I'd just like to back up the original poster, and add no, I don't drive, I walk to work. Every day. Oh, and I use the flourescent bulbs.
I understand your annoyance about the fact that the wireless network and bulbs work on the same frequency. I'd use the bulbs without hesitation, if it only affected my house...
Oh, and while we're on the subject of energy saving bulbs, when was the last time anyone here thought about energy consumption of a computer they put together? How about all those who boast about uptimes - are you really using it continuously? Imagine the waste of electricity from that!
Makes it much, much harder, given the aim cheat also has to track the player itself. Also, the server may limit how far/fast you can turn, which would really give aim cheats problems. As to keyboard drivers - the client should handle any complicated parsing, and send the data to the server in a nice, easy to cope with format. A sequence of keys up/down would probably be best.
Actually, you can kinda cross the two approaches. Pass all keystrokes.mouse movements to the server (yeah, its a bit of data, but over a fast modem, hardly a problem). The server then works out what is happening. Meanwhile, the client, also works out what is happening, and shows the user. Doesn't matter what you do to the client, they server is reacting to just input. Yes, there is duplication of processing, but this is hardly a major problem, IMHO.
You know, I can see the Slashdot article moaning about a worm writer being sued for millions of dollars already. Thing is, if the worm costs each victim $100, consider the number of people likely to be affected, and they'll probably sue the person responsible given half a chance.
Personally, I think this is right - its not exactly as if you can accidently write a worm, and you may not realise how destructive they are, but I don't feel stupdity is an excuse! However, I wonder how many of Slashdot's users would agree.
This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. You're not buying the PC version because it lacks multiplayer support, so instead you're planning on buying the PS2 version which still doesn't have multiplayer support, but also costs more and has worse graphics?
As an owner of the PS2 version, frankly I'd recommend the PC version, from the screenshots I've seen!
Nope, the data protection act has no US equivalent. Are you feeling ressured?
Basically, for those of you in the US, the data protection act, amongst other things, means you have to be careful with people's data. If you're not, they can revoke your license to hold personal data on people, very effectively killing off most businesses.
Okay... this is perhaps taking paranoia a little far. Or at least in the wrong direction. You're suggesting that the appropriate government may hire people to steal your wallet and pull the data from your smart cards? Given the general data stored on this (credit card numbers, or digital cash), do you really think governments are so hard up they have to mug people?
Okay, if you're suggesting that you might carry documents on a smart card, which you wouldn't want a government to see, and which they might actually want to, perhaps you have a point. Just, it seems to me that PGP and a floppy disk is a much better idea.
Could simply be indicative of limited testing of the product. They might have only tested it on Intel machines - chances are it'll be fine on anything, but they could be playing it safe.
Bit unlikely, of course. Its probably just an oversight on their part.
The only valid statistic they can call this, is the number of percentage of people which viewed the sites in question (yes, I know they quote a figure of 125,000), using a browser which identified itself as running under Linux.
There are several problems with the statistics, as supplied:
We are not told how they determine what a web site is. Frankly, I'm skeptical that their software runs on 125,000 different servers.
Given the quoted figure of "80 million Internet users daily", I think it is reasonable to predict that they focus on very high load sites. This does not necessarily represent all sites, fairly.
We are not told how they determine what a user is. Is that 80 million different IPs (in which case dynamic IP and NAT are going to skew that figure), or 80 million hits. If hits, is that individual pages accessed, or individual files (including images, for example).
They mention that the information covers "120 industry categories" - this would imply to me that the a significant part of the data is taken from corporate sites. I think it is reasonable to guess that most people who use the Internet at work in a business to business fashion are likely to be using Windows, because that's what the company supports, and/or they aren't very technically minded.
Finally, the statistics do not consider the relative quality of web browsers on Linux and Windows. Windows comes with IE, which as much as I hate to say it, is a lot more standards compliant than Netscape. Linux has Mozilla, Opera and Konqueror, but those are not widely used yet. The use of an OS for web browsing does not mean you use it for everything else.
Also, the article compares different points in their product life-cycle. Does anyone have information on how well the PS2 sold during its first 3 weeks or so? If I remember correctly, it wasn't doing so well. Its since then had a year to become well known, and get more software out there, while the X-Box and GC have only just started their lifecycle.
My house LAN involves a 4 port router, with CAT 5 wiring layed under rugs. Its simple, and its fine for playing games over. I have to admit, I don't see the advantage of setting up a server for a house - very few files require sharing across the network, and NFS/SMB can handle those fine. Game servers run just fine on any of the machines involved in the game.
It was suggested to me that instead of a router, I could buy an old computer and run Linux off it, stick a few network cards in and use that as a more flexible alternative. That's about the closest example I can think of a server that'd be useful on a home network.
There is also a certain element of everything being over-complicated. I'm currently working on an SMTP server (as part of a different project), which should be idiot proof. In most cases, it will be possible to just compile & run. Some cases may require command line options, but nothing like the complexity of configuration involved with Sendmail. No, it won't be as powerful, but that's not the point - with less complexity, comes less to go wrong.
Maybe now is the time to stop adding features, and make things work!
Correction - Looking Glass went out of business shortly after releasing Thief II. A large number of their staff went on to work at Ion Storm. Ion Storm released Diakatana shortly after this, and it flopped. They also released Deus Ex, and Anachronox. Shortly after the release of Anachronox, Eidos closed the half of Ion Storm responsible for it and Diakatana. AFAIK Deus Ex 2 and Thief 3 are still being worked on.
Okay, less that $2k is a lot better than had thought. As to the use of record labels - they aren't obsolete, just in need of a redesign. They're will probably always be a need for companies which can arrange the recording, distribution and advertising - just maybe not companies as large as the current ones.
However, the original poster was still implying (IMHO) that they'd never pay for music - and even if you can cut the record company out of the equation completely, that still leaves the artist with nothing. This would significantly reduce the number of people willing to work on songs!
... but I'd like people to think about why it won't work. The most obvious point is the whole needing to maintain your subscription - even at $10 a month for 100 songs, most people aren't going to be into effectively committing to this service for life.
Step back though, consider why they're doing this. Do people really think that the record companies get a kick out of not letting people listen to music while on the move? If you do - fine, I'd like to know why, but its your opinion. I feel more though that the fear the copying of the files.
Can anyone here genuinely tell me that most of the efforts toward breaking the security on this will be so that someone can distribute music amongst their friends? I'm reasonably willing to bet it'll be broken because someone wants to copy files illegally, not because they're frustrated with the subscription model. Maybe I'm wrong - DVDss were a good example of where this theory has been wrong - but even there, the information was rapidly adapted to allow people to copy DVDs.
Perhaps people could think more about how illegal copying affects everyone. If you don't agree with the pricing of some music, sure don't buy it, but also don't copy it. Make a statement that you're willing to go without this, because it costs so much, not a statement that you're going to copy it because its cheaper.
Also, everyone that's saying "this model will never work, its not what I want" - are you going to do anything about this? Are you going to contact any of the companies involved, and tell them you're opinions in a calm and rational way, or are you just ignore the entire thing. These companies won't realise what people want, through magic, so tell them!
What quality of speakers are you playing these out of? If you've got reasonable speakers attached to mine, but have a flatmate who likes her MP3s at 192Kbps and then plays them though a pair of $20 speakers.
128Kbps is used because it makes a reasonable comprimise between quality and size. You may not like 128Kbps, but I'm wondering how many people would want files at 192Kbps.
You've suggested lossless. That's basically.wav - have you seen the size of those files? 40mb a track, typically. I'd generally consider that file size completely impractical for these purposes, at least until DSL is common place, cheap, and even then its very very large (okay, fed up with people assuming that everyone can choose DSL if they want - and kinda bitter because I can't - but I still think 40mb is insane).
Apart from that, well, there's the cost. I'm sure they could do this, but I'm not sure it would be at a price point you'd be happy with. I imagine they'd make back enough money from $20 a month, with all the requirements you've given, but only if people didn't copy on anything like the level they do already. $20 a month for one person's subscription is fine, but if their files are then going onto tens or hundreds of people.
On a general note (as in, not meant to be aimed at the post's author), I wish people would stop illegally copying stuff - no, it may not actually stop the companies charging so much, but all the insane laws they're trying to bring in are because they want to stop copying. I'm not blaming people that copy music/software/whatever illegally for those laws, I just wish they'd stop anyway (and it really bugs me when people say they're copying in protest at the costs - if you don't like the cost, don't buy the product. You do not need music, or software, it is not critical to your existance, and I'm not sympathetic).
Right... so, either they start giving you money with the music, or you'll just download it for free. So they can't make any money from music. Yup, would be great if they realise this, because if they ever seriously beleive that's the case they'll stop making music! No, it isn't going to happen anytime too soon, but if people think about music like this, soon we won't have record companies, and while they may be generally rather evil, they have nice advantages like being able to fund the use of a professional recording studio.
Basically, yes you can keep downloading your music, yes you can get it free, but you can't get the quality of performance or recording you currently enjoy, unless you pay for it!
Actually its a low paid job, because of the flexible timetable. Quite close, apart from that. I'm just going to go reorganise my life completely now...
Mon-Fri: Get up later than I should do, dress, leave house, pick up lunch in form of sandwich, proceeed to work. Eat sandwich, stay at work for 8 hours, go home. Wednesdays I can be found in the student union (I'm a graduate from the university I work at).
Sat: Get up, wander around town with flatmate a bit. Go home.
Sunday: Stay home, mostly. Possibly go food shopping.
Does everyone now feel informed? Do they feel they know just a little more about me? Does anyone care? Has anyone really read this message all the way to the bottom?
And yet, when its suggested that the cameras are given software to recognise people/crimes, everyone screams about that too. Okay, I understand the fears about the software getting it wrong, but cops can get it wrong too... and certainly I'd hope any camera system that did such recognition would have a human to check it, anyway.
Ant rocks. I'm using it for a reasonably large scale project, and it makes my life so much easier its not funny. Despite what another poster has said, I see no reason why it cannot be used to develop C programs - however it does not support gcc directly, you would have to use <Exec>.
I have also used autoconf, and tried to use automake - my general feeling on these tools is that they are very inelegant solutions to the problem of cross-platform portability. Personally I'd love to see an Ant-like tool which read in a file which contains both makefile and autoconf data (and using XML for the data format wouldn;t hurt, either).
Slashdot Mirror
I'd just like to back up the original poster, and add no, I don't drive, I walk to work. Every day. Oh, and I use the flourescent bulbs.
I understand your annoyance about the fact that the wireless network and bulbs work on the same frequency. I'd use the bulbs without hesitation, if it only affected my house...
Oh, and while we're on the subject of energy saving bulbs, when was the last time anyone here thought about energy consumption of a computer they put together? How about all those who boast about uptimes - are you really using it continuously? Imagine the waste of electricity from that!
Makes it much, much harder, given the aim cheat also has to track the player itself. Also, the server may limit how far/fast you can turn, which would really give aim cheats problems. As to keyboard drivers - the client should handle any complicated parsing, and send the data to the server in a nice, easy to cope with format. A sequence of keys up/down would probably be best.
Actually, you can kinda cross the two approaches. Pass all keystrokes.mouse movements to the server (yeah, its a bit of data, but over a fast modem, hardly a problem). The server then works out what is happening. Meanwhile, the client, also works out what is happening, and shows the user. Doesn't matter what you do to the client, they server is reacting to just input. Yes, there is duplication of processing, but this is hardly a major problem, IMHO.
Nope. (Damn damn damn damn)
You know, I can see the Slashdot article moaning about a worm writer being sued for millions of dollars already. Thing is, if the worm costs each victim $100, consider the number of people likely to be affected, and they'll probably sue the person responsible given half a chance.
Personally, I think this is right - its not exactly as if you can accidently write a worm, and you may not realise how destructive they are, but I don't feel stupdity is an excuse! However, I wonder how many of Slashdot's users would agree.
This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. You're not buying the PC version because it lacks multiplayer support, so instead you're planning on buying the PS2 version which still doesn't have multiplayer support, but also costs more and has worse graphics?
As an owner of the PS2 version, frankly I'd recommend the PC version, from the screenshots I've seen!
Nope, the data protection act has no US equivalent. Are you feeling ressured?
Basically, for those of you in the US, the data protection act, amongst other things, means you have to be careful with people's data. If you're not, they can revoke your license to hold personal data on people, very effectively killing off most
businesses.
Okay... this is perhaps taking paranoia a little far. Or at least in the wrong direction. You're suggesting that the appropriate government may hire people to steal your wallet and pull the data from your smart cards? Given the general data stored on this (credit card numbers, or digital cash), do you really think governments are so hard up they have to mug people?
Okay, if you're suggesting that you might carry documents on a smart card, which you wouldn't want a government to see, and which they might actually want to, perhaps you have a point. Just, it seems to me that PGP and a floppy disk is a much better idea.
Tragically, no, its not.
Strangely enough, in some cases it does cause people to do that. Something about curiousity. Could also be considered as Darwinism at work...
Could simply be indicative of limited testing of the product. They might have only tested it on Intel machines - chances are it'll be fine on anything, but they could be playing it safe.
Bit unlikely, of course. Its probably just an oversight on their part.
The only valid statistic they can call this, is the number of percentage of people which viewed the sites in question (yes, I know they quote a figure of 125,000), using a browser which identified itself as running under Linux.
There are several problems with the statistics, as supplied:
Also, the article compares different points in their product life-cycle. Does anyone have information on how well the PS2 sold during its first 3 weeks or so? If I remember correctly, it wasn't doing so well. Its since then had a year to become well known, and get more software out there, while the X-Box and GC have only just started their lifecycle.
My house LAN involves a 4 port router, with CAT 5 wiring layed under rugs. Its simple, and its fine for playing games over. I have to admit, I don't see the advantage of setting up a server for a house - very few files require sharing across the network, and NFS/SMB can handle those fine. Game servers run just fine on any of the machines involved in the game.
It was suggested to me that instead of a router, I could buy an old computer and run Linux off it, stick a few network cards in and use that as a more flexible alternative. That's about the closest example I can think of a server that'd be useful on a home network.
There is also a certain element of everything being over-complicated. I'm currently working on an SMTP server (as part of a different project), which should be idiot proof. In most cases, it will be possible to just compile & run. Some cases may require command line options, but nothing like the complexity of configuration involved with Sendmail. No, it won't be as powerful, but that's not the point - with less complexity, comes less to go wrong.
Maybe now is the time to stop adding features, and make things work!
Correction - Looking Glass went out of business shortly after releasing Thief II. A large number of their staff went on to work at Ion Storm. Ion Storm released Diakatana shortly after this, and it flopped. They also released Deus Ex, and Anachronox. Shortly after the release of Anachronox, Eidos closed the half of Ion Storm responsible for it and Diakatana. AFAIK Deus Ex 2 and Thief 3 are still being worked on.
The source is probably not freely available to people in the Air Force, but I'd be very suprised to discover it hasn't been checked very carefully.
Ah right, sorry, your initial post implied something different to me.
Okay, less that $2k is a lot better than had thought. As to the use of record labels - they aren't obsolete, just in need of a redesign. They're will probably always be a need for companies which can arrange the recording, distribution and advertising - just maybe not companies as large as the current ones.
However, the original poster was still implying (IMHO) that they'd never pay for music - and even if you can cut the record company out of the equation completely, that still leaves the artist with nothing. This would significantly reduce the number of people willing to work on songs!
... but I'd like people to think about why it won't work. The most obvious point is the whole needing to maintain your subscription - even at $10 a month for 100 songs, most people aren't going to be into effectively committing to this service for life.
Step back though, consider why they're doing this. Do people really think that the record companies get a kick out of not letting people listen to music while on the move? If you do - fine, I'd like to know why, but its your opinion. I feel more though that the fear the copying of the files.
Can anyone here genuinely tell me that most of the efforts toward breaking the security on this will be so that someone can distribute music amongst their friends? I'm reasonably willing to bet it'll be broken because someone wants to copy files illegally, not because they're frustrated with the subscription model. Maybe I'm wrong - DVDss were a good example of where this theory has been wrong - but even there, the information was rapidly adapted to allow people to copy DVDs.
Perhaps people could think more about how illegal copying affects everyone. If you don't agree with the pricing of some music, sure don't buy it, but also don't copy it. Make a statement that you're willing to go without this, because it costs so much, not a statement that you're going to copy it because its cheaper.
Also, everyone that's saying "this model will never work, its not what I want" - are you going to do anything about this? Are you going to contact any of the companies involved, and tell them you're opinions in a calm and rational way, or are you just ignore the entire thing. These companies won't realise what people want, through magic, so tell them!
Hmmm... high quality files... okay, a few points:
Apart from that, well, there's the cost. I'm sure they could do this, but I'm not sure it would be at a price point you'd be happy with. I imagine they'd make back enough money from $20 a month, with all the requirements you've given, but only if people didn't copy on anything like the level they do already. $20 a month for one person's subscription is fine, but if their files are then going onto tens or hundreds of people.
On a general note (as in, not meant to be aimed at the post's author), I wish people would stop illegally copying stuff - no, it may not actually stop the companies charging so much, but all the insane laws they're trying to bring in are because they want to stop copying. I'm not blaming people that copy music/software/whatever illegally for those laws, I just wish they'd stop anyway (and it really bugs me when people say they're copying in protest at the costs - if you don't like the cost, don't buy the product. You do not need music, or software, it is not critical to your existance, and I'm not sympathetic).
Right... so, either they start giving you money with the music, or you'll just download it for free. So they can't make any money from music. Yup, would be great if they realise this, because if they ever seriously beleive that's the case they'll stop making music! No, it isn't going to happen anytime too soon, but if people think about music like this, soon we won't have record companies, and while they may be generally rather evil, they have nice advantages like being able to fund the use of a professional recording studio.
Basically, yes you can keep downloading your music, yes you can get it free, but you can't get the quality of performance or recording you currently enjoy, unless you pay for it!
Actually its a low paid job, because of the flexible timetable. Quite close, apart from that. I'm just going to go reorganise my life completely now...
Okay, for the record, my days go like this:
Mon-Fri: Get up later than I should do, dress, leave house, pick up lunch in form of sandwich, proceeed to work. Eat sandwich, stay at work for 8 hours, go home. Wednesdays I can be found in the student union (I'm a graduate from the university I work at).
Sat: Get up, wander around town with flatmate a bit. Go home.
Sunday: Stay home, mostly. Possibly go food shopping.
Does everyone now feel informed? Do they feel they know just a little more about me? Does anyone care? Has anyone really read this message all the way to the bottom?
And yet, when its suggested that the cameras are given software to recognise people/crimes, everyone screams about that too. Okay, I understand the fears about the software getting it wrong, but cops can get it wrong too... and certainly I'd hope any camera system that did such recognition would have a human to check it, anyway.
Ant rocks. I'm using it for a reasonably large scale project, and it makes my life so much easier its not funny. Despite what another poster has said, I see no reason why it cannot be used to develop C programs - however it does not support gcc directly, you would have to use <Exec>.
I have also used autoconf, and tried to use automake - my general feeling on these tools is that they are very inelegant solutions to the problem of cross-platform portability. Personally I'd love to see an Ant-like tool which read in a file which contains both makefile and autoconf data (and using XML for the data format wouldn;t hurt, either).