Do you really want all the hacked up and modified copies of your art floating around there? Does that really matter to you?
I'd just give the art away. If people want to replace it, fine. If they want to chuck all yours and charge for their own, nothing is stopping them.
The code can be GPL'ed. It's like making a video encoder - the mechanics of the encoder are yours, but what people feed it is theirs. In your case, the things you did with Flash are GPLable (if this truly is the case - I'm not sure how flash works).
I'd release them as "The code bits are GPL, the art is mine, ask to use it" or "The code bits are GPL, the art is public domain, use it as you wish". Some variant on that should be able to fit what you want to do.
Any good electronics shop or catalog should have 120v relays with a preset delay on them (usually 5-20 seconds). I have several 5 second ones on a rack of AV gear where I work, ganged together so equipment turns on 0, 5 and 10 seconds after the switch is thrown.
They're pretty cheap ($20), and if you've got drives on a separate powersupply, hooking it up should be trivial.
You'll note a lack of OpenBSD iso images anywhere on the net - instead of copywrighting the content, they copyright the actual disk layout. You could theoretically create your own install disks and go through the hassle of making them self booting. It's an incentive to buy CD's and support the project.
Redhat is doing a similar thing here to promote the sale of their boxed distro, and cut down on things like cheapbytes. Their spin is to allow ISO images, but have a renaming requirement.
I personally don't have a problem with either plan, but I think Redhat's will bite them in the butt eventually - who wants a weirdly labeled CD, when the contents are identical? All it leads to is possible confusion on the part of the users, and reduces the free advertizing they get by burned copy distribution.
Plain and simple, getting patches and rolling them out is a pain in the ass, for most vendors products. I've switched most of my servers to BSD based systems, simply because it's easier and simpler for me to stop a service, do a cvs update against the patched source tree, compile and reenable the service, than it is for any other operating system.
Windows update is ok (the 75% of the time that it works), but there are far to many interdependancies between products - for example, to apply the latest Outlook 2000 bugfix, you need to download a 50MB patch for all of Office 2000, and have an Office 2000 disk around - since all my Outlook 2000 installs came with Small Business Server, I don't have this, and can't apply the
patch.
In short, it needs to be easier to patch systems - so simple, that people will bother to do it on a regular basis.
Rez is coming out for PS2 sometime in january. It's a rail shooter (like panzer dragoon) with graphics similar to ones you'ld find in an MP3 visualization, and electronic music that responds to your play style. The gameplay is amazing, and the music kicks ass, and unlike most shooters, It doesn't get booring the 10th time through. Here's some more info: http://www.thegia.com/psx2/rez/rez.html
If you really want something before christmas, a Dreamcast + 4 games will set you back under $100. Most games on it look as good as other consoles and cost 1/4 what they do...
this supports outgoing transfers. Incoming are a possible security risk (NO authentication happens in most cases, other than IP address checking, IIRC), making this a prudent decision, IETF or no.
Not that I'm up on the subject, but DJB's issue seems to be with people distributing his code in a modified form that's broken in some way. He's putting money on the line that his software isn't broken, and he values the reputation. Therefore, some distributor hacking and patching it all to heck (like nearly all linux and bsd distributions do) is simply risking the integrity of the software he made.
1. I run linux on all my computers. There aren't a lot of games availible for linux (although I do play a bit of the Loki Quake 3 port from time to time).
2. No hardware incompatibilies or driver problems. A console is a fixed hardware platform, so you never have problems endemic to PC systems
3. Games come out finished. No downloading a huge patch of bugfixes after a game is releaed. It just works, the first time.
4. I can play on my big TV. (well, with TV out on most video cards, this isn't as much of an issue anymore)
5. The games are different. I like Japanese created RPGS. None are avilible for PC (unless they're ports of console games). This is mainly a matter of taste - If I was into FPS games, I'd definitely choose a PC.
The HP recorder probably only writes to the "CD for audio recorders" - the ones they sell for standalone CD->CD consumer audio devices. Nothing new for that market segment.
The media generally costs twice as much as normal CD's, even though it is basically identical - the extra is for the RIAA tax that is placed on the media.
Play (the newtek people) made a linear video editor called Trinity, which happened to tank in the marketplace - neat hardware though - 8x9 production video switcher, real time effects and video mapping, all through a box hooked to a winNT machine. Cool hardware, but they missed the nonlinear video boat, and their expansion nonlinear system didn't integrate all that well.
Play went under, and got bought by "Global Streams", and they sell trinity based harware that is made to stream video over the internet.
Check out www.mgeups.com's ESV+ line - you can control individual outlets on the back of their UPS's: http://www.mgeups.com/products/pdt120/1ph/esv/html/page23.htm
I've haven't used these personally, but they work well for a friend of mine in a colocation facility. Their software seems to be windows only.
The serverworks IDE chipset has, to put it lightly, some problems. It's DMA support is broken on some chipset revisions, so running it in anything greater than PIO mode 4 is a bad idea.
I'd buy a 3rd party IDE interface (3ware would be my first choice - lots of ports, modern drivers in kernel), or SCSI drives for the board. Tyan boards are great BTW - my old Dual PentiumPro Titan Pro ATX is running great after 6 years of use.
Thresh, the guy who started Firingsquad (actually, it used to be Thresh's Firingsquad), quit about a year ago... IIRC he just wanted a change of pace, and wanted out of the hardware review business.
Some of the newer cards are able to do IP checksums in hardware, a feature required for the newly introduced zero copy networking code to function at full speed. This saves a noticeable amount of processor time for servers or other heavily network loaded systems. And supposedly your quake ping is a bit better;-).
A list of drivers and more information is availible here: http://lwn.net/2001/0111/a/zero-copy.php3
Report to HPD & Mind Control for immediate reprogramming! And bring all your Teela-O-MLY pictures and Bouncy Bubble Beverage with you, you Commie Mutant Traitor Bastard!
(for those who don't get the joke, it's from Paranoia, an early 90's tabletop RPG. Very fun, but now out of print. You can get an idea of what it's like by running the paranoia program that's included on some linux distros in the BSD games package)
But check out the Powermac 7100 page... The original code name for the machine was "Carl Sagan", but when this news got to the late Mr. Sagan, he sued Apple, and the code name was changed to BHA, or "Butt-Head Astronomer".. No joke. You can check out the whole story here:
http://www.macspeedzone.com/articles/appleconfid en tial/sagan.shtml
The Xbox is pretty much doomed for failure in japan - by the time it comes out, the PS2 will have been in the japanese market for almost 2 year, and the Gamecube will have just come out. Japanese gamers are wary of an american console, thinking it will be the next 3DO, a console which bombed horribly in both countries. Japanese console developers haven't signed up en masse, and big names like Square haven't definitely announced any product.
As the only console games I play are RPG's, and the occasional game of Dance Dance Revolution (all very japanese games), I doubt I'm going to buy an Xbox any time soon - which is probably the case for most of the hardcore gamer market. As for the rest of the american market, I think the Xbox will do ok. It'll all depend on the games.
Anyway, the Naomi (dreamcast equivalent) and System 246 (PS2 equivalent) boards are already in use in arcade systems - and the Naomi 2 (4x power of dreamcast) is coming out pretty soon as well. Microsoft has no standard arcade Xbox based system, and hasn't made any overtures of creating one, IIRC. Because of this, arcade ports are much more likely to be made to the PS2 and Dreamcast.
I don't see how this can really help us - I mean, 70-90% of the spam I get is from country codes out side of the US.
Anyway, basically all this does is make it illegal to hijack someone's email address to send spam, and to remove someone from the spamming list when asked. But, if you're like me, I never reply to spam - that's the one way that the spammer knows that the address is live.
Playstation Modchipping is the only way to get
around the region coding that Sony puts on every
playstation game. It's basically same as the DVD regions, except only 3 - one for each of Japan, America, and Europe. If you want to play imported games, you either import consoles from each region or modchip, which removes the region coding from the Playstation.
This also has the side effect of making it possible to play burned copies of games. Oh well.
In australia, I'd bet that the main focus is to get foreign games to play, as australia probably only gets european releases (confirmation?), where far fewer games come out. In america, the main concern is playing japanese games that will never come out here, such as dating sims and music games.
There are currently no games on the market that use USB to ethernet adapters for connectivity - the only games that are multi-machine/multiplayer use the firewire ports and firewire hubs. No PSX2 game has any sort of online support today - the driver support for anything but a specific USB device (other than keyboard+mouse) is pretty much of a nightmare - it took quite a while to get that support in the linux kernel, and Sony hasn't been making motions in that directions, so I doubt that developers are going to undertake the task of writing USB drivers for various devices themselves.
Supposedly Unreal Tournament is pretty nice with the above setup, and there are a couple other games that support firewire links coming out soon as well.
I own both a Dreamcast and PSX2, and by far, the better machine now game and connection wise is the Dreamcast. You can surf the internet and download stuff with a dreamcast, and right now the Dreamcast game lineup puts the PSX2 one to shame. Oh well, give the PS2 a year, and we'll see what progress has been made.
How does this integrate with the rest of a computer system? I've seen things in the past that are basically a keyboard+screen+memory so you can take notes on the go, and then use the device as a normal keyboard (PS/2 Port connected) on your home machine - hit a key combination and it dumps it's buffer across the keyboard interface. Is this what the appliance will be, or will it be closer to a PDA?
What OS is used on the appliance? Expansion / peripheral port details? Expected price? Is it intended to be wearable (or will there be a wearable version) ?
Also, do you intend to support other PDA's other than Palm OS devices with the Half Keyboard?
I'd like to see that - Fred Smith from Telehypertronics Inc. walks into a customers office covered in grime - his sawed off double barrel shotgun in hand, humping a bunch of pamphlets and product samples in his military surplus duffelbag.
Of course, he'd have to find a place to park his 18 wheeler cab with custom cowcatcher and 40MM turret mounted anti-aircraft gun first...
The Ultra 5 system architecture is basically the same as a PC - the UltraSparc IIi that's running the machine has a PCI bus interface built in (for PC folks, think of it as an integrated northbridge - and reminiscent of alpha 21064 series of chips)
Bandwidth wise, these machines are no better than a cheapo PC - their internal bus structure is nearly identical, as are most of the peripherals they use. As far as benchmarks go, check out:
http://www.ultralinux.org/faq.html#q_1_27
For the most part, Linux on sparc will be around the same speed as Solaris on sparc, with variation
one way or the other on certain benchmarks due to OS design differences. I'd prefer Linux anyway - it uses a lot less disk space and memory to do the same things as solaris can.
That said, I'm beginning to wonder how viable Sun will be in the future. Their newest processor, the UltraSparc III, at 600 Mhz is slower in both integer and floating point than a P3 800 (according to the spec2000 benchmark, www.specbench.org). Yeah, its more efficent per clock cycle, but when you realize that the cheapest workstation with a single USIII 600 in it costs 10k, and you can easily build a Dual P3 800 system for under 2k, you soon realize that for sheer processing power, Sun is up a creek without a paddle.
As one of the few people who preordered and got a PS2 today (Fantavision kicks butt!), I can assure you that the PS2 has an optical digital out (TOSLINK) for AC3 and DTS, and that it works fine - I have mine hooked up that way right now, games and DVD's playing just fine.
The DVD playback is improved over the Japanese release, compairing it with my friend's import PS2, which got a bit blocky at times. The DVD playing software has been moved off the memory card into firmware, due to the weird memory card corruption problems in the japanese release.
Supposedly the Macrovision in DVD playback is catching people offguard - a lot of people are having problems using their VCR's as RF converters to go to their TV's, which doesn't work well for some reason. The guys at EB exhorted people to read the manual for this reason.
Slashdot Mirror
What it comes down to is this -
Do you really want all the hacked up and modified copies of your art floating around there? Does that really matter to you?
I'd just give the art away. If people want to replace it, fine. If they want to chuck all yours and charge for their own, nothing is stopping them.
The code can be GPL'ed. It's like making a video encoder - the mechanics of the encoder are yours, but what people feed it is theirs. In your case, the things you did with Flash are GPLable (if this truly is the case - I'm not sure how flash works).
I'd release them as "The code bits are GPL, the art is mine, ask to use it" or "The code bits are GPL, the art is public domain, use it as you wish". Some variant on that should be able to fit what you want to do.
BBK
Any good electronics shop or catalog should have 120v relays with a preset delay on them (usually 5-20 seconds). I have several 5 second ones on a rack of AV gear where I work, ganged together so equipment turns on 0, 5 and 10 seconds after the switch is thrown.
They're pretty cheap ($20), and if you've got drives on a separate powersupply, hooking it up should be trivial.
BBK
You'll note a lack of OpenBSD iso images anywhere on the net - instead of copywrighting the content, they copyright the actual disk layout. You could theoretically create your own install disks and go through the hassle of making them self booting. It's an incentive to buy CD's and support the project.
Redhat is doing a similar thing here to promote the sale of their boxed distro, and cut down on things like cheapbytes. Their spin is to allow ISO images, but have a renaming requirement.
I personally don't have a problem with either plan, but I think Redhat's will bite them in the butt eventually - who wants a weirdly labeled CD, when the contents are identical? All it leads to is possible confusion on the part of the users, and reduces the free advertizing they get by burned copy distribution.
BBK
Plain and simple, getting patches and rolling them out is a pain in the ass, for most vendors products. I've switched most of my servers to BSD based systems, simply because it's easier and simpler for me to stop a service, do a cvs update against the patched source tree, compile and reenable the service, than it is for any other operating system.
Windows update is ok (the 75% of the time that it works), but there are far to many interdependancies between products - for example, to apply the latest Outlook 2000 bugfix, you need to download a 50MB patch for all of Office 2000, and have an Office 2000 disk around - since all my Outlook 2000 installs came with Small Business Server, I don't have this, and can't apply the
patch.
In short, it needs to be easier to patch systems - so simple, that people will bother to do it on a regular basis.
BBK
Rez is coming out for PS2 sometime in january. It's a rail shooter (like panzer dragoon) with graphics similar to ones you'ld find in an MP3 visualization, and electronic music that responds to your play style. The gameplay is amazing, and the music kicks ass, and unlike most shooters, It doesn't get booring the 10th time through. Here's some more info: http://www.thegia.com/psx2/rez/rez.html
If you really want something before christmas, a Dreamcast + 4 games will set you back under $100. Most games on it look as good as other consoles and cost 1/4 what they do...
BBK
check here:
http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/axfrdns.html
this supports outgoing transfers. Incoming are a possible security risk (NO authentication happens in most cases, other than IP address checking, IIRC), making this a prudent decision, IETF or no.
BBK
Not that I'm up on the subject, but DJB's issue seems to be with people distributing his code in a modified form that's broken in some way. He's putting money on the line that his software isn't broken, and he values the reputation. Therefore, some distributor hacking and patching it all to heck (like nearly all linux and bsd distributions do) is simply risking the integrity of the software he made.
BBK
Simple:
1. I run linux on all my computers. There aren't a lot of games availible for linux (although I do play a bit of the Loki Quake 3 port from time to time).
2. No hardware incompatibilies or driver problems. A console is a fixed hardware platform, so you never have problems endemic to PC systems
3. Games come out finished. No downloading a huge patch of bugfixes after a game is releaed. It just works, the first time.
4. I can play on my big TV. (well, with TV out on most video cards, this isn't as much of an issue anymore)
5. The games are different. I like Japanese created RPGS. None are avilible for PC (unless they're ports of console games). This is mainly a matter of taste - If I was into FPS games, I'd definitely choose a PC.
BBK
The HP recorder probably only writes to the "CD for audio recorders" - the ones they sell for standalone CD->CD consumer audio devices. Nothing new for that market segment.
The media generally costs twice as much as normal CD's, even though it is basically identical - the extra is for the RIAA tax that is placed on the media.
BBK
Play (the newtek people) made a linear video editor called Trinity, which happened to tank in the marketplace - neat hardware though - 8x9 production video switcher, real time effects and video mapping, all through a box hooked to a winNT machine. Cool hardware, but they missed the nonlinear video boat, and their expansion nonlinear system didn't integrate all that well.
Play went under, and got bought by "Global Streams", and they sell trinity based harware that is made to stream video over the internet.
BBK, provider of random trivia
Check out www.mgeups.com's ESV+ line - you can control individual outlets on the back of their UPS's: http://www.mgeups.com/products/pdt120/1ph/esv/html /page23.htm
I've haven't used these personally, but they work well for a friend of mine in a colocation facility. Their software seems to be windows only.
BBK
The serverworks IDE chipset has, to put it lightly, some problems. It's DMA support is broken on some chipset revisions, so running it in anything greater than PIO mode 4 is a bad idea.
I'd buy a 3rd party IDE interface (3ware would be my first choice - lots of ports, modern drivers in kernel), or SCSI drives for the board. Tyan boards are great BTW - my old Dual PentiumPro Titan Pro ATX is running great after 6 years of use.
BBK
Thresh, the guy who started Firingsquad (actually, it used to be Thresh's Firingsquad), quit about a year ago... IIRC he just wanted a change of pace, and wanted out of the hardware review business.
BBK
Some of the newer cards are able to do IP checksums in hardware, a feature required for the newly introduced zero copy networking code to function at full speed. This saves a noticeable amount of processor time for servers or other heavily network loaded systems. And supposedly your quake ping is a bit better ;-).
A list of drivers and more information is availible here: http://lwn.net/2001/0111/a/zero-copy.php3
BBK
Report to HPD & Mind Control for immediate reprogramming! And bring all your Teela-O-MLY pictures and Bouncy Bubble Beverage with you, you Commie Mutant Traitor Bastard!
(for those who don't get the joke, it's from Paranoia, an early 90's tabletop RPG. Very fun, but now out of print. You can get an idea of what it's like by running the paranoia program that's included on some linux distros in the BSD games package)
I know, offtopic -1
BBK
But check out the Powermac 7100 page... The original code name for the machine was "Carl Sagan", but when this news got to the late Mr. Sagan, he sued Apple, and the code name was changed to BHA, or "Butt-Head Astronomer".. No joke. You can check out the whole story here:
d en tial/sagan.shtml
http://www.macspeedzone.com/articles/appleconfi
BBK, random fact monkey
The Xbox is pretty much doomed for failure in japan - by the time it comes out, the PS2 will have been in the japanese market for almost 2 year, and the Gamecube will have just come out. Japanese gamers are wary of an american console, thinking it will be the next 3DO, a console which bombed horribly in both countries. Japanese console developers haven't signed up en masse, and big names like Square haven't definitely announced any product.
As the only console games I play are RPG's, and the occasional game of Dance Dance Revolution (all very japanese games), I doubt I'm going to buy an Xbox any time soon - which is probably the case for most of the hardcore gamer market. As for the rest of the american market, I think the Xbox will do ok. It'll all depend on the games.
Anyway, the Naomi (dreamcast equivalent) and System 246 (PS2 equivalent) boards are already in use in arcade systems - and the Naomi 2 (4x power of dreamcast) is coming out pretty soon as well. Microsoft has no standard arcade Xbox based system, and hasn't made any overtures of creating one, IIRC. Because of this, arcade ports are much more likely to be made to the PS2 and Dreamcast.
BBK
I don't see how this can really help us - I mean, 70-90% of the spam I get is from country codes out side of the US.
Anyway, basically all this does is make it illegal to hijack someone's email address to send spam, and to remove someone from the spamming list when asked. But, if you're like me, I never reply to spam - that's the one way that the spammer knows that the address is live.
Net gain to most net users = almost 0.
This also has the side effect of making it possible to play burned copies of games. Oh well.
In australia, I'd bet that the main focus is to get foreign games to play, as australia probably only gets european releases (confirmation?), where far fewer games come out. In america, the main concern is playing japanese games that will never come out here, such as dating sims and music games.
A good technical breif on modchips is availible here:http://www.modgalaxy.com/modchip.htm
BBK
There are currently no games on the market that use USB to ethernet adapters for connectivity - the only games that are multi-machine/multiplayer use the firewire ports and firewire hubs. No PSX2 game has any sort of online support today - the driver support for anything but a specific USB device (other than keyboard+mouse) is pretty much of a nightmare - it took quite a while to get that support in the linux kernel, and Sony hasn't been making motions in that directions, so I doubt that developers are going to undertake the task of writing USB drivers for various devices themselves.
Supposedly Unreal Tournament is pretty nice with the above setup, and there are a couple other games that support firewire links coming out soon as well.
I own both a Dreamcast and PSX2, and by far, the better machine now game and connection wise is the Dreamcast. You can surf the internet and download stuff with a dreamcast, and right now the Dreamcast game lineup puts the PSX2 one to shame. Oh well, give the PS2 a year, and we'll see what progress has been made.
BBK
I'm intrigued with the Half Keyboard appliance.
How does this integrate with the rest of a computer system? I've seen things in the past that are basically a keyboard+screen+memory so you can take notes on the go, and then use the device as a normal keyboard (PS/2 Port connected) on your home machine - hit a key combination and it dumps it's buffer across the keyboard interface. Is this what the appliance will be, or will it be closer to a PDA?
What OS is used on the appliance? Expansion / peripheral port details? Expected price? Is it intended to be wearable (or will there be a wearable version) ?
Also, do you intend to support other PDA's other than Palm OS devices with the Half Keyboard?
Thanks,
BBK
Check out this project:
http://headwize.com/projects/noise_prj.htm
It's instructions to build your own noise canceling headphones.
BBK
I'd like to see that - Fred Smith from Telehypertronics Inc. walks into a customers office covered in grime - his sawed off double barrel shotgun in hand, humping a bunch of pamphlets and product samples in his military surplus duffelbag.
Of course, he'd have to find a place to park his 18 wheeler cab with custom cowcatcher and 40MM turret mounted anti-aircraft gun first...
BBK
The Ultra 5 system architecture is basically the same as a PC - the UltraSparc IIi that's running the machine has a PCI bus interface built in (for PC folks, think of it as an integrated northbridge - and reminiscent of alpha 21064 series of chips)
Bandwidth wise, these machines are no better than a cheapo PC - their internal bus structure is nearly identical, as are most of the peripherals they use. As far as benchmarks go, check out:
http://www.ultralinux.org/faq.html#q_1_27
For the most part, Linux on sparc will be around the same speed as Solaris on sparc, with variation
one way or the other on certain benchmarks due to OS design differences. I'd prefer Linux anyway - it uses a lot less disk space and memory to do the same things as solaris can.
That said, I'm beginning to wonder how viable Sun will be in the future. Their newest processor, the UltraSparc III, at 600 Mhz is slower in both integer and floating point than a P3 800 (according to the spec2000 benchmark, www.specbench.org). Yeah, its more efficent per clock cycle, but when you realize that the cheapest workstation with a single USIII 600 in it costs 10k, and you can easily build a Dual P3 800 system for under 2k, you soon realize that for sheer processing power, Sun is up a creek without a paddle.
BBK
As one of the few people who preordered and got a PS2 today (Fantavision kicks butt!), I can assure you that the PS2 has an optical digital out (TOSLINK) for AC3 and DTS, and that it works fine - I have mine hooked up that way right now, games and DVD's playing just fine.
The DVD playback is improved over the Japanese release, compairing it with my friend's import PS2, which got a bit blocky at times. The DVD playing software has been moved off the memory card into firmware, due to the weird memory card corruption problems in the japanese release.
Supposedly the Macrovision in DVD playback is catching people offguard - a lot of people are having problems using their VCR's as RF converters to go to their TV's, which doesn't work well for some reason. The guys at EB exhorted people to read the manual for this reason.
BBK