Precisely my point. Do you see a control panel on an xbox? How running any kind of installer, or processing.inf files? How many *years* did it take to QA that OS? Its based on 2000 btw, not XP. It is not a general purpose PC platform. You wouldnt stick it on a dell and run netscape on it.
If one of my customers asked me to remove a major chunk of my product, say a core user interface library that all my configuration and set-up tools used, I'd have to say no. Not only would many of support tools not function, but I'd have a major Quality Assurance nightmare on my hands. I know slashdot is a hot bed of anti-microsoft feeling, but how many of you software developers would agree to such a thing if your boss suggested it, let alone your government.
I'm using XP Embedded and there are *major* parts of it that dont work without IE. To get the functionality we want, we have to include it. I think XP Embedded is actually a deliberate bait and switch move because the more you guys go on about how it proves your case, the more screwed you'll be when it only demonstrates how right microsoft are. That Web Set Top box build that the professor was talking about requires IE too.
And I should just say that I called it a generic gaming scripting engine because it is. We've been using VMs in games for decades, we just didnt call them that. So, Java is like "so what?" for most of us.
Mass market games are about money. They cost money to develop, to advertise and to distribute. Certainly there are many great community, grass-roots, hobby games out there and java may be ideal for those, but this story was about the xbox, ps2, gamecube etc.
First, Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft will always attempt to strong-arm developers into producing single-console titles. "Only for XBOX" boasts one-time-Mac-developer Bungie about Halo. So who Sun think they are fooling is anyone's idea. In fact, one can find a way that Sun has competed directly or indirectly with all the major players. Sony and Nintendo use MIPS processors, and the N64 used SGI technology. The Xbox, and, for most people, the PC, is owned by Microsoft. Nuff said.
I dont see what Java can do for games that flash, virtools, renderware cant do. Class "A" titles are frankly more concerned by how long it takes to load a level, than by easy of portability. Halo and Jak&Daxter are both touting their "instant-loading" abilities. Imagine if the JITC had to compile the level before loading! I did find it terribly amusing that the clever fellow who pointed out how JITCs can compile for all sorts of different processors ever so well and how I, the developer, can instruct the JITC to compile the code just once, unfortunately forgot, or was blinded by his own brilliance, that neither the ps2, nor gamecube, have a harddrive.
So, if we limit our discussion to the PC, why dont I just use C#? The developement environment is infinitely better than anything for less than $5000 and its guaranteed to run on 99% of all game-playing PCs.
Sorry, Sun, you had your chance at making Java a generic gaming scripting engine, but that was years ago when you were still a bunch of arrogant fuck-heads who thought Java was amazing and we could all bloody well pay $100,000's for it. Now that C# arrives, you're so keen to push Java for games. Hmmm. See ya!
I think the author here is the person who wants to try this. You sound like a techie trying to be clever and sounding it out on here. Fuck off and get a life.
Judges are not techies, and thats a good thing
on
Abusing the GPL?
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The first thing a judge will want to know is "What is source code?". If he or she learns that the gobbledigook was *generated* then clearly, it isnt source code. The authors of the proprietary code didnt author it in the obfustication, and they clearly wont be maintaining the obfusticated code. A judge will be able to understand this, and in fact, his or her non-understanding of the technical bullshit that these guys are flinging will be a good thing. It often amazes me how oh-so-clever we techies can be, when in fact we're just being daft.
Some people really think that lawyers and judges are stupid. They are not. They can be bought, but they arent stupid.:-)
So, you ask the question "Does anyone get arrested?", and answer it yourself "Yes."
You point out that the FBI has a the same email and web sniffing technology (check out echelon as well as carnivore).
You say you can have a rally for $25, "if you're not going to destroy the park in the process". Not "going to". How does any one know if you are "going to" do anything? Aha, you mean "if the government doesnt think you are going to". Or, in fact, "if the government doesnt say that you are going to", i.e. The government can stop you and show up with police and riot gear and tear gas. I was at a rave in San Bernadino. There was no damage. There was no violence. But suddenly there were helicopters, riot gear and tear gas. I had live ammunition pointed AT MY FUCKING FACE because I attempted to drive down an american street. If there are no TV cameras, then the police can do what ever they want.
"We all agreed people should keep their mouth shut for a few years". Er, no, some of us obviously didnt. You "all" (i.e. majority) agreed, and suspended the right to free speech for the rest of us. Hell, you "all" agreed that "niggers" should stand on the bus. How do you feel about that?
So, in case I'm not making myself clear, you've just detailed in your own words how the USA is *exactly* like China, in every single aspect. You simply believe that because none of it is being applied to you then it cant be happening enough to worry about.
I saw Final Fantasy on a digitial projector. Incredible. Amazing. Fantastic clarity and color. I think its the only one in the UK and I'd be bummed if AOTC debuted at a different theatre.
I would go further. If someone allowed you to build a large army then they deserved to die. I admit that I last played over a year ago, so a new strategy may have evolved.
The way to win was to attack immediately and maintain a steady increase of technology as well as a steady stream of attacking units. The strategy came into it because every game is different, with different starting positions and resource availability. Knowing when to build that extra villager before castling took fine instincts.
Most people, however, enjoy building up to imperial age, then making a huge army, and then attacking. These people have very, very short games against anyone who plays a fast game. They should just play "deathmatch" mode, where you can start in Imperial age with huge amounts of cash and resources.
I would suggest that perhaps the fact that the free-est nation in the world can have its civil rights crumble only tells us about the dangers in our future, not the superiority of our present. I would point out, for example, that the european patent office is already issuing "process" patents, that are supposedly not patentable over here, but which the WIPO is forcing on the world. We actually have government organisations doing what they've been told not to, and no one seems to care. The right to silence, still mostly guaranteed in the US (well to US citizens in the US anyway) no longer exists in the UK. Christ, in the UK you cant get together with 5 mates and listen to music that consists of "repetitive beats". WAKE UP MAN.
At least in the US theres the opportunity of throwing out unconstitutional laws when theres a less hand picked supreme court.
I once had to write a program that had many hours of computation. I had it use memory mapped files. It was written so that if it was interrupted, or more likely, if it crashed, it would restart where it left off. Very useful if the bit you are trying to debug only occurs after an hour of previous computation.
Really if you write a program that is going to take more than an hour, you really should spend a few minutes doing it properly.
Or you could use any computer that can hibernate. I do find it highly amusing that in response to the "use XP" messgaes, the linux community replies by saying "Oh thats not what he meant at all". It isnt? He said he had to shut down his machine because of a power failure. He didnt say "I want to shut down this one single process". Hibernation would quite clearly have satisfied the original post. But be that as it may, there seem to be quite a few non techies happy to jump about and talk about suspending a single process, without any thought to things like file handle, inter process communications, access to devices. I'm sure someone could implement a "hack" that would occasionally manage to save a process, but it would not be reliable enough to risk using. I would agree with the posters who suggest that creating a protocol through which a program can participate in suspending itself would be ideal, and if it can handle being restarted on another machine then perhaps we have moved on to talking about agents...
Sounds like we need a protest application. A windows app (face it) that "normal people" can run on their machine that uses all 1.4Mb/s (or whatever you have) all of the time. Bring the network to its knees downloading rubbish.
Let them know they can either have single computers that use all 1.4Mb/s 24/7 or multiple computers using whatever they need at the time (i.e. a lot less than 1.4Mb/s on average).
Really? Dont you guys have a thing called the constitution, with something very specific about "the right to bear arms", and yet try walking into a shop in california and walking out with a gun.
Of course, the CIA and FBI would never say that unlicensed operating systems could actually kill people would they? They'd never say that you'd have to run a licensed registered operating system with government access to your email "in the interests of national security"? No, that would never happen.
Nope. Never happen.
Look kids, hacked cable boxes are illegal. Hacked BIOSs will be illegal too.
There isnt much new in my post, I just want to voice my opinion in case anyone from the recording industry is reading.
I am sitting in my office in front of my laptop listening to music on its DVD drive. If I cannot listen to a CD because it wont work then I will take it back and download it. Legally, you see, the record company has excluded me from purchasing a legal copy of their cd. They cannot claim damages from me because there is no way for me to buy a legal copy: they have not lost money, so they cannot claim damages.
This is a stupid loss for them. I buy CDs that I like. I have hundreds.
I've used the old free version of Together 4, and a time limited trial version of Together 5. We were originaly developing using J2EE, and had we continued I would absolutely have forked out the 7000UKP for a floating license. Short of SCID, its exactly what you want. Round-trip doesnt describe it. Its not even real-time round-trip: There is no trip. The code and the UML model is the same. You cannot change one without the other. I hear that they are putting in C# stuff for windows, so I'll be having another look at it, but if you are developing in java, or, in fact, in C++ on a non-windows platform, Together is *the* definitive product.
If by your post you mean that you want a strategy game that emulates real life, then I dont know of any (I'm sure other posters do). You can have a strategy game without "real world" things like supply routes. I've played Microsoft's Age of Kings a lot, and while you dont need supply lines to supply your troops, you do have to worry about production, and there is even an element of supply lines with the trade carts and ships.
However, your description of peoples play as "build a lot of units quickly and then go kill people" suggests to me that a) you are poo-pooing this kind of strategy, but more importantly b) you arent actually very good at this strategy and get killed a lot. My reasoning is this: if you had attempted to learn the strategy of the game, you would realise just how subtle and important *every* key press and button push is in the beginning of a game, and that building lots of units and attacking early is no mean feat, but a great skill. A difference of 20 seconds can be life or death. Instead, you do not see "real world" strategy and so claim that there is none.
The order in which you build given your starting situation is vitally important. Guaging your opponent is important. Once you survive the opening game, much more strategy is revealed which is especially apparent in team play.
Go away and read "On War" by Carl Von Clauswitz, and "The Art of War" by Sun Tsu, and oh, that one by Machiavelli and then have a go at learning the world of your game, instead of trying to fit your real world into your game.
Given that this system can be completely defeated by encryption, and that anyone engaging in illegal activities (if not everyone) will use encryption, it is clear that there must be some other motive for creating this system:
a) They have quantum computers and have cracked encryption.
b) They want to spy on the populace who they believe are too inept to use encryption.
c) They are about to make encryption illegal, so they want to detect when US citizens use it.
d) They want to re-configure the "internet" into a system which has single points of failure, or perhaps "single ports of entry".
While all of the above could be true, the most important one is (d). The biggest fear that big business and government has is that the internet is failure and censor proof. One of my favourite sigs here is:
"The internet views censorship as damage and routes around it"
Not any more.
Do you guys honestly thing that these guys dont know about encryption? Look at everyone's reaction here: "Oh well it wont matter because I have encryption". That is exactly the attitude the FBI is counting on. Just carry on believing that you dont need to do anything about it because you have encryption. Then one day you wake up to find that your encrypted packets are all blocked, that any site that expresses pro-open source or pro-file sharing, or pro-encryption, or pro-constitution views is killed and anyone going there is identified, correlated and brought up on charges, forced to reveal private keys or face life imprisonment without trial (you are a TERRORIST) and then all your correspondents are found etc...
Checkout this Toms Hardware article on software RAID arrays in Win2k. At $100 for 40Gb I can get a 160Gb four-drive array for $400, with a *sustainable* speed of 150Mb/s. How much would 160Gb SCSI drive cost that can do that? $800? $1000? Of course, you pay for it in CPU usage. However, if you get a supertrak 100 controller you can mirror and stripe six drives.
For me, when one of my drives fails, I like to pay $100 for whatever is the sweet spot size. When my single 160Mb/s SCSI 18Gb HD fails, I'm not going to spend $650 on another one!
Having been using computers since 1981, I finally bought myself a top-of-the-line PC in 1999 for $4000. It was a dual PIII system, using an Intel 440GX (server) chipset, with on-board SCSI controller. My SCSI drive was a 160Mb/s 19 Gb drive that cost me $650. My mobo could only do 80mb/s. The system had 512Mb of RAM, and was basically top-spec. I will never make such a mistake again.
That same machine is now using W2k software RAID 1 across two 20Gb IDE drives that cost me 50UKP each. Its a server: it has 1Gb RAM, which now costs 70UKP (instead of $500 for 512Mb), and its 100Mbit connection is the rate-limiting step for its major use (file server).
I still use the SCSI CD-ROM and CD-RW, but those cost me $100 and $300 respectively, basically double the price for SCSI. I have run W2k and Redhat linux and had major problems with my SCSI CD-ROM drive. On W2k the Event log filled up with errors on the scsi bus, and on redhat, the kernel locked itself up and kept trying to spin up the drive after repeated bus resets.. Now that my main drive isnt SCSI, I have much less problems. I have never had such a problem with IDE.
At work, we have a single server, with one 9Gb SCSI 160Mb/s drive. That wasnt enough, and we wanted RAID. With RAID, if one drive fails, you just replace it. Only if you lose 2 drives within the same 1 hour window, do you lose data and have to go back to a backup. Having seen the work lost caused by losing a companies data drive, I wanted RAID on our server. Ok, so how much is SCSI RAID?
$300 for a RAID controller, and 4x $400 for 36Gb SCSI 160mb/s drives = ~$2000 for 72Gb SCSI RAID.
$350 for Promise Supertrak IDE RAID controller and 4x$150 for 60Gb ATA 100 drives = ~$1000 for 120Gb IDE RAID. The card behaves like a SCSI card, in that it a) it appears as a SCSI controller to the OS and b) it has a microcontroller on the card and manages all the interupts itself. It has 6 IDE cables, one drive each.
Sure, and IDE RAID 5 system will not be as fast as a SCSI RAID5 system, but its less than half price, for almost double the storage. In fact, to get a 120Gb SCSI system, without raid, would cost ~$1000, and you can always bring down the IDE solution by using smaller drives. The IDE RAID 5 solution is faster than an equal priced SCSI solution, and it is redundent (*three* drives must fail to lose data), while the SCSI solution is not.
At the bottom end, you can always use software RAID. I believe SCSI is better for this, because the bus is better managed. I would not do this using IDE on a workstation. I do it on my server at home because it is basically a file server and so its limited by the ethernet card, and it has 1Gb of memory for buffering. Software RAID can read fast because it can do interleaving off two drives. Writing is slow because it has to write everything twice, and thats why the 1gb of ram.
For workstations, there are several motherboards on the market that come with an on-board Promise IDE Raid0/1 card. This give you either stripping, which gives you speed, or mirroring, which gives you safety. Using striping increases your risk, because if either drive fails, then the data is lost. Again, the controller takes care of the disk access, so it doesnt have the disadvantages (lots of IRQs and higher kernel usage) that IDE has.
Our newest workstations use raid-striping with mobos from gigabyte. Our servers use RAID cards with 3+1 RAID5.
So except for monster Sun or IBM servers that need SCSI RAID5 speed, SCSI is just a waste of money. I have learned not to spend my own money on "top-of-the-line" equipment. It will be average in 6 months, and obsolete in a year. With storage, however, the "cheap" solution is faster than the expensive one. I dont do it with my companies money either.
I cant see how these guys can justify the huge extra $$$$ for SCSI, but not go all the way and go for SCSI RAID. If the goal is to create the best linux system for any amount of money, then buying RAID is the way to go. They even advocate using two drives in case one breaks. Sounds like two *mirrored* drives would be the option there.
Alternatively, if money is a concern, then why not use IDE RAID? You can do it in software, or you can get a RAID card from Promise. A four drive 80Mb IDE Raid array using the Promise SuperTrak card costs less money than a single 160Mb/s SCSI drive, and out performs it for speed (I believe, anyone got any links to prove it?), and has 3+1 RAID 5 safety.
I loved the report that the administration was pushing for jail-without-trial laws for "noncitizens". How does that constitution of yours go? "We hold these things to be true (but only for US Citizens. you noncitizens have no rights whatsoever)"...
Jews, Blacks, now its "noncitizens"... does sound more PC than "rag-head" I suppose.
Slashdot's pathological hatred of patents is silly and immature. Patents are absolutely necessary to allow businesses to recoup their research investments.
This is an opinion that you share with many in business that has never actually been proven. Patents do allow large businesses to make money, that much is certain. In particular, large businesses can ignore the patents of smaller businesses, who cannot afford the legal fees to protect their patents. Meanwhile, investors simply wont invest in a small company unless it has patents, which forces us all to gain them, even if we dont believe in them.
So, please provide some evidence before you spout off calling us silly and immature.
I have read reports that when the www came on-line in 1993 that innovation and development flourished in Europe, however patent filing suffered because everyone could claim some part of the innovation. That is, greater communication caused innovation, not patents. Now, many company's aware of this, actively prevent communication, so that they can get patents. Therefor, patents are preventing communication, and therefor, patents prevent innovation.
The idea that patents are to encourage people to invest is debunked by the number of patents that are awarded for incredibly obvious things. The stantard arguement against this is "its only obvious because you've seen it already". However I have direct personal experience where we have come up with a solution to a problem and found later that it was patented. That is, we have had a problem, and solved in a very obvious and easy way, and found that someone got a patent for it last year. I have seen patent's where the innovation is a new using of two existing standards where that use was actually documented in the standards!
However, even if we managed to smarten up patent judges, to remove the awarding of obvious patents, I still believe that patents are not neccessary to protect investment. The arguement for patents is that someone can spend a bunch of time and materials creating a new design, which someone else then comes along and copies. However, this idea is not real. The most difficult aspects of some of our inventions have not been patented, because they cant be, however a competitor will find them hard to copy without expending the same effort.
Finally, copying a thing does not invalidate the investment of the original inventor, because the inventor knows why it was made that way, while the copier only knows how. If someone copies our product, it will take them many months to do so, and at the end of it, we will be rolling out version two. They, however, will not have the understanding to make a version two of their own, and will have to wait for ours to copy.
Patents are a tool of investors. It makes the people with the money the most important, not the people with the ideas, or the people who would benefit from them. Getting rid of patents will improve the quality of life of everyone. End of story.
I think you'd all be a lot happier if you americans realised that:
a) You already live in a totalitarian police state with a facade of democracy, and
b) None of you are prepared to do anything about it (unlike your founding fathers).
So why not give it a rest? Its not that bad. Theres only a small probability that it will be you thats carted off into the night. Sure possessing open source software will soon be a crime (because it doesnt have backdoor crypto), but, really, MS Windows doesnt cost that much. Its not like you're starving, or dying, like the people who make your nike's.
Your own CIA has smuggled drugs which has surely killed many americans. Is it that hard to believe that they'd "miss" this terrorist attack so they can get some great laws through. Or, "whoops" we bombed the wrong factory (that just happened to be the only competition for US companies in the region). Or, UNICEFs claim that 500,000 children died who didnt need to because of the sanctions against Iraq, but, hey, my V8 has cheap gas.
Your american dream isnt what you think it is. But its still pretty nice. So stop whining about it and chill out. Have a bud. Drive your ford. Wear your nike's.
And in case you are wondering why, its because the Media is the same group that will back government back doors in return for digital copyright bullshit.
Fourth amendment? Who cares who fucking died for the constitution, I want my fucking mcdonalds and my fucking nikes, and if I have to give up all my rights to big business and the government to get them, and fuck on all the small countries of the world, then sure, fuck the constitution and the shitty pot-smoking hemp its written, bunch of fucking founding fucking fathers.
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Precisely my point. Do you see a control panel on an xbox? How running any kind of installer, or processing .inf files? How many *years* did it take to QA that OS? Its based on 2000 btw, not XP.
It is not a general purpose PC platform. You wouldnt stick it on a dell and run netscape on it.
If one of my customers asked me to remove a major chunk of my product, say a core user interface library that all my configuration and set-up tools used, I'd have to say no. Not only would many of support tools not function, but I'd have a major Quality Assurance nightmare on my hands. I know slashdot is a hot bed of anti-microsoft feeling, but how many of you software developers would agree to such a thing if your boss suggested it, let alone your government.
I'm using XP Embedded and there are *major* parts of it that dont work without IE. To get the functionality we want, we have to include it. I think XP Embedded is actually a deliberate bait and switch move because the more you guys go on about how it proves your case, the more screwed you'll be when it only demonstrates how right microsoft are. That Web Set Top box build that the professor was talking about requires IE too.
And I should just say that I called it a generic gaming scripting engine because it is. We've been using VMs in games for decades, we just didnt call them that. So, Java is like "so what?" for most of us.
Mass market games are about money. They cost money to develop, to advertise and to distribute. Certainly there are many great community, grass-roots, hobby games out there and java may be ideal for those, but this story was about the xbox, ps2, gamecube etc.
First, Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft will always attempt to strong-arm developers into producing single-console titles. "Only for XBOX" boasts one-time-Mac-developer Bungie about Halo. So who Sun think they are fooling is anyone's idea. In fact, one can find a way that Sun has competed directly or indirectly with all the major players. Sony and Nintendo use MIPS processors, and the N64 used SGI technology. The Xbox, and, for most people, the PC, is owned by Microsoft. Nuff said.
I dont see what Java can do for games that flash, virtools, renderware cant do. Class "A" titles are frankly more concerned by how long it takes to load a level, than by easy of portability. Halo and Jak&Daxter are both touting their "instant-loading" abilities. Imagine if the JITC had to compile the level before loading! I did find it terribly amusing that the clever fellow who pointed out how JITCs can compile for all sorts of different processors ever so well and how I, the developer, can instruct the JITC to compile the code just once, unfortunately forgot, or was blinded by his own brilliance, that neither the ps2, nor gamecube, have a harddrive.
So, if we limit our discussion to the PC, why dont I just use C#? The developement environment is infinitely better than anything for less than $5000 and its guaranteed to run on 99% of all game-playing PCs.
Sorry, Sun, you had your chance at making Java a generic gaming scripting engine, but that was years ago when you were still a bunch of arrogant fuck-heads who thought Java was amazing and we could all bloody well pay $100,000's for it. Now that C# arrives, you're so keen to push Java for games. Hmmm. See ya!
I think the author here is the person who wants to try this. You sound like a techie trying to be clever and sounding it out on here. Fuck off and get a life.
The first thing a judge will want to know is "What is source code?". If he or she learns that the gobbledigook was *generated* then clearly, it isnt source code. The authors of the proprietary code didnt author it in the obfustication, and they clearly wont be maintaining the obfusticated code. A judge will be able to understand this, and in fact, his or her non-understanding of the technical bullshit that these guys are flinging will be a good thing. It often amazes me how oh-so-clever we techies can be, when in fact we're just being daft.
:-)
Some people really think that lawyers and judges are stupid. They are not. They can be bought, but they arent stupid.
You point out that the FBI has a the same email and web sniffing technology (check out echelon as well as carnivore).
You say you can have a rally for $25, "if you're not going to destroy the park in the process". Not "going to". How does any one know if you are "going to" do anything? Aha, you mean "if the government doesnt think you are going to". Or, in fact, "if the government doesnt say that you are going to", i.e. The government can stop you and show up with police and riot gear and tear gas. I was at a rave in San Bernadino. There was no damage. There was no violence. But suddenly there were helicopters, riot gear and tear gas. I had live ammunition pointed AT MY FUCKING FACE because I attempted to drive down an american street. If there are no TV cameras, then the police can do what ever they want.
"We all agreed people should keep their mouth shut for a few years". Er, no, some of us obviously didnt. You "all" (i.e. majority) agreed, and suspended the right to free speech for the rest of us. Hell, you "all" agreed that "niggers" should stand on the bus. How do you feel about that?
So, in case I'm not making myself clear, you've just detailed in your own words how the USA is *exactly* like China, in every single aspect. You simply believe that because none of it is being applied to you then it cant be happening enough to worry about.
I saw Final Fantasy on a digitial projector. Incredible. Amazing. Fantastic clarity and color. I think its the only one in the UK and I'd be bummed if AOTC debuted at a different theatre.
The way to win was to attack immediately and maintain a steady increase of technology as well as a steady stream of attacking units. The strategy came into it because every game is different, with different starting positions and resource availability. Knowing when to build that extra villager before castling took fine instincts.
Most people, however, enjoy building up to imperial age, then making a huge army, and then attacking. These people have very, very short games against anyone who plays a fast game. They should just play "deathmatch" mode, where you can start in Imperial age with huge amounts of cash and resources.
What a wonderful, spring-time, naive, idea. I just love how it sounds. Really, say it. Say it out loud. Ah, it just brings back my youth. Thanks guys.
At least in the US theres the opportunity of throwing out unconstitutional laws when theres a less hand picked supreme court.
Really if you write a program that is going to take more than an hour, you really should spend a few minutes doing it properly.
Or you could use any computer that can hibernate. I do find it highly amusing that in response to the "use XP" messgaes, the linux community replies by saying "Oh thats not what he meant at all". It isnt? He said he had to shut down his machine because of a power failure. He didnt say "I want to shut down this one single process". Hibernation would quite clearly have satisfied the original post. But be that as it may, there seem to be quite a few non techies happy to jump about and talk about suspending a single process, without any thought to things like file handle, inter process communications, access to devices. I'm sure someone could implement a "hack" that would occasionally manage to save a process, but it would not be reliable enough to risk using. I would agree with the posters who suggest that creating a protocol through which a program can participate in suspending itself would be ideal, and if it can handle being restarted on another machine then perhaps we have moved on to talking about agents...
Sounds like we need a protest application. A windows app (face it) that "normal people" can run on their machine that uses all 1.4Mb/s (or whatever you have) all of the time. Bring the network to its knees downloading rubbish.
Let them know they can either have single computers that use all 1.4Mb/s 24/7 or multiple computers using whatever they need at the time (i.e. a lot less than 1.4Mb/s on average).
Of course, the CIA and FBI would never say that unlicensed operating systems could actually kill people would they? They'd never say that you'd have to run a licensed registered operating system with government access to your email "in the interests of national security"? No, that would never happen.
Nope. Never happen.
Look kids, hacked cable boxes are illegal. Hacked BIOSs will be illegal too.
I am sitting in my office in front of my laptop listening to music on its DVD drive. If I cannot listen to a CD because it wont work then I will take it back and download it. Legally, you see, the record company has excluded me from purchasing a legal copy of their cd. They cannot claim damages from me because there is no way for me to buy a legal copy: they have not lost money, so they cannot claim damages.
This is a stupid loss for them. I buy CDs that I like. I have hundreds.
I've used the old free version of Together 4, and a time limited trial version of Together 5. We were originaly developing using J2EE, and had we continued I would absolutely have forked out the 7000UKP for a floating license. Short of SCID, its exactly what you want. Round-trip doesnt describe it. Its not even real-time round-trip: There is no trip. The code and the UML model is the same. You cannot change one without the other. I hear that they are putting in C# stuff for windows, so I'll be having another look at it, but if you are developing in java, or, in fact, in C++ on a non-windows platform, Together is *the* definitive product.
However, your description of peoples play as "build a lot of units quickly and then go kill people" suggests to me that a) you are poo-pooing this kind of strategy, but more importantly b) you arent actually very good at this strategy and get killed a lot. My reasoning is this: if you had attempted to learn the strategy of the game, you would realise just how subtle and important *every* key press and button push is in the beginning of a game, and that building lots of units and attacking early is no mean feat, but a great skill. A difference of 20 seconds can be life or death. Instead, you do not see "real world" strategy and so claim that there is none.
The order in which you build given your starting situation is vitally important. Guaging your opponent is important. Once you survive the opening game, much more strategy is revealed which is especially apparent in team play.
Go away and read "On War" by Carl Von Clauswitz, and "The Art of War" by Sun Tsu, and oh, that one by Machiavelli and then have a go at learning the world of your game, instead of trying to fit your real world into your game.
a) They have quantum computers and have cracked encryption.
b) They want to spy on the populace who they believe are too inept to use encryption.
c) They are about to make encryption illegal, so they want to detect when US citizens use it.
d) They want to re-configure the "internet" into a system which has single points of failure, or perhaps "single ports of entry".
While all of the above could be true, the most important one is (d). The biggest fear that big business and government has is that the internet is failure and censor proof. One of my favourite sigs here is:
Not any more.Do you guys honestly thing that these guys dont know about encryption? Look at everyone's reaction here: "Oh well it wont matter because I have encryption". That is exactly the attitude the FBI is counting on. Just carry on believing that you dont need to do anything about it because you have encryption. Then one day you wake up to find that your encrypted packets are all blocked, that any site that expresses pro-open source or pro-file sharing, or pro-encryption, or pro-constitution views is killed and anyone going there is identified, correlated and brought up on charges, forced to reveal private keys or face life imprisonment without trial (you are a TERRORIST) and then all your correspondents are found etc...
McCarthyism didnt happen here. McCarthyism didnt happen here. McCarthyism didnt happen here. McCarthyism didnt happen here. McCarthyism didnt happen here. McCarthyism didnt happen here. McCarthyism didnt happen here. McCarthyism didnt happen here. McCarthyism didnt happen here.
Just keep saying it.
Checkout this Toms Hardware article on software RAID arrays in Win2k. At $100 for 40Gb I can get a 160Gb four-drive array for $400, with a *sustainable* speed of 150Mb/s. How much would 160Gb SCSI drive cost that can do that? $800? $1000? Of course, you pay for it in CPU usage. However, if you get a supertrak 100 controller you can mirror and stripe six drives.
For me, when one of my drives fails, I like to pay $100 for whatever is the sweet spot size. When my single 160Mb/s SCSI 18Gb HD fails, I'm not going to spend $650 on another one!
That same machine is now using W2k software RAID 1 across two 20Gb IDE drives that cost me 50UKP each. Its a server: it has 1Gb RAM, which now costs 70UKP (instead of $500 for 512Mb), and its 100Mbit connection is the rate-limiting step for its major use (file server).
I still use the SCSI CD-ROM and CD-RW, but those cost me $100 and $300 respectively, basically double the price for SCSI. I have run W2k and Redhat linux and had major problems with my SCSI CD-ROM drive. On W2k the Event log filled up with errors on the scsi bus, and on redhat, the kernel locked itself up and kept trying to spin up the drive after repeated bus resets.. Now that my main drive isnt SCSI, I have much less problems. I have never had such a problem with IDE.
At work, we have a single server, with one 9Gb SCSI 160Mb/s drive. That wasnt enough, and we wanted RAID. With RAID, if one drive fails, you just replace it. Only if you lose 2 drives within the same 1 hour window, do you lose data and have to go back to a backup. Having seen the work lost caused by losing a companies data drive, I wanted RAID on our server. Ok, so how much is SCSI RAID?
$300 for a RAID controller, and 4x $400 for 36Gb SCSI 160mb/s drives = ~$2000 for 72Gb SCSI RAID.
$350 for Promise Supertrak IDE RAID controller and 4x$150 for 60Gb ATA 100 drives = ~$1000 for 120Gb IDE RAID. The card behaves like a SCSI card, in that it a) it appears as a SCSI controller to the OS and b) it has a microcontroller on the card and manages all the interupts itself. It has 6 IDE cables, one drive each.
Sure, and IDE RAID 5 system will not be as fast as a SCSI RAID5 system, but its less than half price, for almost double the storage. In fact, to get a 120Gb SCSI system, without raid, would cost ~$1000, and you can always bring down the IDE solution by using smaller drives. The IDE RAID 5 solution is faster than an equal priced SCSI solution, and it is redundent (*three* drives must fail to lose data), while the SCSI solution is not.
At the bottom end, you can always use software RAID. I believe SCSI is better for this, because the bus is better managed. I would not do this using IDE on a workstation. I do it on my server at home because it is basically a file server and so its limited by the ethernet card, and it has 1Gb of memory for buffering. Software RAID can read fast because it can do interleaving off two drives. Writing is slow because it has to write everything twice, and thats why the 1gb of ram.
For workstations, there are several motherboards on the market that come with an on-board Promise IDE Raid0/1 card. This give you either stripping, which gives you speed, or mirroring, which gives you safety. Using striping increases your risk, because if either drive fails, then the data is lost. Again, the controller takes care of the disk access, so it doesnt have the disadvantages (lots of IRQs and higher kernel usage) that IDE has.
Our newest workstations use raid-striping with mobos from gigabyte. Our servers use RAID cards with 3+1 RAID5.
So except for monster Sun or IBM servers that need SCSI RAID5 speed, SCSI is just a waste of money. I have learned not to spend my own money on "top-of-the-line" equipment. It will be average in 6 months, and obsolete in a year. With storage, however, the "cheap" solution is faster than the expensive one. I dont do it with my companies money either.
Alternatively, if money is a concern, then why not use IDE RAID? You can do it in software, or you can get a RAID card from Promise. A four drive 80Mb IDE Raid array using the Promise SuperTrak card costs less money than a single 160Mb/s SCSI drive, and out performs it for speed (I believe, anyone got any links to prove it?), and has 3+1 RAID 5 safety.
Jews, Blacks, now its "noncitizens"... does sound more PC than "rag-head" I suppose.
This is an opinion that you share with many in business that has never actually been proven. Patents do allow large businesses to make money, that much is certain. In particular, large businesses can ignore the patents of smaller businesses, who cannot afford the legal fees to protect their patents. Meanwhile, investors simply wont invest in a small company unless it has patents, which forces us all to gain them, even if we dont believe in them.
So, please provide some evidence before you spout off calling us silly and immature.
I have read reports that when the www came on-line in 1993 that innovation and development flourished in Europe, however patent filing suffered because everyone could claim some part of the innovation. That is, greater communication caused innovation, not patents. Now, many company's aware of this, actively prevent communication, so that they can get patents. Therefor, patents are preventing communication, and therefor, patents prevent innovation.
The idea that patents are to encourage people to invest is debunked by the number of patents that are awarded for incredibly obvious things. The stantard arguement against this is "its only obvious because you've seen it already". However I have direct personal experience where we have come up with a solution to a problem and found later that it was patented. That is, we have had a problem, and solved in a very obvious and easy way, and found that someone got a patent for it last year. I have seen patent's where the innovation is a new using of two existing standards where that use was actually documented in the standards!
However, even if we managed to smarten up patent judges, to remove the awarding of obvious patents, I still believe that patents are not neccessary to protect investment. The arguement for patents is that someone can spend a bunch of time and materials creating a new design, which someone else then comes along and copies. However, this idea is not real. The most difficult aspects of some of our inventions have not been patented, because they cant be, however a competitor will find them hard to copy without expending the same effort.
Finally, copying a thing does not invalidate the investment of the original inventor, because the inventor knows why it was made that way, while the copier only knows how. If someone copies our product, it will take them many months to do so, and at the end of it, we will be rolling out version two. They, however, will not have the understanding to make a version two of their own, and will have to wait for ours to copy.
Patents are a tool of investors. It makes the people with the money the most important, not the people with the ideas, or the people who would benefit from them. Getting rid of patents will improve the quality of life of everyone. End of story.
a) You already live in a totalitarian police state with a facade of democracy, and
b) None of you are prepared to do anything about it (unlike your founding fathers).
So why not give it a rest? Its not that bad. Theres only a small probability that it will be you thats carted off into the night. Sure possessing open source software will soon be a crime (because it doesnt have backdoor crypto), but, really, MS Windows doesnt cost that much. Its not like you're starving, or dying, like the people who make your nike's.
Your own CIA has smuggled drugs which has surely killed many americans. Is it that hard to believe that they'd "miss" this terrorist attack so they can get some great laws through. Or, "whoops" we bombed the wrong factory (that just happened to be the only competition for US companies in the region). Or, UNICEFs claim that 500,000 children died who didnt need to because of the sanctions against Iraq, but, hey, my V8 has cheap gas.
Your american dream isnt what you think it is. But its still pretty nice. So stop whining about it and chill out. Have a bud. Drive your ford. Wear your nike's.
Fourth amendment? Who cares who fucking died for the constitution, I want my fucking mcdonalds and my fucking nikes, and if I have to give up all my rights to big business and the government to get them, and fuck on all the small countries of the world, then sure, fuck the constitution and the shitty pot-smoking hemp its written, bunch of fucking founding fucking fathers.