Considering what Mainsoft did for a living, its my guess that the leaked code only relates to API calls and such. I saw one report that said the source is 'largely composed of the source of MS Paint', which, at 600Mb, seems quite unlikely to me. My money is on the former - that'd probably only help projects such as WINE and WINEX (and it owuld likely help them a lot, I'd guess. but there's no legal way they can look at it, I think)
I've given this topic considerable thought, and here are the possible conclusions I've reached.
1) MS will use this source leak in the future to claim that various open source projects (Samba, Gnome, KDE, OpenOffice(?), linux) that get new features which MS finds competitive are 'derivative' works, regardless of whether or not the developers actually looked at the source. 2) There will be enough people looking at this source for large portions of the code's functionality essentially entering into 'public domain', with people writing up how the components work. It will be essentially impossible for anyone to do 'virgin' development on 'windows-like' features for anything, as the information on precisely what the Windows version does will only be 2 steps of association from the programmer. 3) MS will pull a 'patent' or 'trade secret' violation claim on Samba/Linux/GNOME/KDE, in addition to pulling the.NET framework out from underneath the Linux community (by claiming patent infringement again). Two shovels of dirt on the grave of linux.
From my interpretation, this all seems quite feasable given current legal atmosphere. Any lawyers here have a comment on this?
The best thing that MS could do is release this code, themselves, under a license of some sort which allows code submissions and modifications, without negative implications for the modifiers (if they can, in fact, do so themselves due to contracts with other folks).
Maybe that way they'll get some white hats looking at their code, offering fixes, and actually improving their software, instead of the currently likely scenario where only black hats (worm writers, spammers, and the like) will look at it.
Hrm. That seems contrary to my understanding of 'copyright'. If you might clarify some things for me, it'd be appreciated.
Let's say my neighbor invents a Humdinger, and markets it. I buy one, take it appart, and notice some flaws in it. I then make some modifications (improving it), and start marketing my own Humdinger, but under a different name. From what I recall about -copyright- law, this is perfectly permissible. It's patent law that this would be a violation under; correct?
It seems to me that if I were to see the source code to Windows, and then write a work-alike that is more efficient (or even less efficient, for crying out loud), this should be permissible - under copyright law. However, since there are patents involved, it would not be OK, in some respects.
Totally awesome. I beat Halo two nights ago (or so - took roughly 14 hours to beat. now I just want to beat the level designer), and I can tell you: there are some definite vehicular comparisions.
The "scorpion" in UT2k4 is a lot like the warthog, only better: it only takes a single person to drive it and shoot, and you can shoot/aim with your mouse while you steer/drive with the keyboard. maneuverability is a little bit less, but that's not much of a complaint - it feels nearly identical, seriously. Oh, and one more thing: the scorpion definately trumps the warthog, if for no other reason: the retractable 'blades' that pop out with alternate fire. we're talking about a 30+' driving blade. Makes vehicular homicide fairly easy.:P
The fliers are also quite fun. IMO, the vehicles in general are better than Tribes and Tribes 2... I kept expecting my character to jump higher, and tried to use the jetpack, however - it feels that similar at times.:) I can't wait for Tribes Vengeance. That will rock the house!
I've not yet gotten to play the game online - it appears that by the time I was comfortable enough with the 'single player' mode of the demo, you folks slashdotted the servers.:P My brother played it yesterday for a couple hours, however, and said that the network code sucked, even with a low latency: he'd get lag and disconnects, particularly when he was driving a vehicle. Anyone else experience that?
Canon products are superb. Sony isn't even close in their consumer market.
A year or so back I spent a couple days reviewing camcorders at Best Buy, Electronics Botique, etc., then bringing the tape home and messing around with seeing what was best.
A couple things I liked about Canon camcorders:
- image stabilization (it works wonderfully, and is a great thing to have for those who don't want to carry around a tripod or such) - nice, crisp images (I bought a camcorder that was made prior to Canon's 'new' image quality technology they've been marketing. it's still better than the competition - bright colors and good darkness compensation - small, well designed, and sturdy - interchangeable batteries with other Canon products - (generally) standard lenses and filter attachments
I'd recommend buying a canon ZR miniDV camcorder, as they're small, sturdy, have good battery life, and fit nicely in a day pack. They're easily palmable.
I recently got a Canon Powershot G5. I'm equally impressed with it. I can use my ZR battery (511) in my Powershot, and vice versa. Very nice.
Canon is, IMO, the quality peer of IBM in the camera world.
What logic, if any, are you using in determining that the US "can't have it both ways": keeping high-paying jobs and having a global presence?
Global economy is not the same as globalism. Every powerful empire since the beginning of time has had a global economy where they are the largest benifactors. You don't read about Rome sending all of their traders and merchants to other countries, do you? No, of course not.
Back when CS was in versions beta 5 - 1.2, I was an avid player. I went from sucking quite a bit (anywhere from mediocre to poor online), to frequently getting accused of cheating (around beta 7) due to owning up on everyone. Then I started sucking horribly again - to the point where I'd have games with 0-20 scores. Maybe I got bored, I don't know. I then basically gave up and only played on occasion.
Even with all the cheaters in CS nowadays, I'll occasionally fire the beast up and play for half an hour or so. I don't game, really anymore (under an hour a week, probably, on average), but when I do play, I'll have scores along the lines of 20-3.
Yes, that's just what we need - every Joe, Shmoe, and Harry that surfs the web to start thinking he's hot shit on Sunday because he's a "programmer", and now he can go out and grab one of those elite tech jobs!
Of course, knowing the stupidity of HR, they'll likely get hired.
the clothing industry? the music industry? the software industry as a whole? or any number of other industries?
It isn't. Granted, there's some protectionism in there (clothing industry) so as to allow for such inflation, but that's largely how it sits. All the money floats to the top, too.
Hrm. personally, I suspect that the crippling would instead bundle -more- MS applications, and remove the ability to run things like, oh, something that competes with MS Publisher or MS Blah.
I wonder what exactly 'reduced functionality' will mean? No more 'security loopholes' allowing 'power users' to use machines as remote gateways?:P
Kidding aside, I wonder what exactly they plan on stripping out. Personally (as others here have mentioned as well), I'd love to see a version of XP, minus all the GUI tweaks, 'tools' that nobody uses (sans defrag), IE, WMP, and the like. I imagine that, if it's in the least bit operable, and it's available in English, it would see widespread pirating due to the suckyness of XP.
Then again, it might just be their way of saying it's going to have fully implimented DRM:P
Most Americans will also tell you that there's no need to know a second language, that the very act of going to college itself is an important part of growing up, and that computers are tempermental.
Many of them might actually go on to tell you that the state of the stock market actually gets determined by the president ("market is up! president is good!", or "market is down, president is bad!"), or that spending massive amounts of money on road repair (something that doesn't really need to be done anyway) is a Good Thing, as it provides jobs, when large numbers of jobs are being shipped overseas, and no new jobs are being created.
I've found that Abekka is great up to high school for everything, but kind of drops the ball with mathematics starting at around 7th or 8th grade.
Saxon math books are much better, though they are also a lot more expensive. They're a perrenial favorite of home schoolers, both parents and students, as they cover quite a lot of ground, and by the time a student graduates high school, they'll very likely actually remember everything - and well - as nothing is disgarded, and all lessons are truely incrimental. Instead of having a 'review' section for previous lessons, there's a 5 (or so) exercise section with easy problems from that lesson, and then 30 problems from previous chapters that get cycled through - the newer stuff as a lower number, and the older stuff as a higher number. The student's recollection of the material determines how many problems they actually have to do (if you're oding things wisely, in a home setting). Quite excellent. I'll likely be using Saxon math books with my son when he's old enough.
Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to go through all 4 years of high school with Saxon.
You should know better than to ask a bunch of geeks what a girlfriend should get for her boyfriend. The obvious answer will more than likely be: a blowjob, sex, unobligated sex of his type choice (my vote:P), and "Just feed and water him, he should be OK".
However, in terms of gadgetry, I'd have to put up for these as particularly good products:
Arc-AAA LED Flashlight (they look damned cool and industrial, and are incredible little lights - possibly the AA model, depends on what you're going for) Kershaw folding knife (I personally like knives; he may not. However, there are a lot of things you can do with a knife that most folks don't think about. You might find that getting him a Swiss Army knife (or leatherman's tool) would be more appropriate to his tastes) a flight watch - you might be able to find one of these at sub-100$ prices, I'm not sure. Flight watches have lots of nice dials and such that are sure to entertain him; a nice timepiece is fun to wear, IMO. possibly something like a dremmel - it depends on how much he's into making things; it's possible he already has one, though.
Remember, the cardinal rule when buying gifts for guys, and geek guys in particular is: the exact opposite when shopping for woman. If it's not practical, we don't want it (more often than not). Don't waste your time/money on a card; they're impractical and don't mean anything unless you wrote it/made it yourself anyway.
I'd probably say it's harder to shop for men, as there's got to be a balance met amongst various factors: practicality, whether the person could/would use it, and the "nice to have" factor: sure, you could use a sexy looking flashlight, but a 10$ from kmart would probably do just fine: a nice one like the one above shows you care.
IMO.:P Of course, doting on him and making him dinner or such would likely be just as appreciated, if not more so: not many typical geeks spend their time cooking. Show him how cool and counter-culture you are (valentine's day is typically a "guy sweats blood trying to please the female, for hopes that she'll appreciate his efforts" affair), and break some rules.
I'll agree with you completely. Public schools in general put the lowest priority on grammar; in reality, it's probably one of the most important things you could learn in high school (at least as a scholastic skill that can be quantified).
I attended a private school my sophmore year of HS. That was an incredibly difficult year for me, as the english class was quite intense in teaching the nuances of the english language (at least compared to anything I'd seen prior, or have seen since).
For basic grammar, we used Abekka books. They had the basic "underline this part of speech, circle that" problems, but in addition, there was a huge amount of space dedicated to things such as common mistakes that most people make (your|you're, its|it's, who|whom, nauseated|nauseous, etc. etc. - I've forgotten most of the specifics by now, but I have the feeling I'm still aware of most of them through basic osmosis)).
Additionally, we had latin roots, prefixes and suffixes (probably 20 or so a week combined) as well as 20 or so 3-sylabilic+ words and at least 1 book a week from the library (which didn't have shit rags like Hardy Boys in it). It was quite the course load.
If they're judging screenplays, it's one thing. A completed film is something else entirely.
Not only do you have the script, but you also have the work of the (voice) actors, the editors ( a massive undertaking, and quite undervalued my most people that have never done it), the soundtrack composer, the director (definately a biggie, particularly when considering an auteur director), and a miriad of othre factors thrown in.
Think of what any one of Quentin Tarantino's films would be like if he hadn't directed them; say they were directed by someone like Lucas or . They'd all have been shit, because for the most part, the scripts he uses don't stand out too much on their own. Each element makes up the sum of a film's quality.
Slashdot Mirror
That's a good point.
Considering what Mainsoft did for a living, its my guess that the leaked code only relates to API calls and such. I saw one report that said the source is 'largely composed of the source of MS Paint', which, at 600Mb, seems quite unlikely to me. My money is on the former - that'd probably only help projects such as WINE and WINEX (and it owuld likely help them a lot, I'd guess. but there's no legal way they can look at it, I think)
I've given this topic considerable thought, and here are the possible conclusions I've reached.
.NET framework out from underneath the Linux community (by claiming patent infringement again). Two shovels of dirt on the grave of linux.
1) MS will use this source leak in the future to claim that various open source projects (Samba, Gnome, KDE, OpenOffice(?), linux) that get new features which MS finds competitive are 'derivative' works, regardless of whether or not the developers actually looked at the source.
2) There will be enough people looking at this source for large portions of the code's functionality essentially entering into 'public domain', with people writing up how the components work. It will be essentially impossible for anyone to do 'virgin' development on 'windows-like' features for anything, as the information on precisely what the Windows version does will only be 2 steps of association from the programmer.
3) MS will pull a 'patent' or 'trade secret' violation claim on Samba/Linux/GNOME/KDE, in addition to pulling the
From my interpretation, this all seems quite feasable given current legal atmosphere. Any lawyers here have a comment on this?
The best thing that MS could do is release this code, themselves, under a license of some sort which allows code submissions and modifications, without negative implications for the modifiers (if they can, in fact, do so themselves due to contracts with other folks).
Maybe that way they'll get some white hats looking at their code, offering fixes, and actually improving their software, instead of the currently likely scenario where only black hats (worm writers, spammers, and the like) will look at it.
Hrm. That seems contrary to my understanding of 'copyright'. If you might clarify some things for me, it'd be appreciated.
Let's say my neighbor invents a Humdinger, and markets it. I buy one, take it appart, and notice some flaws in it. I then make some modifications (improving it), and start marketing my own Humdinger, but under a different name. From what I recall about -copyright- law, this is perfectly permissible. It's patent law that this would be a violation under; correct?
It seems to me that if I were to see the source code to Windows, and then write a work-alike that is more efficient (or even less efficient, for crying out loud), this should be permissible - under copyright law. However, since there are patents involved, it would not be OK, in some respects.
Hahaha you rock!
My take on the whole matter: Blow. (ie, I couldn't care less. It'll just speed up the inevitable - switching to linux.)
I wonder how many shops will rush migration from Windows to Linux (if it is indeed possible in their shop)? I'm guessing quite a few.
haha, that freaking rocks :P
thanks, you made my day.
Totally awesome. I beat Halo two nights ago (or so - took roughly 14 hours to beat. now I just want to beat the level designer), and I can tell you: there are some definite vehicular comparisions.
:P
:) I can't wait for Tribes Vengeance. That will rock the house!
:P My brother played it yesterday for a couple hours, however, and said that the network code sucked, even with a low latency: he'd get lag and disconnects, particularly when he was driving a vehicle. Anyone else experience that?
The "scorpion" in UT2k4 is a lot like the warthog, only better: it only takes a single person to drive it and shoot, and you can shoot/aim with your mouse while you steer/drive with the keyboard. maneuverability is a little bit less, but that's not much of a complaint - it feels nearly identical, seriously. Oh, and one more thing: the scorpion definately trumps the warthog, if for no other reason: the retractable 'blades' that pop out with alternate fire. we're talking about a 30+' driving blade. Makes vehicular homicide fairly easy.
The fliers are also quite fun. IMO, the vehicles in general are better than Tribes and Tribes 2... I kept expecting my character to jump higher, and tried to use the jetpack, however - it feels that similar at times.
I've not yet gotten to play the game online - it appears that by the time I was comfortable enough with the 'single player' mode of the demo, you folks slashdotted the servers.
Not bloody likely.
Block mail ports? You just made the service useless for 99% of travelers.
Not really. Sony might 'have' those features, but they're definately inferior, at a much higher price.
pure, undillute genius. good work, guys. :P
I'll keep that tactic in mind for future reference.
two words: spammers' gateway
Canon products are superb. Sony isn't even close in their consumer market.
A year or so back I spent a couple days reviewing camcorders at Best Buy, Electronics Botique, etc., then bringing the tape home and messing around with seeing what was best.
A couple things I liked about Canon camcorders:
- image stabilization (it works wonderfully, and is a great thing to have for those who don't want to carry around a tripod or such)
- nice, crisp images (I bought a camcorder that was made prior to Canon's 'new' image quality technology they've been marketing. it's still better than the competition
- bright colors and good darkness compensation
- small, well designed, and sturdy
- interchangeable batteries with other Canon products
- (generally) standard lenses and filter attachments
I'd recommend buying a canon ZR miniDV camcorder, as they're small, sturdy, have good battery life, and fit nicely in a day pack. They're easily palmable.
I recently got a Canon Powershot G5. I'm equally impressed with it. I can use my ZR battery (511) in my Powershot, and vice versa. Very nice.
Canon is, IMO, the quality peer of IBM in the camera world.
What logic, if any, are you using in determining that the US "can't have it both ways": keeping high-paying jobs and having a global presence?
Global economy is not the same as globalism. Every powerful empire since the beginning of time has had a global economy where they are the largest benifactors. You don't read about Rome sending all of their traders and merchants to other countries, do you? No, of course not.
Hrm, I odn't know about that.
Back when CS was in versions beta 5 - 1.2, I was an avid player. I went from sucking quite a bit (anywhere from mediocre to poor online), to frequently getting accused of cheating (around beta 7) due to owning up on everyone. Then I started sucking horribly again - to the point where I'd have games with 0-20 scores. Maybe I got bored, I don't know. I then basically gave up and only played on occasion.
Even with all the cheaters in CS nowadays, I'll occasionally fire the beast up and play for half an hour or so. I don't game, really anymore (under an hour a week, probably, on average), but when I do play, I'll have scores along the lines of 20-3.
Yes, that's just what we need - every Joe, Shmoe, and Harry that surfs the web to start thinking he's hot shit on Sunday because he's a "programmer", and now he can go out and grab one of those elite tech jobs!
Of course, knowing the stupidity of HR, they'll likely get hired.
How is this different than,
the clothing industry?
the music industry?
the software industry as a whole?
or any number of other industries?
It isn't. Granted, there's some protectionism in there (clothing industry) so as to allow for such inflation, but that's largely how it sits. All the money floats to the top, too.
Hrm. personally, I suspect that the crippling would instead bundle -more- MS applications, and remove the ability to run things like, oh, something that competes with MS Publisher or MS Blah.
I wonder what exactly 'reduced functionality' will mean? No more 'security loopholes' allowing 'power users' to use machines as remote gateways? :P
:P
Kidding aside, I wonder what exactly they plan on stripping out. Personally (as others here have mentioned as well), I'd love to see a version of XP, minus all the GUI tweaks, 'tools' that nobody uses (sans defrag), IE, WMP, and the like. I imagine that, if it's in the least bit operable, and it's available in English, it would see widespread pirating due to the suckyness of XP.
Then again, it might just be their way of saying it's going to have fully implimented DRM
You have classic stupid poster syndrome. The article clearly states,
Mr McBean added that the first release would essentially be XP Home edition with some reduced functionality,
Most Americans will also tell you that there's no need to know a second language, that the very act of going to college itself is an important part of growing up, and that computers are tempermental.
Many of them might actually go on to tell you that the state of the stock market actually gets determined by the president ("market is up! president is good!", or "market is down, president is bad!"), or that spending massive amounts of money on road repair (something that doesn't really need to be done anyway) is a Good Thing, as it provides jobs, when large numbers of jobs are being shipped overseas, and no new jobs are being created.
I've found that Abekka is great up to high school for everything, but kind of drops the ball with mathematics starting at around 7th or 8th grade.
Saxon math books are much better, though they are also a lot more expensive. They're a perrenial favorite of home schoolers, both parents and students, as they cover quite a lot of ground, and by the time a student graduates high school, they'll very likely actually remember everything - and well - as nothing is disgarded, and all lessons are truely incrimental. Instead of having a 'review' section for previous lessons, there's a 5 (or so) exercise section with easy problems from that lesson, and then 30 problems from previous chapters that get cycled through - the newer stuff as a lower number, and the older stuff as a higher number. The student's recollection of the material determines how many problems they actually have to do (if you're oding things wisely, in a home setting). Quite excellent. I'll likely be using Saxon math books with my son when he's old enough.
Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to go through all 4 years of high school with Saxon.
nauseous|nauseating are essentially the same in meaning. You'll note my list mentioned words that are often confused and used in the wrong situations.
:P
So I did indeed mean neauseated|nauseous: If I'm neauseated, then I'm feeling ill; if I'm nauseous, I'm making others feel ill.
You should know better than to ask a bunch of geeks what a girlfriend should get for her boyfriend. The obvious answer will more than likely be: a blowjob, sex, unobligated sex of his type choice (my vote :P), and "Just feed and water him, he should be OK".
:P Of course, doting on him and making him dinner or such would likely be just as appreciated, if not more so: not many typical geeks spend their time cooking. Show him how cool and counter-culture you are (valentine's day is typically a "guy sweats blood trying to please the female, for hopes that she'll appreciate his efforts" affair), and break some rules.
However, in terms of gadgetry, I'd have to put up for these as particularly good products:
Arc-AAA LED Flashlight (they look damned cool and industrial, and are incredible little lights - possibly the AA model, depends on what you're going for)
Kershaw folding knife (I personally like knives; he may not. However, there are a lot of things you can do with a knife that most folks don't think about. You might find that getting him a Swiss Army knife (or leatherman's tool) would be more appropriate to his tastes)
a flight watch - you might be able to find one of these at sub-100$ prices, I'm not sure. Flight watches have lots of nice dials and such that are sure to entertain him; a nice timepiece is fun to wear, IMO.
possibly something like a dremmel - it depends on how much he's into making things; it's possible he already has one, though.
Remember, the cardinal rule when buying gifts for guys, and geek guys in particular is: the exact opposite when shopping for woman. If it's not practical, we don't want it (more often than not). Don't waste your time/money on a card; they're impractical and don't mean anything unless you wrote it/made it yourself anyway.
I'd probably say it's harder to shop for men, as there's got to be a balance met amongst various factors: practicality, whether the person could/would use it, and the "nice to have" factor: sure, you could use a sexy looking flashlight, but a 10$ from kmart would probably do just fine: a nice one like the one above shows you care.
IMO.
I'll agree with you completely. Public schools in general put the lowest priority on grammar; in reality, it's probably one of the most important things you could learn in high school (at least as a scholastic skill that can be quantified).
I attended a private school my sophmore year of HS. That was an incredibly difficult year for me, as the english class was quite intense in teaching the nuances of the english language (at least compared to anything I'd seen prior, or have seen since).
For basic grammar, we used Abekka books. They had the basic "underline this part of speech, circle that" problems, but in addition, there was a huge amount of space dedicated to things such as common mistakes that most people make (your|you're, its|it's, who|whom, nauseated|nauseous, etc. etc. - I've forgotten most of the specifics by now, but I have the feeling I'm still aware of most of them through basic osmosis)).
Additionally, we had latin roots, prefixes and suffixes (probably 20 or so a week combined) as well as 20 or so 3-sylabilic+ words and at least 1 book a week from the library (which didn't have shit rags like Hardy Boys in it). It was quite the course load.
If they're judging screenplays, it's one thing. A completed film is something else entirely.
Not only do you have the script, but you also have the work of the (voice) actors, the editors ( a massive undertaking, and quite undervalued my most people that have never done it), the soundtrack composer, the director (definately a biggie, particularly when considering an auteur director), and a miriad of othre factors thrown in.
Think of what any one of Quentin Tarantino's films would be like if he hadn't directed them; say they were directed by someone like Lucas or . They'd all have been shit, because for the most part, the scripts he uses don't stand out too much on their own. Each element makes up the sum of a film's quality.