At the beginning of the game, you have to wander around the Hall of Champions and pick your four adventurers. Depending on what sort of game you wanted, this could take quite some time. Once you'd chosen to perfection, you then stepped on a pressure plate to open the door to the dungeons beyond...
Except that, if you'd copied the floppy on the ST, the door wouldn't open. The game would load up, it would let you waste an hour of your life picking the characters, it just wouldn't let you actually play anything at the other end. And it never told you why either - if you had no access to the originals, then you'd never know what you'd done wrong.
I suggest that you burn two DVDs and keep each at a separate location (one at work, one at home for eg). Reburn one (or both, if you want) of them every two or three years.
Good advice, and advice I'll take.
I also have the advantage that I run a small-scale webhosting operation. If I copy the DVD image to my server, it will be both an offsite backup and copied to tape by my co-lo hosts on a nightly basis. Paranoid certainly, but as you point out we're talking about data that is crucial to me.
If a CD-R degrades after two years it is considered acceptable.
Interesting. Do you happen to know if DVD-R (or DVD+R) is similar?
I have a rather keen interest in the answer to this, as whilst typing this in the background Pinnacle Studio is hard at work preparing a DVD image of my wedding video shot on Saturday...
The simple solution to this problem? Demand that your vendors implement solutions that run on Linux. Its a quick cure to being "locked in"..
No it isn't. It's a quick route to ensure being locked into the Linux platform. You might not be paying any money for that platform, but you're locked in just the same.
Now ensuring cross-platform compatibility where possible, now that's a better route. Most of the open source infrastructure solutions that ever get discussed actually do things this way.
There is more, true. Braben has said that the reason he asked for the removal of TNK is that it was a source distribution, as well as binary. The illegal PalmOS (I think) port had taken Pinder's source, slapped their own EULA on it and then released it for the Palm.
That's why Braben got involved. He had turned a blind eye to all the Elite-a-likes until his own ideas started being used against him. I mean, an EULA added on a port of C code cheerfully described by its author as "In breach of copyright? Probably"? You can't really blame Braben for being a trifle miffed...
I find it sad they split up, but I don't know either individual. Consequently, I'm not prepared to say who was/is right and who was wrong. But I do think it's a shame.
Why do we have things like Columbine nowadays when these things were unheard of 30 years ago?
Ever hear the Boomtown Rats' track "Tell Me Why (I don't like Mondays)"? If so, do you know what it's really about?
It's about a girl, Brenda Spencer, who came into school one day and shot her classmates (I think nine, though I'm not entirely sure of the number). When asked why, she gave her reason as "I don't like Mondays".
OK - it's not quite thirty years ago but it's not far off. These things have happened before. Sad, but true.
It seems the two no longer get along terribly well...
A mild understatement. I've been a fan of Elite since it first appeared on the BBC micro, and the pettiness between Ian Bell and David Braben is extraordinary. It occasionally spills over into alt.fan.elite, such as at the moment. The author of the re-engineered version is also working with Ian Bell to produce an Elite-inspired game which would be free of all Elite-based copyrights. Bell seem to refuse to even speak to Braben, let alone co-operate with him.
Without knowing people it's impossible for me to take sides without just guessing. The majority of the fans seem to have sided with Ian Bell, but Braben appears to have been behaving quite reasonably in his newsgroups posts so I'm withholding judgement.
Or, as is more likely, they'll be re-selling the rights to such classic games for inclusion on mobile phones...
Ever play Elite?
Right now, on alt.fan.elite, there are threads going on where one of the joint copyright holders has 'asked for' (required) all Elite-a-likes to be removed from download. The reason was that he'd just realised a commercial Elite-a-like for handhelds, and when searching for reviews of it he found only illegal ports of Elite to the handhelds.
So yes, it may well be that they're trying to preserve copyrights so that these older games can be ported to mobile phones, PDAs...whatever. They do own the copyright, and they are within their rights to do that.
Well, the list of example titles I saw in that correspondence included Mario. I don't even need to begin to do a search to tell that that one's still copyrighted, and certainly has never been given permission to be downloaded freely to anything anywhere.
I'm a big user of emulation - some MAME, a fair amount of C64 and also Amiga stuff. However, I do feel that if the original copyright owners complain, then the fair thing to do is to take the downloads down. In this case, IDSA is being too vague and needs to give a specific list of titles. Once given though, I feel it is only correct to comply.
Why should it need a keyboard simply to boot a machine? It doesn't know what purpose I've put that machine to - perhaps there is no keyboard to be attached. And yes, I'm aware some recent BIOSes finally understand that and just boot with a warning. The post wasn't really meant to be taken that seriously.
Consider that a laissez-faire economy results in prices that rise to what the market will bear. If, then, a piece of software is regularly pirated, copied, or used once and returned, doesn't that indicate that the price is too high, according to the market?
No.
Economics is concerned with the distribution of scarce resources (By 'scarce', I mean finite rather than rare). Since software can have a copy created without affecting the availability of the original, it can be argued that software is not a scarce resource. The classical market rules you describe simply do not apply.
Ther are people who can afford software who will simply copy it anyway. There are others who will ensure that every scrap is licensed correctly. With relatively little enforcement going on, it becomes a matter of personal choice and honesty.
Everyone knows the old rule of backup, but sometimes you lose that data...You're keeping the data for an emotional reason. It makes sense that when you lose that data you're going to be affected.
True. My camcorder was stolen in Prague the other week - the camera's gone, but it can be replaced. However, two miniDV tapes of data have gone as well, and those can't be replaced. Since they're tapes of my daughter's first birthday, I'm pretty angry about that.
Now, personally I don't feel the need to resort to a psychiatrist. However, I fully support the main point of this article - that loss of data can affect you emotionally.
After looking at everything I suggested a lot of open-source alternatives to all the current software....After presenting my ideas to management they shot it down totally.
What would be their motivation to replace the software? Does the current set-up work? Is there a burning need to replace?
Often "it would be a better system" isn't enough. If the old system works well enough and takes few resources, then it's doing its job fine and doesn't need a potentially risky replacement. And it sounds like what you proposed was a large change.
the only way that I can implement it now is to do it slowly behind their backs
Careful, young grasshopper. These aren't your private machines. If you've presented your ideas and they've been rejected, then do not sneak in those changes anyway. To do so could have serious ramifications for your job. Stick by what you've been told, and do things openly.
'The open-source implementation of TCP/IP in the Linux kernel clearly exhibits a higher code quality than commercial implementations in general-purpose operating systems,'
Really? But I thought most commercial OSes derived their TCP/IP stacks from BSD code in the first place. And since BSD is open-source, shouldn't these commercial OSes show roughly the same level of quality then? Or are they arguing that the Linux TCP/IP stack is superior to the BSD one?
"We've sent out calls at 3 a.m. when the build is broken, find the developer that broke it, and get him into work right then and fix it immediately."
"We let people bring their kids in on Saturdays, it's a family day. There's no swearing allowed on Saturdays. But you still have to be there, and we still have to make a build."
Hmm. Not a life for me, thank you very much. I have a wife and daughter, and jealously guard my time with them. You can forget being called at at 3:00am to fix bugs, and you can forget being required to be in on Saturdays too.
C'mon though - bug fixing is dull. That's what they meant by unrewarding - personal satisfaction. They weren't quibbling the necessity.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:The Brits could have predicted this...
on
Buy a Segway... Please
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I have a very small amount of sympathy for Sinclair over this. The C5 was never the intended end product.
I remember seeing a documentary about it - basically, the end product was to be a full-sized electric car which could carry four people. However, the company ran out of cash and needed something to sell quickly. Hence the rather quickly thrown-together C5.
Can still remember its debut on TV. Looked great in the studio, then they showed some live shots of trying to use it in London traffic. I'll never forget the sheer terror on the face of the guy who drove ir down the inside of a large truck...
Even if you disagree - please realize that the decision to work on the project, and the decision to drop the bomb, were two separate decisions, made by two separate classes of individuals.
I agree with the rest of your post, but I have to say I find the distinction made here to be dubious. Technically, you are correct of course - scientists could have said no, and politicians could have refused to drop, but...
The scientists would have tried to build the bomb in order for it to be used. The politicians would have commissioned the bomb in order for it to be dropped. I find the pretense of "we just built it, we didn't know it would be used" to be incredibly thin.
If that were the case these domains wouldn't be very well used, especially.com. Since it is hard and expensive for a commercial entity to operate globally.
Well...no. I run a commerical entity that operates globally. This commecial entity consists of one person - me. However, it has no trouble dealing with customers across the globe and it does this through use of its.com website. All depends on the nature of what you're offering (I do a very small scale hosting service).
As I understand it, MSN served a stylesheet that aligned elements 34pts over because Opera was broken. Opera v6 that is. So what was wrong is MSN's version checking code, not some grand campaign against Opera. In fact, the very fact that this alternative stylesheet existed shows that Microsoft had put in extra work and tried to provide Opera users with a usable page.
Who here thinks their incentive to do that has been increased by this move?
Slashdot Mirror
Crepes are thinner and often smaller than pancakes. They're French originally (as I'm sure you knew already...).
Cheers,
Ian
Nope. 0.9, 1992 (I think).
Cheers,
Ian
Never trust a language with more brackets than code...
Cheers,
Ian
Except that, if you'd copied the floppy on the ST, the door wouldn't open. The game would load up, it would let you waste an hour of your life picking the characters, it just wouldn't let you actually play anything at the other end. And it never told you why either - if you had no access to the originals, then you'd never know what you'd done wrong.
Appealed to my twisted sense of humour, that did.
Cheers,
Ian
Good advice, and advice I'll take.
I also have the advantage that I run a small-scale webhosting operation. If I copy the DVD image to my server, it will be both an offsite backup and copied to tape by my co-lo hosts on a nightly basis. Paranoid certainly, but as you point out we're talking about data that is crucial to me.
Cheers,
Ian
Interesting. Do you happen to know if DVD-R (or DVD+R) is similar?
I have a rather keen interest in the answer to this, as whilst typing this in the background Pinnacle Studio is hard at work preparing a DVD image of my wedding video shot on Saturday...
Cheers,
Ian
No it isn't. It's a quick route to ensure being locked into the Linux platform. You might not be paying any money for that platform, but you're locked in just the same.
Now ensuring cross-platform compatibility where possible, now that's a better route. Most of the open source infrastructure solutions that ever get discussed actually do things this way.
Cheers,
Ian
That's why Braben got involved. He had turned a blind eye to all the Elite-a-likes until his own ideas started being used against him. I mean, an EULA added on a port of C code cheerfully described by its author as "In breach of copyright? Probably"? You can't really blame Braben for being a trifle miffed...
I find it sad they split up, but I don't know either individual. Consequently, I'm not prepared to say who was/is right and who was wrong. But I do think it's a shame.
Cheers,
Ian
Ever hear the Boomtown Rats' track "Tell Me Why (I don't like Mondays)"? If so, do you know what it's really about?
It's about a girl, Brenda Spencer, who came into school one day and shot her classmates (I think nine, though I'm not entirely sure of the number). When asked why, she gave her reason as "I don't like Mondays".
OK - it's not quite thirty years ago but it's not far off. These things have happened before. Sad, but true.
Cheers,
Ian
A mild understatement. I've been a fan of Elite since it first appeared on the BBC micro, and the pettiness between Ian Bell and David Braben is extraordinary. It occasionally spills over into alt.fan.elite, such as at the moment. The author of the re-engineered version is also working with Ian Bell to produce an Elite-inspired game which would be free of all Elite-based copyrights. Bell seem to refuse to even speak to Braben, let alone co-operate with him.
Without knowing people it's impossible for me to take sides without just guessing. The majority of the fans seem to have sided with Ian Bell, but Braben appears to have been behaving quite reasonably in his newsgroups posts so I'm withholding judgement.
Cheers,
Ian
Ever play Elite?
Right now, on alt.fan.elite, there are threads going on where one of the joint copyright holders has 'asked for' (required) all Elite-a-likes to be removed from download. The reason was that he'd just realised a commercial Elite-a-like for handhelds, and when searching for reviews of it he found only illegal ports of Elite to the handhelds.
So yes, it may well be that they're trying to preserve copyrights so that these older games can be ported to mobile phones, PDAs...whatever. They do own the copyright, and they are within their rights to do that.
Cheers,
Ian
Ah. I see you're a big user too... :-)
Cheers,
Ian
I'm a big user of emulation - some MAME, a fair amount of C64 and also Amiga stuff. However, I do feel that if the original copyright owners complain, then the fair thing to do is to take the downloads down. In this case, IDSA is being too vague and needs to give a specific list of titles. Once given though, I feel it is only correct to comply.
Cheers,
Ian
Cheers,
Ian
keyboard not found, press F1 to continue
Cheers,
Ian
No.
Economics is concerned with the distribution of scarce resources (By 'scarce', I mean finite rather than rare). Since software can have a copy created without affecting the availability of the original, it can be argued that software is not a scarce resource. The classical market rules you describe simply do not apply.
Ther are people who can afford software who will simply copy it anyway. There are others who will ensure that every scrap is licensed correctly. With relatively little enforcement going on, it becomes a matter of personal choice and honesty.
Cheers,
Ian
True. My camcorder was stolen in Prague the other week - the camera's gone, but it can be replaced. However, two miniDV tapes of data have gone as well, and those can't be replaced. Since they're tapes of my daughter's first birthday, I'm pretty angry about that.
Now, personally I don't feel the need to resort to a psychiatrist. However, I fully support the main point of this article - that loss of data can affect you emotionally.
Cheers,
Ian
What would be their motivation to replace the software? Does the current set-up work? Is there a burning need to replace?
Often "it would be a better system" isn't enough. If the old system works well enough and takes few resources, then it's doing its job fine and doesn't need a potentially risky replacement. And it sounds like what you proposed was a large change.
the only way that I can implement it now is to do it slowly behind their backs
Careful, young grasshopper. These aren't your private machines. If you've presented your ideas and they've been rejected, then do not sneak in those changes anyway. To do so could have serious ramifications for your job. Stick by what you've been told, and do things openly.
Cheers,
Ian
Really? But I thought most commercial OSes derived their TCP/IP stacks from BSD code in the first place. And since BSD is open-source, shouldn't these commercial OSes show roughly the same level of quality then? Or are they arguing that the Linux TCP/IP stack is superior to the BSD one?
Cheers,
Ian
Hmm. Not a life for me, thank you very much. I have a wife and daughter, and jealously guard my time with them. You can forget being called at at 3:00am to fix bugs, and you can forget being required to be in on Saturdays too.
Cheers,
Ian
Cheers,
Ian
I remember seeing a documentary about it - basically, the end product was to be a full-sized electric car which could carry four people. However, the company ran out of cash and needed something to sell quickly. Hence the rather quickly thrown-together C5.
Can still remember its debut on TV. Looked great in the studio, then they showed some live shots of trying to use it in London traffic. I'll never forget the sheer terror on the face of the guy who drove ir down the inside of a large truck...
Cheers,
Ian
I agree with the rest of your post, but I have to say I find the distinction made here to be dubious. Technically, you are correct of course - scientists could have said no, and politicians could have refused to drop, but...
The scientists would have tried to build the bomb in order for it to be used. The politicians would have commissioned the bomb in order for it to be dropped. I find the pretense of "we just built it, we didn't know it would be used" to be incredibly thin.
Cheers,
Ian
Well...no. I run a commerical entity that operates globally. This commecial entity consists of one person - me. However, it has no trouble dealing with customers across the globe and it does this through use of its .com website. All depends on the nature of what you're offering (I do a very small scale hosting service).
Cheers,
Ian
Who here thinks their incentive to do that has been increased by this move?
Cheers,
Ian