I guess you missed Diablo 2 and WarCraft 3. More people play Starcraft on Battle.net than WarCraft 3. I could list paragraphs of the reasons why WC3 sucked (don't get me started on the awful story and voice acting), but the biggest one is that they box you into playing a certain way. Then they limit the # of units in an attempt to "prevent rushing," but the gameplay requires that you rush and nothing else. Get heroes, run out and level them up, than rush enemy. Rinse and repeat for 30min cycles. Gee, fun.
I was a HUGE fan of WarCraft and was blown away when WarCraft 2 came out. WarCraft 3 feels like it was made by a totally different company.
Honestly people, is this really/. front page news?
We get a front page headline for ever user-ran executable that is somehow labelled a "Microsoft hole." I see no reason why OSS software should be treated any differently (though sometimes it is...).
- Apple putting out a mind-blowing GUI on top of a UNIX-like system (Slashdotters claim not to like it yet rip-off the Aqua theme endlessly for KDE) - Apple having massive sales of iPod/iPod Minis - Apple vanquishing all debt - Apple executive announcing plan to increase billions of dollars for company - Apple innovating with Expose, OpenGL rendering backend for 2D GUI, Apple actually INCREASING performance with each OS X update...equate to "nothing can save Apple because Apple is dying.":) As far as I can tell, Apple is doing everything right. Is it possible Apple might see some sort of revival in the time up to Longhorn? Think of how many people would buy Apples if they were lowered even just as much as $200-300...
<CmdrTaco> CD sales went up in Australia <Hemos> cool lets get an article up <Hemos> we'll call it "File-Sharing Increases CD Sales" <CmdrTaco> lol <Hemos> seriously. file-sharing is good. distributing someone's intellectual property is good <CmdrTaco> hey, did we ever get dailyslash shut down? <Hemos> not yet. you know some people actually think we have a double-standard for declaring them illegal? <CmdrTaco> rofl <CowboyNeal> hey guys <CmdrTaco> hey <Hemos> hi <CowboyNeal> some guys ar posting information on pirates <CmdrTaco> fuckers <Hemos> yeah, nobody should post information on people breaking the law <CmdrTaco> dude nobody's breaking the law <CmdrTaco> they're INCREASING CD SALES <Hemos> oh yeah <CowboyNeal> i'll get an article up and call them "vigilantes" <CmdrTaco> lol <Hemos> that'll get the discussions going...more page hits <CowboyNeal> ya <CmdrTaco> it sucks that people can't participate in the mp3 culture movement by illegally distributing other people's product <Hemos> i know <Hemos> hmm <CowboyNeal> ? <Hemos> isn't that a contradiction, since we expect everybody to follow the licensing restrictions of a GPL.TXT file and raise a piss if they don't? <CmdrTaco> rofl <CowboyNeal> haha <CmdrTaco> yeah expect everyone to follow the GPL... <Hemos> ya, i know..oh well, nobody said we were perfect <CmdrTaco> whatever gets page hits <michael> i'm perfect <CmdrTaco> you scare me
File sharing can help or hurt CD sales of mediocre music.
Common sense.
File sharing hurts CD sales of bad music.
Common sense.
Apparently the only difference you have drawn between the helping and hurting of file-sharing is whether or not it's good music. Never mind the fact that if it's good music, that simply means more people will pirate it.
Somehow, you magically think people are going to download and then get it again by purchasing it when they already have gotten it from p2p. Simply because it's "good" music. Good music only means it'll be even more pirated.
Everyone is ignoring the SIMPLE TRUTH--people don't want to pay for something they can get for free. You guys are trying so hard to justify piracy that you skip that fact every time. You don't want to admit it's wrong. You just want to blame the RIAA for everything (apparently suing people for illegally distributing your product is wrong here at Slashdot...).
Slashdot routinely claims that file-sharing increases CD sales. I'm curious where the logic comes from in this. Why would getting a CD for free online magically make you want to purchase it when you already have it?
Apparently Slashdot thinks p2p networks are composed of moral pioneers who only use the networks to "preview samples" of albums before they head to the store. Give me a fucking break! Why would some high school kid go out and spend money on something he already grabbed online for free from a p2p network? Why would a college student go out and buy an entire discography for Radiohead that he downloaded as a big RAR file overnight on his dorm laptop? IT'S CALLED THE REAL WORLD, SLASHDOT. Not this head-in-the-clouds, "file-sharing is just for previewing albums that I eventually go and buy later," RIAA-is-evil-for-suing-the-people-breaking-the-law mentality.
I think one of the really pathetic parts is that Slashdotters don't realize how immoral and self-serving it makes their community look to have articles posted like that. "CD sales went up in Australia--so we're magically going to have the headline 'File Sharing Increases CD Sales!' We'll sure look like we have journalistic integrity then!"
Talk about SPIN. Yes, I feel strongly about this because it amazes me that so many people can adopt groupthink and lose their common sense.
I've long had a theory that the RIAA/MPAA aren't really against piracy, but they are really against a peer-to-peer economy that is coming up. I believe that they are threatened, not by illegal piracy activities, but by the market becoming splintered, and people listenening to a larger variety of music.
Tell me, what "peer-to-peer economy" is there in going on eMule and downloading a leaked advance rip? Or grabbing an APE file of your favorite artists' music? Are you saying pirates are sending the artists money when they illegally download music?
I know you and other Slashdotters desperately want to paint the RIAA as the bad guy in this--hence your "strong-arm tactics" comment, which apparently means suing people illegally distributing your product is somehow strong-arm--but it doesn't hold water and never will. Slashdot's niche opinions don't represent the majority and don't represent the law.
But I'm not going to play with the facts to try to claim that my downloading activities actually help the recording industry. That's just bullshit.
And this is why I don't respect Slashdot--if people just ADMITTED that what they're doing is probably wrong, it wouldn't seem so ridiculous. But instead we get this ludicrous "correlation = causality" articles that make people look stupid.
As you pointed out, this magic link disappears when CD sales go down. Suddenly it's the "RIAA's fault for signing bad artists."
First off, this article is a dupe from many months ago. We already had an article about the music industry in Australia. We already had the misleading title incorrectly (and hilariously) drawing between file-sharing and CD sales for no reason whatsoever. We already had people in the comments saying "But does this only apply to the Australian market?"
Sorry, guys--any way you slice it, because CD sales were up in Australia still does not mean file-sharing contributed to it, does not mean it's suddenly not immoral, illegal, and wrong, and does not mean that it's doing anybody any favors...particularly the artists who WILLFULLY signed the record label contract, went into the studio to spend months recording an album, only to have pirates rip it and stick it on eMule for everyone to grab without paying for it. There is absolutely no valid justification any Slashdotter has ever given.
Because Anonymous Crowhead has declared such! I mean, even if you code it completely correctly, present it correctly, and the code itself is well-organized and formatted and easy to read...Anonymous Crowhead on Slashdot has decided inlining presentation and data is bad design. Let's all change for him.
Bush has been the worst PR your country has had in quite some time. He makes your country look like a t-rex with the brain that goes with it...
You people already thought that. Clinton bombed lots of places, even without UN approval. I remember people in Iraq dancing with Monica Lewinsky signs.
You people just hate Bush especially more because he's a conservative Republican.
Then facts simply won't convince you. Y is aiming for 1.0 within a year. I'll be switching immediately: hardware-accelerated vector-based desktop that can even unload and reload graphics drivers without needing a restart. Have fun editing "XF86Config" to get a mousewheel working.
Claim something, then claim something else that will paint anyone who disagrees as a "Bush supporter."
Nice logically structured argument you have there. There's been anti-Americanism regardless of which yahoo was in the White House. Clinton did just as much damage as anyone else.
Doesn't that say more about the lack of any real anti-competitive behavior? I mean, if you were totally unaware of any.
I thought the point of antitrust law was to protect the customer. But if you'll notice, it's never the customers speaking out and doing this to Microsoft. Microsoft got where they are because they offered software we wanted.
Here on Slashdot, however, it's "unfair" if you're the #1 company. "Unfair" if you're the standard or if you ship free programs with your OS.
Why abandon one of the greatest technologies ever created in computer world?
It's not one of the "greatest technologies ever created in computer world." You've got to be kidding me. Then you go into a long advertising spiel on X11.
Anyway, here are the reasons listed in Mark's paper:
"The X Window System [23] is the de facto standard graphical user interface (GUI) system on UNIX and UNIX-like platforms such as GNU/Linux. However, as X approaches its 20th year, signs of its age are beginning to show. Commonly cited problems with X include:
X is too slow. This is commonly dismissed as nonsense due to high throughput that tweaked implementations of X have been proven to achieve. What this does not take into account is that in the general case it is latency that matters more than throughput [6]. Unfortunately, the design of X does not facilitate low latency.
X places too much burden on the programmer. The X protocol, and its corresponding library Xlib, provide very low level operations. As a result, programming directly with Xlib is very difficult. For this reason, programmers usually choose to use a toolkit library.
X has no standard toolkit. In 1984, before GUIs were common-place, not providing a standard toolkit was the best way to achieve enough flexibility to create all the applications that had not yet been conceived. However, these days, with the benefit of the last two decades of experience [16, 25], it is much better ot provide a complet eset of standard user interface components that look and behave consistently.
Aside from the user interface inconsistency, the lack of standard components also makes internationalisation difficult, particularly for languages which require a complex input method.
X is reaching the end of its life span. XFree86, the most popular version of X that is in use, is now over 10 years old. Over the years it has been extended and modified many times, to the point where it is an incoherent mess.
Although the X protocol supports extensions very well, some of the latest extensions have begun to interfere with each other. For example, when Xinerama (the extension which allows X desktops to span multiple monitors) was first released, it broke XVideo (the extension which allows X to use hardware accelerated overlays for video play back). The 'fix' for this was to allow XVideo to only work on the primary display. The latest extension, XRandR (Rotate and Resize), is also known to break many older applications which assume that the screen size will never change.
Further, the internal design of X itself is outdated. Even adding a simple feature, such a stranslucent windows, requires large changes to the server [17]. Because of the requirement to be backwardly compatible, these features must be implemented for everything that X works on, including two-colour displays.
X is too complex. The years of extension and modification of the X protocol itself hav eleft he unfortunate legacy that X is too complex. Additional protocols like ICCCM which have been layered above X in an attempt to solve problems have caused additional problems when it comes to understanding what is actually happening [24]. The xine media player for Linux has to probe which window manager is currently running and guess at the best way to switch to full screen. The developers gave up trying to find a consistent way to switch off the screen saver, and switch to the ugly hack of simulating ht eleft shift key being pressed once every thirty seconds [7]."
I wouldn't dare to imagine the number of times that MS has replaced or retrofitted (read: ugly hacks) technologies found in previous versions of Windows.
What about X? That's 20+ years, and now extensions are beginning to conflict with each other. For instance, Xinerama broke XVideo. Solution? XVideo only works on the primary display. Look at the complexity of ICCCM, or the fact that Xine simulates a shift key press every 30 seconds to disable the screensaver since it gave up trying to figure out the window manager it's running under. Yes, Virgina, sometimes endless choice is bad.
These examples, of course, were taken from the Y-Windows paper describing all the reasons to get rid of X and replace it with Y (which is also network transparent). I fully expect Y to be the superior replacement to X. They're at 0.2 now and are targetting a 1.0 release in a year.
X11 is a standard, but the implementations can wildly vary all they want. For instance, one might implement drivers in a completely different way than another.
This forced switch is a bigger deal than you're making it out to be.
Slashdot Mirror
An AI robot being taught to recognize banana-shaped objects, anyone?
If it would EVER get finished, the Star Wars Combine is what you've described.
I can tell you exactly why WarCraft 3 came out the way it did.
Marketing exec: Hey, guys, let's mix two of your biggest sellers: Diablo and Starcraft.
Devs: We'll get right on it, regardless of whether or not it's a good idea! Diablo * Starcarft = profits of both put together!!
but Blizzard has a flawless record.
I guess you missed Diablo 2 and WarCraft 3. More people play Starcraft on Battle.net than WarCraft 3. I could list paragraphs of the reasons why WC3 sucked (don't get me started on the awful story and voice acting), but the biggest one is that they box you into playing a certain way. Then they limit the # of units in an attempt to "prevent rushing," but the gameplay requires that you rush and nothing else. Get heroes, run out and level them up, than rush enemy. Rinse and repeat for 30min cycles. Gee, fun.
I was a HUGE fan of WarCraft and was blown away when WarCraft 2 came out. WarCraft 3 feels like it was made by a totally different company.
Honestly people, is this really /. front page news?
We get a front page headline for ever user-ran executable that is somehow labelled a "Microsoft hole." I see no reason why OSS software should be treated any differently (though sometimes it is...).
Developers love Cocoa. When they've gotten used to Cocoa, they wonder how they could have done things any other way.
.NET.
The only thing I've seen excitement over in the same way is
Yet again, only on Slashdot can:
...equate to "nothing can save Apple because Apple is dying." :) As far as I can tell, Apple is doing everything right. Is it possible Apple might see some sort of revival in the time up to Longhorn? Think of how many people would buy Apples if they were lowered even just as much as $200-300...
- Apple putting out a mind-blowing GUI on top of a UNIX-like system (Slashdotters claim not to like it yet rip-off the Aqua theme endlessly for KDE)
- Apple having massive sales of iPod/iPod Minis
- Apple vanquishing all debt
- Apple executive announcing plan to increase billions of dollars for company
- Apple innovating with Expose, OpenGL rendering backend for 2D GUI, Apple actually INCREASING performance with each OS X update
It's based on Mach, with some BSD userland stuff thrown in.
<CmdrTaco> CD sales went up in Australia
<Hemos> cool lets get an article up
<Hemos> we'll call it "File-Sharing Increases CD Sales"
<CmdrTaco> lol
<Hemos> seriously. file-sharing is good. distributing someone's intellectual property is good
<CmdrTaco> hey, did we ever get dailyslash shut down?
<Hemos> not yet. you know some people actually think we have a double-standard for declaring them illegal?
<CmdrTaco> rofl
<CowboyNeal> hey guys
<CmdrTaco> hey
<Hemos> hi
<CowboyNeal> some guys ar posting information on pirates
<CmdrTaco> fuckers
<Hemos> yeah, nobody should post information on people breaking the law
<CmdrTaco> dude nobody's breaking the law
<CmdrTaco> they're INCREASING CD SALES
<Hemos> oh yeah
<CowboyNeal> i'll get an article up and call them "vigilantes"
<CmdrTaco> lol
<Hemos> that'll get the discussions going...more page hits
<CowboyNeal> ya
<CmdrTaco> it sucks that people can't participate in the mp3 culture movement by illegally distributing other people's product
<Hemos> i know
<Hemos> hmm
<CowboyNeal> ?
<Hemos> isn't that a contradiction, since we expect everybody to follow the licensing restrictions of a GPL.TXT file and raise a piss if they don't?
<CmdrTaco> rofl
<CowboyNeal> haha
<CmdrTaco> yeah expect everyone to follow the GPL...
<Hemos> ya, i know..oh well, nobody said we were perfect
<CmdrTaco> whatever gets page hits
<michael> i'm perfect
<CmdrTaco> you scare me
File sharing helps CD sales of good music.
Prove it.
File sharing can help or hurt CD sales of mediocre music.
Common sense.
File sharing hurts CD sales of bad music.
Common sense.
Apparently the only difference you have drawn between the helping and hurting of file-sharing is whether or not it's good music. Never mind the fact that if it's good music, that simply means more people will pirate it.
Somehow, you magically think people are going to download and then get it again by purchasing it when they already have gotten it from p2p. Simply because it's "good" music. Good music only means it'll be even more pirated.
Everyone is ignoring the SIMPLE TRUTH--people don't want to pay for something they can get for free. You guys are trying so hard to justify piracy that you skip that fact every time. You don't want to admit it's wrong. You just want to blame the RIAA for everything (apparently suing people for illegally distributing your product is wrong here at Slashdot...).
Slashdot routinely claims that file-sharing increases CD sales. I'm curious where the logic comes from in this. Why would getting a CD for free online magically make you want to purchase it when you already have it?
w mentality.
Apparently Slashdot thinks p2p networks are composed of moral pioneers who only use the networks to "preview samples" of albums before they head to the store. Give me a fucking break! Why would some high school kid go out and spend money on something he already grabbed online for free from a p2p network? Why would a college student go out and buy an entire discography for Radiohead that he downloaded as a big RAR file overnight on his dorm laptop? IT'S CALLED THE REAL WORLD, SLASHDOT. Not this head-in-the-clouds, "file-sharing is just for previewing albums that I eventually go and buy later," RIAA-is-evil-for-suing-the-people-breaking-the-la
I think one of the really pathetic parts is that Slashdotters don't realize how immoral and self-serving it makes their community look to have articles posted like that. "CD sales went up in Australia--so we're magically going to have the headline 'File Sharing Increases CD Sales!' We'll sure look like we have journalistic integrity then!"
Talk about SPIN. Yes, I feel strongly about this because it amazes me that so many people can adopt groupthink and lose their common sense.
I've long had a theory that the RIAA/MPAA aren't really against piracy, but they are really against a peer-to-peer economy that is coming up. I believe that they are threatened, not by illegal piracy activities, but by the market becoming splintered, and people listenening to a larger variety of music.
Tell me, what "peer-to-peer economy" is there in going on eMule and downloading a leaked advance rip? Or grabbing an APE file of your favorite artists' music? Are you saying pirates are sending the artists money when they illegally download music?
I know you and other Slashdotters desperately want to paint the RIAA as the bad guy in this--hence your "strong-arm tactics" comment, which apparently means suing people illegally distributing your product is somehow strong-arm--but it doesn't hold water and never will. Slashdot's niche opinions don't represent the majority and don't represent the law.
But I'm not going to play with the facts to try to claim that my downloading activities actually help the recording industry. That's just bullshit.
And this is why I don't respect Slashdot--if people just ADMITTED that what they're doing is probably wrong, it wouldn't seem so ridiculous. But instead we get this ludicrous "correlation = causality" articles that make people look stupid.
As you pointed out, this magic link disappears when CD sales go down. Suddenly it's the "RIAA's fault for signing bad artists."
First off, this article is a dupe from many months ago. We already had an article about the music industry in Australia. We already had the misleading title incorrectly (and hilariously) drawing between file-sharing and CD sales for no reason whatsoever. We already had people in the comments saying "But does this only apply to the Australian market?"
Sorry, guys--any way you slice it, because CD sales were up in Australia still does not mean file-sharing contributed to it, does not mean it's suddenly not immoral, illegal, and wrong, and does not mean that it's doing anybody any favors...particularly the artists who WILLFULLY signed the record label contract, went into the studio to spend months recording an album, only to have pirates rip it and stick it on eMule for everyone to grab without paying for it. There is absolutely no valid justification any Slashdotter has ever given.
You mean, it's NOT always good to have "competing standards" for "freedom of choice?"
Welcome to the real world, Slashdot.
Because Anonymous Crowhead has declared such! I mean, even if you code it completely correctly, present it correctly, and the code itself is well-organized and formatted and easy to read...Anonymous Crowhead on Slashdot has decided inlining presentation and data is bad design. Let's all change for him.
Bush has been the worst PR your country has had in quite some time. He makes your country look like a t-rex with the brain that goes with it...
You people already thought that. Clinton bombed lots of places, even without UN approval. I remember people in Iraq dancing with Monica Lewinsky signs.
You people just hate Bush especially more because he's a conservative Republican.
Then facts simply won't convince you. Y is aiming for 1.0 within a year. I'll be switching immediately: hardware-accelerated vector-based desktop that can even unload and reload graphics drivers without needing a restart. Have fun editing "XF86Config" to get a mousewheel working.
Claim something, then claim something else that will paint anyone who disagrees as a "Bush supporter."
Nice logically structured argument you have there. There's been anti-Americanism regardless of which yahoo was in the White House. Clinton did just as much damage as anyone else.
Doesn't that say more about the lack of any real anti-competitive behavior? I mean, if you were totally unaware of any.
I thought the point of antitrust law was to protect the customer. But if you'll notice, it's never the customers speaking out and doing this to Microsoft. Microsoft got where they are because they offered software we wanted.
Here on Slashdot, however, it's "unfair" if you're the #1 company. "Unfair" if you're the standard or if you ship free programs with your OS.
Read the Y paper. X is dead in the water.
It's not one of the "greatest technologies ever created in computer world." You've got to be kidding me. Then you go into a long advertising spiel on X11.
Anyway, here are the reasons listed in Mark's paper:
"The X Window System [23] is the de facto standard graphical user interface (GUI) system on UNIX and UNIX-like platforms such as GNU/Linux. However, as X approaches its 20th year, signs of its age are beginning to show. Commonly cited problems with X include:
Aside from the user interface inconsistency, the lack of standard components also makes internationalisation difficult, particularly for languages which require a complex input method.
Although the X protocol supports extensions very well, some of the latest extensions have begun to interfere with each other. For example, when Xinerama (the extension which allows X desktops to span multiple monitors) was first released, it broke XVideo (the extension which allows X to use hardware accelerated overlays for video play back). The 'fix' for this was to allow XVideo to only work on the primary display. The latest extension, XRandR (Rotate and Resize), is also known to break many older applications which assume that the screen size will never change.
Further, the internal design of X itself is outdated. Even adding a simple feature, such a stranslucent windows, requires large changes to the server [17]. Because of the requirement to be backwardly compatible, these features must be implemented for everything that X works on, including two-colour displays.
D'oh. :)
I wouldn't dare to imagine the number of times that MS has replaced or retrofitted (read: ugly hacks) technologies found in previous versions of Windows.
What about X? That's 20+ years, and now extensions are beginning to conflict with each other. For instance, Xinerama broke XVideo. Solution? XVideo only works on the primary display. Look at the complexity of ICCCM, or the fact that Xine simulates a shift key press every 30 seconds to disable the screensaver since it gave up trying to figure out the window manager it's running under. Yes, Virgina, sometimes endless choice is bad.
These examples, of course, were taken from the Y-Windows paper describing all the reasons to get rid of X and replace it with Y (which is also network transparent). I fully expect Y to be the superior replacement to X. They're at 0.2 now and are targetting a 1.0 release in a year.
And who modded you up as Informative?
X11 is a standard, but the implementations can wildly vary all they want. For instance, one might implement drivers in a completely different way than another.
This forced switch is a bigger deal than you're making it out to be.