You realize that the source engine was released in 2005, almost two years before the first Intel Mac shipped, right? And that only major upgrade occurred in 2007, shortly after PPC Macs stopped shipping. Those systems played Doom3 just fine, and I'm sure they would be perfectly capable of playing any of the Orange Box games as well (don't know about Left4Dead). That said, I don't see why Valve would spend the money supporting an obsolete platform.
Yeah, but how much effort did they expend to get their build process to that point, and how much of that could have been spent on HL2 Ep3 instead? My guess is "a hell of a lot of work", and "not much since Ep3 is mostly new content not new software".
On the other hand, if you assume there is any market for games on Linux at all, then it would be a very good idea for Valve to port Steam to Linux, as it would be the solution to everything you said - it would provide a consistent installer, updater, dependency manager, and DRM for the platform so the individual developers wouldn't have to.
The main problem with gaming on Linux is simply the small size of the market. Any other complaints are minor and solvable.
When Steam goes down, you can't play your games... not even when you're offline.
That's probably not the best example of the problems with Steam DRM - it does have an offline mode. You have to be online when you enable the feature, since by default all of your configuration is stored on the the server rather than your local computer, so folks that hadn't done that in advance will have problems when the servers are down.
A worse problem is that they can cancel your account for all sorts of reasons, and then if you ever launch steam on that computer while online, all of your games will be disabled.
A new type of solder can be melted and shaped in three dimensions under the force of a weak magnetic field
How weak are we talking about here? I wouldn't want my chips to become desoldered just because they were exposed to an electromagnetic field. The article didn't mention any thing about that.
That was said much better than I could have put it. I'm always skeptical when people clamor about throwing IT at a problem to fix it. The VA example is perfect. If it is taking 160 days to process a claim, then there is a bigger problem than using physical paper. There was once a time when there were no computers, and yet we managed to do things in a reasonable timeframe. This sort of thing wouldn't be tolerated in the 1920's so why do we assume that not using new technology is the problem now? Throwing IT at the problem without understanding what the problem is to begin with will just turn an overly complicated paperwork mess to an overly complicated digital mess. Except now you've added another layer to the problem with it's own overhead.
On Linux nice only modifies the CPU priority, and you could set that extremely low and not see any impact on an IO limited tasks. Linux allows you to throttle IO using the related ionice command, but that doesn't exist on OS X. I've been told that on OS X nice changes both, but I haven't been able to find any documentation to back that up so I'm not sure whether to believe them or not.
Since the purpose of this is to backup critical data, you want to make darn sure that you never loose the key, or all the data is worthless. Storing pieces of paper securely and safe from disaster is something that we have been doing for years, and you don't have to look very far for a solution. On the otherhand, most safes, fire boxes and safety deposit boxes will still get hot enough enough in a fire to destroy any digital media stored in them.Paper offers a simple, traditional backup while something like a smart-card could be used on a day to day basis.
I agree that stability of Ubuntu has gone downhill. I have given up using Ubuntu on my desktop for that reason, and it is not exotic hardware - it is a Dell which came with Ubunutu preinstalled on it!
The two biggest problems are the Intel graphics drivers and Pulse Audio. Keith Packard and others have been using the Intel drivers as a proving ground for some much needed re-architecting of the Xorg driver framework. This is important work, but it also means that using the latest and greatest versions of those drivers, like Ubuntu does, is a bad idea. Pulse Audio is buggy as shit. I'm not convinced that it is a good idea at all, but at the very least it should not be considered stable enough for mainstream use.
Ubuntu is quickly changing from a mainstream user-friendly distro to a bleeding edge distro, because they cannot resist the urge to include new features. They look at how these features would improve usability if they worked, but neglect the frustration caused by their instability. Even long term support releases have this problem.
Okay, so the company suspended the safety director only four days ago, and the submitter is bitching about "lack of full complement of safety personnel", and implying that the plant should be shut down? Give me a fucking break. He has assistants and subordinates that can fill in for him until a replacement is chosen. It's not like he never took vacation or was away from the plant during the time he was working there.
This is a serious situation and needs to be looked into closely, especially given the deceit on behalf of Entergy. I agree that long-term license renewal should not be granted until they agree to additional oversight and put forth concrete plans for resolving the maintenance problems that currently exist. However, the plant is not unsafe at this time, the problems can be fixed, and there is no reason that it shouldn't be.
Seriously, mdsolar, just STFU. It is people like you that make me ashamed to be associate with environmental groups at all.
For every used game sold, the game editor gets ZERO.
If I couldn't resell my games I would never by them for $50 to begin with. For games, like most products, market segmentation exists, and some form of price discrimination is necessary to maximize profits in such an environment. The used game market provides this without any additional work on the publisher's behalf. Eliminating the used game market will just decrease the value of the new sales, resulting in a lower number of sales at a given price point.
Thus, they are not getting ZERO for the used games sold, they are getting the fraction of new sales that wouldn't happen without the used market.
Same here. I looked at joining the credit union that is loosely affiliated with my employer, when I started working here, and again when I was looking at buying a house, and decided against it both times. The credit union has a smaller number of branches, further from where I live. The online banking options are poor compared to my existing bank, which would force me to physically go to the bank more often, which in turn has worse hours than a regular bank. And from what my office-mate tells me the service is worse - the lines at the credit union are always longer than the bank and they constantly make mistakes and then try to turn around and blame him. At my normal bank I get treated like a number, but the bank is quite efficient and adept at dealing with numbers.
The number of ATMs is about the same since they pooled together with the "CU Anytime" ATMs. The interest rates for saving accounts and mortgages are a better deal than I could get from my bank, but not as good as I can get from financial institutions that specialize on those things. As for the nickel and dimeing - my bank has never charged me any fees related to my accounts since I opened 13 years ago (then Norwest, now WellsFargo), except overdraft fees, which are to be expected.
There are a couple of credit unions which I have been told are good, but they limit their membership, like the state employees credit union.
This flash sideshow has pictures of the car when mated. It looks like the backend of both cars are removed, and they are joined together but-to-but.
It seems very impractical to me. First, it looks like it would take quite a bit of effort to join the cars that way. Second you are loosing much of your luggage space when you join the two cars. So why wouldn't you just drive two cars rather than joining them into one? Is there really that much of an efficiency improvement doing this?
No, that's not what is meant by the term. Intangible assets refer to non-physical things that realistically increase the value of the company. Copyrights and patents are intangible assets because they can be capitalized, and this ability is exclusive to the holder. If anyone could reproduce an image or re-implement an invention, then they couldn't be claim as assets. If push comes to shove, they could sell their copyrights and patents to pay off debt. Brand recognition is another intangible asset, and again companies have absolutely been bought and sold primarily to acquire the name. If anyone could use their brand, this would change.
Ideally, legal and regulatory framework must allow companies participating on commons-based R&D to generate intangible assets for their contribution to successful projects. Otherwise, expenses must have an equitable tax treatment as a donation to social welfare.
This doesn't make any sense to me. Since the code has been released as open source, it isn't really an asset of the company that wrote it anymore than it is to anyone else who uses it. It isn't something that could be liquidated to pay off debts, and allowing them to specify it as an asset on their balance sheets seems like just another way to distort the books and confuse investors. I don't see any good coming out of that.
Secondly, I don't see the point in letting them receive tax deductions for their contributions. They made these contributions because it was in their best interest to do so regardless of the tax status. And while it is nice that their contributions help the community as a whole, they themselves are helped by contributions that others have made. If they weren't taxed on the later, why should they get a deduction for the former? Open source is already provides economic and social benefits to those that participate in it's development - government wealth distribution is not needed in a system that already does so inherently.
Finally, even if I did agree with these goals, I don't see how having an estimate of the cost of the kernel as a whole would help - what matters are the specific contributions of the company and there are better ways to figure that.
I'm sorry, but you don't get to say, "The course is fine," and then also get to change it immediately after a crash.
This isn't exactly the same, but we've been getting this line at work and frankly I think it is bunk. Anytime we make an improvement to our process or design, the customer's Quality Assurance folks come and act as though that proves that we were doing things poorly to begin with, and that all our prior product needs to be recertified, even though our testing and performance already exceeds customer requirements. The thing is that nothing is ever perfect. There is always room for improvement, and just because something does improve doesn't mean that it was inadequate to begin with. On the otherhand sometimes the customer has come with complaints, and we have made improvements to mollify them, even though we thought the changes were completely unnecessary. That doesn't mean that they were right, it just means that we don't get to base all our decisions on technical reasons.
The fact that someone died, and the fact that many people have already noticed that this track is not as safe as others, is good evidence that the track wasn't adequate. But the fact that they chose to improve it for whatever reason is not.
It turns out that one of the the network administrators at the school district has a fairly large online presence, and has posted quite a bit relating to this program on his blog over the years. Some folks have started looking over the blogs and the software being used, and it is pretty interesting.
The 5 most popular are shown when the window first opens (in random order), you have to scroll over to see the rest. Furthermore, it can't be an evil scheme by Microsoft as it wasn't their choice - the idea, the criteria for browser selection, and the ordering of the browsers were forced on them by the EU
The reason they can enforce this is because they can refuse to issue patents related to Blu-ray to any manufacturer that does not agree to their terms, which a blatant abuse patent system.
The purpose of patents are to promote the development of novel ideas, and the primary mechanism for doing so is to allow the original inventor to be compensated when these ideas are used. A government-granted monopoly is completely unnecessary to accomplish these goals, and is a horrible anachronism in a free market society.
Patents should be reformed to require all grantees to license their patents to anyone who is willing to pay a reasonable and non-discriminatory fee. This would at least solve the problem of patents being abused to force agendas and limit competition, while still achieving the goal of compensating inventors.
The first distribution destroys the exclusivity, and most of the value is in the exclusivity. Therefore, the first unlicensed distribution destroys most of the value of the property.
That assumes that just because there is an additional (free) source for the work that nearly everyone will choose that source, which is completely unsupported.
If that were the case the music, movie, and games sales would be zero, as every single new song, movie and PC game released is available on the P2P networks. Well not quite zero because you have to account for people who don't have (sufficient) internet access or are ignorant about P2P. However, it should be a small fraction of what the market used to be before P2P came along. And yet it isn't. It is lower, but not that much lower, and much of the decrease can be attributed to other things.
Just because something is possible doesn't mean it is inevitable - there are other social pressures in work such as the desire to be honest and the fear of getting caught that prevent the majority of people from breaking the law. This is the same with most legitimate laws and there is no reason to believe that it is on the edge of falling apart - that there isn't an equilibrium at which a certain percentage of people will pirate but the majority won't.
WTF, who modded this as troll? He stated a plain fact quoted straight from the Constitution, which is directly on topic with the conversation, and was not done in a rude or insulting manner whatsoever.
Except I know for a fact that for many things I am searching for the problem isn't lack of sites with the correct information. I will search for information about product x, and get nothing but sites selling x for the first three pages. I will try searching for "x reviews" or simular and get nothing but link-farms and very poor quality sites (stuff like about.com). I will then restrict my search to a site that I know about, and sure enough they have the information I need.
So it isn't that sites containing the information aren't available, or aren't being indexed, they just aren't being given proper weighting in the search results. That would be my two biggest wishlist items for searching - do better at filtering out linkfarms, and have a switch I could select to exclude commerce sites from a specific search. None of the other search engines are doing any better than google, but if there were one that managed to do the above, I would switch to it in a heartbeat.
No he complaining that Google is not being an adequate interface to the rest of the web because the only things showing up in his search are Wikipedia and link farms. This is like complaining about a car that will only take you to the library and stores, and not any other building.
Just because something can be archived by everyone, doesn't mean that someone will. Otherwise we wouldn't be missing all those old BBC episodes for which the originals were destroyed.
Slashdot Mirror
You realize that the source engine was released in 2005, almost two years before the first Intel Mac shipped, right? And that only major upgrade occurred in 2007, shortly after PPC Macs stopped shipping. Those systems played Doom3 just fine, and I'm sure they would be perfectly capable of playing any of the Orange Box games as well (don't know about Left4Dead). That said, I don't see why Valve would spend the money supporting an obsolete platform.
Yeah, but how much effort did they expend to get their build process to that point, and how much of that could have been spent on HL2 Ep3 instead? My guess is "a hell of a lot of work", and "not much since Ep3 is mostly new content not new software".
On the other hand, if you assume there is any market for games on Linux at all, then it would be a very good idea for Valve to port Steam to Linux, as it would be the solution to everything you said - it would provide a consistent installer, updater, dependency manager, and DRM for the platform so the individual developers wouldn't have to.
The main problem with gaming on Linux is simply the small size of the market. Any other complaints are minor and solvable.
When Steam goes down, you can't play your games... not even when you're offline.
That's probably not the best example of the problems with Steam DRM - it does have an offline mode. You have to be online when you enable the feature, since by default all of your configuration is stored on the the server rather than your local computer, so folks that hadn't done that in advance will have problems when the servers are down.
A worse problem is that they can cancel your account for all sorts of reasons, and then if you ever launch steam on that computer while online, all of your games will be disabled.
From the article:
A new type of solder can be melted and shaped in three dimensions under the force of a weak magnetic field
How weak are we talking about here? I wouldn't want my chips to become desoldered just because they were exposed to an electromagnetic field. The article didn't mention any thing about that.
That was said much better than I could have put it. I'm always skeptical when people clamor about throwing IT at a problem to fix it. The VA example is perfect. If it is taking 160 days to process a claim, then there is a bigger problem than using physical paper. There was once a time when there were no computers, and yet we managed to do things in a reasonable timeframe. This sort of thing wouldn't be tolerated in the 1920's so why do we assume that not using new technology is the problem now? Throwing IT at the problem without understanding what the problem is to begin with will just turn an overly complicated paperwork mess to an overly complicated digital mess. Except now you've added another layer to the problem with it's own overhead.
On Linux nice only modifies the CPU priority, and you could set that extremely low and not see any impact on an IO limited tasks. Linux allows you to throttle IO using the related ionice command, but that doesn't exist on OS X. I've been told that on OS X nice changes both, but I haven't been able to find any documentation to back that up so I'm not sure whether to believe them or not.
Since the purpose of this is to backup critical data, you want to make darn sure that you never loose the key, or all the data is worthless. Storing pieces of paper securely and safe from disaster is something that we have been doing for years, and you don't have to look very far for a solution. On the otherhand, most safes, fire boxes and safety deposit boxes will still get hot enough enough in a fire to destroy any digital media stored in them.Paper offers a simple, traditional backup while something like a smart-card could be used on a day to day basis.
well.my.space.bar.shift.key.and.delete.key.on.my.cell.phone.stopped.working.after.i.got.into.a.hot.tub.with.it.in.my.pocket....so.now.my.texts.have.to.be.written.like.this.with.periods.for.spaces.and.mistakes.pushed.to.the.end.of.the.message.........htisdropwhenbrokdp
I agree that stability of Ubuntu has gone downhill. I have given up using Ubuntu on my desktop for that reason, and it is not exotic hardware - it is a Dell which came with Ubunutu preinstalled on it!
The two biggest problems are the Intel graphics drivers and Pulse Audio. Keith Packard and others have been using the Intel drivers as a proving ground for some much needed re-architecting of the Xorg driver framework. This is important work, but it also means that using the latest and greatest versions of those drivers, like Ubuntu does, is a bad idea. Pulse Audio is buggy as shit. I'm not convinced that it is a good idea at all, but at the very least it should not be considered stable enough for mainstream use.
Ubuntu is quickly changing from a mainstream user-friendly distro to a bleeding edge distro, because they cannot resist the urge to include new features. They look at how these features would improve usability if they worked, but neglect the frustration caused by their instability. Even long term support releases have this problem.
Okay, so the company suspended the safety director only four days ago, and the submitter is bitching about "lack of full complement of safety personnel", and implying that the plant should be shut down? Give me a fucking break. He has assistants and subordinates that can fill in for him until a replacement is chosen. It's not like he never took vacation or was away from the plant during the time he was working there.
This is a serious situation and needs to be looked into closely, especially given the deceit on behalf of Entergy. I agree that long-term license renewal should not be granted until they agree to additional oversight and put forth concrete plans for resolving the maintenance problems that currently exist. However, the plant is not unsafe at this time, the problems can be fixed, and there is no reason that it shouldn't be.
Seriously, mdsolar, just STFU. It is people like you that make me ashamed to be associate with environmental groups at all.
For every used game sold, the game editor gets ZERO.
If I couldn't resell my games I would never by them for $50 to begin with. For games, like most products, market segmentation exists, and some form of price discrimination is necessary to maximize profits in such an environment. The used game market provides this without any additional work on the publisher's behalf. Eliminating the used game market will just decrease the value of the new sales, resulting in a lower number of sales at a given price point.
Thus, they are not getting ZERO for the used games sold, they are getting the fraction of new sales that wouldn't happen without the used market.
Same here. I looked at joining the credit union that is loosely affiliated with my employer, when I started working here, and again when I was looking at buying a house, and decided against it both times. The credit union has a smaller number of branches, further from where I live. The online banking options are poor compared to my existing bank, which would force me to physically go to the bank more often, which in turn has worse hours than a regular bank. And from what my office-mate tells me the service is worse - the lines at the credit union are always longer than the bank and they constantly make mistakes and then try to turn around and blame him. At my normal bank I get treated like a number, but the bank is quite efficient and adept at dealing with numbers.
The number of ATMs is about the same since they pooled together with the "CU Anytime" ATMs. The interest rates for saving accounts and mortgages are a better deal than I could get from my bank, but not as good as I can get from financial institutions that specialize on those things. As for the nickel and dimeing - my bank has never charged me any fees related to my accounts since I opened 13 years ago (then Norwest, now WellsFargo), except overdraft fees, which are to be expected.
There are a couple of credit unions which I have been told are good, but they limit their membership, like the state employees credit union.
This flash sideshow has pictures of the car when mated. It looks like the backend of both cars are removed, and they are joined together but-to-but.
It seems very impractical to me. First, it looks like it would take quite a bit of effort to join the cars that way. Second you are loosing much of your luggage space when you join the two cars. So why wouldn't you just drive two cars rather than joining them into one? Is there really that much of an efficiency improvement doing this?
No, that's not what is meant by the term. Intangible assets refer to non-physical things that realistically increase the value of the company. Copyrights and patents are intangible assets because they can be capitalized, and this ability is exclusive to the holder. If anyone could reproduce an image or re-implement an invention, then they couldn't be claim as assets. If push comes to shove, they could sell their copyrights and patents to pay off debt. Brand recognition is another intangible asset, and again companies have absolutely been bought and sold primarily to acquire the name. If anyone could use their brand, this would change.
Ideally, legal and regulatory framework must allow companies participating on commons-based R&D to generate intangible assets for their contribution to successful projects. Otherwise, expenses must have an equitable tax treatment as a donation to social welfare.
This doesn't make any sense to me. Since the code has been released as open source, it isn't really an asset of the company that wrote it anymore than it is to anyone else who uses it. It isn't something that could be liquidated to pay off debts, and allowing them to specify it as an asset on their balance sheets seems like just another way to distort the books and confuse investors. I don't see any good coming out of that.
Secondly, I don't see the point in letting them receive tax deductions for their contributions. They made these contributions because it was in their best interest to do so regardless of the tax status. And while it is nice that their contributions help the community as a whole, they themselves are helped by contributions that others have made. If they weren't taxed on the later, why should they get a deduction for the former? Open source is already provides economic and social benefits to those that participate in it's development - government wealth distribution is not needed in a system that already does so inherently.
Finally, even if I did agree with these goals, I don't see how having an estimate of the cost of the kernel as a whole would help - what matters are the specific contributions of the company and there are better ways to figure that.
I'm sorry, but you don't get to say, "The course is fine," and then also get to change it immediately after a crash.
This isn't exactly the same, but we've been getting this line at work and frankly I think it is bunk. Anytime we make an improvement to our process or design, the customer's Quality Assurance folks come and act as though that proves that we were doing things poorly to begin with, and that all our prior product needs to be recertified, even though our testing and performance already exceeds customer requirements. The thing is that nothing is ever perfect. There is always room for improvement, and just because something does improve doesn't mean that it was inadequate to begin with. On the otherhand sometimes the customer has come with complaints, and we have made improvements to mollify them, even though we thought the changes were completely unnecessary. That doesn't mean that they were right, it just means that we don't get to base all our decisions on technical reasons.
The fact that someone died, and the fact that many people have already noticed that this track is not as safe as others, is good evidence that the track wasn't adequate. But the fact that they chose to improve it for whatever reason is not.
It turns out that one of the the network administrators at the school district has a fairly large online presence, and has posted quite a bit relating to this program on his blog over the years. Some folks have started looking over the blogs and the software being used, and it is pretty interesting.
The 5 most popular are shown when the window first opens (in random order), you have to scroll over to see the rest. Furthermore, it can't be an evil scheme by Microsoft as it wasn't their choice - the idea, the criteria for browser selection, and the ordering of the browsers were forced on them by the EU
The reason they can enforce this is because they can refuse to issue patents related to Blu-ray to any manufacturer that does not agree to their terms, which a blatant abuse patent system.
The purpose of patents are to promote the development of novel ideas, and the primary mechanism for doing so is to allow the original inventor to be compensated when these ideas are used. A government-granted monopoly is completely unnecessary to accomplish these goals, and is a horrible anachronism in a free market society.
Patents should be reformed to require all grantees to license their patents to anyone who is willing to pay a reasonable and non-discriminatory fee. This would at least solve the problem of patents being abused to force agendas and limit competition, while still achieving the goal of compensating inventors.
The first distribution destroys the exclusivity, and most of the value is in the exclusivity. Therefore, the first unlicensed distribution destroys most of the value of the property.
That assumes that just because there is an additional (free) source for the work that nearly everyone will choose that source, which is completely unsupported.
If that were the case the music, movie, and games sales would be zero, as every single new song, movie and PC game released is available on the P2P networks. Well not quite zero because you have to account for people who don't have (sufficient) internet access or are ignorant about P2P. However, it should be a small fraction of what the market used to be before P2P came along. And yet it isn't. It is lower, but not that much lower, and much of the decrease can be attributed to other things.
Just because something is possible doesn't mean it is inevitable - there are other social pressures in work such as the desire to be honest and the fear of getting caught that prevent the majority of people from breaking the law. This is the same with most legitimate laws and there is no reason to believe that it is on the edge of falling apart - that there isn't an equilibrium at which a certain percentage of people will pirate but the majority won't.
WTF, who modded this as troll? He stated a plain fact quoted straight from the Constitution, which is directly on topic with the conversation, and was not done in a rude or insulting manner whatsoever.
Except I know for a fact that for many things I am searching for the problem isn't lack of sites with the correct information. I will search for information about product x, and get nothing but sites selling x for the first three pages. I will try searching for "x reviews" or simular and get nothing but link-farms and very poor quality sites (stuff like about.com). I will then restrict my search to a site that I know about, and sure enough they have the information I need.
So it isn't that sites containing the information aren't available, or aren't being indexed, they just aren't being given proper weighting in the search results. That would be my two biggest wishlist items for searching - do better at filtering out linkfarms, and have a switch I could select to exclude commerce sites from a specific search. None of the other search engines are doing any better than google, but if there were one that managed to do the above, I would switch to it in a heartbeat.
No he complaining that Google is not being an adequate interface to the rest of the web because the only things showing up in his search are Wikipedia and link farms. This is like complaining about a car that will only take you to the library and stores, and not any other building.
Just because something can be archived by everyone, doesn't mean that someone will. Otherwise we wouldn't be missing all those old BBC episodes for which the originals were destroyed.