My attitude on this matter so far has always been the same.
Free Market.
Face it. The music industry in its current form is dead. The only reason that they're getting away with suing people is because the government is letting them with crap like the DMCA, something I personally think was entirely developped to stunt the inevitable change of the global market.
CDs are obsolete as a distribution form. The internet is cheaper, quicker, easier. CDs used to be a marketable product: People wanted music in a decent high-quality format and CDs were the best thing available for it.
But now that's changed. CDs are no longer worth the same money that we pay for it because it has less value. So why are the governments bending over for the music industry and outright saying "I don't care what they're worth now. They were worth $20 20 years ago, they should be so now too."
When Henry Ford invented the assembly line, cars dropped radically in price. We're looking at the new economic revolution, and it's digital. An exceptionally cheap means of distibuting any digital media, be it software, music, videos or anything along the way. But the fact that it's not patentable or marketable has a lot of these now obsolete industries going crazy. Granted, the software industry always had to cope with this, and Microsoft did a great job at it by basically cramming their product down everybody's throats to the point of dependency. But the fact of the matter is that these distributors of software and data are becoming more and more obsolete the more accessible stuff is becoming through digital media.
And of course, lobbying seems to have forced the government's hand to agree with them, and so technology as we know it isn't being given the breathing room it needs to flourish, and so these companies are refusing to adapt, with disasterous results: Suing 12 year old girls, awful mediocre music giving us outright reason to stop listening to radios and stop buying CDs, buggy software with no less than 3 major worms in the last year hitting a bunch of people and making everybody pissed off with their computers (honestly. Your computer didn't do anything wrong. It did exactly what it was supposed to in that situation. Maybe next time you'll think twice before you shell out $150 to those boys in Redmond).
But of course, in this so called "Capitalist" society we're going to completely refuse the concept of the Open Market because it seems now that people will actually have to play the game of supply and demand instead of venture into Count-Zero like mafia-war tactics of Big Business. And of course we can't let that happen because... well... I can't think of any reason other than to let the rich get richer. 1984 here we come!
This is why I support open software. This is why I download my music. This is why I waste hours on the internet trying to learn as much as possible about computers. Because I ultimately want to help this world progress into something better than it is now, rather than let it perpetuate itself into staleness.
I saw an ad for iLife just yesterday in a magazine. I've also seen plenty of Apple billboards in the past as well as the present. And not to mention all the pree press it gets on the internet.
You can license open source software as well. There are plenty of them out there. It's called the GPL and the LGPL and the BSD License and the countless other ones that are out there that involve distributing source code with the product to the consumers.
Saying all OSS falls under the GPL is both misleading and naive.
Open source means the consumer can look at the code and modify as deemed appropriate in order to better access their needs. It's cutting the middle man of "systems analyst" out of the equation. If you dislike the software, you can fix it or contract someone to fix it more to your specifications. Then systems become based on user needs rather than vendors dictating to the users what they need. It's how a free market works.
(remember, open source does not mean free as in beer)
The main key is whether or not source goes to joe average end user. Windows isn't open source on the basis that the people who USE Windows aren't entitled to the source code. Linux cannot be distributed WITHOUT making the source code readily available under the GPL, hence it's open source.
Sure, used CD stores will phase out vinyl, but there are plenty vinyl-only stores around there. In Vancouver, BC I can think of about 5 offhand (Otis, Bassix, one down the hall from Puff on Robson, One down on Commercial, and Boomtown) that all do business. Like I said, purists and DJs hail these places as mecca. Sadly though it'd only work in large cities where you'd have a large concentration of those people.
But trust me. Small independant record stores have a user base they aren't about to lose to Big Box stores or Napster any day.
Reminds me of a troll on another forum I was on. When I wrote "viri" he responded with "IT'S SPELLED VIRII" and other such flames. I was amused, because in latin, the singular "us" is pluralized to "i", so virus would be viri.
Funniest thing is the plural of "virus" is "viruses".
To: Luser (whoever@blah.com) From: Hax0r (jeffk@somethingawful.com) Subject: *nix virus
This is the only known Virus that works on all *nix systems. Please forward this to everybody on your list and delete all the files on your harddrive. Thank you.
See, though, all the Windows Zealots do is post of Slashdot that all people who use Linux are zealots. And then the Linux Zealots come in and give facts to back up their arguments that Linux Is Better. Then the Windows Zealots start mentioning playing Counterstrike or something on Linux. Then the Linux Zealots mention WineX. Then the Windows Zealots mention that it doesn't handle everything, then the BSD Zealots start laughing at them, and then the Windows Zealots and Linux Zealots shout "SHUT UP! NOBODY USES BSD ANYMORE!" and then SCO sues them all.
In the end, Linux has always proven to be a more stable system (I have yet to hear of ANY windows system with a single uptime of more than a month) and the current state of the exploits IE is churning out is a good indicator of that. I remember hearing about the last Samba exploit about 5 hours after I had already patched it. In the end, all operating systems have their advantages and disadvantages. My personal experience states I prefer Linux just on the basis that:
a) I like the CLI (bash is my friend) 2) Price can't be beat. iii) Open source = nice. I like the philosophy as a developer-in-training and as such will support OSS as much as I can. Linux just happens to be the best open-source OS I can find. Four) SSH is also my friend.
It may be a Windows virus, but that doesn't negate that it might have been written by a Linux zealot in an attempt to show the world how unstable and bloody silly Microsoft's code is. In fact, that would make the most sense to me.
Thing is, even though it's a Linux zealot doing this, I don't blame Linux users, in the same way that I don't blame the American Government's dropping bombs on all kinds of Third-World countries (as they have been consistently for the last, what, 20 years now?) on every single American out there.
Native is a very specific concept actually. If you can take a piece of code in its very base-bones assembler 1s and 0s and put it through a processor and obtain the expected result, it processes that code natively. If not, then it can't. Itanium cannot process 32-bit code natively. It needs an emulator which trades those 1s and 0s to a different format that the itanium can read (thus changing the input to the processor) and then the processor can read it. Obviously emulation would take a lot more clock cycles than native performance, and thus speed is greatly improved when using native processing as opposed to emulated.
After all, the best way to solve a problem is to reverse the polarity.
Actually, no, it's ejecting the core. But every time that they're in such a tight spot that the core actually needs ejecting the ejector isn't working, so they have to find some other solution, like say reversing the polarity, in order to save their asses. Personally I think that fixing the ejector so that it will work under extreme pressure would be a good idea. Heh. They can hold electrons into place but they still can't make a spring work. *sigh*
A company, say Microsoft, starts making a bunch of good decisions insofar as the slashdot community is concerned, and everybody says "MICROSOFT BAD! LINUX GOOD!" then they get jumped on for being zealots.
Now a company that formerly gave us countless headaches seems to shed its skin and starts helping out the open source community, and we're supposed to remember the past? How in God's name can these companies win our approval? What the hell do they have to do? If this is the case then I applaud Microsoft for everything they've been doing because it seems they understand that no matter how much they try to placate the Development Community they're not going to be liked by them.
This is stupid in my opinion. Why shouldn't we praise companies for making intelligent and helpful decisions? Basic operant conditioning would recommend that if we support IBM when they support us, then they will continue to support us in the future because it's looked upon as a Good Thing. So rather than just reminding yourself of how Evil IBM used to be, why not take note that hey... looks like they're making some good decisions. Why must we always look gifthorses in the mouth?
First of all, I wouldn't call P. Diddy (or whatever his name of the week is) or 50 cent pioneers of hip hop. And hip hop has NOT always been based on that. Sugarhill Gang was really the first to do it and they did it rather well, so much so that Rapper's Delight was a VERY different song from Good Times. And I dare you to find anybody who isn't a Run DMC afficianado realize that It's Tricky borrowed guitar lines from My Sharona.
Hip Hop evolved off the streets with what instruments they had, namely records and their voices. So they'd write poetry, and "rap" it overtop their favourite beats. Funk was big in Black culture, as well as useful for rapping as it was a lot of bassline and not so much lyrics, in the 70s and as such was used frequently. And eventually the DJs started manipulating their turntables to do little tricks, like varying the electrical input to change pitch and using their hands to backspin and play with little samples of music, known as "scratching".
Now, I'm not disagreeing with you that most modern hip hop is blatant plagiarism of other people's work, regardless of whether or not it's authorized. But to outright disclaim the entire genre just because of some people who achieve market prominence in the last 10 years who happen to be talentless hacks seems about as silly as to say that Punk is stupid because you dislike Sum 41. Or that Rock sucks because you dislike Linkin Park.
As far as I understand, linux has many copywrites in a file-by-file basis. For instance, kernel/fork.c is copywrited to Linus, but I'd imagine the people who built the original versions of the files and whatnot have probably copywrited the code to themselves.
A buddy of mine who's on the kernel contributors list was wondering if he'd send a bill to SCO since they use linux, distribute linux, and it contains his copywrited code. Doesn't work too well considering he's the one who knowingly placed the code under the GPL and as such it is allowed to be redistributed sans charge as much as whoever has the code wants to.
Theoretically, SCO has a threat. SGI even pointed it out for us when they noticed that they unknowingly put some code that was part of SysV (although apparently a lot of that stuff dated back to BSD and as such SCO has no authority over). However, nobody who runs linux can be held responsible for it. Only IBM can be, or anybody with any evidence that this infringement occurred. As no evidence has been introduced and SCO has done nothing to mitigate their losses, they can't expect people like Google or Red Hat or any of the Fortune 5000 companies they seem to be threatening to be at all liable to anything that IBM may have intentionally or inadvertantly done. To demand that they be held liable despite any mitigating is absurd. They can't order anything prior to the filing of the lawsuit with IBM because even they didn't know about it, and they can't order anything after it because they refused to offer any type of evidence that it actually happened. They merely said wait. And they're using that waiting time to commit as much extortion and drive up their stock price. This sounds suspiciously similar to the dot-com strategy. Screw how the company's actually doing, let's say something big is coming and people will invest!
I'm not too keen to believe that SCO is actually right and IBM did actually put proprietary code into linux, but it is possible. If it is true though, then SCO's behaviour makes absolutely no sense. Why go suing and demanding money from people who have absolutely nothing to do with this? Why all the contradicting statements? Why such reluctance to produce evidence? Why get annoyed with IBM and tell them to incriminate themselves for them? Why go after GOOGLE of all things? If anything, this screams "Last ditch try-to-get-bought effort" surrounded with extortion. I hope none of this gets settled anywhere other than in court because the tactics SCO has given are inexcusable.
What use is the SCO stock when their lawsuit is about to crumble and they're shown to be the idiots that they are? Unless google sells the SCO stock immediately, in which case SCO drops back down and solves absolutely nothing. So how is this win-win for SCO? Someone gets fucked when the IBM case and the Red Hat case come to fruition. If it isn't IBM or Red Hat, it's Google given your scenario.
I think it's far more realistic that google, having what I'd expect a strong pulse on the industry, would see google as the hoardes of slashdotters see it: a sinking ship. And they'll want no part of it.
Eliminate all sense of justice and do exactly what SCO wanted when they started this bloody tirade. If Google did that, I'd recommend IBM buy google and cancel the sale just to send the message: You guys are manipulating the system and we're not going to stand for it.
I want to see SCO go down hard and fast. Only way to do this is to let the world see them with their pants down. You have to hit them hard enough that they don't want to get back up, and that nobody will ever stand for such blatant FUD. If SCO was bought, Darl gets heralded as the saviour of SCO, because it seems they weren't doing squat for decency and now they managed to get bought out at prices about 3 times higher than they were at prior to this whole debacle.
Buying SCO out gives no sense of justice whatsoever. I'd rather not let the bad guys win.
FBI Rancher and FBI Washington are still my favourite Rampage machines. Save the tank I've got for emergencies. And Patriots are nice for severe beef. My default location for getting loaded up pre-cop-assault is Phil Cassidy's.
Problem I had with GTA 3 was that it followed too religiously some pointers from San Fran... flat intersection between downhill spurts of street.
VC had a lot nicer texturing (well, duh...) but, yeah, I'd like to see more general hills and the like to launch myself off of than to rely on ramps and whatnot for unique stunts.
A swim engine would be nice too.... VC pissed me off because I had this cokehead who could run almost as fast as a Cheetah (car, not animal) but would die the second he got under water.
Slashdot Mirror
My attitude on this matter so far has always been the same.
Free Market.
Face it. The music industry in its current form is dead. The only reason that they're getting away with suing people is because the government is letting them with crap like the DMCA, something I personally think was entirely developped to stunt the inevitable change of the global market.
CDs are obsolete as a distribution form. The internet is cheaper, quicker, easier. CDs used to be a marketable product: People wanted music in a decent high-quality format and CDs were the best thing available for it.
But now that's changed. CDs are no longer worth the same money that we pay for it because it has less value. So why are the governments bending over for the music industry and outright saying "I don't care what they're worth now. They were worth $20 20 years ago, they should be so now too."
When Henry Ford invented the assembly line, cars dropped radically in price. We're looking at the new economic revolution, and it's digital. An exceptionally cheap means of distibuting any digital media, be it software, music, videos or anything along the way. But the fact that it's not patentable or marketable has a lot of these now obsolete industries going crazy. Granted, the software industry always had to cope with this, and Microsoft did a great job at it by basically cramming their product down everybody's throats to the point of dependency. But the fact of the matter is that these distributors of software and data are becoming more and more obsolete the more accessible stuff is becoming through digital media.
And of course, lobbying seems to have forced the government's hand to agree with them, and so technology as we know it isn't being given the breathing room it needs to flourish, and so these companies are refusing to adapt, with disasterous results: Suing 12 year old girls, awful mediocre music giving us outright reason to stop listening to radios and stop buying CDs, buggy software with no less than 3 major worms in the last year hitting a bunch of people and making everybody pissed off with their computers (honestly. Your computer didn't do anything wrong. It did exactly what it was supposed to in that situation. Maybe next time you'll think twice before you shell out $150 to those boys in Redmond).
But of course, in this so called "Capitalist" society we're going to completely refuse the concept of the Open Market because it seems now that people will actually have to play the game of supply and demand instead of venture into Count-Zero like mafia-war tactics of Big Business. And of course we can't let that happen because... well... I can't think of any reason other than to let the rich get richer. 1984 here we come!
This is why I support open software. This is why I download my music. This is why I waste hours on the internet trying to learn as much as possible about computers. Because I ultimately want to help this world progress into something better than it is now, rather than let it perpetuate itself into staleness.
In that case I recommend you turn off your tv.
I saw an ad for iLife just yesterday in a magazine. I've also seen plenty of Apple billboards in the past as well as the present. And not to mention all the pree press it gets on the internet.
Advertising and marketing is more than tv spots.
You can license open source software as well. There are plenty of them out there. It's called the GPL and the LGPL and the BSD License and the countless other ones that are out there that involve distributing source code with the product to the consumers.
Saying all OSS falls under the GPL is both misleading and naive.
Open source means the consumer can look at the code and modify as deemed appropriate in order to better access their needs. It's cutting the middle man of "systems analyst" out of the equation. If you dislike the software, you can fix it or contract someone to fix it more to your specifications. Then systems become based on user needs rather than vendors dictating to the users what they need. It's how a free market works.
(remember, open source does not mean free as in beer)
The main key is whether or not source goes to joe average end user. Windows isn't open source on the basis that the people who USE Windows aren't entitled to the source code. Linux cannot be distributed WITHOUT making the source code readily available under the GPL, hence it's open source.
Sure, used CD stores will phase out vinyl, but there are plenty vinyl-only stores around there. In Vancouver, BC I can think of about 5 offhand (Otis, Bassix, one down the hall from Puff on Robson, One down on Commercial, and Boomtown) that all do business. Like I said, purists and DJs hail these places as mecca. Sadly though it'd only work in large cities where you'd have a large concentration of those people.
But trust me. Small independant record stores have a user base they aren't about to lose to Big Box stores or Napster any day.
Used Vinyl != your typical music store.
Used Vinyl stores are still meccas for purists and DJs. They will forever remain alive.
Reminds me of a troll on another forum I was on. When I wrote "viri" he responded with "IT'S SPELLED VIRII" and other such flames. I was amused, because in latin, the singular "us" is pluralized to "i", so virus would be viri.
Funniest thing is the plural of "virus" is "viruses".
Yes, and the biggest irony of it all is the moderation it would/will get would be "Off-topic".
Ah, Slashdot.
So what we're looking for is a tar file that is self-untarring, which gets us back to shell scripts, which gets us back to text files....
Woo! The virus that gives a buffer overload to the person writing it!
6 3.5"s + net install = debian.
To: Luser (whoever@blah.com)
From: Hax0r (jeffk@somethingawful.com)
Subject: *nix virus
This is the only known Virus that works on all *nix systems. Please forward this to everybody on your list and delete all the files on your harddrive. Thank you.
(Or something to that effect)
See, though, all the Windows Zealots do is post of Slashdot that all people who use Linux are zealots. And then the Linux Zealots come in and give facts to back up their arguments that Linux Is Better. Then the Windows Zealots start mentioning playing Counterstrike or something on Linux. Then the Linux Zealots mention WineX. Then the Windows Zealots mention that it doesn't handle everything, then the BSD Zealots start laughing at them, and then the Windows Zealots and Linux Zealots shout "SHUT UP! NOBODY USES BSD ANYMORE!" and then SCO sues them all.
In the end, Linux has always proven to be a more stable system (I have yet to hear of ANY windows system with a single uptime of more than a month) and the current state of the exploits IE is churning out is a good indicator of that. I remember hearing about the last Samba exploit about 5 hours after I had already patched it. In the end, all operating systems have their advantages and disadvantages. My personal experience states I prefer Linux just on the basis that:
a) I like the CLI (bash is my friend)
2) Price can't be beat.
iii) Open source = nice. I like the philosophy as a developer-in-training and as such will support OSS as much as I can. Linux just happens to be the best open-source OS I can find.
Four) SSH is also my friend.
It may be a Windows virus, but that doesn't negate that it might have been written by a Linux zealot in an attempt to show the world how unstable and bloody silly Microsoft's code is. In fact, that would make the most sense to me.
Thing is, even though it's a Linux zealot doing this, I don't blame Linux users, in the same way that I don't blame the American Government's dropping bombs on all kinds of Third-World countries (as they have been consistently for the last, what, 20 years now?) on every single American out there.
Native is a very specific concept actually. If you can take a piece of code in its very base-bones assembler 1s and 0s and put it through a processor and obtain the expected result, it processes that code natively. If not, then it can't. Itanium cannot process 32-bit code natively. It needs an emulator which trades those 1s and 0s to a different format that the itanium can read (thus changing the input to the processor) and then the processor can read it. Obviously emulation would take a lot more clock cycles than native performance, and thus speed is greatly improved when using native processing as opposed to emulated.
Excellent crack you're smoking there. Mind if you tell me where you got it?
Works fine for me
After all, the best way to solve a problem is to reverse the polarity.
Actually, no, it's ejecting the core. But every time that they're in such a tight spot that the core actually needs ejecting the ejector isn't working, so they have to find some other solution, like say reversing the polarity, in order to save their asses. Personally I think that fixing the ejector so that it will work under extreme pressure would be a good idea. Heh. They can hold electrons into place but they still can't make a spring work. *sigh*
Music almost worth giving the RIAA money over
So, let me get this straight:
A company, say Microsoft, starts making a bunch of good decisions insofar as the slashdot community is concerned, and everybody says "MICROSOFT BAD! LINUX GOOD!" then they get jumped on for being zealots.
Now a company that formerly gave us countless headaches seems to shed its skin and starts helping out the open source community, and we're supposed to remember the past? How in God's name can these companies win our approval? What the hell do they have to do? If this is the case then I applaud Microsoft for everything they've been doing because it seems they understand that no matter how much they try to placate the Development Community they're not going to be liked by them.
This is stupid in my opinion. Why shouldn't we praise companies for making intelligent and helpful decisions? Basic operant conditioning would recommend that if we support IBM when they support us, then they will continue to support us in the future because it's looked upon as a Good Thing. So rather than just reminding yourself of how Evil IBM used to be, why not take note that hey... looks like they're making some good decisions. Why must we always look gifthorses in the mouth?
First of all, I wouldn't call P. Diddy (or whatever his name of the week is) or 50 cent pioneers of hip hop. And hip hop has NOT always been based on that. Sugarhill Gang was really the first to do it and they did it rather well, so much so that Rapper's Delight was a VERY different song from Good Times. And I dare you to find anybody who isn't a Run DMC afficianado realize that It's Tricky borrowed guitar lines from My Sharona.
Hip Hop evolved off the streets with what instruments they had, namely records and their voices. So they'd write poetry, and "rap" it overtop their favourite beats. Funk was big in Black culture, as well as useful for rapping as it was a lot of bassline and not so much lyrics, in the 70s and as such was used frequently. And eventually the DJs started manipulating their turntables to do little tricks, like varying the electrical input to change pitch and using their hands to backspin and play with little samples of music, known as "scratching".
Now, I'm not disagreeing with you that most modern hip hop is blatant plagiarism of other people's work, regardless of whether or not it's authorized. But to outright disclaim the entire genre just because of some people who achieve market prominence in the last 10 years who happen to be talentless hacks seems about as silly as to say that Punk is stupid because you dislike Sum 41. Or that Rock sucks because you dislike Linkin Park.
Citigroup being the biggest Pyramid scheme in the world, and nobody seems to be complaining too much about them.
As far as I understand, linux has many copywrites in a file-by-file basis. For instance, kernel/fork.c is copywrited to Linus, but I'd imagine the people who built the original versions of the files and whatnot have probably copywrited the code to themselves.
A buddy of mine who's on the kernel contributors list was wondering if he'd send a bill to SCO since they use linux, distribute linux, and it contains his copywrited code. Doesn't work too well considering he's the one who knowingly placed the code under the GPL and as such it is allowed to be redistributed sans charge as much as whoever has the code wants to.
Theoretically, SCO has a threat. SGI even pointed it out for us when they noticed that they unknowingly put some code that was part of SysV (although apparently a lot of that stuff dated back to BSD and as such SCO has no authority over). However, nobody who runs linux can be held responsible for it. Only IBM can be, or anybody with any evidence that this infringement occurred. As no evidence has been introduced and SCO has done nothing to mitigate their losses, they can't expect people like Google or Red Hat or any of the Fortune 5000 companies they seem to be threatening to be at all liable to anything that IBM may have intentionally or inadvertantly done. To demand that they be held liable despite any mitigating is absurd. They can't order anything prior to the filing of the lawsuit with IBM because even they didn't know about it, and they can't order anything after it because they refused to offer any type of evidence that it actually happened. They merely said wait. And they're using that waiting time to commit as much extortion and drive up their stock price. This sounds suspiciously similar to the dot-com strategy. Screw how the company's actually doing, let's say something big is coming and people will invest!
I'm not too keen to believe that SCO is actually right and IBM did actually put proprietary code into linux, but it is possible. If it is true though, then SCO's behaviour makes absolutely no sense. Why go suing and demanding money from people who have absolutely nothing to do with this? Why all the contradicting statements? Why such reluctance to produce evidence? Why get annoyed with IBM and tell them to incriminate themselves for them? Why go after GOOGLE of all things? If anything, this screams "Last ditch try-to-get-bought effort" surrounded with extortion. I hope none of this gets settled anywhere other than in court because the tactics SCO has given are inexcusable.
What use is the SCO stock when their lawsuit is about to crumble and they're shown to be the idiots that they are? Unless google sells the SCO stock immediately, in which case SCO drops back down and solves absolutely nothing. So how is this win-win for SCO? Someone gets fucked when the IBM case and the Red Hat case come to fruition. If it isn't IBM or Red Hat, it's Google given your scenario.
I think it's far more realistic that google, having what I'd expect a strong pulse on the industry, would see google as the hoardes of slashdotters see it: a sinking ship. And they'll want no part of it.
Eliminate all sense of justice and do exactly what SCO wanted when they started this bloody tirade. If Google did that, I'd recommend IBM buy google and cancel the sale just to send the message: You guys are manipulating the system and we're not going to stand for it.
I want to see SCO go down hard and fast. Only way to do this is to let the world see them with their pants down. You have to hit them hard enough that they don't want to get back up, and that nobody will ever stand for such blatant FUD. If SCO was bought, Darl gets heralded as the saviour of SCO, because it seems they weren't doing squat for decency and now they managed to get bought out at prices about 3 times higher than they were at prior to this whole debacle.
Buying SCO out gives no sense of justice whatsoever. I'd rather not let the bad guys win.
But I could honestly see them do stuff like that.
Props to the developers for this series. Honest. It's fucking attention to detail is amazing, and I can only hope for more in future installments.
It's called "Steal it from the Feds."
FBI Rancher and FBI Washington are still my favourite Rampage machines. Save the tank I've got for emergencies. And Patriots are nice for severe beef. My default location for getting loaded up pre-cop-assault is Phil Cassidy's.
Problem I had with GTA 3 was that it followed too religiously some pointers from San Fran... flat intersection between downhill spurts of street.
VC had a lot nicer texturing (well, duh...) but, yeah, I'd like to see more general hills and the like to launch myself off of than to rely on ramps and whatnot for unique stunts.
A swim engine would be nice too.... VC pissed me off because I had this cokehead who could run almost as fast as a Cheetah (car, not animal) but would die the second he got under water.