Am I just a raving loon, or is there a cabal out there trying to limit and control our freedoms?
Limiting servers does two things, one of them specifically for cable, the other more nefarious. Since cable connections are shared anyone hogging the bandwidth (say an MP3 server) makes everyone elses service slower than dial-up (BTW, sharing cable is why I have DSL),so there is a practical reason to keep you from doing it. The "nefarious" angle is about controlling content. If "they" can control who runs servers, it makes it much harder to do activity that is illegal and makes everyone subservient to their ISP's content controls, unless of course you want to shell out the extra bucks for a business account and run a server out of your house. By limiting the usefulness of normal account, business accounts without the restrictions are "worth" more and therefore cost more, even if they are used less than a regular one, and have no other appreciable difference. It's called capitalism.
Sun hates M$, M$ rules because of Office, Sun sees the potential in Linux, Sun buys StarOffice, Open sources it(kind-of, for the PR, PHBs) Communinity makes it SuperNova Office, Bill becomes a pauper when M$ stock plummets, hilarity ensues.
I disagree, although people do often get trashed for defending M$ there are enough sane people to look over it.
/. is starting to get a bad rep.
Where?
I personally love to thrash M$, why? Becuase they use their tremendous marketing power and market share to LIE TO PEOPLE. That type of behaviour deserves thrashing IMHO. Call it a holy war, it is based on moral values after all. (Giving vs. Stealing)
Not only that, but the external links that are added have exceptional value. There was tremendous evidence of this is the aforementioned evolution discussion.
Ya know, for all the crap that first-posters get, I kind of like it. Or at least it doesn't really bother me. They always gets moderated down (perhaps a waste of mod person, or perhaps a reason for them), and cause no real damage. I like to think of as more of a cultural phenomenon. You know, the stupid sh*t everyone, at some point or other, tries but no one is willing to condone. I agree with the "part childish behavior" part, but it helps to lighten what are often very serious, very technical discussions, like the ones for polls:-)
/. is "new media" defined, as in there was nothing like it before but new technology has made it possible and even commonplace, kudos to the/. team (and the Andover whipcrackers)
The Quake Experience: Run around pick up guns, see opponent, chase opponent, jump off 100 foot cliff while trying to shoot opponent, follow opp. around corner, realize he has outsmarted you, die in fountain of blood, try again.
CTF (Capture the Flag) is more fun IMHO than the regular game, more strategy and all that, but the regular game (even Q3Atest)is so fun because of the intelligence of your opponents. No AI can match the simple craftiness that your average 12 year-old can come up with, much less an experienced player. Matched against similar pings, it comes down to skill. A fast trigger finger is nice, but if you don't know how to strafe wildly while hitting a wildly strafing opponent, your trigger finger don't mean sh*t.
I play because after nearly 20 years of playing games it is by far the most intense, immersive, fastest, and gratifying experience I have found coming from a machine. That being said I was up until 2:00 last night (no I'm not in school, real world) trying to keep Morgan Industries from overrunning my fungus farms. Thats from "Alpha Centauri" for the gaming challenged. Definitely a "thinking mans" game. There are also a couple of nice CGI swipes at M$ in the game, and quotes from nearly every major thinker in western history. Very highly recommended if you like breathing and use a computer.
Surely, if what you were saying was correct, the market would not be willing to pay for software, and commercial software as we know it would cease to exist.
This is exacly what I am saying. With the growth of Linux and a braoder knowledge of OSS, consumers as a whole will NOT be willing to pay for software. I think this is 10-15 years down the road, but I can see it happening. Things just have to get a whole lot easier, which events llke the RHAT IPO will speed right along.
Apparently, you don't consider your long distance telephone service to be a "service" ? Can I make a copy of my long distance service, give it to my friends, and still have my long distance service? There is nothing else the same, sorry. We really are using matter replicators. Actualyly thought replicators, but roughly the same thing.
The fact that software is a service rather than a commodity doesn't make it worthless
How many other "services" do you know of that are, in effect, infinite? Software is really an in between product, totally different than any other product we have dealt with. It *does* have a physical form, but only because E=mc^2. It can be copied "infinitely" for almost no cost. That fits with no other known product. It has been sold and protected as if it were a toaster and now the ridiculousness of that idea is becoming obvious.
"Service" is when I call tech support and someone takes the TIME to help me. When someone has to do something to help me. The previous effort that has gone into building software, because of softwares infinite nature, is worth nothing. (Finite/Infinite = 0) The "new" work required to handle specific problems or tasks can be billed on an hour by hour or instance by instance basis. As a matter of fact, wider distribution would allow the infinite nature of the product to tremendously increase the amount of service required to keep it running. Thats where the money in software is. Or should be, if you look at it objecively.
Taking that away pretty much causes all your other arguments to collapse, so I'll leave it at that.
Thanks for the clarification. I think there will be some marked changes in the way things are done. As it stands now (pls correct me if I'm wrong) very few (5?) people make final decisions on what is added and when. Now these decision affect billion dollar companies and I seriously doubt that the "benevolent dictator" model we have now will continue to suffice. I think its up to the community to try and guide the process of deciding how things work. Of course, the "community" now includes those companies, which will gum up the whole works. I guess all I can do is voice my opinion and hope Linus doesn't go for the Canyonero (cryptic Simpsons reference)
All forms of government and various institutions of social order were created to combat scarcity. Or more to the poing, to deal with the fact that supplies are finite.
THIS DOES NOT APPLY TO SOFTWARE. Software is not finite, I can copy something a million times over, all are exactly the same, AND I still have the original. This moves it into a realm where all previous models of how to deal with it do not apply. You can, of course, argue that the TIME used to create the software is finite, which is true, but that changes the whole scope and texture of the argument.
I disagree totally. I see the money pouring in allowing companies to focus on building that ease of use to make their distro or their app sell. People can't compete with Microsoft so young hungry companies will go someplace else. The open source spirit (and free debugging) should help keep some projects open.
Oh, and my end users most definitely DO mind rebooting two-three times a day. They also mind all the weird behaviour that I blame (usually) on M$'s crap. The public opinion of M$ has plummeted recently and as more people see an alternative it will help drive the market. It will probably take another 10-15 years, but it's gonna happen.
Flexibility and stability are great, I do think that there is currently too much emphasis on flexibility for a mass market approach. This was readily apparent in Mandrake's answer to this question. While some people (not geeks) like the flexibility, most want a useful out-of-the-box experience, a good default, something that he (mandrake) is totally missing out on. And something that some other company will pick up on, they sell a $20 gui on top of Linux and make a living at it. Competition (which has been totally stagnant in that part of the market, from an OS to OS standpoint) will help make things better as some coders go for the gold.
Another big question is how the GPL will hold up with the rapid lawyers just waiting to take on new territory. Big companies with lot's of 'em will walk around it, will the community hold, or will it, like many small enitities, not hold up under the pressures of mass expansion.
(sorry this should have been two or three posts, but me fingers just kept movin'. I also submitted this article under the heading "Linux SUCKs" no wonder it didn't make it...)
(disclaimer: not a serious coder, more of a benevolent observer and person with money to spend on games)
I mentioned this in another gaming article (more focused on the OSS side) so if this is redundant to you I apologize.
The major problem, as I see it, with creating consistent high-quality games is building the underlying technology. As the author said, game engines have a half-life (yes, pun) of about two years. Now wouldn't the open source model for building software be applicable to creating such engines. The bugs could be worked out en masse and all the nifty features could be added a la carte. This would also provide the community type support that I have found SO extremely helpful in learning Linux and Apache.
Not having to build a quick, proprietary (and therefore buggy) engine for each game would allow designers to work on the stuff that make a great game, level design, art, interaction, sound, etc. By lowering the programming barriers to entry we might even see a return to the lone-wolf style games that bootstrapped the industry. And just might lower game prices into a range where they can be massively consumed, like movies. Personally I think $20 is a good target. With the rise of digital (legal) distribution, and the HUGE proliferation of gaming sites (comes close the pr0n IMHO) would provide all the hype, marketing, and access you need to sustain a comsumption driven product.
Also building a common installer and graphic libs would GREATLY reduce the complexity of getting games running on the wide variety of installations out there, not to mention a conversion of the next generation of gamers.
You don't really need high bitrates for human speech. Plus, those po' folks without broadband can still get in on the fun. I'm still waiting for the 24 hour/. icecast server. Of course I KNOW they don't have the bandwidth to support 100.000 64 kpbs streams.
Fast, fully supported 3d, AND a TV Tuner. they make great boards, fast as all hell, now if they can just figure out how to do 32-bit rendering, and get fully into the OEM market, I'll buy their stock.
BTW: I thought their commercials kicked ass, except for the thing that nobody can quite get right...30 second of screen shots please. I can't stand game commercials that have 2 second of actual gameply and 28 of some idiot actors doing stupid sh*t. The QuakeII commercial is a perfect example of how NOT to do one.
Slashdot Mirror
they changed it, I noticed that blazingly fast 1000 WHOLE pages an HOUR also. Funny how the 'Net can make you a liar very quickly.
Am I just a raving loon, or is there a cabal out there trying to limit and control our freedoms?
Limiting servers does two things, one of them specifically for cable, the other more nefarious.
Since cable connections are shared anyone hogging the bandwidth (say an MP3 server) makes everyone elses service slower than dial-up (BTW, sharing cable is why I have DSL),so there is a practical reason to keep you from doing it. The "nefarious" angle is about controlling content. If "they" can control who runs servers, it makes it much harder to do activity that is illegal and makes everyone subservient to their ISP's content controls, unless of course you want to shell out the extra bucks for a business account and run a server out of your house. By limiting the usefulness of normal account, business accounts without the restrictions are "worth" more and therefore cost more, even if they are used less than a regular one, and have no other appreciable difference. It's called capitalism.
Sun hates M$, M$ rules because of Office, Sun sees the potential in Linux, Sun buys StarOffice, Open sources it(kind-of, for the PR, PHBs) Communinity makes it SuperNova Office, Bill becomes a pauper when M$ stock plummets, hilarity ensues.
Tokin' mascot. I get the feeling that he's staring straight into Zen, or maybe a tasty fish.
sorry about the redundantcy, bad spelling, and this post, aaahh screw it, it's friday and that means beer around here, have a good weekend.
from www.m-w.com
Main Entry: halite
Pronunciation: 'ha-"lIt, 'hA-
Function: noun
Date: 1868
: ROCK SALT
(insert intelligence questioning comment here)
Or more likely, he talks sh*t about MTV, they stop signing checks or use a clause in that 30-page contract to take him to court.
and it threatens to do to our computer networks what the latter has done to our city centers.
And it also threatens to do to our software companies what the war on drugs did to our drug companies (include tobacco and alcohol in that assessment)
Right now the U.S. Government is about making money for U.S. companies, Why?, because we all work for who pays us.
My two most importants items in the next election? Campaign Finance and Term Limits, long live Jesse!
I disagree, although people do often get trashed for defending M$ there are enough sane people to look over it.
/. is starting to get a bad rep.
Where?
I personally love to thrash M$, why? Becuase they use their tremendous marketing power and market share to LIE TO PEOPLE. That type of behaviour deserves thrashing IMHO. Call it a holy war, it is based on moral values after all. (Giving vs. Stealing)
Not only that, but the external links that are added have exceptional value. There was tremendous evidence of this is the aforementioned evolution discussion.
Ya know, for all the crap that first-posters get, I kind of like it. Or at least it doesn't really bother me. They always gets moderated down (perhaps a waste of mod person, or perhaps a reason for them), and cause no real damage. I like to think of as more of a cultural phenomenon. You know, the stupid sh*t everyone, at some point or other, tries but no one is willing to condone. I agree with the "part childish behavior" part, but it helps to lighten what are often very serious, very technical discussions, like the ones for polls :-)
/. team (and the Andover whipcrackers)
/. is "new media" defined, as in there was nothing like it before but new technology has made it possible and even commonplace, kudos to the
The Quake Experience: Run around pick up guns, see opponent, chase opponent, jump off 100 foot cliff while trying to shoot opponent, follow opp. around corner, realize he has outsmarted you, die in fountain of blood, try again.
CTF (Capture the Flag) is more fun IMHO than the regular game, more strategy and all that, but the regular game (even Q3Atest)is so fun because of the intelligence of your opponents. No AI can match the simple craftiness that your average 12 year-old can come up with, much less an experienced player. Matched against similar pings, it comes down to skill. A fast trigger finger is nice, but if you don't know how to strafe wildly while hitting a wildly strafing opponent, your trigger finger don't mean sh*t.
I play because after nearly 20 years of playing games it is by far the most intense, immersive, fastest, and gratifying experience I have found coming from a machine. That being said I was up until 2:00 last night (no I'm not in school, real world) trying to keep Morgan Industries from overrunning my fungus farms. Thats from "Alpha Centauri" for the gaming challenged. Definitely a "thinking mans" game. There are also a couple of nice CGI swipes at M$ in the game, and quotes from nearly every major thinker in western history. Very highly recommended if you like breathing and use a computer.
Surely, if what you were saying was correct, the market would not be willing to pay for software, and commercial software as we know it would cease to exist.
This is exacly what I am saying. With the growth of Linux and a braoder knowledge of OSS, consumers as a whole will NOT be willing to pay for software. I think this is 10-15 years down the road, but I can see it happening. Things just have to get a whole lot easier, which events llke the RHAT IPO will speed right along.
Apparently, you don't consider your long distance telephone service to be a "service" ?
Can I make a copy of my long distance service, give it to my friends, and still have my long distance service? There is nothing else the same, sorry. We really are using matter replicators. Actualyly thought replicators, but roughly the same thing.
my vote for funniest moderator bashing post.
We need a poll.....
The fact that software is a service rather than a commodity doesn't make it worthless
How many other "services" do you know of that are, in effect, infinite? Software is really an in between product, totally different than any other product we have dealt with. It *does* have a physical form, but only because E=mc^2. It can be copied "infinitely" for almost no cost. That fits with no other known product. It has been sold and protected as if it were a toaster and now the ridiculousness of that idea is becoming obvious.
"Service" is when I call tech support and someone takes the TIME to help me. When someone has to do something to help me. The previous effort that has gone into building software, because of softwares infinite nature, is worth nothing. (Finite/Infinite = 0) The "new" work required to handle specific problems or tasks can be billed on an hour by hour or instance by instance basis. As a matter of fact, wider distribution would allow the infinite nature of the product to tremendously increase the amount of service required to keep it running. Thats where the money in software is. Or should be, if you look at it objecively.
Taking that away pretty much causes all your other arguments to collapse, so I'll leave it at that.
Thanks for the clarification. I think there will be some marked changes in the way things are done. As it stands now (pls correct me if I'm wrong) very few (5?) people make final decisions on what is added and when. Now these decision affect billion dollar companies and I seriously doubt that the "benevolent dictator" model we have now will continue to suffice. I think its up to the community to try and guide the process of deciding how things work. Of course, the "community" now includes those companies, which will gum up the whole works. I guess all I can do is voice my opinion and hope Linus doesn't go for the Canyonero (cryptic Simpsons reference)
preview is a good thing (even when /. is slow)..DOH!
All forms of government and various institutions of social order were created to combat scarcity. Or more to the poing, to deal with the fact that supplies are finite.
THIS DOES NOT APPLY TO SOFTWARE. Software is not finite, I can copy something a million times over, all are exactly the same, AND I still have the original. This moves it into a realm where all previous models of how to deal with it do not apply. You can, of course, argue that the TIME used to create the software is finite, which is true, but that changes the whole scope and texture of the argument.
I disagree totally. I see the money pouring in allowing companies to focus on building that ease of use to make their distro or their app sell. People can't compete with Microsoft so young hungry companies will go someplace else. The open source spirit (and free debugging) should help keep some projects open.
Oh, and my end users most definitely DO mind rebooting two-three times a day. They also mind all the weird behaviour that I blame (usually) on M$'s crap. The public opinion of M$ has plummeted recently and as more people see an alternative it will help drive the market. It will probably take another 10-15 years, but it's gonna happen.
Flexibility and stability are great, I do think that there is currently too much emphasis on flexibility for a mass market approach. This was readily apparent in Mandrake's answer to this question. While some people (not geeks) like the flexibility, most want a useful out-of-the-box experience, a good default, something that he (mandrake) is totally missing out on. And something that some other company will pick up on, they sell a $20 gui on top of Linux and make a living at it. Competition (which has been totally stagnant in that part of the market, from an OS to OS standpoint) will help make things better as some coders go for the gold.
Another big question is how the GPL will hold up with the rapid lawyers just waiting to take on new territory. Big companies with lot's of 'em will walk around it, will the community hold, or will it, like many small enitities, not hold up under the pressures of mass expansion.
(sorry this should have been two or three posts, but me fingers just kept movin'. I also submitted this article under the heading "Linux SUCKs" no wonder it didn't make it...)
That how you pay for a meal at TRATEOTU. deposit $.01 at the beginning of time, come back at the end, quite simple really.
Sometimes I wonder how software companies make money at all
see: business practices, Microsoft.
(sorry folks, but that's the harsh reality.)
(disclaimer: not a serious coder, more of a benevolent observer and person with money to spend on games)
I mentioned this in another gaming article (more focused on the OSS side) so if this is redundant to you I apologize.
The major problem, as I see it, with creating consistent high-quality games is building the underlying technology. As the author said, game engines have a half-life (yes, pun) of about two years. Now wouldn't the open source model for building software be applicable to creating such engines. The bugs could be worked out en masse and all the nifty features could be added a la carte. This would also provide the community type support that I have found SO extremely helpful in learning Linux and Apache.
Not having to build a quick, proprietary (and therefore buggy) engine for each game would allow designers to work on the stuff that make a great game, level design, art, interaction, sound, etc. By lowering the programming barriers to entry we might even see a return to the lone-wolf style games that bootstrapped the industry. And just might lower game prices into a range where they can be massively consumed, like movies. Personally I think $20 is a good target. With the rise of digital (legal) distribution, and the HUGE proliferation of gaming sites (comes close the pr0n IMHO) would provide all the hype, marketing, and access you need to sustain a comsumption driven product.
Also building a common installer and graphic libs would GREATLY reduce the complexity of getting games running on the wide variety of installations out there, not to mention a conversion of the next generation of gamers.
Just some thoughts on a Frydi...
You don't really need high bitrates for human speech. Plus, those po' folks without broadband can still get in on the fun. I'm still waiting for the 24 hour /. icecast server. Of course I KNOW they don't have the bandwidth to support 100.000 64 kpbs streams.
Fast, fully supported 3d, AND a TV Tuner. they make great boards, fast as all hell, now if they can just figure out how to do 32-bit rendering, and get fully into the OEM market, I'll buy their stock.
BTW: I thought their commercials kicked ass, except for the thing that nobody can quite get right...30 second of screen shots please. I can't stand game commercials that have 2 second of actual gameply and 28 of some idiot actors doing stupid sh*t. The QuakeII commercial is a perfect example of how NOT to do one.
nt