Yes, but in the end the world simply isn't that great and simple a place.
Here in Europe, where the telecom companies have been largely unchallenged (the introduction of competition is pretty much a farce) and unregulated, and we have the high metered local phone calls, they are already introducing prices per megabyte transferred on the new DSL and Cable modem services so as not to make them a cheap option to metered modems and isdn. The prices are ridiculous (try 5.5 cents per megabyte on a 2 mb/s line), but have to be so that they won't cost less much less than the phone call for joe-smoe-surfer-the-web.
In America, you have to opposite situation, where because you have never been metered (well, not since the aol days anyways), and the companies are therefore offering DSL and cable at flat rates. Flat rates for lines of 2 megabit/s and above are just as ridiculous as cited Euro numbers however, it just won't hold.
I see the bandwidth problem amounting to a giant pyramid game, where everyone just wants more and more and without paying, and it is great for a while, but then suddenly you reach the threshold, and the whole shit comes falling down on your head.
The Internet's bandwidth needs to be a commodity so people begin realizing its worth, whatever it may be.
The world would not be were it is today without despotism and monarchy, without slavery and religious oppression, or without war and arms races. Just because these things have been important, I would even say necessary, for taking us to the level we are at today, does not mean that we should hold on to them.
Their is am undeniable fundamental opposition between Intellectual Property and freedom of thought, and if we don't decide where we want to be on this issue, we are heading for big trouble. As long as the flows of information in our society were limited and controlled, the system of IP worked, and only then by bare necessity. When information flows freely, not only does the infringement on freedom become clearer: enforcement becomes impossible. The only thing hanging on to Intellectual Property will do to our society is to our data networks what the "War on drugs" has done to our cities.
Ok, we are like way off topic here, but the shipment of goods is what I meant by practical rather than social changes. My reference was also to the personal automobile, but I guess in the strict sense of the word any self moving machine is an automobile..
One could debate about whether cars are necessary for suburbs (I live in the suburbs - I know I do because I just mowed the lawn - without a car and without problems), but even so, I don't exactly consider it a revolution of the way we live.
If Connectivity is just going do something equivalent of creating suburbs, we might as well cann it...
Also, I would say you are the one who can't see out of the box, only yours is big and named America...
The invention of the automobile changed society? Did I miss this somewhere, because I really can't see what big changes it has brought about except for practical ones.
But then I don't own a car or have driver license. I guess I'm just on the wrong continent to grasp this (or why every product needs its own song, or why guns are necessary for personal freedom, or etc ad infinum)...
Your the naive one if you think your government was doing this all along. What is happening is quite the contrary: suddenly we have the tools to protect us from their eyes, and they are using the most desperate of methods (like the rediculous crypto bans) to keep us from using them. And it is going to be their fall, not ours.
And credit cards have been around much longer than the Internet revolution (yes I know the net itself is older) has. They are not an IT, more like bad bagage that we _have_ to rid ourselves of.
This how the Swedish Internic has it, only registered (limited) companies can register domains, and only one a piece. The result? Well, someone discovered that the.nu domain of Nuie (South Pacific) means "now" in Swedish, so all the companies registered a hundred million domains there instead. Really smart.
Worst part is that it's some American lawyer who manages it, not the polynesians, who gets all the money...
If source code is speech, as was ruled earlier in the Crypto case, then where does that put Software Patents?
"This patent descibes a story where the hero gets screwed over big time by some bad guys, his love interest gets kidnapped, and he goes after the bad guys with a big gun, killing them, and getting the girl."
Or, as a less comfy thought, consider that Bills & Pauls of 70s are around today, that they are using Linux, and that they are just waiting to do to it what Bill & Paul did to the early PCs (copy, clone, fuck over till they bleed).
Actually, Zoid (who does the Linux ports of id's products) said several times during an IRC chat last week that he had Nvidias Linux glX driver and that he "hoped they would be released soon".
Don't worry people, in six months their won't be a serious peace of hardware (if a game accelerator is serious) that doesn't support Linux...
Most serious gamers don't want to sit on the floor of the tv room playing Mario 64 by themselves, the only type of gaming that is actually fun is multiplayer over the Internet.
Yeah, just compare getting Quake/Quake2 to run on Windows (you might have to download a file!) to getting it to run on Linux (where you only have to follow a 15 page HOWTO).
I love Linux as much as the next man, but I don't think our house is built for throwing stones about ease of installation.
Regarding the rental stuff, I love it. Once the crack comes out, I will never pay full price for a game again (same reason I support divX and SDMI).
The rational behind not going with Linux as a controle platform was that because of its varying and configurable nature (a good thing in general) it is harder for id to know what bugs are in there software and peoples setups.
Mac is one OS, one set of hardware, and one company.
The obvious downside is that most Linux users would probably be good at reporting the conditions of crashes and bugs, while the average mac use will write: "It does not work on my blueberry Mac but it does on my friends strawberry, fix it!"
The new G3s have Rage128 cards in them, which are almost (slightly lower clock) as good as the TNT and Voodoo2 cards for PCs. The old G3s and the iMacs run the shitty Pro (but so do some PCs).
Carmack even says this in the text, if you bothered reading it before going all "Maceristic" about any critism of the promised OS.
Also, all Quake3 benchmarks id have realesed from Quake3 show that the game is almost totally reliant on processors, not card fillrate, for performance, even on the highest level PCs....
Yes, but in the end the world simply isn't that great and simple a place.
Here in Europe, where the telecom companies have been largely unchallenged (the introduction of competition is pretty much a farce) and unregulated, and we have the high metered local phone calls, they are already introducing prices per megabyte transferred on the new DSL and Cable modem services so as not to make them a cheap option to metered modems and isdn. The prices are ridiculous (try 5.5 cents per megabyte on a 2 mb/s line), but have to be so that they won't cost less much less than the phone call for joe-smoe-surfer-the-web.
In America, you have to opposite situation, where because you have never been metered (well, not since the aol days anyways), and the companies are therefore offering DSL and cable at flat rates. Flat rates for lines of 2 megabit/s and above are just as ridiculous as cited Euro numbers however, it just won't hold.
I see the bandwidth problem amounting to a giant pyramid game, where everyone just wants more and more and without paying, and it is great for a while, but then suddenly you reach the threshold, and the whole shit comes falling down on your head.
The Internet's bandwidth needs to be a commodity so people begin realizing its worth, whatever it may be.
The world would not be were it is today without despotism and monarchy, without slavery and religious oppression, or without war and arms races. Just because these things have been important, I would even say necessary, for taking us to the level we are at today, does not mean that we should hold on to them.
Their is am undeniable fundamental opposition between Intellectual Property and freedom of thought, and if we don't decide where we want to be on this issue, we are heading for big trouble. As long as the flows of information in our society were limited and controlled, the system of IP worked, and only then by bare necessity. When information flows freely, not only does the infringement on freedom become clearer: enforcement becomes impossible. The only thing hanging on to Intellectual Property will do to our society is to our data networks what the "War on drugs" has done to our cities.
In matters of freedom, fuck the economy.
Ok, we are like way off topic here, but the shipment of goods is what I meant by practical rather than social changes. My reference was also to the personal automobile, but I guess in the strict sense of the word any self moving machine is an automobile..
One could debate about whether cars are necessary for suburbs (I live in the suburbs - I know I do because I just mowed the lawn - without a car and without problems), but even so, I don't exactly consider it a revolution of the way we live.
If Connectivity is just going do something equivalent of creating suburbs, we might as well cann it...
Also, I would say you are the one who can't see out of the box, only yours is big and named America...
The invention of the automobile changed society? Did I miss this somewhere, because I really can't see what big changes it has brought about except for practical ones.
But then I don't own a car or have driver license. I guess I'm just on the wrong continent to grasp this (or why every product needs its own song, or why guns are necessary for personal freedom, or etc ad infinum)...
Your the naive one if you think your government was doing this all along. What is happening is quite the contrary: suddenly we have the tools to protect us from their eyes, and they are using the most desperate of methods (like the rediculous crypto bans) to keep us from using them. And it is going to be their fall, not ours.
And credit cards have been around much longer than the Internet revolution (yes I know the net itself is older) has. They are not an IT, more like bad bagage that we _have_ to rid ourselves of.
This how the Swedish Internic has it, only registered (limited) companies can register domains, and only one a piece. The result? Well, someone discovered that the .nu domain of Nuie (South Pacific) means "now" in Swedish, so all the companies registered a hundred million domains there instead. Really smart.
Worst part is that it's some American lawyer who manages it, not the polynesians, who gets all the money...
What does "amicus curiae" mean?
If source code is speech, as was ruled earlier in the Crypto case, then where does that put Software Patents?
"This patent descibes a story where the hero gets screwed over big time by some bad guys, his love interest gets kidnapped, and he goes after the bad guys with a big gun, killing them, and getting the girl."
Sorry Hollywood!
Or, as a less comfy thought, consider that Bills & Pauls of 70s are around today, that they are using Linux, and that they are just waiting to do to it what Bill & Paul did to the early PCs (copy, clone, fuck over till they bleed).
sorta like maybe Anakin Skywalker I guess...
Just can't imagine Bill sacrificing everything to redeem himself, but then, who would have after the first film.
And how did you benchmark these results?
Obviously, there is no use in just reporting framerates taken at any spot on any map...
Actually, Zoid (who does the Linux ports of id's products) said several times during an IRC chat last week that he had Nvidias Linux glX driver and that he "hoped they would be released soon".
Don't worry people, in six months their won't be a serious peace of hardware (if a game accelerator is serious) that doesn't support Linux...
I'm off topic again, but "On the turning away" isn't really pink floyd, since it is from the post Waters period...
One word: Quake
Most serious gamers don't want to sit on the floor of the tv room playing Mario 64 by themselves, the only type of gaming that is actually fun is multiplayer over the Internet.
(ok this is off topic but TNT2 = gaming)
Yeah, just compare getting Quake/Quake2 to run on Windows (you might have to download a file!) to getting it to run on Linux (where you only have to follow a 15 page HOWTO).
I love Linux as much as the next man, but I don't think our house is built for throwing stones about ease of installation.
Regarding the rental stuff, I love it. Once the crack comes out, I will never pay full price for a game again (same reason I support divX and SDMI).
The rational behind not going with Linux as a controle platform was that because of its varying and configurable nature (a good thing in general) it is harder for id to know what bugs are in there software and peoples setups.
Mac is one OS, one set of hardware, and one company.
The obvious downside is that most Linux users would probably be good at reporting the conditions of crashes and bugs, while the average mac use will write: "It does not work on my blueberry Mac but it does on my friends strawberry, fix it!"
The new G3s have Rage128 cards in them, which are almost (slightly lower clock) as good as the TNT and Voodoo2 cards for PCs. The old G3s and the iMacs run the shitty Pro (but so do some PCs).
Carmack even says this in the text, if you bothered reading it before going all "Maceristic" about any critism of the promised OS.
Also, all Quake3 benchmarks id have realesed from Quake3 show that the game is almost totally reliant on processors, not card fillrate, for performance, even on the highest level PCs....