I have windows '98. When that will no longer suffice, I will remove myself from the PC market. At that time, those 'old' PS2's and X-Box's should be available for around $100 on eBay.
Or I'll dump the money into a MAME cab, or pick up a Battlezone, Frogger, or any of a dozen video arcade games I'd like to have.
The most important thing is that relative to the cost of games, the cost of Windows is trivial. I spent around $40 for Roller Coaster Tycoon and Baldur's Gate. More for Red Alert and some other RTS games. I would have bought Deus Ex at full price when it came out, but had other things to do with my time. Now, let's say I spend $20/month on games. Probably close to what I spend. Now let's say I have to upgrade Windows every three years (reasonable, given '95, '98, and the current OSes fighting it out now). Let's further assume that I pay the full $209 cost. That's less than $7 per month. Keeping current hardware costs more than that. ($150 video card every two years, $150+ for processor/mobo a little less often).
It ain't cost. I've got enough money. Trust me. My bike probably costs more than the car of the average/. reader.
If there are no more games... big fucking deal. Way more to do with life than engage in a twitch fest.
Not necessarily. I was at a college that I won't name where I was on the Academic Honor Board. Essentially, suspected cheats were brought before the board to decide on guilt/inocense (sp) and give punishment.
Computer cases were the most common (4 of the 5 cases I sat in on). One day, we had three cases, with different defendants in each one. All programs, from about 15 students were essentially identical. What were the differences? Capitalization of variable names, and indenting style. That's it. So, while they were not 'exact' copies, they were close enough in my mind to merit guilt.
They were fairly trivial programs. I think a total of maybe 150 lines of code or so. Can't remember if it was some form of basic, or C (I really think it was the former). There were a few ways to do the problem (I think it sorted words or something). But the striking thing is that the variables were typical CS100 nonsense names (variablefoo, variablebar, but NOT simply 'i' for iterator or 'x') of four-five characters in length, differing only in that some students had all uppercase, and others all lowercase.
Now, I suppose that if the instructor had said 'use these variable names' there is a defense. But that was never mentioned.
I think the ultimate answer was that almost everyone admitted that they did some amount of copying, and all got zeroes on the assignment. I can't remember if any failed the class (and no, nobody was tossed from school).
But this is the interesting thing: Each of the three cases was about the same instructor, with the same program. But they were brought as three cases. We were presented the hard copy evidence for all three cases at the beginning of the morning. During a break after the first case, I flipped through the other evidence packs. I saw that the copying was very, VERY similar in all three cases. In fact, there were more similarities between program A in case 1 and program B in case 2 than between Program A in case 1 and Program B in case 2. To my mind, it was clear that the cheating was much broader than indicated. However, I was ignored. Our power was only as petit jury, judge, and executioner. We had no room to act as grand jury. (In addition, this was my first real world experience with a judicial system unable to understand technical issues. I was a chem major. Roommate was a CS major. I was the only hard-science guy on the board. The others were various history/business majors.)
Anyway, the point is: exact copies are probably always cheating. But near copies are also sometimes cheating.
Professor X, you should not have agreed to sign over your work to the University. Or you should have funded the research privately. But you asked me, the taxpayer, to take the risk. The risk that your perpetual motion machine would not work. I took the risk, I get the reward.
But not necessarily public domain. The BSD model seems to have done quite well.
And this should extend to not only code, but any research. How can Univ. of XYZ get a government grant, and then have the university, the prof, or the private company who pitched in some spending money get ALL of the rights to the results of the project?
Kind of a dumb question to ask around these parts.
'Coolness' is not and was not the perennial Apple motto. Not even under Steve Jobs. Witness the Apple I through the III. All were utilitarian machines. The first were geek hardware without the geek price. And having a wooden case was not 'cool'; it was being cheap.
1984, enter the Mac. What was the motto? Anyone? Yes, it was "The Computer for the Rest of Us". The machine for everyman. Its aim was usability and simplicity. And it was. For a long time, the 128k Mac typified computing for the average slob. Not until 11 years later did M$ come close to this.
Steve Jobs did not find the mantra of coolness until returned from the wasteland of NeXT. The idea that a Mac was cool did not develop until the iMac. And it is what has succeeded.
I think that Jobs has matured, rather than devolved. He realizes that people won't buy insanely great things. Not en masse. But as long as 4-8% of people do, the company will be okay.
In 1993, people didn't buy usability. They don't in 2002. What people buy is familiarity and cheapness. And at that, M$ wins.
Go here for info on the Tron video game and here for Discs of Tron, a game I much prefer. The second link has a picture of the enviro-cabinet. Definately a cool touch, and the only way to play. I believe that these five games were originally supposed to be on one machine, but the fifth got spun off.
Good post, but I'd like to take issue with your notion of the album dying. I, for one, would hate to see this happen. Bands who can actually put together a cohesive album get my money. Also, both the top 40 format, most other radio formats, and the size of music downloads, for the time being, precludes much more than the three minute single.
Some singles are great. Hell, I'm shopping for a jukebox. But if I'm going to sit down for an hour or two, I'm listening to Rush or Pink Floyd (or many others with good albums). I would hate to see the format die.
(OTOH, the album format is largely dead. Look at the plethora of 'Music NOW!' discs and so forth. Most 'albums' are just one or two singles with some hastily recorded crap to fill out 35-45 minutes.)
Slashdot is pretty pathetic lately. Just read your own journal:)
BTW, regarding anyone who wants to 'reinvent' slashdot. Why bother? From the handful of journals I've been reading, seems that much of the good comments and stories happen there. It's even better than the hidden sid's.
Slashdot Mirror
real men use ld, gas, etc.
(while that last mean 'et cetera', I'm sure it is a *nix command somewhere)
I'd like to dump his articles, due to his stupid comments (as well as some other /. eds) but the articles are frequently on interesting topics.
What to do...
>>Shameless plug: Do you need step by step instructions on configuring WINE to run popular Windows applications? Check out my web site, Winecentric
Urm... Last updated July 26, 2001?
Thanks for the URL. I'm sure I'll go there often.
I carried the damned golden pantaloons forever, and followed the saga. But haven't followed the investigation for quite a while.
Can't believe someone figured it out. Guess it's time to get Throne of Bhaal.
I have windows '98. When that will no longer suffice, I will remove myself from the PC market. At that time, those 'old' PS2's and X-Box's should be available for around $100 on eBay.
/. reader.
Or I'll dump the money into a MAME cab, or pick up a Battlezone, Frogger, or any of a dozen video arcade games I'd like to have.
The most important thing is that relative to the cost of games, the cost of Windows is trivial. I spent around $40 for Roller Coaster Tycoon and Baldur's Gate. More for Red Alert and some other RTS games. I would have bought Deus Ex at full price when it came out, but had other things to do with my time. Now, let's say I spend $20/month on games. Probably close to what I spend. Now let's say I have to upgrade Windows every three years (reasonable, given '95, '98, and the current OSes fighting it out now). Let's further assume that I pay the full $209 cost. That's less than $7 per month. Keeping current hardware costs more than that. ($150 video card every two years, $150+ for processor/mobo a little less often).
It ain't cost. I've got enough money. Trust me. My bike probably costs more than the car of the average
If there are no more games... big fucking deal. Way more to do with life than engage in a twitch fest.
Must be just you. He's on my list, and I can still metamod. (And do it daily)
Hmmm.... NO. Again, if they don't make games I want, I don't buy. That simple.
They didn't make games I wanted. Didn't seem like they ever would. My job is not to 'support the concept of Linux gaming'. It's to buy games.
We finally know who to blame for Clippy, you rotten SOB. Switching to OSS won't save your sorry ass now.
Not necessarily. I was at a college that I won't name where I was on the Academic Honor Board. Essentially, suspected cheats were brought before the board to decide on guilt/inocense (sp) and give punishment.
Computer cases were the most common (4 of the 5 cases I sat in on). One day, we had three cases, with different defendants in each one. All programs, from about 15 students were essentially identical. What were the differences? Capitalization of variable names, and indenting style. That's it. So, while they were not 'exact' copies, they were close enough in my mind to merit guilt.
They were fairly trivial programs. I think a total of maybe 150 lines of code or so. Can't remember if it was some form of basic, or C (I really think it was the former). There were a few ways to do the problem (I think it sorted words or something). But the striking thing is that the variables were typical CS100 nonsense names (variablefoo, variablebar, but NOT simply 'i' for iterator or 'x') of four-five characters in length, differing only in that some students had all uppercase, and others all lowercase.
Now, I suppose that if the instructor had said 'use these variable names' there is a defense. But that was never mentioned.
I think the ultimate answer was that almost everyone admitted that they did some amount of copying, and all got zeroes on the assignment. I can't remember if any failed the class (and no, nobody was tossed from school).
But this is the interesting thing: Each of the three cases was about the same instructor, with the same program. But they were brought as three cases. We were presented the hard copy evidence for all three cases at the beginning of the morning. During a break after the first case, I flipped through the other evidence packs. I saw that the copying was very, VERY similar in all three cases. In fact, there were more similarities between program A in case 1 and program B in case 2 than between Program A in case 1 and Program B in case 2. To my mind, it was clear that the cheating was much broader than indicated. However, I was ignored. Our power was only as petit jury, judge, and executioner. We had no room to act as grand jury. (In addition, this was my first real world experience with a judicial system unable to understand technical issues. I was a chem major. Roommate was a CS major. I was the only hard-science guy on the board. The others were various history/business majors.)
Anyway, the point is: exact copies are probably always cheating. But near copies are also sometimes cheating.
I'll move to flatland. I figure I'll at least be a square. Maybe a pentagon.
Professor X, you should not have agreed to sign over your work to the University. Or you should have funded the research privately. But you asked me, the taxpayer, to take the risk. The risk that your perpetual motion machine would not work. I took the risk, I get the reward.
But not necessarily public domain. The BSD model seems to have done quite well.
And this should extend to not only code, but any research. How can Univ. of XYZ get a government grant, and then have the university, the prof, or the private company who pitched in some spending money get ALL of the rights to the results of the project?
Kind of a dumb question to ask around these parts.
'Coolness' is not and was not the perennial Apple motto. Not even under Steve Jobs. Witness the Apple I through the III. All were utilitarian machines. The first were geek hardware without the geek price. And having a wooden case was not 'cool'; it was being cheap.
1984, enter the Mac. What was the motto? Anyone? Yes, it was "The Computer for the Rest of Us". The machine for everyman. Its aim was usability and simplicity. And it was. For a long time, the 128k Mac typified computing for the average slob. Not until 11 years later did M$ come close to this.
Steve Jobs did not find the mantra of coolness until returned from the wasteland of NeXT. The idea that a Mac was cool did not develop until the iMac. And it is what has succeeded.
I think that Jobs has matured, rather than devolved. He realizes that people won't buy insanely great things. Not en masse. But as long as 4-8% of people do, the company will be okay.
In 1993, people didn't buy usability. They don't in 2002. What people buy is familiarity and cheapness. And at that, M$ wins.
Okay, that I got. But... What did the code that the original poster post actually do? 'Just' make the running process run as root?
TIA
I must agree that linking to Amazon was the icing on the cake.
/. editors)
(Mod me as a karma whore, but at least I'm not a corporate whore like the
Go here for info on the Tron video game and here for Discs of Tron, a game I much prefer. The second link has a picture of the enviro-cabinet. Definately a cool touch, and the only way to play. I believe that these five games were originally supposed to be on one machine, but the fifth got spun off.
I guess you never collected laser discs, did you? This was SOP, and it was nothing to have 2-3 copies of movies.
Given the small userbase, I think it was the only way to make a profit:)
Longish thread on RGVAC about people who already have copies. Seems some shipped early and the stores screwed up.
Could you explain that a little more slowly? Why are the setgid, setuid, and system statements a bad thing?
Any field which has a future dictated by lawyers, other than the legal field itself (and, maybe, politics), is in trouble.
I would argue that lawyers have screwed up politics more so than any other field...
Good post, but I'd like to take issue with your notion of the album dying. I, for one, would hate to see this happen. Bands who can actually put together a cohesive album get my money. Also, both the top 40 format, most other radio formats, and the size of music downloads, for the time being, precludes much more than the three minute single.
Some singles are great. Hell, I'm shopping for a jukebox. But if I'm going to sit down for an hour or two, I'm listening to Rush or Pink Floyd (or many others with good albums). I would hate to see the format die.
(OTOH, the album format is largely dead. Look at the plethora of 'Music NOW!' discs and so forth. Most 'albums' are just one or two singles with some hastily recorded crap to fill out 35-45 minutes.)
Shouldn't your username now be "Ion"?
(FWIW, Hal Jordan is the one, true GL, IMNSHO)
Good luck with what? iMacs run Linux. Just ask these guys.
Slashdot is pretty pathetic lately. Just read your own journal:)
BTW, regarding anyone who wants to 'reinvent' slashdot. Why bother? From the handful of journals I've been reading, seems that much of the good comments and stories happen there. It's even better than the hidden sid's.