DiabloII.net is a pretty decent source of info for this game. They give daily updates and they seem to be able to filter out the real insider info from bs hype.
I don't read it religiously, but it's nice when I need a "how's Diablo II doing" fix.
The heads are a definitely an important product for IBM. And yes, you can find them in other vendor's products. As for the hardest part to make, perhaps, but there is another piece that is just as tough. The flex cable.
Flex cable is the ribbon that connects the actuator to the electronics. Sounds easy, but you have to remember that this thing is moving (flexing) constantly. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, thousands and millions of times. It takes some serious physics to design these parts, while minimizing the costs. Constant movement inside a little oven, and you have to design these things to cost you pennies. Not easy.
These are just two parts. What else is tough to make and requires significant engineering?
Platters which have to be ground super smooth and coated with the magnetic material. The slightest bump will cause all kinds of bad things to happen when the head contacts it.
The channel, which is essentially the A/D converter that takes the signal from the head. This is a big piece of R&D, and the specifics are highly guarded between HDD companies.
The interface code - controls how the drive interacts with the rest of the world. IDE, SCSI, FC-AL, etc. and of course it has to be tuned to handle the cases where the host adapter companies got the interface wrong.
the motor
Servo code to control the motor and the actuator. Handles the basics like seeking, and also the more advanced things like load/unload.
ESD concerns. The heads are extremely sensitive to static electricity. The electronics are too, but not to the same degree.
Electronic board layout. This is a lot of tradeoffs to cut cost.
Power and heat concerns. The attention that these two items get is psychotic. The drives today are very efficient machines.
Test. Especially when working with the newer interfaces, newer heads (ie. GMR), etc. Lots of work here. The absolutely worst thing a drive can do is return incorrect data and declare it to be correct. Slightly less severe than this is if the drive explodes in a giant fireball. (At least then you know the data is bad.)
This is just what I can come up with off the top of my head. The HDD world is a great mix of software and hardware (and some really genius R&D people). The cost to enter this market is absolutely enormous. And to remain in the lead requires a constant investment.
Agreed. I learned a lot from reading the article. After you wade through the whole thing, it's pretty funny to scroll back up to the top and read the quote again. I got a laugh anyway.
The fact is, someone will use it. How many times do you hit "n" when you're configuring your kernel? Lot's I'll bet. I know I do. I really don't give a crap about "Amateur Radio AX.25 Level 2 protocol", and yet somehow it snuck its way into my config script. So what? I just hit "n", and then forget about it.
Just because you don't (or the majority of users doesn't) care about a particular feature, it doesn't mean that there's not a place for it.
[In response to tax refunds...]So? Are you opposed to people getting money back? If I were you, I'd be happy. Keep in mind, of course, that I pay taxes, but I'm not so sure about you.
Don't sell yourself so short. You've been sold a line of BS that sounds like this, "Oops, we don't know how it could have happened, but we seem to have too much money. Gosh darn it, we'll be heroes and hand it out to all of you." What an enormous load of crap. We've heard this line in MN for the last two years now, and I'm sick of it. The simple fact is this. Our taxes are too damn high! The tax rates need to be cut across the board, and now.
One of the biggest lies of all (at least with the way they do these tax refunds in MN) is that they don't consider it to be an income tax overpayment. Nope, even people who paid no income tax at all are being considered for a credit this time around. It's simply another wealth redistribution, and our wonderful governor is right at the heart of it.
If the top 15% own more than 90% of the country and only pay 50% of the tax burden, there is a problem. IMHO, the top 15% should pay all of it if our current system must be more or less preserved. I suppose that puts me into the 'must be stopped category:)'
The problem with this is that the people who are making the most money are also typically the people who provide the jobs and wages for the lower income people. And, while doing this, they aren't neccessarily consuming any more of the public goods that the taxes are supposedly paying for. So, why tax them so highly? It seem punitive to me. Punishment for success. I'm not there yet, but when I am (and yes I still believe in the American dream), I certainly don't want to be punished for making it big.
Here's a simpler example that goes along with what I'm saying. In my state, taxes for license plate registration are based on the value of the car. Now, why is this? Does a $50,000 car actually consume more public goods (such as highways, state police, and pollution) than a $1000 dollar car? No way. In fact, it could be argued that since the junker cars typically have inferior pollution controls, they should be paying more in taxes than the expensive newer vehicles. So, why are the richer people taxed more in this case? Because they'll pay it. It's another example of wealth redistribution, and there's simply not enough of an outcry to stop it.
It's like this. If 15% of the people are shouldering the lion's share of the tax bourdon, and then you have a poll asking people what they're most concerned with in politics, should you be surprised when only 11% of the respondants name taxes as their primary concern? Well, it happened, and the response from the politicians around here was, "See no one cares about taxes, it's a non-issue. Let's raise them some more."
Arguably, it costs X amount of dollars for each person's share of the public goods. Now, why would anyone have to pay more than this? It is so backwards to me that if someone works harder to make more money, more gets taken away.
You also argued that since the top marginal tax rate is now 39%, we should feel lucky because it used to be well above 70%. Well, the top marginal rate used to be 0% (zero). So, anything above that seems like a big rip-off to me. I'm not against paying taxes. I should pay for what I'm consuming from the public goods. I find it very hard to believe that I'm getting anything even close to what I'm paying in taxes back in the form of public-anything.
Hope... that you are having a better day than I am.
Yeah, I'm having a great day, although this thread is getting so buried that I doubt anyone is actually still reading it. When I read the article about who would be the best "geek" presidential candidate, and the concensus was Ralph Nader, I knew I was going to be talking to a brick wall by taking a fiscally conservative stance on any issue. However, I'm happy to press on, and so far the arguments against me have been well thought out and well-intentioned. (They just happen to be completely wrong.;)
What if "The sun is very big and very hot" had been part of it? Would you deny that factual assertion simply because I'm, in your mind, "one of those people"?
Of course not, that's silly. If you had included the comment about the sun, it would have been the only factual statement in your post. (Of course, I suppose that you could argue that "big" and "hot" are both subjective terms.) Let's go through your original post and forget the refernce to Joe Firmage.
What's sad about it is that it typifies the attitude of just about every corporation on earth; not simply "Can I make money off of this?" but rather "How can I make the most possible money, no matter whose rights I have to step on, as long as I can legally get away with it?" Corporations have no morals. Their only motivation is greed.
Just about every corporation on earth is purely motivated by greed? I disagree. Plus, you still dodge the question as to why this would be wrong. The point of a corporation is to maximize profits. Just because you want to label it as greed doesn't make it evil.
This leads to Microsofts and Exxons and Ted Turners. Big business, big banks, politicians, and all their combined greed is going to destroy this planet (if it hasn't already). They're so afraid of losing a little market share, power, prestige, or profit that they're willing to keep poisoning our air, water, land, and space just to keep the money rolling in.
Now all corporations are killing the planet? The planet has already been destroyed? That is simply absurd. How is Bill Gates poisoning the planet? His company might make poor software, but do you think that this is poisoning the planet? What about Turner, one of your other examples? How is he poisoning the planet? Ok, Exxon had an oil spill. You found 1 example. Congratulations. That must mean that all corporations are evil and greedy.
The money must roll; that is their only concern. This is to me unconscionable.
And this hurts you how?
So what can be done? How do we save ourselves from these self-serving greedy capitalist bastards?
A better question might be (at least here in the US), "How can we save ourselves from the tree-hugging socialists on the left who seek to gain personal power through a constant cycle of increased taxation, redistribution, and dependance?" Yehaw, them evil greedy bastards got to be stopped. I've got news for you. After you "stop" the capitalists, there's no one left to suck the money from. The top 15% of income earners in the US shoulder more that 50% of the tax burden (source: Congressional Budget Office - stats from 1995).
Is there an unfortunate paragraph in the US Code that keeps you from increasing your profits 1.09% because it prohibits toxic waste dumps next to elementary schools? Just buy a lobbyist and send him to Congress and have him whine and pass out gifts and do everything possible to get that paragraph deleted from the law.
Care to back this one up with a fact or two? Yeah, buying votes is wrong, and certainly happens. I'm not denying that. I do deny that all or even a majority of corporations participate in this. The largest and strongest lobbies are typically the government unions. Look at the teacher's union. Good god, you want corruption, start with them.
Greed is the root of all evil, and it is a basic part of human nature... and to me, that is the saddest thing of all.
So now all humans are evil too? I seriously feel bad for you and the dark world that you live in. I see people as inheriently good. The bad ones are few and far between.
Now, regarding Joe Firmage. I have no clue what he's really about, and I didn't judge you because of what might have been said about him. I agree with your distrust of the media, so I can feel for you there. If you say he's your hero, ok. I won't hold it against you. I will, however, strongly disagree with your assertation that humans are evil and are destroying the planet.
But back to "what goes through an oil baron's head"... That's easy... "Can I make more money off this than oil, what's the cost of conversion, and can I convert profitably?" Sadly, that's pretty much it.
What's sad about this? Is it wrong for an oil company to want to be profitable?
I learned Java with the JDK 1.1, and found two books pretty helpful. I already had been programming in other languages including C/C++ for a while, and these books helped to learn the language. Neither would be a good choice if you also needed to learn how to program at the same time.
"Java 1.1 Certification Study Guide" by Roberts and Heller, published by Sybex.
"Java in a Nutshell" by Flanagan, published by O'Reilly.
The certification guide has an updated version for 1.2 that I haven't read. I was also warned by people who had taken the exam that the book by Boone, "Java 1.1 Certification Exam Guide for Programmers and Developers" is one to stay away from. Apparently it is just filled with errors. (There may be an updated version that is better, but I have no intentions of buying it, so I don't know.)
I know what you mean by being overwhelmed when you go to the bookstore. There are a lot of Java books available, and most are pure garbage. For the more specific Java topics the ORA books are pretty good, but I think that the Addison Wesley books are just a bit better.
Not being a Debian user, I guess I can't say for sure (maybe there's some weird issue that I'm not seeing). However, if you're worried about being able to unistall easily, you shouldn't be (worried that is). Beyond using tar to create your/usr/local/jdk1.2.2/ directory, and modifying your environment variables, there's nothing more to do. To get rid of the jdk, just remove jdk1.2.2 directory.
I have three different jdk's installed under/usr/local/ and it makes it very convenient to switch between them by simply changing my environment variables.
Perhaps this isn't "stuff that matters," but it directly fits under "news for nerds." Did you bother to read the article? It is pretty interesting even if it isn't, as you say, "newsworthy."
If the (Linux) numbers sold become very high, the original software companies are going to realize this and say "hell, we could do the port ourselves and keep all the money!". It seems to be a balancing act for Loki.
However, as the number of copies sold increases, Loki has to charge less and less to make money also. It's the same for an in-house port. "Keep all the money" doesn't make sense, because there is still of the cost of doing the port, so you never get to keep all of the money. It still comes down to, can Loki port a game for less money than an in-house development effort?
Of course there's other things to look at like, how long will it take to do the port, quality of the end product, customer satisfaction, etc. Having never purchased a Loki product (yet), I can't say how they compare in these areas. Anyone care to comment on the quality of Loki's ports?
One thing that you might start to see more and more of is a simultaneous development of games for both platforms. For instance Black Isle is developing Neverwinter Nights for PC, Linux, and Mac at the same time. Diablo II for Linux would be the killer-app that gets me to buy a Linux-only pc capable of actually playing games. A game like NWN would make it that much easier of a descision.
In corporate America, it's practically illegal to do anything with money except distribute it to stockholders as quickly as possible. This is great for the stockholders, but is short-sighted, especially tough on the social fabric of a country in which politicians campaign for office mostly on vows to do little or nothing.
Politicians should be doing little or nothing. Everytime a politician does anyting in this country, it costs taxpayers more money. The less they do the better. To say that it is wrong that companies give back the best possible return to their stockholders shows a complete lack of compassion towards the people who pay for this country to operate. The top 15% of income earners in the US shoulder more that 50% of the tax burden (source: Congressional Budget Office - stats from 1995) To say that a company is being greedy when it wants to keep the money that's left over after the government gets done taking its increasingly larger share is just insulting.
Political commentary aside, if you think that this computer giveaway isn't a calculated business descision, you need to re-think. If Ford had said, "Everyone get's $1500 dollars more in matching 401K funds this year," how would this be any different? Would you have even bothered with a story about it? Would it have been the "the most significant technology news in years"? It's a business descision, that is all.
I am not a legal person, but the suffix '.net' usually denotes a provider of network services. Unless Blizzard have evolved Warcraft into some new and startling protocol or network service, I can't see how they can claim it.
Blizzard supplies a network service via their battle.net domain. Similar to Bungie, where you have bungie.com for the corporate stuff and press releases, and bungie.net for the online gaming, I can see where a blizzard.net would make sense.
Now, I'm not saying that their efforts to scare this guy into giving up his domain makes sense, but perhaps it's one of those "protect your trademark or lose it" issues.
Yeah, you're wrong. Even if Blizzard thought that there was an enormous market for Linux games, they still have to decide what the most cost-effective method of porting the game is. If Loki can show that they can do the port at a savings to Blizzard, then Blizzard would have no reason to do it themselves. If Loki can't do a port cheaper than an in-house effort, why are they even in business?
It is definitely in Loki's best interest to show that there is a large market for Linux games. Then they can say, "See, huge market, lot's of royalties. And we just happen to have the means to port your game cheaply and efficiently."
As I'm reading through this memo, I've been finding various pieces that show how non-technical this judge really is. This one astounds me. Under the passage regarding Section 1201(f), where the defendants claim that DeCSS is needed "to achieve interoperability between computers running on the Linux system and DVDs," the judge shoots them down with this one...
Second, even assuming that DeCSS runs under Linux, it concededly runs under Windows---a far more widely used operating system---as well. It therefore cannot reasonably be said that DeCSS was developed "for the sole purpose'' of achieving interoperability between Linux and DVDs.
You write a piece of software that has a "sole purpose." Someone, maybe even you, takes that code and ports it to another platform. Does that change the sole purpose for which the code was developed in the first place?
Seems to be confusing the initial development with a porting process. Also, isn't it the slightest bit possible that the code is actually trivial to port, and in reality will compile and run on many different systems already?
Re:The Snow Crash intellectual virus a reality?
on
Snow Crash
·
· Score: 1
Along the lines of "how did you hear about it", was anyone else introduced to NS through Pyramid magazine? This Steve Jackson periodical printed the 1st chapter of Snow Crash in one of their issues. (I think. I swear that they did. Someone please confirm that I'm not insane.) It's (possibly) the reason I bought the book in the first place.
I completely agree. It's pretty easy reading, and it's a great story. It's been a long time since I read it, so I can't really give any specifics of why it was so good. I do remember laughing out loud a couple of times, and I liked the characters a lot.
The same is also true in the world of HDD's. A typical SCSI drive can recognize the access patterns of a benchmark and adjust its caching algorithm accordingly.
The thing is, I don't see this as being bad on the part of the drive (or microchip or compiler or whatever). Benchmarks are supposed to measure real world performance. If tuning your product to do well in a becnchmark doesn't make it perform better in the real world, I'd say that you need to get a new benchmark.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm, the thread includes the topics "The Net" and "hacking", and out of nowhere comes some Nethack humor. Subliminal influence? :)
DiabloII.net is a pretty decent source of info for this game. They give daily updates and they seem to be able to filter out the real insider info from bs hype.
I don't read it religiously, but it's nice when I need a "how's Diablo II doing" fix.
The heads are a definitely an important product for IBM. And yes, you can find them in other vendor's products. As for the hardest part to make, perhaps, but there is another piece that is just as tough. The flex cable.
Flex cable is the ribbon that connects the actuator to the electronics. Sounds easy, but you have to remember that this thing is moving (flexing) constantly. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, thousands and millions of times. It takes some serious physics to design these parts, while minimizing the costs. Constant movement inside a little oven, and you have to design these things to cost you pennies. Not easy.
These are just two parts. What else is tough to make and requires significant engineering?
This is just what I can come up with off the top of my head. The HDD world is a great mix of software and hardware (and some really genius R&D people). The cost to enter this market is absolutely enormous. And to remain in the lead requires a constant investment.
Agreed. I learned a lot from reading the article. After you wade through the whole thing, it's pretty funny to scroll back up to the top and read the quote again. I got a laugh anyway.
The fact is, someone will use it. How many times do you hit "n" when you're configuring your kernel? Lot's I'll bet. I know I do. I really don't give a crap about "Amateur Radio AX.25 Level 2 protocol", and yet somehow it snuck its way into my config script. So what? I just hit "n", and then forget about it.
Just because you don't (or the majority of users doesn't) care about a particular feature, it doesn't mean that there's not a place for it.
[In response to tax refunds...]So? Are you opposed to people getting money back? If I were you, I'd be happy. Keep in mind, of course, that I pay taxes, but I'm not so sure about you.
Don't sell yourself so short. You've been sold a line of BS that sounds like this, "Oops, we don't know how it could have happened, but we seem to have too much money. Gosh darn it, we'll be heroes and hand it out to all of you." What an enormous load of crap. We've heard this line in MN for the last two years now, and I'm sick of it. The simple fact is this. Our taxes are too damn high! The tax rates need to be cut across the board, and now.
One of the biggest lies of all (at least with the way they do these tax refunds in MN) is that they don't consider it to be an income tax overpayment. Nope, even people who paid no income tax at all are being considered for a credit this time around. It's simply another wealth redistribution, and our wonderful governor is right at the heart of it.
If the top 15% own more than 90% of the country and only pay 50% of the tax burden, there is a problem. IMHO, the top 15% should pay all of it if our current system must be more or less preserved. I suppose that puts me into the 'must be stopped category :)'
The problem with this is that the people who are making the most money are also typically the people who provide the jobs and wages for the lower income people. And, while doing this, they aren't neccessarily consuming any more of the public goods that the taxes are supposedly paying for. So, why tax them so highly? It seem punitive to me. Punishment for success. I'm not there yet, but when I am (and yes I still believe in the American dream), I certainly don't want to be punished for making it big.
Here's a simpler example that goes along with what I'm saying. In my state, taxes for license plate registration are based on the value of the car. Now, why is this? Does a $50,000 car actually consume more public goods (such as highways, state police, and pollution) than a $1000 dollar car? No way. In fact, it could be argued that since the junker cars typically have inferior pollution controls, they should be paying more in taxes than the expensive newer vehicles. So, why are the richer people taxed more in this case? Because they'll pay it. It's another example of wealth redistribution, and there's simply not enough of an outcry to stop it.
It's like this. If 15% of the people are shouldering the lion's share of the tax bourdon, and then you have a poll asking people what they're most concerned with in politics, should you be surprised when only 11% of the respondants name taxes as their primary concern? Well, it happened, and the response from the politicians around here was, "See no one cares about taxes, it's a non-issue. Let's raise them some more."
Arguably, it costs X amount of dollars for each person's share of the public goods. Now, why would anyone have to pay more than this? It is so backwards to me that if someone works harder to make more money, more gets taken away.
You also argued that since the top marginal tax rate is now 39%, we should feel lucky because it used to be well above 70%. Well, the top marginal rate used to be 0% (zero). So, anything above that seems like a big rip-off to me. I'm not against paying taxes. I should pay for what I'm consuming from the public goods. I find it very hard to believe that I'm getting anything even close to what I'm paying in taxes back in the form of public-anything.
Hope ... that you are having a better day than I am.
Yeah, I'm having a great day, although this thread is getting so buried that I doubt anyone is actually still reading it. When I read the article about who would be the best "geek" presidential candidate, and the concensus was Ralph Nader, I knew I was going to be talking to a brick wall by taking a fiscally conservative stance on any issue. However, I'm happy to press on, and so far the arguments against me have been well thought out and well-intentioned. (They just happen to be completely wrong. ;)
What if "The sun is very big and very hot" had been part of it? Would you deny that factual assertion simply because I'm, in your mind, "one of those people"?
Of course not, that's silly. If you had included the comment about the sun, it would have been the only factual statement in your post. (Of course, I suppose that you could argue that "big" and "hot" are both subjective terms.) Let's go through your original post and forget the refernce to Joe Firmage.
What's sad about it is that it typifies the attitude of just about every corporation on earth; not simply "Can I make money off of this?" but rather "How can I make the most possible money, no matter whose rights I have to step on, as long as I can legally get away with it?" Corporations have no morals. Their only motivation is greed.
Just about every corporation on earth is purely motivated by greed? I disagree. Plus, you still dodge the question as to why this would be wrong. The point of a corporation is to maximize profits. Just because you want to label it as greed doesn't make it evil.
This leads to Microsofts and Exxons and Ted Turners. Big business, big banks, politicians, and all their combined greed is going to destroy this planet (if it hasn't already). They're so afraid of losing a little market share, power, prestige, or profit that they're willing to keep poisoning our air, water, land, and space just to keep the money rolling in.
Now all corporations are killing the planet? The planet has already been destroyed? That is simply absurd. How is Bill Gates poisoning the planet? His company might make poor software, but do you think that this is poisoning the planet? What about Turner, one of your other examples? How is he poisoning the planet? Ok, Exxon had an oil spill. You found 1 example. Congratulations. That must mean that all corporations are evil and greedy.
The money must roll; that is their only concern. This is to me unconscionable.
And this hurts you how?
So what can be done? How do we save ourselves from these self-serving greedy capitalist bastards?
A better question might be (at least here in the US), "How can we save ourselves from the tree-hugging socialists on the left who seek to gain personal power through a constant cycle of increased taxation, redistribution, and dependance?" Yehaw, them evil greedy bastards got to be stopped. I've got news for you. After you "stop" the capitalists, there's no one left to suck the money from. The top 15% of income earners in the US shoulder more that 50% of the tax burden (source: Congressional Budget Office - stats from 1995).
Is there an unfortunate paragraph in the US Code that keeps you from increasing your profits 1.09% because it prohibits toxic waste dumps next to elementary schools? Just buy a lobbyist and send him to Congress and have him whine and pass out gifts and do everything possible to get that paragraph deleted from the law.
Care to back this one up with a fact or two? Yeah, buying votes is wrong, and certainly happens. I'm not denying that. I do deny that all or even a majority of corporations participate in this. The largest and strongest lobbies are typically the government unions. Look at the teacher's union. Good god, you want corruption, start with them.
Greed is the root of all evil, and it is a basic part of human nature... and to me, that is the saddest thing of all.
So now all humans are evil too? I seriously feel bad for you and the dark world that you live in. I see people as inheriently good. The bad ones are few and far between.
Now, regarding Joe Firmage. I have no clue what he's really about, and I didn't judge you because of what might have been said about him. I agree with your distrust of the media, so I can feel for you there. If you say he's your hero, ok. I won't hold it against you. I will, however, strongly disagree with your assertation that humans are evil and are destroying the planet.
But back to "what goes through an oil baron's head"... That's easy... "Can I make more money off this than oil, what's the cost of conversion, and can I convert profitably?" Sadly, that's pretty much it.
What's sad about this? Is it wrong for an oil company to want to be profitable?
I learned Java with the JDK 1.1, and found two books pretty helpful. I already had been programming in other languages including C/C++ for a while, and these books helped to learn the language. Neither would be a good choice if you also needed to learn how to program at the same time.
The certification guide has an updated version for 1.2 that I haven't read. I was also warned by people who had taken the exam that the book by Boone, "Java 1.1 Certification Exam Guide for Programmers and Developers" is one to stay away from. Apparently it is just filled with errors. (There may be an updated version that is better, but I have no intentions of buying it, so I don't know.)
I know what you mean by being overwhelmed when you go to the bookstore. There are a lot of Java books available, and most are pure garbage. For the more specific Java topics the ORA books are pretty good, but I think that the Addison Wesley books are just a bit better.
Not being a Debian user, I guess I can't say for sure (maybe there's some weird issue that I'm not seeing). However, if you're worried about being able to unistall easily, you shouldn't be (worried that is). Beyond using tar to create your /usr/local/jdk1.2.2/ directory, and modifying your environment variables, there's nothing more to do. To get rid of the jdk, just remove jdk1.2.2 directory.
/usr/local/ and it makes it very convenient to switch between them by simply changing my environment variables.
I have three different jdk's installed under
Perhaps this isn't "stuff that matters," but it directly fits under "news for nerds." Did you bother to read the article? It is pretty interesting even if it isn't, as you say, "newsworthy."
If the (Linux) numbers sold become very high, the original software companies are going to realize this and say "hell, we could do the port ourselves and keep all the money!". It seems to be a balancing act for Loki.
However, as the number of copies sold increases, Loki has to charge less and less to make money also. It's the same for an in-house port. "Keep all the money" doesn't make sense, because there is still of the cost of doing the port, so you never get to keep all of the money. It still comes down to, can Loki port a game for less money than an in-house development effort?
Of course there's other things to look at like, how long will it take to do the port, quality of the end product, customer satisfaction, etc. Having never purchased a Loki product (yet), I can't say how they compare in these areas. Anyone care to comment on the quality of Loki's ports?
One thing that you might start to see more and more of is a simultaneous development of games for both platforms. For instance Black Isle is developing Neverwinter Nights for PC, Linux, and Mac at the same time. Diablo II for Linux would be the killer-app that gets me to buy a Linux-only pc capable of actually playing games. A game like NWN would make it that much easier of a descision.
In corporate America, it's practically illegal to do anything with money except distribute it to stockholders as quickly as possible. This is great for the stockholders, but is short-sighted, especially tough on the social fabric of a country in which politicians campaign for office mostly on vows to do little or nothing.
Politicians should be doing little or nothing. Everytime a politician does anyting in this country, it costs taxpayers more money. The less they do the better. To say that it is wrong that companies give back the best possible return to their stockholders shows a complete lack of compassion towards the people who pay for this country to operate. The top 15% of income earners in the US shoulder more that 50% of the tax burden (source: Congressional Budget Office - stats from 1995) To say that a company is being greedy when it wants to keep the money that's left over after the government gets done taking its increasingly larger share is just insulting.
Political commentary aside, if you think that this computer giveaway isn't a calculated business descision, you need to re-think. If Ford had said, "Everyone get's $1500 dollars more in matching 401K funds this year," how would this be any different? Would you have even bothered with a story about it? Would it have been the "the most significant technology news in years"? It's a business descision, that is all.
I am not a legal person, but the suffix '.net' usually denotes a provider of network services. Unless Blizzard have evolved Warcraft into some new and startling protocol or network service, I can't see how they can claim it.
Blizzard supplies a network service via their battle.net domain. Similar to Bungie, where you have bungie.com for the corporate stuff and press releases, and bungie.net for the online gaming, I can see where a blizzard.net would make sense.
Now, I'm not saying that their efforts to scare this guy into giving up his domain makes sense, but perhaps it's one of those "protect your trademark or lose it" issues.
Yeah, you're wrong. Even if Blizzard thought that there was an enormous market for Linux games, they still have to decide what the most cost-effective method of porting the game is. If Loki can show that they can do the port at a savings to Blizzard, then Blizzard would have no reason to do it themselves. If Loki can't do a port cheaper than an in-house effort, why are they even in business?
It is definitely in Loki's best interest to show that there is a large market for Linux games. Then they can say, "See, huge market, lot's of royalties. And we just happen to have the means to port your game cheaply and efficiently."
As I'm reading through this memo, I've been finding various pieces that show how non-technical this judge really is. This one astounds me. Under the passage regarding Section 1201(f), where the defendants claim that DeCSS is needed "to achieve interoperability between computers running on the Linux system and DVDs," the judge shoots them down with this one...
Second, even assuming that DeCSS runs under Linux, it concededly runs under Windows---a far more widely used operating system---as well. It therefore cannot reasonably be said that DeCSS was developed "for the sole purpose'' of achieving interoperability between Linux and DVDs.
You write a piece of software that has a "sole purpose." Someone, maybe even you, takes that code and ports it to another platform. Does that change the sole purpose for which the code was developed in the first place?
Seems to be confusing the initial development with a porting process. Also, isn't it the slightest bit possible that the code is actually trivial to port, and in reality will compile and run on many different systems already?Along the lines of "how did you hear about it", was anyone else introduced to NS through Pyramid magazine? This Steve Jackson periodical printed the 1st chapter of Snow Crash in one of their issues. (I think. I swear that they did. Someone please confirm that I'm not insane.) It's (possibly) the reason I bought the book in the first place.
I completely agree. It's pretty easy reading, and it's a great story. It's been a long time since I read it, so I can't really give any specifics of why it was so good. I do remember laughing out loud a couple of times, and I liked the characters a lot.
cmd-option-o-f
The same is also true in the world of HDD's. A typical SCSI drive can recognize the access patterns of a benchmark and adjust its caching algorithm accordingly.
The thing is, I don't see this as being bad on the part of the drive (or microchip or compiler or whatever). Benchmarks are supposed to measure real world performance. If tuning your product to do well in a becnchmark doesn't make it perform better in the real world, I'd say that you need to get a new benchmark.