Another question... Does this mean a central computer will control heat, locks, water, power, and ever thing down to childrens toys? I know this would be a good idea, but once again would this be worth the risk? I think not having some of those "features" would be safer for everyone, once again, what does everyone think, or anyone know places with information on these questions?
I think the idea is that you'd use this for multiplayer games, so when you saw your buddy down the hall, it'd really be your buddy down the hall.
I'd like to see Jar-Jar too.;-)
--
Re:Why You Need to Read the Risks Forum
on
Mattel Spyware
·
· Score: 2
I agree with you.
I think some have tried to argue that this wouldn't have happened with a UNIX-based OS, because the software developers who write apps for UNIX pay more attention to details like error trapping than those who write Windows apps do. It's really unfair to generalize like that (although the generalization does seem to be true a lot of the time).
No, I'm sure they mean freedom of movement, just like Quake, et al. There will be places you can't go - like, say, you probably can't jump off a cliff, because being able to do that would seriously change the feel of the game.
They've licensed the rights to Mattel Interactive/Presto Studios, which will be making a sequel. RealMYST is just a remake of the original.
After a few years, you really do forget a lot of the puzzles and things, although it does come back quickly, and you can never forget how the ending works.
Definitely not, but Myst was a great example of the awesome power of HyperCard. If anyone cares, (shameles plug) I've got a game of my own developed entirely in HyperCard, though nowhere near as impressive as Myst. Cannons and Castles is a HyperCard port of the Apple II game with two castles and a hill; type in the angle and velocity of your shot and try to blow up your opponent's castle.
If you have any really pressing questions about HyperCard, feel free to e-mail me.
I have a big problem with all of these types of games... At the end of the day, they are all very linear. You have to do A before you can do B which in turn allows you to do C. What if I happen to think up a better way which allows me to jump straight to C and go back to A and B later? Tough! Why can't I do C first. God damn it! I wanna do C first!!
That's one of the big things I liked about Myst. It had no artificial restrictions like "sorry, you can't open this door because you're not cool enough yet." Sure, there are places you can't go, but that's because of something realistic, like there's a bridge between here and there but the bridge is retracted and can only be extended from the other side of the bridge - so you have to find some other way to get to the other side first, and then extend the bridge to make things easier for you.
In Myst, if you can get there somehow, everything's waiting for you. In many other games, if you can find a way to get to someplace you're supposed to be yet, a door will be locked for no apparent reason (if you get there the "correct" way it'll be open when you get to it), or there'll be a person you have to talk to and they'll refuse to talk to you. I hate that; it's stupid. In Myst, you can beat the game from start to finish in two minutes, if you happen to know the secret - which you normally figure out by discovering clues as you go, but if you don't want to do it the "correct" way, you don't have to.
I agree, the chance that it's just a coincidence is minimal, but without George Lucas' approval, they have to say it's coincidental.
Alternately, the engineers know better than to tell the PR people what it looks like, so of course the PR people assume it's coincidental, since the resemblance to Boba Fett wasn't documented anywhere.
In its brief, the RIAA submitted materials that aimed to show that every single Napster user was engaged in some copyright infringement. Barry protested the characterization, saying that merely having a copyrighted file on a hard drive and joining a service like Napster didn't make a user liable. "The industry is seeking nothing less than to eliminate file sharing as a technology -- just as it has sought to squash prior technological advances," he said.
Can anyone explain to my why making a copyrighted MP3 file available for public download doesn't make you liable for copyright infringement? Just having the file doesn't, but making it publicly available does, yes?
--
Re:Explain to stupid: Why faster?
on
Linux BIOS
·
· Score: 1
No, there wouldn't be a LILO prompt - but I don't understand this either, unless login and bash are also in the BIOS? I'd prefer if the kernel launched init, and init ran my/etc/rc.d scripts like it's supposed to, before running login....
Will this lead to the introduction of silly little "Designed for GNU/Linux" stickers to replace the silly little "Designed for Windows 98/NT" stickers?
No.
Hardware vendors pay Microsoft a lot of money for the right to put those stickers on their boxes. If you think you can convince them that this is a bad idea, be my guest.
--
Re:How about a nice ROM Monitor instead?
on
Linux BIOS
·
· Score: 1
I've never actually run it, but I've got the code and instructions for a Forth port of Pong that runs in OpenFirmware. When you're done with your game, you can boot your OS.
I think I'd be more concerned about the crashing. With time the microwave would become more and more unstable, until it became unusable (perhaps even dangerous), at which point you'd have to reformat and reinstall. Since Microsoft will only let you have a Quick Restore disk, not the standard Windows install disk, it would be impossible to reinstall your microwave unless you tracked down the particular CD that it came shipped with. Or, you could take it to your local appliance repair shop, and they could charge you $80/hr to fix the software problems - and of course it would take them a minimum of four hours.
This is why we need IPv6. There simply aren't enough IP addresses for everyone to do what you describe - unless everyone used internal IPs for everything, and then how would I turn on your vacuum cleaner at 3am? That just wouldn't be much fun at all. IPv6 is definitely the way to go.
I think the comment about Tru64 was the most outlandish thing I've heard all week. Tru64 UNIX is a mature, stable, and reliable OS, only to be matched by Solaris. We won't be seeing the end of it anytime soon.
Do you mean to say that you honestly believe that just because something is better, a corporation won't stop using it? This is America, and that view is simply naïve. Linux is a popular buzzword, and Tru64 UNIX is not.
Remember, too, we're talking about Compaq, not DEC anymore. Since when has Compaq been interested in quality?
One company I can commend for refusing to follow everyong else in jumping on the Linux bandwagon is Apple, although I realize this decision was probably based on licensing restrictions more than anything else.
I've never quite understood the need for the QPL. TrollTech could easily achieve the same effect by offering Qt under both GPL and proprietary licenses. Anyone who accepted the free license would be forced (by the GPL) to use it only in free projects, while anyone who developed non-free software would have to pay TrollTech for the privilege. This would be a perfect application of the viral effect of the GPL.
You're absolutely right, and I agree completely.
All that notwithstanding, I don't quite understand why the $3000-guy is so bitter. This all sounds like a lot of sour grapes to me. Why is he so hell-bent on getting KDE into Debian? KDE is a valuable asset to the Linux desktop, but if the Debian people don't want to include it then that's their perogative, and their problem. There are plenty of Linux systems (most of them, actually) that happily include it.
It's not that he's hell-bent on getting KDE into Debian. Debian won't do it because distributing KDE binaries is ILLEGAL. Those other Linux distributions that happily include it are breaking the law. They are violating the GPL, and thus infringing on the copyrights of the authors of the GPL'd code that KDE uses. Most people don't care, so they see it as a non-issue. Debian supports free software and refuses to violate the GPL just because it's convenient to do so - and I highly respect them for sticking to that position.
Most of the time, if someone violates the GPL, everyone gets upset. In this case, nobody cares, because KDE is useful, it's free beer and partially free speech. It's still illegal.
If this quote (which is apparently what Debian maintains) is true, then aren't Redhat, Corel, Mandrake, SuSE, (etc. etc. etc. etc.) BREAKING THE LAW by distributing binary KDE packages?
That's correct. IANAL, but this guy is saying that distributing KDE binaries at all is illegal. Distributing the KDE source for people to compile themselves is perfectly OK.
Do their respective legal departments know about this?
I'm sure they do, by now, but they're conveniently ignoring it, because as far as anyone knows, nobody but Debian cares.
Or is the whole issue moot because those who would have to bring forth a complaint about license violations simply won't bother? (And who would those people be, anyhow? The KDE coders?)
It would be the people who aren't part of the KDE team, but who wrote code that was released under the GPL and has been incorporated into various parts of KDE. Were it not for this, the KDE team could simply re-release KDE under their own license, which would essentially be a modified GPL that allows for linking to Qt. The problem is that KDE incorporates code from other people outside the team, and in order to make the licensing change, all of those people would have to consent to this - that's what the $3,000 was for.
Perhaps they think they'll be more likely to find a Mac OS developer to build the plugin? Perhaps some company has commercial or other reasons for wanting such a plugin to exist, even if it's open-source?
How much work has been done on making a viable alternative to QuickTime that works on Linux and has similar features? I realize that compatibility with the Sorenson codec is a problem, but does anyone have anything better (or at least as good) that's free? Bonus if it can be used on non-UNIX platforms as well.
Go back to the Cantel agent's office that you went to to get the phone. Tell him you want a phone, and there's a problem with your records. Ask him to do a background check again, and tell him that if he finds the problem, you need to get your old account number so that you can get the mix-up cleared up. Then just go back to FCS and give them the account number.
Don't be surprised if the Cantel agent is very hesitant to give you your account number; it's an unusual request, and giving out account numbers to anyone is very dangerous, even if they claim that it's their own account number. Be ready to offer multiple forms of identification.
Is it illegal to base your business model on the occurance of illegal activities, if you neither do nor condone those illegal activities yourself?
If I bought a Metallica CD, ripped it to MP3 and saved the files on my hard drive, forgot about it, then used Napster and let it search my drive for files to share (like it asks for), and Metallica found me sharing those MP3s (which I hadn't been aware of due do my own incompetence, and I didn't intend to do), and upon being informed of the situation and educating myself about what exactly was happening, deleted all copyright MP3 files immediately, are you saying that Napster shouldn't ever let me use their service again?
Slashdot Mirror
Jurassic Park, anyone?
--
I'd like to see Jar-Jar too.
--
I think some have tried to argue that this wouldn't have happened with a UNIX-based OS, because the software developers who write apps for UNIX pay more attention to details like error trapping than those who write Windows apps do. It's really unfair to generalize like that (although the generalization does seem to be true a lot of the time).
--
--
--
After a few years, you really do forget a lot of the puzzles and things, although it does come back quickly, and you can never forget how the ending works.
--
If you have any really pressing questions about HyperCard, feel free to e-mail me.
--
--
That's one of the big things I liked about Myst. It had no artificial restrictions like "sorry, you can't open this door because you're not cool enough yet." Sure, there are places you can't go, but that's because of something realistic, like there's a bridge between here and there but the bridge is retracted and can only be extended from the other side of the bridge - so you have to find some other way to get to the other side first, and then extend the bridge to make things easier for you.
In Myst, if you can get there somehow, everything's waiting for you. In many other games, if you can find a way to get to someplace you're supposed to be yet, a door will be locked for no apparent reason (if you get there the "correct" way it'll be open when you get to it), or there'll be a person you have to talk to and they'll refuse to talk to you. I hate that; it's stupid. In Myst, you can beat the game from start to finish in two minutes, if you happen to know the secret - which you normally figure out by discovering clues as you go, but if you don't want to do it the "correct" way, you don't have to.
--
That sounds like what Myst was originally. They're changing it to make it realtime. Which one of us is confused?
--
Alternately, the engineers know better than to tell the PR people what it looks like, so of course the PR people assume it's coincidental, since the resemblance to Boba Fett wasn't documented anywhere.
--
I would think latency would be a bigger issue....?
--
Can anyone explain to my why making a copyrighted MP3 file available for public download doesn't make you liable for copyright infringement? Just having the file doesn't, but making it publicly available does, yes?
--
--
No.
Hardware vendors pay Microsoft a lot of money for the right to put those stickers on their boxes. If you think you can convince them that this is a bad idea, be my guest.
--
--
--
--
Do you mean to say that you honestly believe that just because something is better, a corporation won't stop using it? This is America, and that view is simply naïve. Linux is a popular buzzword, and Tru64 UNIX is not.
Remember, too, we're talking about Compaq, not DEC anymore. Since when has Compaq been interested in quality?
One company I can commend for refusing to follow everyong else in jumping on the Linux bandwagon is Apple, although I realize this decision was probably based on licensing restrictions more than anything else.
--
You're absolutely right, and I agree completely.
All that notwithstanding, I don't quite understand why the $3000-guy is so bitter. This all sounds like a lot of sour grapes to me. Why is he so hell-bent on getting KDE into Debian? KDE is a valuable asset to the Linux desktop, but if the Debian people don't want to include it then that's their perogative, and their problem. There are plenty of Linux systems (most of them, actually) that happily include it.
It's not that he's hell-bent on getting KDE into Debian. Debian won't do it because distributing KDE binaries is ILLEGAL. Those other Linux distributions that happily include it are breaking the law. They are violating the GPL, and thus infringing on the copyrights of the authors of the GPL'd code that KDE uses. Most people don't care, so they see it as a non-issue. Debian supports free software and refuses to violate the GPL just because it's convenient to do so - and I highly respect them for sticking to that position.
Most of the time, if someone violates the GPL, everyone gets upset. In this case, nobody cares, because KDE is useful, it's free beer and partially free speech. It's still illegal.
--
--
That's correct. IANAL, but this guy is saying that distributing KDE binaries at all is illegal. Distributing the KDE source for people to compile themselves is perfectly OK.
Do their respective legal departments know about this?
I'm sure they do, by now, but they're conveniently ignoring it, because as far as anyone knows, nobody but Debian cares.
Or is the whole issue moot because those who would have to bring forth a complaint about license violations simply won't bother? (And who would those people be, anyhow? The KDE coders?)
It would be the people who aren't part of the KDE team, but who wrote code that was released under the GPL and has been incorporated into various parts of KDE. Were it not for this, the KDE team could simply re-release KDE under their own license, which would essentially be a modified GPL that allows for linking to Qt. The problem is that KDE incorporates code from other people outside the team, and in order to make the licensing change, all of those people would have to consent to this - that's what the $3,000 was for.
--
How much work has been done on making a viable alternative to QuickTime that works on Linux and has similar features? I realize that compatibility with the Sorenson codec is a problem, but does anyone have anything better (or at least as good) that's free? Bonus if it can be used on non-UNIX platforms as well.
--
Don't be surprised if the Cantel agent is very hesitant to give you your account number; it's an unusual request, and giving out account numbers to anyone is very dangerous, even if they claim that it's their own account number. Be ready to offer multiple forms of identification.
--
If I bought a Metallica CD, ripped it to MP3 and saved the files on my hard drive, forgot about it, then used Napster and let it search my drive for files to share (like it asks for), and Metallica found me sharing those MP3s (which I hadn't been aware of due do my own incompetence, and I didn't intend to do), and upon being informed of the situation and educating myself about what exactly was happening, deleted all copyright MP3 files immediately, are you saying that Napster shouldn't ever let me use their service again?
--