"It's not that I don't like linux[1]-- it's just the user community has so many members who are down on *every* other operating system, even those that should be the natural allies, that it poisons the well, so to speak."
Well, Sun picked this fight, not the Linux Community.
1. How OSS people complain that Solaris is a piece of junk toy OS? 2. How many Linux companies publicly disparage Sun?
If we picked on people publicly, We'd pick on IBM for still supporting AIX, HP for HPUX/Tru64, SGI for IRIX, etc.. We pick on Sun because they're explicitly attacking Linux community ideals. Its the same as Microsoft. Consider it a reflex action. If anything, we've shown restraint. Most of 'us' haven't attacked Sun Ad-homium like we do regularly to Microsoft!
The copyrighted media that you're playing confirms that you have legal rights to the software assuming its flawless encryption:-)
To my knowledge, you only NEED to connect to steam the initial time to activate the software. Its like going to the store and purchasing the DVD over the counter. Since steam has no media (for some of us), the activation is our over-the-counter assurance that the game isn't stolen.
Now you can cry me a river about how you paid at the store and that they're stealing our souls and all. For the advantages that come from internet game distribution vs. retail boxes, I'd sacrifice having to activate against them.
If you really want to slam Valve, why not slam them for being so heavily microsoft technology biased! IE components, Directx only, Windows only, etc.. I think we should boycott any Valve software hosted on Linux servers! If they want to treat Linux like a second rate citizen (like it is on the desktop), then they don't deserve to reap from Linux based servers either.
If you're worried about steam connecting, then block the port. Nobody's forcing you to allow the connection (after the first time). Steam takes 5 seconds to load on my 2500+ I'm sure you can live with it. Plus, 16MB of Workingset (when its active) isn't exactly the memory killer that other programs like HL which takes hundreds of megs of ram if given the chance.
We'll let the market decide what's acceptible and what isn't. That said, educate everyone you know about the lorals of fair use, lock-ins, and copyrights. The more they know, the more likely they'll side with you when developers start making single player games with pay-per-second billing!
If you really want to know, then learn it. You aren't expected to know every inane detail of every inane system in the world. Pick a few nice news aggrigation systems, aggrigate them, the n have one source of 'news' every day.
Learn to pick out out what's relevent and what's the same old crap. That'll save you a lot of effort. Remember, half the crap you read on these sites are press releases from the companies involved.
OMG someone who actually read the book. You must've just joined slashdot or been here since before the Information Superhigway was supersized to 6 lanes.
I think this is purly agism between the older law makers and the 18-36 type demographics. Do these law makers really believe that adults don't/shouldn't play video games? Are the laws really that out of date? Really, Adults playing video games have been well established for at least 20 years, and adult themed games have been out of just as long. As long as there's a niche, there's a way.
Anyways, why can't they just treat the games like movies and have bold warnings on the package and allow the reatailers to self-enforce the restrictions on child use of video games?
When I begged my mom to buy me a leisure suit larry when I was like 15 she sould read the box and say no, this is smut. I don't know why we can't live with that in today's protectionist world...
Wouldn't your system require you to have the NX bit on your CPU? If your CPU doesn't implement NX, does that mean your vulnerable? I admit NX does help security, but assuming that the bug is magically fixed by a NX, a harware based solution on new hardware, I don't think even Microsoft's brazen enough to ignore computers that don't have NX.
We basically get notice of every major Firefox, kernel and OpenSSL exploit that gets released. Outside of that, We'd be posting hundreds of potentially relevent security articles that are better off in bugtraq anyways. If ANYONE here really cares about security their on Bugtraq anyways. This is like a 'look guys it really bad!' type of news. Since all Microsoft bugs seem to fall into that category, their listed a lot.
Wouldn't that imply that they knew about this problem way before Service Pack 2, and their just now getting around to rolling those patches into previous releases?
By the author's description, I'd say that the topics braches in this book cover two university level courses, Computer Architecture which entails registers, alignment, buses (Structured Computer Organization Tanenbaum) as well as Operating systems internals (APUE, Stevens or Modern Operating Systems, Tanenbaum)
The problem being that both instructors need to agree on the book to get the benefit over the diverging information.
In an academic standpoint, the book's too large to serve as a workable text, and too specific to be used for multi-course uses. Of course I've never actually seen the book, so its all speculation based on the review.
For personal uses, I'm sure the added insights would be nice for those who haven't been beaten over the head with alginment and register offsets from schooling.. (*arg*).
If you look at the companys, its geared toward software companys, with AMD and Intel thrown in since The (Intel anyways) always wants a say in standards like this. Maybe their affraid of other chip vendors from putting this embedded on chips giving them the advantage..
I can't say positive of negative on the news. Its a standard, and no matter what standard, it needs adoption and tools support. A new-technology for the sake of itself doesn't make the market jump, and I doubt that anyone 'using' the systems will notice the difference. I doubt vendors are going to start supporting this yet-another-standard-standard just as they don't support bone headed standards today.
Who supports ISO protocol stack, X.500 (full spec), CSS, etc.. The bigger you make the spec, the less likely people will be to use it.
That's where a group-policy framework tied to the mangement framework like this would be handy. I still don't like Microfts politics, but I'll give it to them that their management tools are easier than *nix and the like.
HL2 hasn't been beta tested because HL2 isn't multiplayer!
CS:Source is the only out-of-the-box multiplayer support the last I heard, so your beta woes are unfounded.
If you actually had Steam & Source, youd know that we have a couple gigs of data sitting around waiting to be unpacked. I don't see how this is all just an elaborate charade. Reviewers are getting first hand accounts of the game, it may be controlled, but none the less, if THEY are playing the real game, everything but some here-and-there bugs must be done.
So, you say the US bombed Iraq to Keep Osama from hiding there... so if mission accomplished, then where's Osama?
No matter how you want to twist it, there are some basic facts that weaken Bush's position:
1. Osama is still on the loose (Unless you actually think the US is holding him hostage *really out there*) 2. No WMD found 3. No peace for Iraqi's (yet) 4. No direct link between Iraq and Al-qaeda for the american attacks. 5. No Iraqi's involved in the attack (plenty of saudi's)
I fully support your statements, but you missed one important aspect of the Microsoft-OEM relationship, and that is support. When MS hands over an OEM license, they don't just relinquish the liabilities of shipping a box and manual, they also loose any requirement to support the OS.
This is valid, since the OEM could've put anything on the machine after being received from MS. But, it also means that the Vendor is now liable to handle support for its devices. Theoretically, the hand-over of the software should be the end of the agreement. If Dell doesn't want to ship media player for whatever reason, they don't have to.
That all doesn't matter though. The second Dell starts getting phone calls over people not being able to play mp3's or watch movies, the crowds will be swarming. I agree with an earlier argument, it is too late to fix what they've done before.
What we have to do now is INFORM our governments of anything Microsoft does BEFORE the damage is incurred. Imagine MS's faces being held back from releasing Longhorn due to potential Monopolistic abuses in the system. That's where any of these 'Microfot is a monopoly, we'll fix it' scenerios holds any real world hopes.
This argument could have been the same for Microsoft with MS Movie maker. What happens if they decide to sink Adobe by investing tons of money into Their movie maker. Today's Media Player is tomorrows Antivirus, Movie Makers, networking protocols, web standards, etc.. There's no stopping them if we let them run free. If you hadn't guessed already, Bill gates is spoofed as a borg for a reason.
1. You think that 'Next Generation' DVD's will splash. That'll requires two things: Reason to move and a large enough number of early adopters. I don't see 'traditional' DVD's being supplanted any time soon for home media.
Audio is just about the maxiumum normal consumers are going to opt in for. 'Normal' DVD watchers still use 2.0 sound. They like it because its better than VHS. For the size/resolution, How many people can afford the enormous cost of HDTV's in order to 'possibly' see their favorite movies from a few extra data frames? You'll get a lot from Slashdot to the HD-philes, but it'll be quite a while (long after) DVDv2 before they decide on that. I love my DVD's and even I can't afford a decent Widescreen TV. Buying HDTV is up their with unlikely until the opt-in price is floating around $700 (purely speculative).
So, the only reason left 'too' update is if studios decide to drop 'traditional' DVD's all together, or release them disabled. Instead of seeing soring profits much like they got off the DVD craze, They'll see the same adotion rate of LaserDiscs.
DVDv2 may see traction in the PC arena. With DVD burners comoditized to $50, I don't see that the new format will find adoption challenges in this space. Mind you, this is the area RIAA/MPAA least want this standard to apply. It puts control in the user's hands.
The problem was with one thing, and one thing only. The developers had nobody to blame but Linux. The second case, the developers were in-house and their code didn't work. "What so we do"?? We could take the shit from management, or we could blame the OS.
I'll bet $10 that it was the programmers trying to find an excuse for a bug that slipped into the system. There is Zero way that Linux on a competently setup Linux machine could not process this input properly. In all likelihood, their code didn't expect a transaction of that size and torpedoed.
Now a whole year after (with much development in between), the developers get it right. Yawn.
As for the first 'case', its clearly a case of bad business judgement. 10 years ago people put up 'web sites' which was basically standing two match books beside one another. I'm on the web! When they wanted to grow the web presence, they couldn't be bothered to spend one employee on their web site's technical aspects. I can understand that, its not their core business. But, it is their incompetence for not covering their asses on who they did choose as a business supplier. Things that didn't happen:
- CompanyX's web host should have referred them to a company that could do the same job. - CompanyX could have hired one of the hosting company's Linux guys to manage their web site in-house. - CompanyX could have hired joe-blow contractor off the street to manage theie web site in-house.
Upgrading your 2004-level5 personal computer to support the 2004-level5+1 booster pack
Only purchase 2004-level5+1 booster pack from a certified Microsoft outlet. Make sure your computer has the appropriate assurance level purchase for it. 2004-level5+1 requires assurance level 7 or higher.
Issue: If you fail to meet these requirements, the installation of 2004-level5+1 will instantly cause a blue-screen-of-licensing indicating that "The assurance level supplied is invalid. Please visit licensing dot microsoft dot com to purchase appropriate licenses".
Without starting a flame war, I thought the new mantra was that Gnome has been redeveloped to be simple and easy to use while KDE exposes more customization but at the cost of usability (like the article suggests)? Was I mistaken?
PS: I'm a GNOME user and you can flame me as long as I'm being unbalanced. Oh hell, this is slashdot, flame away!
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, its in desperate need for a 100% increase in IT staff, from one person to two.
"It's not that I don't like linux[1]-- it's just the user community has so many members who are down on *every* other operating system, even those that should be the natural allies, that it poisons the well, so to speak."
Well, Sun picked this fight, not the Linux Community.
1. How OSS people complain that Solaris is a piece of junk toy OS?
2. How many Linux companies publicly disparage Sun?
If we picked on people publicly, We'd pick on IBM for still supporting AIX, HP for HPUX/Tru64, SGI for IRIX, etc.. We pick on Sun because they're explicitly attacking Linux community ideals. Its the same as Microsoft. Consider it a reflex action. If anything, we've shown restraint. Most of 'us' haven't attacked Sun Ad-homium like we do regularly to Microsoft!
The copyrighted media that you're playing confirms that you have legal rights to the software assuming its flawless encryption :-)
To my knowledge, you only NEED to connect to steam the initial time to activate the software. Its like going to the store and purchasing the DVD over the counter. Since steam has no media (for some of us), the activation is our over-the-counter assurance that the game isn't stolen.
Now you can cry me a river about how you paid at the store and that they're stealing our souls and all. For the advantages that come from internet game distribution vs. retail boxes, I'd sacrifice having to activate against them.
If you really want to slam Valve, why not slam them for being so heavily microsoft technology biased! IE components, Directx only, Windows only, etc.. I think we should boycott any Valve software hosted on Linux servers! If they want to treat Linux like a second rate citizen (like it is on the desktop), then they don't deserve to reap from Linux based servers either.
If you're worried about steam connecting, then block the port. Nobody's forcing you to allow the connection (after the first time). Steam takes 5 seconds to load on my 2500+ I'm sure you can live with it. Plus, 16MB of Workingset (when its active) isn't exactly the memory killer that other programs like HL which takes hundreds of megs of ram if given the chance.
We'll let the market decide what's acceptible and what isn't. That said, educate everyone you know about the lorals of fair use, lock-ins, and copyrights. The more they know, the more likely they'll side with you when developers start making single player games with pay-per-second billing!
If you really want to know, then learn it. You aren't expected to know every inane detail of every inane system in the world. Pick a few nice news aggrigation systems, aggrigate them, the n have one source of 'news' every day.
Learn to pick out out what's relevent and what's the same old crap. That'll save you a lot of effort. Remember, half the crap you read on these sites are press releases from the companies involved.
OMG someone who actually read the book. You must've just joined slashdot or been here since before the Information Superhigway was supersized to 6 lanes.
I think this is purly agism between the older law makers and the 18-36 type demographics. Do these law makers really believe that adults don't/shouldn't play video games? Are the laws really that out of date? Really, Adults playing video games have been well established for at least 20 years, and adult themed games have been out of just as long. As long as there's a niche, there's a way.
Anyways, why can't they just treat the games like movies and have bold warnings on the package and allow the reatailers to self-enforce the restrictions on child use of video games?
When I begged my mom to buy me a leisure suit larry when I was like 15 she sould read the box and say no, this is smut. I don't know why we can't live with that in today's protectionist world...
Wouldn't your system require you to have the NX bit on your CPU? If your CPU doesn't implement NX, does that mean your vulnerable? I admit NX does help security, but assuming that the bug is magically fixed by a NX, a harware based solution on new hardware, I don't think even Microsoft's brazen enough to ignore computers that don't have NX.
They we-wrote the OS in .NET CLR??
"new compiler that basically eliminates any possibility of buffer overflows"
You're obviously not a programmer if you believe this.
We basically get notice of every major Firefox, kernel and OpenSSL exploit that gets released. Outside of that, We'd be posting hundreds of potentially relevent security articles that are better off in bugtraq anyways. If ANYONE here really cares about security their on Bugtraq anyways. This is like a 'look guys it really bad!' type of news. Since all Microsoft bugs seem to fall into that category, their listed a lot.
Wouldn't that imply that they knew about this problem way before Service Pack 2, and their just now getting around to rolling those patches into previous releases?
By the author's description, I'd say that the topics braches in this book cover two university level courses, Computer Architecture which entails registers, alignment, buses (Structured Computer Organization Tanenbaum) as well as Operating systems internals (APUE, Stevens or Modern Operating Systems, Tanenbaum)
The problem being that both instructors need to agree on the book to get the benefit over the diverging information.
In an academic standpoint, the book's too large to serve as a workable text, and too specific to be used for multi-course uses. Of course I've never actually seen the book, so its all speculation based on the review.
For personal uses, I'm sure the added insights would be nice for those who haven't been beaten over the head with alginment and register offsets from schooling.. (*arg*).
You bunch of tree huggin ECOnomists. Go back to russia Comrads!
If you look at the companys, its geared toward software companys, with AMD and Intel thrown in since The (Intel anyways) always wants a say in standards like this. Maybe their affraid of other chip vendors from putting this embedded on chips giving them the advantage..
I can't say positive of negative on the news. Its a standard, and no matter what standard, it needs adoption and tools support. A new-technology for the sake of itself doesn't make the market jump, and I doubt that anyone 'using' the systems will notice the difference. I doubt vendors are going to start supporting this yet-another-standard-standard just as they don't support bone headed standards today.
Who supports ISO protocol stack, X.500 (full spec), CSS, etc.. The bigger you make the spec, the less likely people will be to use it.
That's where a group-policy framework tied to the mangement framework like this would be handy. I still don't like Microfts politics, but I'll give it to them that their management tools are easier than *nix and the like.
Well, its leagues better than the Windows Management framework with relied on the rarely used (outside windows) DCE-RPC.
At least there is a 'hope' of interoperability.
HL2 hasn't been beta tested because HL2 isn't multiplayer!
CS:Source is the only out-of-the-box multiplayer support the last I heard, so your beta woes are unfounded.
If you actually had Steam & Source, youd know that we have a couple gigs of data sitting around waiting to be unpacked. I don't see how this is all just an elaborate charade. Reviewers are getting first hand accounts of the game, it may be controlled, but none the less, if THEY are playing the real game, everything but some here-and-there bugs must be done.
So, you say the US bombed Iraq to Keep Osama from hiding there... so if mission accomplished, then where's Osama?
No matter how you want to twist it, there are some basic facts that weaken Bush's position:
1. Osama is still on the loose (Unless you actually think the US is holding him hostage *really out there*)
2. No WMD found
3. No peace for Iraqi's (yet)
4. No direct link between Iraq and Al-qaeda for the american attacks.
5. No Iraqi's involved in the attack (plenty of saudi's)
I fully support your statements, but you missed one important aspect of the Microsoft-OEM relationship, and that is support. When MS hands over an OEM license, they don't just relinquish the liabilities of shipping a box and manual, they also loose any requirement to support the OS.
This is valid, since the OEM could've put anything on the machine after being received from MS. But, it also means that the Vendor is now liable to handle support for its devices. Theoretically, the hand-over of the software should be the end of the agreement. If Dell doesn't want to ship media player for whatever reason, they don't have to.
That all doesn't matter though. The second Dell starts getting phone calls over people not being able to play mp3's or watch movies, the crowds will be swarming. I agree with an earlier argument, it is too late to fix what they've done before.
What we have to do now is INFORM our governments of anything Microsoft does BEFORE the damage is incurred. Imagine MS's faces being held back from releasing Longhorn due to potential Monopolistic abuses in the system. That's where any of these 'Microfot is a monopoly, we'll fix it' scenerios holds any real world hopes.
This argument could have been the same for Microsoft with MS Movie maker. What happens if they decide to sink Adobe by investing tons of money into Their movie maker. Today's Media Player is tomorrows Antivirus, Movie Makers, networking protocols, web standards, etc.. There's no stopping them if we let them run free. If you hadn't guessed already, Bill gates is spoofed as a borg for a reason.
Two points:
1. You think that 'Next Generation' DVD's will splash. That'll requires two things: Reason to move and a large enough number of early adopters. I don't see 'traditional' DVD's being supplanted any time soon for home media.
Audio is just about the maxiumum normal consumers are going to opt in for. 'Normal' DVD watchers still use 2.0 sound. They like it because its better than VHS. For the size/resolution, How many people can afford the enormous cost of HDTV's in order to 'possibly' see their favorite movies from a few extra data frames? You'll get a lot from Slashdot to the HD-philes, but it'll be quite a while (long after) DVDv2 before they decide on that. I love my DVD's and even I can't afford a decent Widescreen TV. Buying HDTV is up their with unlikely until the opt-in price is floating around $700 (purely speculative).
So, the only reason left 'too' update is if studios decide to drop 'traditional' DVD's all together, or release them disabled. Instead of seeing soring profits much like they got off the DVD craze, They'll see the same adotion rate of LaserDiscs.
DVDv2 may see traction in the PC arena. With DVD burners comoditized to $50, I don't see that the new format will find adoption challenges in this space. Mind you, this is the area RIAA/MPAA least want this standard to apply. It puts control in the user's hands.
The problem was with one thing, and one thing only. The developers had nobody to blame but Linux. The second case, the developers were in-house and their code didn't work. "What so we do"?? We could take the shit from management, or we could blame the OS.
I'll bet $10 that it was the programmers trying to find an excuse for a bug that slipped into the system. There is Zero way that Linux on a competently setup Linux machine could not process this input properly. In all likelihood, their code didn't expect a transaction of that size and torpedoed.
Now a whole year after (with much development in between), the developers get it right. Yawn.
As for the first 'case', its clearly a case of bad business judgement. 10 years ago people put up 'web sites' which was basically standing two match books beside one another. I'm on the web! When they wanted to grow the web presence, they couldn't be bothered to spend one employee on their web site's technical aspects. I can understand that, its not their core business. But, it is their incompetence for not covering their asses on who they did choose as a business supplier. Things that didn't happen:
- CompanyX's web host should have referred them to a company that could do the same job.
- CompanyX could have hired one of the hosting company's Linux guys to manage their web site in-house.
- CompanyX could have hired joe-blow contractor off the street to manage theie web site in-house.
Knowledge Base article 666
Upgrading your 2004-level5 personal computer to support the 2004-level5+1 booster pack
Only purchase 2004-level5+1 booster pack from a certified Microsoft outlet. Make sure your computer has the appropriate assurance level purchase for it. 2004-level5+1 requires assurance level 7 or higher.
Issue:
If you fail to meet these requirements, the installation of 2004-level5+1 will instantly cause a blue-screen-of-licensing indicating that "The assurance level supplied is invalid. Please visit licensing dot microsoft dot com to purchase appropriate licenses".
Solutions:
Pay Us!
If so, they won't care about the numeric levels any more than they'd care about the detailed specs.
They'll be:
Does it have a monitor?
Does it have internet access?
Does it let me type letters?
They won't be the ones asking if level 5 PC's support playing doom 3 at 1600x1200x32-4xaa-8xans
Without starting a flame war, I thought the new mantra was that Gnome has been redeveloped to be simple and easy to use while KDE exposes more customization but at the cost of usability (like the article suggests)? Was I mistaken?
PS: I'm a GNOME user and you can flame me as long as I'm being unbalanced. Oh hell, this is slashdot, flame away!