apple stopped advertising, they hit a slump.
Of course, there is a true art to advertising in which the viewer is kept entertained and interested while discovering the true value of the product. How fun is an infomercial to watch? How informative were those mLife ads at the Super Bowl? How enjoyable are the yahoo ads to watch? Yahoo lets the viewer know about their services, while providing humor (Which ties into the product). Even the E-Trade *wasting a million bucks monkey* ad was successful in this respect. Apple's 1984 ad is another good example.
Of course, a start-up shouldn't be advertising at the super-bowl. They don't need to waste money.
Microsoft offers a similar deal to K-12 students and faculty (for use OUTSIDE of the school, according to EULA. Microsoft doesn't typically release those prices to the public)
Of course, Sun offers no indication of offering the products to students for use at home (for school related work, of course!)
One can only wonder HOW microsoft can legally enforce their EULA on the K-12 Office, as it only permits it to be used by students (not parents) for work relating to school.
How does free software 'work' in a communist government on a large scale. Could a private enterprise (sun) give them stuff? Does it then get classified as 'enterprise' if it's free?
Free software often conveys ideas of free speech. This is frowned upon by the chinese (remember what happened in 1989?).
it's not that they couldn't use software such as this; it certainly is for a good cause. it is also certainly a welcome change to see private enterprise to begin to appear in china, just like this software, which brings up another humungous topic:
In a hard-core communist country, would the government create all software, which is required to be proprietary to the country, and keep it inside the country? What would their opinions be on free software?
and of course, after reading this post, I see why communism hasn't been successful yet.
odd... the same thing seems to happen to me with every distro execpt for debian (maybe if I try now, a new version will come out. the last time I tried was about a year ago).
Or it could simply be because of the absurdly large amount of time it takes a 56k user to download 1.2 gigabytes of ISO images
This is what Open Source should be about. Granted, there will never be a day where all software is free and source code is available. The simple idea of that is balderdash. Most of the software industry would grind to a halt. But I digress.
This is definitely a step in the right direction and should be viewed as a giant step in the right direction for the open source movement. Granted, the code isn't free to use commercially, and only the engine is included in the source; the point is that several free projects have this engine to work off of, and programmers-in-training can examine the code and learn from it.
This should be seen as 'doing a good deed' and 'helping the community'. It's there so everyone can learn from it and boost the overall gaming industry.
It is also a giant leap in the right direction for free software in that companies are acknowledging the free software movement and releasing the sources to the products which no longer are sold or generate a substantial revenue. If the BeOS source were to be released, the community as a whole would benefit greatly. Not to serve as flamebait, but BeOS is superior to almost all othe Operating systems today, and if the source were released, it would have a good chance of becoming #1 if the vollunteer developers put enough effort into it. Other projects benefit from seeing the source, as well. They may choose to intergrate certain elements (the BeOS UI on linux.. *wipes drool off keyboard*), or they may choose to simply examine the technique of how an operating system SHOULD be written. Heck, the thing boots in less then 5 seconds on my slightly dated pc.
This is certainly a nice change from the game publishers requesting that sites such as The Underdogs take down full versions of titles produced by independent developers whose assets were purchased by the publisher after they went bankrupt.... and the games are no longer sold in any stores, and the publisher refuses to sell them or provide a copy if contacted. and many of these games were made over 10 years ago. Sometimes lobbying them to make the games free works, but there is a little-known organization which is the software world's equivilant to the RIAA which urges companies not to release their dated products free with the thinking that other companies may follow and unintentionally destroy the software industry.
Isn't that pathetic.
But why would the publisher want people to learn from their code? They could be worried the person may found his own gaming company, release a product which puts them out of business (highly unlikely:) ). Chances are they won't. Chances are, if they become familiar with the code enough and learn enough about game programming, there is a good chance the person may seek employment from that company. So it does have potential to benefit the company.
I'd like to reccomend another game very similar (yet superior) to bzflag. It is called Wulfram II. It follows the same concept of a tank game as bzflag does, execpt it involves teamwork, bases, and much more strategy. Unfortunately, it is only available for win32, although if you send the author enough money, he'll speed up his port to unix and osx. The game is free, although donations of as little as $4 per month are highly encouraged. All in all, i'd say this game is everything that bzflag is and more. It combines a little action, real-time strategy, teamwork, and more into one great game.
The graphics aren't GREAT, but they're still nice, and the game runs on most pcs, and the graphics are still signifigantly better than BZFlag. People with a voodoo2 or 3 can play using glide, which produces really nice graphics. Unfortunately a 3dfx driver update broke glide support for the game, and it can only be played wiht dated drivers (completely broken on voodoo4/5).
A last note is that the thing that sets this game apart from others is it's incredibly realistic physics and gravity, etc. I have never seen a game with more realistic physics, etc. The sequal being worked on by the underpaid independent developer (yes... one developer) will be even better with the addition of an advanced lighting engine. (by physics, i'm talking about how a pulse shell arcs, how tanks are dragged to the ground, etc.). These phyiscs also help combat lag, as the server uses a vector-based coordinate system, which greatly reduces bandwidth to help 56k users (such as myself).
Nvidia's linux drivers have support for twinview in them: their multimonitor technology. I'm somewhat sure that their mobile GPUs have TwinView enabled.
The linux drivers support using an external monitor or television as your second display.
Slashdot Mirror
iD is a great example of a company which knows how to please it's target audience.
Simply put, their products work well, and they sell well. They sell well; other game developers notice this, and they license their technology.
They please the geeks by releasing linux versions of their products, as well as releasing source code to their old engines which no longer pull in any cash for the company (after all, what good IS the source doing on a dusty pile of old disks in the closet?). They also release game sources for mod developers and such: once again, they help themselves by helping others, but they aren't loosing anything by doing this (have ANY 3rd-party games incorporated the QuakeII engine since the release of the QuakeIII engine?) This generates a highly positive image for the company.
Now only if they could please the overprotective parents!
True. True.
I just estimated in my head. As for the adoption rate. I have no clue how many internet users live near me. I just know that in a survey showed that well over three quarters of the population in my area had internet access.
Do you know that these cells work nicely when overlapping? Some cells don't play nice when doing this, especilly when sending out two distinctly different signals.
Then you have the latency issues.
I hope that most of you do realize that the high bandwidth offered by these services isn't it's biggest feature.
DSL has a max throughput of somewhere around 10mbps. Virtually all ISPS cap it at 1.5mbps or lower.
Cable is a bit different: sometimes it's capped at a set rate, or it's evenly distributed throughout all the active users (evenly in theory... somehow, it doesn't seem to work out that way). Even so, it maxes out at around 10mbps as well.
T1 is.... awesome. Unfortunately it's quite expensive to run, even though it's available virtually everywhere (remember that the T-1 system has existed for well over 20 years).
The other factor is the 12.5 gigaBYTE limit. Is the article wrong: most network transmissions are measured in bits. If it is in bits, you only get 1ish gigabytes per second.
Simply put, the 12.5 gigabyte limit may be for everybody within the 15-mile radius of the antenna. If so, users will be severely limited. If each user has 12.5 gigabytes, it will definitely be capped. SLASHDOT probably couldn't handle that much load (poor fellow whose server gets slashdotted by thousands of users on 12gigabyte connections). Think about it, there are about 20,000 people living 15 miles from my home. The article says it's 1,000 T1 lines. that's 1/20 of a T1 for home users. FYI, that's slower then 56k.
Finally, how expensive will this be? Will it go through walls? Will it be fixed-point (ie. you must be aimed directly at the antenna, making use of this with laptops/pdas/phones impossible.).
High-frequency transmission equipment is expensive. Possibly this would use a one-way connection with a 3G type system as the upstream connection.
In conclusion, I must add that ISPS need to realize that they don't have to cap bandwidth for their users if they simply provide services (ftp mirrors, gaming servers, etc) to their LOCAL networks so that their users can have fast internet for those services without having to cap their bandwidth or waste excess bandwidth over the backbone.
I'm not sure if this really has to do with this, but I got that DVD at my local supermarket for about $10 (I honestly forget the exact number, but I brought the DVD and 12 cans of soda and the whole order totalled $15).
This is definitely the cheapest I've ever seen a DVD movie sell for, especially when it's a new release, a 2-disk set, and is a major movie actually worth seeing (sure, UHF was great, but I don't think it was a major movie, nor is it new)
This is rediculous. The whole point of bnetd is to play Blizzard's games. If nobody buys and plays their games, bnetd has lost its purpose.
Either way, bnetd looses.
Unfortunately, as it stands now, the easiest thing to do seems to be to get a USB to serial/parallel converter, as serial and parallel devices are much easier to construct.
:) ).
Of course, you could disassemble the converter to intergrate it into whatever you are building, as well as tapping the power current from the USB port.
Think of it this way: it's like building a SCSI mouse (sidenote: I own a compaq scsi keyboard... strangest contraption ever built
I really don't think USB is suited for this task. It's just too complicated, and parallel and serial seem to work just fine for now, as they use much simpler communication mechanisms (if USB were simple, it would have been invented a long time ago. duh!)
I'm suprised that nobody saw this coming sooner. On a recent shipment of IBM PCs (before the announcement), I noticed that all of their hard drives were made by Maxtor.
I certainly hope that this closure does not effect IBM's R&D on some of their next-gen storage devices (extremely-high-density hard disks, holographic storage, microdrive, etc). Those devices showed promise, and IBM is probably the only company capable of continuing such efforts (Their efforts could have equaled those of PARC)
So long, and thanks for the disk!
While I agree with you on every aspect here, I find it necessary to add another point:
While some of the dot-coms had a great sales force, they lacked an actual useful product. Just look at all the dot-coms which advertised at the super bowl.
Look at AOL. Do they have a good product? Sure, we see their ads everywhere (tv, radio, mail, billboards, milk cartons, and the list goes on), but how many AOL users are even aware that alternatives exist? Those who do usually end up switching ISPs. Does Dell really make computers which are superior to the ones made by my local OEM - are they actually easier to use?
On the flipside, look at TiVo. They have a revolutionary product which wasn't marketed as good as it could have (I was skeptical about it until I actually used one, and then got one for myself). Definitely a marketing failure.
Same thing with AMD processors, which are in many ways (but not all) superior to Pentium chips - AMD only made ONE television ad, which I believe did caused a sales increase. Until last year, most people had never even heard of an athlon, or simply dismissed it as worthless crap (god, I hate people who make judgments such as that so quickly without thought). Intel runs ads for their chips (which advertise features of their CPUS which either don't exist, or have existed for over 4 years (processor that enhances the internet.... plllleeaaase)
A good example of a company which has successfully intergrated their marketing department and programmers is apple. They run a healthy amount of advertising, create an appealing product, as well as creating a good, useful, quality product. Look how apple has been working its way back into the mainstream since Jobs took over - when apple stopped advertising, they hit a slump.
Of course, there is a true art to advertising in which the viewer is kept entertained and interested while discovering the true value of the product. How fun is an infomercial to watch? How informative were those mLife ads at the Super Bowl? How enjoyable are the yahoo ads to watch? Yahoo lets the viewer know about their services, while providing humor (Which ties into the product). Even the E-Trade *wasting a million bucks monkey* ad was successful in this respect. Apple's 1984 ad is another good example.
Of course, a start-up shouldn't be advertising at the super-bowl. They don't need to waste money.
And then there's BetaMax...
Microsoft offers a similar deal to K-12 students and faculty (for use OUTSIDE of the school, according to EULA. Microsoft doesn't typically release those prices to the public)
K-12 Students and faculty can get Office XP Full for $149 (a 70% discount).
Of course, Sun offers no indication of offering the products to students for use at home (for school related work, of course!)
One can only wonder HOW microsoft can legally enforce their EULA on the K-12 Office, as it only permits it to be used by students (not parents) for work relating to school.
Or it could be all those iMac users who can't get the darn thing out of their CD drives.
In other words, you can get an i486-DX2 for $4.24 (a 53% decrease of the previous price of $8)
Imagine if DigiScents hadn't ran out of money.
At least the air freshener industry would benefit for the next 20 years as we attempt to de-stink the world
Imagine a beowulf cluster of those.....
i'm just a bit curious with the Chinese donation.
How does free software 'work' in a communist government on a large scale. Could a private enterprise (sun) give them stuff? Does it then get classified as 'enterprise' if it's free?
Free software often conveys ideas of free speech. This is frowned upon by the chinese (remember what happened in 1989?).
it's not that they couldn't use software such as this; it certainly is for a good cause. it is also certainly a welcome change to see private enterprise to begin to appear in china, just like this software, which brings up another humungous topic:
In a hard-core communist country, would the government create all software, which is required to be proprietary to the country, and keep it inside the country? What would their opinions be on free software?
and of course, after reading this post, I see why communism hasn't been successful yet.
I can simultaneously induce releases by downloading them. I just downloaded RC1 yesterday. I installed RH 7.2 HOURS before 7.3 was released.
Such irony!
Lets hope they equip these guys with a parachute... just incase.... POP!
Does installing WINE on a *nix machine count?
I mean, after all, it provides virtually the same functionality as windows.
odd... the same thing seems to happen to me with every distro execpt for debian (maybe if I try now, a new version will come out. the last time I tried was about a year ago).
Or it could simply be because of the absurdly large amount of time it takes a 56k user to download 1.2 gigabytes of ISO images
In other news, 95% of 4-year-olds believe in santa clause
Imagine if enron got infected with one of these worms?
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these! *smack* sorry! sorry! I won't say it..... *zap!* ouch! what did you do that *smack* for?
This is what Open Source should be about. Granted, there will never be a day where all software is free and source code is available. The simple idea of that is balderdash. Most of the software industry would grind to a halt. But I digress.
:) ). Chances are they won't. Chances are, if they become familiar with the code enough and learn enough about game programming, there is a good chance the person may seek employment from that company. So it does have potential to benefit the company.
This is definitely a step in the right direction and should be viewed as a giant step in the right direction for the open source movement. Granted, the code isn't free to use commercially, and only the engine is included in the source; the point is that several free projects have this engine to work off of, and programmers-in-training can examine the code and learn from it.
This should be seen as 'doing a good deed' and 'helping the community'. It's there so everyone can learn from it and boost the overall gaming industry.
It is also a giant leap in the right direction for free software in that companies are acknowledging the free software movement and releasing the sources to the products which no longer are sold or generate a substantial revenue. If the BeOS source were to be released, the community as a whole would benefit greatly. Not to serve as flamebait, but BeOS is superior to almost all othe Operating systems today, and if the source were released, it would have a good chance of becoming #1 if the vollunteer developers put enough effort into it. Other projects benefit from seeing the source, as well. They may choose to intergrate certain elements (the BeOS UI on linux.. *wipes drool off keyboard*), or they may choose to simply examine the technique of how an operating system SHOULD be written. Heck, the thing boots in less then 5 seconds on my slightly dated pc.
This is certainly a nice change from the game publishers requesting that sites such as The Underdogs take down full versions of titles produced by independent developers whose assets were purchased by the publisher after they went bankrupt.... and the games are no longer sold in any stores, and the publisher refuses to sell them or provide a copy if contacted. and many of these games were made over 10 years ago. Sometimes lobbying them to make the games free works, but there is a little-known organization which is the software world's equivilant to the RIAA which urges companies not to release their dated products free with the thinking that other companies may follow and unintentionally destroy the software industry.
Isn't that pathetic.
But why would the publisher want people to learn from their code? They could be worried the person may found his own gaming company, release a product which puts them out of business (highly unlikely
Did anyone else notice the process list? Microsoft is listed as a process...
Which gives you the advantage of being able to
killall microsoft orang
I'd like to reccomend another game very similar (yet superior) to bzflag. It is called Wulfram II. It follows the same concept of a tank game as bzflag does, execpt it involves teamwork, bases, and much more strategy. Unfortunately, it is only available for win32, although if you send the author enough money, he'll speed up his port to unix and osx. The game is free, although donations of as little as $4 per month are highly encouraged. All in all, i'd say this game is everything that bzflag is and more. It combines a little action, real-time strategy, teamwork, and more into one great game.
The graphics aren't GREAT, but they're still nice, and the game runs on most pcs, and the graphics are still signifigantly better than BZFlag. People with a voodoo2 or 3 can play using glide, which produces really nice graphics. Unfortunately a 3dfx driver update broke glide support for the game, and it can only be played wiht dated drivers (completely broken on voodoo4/5).
A last note is that the thing that sets this game apart from others is it's incredibly realistic physics and gravity, etc. I have never seen a game with more realistic physics, etc. The sequal being worked on by the underpaid independent developer (yes... one developer) will be even better with the addition of an advanced lighting engine. (by physics, i'm talking about how a pulse shell arcs, how tanks are dragged to the ground, etc.). These phyiscs also help combat lag, as the server uses a vector-based coordinate system, which greatly reduces bandwidth to help 56k users (such as myself).
Go out and pay it! http://www.wulfram.com
Nvidia's linux drivers have support for twinview in them: their multimonitor technology. I'm somewhat sure that their mobile GPUs have TwinView enabled.
The linux drivers support using an external monitor or television as your second display.