Ok, screen size and sound might be a problem, but I can't phathom why we haven't seen licensed technology coming from Nintendo to get the GBA/GB/Nintendo 8-bit games into PDAs/mobile phones.
Given that the GBA is as small as it is, I can only imagine the form factor of a device needed to play classic 8-bit games can't be bigger.
Nintendo has shown the propensity to re-release content on the GBA (Super Mario Bros. 3 is one of the latest in a LONG list of re-releases from the SNES), so I wonder what the hold up is on getting out the classic 8-bit games on mobile phones and PDAs. Too expensive to perform the R&D? Too far away from the core business model?
Amazon's Top Lawyer: Look, we know you guys want to do the whole 'One-Click' thing. But we got a patent on it. We have to protect it. How would we look to other companies if we didn't? Like big wussies, that's how we'd look.
B&N's Top Lawyer: But your patent is too broad and ill-defined. You knew you were taking advantage of the patent office's ignorance toward technology. And we're pissed off enough about it to get it over-turned. And if you think inactivity would make you look like wussies, over-turning your patents is going to make you look like money-grubbing vampires.
ATL: We don't have to go through this, you know. You could just pay a nominal license fee...
BNTL: Yeah, and you could lick my #expletive#.
ATL: Oh come on, is that really necessary? It wouldn't hurt your bottom line in the least.
BNTL: It's the principal of the thing.
ATL: Ok, then. What's your idea of a compromise?
BNTL: Ideally, all of you out of a job. But since it's not an ideal world, how about this: We don't pay a license fee and do the 'One-Click' thing anyway.
ATL: Alright, alright. But only if you sign an agreement to never co-operate with, testify for or help any other company we come down on to protect this patent.
BNTL: Only if Bezos goes public and says he's in favor of patent reform.
Bezos: What?!?
ATL: You've GOT to be kidding.
BNTL: Nope. And say it like you mean it.
<Some general grumbling on the Amazon side of the table>
ATL: Deal. But don't ever have the same book of the month as we do!
No, I'm serious. He wanted the plastic fabrication guys to make these black plastic covers that would slide over the front of the modems. The only reason that it wasn't done was that the CEO told him it would be an waste of plastic and reminded the CIO that the modem pool was locked away in a server room with limited access.
At one time I worked with what I thought was a highly paranoid CIO for a manufacturing company. He had custom-made black plastic covers made for every modem in the modem pool (this was waaaay back) for this very reason.
I tried not to think about it but he was convinced that eventually someone would create technology that would re-construct the data transmission based on those LEDs.
If he's reading this (and he knows who he is), you paranoid sod, damn you for being right. *grin*
I agree. If you think for a moment you (as a business or conglomerate thereof) are going to make a mint providing the means to pirate, you're sadly mistaken. Sure, you might make some money. Maybe even pretty good money. But if you start showing as a blip on the RIAA's earnings radar, you and your lawyers are going to find yourself first very busy and second out of business.
...network security are going to have to be even more "on their toes" about their wireless network.
I certainly think it's a good idea, though. I can imagine this kind of universal wireless compatibility preventing a lot of headaches for busy travelers when airports and mass transit terminals start implementing WLANs.
Now if I could only get my boss to let us put up an 802.11 network so I can code from Barnes & Noble down the street...
Re:BeOS had the classic catch 22
on
BeOS For Linux
·
· Score: 2
It's not that I think it blocks progress so much as it extends the time of acceptance.
The thinking would be something like, "I'd like to use BeOS, but it's not compatible with my video card yet." Now, multiply that statement by a couple of gazillion users. Said users don't need another desktop OS and BeOS didn't have any "killer apps", so the acceptance rate is much lower.
Like I said, it doesn't block acceptance. But it certainly influences it negatively when there isn't a "must have" application involved.
BeOS had the classic catch 22
on
BeOS For Linux
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
No one would write a lot of apps until it had a larger user base, no user base would be generated until it had more apps.
It's the same set of problems Linux has faced in the past. BeOS was/is a fine OS, but it never seemed to have a good backer, nor a solid niche. Artsy types already prefer Macs, so it's hard to compete there. Ordinary desktop users have already been won over by Microsoft, so it's really hard to compete there. Linux users already had a free OS and a nice looking desktop if they wanted it (re: KDE, Gnome. You should know that by now).
I think that BeOS was a nice, stable OS that could have been a contender. It's a shame it didn't get more press or attention from major industry players. Oh well, I look forward to another nice Linux desktop all the same.
The mass market of consumers owns a CD player and likely has one in their car. The mass market consumers do not own MP3 players that they use over their home stereo or in their car or even as a portable device for that matter. So despite the large number of "casual" Internet users that became proficient at downloading a few MP3s via a file sharing service (re: Napster), most people still bought CDs.
I think what the RIAA is missing here is that the people who really download lots and lots of MP3s are never going to spend the money to buy this music in the first place. Case and point: I really wanted Tenacious D's album so I bought the CD. A good friend of mine kinda likes Tenacious D, but not enough to buy the album, so he downloaded the MP3s he likes. Since he never would have bought the CD in the first place, you can't really count him as lost revenue. He would have never bought the CD.
It would be interesting to me to find out how many people who used Napster (and still use Morpheus, et al) that never intended to buy the CDs in the first place. Removing them from the equation would provide a more accurate look at what the RIAA lost/gained.
The fact that a majority of the opinions are against the settlement is really a testament to common sense.
I don't want to make myself out to be a MS-basher. That would be hypocritical, since I use MS products in my job as a programmer and at home (mostly for gaming). But even someone who is adamantly pro-MS would have to acknowledge MS's unfair use of it's size and power to not just compete with others in MS's markets, but to crush them.
I used to argue that MS hasn't done anything any other company hasn't done or wanted to do. With the exception that no other company has been in quite a parallel set of circumstances, I still more or less believe that. But MS has become so large and powerful that the decisions those in power make do indeed hinder competition. When MS decides to "embrace and extend" something (like, say, a communication protocol), sure, it protects their business - which is a basic drive of all businesses. But that kind of manuveur by MS just hurts the industry as a whole as manufacturers scramble to make MS-compliant hardware and software developers scramble to implement MS-compatible solutions. And we all do the same dance again when MS Protocol X is revised with (typically buggy) version N.0
It's good to see that the people who aren't agreeing with the settlement are excersizing basic business logic.
...but I don't think it's unreasonable to ask that the organization that doles out.US domains to give trademark holders a brief time to buy their domains. It's not like the sales of domain names would be stagnant, that's for sure, so no money would be lost there. And if a company interested in having their trademark with a.US domain doesn't respond in time (I dunno, a week? Two?) then tough luck. Resolve your cybersquatting issues in court, because you had your chance.
...surprising. Students seem to be the largest demographic, which makes sense because students (especially at the college level) tend to have more free time on their hands (assuming they are providing their classes with the average level of ignoring). Which lends itself to the lowest household income being the highest demographic, since students don't tend to have a lot of income.
What surprises me so much about EQ (I'm a former EQ'er myself) is how much the game appeals to housewives and stay-at-home moms. My mother, who is in her 50s, has been playing for two years now and has gotten no less than two other housewives into EQ. My mother may not be a fair example, after all, this is a woman who bought a Playstation just for Final Fantasy VII, but the other housewives are prime examples of people who had never played a PC game in their lives (and few console games). Yet, something in EQ's mechanics and social structure hooks them and won't let go. I'd like to see a more in-depth analysis of that demographic, simply because I don't think anyone, including Verant, foresaw them becoming a significant portion of the crowd.
Just as a snide/side note: When I read that a good percentage of the EQers in the survey said they play with a romantic partner, I wondered aloud how many of those EQers are playing with a romantic partner they met through the game and never in real life.
For the most part, I agree with you. I fully accept the fact that my ISP logs what I'm accessing. For legal and law enforcement reasons, that only makes sense. What I'm more concerned with is the clarity of Comcast's decision here. Customers need to know that their activities are being logged (something I agree they should already understand) and that those logs are being analyzed so that they can be exposed to targeted advertising.
Also, if Comcast is indeed capturing packets (not just request logs), then the customer needs to know that their ISP is storing things like unencrypted passwords. There's a big difference between packet storage and request storage.
First of all, have their customers been notified of this? Are they aware of the monitoring? Has it been explained to the customers in understandable language, not legalese? If the answer is "No" to any of these questions, then I think this company is headed down the short path to being sued.
Likely, they want to generate detailed customer profiles so that they can sell more targeted advertising (after all, highly targeted advertising is what sells for the most money). But even at that, it's an annoying practice that should be explained to the customers.
Even assuming they notified their customers (which I don't believe they did), though, it's going to be a hard sell to convince customers that their passwords (which are often not encrypted) as safe with them. They'd best stop this practice while they're ahead and no one has taken legal action. It reeks of a poorly-thought-out marketing/management decision.
...and you're right, none of those programming languages will fit all the bills.
I haven't been programming as long as some, but in my experience I've never come across a particular programming language that covers all the bases. You might be better off deciding which of your specifications is of the highest priority before giving weight to any language.
Also, since no one programming language fits all these specs, you might want to start documenting (or digging up documents) on which ones support the most of your specs.
Just from what you've asked for here, I'd say you're asking more for something like C++ than VB/VB.NET. You've thrown "simplified GUI design" into your specs, and, aside from Java, that's almost always anti-portability. Assuming you go with the most widely-used simple GUI language, VB, you're pretty much locked into MS OS's. Since OS-lock-in seems to be a polar opposite from what your other specs aim for, I'll say you don't want to use VB.
Ruling out the simplified GUI design as the highest priority, I'd say you're best off with C++ or Java. There are C++ compilers and Java Virtual Machines for a variety of platforms (that's an understatement). I lean towards C++ - what with it's pointers, truly compiled code, etc - but that's mostly personal preference. I've got some experience with Java and I've got mostly good things to say about it. But all my C++ apps have outperformed my Java apps, so the optimization geek in me leans to C++.
Where the RIAA is pretty damned ruthlessly effective, the EU has far too much internal squabbling (due to pride, years of political conflict, whatever) to be really effective. Give the EU ten more years of so before they become really, really strong.
Likewise, when I think about the BSA, I think about a bunch of tech companies that often have conflicting agendas. Sure, they want a common set of defenses and legal standards (like the RIAA), but each company individually will look to make the most advantageous moves for itself, which will often undermine the strength of the group. Unless, said company is compensated by the entire group to keep the company from undermining the group.
The BSA doesn't scare me just yet. I'll give them a shorter time than the EU - say 5 years - to become really, really powerful. Until then, the BSA is only as strong as the strongest company within the BSA. As soon as members of the BSA want to make a decision that conflicts with the larger, more powerful companies in the BSA, the big companies will leave the BSA. Or ignore it altogether.
A friend of mine who, like me, is a professional software developer once likened programmers to guys who love their cars, they just love to show you what's under the hood.
I mean, really, it doesn't take much poking and prodding around the Internet to find dozens of programmer resource sites, most of which have tons and tons or free code. Programmers, for the most part, feel a sort of comradery (sp?) with each other and as such aren't very hesitant to share their code with other programmers. There have been many occassions where I've gotten a third-party product developer to open up the code base, despite licensing or legal issues, so I could help him/her customize the product to suite my employer's or client's needs.
Also, I believe there comes a time when a professional developer is either experienced or learned enough to understand the "how" of just about any piece of programming, even if they don't have the experise to jump in and do it. For example, I understand how 3d engines work, despite my never having coded one from the ground up (so to speak). I think opening up the code base of your neat-o project is a little easier to take when you realize that other competent developers are going to basically understand how you accomplished what you've done.
As for "weenies" not showing off their code...perhaps they don't have code of their own to show?
Noteriety in an alternate universe
on
EverQuest and the UN
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
As interesting as the talk about the economy of Norrath is, I'm more intrigued by what drives that economy. As a former EQer (although never an addict, per say) and the son of an avid EQ addict, my observations are that the thing that drives the economy of EQ is one of the same things that drives the "luxury" economy of the real world: status.
From a somewhat psychological view, one could argue that one of the primary addictive qualities about EQ is that it allows the player to be represented in a grand, heroic fashion. All the guys are buff and appear strong, all the girls look like a cross between Xena and two coconuts. Riches and adventure are somewhat easy to come by, given that you spend enough time playing the game, so the opportunity to escape one's mundane and unaccomplished life is ample. Given that the rest of the game's world is populated by the avatars of living, breathing human beings, it becomes more than a simple diversion to establish oneself in the society...it becomes a major ambition, just like our normal lives.
Enter the interaction between our real world and Norrath. It is difficult for someone of average income to buy great status. Luxury cars, large homes on prime property...all these things cost tremendous amounts of money. And since most of us did not win the genetic lottery, our appearance will not gain us said status, either (hence, only a tiny portion of the population are models). With the EQ universe, the dynamic is changed. For a mere $100, large sums of game money can be purchased. For your real-world American dollars, you can purchase the most powerful, greatest status symbols of the game. You can walk through the game world boldy, showing off your prized status symbols to other players just as wealthy Americans enjoy going for a drive in their shiny Mercedes.
The ability to re-invent yourself is a major selling point for what is otherwise a chat window with a game around it. Verant, as a business, was very wise to include hard-to-find, rare items that would confer "great champion" status to their owners. It is the same behavior we see in our society, it's just more affordable for the average person.
While I was in college I did a co-op with a company that makes software to sync a certain popular PDA with Office. At the time, the company was really small and there were established competitors who were a lot larger than my employer. They, too, had a patent on a particular algorithm of synchronization, but we my bosses (one of whom was the developer of our software) weren't concerned. Our software was so much faster than theirs, the algorithm couldn't possibly be the same.
Imagine our surpise when our biggest competitor sent a "cease-and-desist" letter claiming we infringed on their patents. My bosses denied it, of course, but our competitor would have none of it. They had to see our code for themselves to verify that we weren't in violation of their patents. I don't quite remember exactly how it was resolved - I left soon after this became a big issue - but I'm sure it had something to do with my employer striking a deal with the manufacturer of the PDA.
Anyway, where I'm going with this is that, sure it might not seem like having this patent is a bad thing or over-reaching. And, used responsibly, it's probably not. But don't be surprised to see AvantGo try to get the drop on a potential competitor if they can use this patent as leverage.
would know better. How often do we (meaning people in the tech industry in general) receive unwanted junk email? All the time. How often do we look at it? I don't know about everyone else, but it goes right into the virtual trash for me.
I don't understand how tech industry people could have thought this would be any different. Perhaps they are fooling themselves about how this relates to physical paper resumes, since some employers will simply take mailed-in resumes and place them "on file" for future reference. As it is, unsolicited emails do nothing more than make the spammer look like a jackass.
Oh, a note to the poster who said they more or less spammed employers through Monster.com. Employers in that system explicitly signed up to receive such emails, thus it can not be spamming.
I know most people will assume such a statement by Microsoft is just response to the bad PR they've endured after stating XP was their most stable OS and then a major hole was found in it. But, when you think about it, it really would seem plausible for MS to finally get serious about security.
Take all the factors that normally influence major business decisions - especially IT decisions - and you start seeing really compelling cases against MS.
First, there's cost. We all know Linux wins that one hands-down, since it's hard to compete with free. Next, consider stability. We all know Win95/98/Me are horrible when it comes to this, but let's remember that most businesses are running at least NT - which is mostly stable - and many have now upgraded to Win 2k, which is very stable (IMHO). XP is as stable as Win 2k, but I don't think most businesses have an interest in upgrading to XP from 2k, so I'm mostly ignoring XP.
Then comes the big one: support. Many IT people that manage MS-centric offices and networks will tell you that they don't trust the availability or amount of support for Linux. Linux gurus, on the other hand, call MS support a joke. This one, IMHO, is more or less a draw since both sides see it differently.
But after all that, you can mention the factor that makes even the non-tech execs cringe: security. If the CEO - now matter how technologically uneducated said CEO is - reads in the Wall Street Journal that there's a major security hole in Windows version Blah and the hole is large enough to present danger to critical corporate systems, said CEO is going to make damned sure the IT people either get the hole patched or ditch Windows version Blah to avoid security problems. In the past, the IT people could shoot down such directives because going from MS to Linux could present too many problems. But now we have Lindows and Wine to help support any critical Win32 apps and KDE and Gnome to make the desktop transition easier.
Again, this could just be MS lip service. But with all the current pressures combined with the future potential of Windows replacements, it wouldn't be all that surprising to see MS start trying to produce a product that deserves the corporate mega-bucks.
...but usually when I see an article or bit of "old-meets-new" tech news, it has a real purpose. Like having a better way to get old heirchical (sp?) data off a legacy system mainframe. But this piece leads to the question of "Who needs to expand their Apple II?"
The Apple II was a desktop system, not a big mainframe. I have my doubts that many critical systems were built for the Apple II. I doubt even more that those critical systems, if they ever existed at all, weren't converted to some other system years ago.
Again, I don't want to take away from the sheer "geek-cool" factor of this. It's a neat little technological achievement. But, for the life of me, I can't think of a useful thing to accomplish with it.
Most Linux users are already familiar with the caveats and reprecussions of customizing your kernel. This kind of tool would just make it easier to get to.
There aren't all that many "casual" Linux users. That market is dominated by Microsoft. And if you've deployed Linux to a work environment, chances are you won't allow a tool like this to be used, because you'll probably want to lock down the configurations (making your life as a sys admin a lot easier).
Assuming Linux continues to proliferate to the consumer market, I still wouldn't be worried about people tinkering with their kernel too much. Most people, especially at the "average Joe" level, don't understand the inner workings of their OS. Heck, most of them fear their OS and assume that they'll break something if they tinker with the OS's inner settings. I wouldn't conclude that simply because the tool is there that most people would be interested in using it.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, screen size and sound might be a problem, but I can't phathom why we haven't seen licensed technology coming from Nintendo to get the GBA/GB/Nintendo 8-bit games into PDAs/mobile phones.
Given that the GBA is as small as it is, I can only imagine the form factor of a device needed to play classic 8-bit games can't be bigger.
Nintendo has shown the propensity to re-release content on the GBA (Super Mario Bros. 3 is one of the latest in a LONG list of re-releases from the SNES), so I wonder what the hold up is on getting out the classic 8-bit games on mobile phones and PDAs. Too expensive to perform the R&D? Too far away from the core business model?
Amazon's Top Lawyer: Look, we know you guys want to do the whole 'One-Click' thing. But we got a patent on it. We have to protect it. How would we look to other companies if we didn't? Like big wussies, that's how we'd look.
B&N's Top Lawyer: But your patent is too broad and ill-defined. You knew you were taking advantage of the patent office's ignorance toward technology. And we're pissed off enough about it to get it over-turned. And if you think inactivity would make you look like wussies, over-turning your patents is going to make you look like money-grubbing vampires.
ATL: We don't have to go through this, you know. You could just pay a nominal license fee...
BNTL: Yeah, and you could lick my #expletive#.
ATL: Oh come on, is that really necessary? It wouldn't hurt your bottom line in the least.
BNTL: It's the principal of the thing.
ATL: Ok, then. What's your idea of a compromise?
BNTL: Ideally, all of you out of a job. But since it's not an ideal world, how about this: We don't pay a license fee and do the 'One-Click' thing anyway.
ATL: Alright, alright. But only if you sign an agreement to never co-operate with, testify for or help any other company we come down on to protect this patent.
BNTL: Only if Bezos goes public and says he's in favor of patent reform.
Bezos: What?!?
ATL: You've GOT to be kidding.
BNTL: Nope. And say it like you mean it.
<Some general grumbling on the Amazon side of the table>
ATL: Deal. But don't ever have the same book of the month as we do!
BNTL: We've got no problem with that.
<End scene>
No, I'm serious. He wanted the plastic fabrication guys to make these black plastic covers that would slide over the front of the modems. The only reason that it wasn't done was that the CEO told him it would be an waste of plastic and reminded the CIO that the modem pool was locked away in a server room with limited access.
At one time I worked with what I thought was a highly paranoid CIO for a manufacturing company. He had custom-made black plastic covers made for every modem in the modem pool (this was waaaay back) for this very reason.
I tried not to think about it but he was convinced that eventually someone would create technology that would re-construct the data transmission based on those LEDs.
If he's reading this (and he knows who he is), you paranoid sod, damn you for being right. *grin*
I agree. If you think for a moment you (as a business or conglomerate thereof) are going to make a mint providing the means to pirate, you're sadly mistaken. Sure, you might make some money. Maybe even pretty good money. But if you start showing as a blip on the RIAA's earnings radar, you and your lawyers are going to find yourself first very busy and second out of business.
...because I kept waiting for the grammar to devolve into Hulk-speak:
RARRR! No like OSX! Icons EVERYWHERE! Stupid Steve! HULK SMASH!
...network security are going to have to be even more "on their toes" about their wireless network.
I certainly think it's a good idea, though. I can imagine this kind of universal wireless compatibility preventing a lot of headaches for busy travelers when airports and mass transit terminals start implementing WLANs.
Now if I could only get my boss to let us put up an 802.11 network so I can code from Barnes & Noble down the street...
It's not that I think it blocks progress so much as it extends the time of acceptance.
The thinking would be something like, "I'd like to use BeOS, but it's not compatible with my video card yet." Now, multiply that statement by a couple of gazillion users. Said users don't need another desktop OS and BeOS didn't have any "killer apps", so the acceptance rate is much lower.
Like I said, it doesn't block acceptance. But it certainly influences it negatively when there isn't a "must have" application involved.
No one would write a lot of apps until it had a larger user base, no user base would be generated until it had more apps.
It's the same set of problems Linux has faced in the past. BeOS was/is a fine OS, but it never seemed to have a good backer, nor a solid niche. Artsy types already prefer Macs, so it's hard to compete there. Ordinary desktop users have already been won over by Microsoft, so it's really hard to compete there. Linux users already had a free OS and a nice looking desktop if they wanted it (re: KDE, Gnome. You should know that by now).
I think that BeOS was a nice, stable OS that could have been a contender. It's a shame it didn't get more press or attention from major industry players. Oh well, I look forward to another nice Linux desktop all the same.
The mass market of consumers owns a CD player and likely has one in their car. The mass market consumers do not own MP3 players that they use over their home stereo or in their car or even as a portable device for that matter. So despite the large number of "casual" Internet users that became proficient at downloading a few MP3s via a file sharing service (re: Napster), most people still bought CDs.
I think what the RIAA is missing here is that the people who really download lots and lots of MP3s are never going to spend the money to buy this music in the first place. Case and point: I really wanted Tenacious D's album so I bought the CD. A good friend of mine kinda likes Tenacious D, but not enough to buy the album, so he downloaded the MP3s he likes. Since he never would have bought the CD in the first place, you can't really count him as lost revenue. He would have never bought the CD.
It would be interesting to me to find out how many people who used Napster (and still use Morpheus, et al) that never intended to buy the CDs in the first place. Removing them from the equation would provide a more accurate look at what the RIAA lost/gained.
The fact that a majority of the opinions are against the settlement is really a testament to common sense.
I don't want to make myself out to be a MS-basher. That would be hypocritical, since I use MS products in my job as a programmer and at home (mostly for gaming). But even someone who is adamantly pro-MS would have to acknowledge MS's unfair use of it's size and power to not just compete with others in MS's markets, but to crush them.
I used to argue that MS hasn't done anything any other company hasn't done or wanted to do. With the exception that no other company has been in quite a parallel set of circumstances, I still more or less believe that. But MS has become so large and powerful that the decisions those in power make do indeed hinder competition. When MS decides to "embrace and extend" something (like, say, a communication protocol), sure, it protects their business - which is a basic drive of all businesses. But that kind of manuveur by MS just hurts the industry as a whole as manufacturers scramble to make MS-compliant hardware and software developers scramble to implement MS-compatible solutions. And we all do the same dance again when MS Protocol X is revised with (typically buggy) version N.0
It's good to see that the people who aren't agreeing with the settlement are excersizing basic business logic.
...but I don't think it's unreasonable to ask that the organization that doles out .US domains to give trademark holders a brief time to buy their domains. It's not like the sales of domain names would be stagnant, that's for sure, so no money would be lost there. And if a company interested in having their trademark with a .US domain doesn't respond in time (I dunno, a week? Two?) then tough luck. Resolve your cybersquatting issues in court, because you had your chance.
...surprising. Students seem to be the largest demographic, which makes sense because students (especially at the college level) tend to have more free time on their hands (assuming they are providing their classes with the average level of ignoring). Which lends itself to the lowest household income being the highest demographic, since students don't tend to have a lot of income.
What surprises me so much about EQ (I'm a former EQ'er myself) is how much the game appeals to housewives and stay-at-home moms. My mother, who is in her 50s, has been playing for two years now and has gotten no less than two other housewives into EQ. My mother may not be a fair example, after all, this is a woman who bought a Playstation just for Final Fantasy VII, but the other housewives are prime examples of people who had never played a PC game in their lives (and few console games). Yet, something in EQ's mechanics and social structure hooks them and won't let go. I'd like to see a more in-depth analysis of that demographic, simply because I don't think anyone, including Verant, foresaw them becoming a significant portion of the crowd.
Just as a snide/side note: When I read that a good percentage of the EQers in the survey said they play with a romantic partner, I wondered aloud how many of those EQers are playing with a romantic partner they met through the game and never in real life.
For the most part, I agree with you. I fully accept the fact that my ISP logs what I'm accessing. For legal and law enforcement reasons, that only makes sense. What I'm more concerned with is the clarity of Comcast's decision here. Customers need to know that their activities are being logged (something I agree they should already understand) and that those logs are being analyzed so that they can be exposed to targeted advertising.
Also, if Comcast is indeed capturing packets (not just request logs), then the customer needs to know that their ISP is storing things like unencrypted passwords. There's a big difference between packet storage and request storage.
First of all, have their customers been notified of this? Are they aware of the monitoring? Has it been explained to the customers in understandable language, not legalese? If the answer is "No" to any of these questions, then I think this company is headed down the short path to being sued.
Likely, they want to generate detailed customer profiles so that they can sell more targeted advertising (after all, highly targeted advertising is what sells for the most money). But even at that, it's an annoying practice that should be explained to the customers.
Even assuming they notified their customers (which I don't believe they did), though, it's going to be a hard sell to convince customers that their passwords (which are often not encrypted) as safe with them. They'd best stop this practice while they're ahead and no one has taken legal action. It reeks of a poorly-thought-out marketing/management decision.
...and you're right, none of those programming languages will fit all the bills.
I haven't been programming as long as some, but in my experience I've never come across a particular programming language that covers all the bases. You might be better off deciding which of your specifications is of the highest priority before giving weight to any language.
Also, since no one programming language fits all these specs, you might want to start documenting (or digging up documents) on which ones support the most of your specs.
Just from what you've asked for here, I'd say you're asking more for something like C++ than VB/VB.NET. You've thrown "simplified GUI design" into your specs, and, aside from Java, that's almost always anti-portability. Assuming you go with the most widely-used simple GUI language, VB, you're pretty much locked into MS OS's. Since OS-lock-in seems to be a polar opposite from what your other specs aim for, I'll say you don't want to use VB.
Ruling out the simplified GUI design as the highest priority, I'd say you're best off with C++ or Java. There are C++ compilers and Java Virtual Machines for a variety of platforms (that's an understatement). I lean towards C++ - what with it's pointers, truly compiled code, etc - but that's mostly personal preference. I've got some experience with Java and I've got mostly good things to say about it. But all my C++ apps have outperformed my Java apps, so the optimization geek in me leans to C++.
reminds more of the EU than, say, the RIAA.
Where the RIAA is pretty damned ruthlessly effective, the EU has far too much internal squabbling (due to pride, years of political conflict, whatever) to be really effective. Give the EU ten more years of so before they become really, really strong.
Likewise, when I think about the BSA, I think about a bunch of tech companies that often have conflicting agendas. Sure, they want a common set of defenses and legal standards (like the RIAA), but each company individually will look to make the most advantageous moves for itself, which will often undermine the strength of the group. Unless, said company is compensated by the entire group to keep the company from undermining the group.
The BSA doesn't scare me just yet. I'll give them a shorter time than the EU - say 5 years - to become really, really powerful. Until then, the BSA is only as strong as the strongest company within the BSA. As soon as members of the BSA want to make a decision that conflicts with the larger, more powerful companies in the BSA, the big companies will leave the BSA. Or ignore it altogether.
A friend of mine who, like me, is a professional software developer once likened programmers to guys who love their cars, they just love to show you what's under the hood.
I mean, really, it doesn't take much poking and prodding around the Internet to find dozens of programmer resource sites, most of which have tons and tons or free code. Programmers, for the most part, feel a sort of comradery (sp?) with each other and as such aren't very hesitant to share their code with other programmers. There have been many occassions where I've gotten a third-party product developer to open up the code base, despite licensing or legal issues, so I could help him/her customize the product to suite my employer's or client's needs.
Also, I believe there comes a time when a professional developer is either experienced or learned enough to understand the "how" of just about any piece of programming, even if they don't have the experise to jump in and do it. For example, I understand how 3d engines work, despite my never having coded one from the ground up (so to speak). I think opening up the code base of your neat-o project is a little easier to take when you realize that other competent developers are going to basically understand how you accomplished what you've done.
As for "weenies" not showing off their code...perhaps they don't have code of their own to show?
As interesting as the talk about the economy of Norrath is, I'm more intrigued by what drives that economy. As a former EQer (although never an addict, per say) and the son of an avid EQ addict, my observations are that the thing that drives the economy of EQ is one of the same things that drives the "luxury" economy of the real world: status.
From a somewhat psychological view, one could argue that one of the primary addictive qualities about EQ is that it allows the player to be represented in a grand, heroic fashion. All the guys are buff and appear strong, all the girls look like a cross between Xena and two coconuts. Riches and adventure are somewhat easy to come by, given that you spend enough time playing the game, so the opportunity to escape one's mundane and unaccomplished life is ample. Given that the rest of the game's world is populated by the avatars of living, breathing human beings, it becomes more than a simple diversion to establish oneself in the society...it becomes a major ambition, just like our normal lives.
Enter the interaction between our real world and Norrath. It is difficult for someone of average income to buy great status. Luxury cars, large homes on prime property...all these things cost tremendous amounts of money. And since most of us did not win the genetic lottery, our appearance will not gain us said status, either (hence, only a tiny portion of the population are models). With the EQ universe, the dynamic is changed. For a mere $100, large sums of game money can be purchased. For your real-world American dollars, you can purchase the most powerful, greatest status symbols of the game. You can walk through the game world boldy, showing off your prized status symbols to other players just as wealthy Americans enjoy going for a drive in their shiny Mercedes.
The ability to re-invent yourself is a major selling point for what is otherwise a chat window with a game around it. Verant, as a business, was very wise to include hard-to-find, rare items that would confer "great champion" status to their owners. It is the same behavior we see in our society, it's just more affordable for the average person.
While I was in college I did a co-op with a company that makes software to sync a certain popular PDA with Office. At the time, the company was really small and there were established competitors who were a lot larger than my employer. They, too, had a patent on a particular algorithm of synchronization, but we my bosses (one of whom was the developer of our software) weren't concerned. Our software was so much faster than theirs, the algorithm couldn't possibly be the same.
Imagine our surpise when our biggest competitor sent a "cease-and-desist" letter claiming we infringed on their patents. My bosses denied it, of course, but our competitor would have none of it. They had to see our code for themselves to verify that we weren't in violation of their patents. I don't quite remember exactly how it was resolved - I left soon after this became a big issue - but I'm sure it had something to do with my employer striking a deal with the manufacturer of the PDA.
Anyway, where I'm going with this is that, sure it might not seem like having this patent is a bad thing or over-reaching. And, used responsibly, it's probably not. But don't be surprised to see AvantGo try to get the drop on a potential competitor if they can use this patent as leverage.
would know better. How often do we (meaning people in the tech industry in general) receive unwanted junk email? All the time. How often do we look at it? I don't know about everyone else, but it goes right into the virtual trash for me.
I don't understand how tech industry people could have thought this would be any different. Perhaps they are fooling themselves about how this relates to physical paper resumes, since some employers will simply take mailed-in resumes and place them "on file" for future reference. As it is, unsolicited emails do nothing more than make the spammer look like a jackass.
Oh, a note to the poster who said they more or less spammed employers through Monster.com. Employers in that system explicitly signed up to receive such emails, thus it can not be spamming.
I know most people will assume such a statement by Microsoft is just response to the bad PR they've endured after stating XP was their most stable OS and then a major hole was found in it. But, when you think about it, it really would seem plausible for MS to finally get serious about security.
Take all the factors that normally influence major business decisions - especially IT decisions - and you start seeing really compelling cases against MS.
First, there's cost. We all know Linux wins that one hands-down, since it's hard to compete with free. Next, consider stability. We all know Win95/98/Me are horrible when it comes to this, but let's remember that most businesses are running at least NT - which is mostly stable - and many have now upgraded to Win 2k, which is very stable (IMHO). XP is as stable as Win 2k, but I don't think most businesses have an interest in upgrading to XP from 2k, so I'm mostly ignoring XP.
Then comes the big one: support. Many IT people that manage MS-centric offices and networks will tell you that they don't trust the availability or amount of support for Linux. Linux gurus, on the other hand, call MS support a joke. This one, IMHO, is more or less a draw since both sides see it differently.
But after all that, you can mention the factor that makes even the non-tech execs cringe: security. If the CEO - now matter how technologically uneducated said CEO is - reads in the Wall Street Journal that there's a major security hole in Windows version Blah and the hole is large enough to present danger to critical corporate systems, said CEO is going to make damned sure the IT people either get the hole patched or ditch Windows version Blah to avoid security problems. In the past, the IT people could shoot down such directives because going from MS to Linux could present too many problems. But now we have Lindows and Wine to help support any critical Win32 apps and KDE and Gnome to make the desktop transition easier.
Again, this could just be MS lip service. But with all the current pressures combined with the future potential of Windows replacements, it wouldn't be all that surprising to see MS start trying to produce a product that deserves the corporate mega-bucks.
Good luck getting that suitcase through airport security.
...but usually when I see an article or bit of "old-meets-new" tech news, it has a real purpose. Like having a better way to get old heirchical (sp?) data off a legacy system mainframe. But this piece leads to the question of "Who needs to expand their Apple II?"
The Apple II was a desktop system, not a big mainframe. I have my doubts that many critical systems were built for the Apple II. I doubt even more that those critical systems, if they ever existed at all, weren't converted to some other system years ago.
Again, I don't want to take away from the sheer "geek-cool" factor of this. It's a neat little technological achievement. But, for the life of me, I can't think of a useful thing to accomplish with it.
Most Linux users are already familiar with the caveats and reprecussions of customizing your kernel. This kind of tool would just make it easier to get to.
There aren't all that many "casual" Linux users. That market is dominated by Microsoft. And if you've deployed Linux to a work environment, chances are you won't allow a tool like this to be used, because you'll probably want to lock down the configurations (making your life as a sys admin a lot easier).
Assuming Linux continues to proliferate to the consumer market, I still wouldn't be worried about people tinkering with their kernel too much. Most people, especially at the "average Joe" level, don't understand the inner workings of their OS. Heck, most of them fear their OS and assume that they'll break something if they tinker with the OS's inner settings. I wouldn't conclude that simply because the tool is there that most people would be interested in using it.