As everyone's pointed out, emulators have already covered the preservation of things like Star Raiders.
What really needs preservation are (relatively) newer games buried by copyright holders. Games like "System Shock 2," "KISS Psycho Circus: The Nightmare Child," and the PC version of "Turok 2: Seeds of Evil," all of which are no longer published and cannot be bought brand new anymore, leaving only eBay and warez as viable sources.
Reading the article, I see that Verizon is against this, so I'm probably for it.
I especially grimaced when I read this part:
[Verizon's top lobbyist said] "Rather than attempting to make the new world of broadband fit into the regulatory scheme of the old telephone world, the FCC should acknowledge that this is an issue Congress should address."
That's more transparent than usual, isn't it? In case it's not, I'll translate: "How are we supposed to have free reign to let America's infrastructure steadily decay, if regulation comes from someone other than the politicians we bought?"
Because of what they've encoded in the Private Use Area block at code point U+E0F2. Check STIXv1.0.0/Glyphs/STIXNonUnit.otf.pdf in the zip file to see it, and check the last link in the summary for the character's name. I hope that gets folded back into the Unicode Standard someday....
I just tried a couple quick tests of two irritating shortcomings which I had remembered off the top of my head: the <object> element and 'inherit' as a CSS property value.
They actually do work. So I retract my complaint. I can only offer the meager defense that I tried those things many times as various IE versions appeared over the years, including in recent years. But clearly not recently enough.
I keep hearing about how IE9 will support HTML 5. I would much rather hear about how it will fully support HTML 4 and CSS 2. I'll even settle for its supporting 95% of HTML 4 and CSS 2.
I keep hearing about how IE9 will support HTML 5 media elements like <video> and <audio>. I'd much rather hear about IE9 correctly rendering nested, cascading <object> elements as HTML 4 describes.
Get the HTML 4 stuff working before trumpeting about HTML 5 functionality, please. God knows you've had enough time.
Get over yourself. Sony pulled a stunt FIVE YEARS AGO.
And aside from the price of minor public outrage, they have paid virtually no price for doing it. (Forgive me if I don't view having to pay each affected customer $7.50 or a voucher for a free song download as a significant punishment.)
You're correct that completely avoiding Sony products is next to impossible, but that's hardly a reason to give up on trying to impose a punishment. Where choice exists, one can choose not to go with Sony.
The original plan was to base Java on Objective C, but as I understand it, the creators saw that widespread adoption of a brand new language was going to be an uphill battle, so they (wisely) chose to base the syntax on C++ to minimize the learning curve for the majority of existing developers, especially commercial developers.
Personally I would have preferred an Objective C syntax, but Java might have died a quick, obscure death were it not for the ease of transition from C++. Academic/technical ingenuity isn't worth much if no one ever uses your technology... which kind of sums up many of Sun's issues.
As for the original Java interpreter, I've yet to see anyone write a faster one for a 486.
It's worth noting that Javadoc (when generated by Sun's standard doclet) provides a "No Frames" version as a link on every single page. I interpret this as the Java team's acknowledging that frames are so unpleasant that even in the rare case where they're used well, many people can't stand them.
That's quite a tidy sum, Mr. Bigglesworth. If it's true, where is the money? Where is that 51 billion? Shouldn't some pirates be living conspicuously opulent lives? Or are we expected to believe that this 51 billion is spread out so evenly among so many pirates that the effect can only be seen in the BSA's careful measurements?
I am in hearty agreement. It's the software that's just awful awful awful. Notice every complaint in the article is actually a software complaint.
And most disheartening of all is that we can't write better software, outside of the FOSS world. Just try to write good software. And I mean really good, intuitive software, with useful errors and help messages that actually tell a user what he can do about the problem. Software that behaves well and doesn't act like it owns the computer and doesn't step on all the other software. I've been trying to do it for twenty years, and it's clear no company is interested in paying for that kind of development. Welcome to the world of low-quality everything.
Real climate scientists have been fighting for years... It is the climate evangelists that have been ignoring everyone else up until now.
I'm getting tired of reading this nonsense. As someone with a degree in environmental science, I feel the need to point out a few things:
No one goes into the field expecting to make a lot of money. There are no tales anywhere of environmental scientists who got famous enough to get a gig hosting Nova or doing Nike endorsements. People choose environmental studies because they find it interesting. Anyone who went into it for the money would rapidly be bored to tears.
Even a meager application of Occam's razor should make it immediately clear that the people accusing the climate science community of scaremongering/profiteering are themselves some of the most aggressive profiteers the world has ever known: the fossil fuel industry. (There's nothing wrong with making a profit, but there is something very wrong with stifling competition.)
Anyone who was alive during the 70s should see distinct similarities between this disinformation campaign and the once vehement claims that there was "no definitive link" between tobacco use and cancer.
Which is more likely: that scientists got together and colluded to invent a crisis thinking it would make tons of money roll in, or that the wealthy are projecting their greed onto the less greedy? Occam's razor.
Reading the article more closely, one can see that it was "statutory rape." Personally I'm having trouble understanding how a 17-year-old can commit statutory rape against a 15-year-old. I could have sworn such laws explicitly allow sex between any two people within two years of age.
I'm guessing that's the only charge they could muster against the male participants. All of the charges, against both the male and female students, seem pretty weak.
I can't say I find this surprising. Anyone who has ever worked on software for a US government contractor, or US military contractor, knows the government/military has no one who can analyze the product they pay for. Nearly every software product I've seen delivered is of absurdly poor quality. It would be laughable if the implications of the software's use weren't so disturbing.
I'm guessing people who choose to create PDF forms are WYSIWYG-obsessed, and Adobe is catering to them. Remember all those web pages in the 90s that contained 1x1 blank GIFs for spacing? The people who made those things are still around, somewhere. Perhaps they are Adobe's target market.
I've actually seen an entire web page replaced with an Acrobat document containing hyperlinks.
Not to burst your bubble too much, but crime in no-light areas is significantly higher than in areas with significant light.
I don't believe this is actually true at all. It's easy to assume it must be true, but evidence suggests that the number of onlookers and passers-by is what affects crime frequency. A well-lit area with few or no people will still have a high crime rate.
I don't have studies on hand to back this up, but I've seen many, many parking lots given obscenely bright overhead lamps in the name of preventing assaults, and in each case they didn't change anything. If anyone has links to studies indicating the opposite, that more lighting actually reduces crime, I'd like to see them.
Code reuse is a nice goal, but it's hardly the core definition of good software engineering. Code reuse is a benefit that arises from good design; code reuse as a goal unto itself is little more than wasted effort driven by cargo-cult misconceptions.
The thing most people overlook is that for code to be reusable, it must first be... usable. Code has to be well defined, well designed and well documented in order to be usable and thus reusable. Sure, you can reuse it even if it fails those qualifications, but it will mean more work than not reusing it.
I think the expectation here is that you're adult enough that you don't need a hall monitor watching over you. It's called acting responsibly.
You want to use example.* domains for the same reason filmmakers always use 555-* phone numbers. There's no law forcing them to; they do it because it's an effortless courtesy to people who might actually own an otherwise randomly generated phone number.
Just ask the few unlucky individuals who have had 867-5309 as their number.
They covered their bases. This is one of the most informative and honest articles I've seen in a long time. They make a point of saying, more than once, that they're not positive a treated person is not infectious, but their certainty is equal to the certainty with which the scientific community asserted in 1986 that kissing cannot spread HIV (an assertion that continues to hold up to this day).
Interestingly, they are not recommending the treatment for widespread use, because many people have trouble rigorously adhering to a treatment schedule, and even a little slip in the treatment could result in the creation of a resistant strain of HIV. I'd hate to be the doctor who has to pass that judgement: "Before I treat you, how do I know you won't skip an occasional treatment, thereby creating a scourge of humankind that's even harder to treat than the HIV we have now?"
Space Invaders, Pong and Galaga were fun but only in a limited way. The old arcade machines existed purely to suck the coins out of your pockets.
Not really. They existed to attract people to the location. "Come for the videogames; stay for the food/rides/sports/shopping." Pinballs existed for the same reason.
The quarters rarely paid for the machines' purchase cost, upkeep, and power consumption. It was the auxiliary business they brought in that helped them earn their keep.
It wasn't until the 90s that games became true quarter-suckers. Once the objective was to get people's money, rather than to attract them with amusement, most games quickly degenerated into something hardly any more fun than a casino slot machine.
I agree with you, except that the older cards should not be written off. I wonder how many of those older All-In-Wonder cards would be sitting in scrap piles if their video ports were usable in Linux. I know I'd use them. I get the impression they're quite a bit better than BT8xx cards. Sadly, they're currently only usable as generic SVGA cards.
Yes, I know there have been some attempts at reverse-engineering the older cards' video ports, but it's spotty, difficult to use, and if I remember correctly, requires not only an X module but also patching and recompiling X itself. Plus special binaries instead of v4l or v4l2 support.
It seems ridiculous to me that so many cards are sitting in landfills for no reason other than ATI's unwillingness to release specs for them. What is there to lose by releasing specs for old cards?
Slashdot Mirror
As everyone's pointed out, emulators have already covered the preservation of things like Star Raiders.
What really needs preservation are (relatively) newer games buried by copyright holders. Games like "System Shock 2," "KISS Psycho Circus: The Nightmare Child," and the PC version of "Turok 2: Seeds of Evil," all of which are no longer published and cannot be bought brand new anymore, leaving only eBay and warez as viable sources.
Reading the article, I see that Verizon is against this, so I'm probably for it.
I especially grimaced when I read this part:
That's more transparent than usual, isn't it? In case it's not, I'll translate: "How are we supposed to have free reign to let America's infrastructure steadily decay, if regulation comes from someone other than the politicians we bought?"
This one.
Because of what they've encoded in the Private Use Area block at code point U+E0F2. Check STIXv1.0.0/Glyphs/STIXNonUnit.otf.pdf in the zip file to see it, and check the last link in the summary for the character's name. I hope that gets folded back into the Unicode Standard someday....
I just tried a couple quick tests of two irritating shortcomings which I had remembered off the top of my head: the <object> element and 'inherit' as a CSS property value.
They actually do work. So I retract my complaint. I can only offer the meager defense that I tried those things many times as various IE versions appeared over the years, including in recent years. But clearly not recently enough.
I keep hearing about how IE9 will support HTML 5. I would much rather hear about how it will fully support HTML 4 and CSS 2. I'll even settle for its supporting 95% of HTML 4 and CSS 2.
I keep hearing about how IE9 will support HTML 5 media elements like <video> and <audio>. I'd much rather hear about IE9 correctly rendering nested, cascading <object> elements as HTML 4 describes.
Get the HTML 4 stuff working before trumpeting about HTML 5 functionality, please. God knows you've had enough time.
And aside from the price of minor public outrage, they have paid virtually no price for doing it. (Forgive me if I don't view having to pay each affected customer $7.50 or a voucher for a free song download as a significant punishment.)
You're correct that completely avoiding Sony products is next to impossible, but that's hardly a reason to give up on trying to impose a punishment. Where choice exists, one can choose not to go with Sony.
The original plan was to base Java on Objective C, but as I understand it, the creators saw that widespread adoption of a brand new language was going to be an uphill battle, so they (wisely) chose to base the syntax on C++ to minimize the learning curve for the majority of existing developers, especially commercial developers.
Personally I would have preferred an Objective C syntax, but Java might have died a quick, obscure death were it not for the ease of transition from C++. Academic/technical ingenuity isn't worth much if no one ever uses your technology ... which kind of sums up many of Sun's issues.
As for the original Java interpreter, I've yet to see anyone write a faster one for a 486.
It's worth noting that Javadoc (when generated by Sun's standard doclet) provides a "No Frames" version as a link on every single page. I interpret this as the Java team's acknowledging that frames are so unpleasant that even in the rare case where they're used well, many people can't stand them.
Standing on the shoulders of giants is fine. Pretending you invented/innovated their work is not.
Am I the only one who remembers the Windows 95 radio ad that claimed Windows 95 introduced an amazing new concept called "multitasking"?
That's quite a tidy sum, Mr. Bigglesworth. If it's true, where is the money? Where is that 51 billion? Shouldn't some pirates be living conspicuously opulent lives? Or are we expected to believe that this 51 billion is spread out so evenly among so many pirates that the effect can only be seen in the BSA's careful measurements?
I am in hearty agreement. It's the software that's just awful awful awful. Notice every complaint in the article is actually a software complaint.
And most disheartening of all is that we can't write better software, outside of the FOSS world. Just try to write good software. And I mean really good, intuitive software, with useful errors and help messages that actually tell a user what he can do about the problem. Software that behaves well and doesn't act like it owns the computer and doesn't step on all the other software. I've been trying to do it for twenty years, and it's clear no company is interested in paying for that kind of development. Welcome to the world of low-quality everything.
I'm getting tired of reading this nonsense. As someone with a degree in environmental science, I feel the need to point out a few things:
Which is more likely: that scientists got together and colluded to invent a crisis thinking it would make tons of money roll in, or that the wealthy are projecting their greed onto the less greedy? Occam's razor.
"Capitalism in action" implies customers who are displeased with the change can take their money to a different, roughly equivalent service.
Reading the article more closely, one can see that it was "statutory rape." Personally I'm having trouble understanding how a 17-year-old can commit statutory rape against a 15-year-old. I could have sworn such laws explicitly allow sex between any two people within two years of age.
I'm guessing that's the only charge they could muster against the male participants. All of the charges, against both the male and female students, seem pretty weak.
I instinctively assume anything that needs to use underhanded advertising must not be able to stand on its merits.
I can't say I find this surprising. Anyone who has ever worked on software for a US government contractor, or US military contractor, knows the government/military has no one who can analyze the product they pay for. Nearly every software product I've seen delivered is of absurdly poor quality. It would be laughable if the implications of the software's use weren't so disturbing.
I'm guessing people who choose to create PDF forms are WYSIWYG-obsessed, and Adobe is catering to them. Remember all those web pages in the 90s that contained 1x1 blank GIFs for spacing? The people who made those things are still around, somewhere. Perhaps they are Adobe's target market.
I've actually seen an entire web page replaced with an Acrobat document containing hyperlinks.
I don't believe this is actually true at all. It's easy to assume it must be true, but evidence suggests that the number of onlookers and passers-by is what affects crime frequency. A well-lit area with few or no people will still have a high crime rate.
I don't have studies on hand to back this up, but I've seen many, many parking lots given obscenely bright overhead lamps in the name of preventing assaults, and in each case they didn't change anything. If anyone has links to studies indicating the opposite, that more lighting actually reduces crime, I'd like to see them.
I'll always remember him as Armando from the third and fourth "Planet of the Apes" movies.
Code reuse is a nice goal, but it's hardly the core definition of good software engineering. Code reuse is a benefit that arises from good design; code reuse as a goal unto itself is little more than wasted effort driven by cargo-cult misconceptions.
The thing most people overlook is that for code to be reusable, it must first be ... usable. Code has to be well defined, well designed and well documented in order to be usable and thus reusable. Sure, you can reuse it even if it fails those qualifications, but it will mean more work than not reusing it.
I think the expectation here is that you're adult enough that you don't need a hall monitor watching over you. It's called acting responsibly.
You want to use example.* domains for the same reason filmmakers always use 555-* phone numbers. There's no law forcing them to; they do it because it's an effortless courtesy to people who might actually own an otherwise randomly generated phone number.
Just ask the few unlucky individuals who have had 867-5309 as their number.
They covered their bases. This is one of the most informative and honest articles I've seen in a long time. They make a point of saying, more than once, that they're not positive a treated person is not infectious, but their certainty is equal to the certainty with which the scientific community asserted in 1986 that kissing cannot spread HIV (an assertion that continues to hold up to this day).
Interestingly, they are not recommending the treatment for widespread use, because many people have trouble rigorously adhering to a treatment schedule, and even a little slip in the treatment could result in the creation of a resistant strain of HIV. I'd hate to be the doctor who has to pass that judgement: "Before I treat you, how do I know you won't skip an occasional treatment, thereby creating a scourge of humankind that's even harder to treat than the HIV we have now?"
Not really. They existed to attract people to the location. "Come for the videogames; stay for the food/rides/sports/shopping." Pinballs existed for the same reason.
The quarters rarely paid for the machines' purchase cost, upkeep, and power consumption. It was the auxiliary business they brought in that helped them earn their keep.
It wasn't until the 90s that games became true quarter-suckers. Once the objective was to get people's money, rather than to attract them with amusement, most games quickly degenerated into something hardly any more fun than a casino slot machine.
I agree with you, except that the older cards should not be written off. I wonder how many of those older All-In-Wonder cards would be sitting in scrap piles if their video ports were usable in Linux. I know I'd use them. I get the impression they're quite a bit better than BT8xx cards. Sadly, they're currently only usable as generic SVGA cards.
Yes, I know there have been some attempts at reverse-engineering the older cards' video ports, but it's spotty, difficult to use, and if I remember correctly, requires not only an X module but also patching and recompiling X itself. Plus special binaries instead of v4l or v4l2 support.
It seems ridiculous to me that so many cards are sitting in landfills for no reason other than ATI's unwillingness to release specs for them. What is there to lose by releasing specs for old cards?