If Gnutella takes off, ISPs won't be able to prohibit their customers from using it. Cutting off Napster is a good way for an ISP to lose a lot of customers right now. If a sizable chunk of their customers want to use Gnutella, Napster, or something else, they'll serve thier customers if they can make money. If necessary, they'll implement bandwidth restrictions or raise the rates.
I remember when Slashdot was like 'the well', a polite, well moderated haven in amongst the internet junk and filth.
Ah, yes. The good old days of Slashdot. Back then articles were carefully researched, double posts never occurred, and CmdrTaco carefully spell-checked everything. The site never crashed, it was solid as a rock. It was a rock. Mind you, we had to work for our articles. Back then, we didn't have this new fangled atch-tea-em-elle and atch-tea-tea-pea. We had raw text and gopher, and we liked it. To get the comments we had to carry a heavy bucket to CmdrTaco's apartment and carry the bits back ourselves. And it was uphill. Both ways.
Maybe you read a different post than you replied to, FFFish
didn't argue for legitimized theft. He argued for boycotting
industries whose behavoir he didn't agree with. Just like you
asked. Perhaps you're replying to "The government never gave two
shakes about whether you and I swapped software, music or video."
Actually, swapping music and video is still (basically)
legal. Copyright was never intended to restrict sale, trade, or
gifting of materials, but to restrict copying (thus the copy in
copyright). Swapping copies is restricted, but he never
said he was doing so.
He's not whining that the RIAA, MPAA, and SIIA are "protecting
their constitutionally guaranteed right." He's complaining that
those organization are trying to pervert the constitution.
Copyright was supposed to be granted for a limited time. Thanks
to the recent extensions on the terms, I don't anticipate ever
seeing the copyright expire on anything created during my
lifetime. Or my parents lifetime. I'm pretty sure that's not
what our forefathers meant by limited. Thanks to the DMCA,
anything on a medium with access controls is effectively
protected forever. Maybe I can legally copy it after copyright
expires, but I can't legally create or purchase tools to do the
copying.
These organizations are attempting to steal our right to
resell our copies of music, movies, or software. Our rights to
timeshift media, to translate a media's format, to watch media on
whatever technology we like.
These organizations aren't protecting their constitutionally
guaranteed right. Please, take a look at the
constitution. There isn't much in there about rights granted
to people or corporations. It's mostly about the rights that the
government has. The single, lonely sentence in question simply
says "The Congress shall have Power..." "To promote the Progress
of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to
Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective
Writings and Discoveries;". Yippee. Congress can choose to
create copyright. They did choose to do so. They can just as easily
choose to undo it. This isn't a protected right. It's right up
there with Congress's power to create a post office system. If
you're going to claim that the US was founded on intellectual
property, you're also going to have to claim that the US was
founded on establishing the USMail.
If you're looking for guaranteed rights for the people, you'll
need to take a peek at the
amendments. The concept of intellectual property didn't seem
to make the list.
Re:Online intellectual property piracy is a fallac
on
Free Books Online
·
· Score: 3
"If you had the equipment to burn the CDs and print the labels on them (if you were so concerned about appearing cool) you would be a damn fool to pay the money for the CD."
And yet, though I have the equipment to burn CDs and print labels on them, though I make heavy use of Napster, I continue to purchase CDs. Lots of CDs. I'm a bit insulted at being called a fool.
I want to give artists I enjoy money. The artist is alot more likely to create more music if I'm paying him. Purchasing a CD is a convient way to do this. (Sadly, musicians see very little of that money, but that's a different problem.) A CD also marks someone as a real fan.
I have a fairly technical group of friends. They all have easy access to CD burners and high quality printing. They make heavy use of Napster. They uniformly purchase lots of CDs.
Sure there are people who will happily leech this free content. But if these people don't feel ethically bound to pay up, why will they pay up if it isn't available for free legally? The risks of copyright infringement for an individual are negligable. Sure enough, some people have always built up libraries of copied tapes. You're not losing potential revenues if they weren't going to pay anyway.
It seems to me that the few people capable of creating PSX mod chips or DeCSS or whatever are going to grow tired of the harassment that inevitably comes with distributing things like that.
This doesn't seem to have stopped the sales of controlled substances in the US. With a bit of work I'm sure I could purchase some illegal drugs. PSX mod chips make their manufacturers good money (either directly through sales of the chips, or indirectly through sales of imported games). So long as there is a sizable market of customers, someone will be willing to take the risk for the money. Capitalism cuts both ways.
If you're armed with an
emulator
you can download ROMs of various games, classic and new.
Firewalls still useful
on
Perl and .NET
·
· Score: 2
"
This will make all current firewalls obsolete as not there will be all of your data going thru the 80 port. To me, this means that the firewall is now useless...."
I suspect you don't understand the value of firewalls.
You can still stop external computers from initiating connections to local computers. No need for the whole world to see my intranet web server. So blocking incoming port 80 is still valuable.
Maybe I have a public web server behind my firewall, I can block incoming port 80 for all destinations except my public web server.
The rule of thumb that you should firewall all incoming ports you don't need remains useful.
This leaves outgoing ports. If you open HTTP, a desperate enough program or user can always sneak out through the port. If it's possible to
tunnel IP over DNS, it's darn well possible to tunnel IP over HTTP.
Obiwan Kenobi points out that this sort of law
is necessary because films are released at
different times.
Movies are released at different times in
different zones for business reasons. That's it.
If the motion picture companies wanted to release
movies simultaneously throughout the world, they
most certainly could. They don't for financial
reasons.
Because a customer could purchase the movie
from another zone, he is provided more options.
Suddenly the local distributor has to compete
against internatial distributors. The customer
is no longer at the mercy of arbitrary release
dates.
By restricting the import of Zone 1 DVDs until
the local version comes out, the French
government is granting a brief monopoly to the
local distributors. No longer can the customer
choose to get the movie now internationally. He
has the single choice granted by the local
distributor: to wait.
The question here is why the French government
feels it necessary to help large corporations
keep choice away from consumers.
Obiwan also commented, "So you wonder, why
would the Italians bother seeing it at all if
they could get the DVD in a few weeks?" Perhaps
because they enjoy seeing movies on bigger
screens than they can afford with better sound
than they can afford. There will always be a
demand for quality theatres. A local theatre
recently re-ran The Matrix and drew
solid crowds wanting to recapture the magic of
the big screen. Many of these people already
owned the DVD.
In Summary: Man in the middle attacks are a tough problem, but solvable so long as the end user pays attention.
No one seriously concerned about security should be surprised. (If you are suprised, perhaps your serious concern should lead you to do a bit of research.)
I was a bit dismayed to find the error, (Regarding man in the middle attacks on SSH) "If this
is the first time you are connecting to a host and you do not have the server's public key locally, you
will be none the wiser." Actually, the first time you connect to a host, SSH 1 generously mentions "Host key not found from the list of known hosts.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?" (You can disable this behavior, but that's a Bad Idea (tm).) If you're really concerned, you can get the server's public key through a secure channel.
The week you spend playing Bard's Tale is one week of delayed revenues for Ultima 2001 Pro Special Gold Edition.
That's not really fair. Did the week I spent reading The Hobbit delay revenues of the newest Harry Potter book?
The demand for classic games is minimal. The majority of customers would look at the classic title and turn up their noses. The hard core gamers will buy Ultima 2001 ASAP as soon as possible anyway. The bitter old fogies won't buy Ultima 2000 at all.
Apple has completely re-written Display Postscript and created Quartz to be Adobe-free (to avoid paying licencing fees) for Mac OS X. No patent infringement there.
Actually independent development doesn't help you avoid patent infringement at all. It probably did help Apple avoid paying to use Adobe's copyright on their Display PS/PDF system, but if Apple used techniques that Adobe has patents on, they are liable.
Furthermore, there have been third-party GPL'd
Postscript interpreters for years; maybe a decade at this point.
Again, this means nothing. GIF writing software, including GPL'd software, was widely available for years before Unisys decided to start enforcing their patent. Unisys won (sorta, in reality most free software ignores the patent and Unisys ignores them. But commericial software makers most certainly cough up the fee to Unisys.
That said, I have no idea if Adobe has any patents on the techniques in question, no idea if Adobe enforces such patents, and no idea if Apple is paying for such patents.
The government granted monopoly of a patent does not expire just because it isn't enforced. That's part of the danger of patents, you can wait for a technique to become a standard, then you can start charging.
Stay away from Shenmue. I wasted my money on it, perhaps I can help someone else save their money.
The above poster commented, "Shenmue--no other game on ANY system approaches what amounts to an interactive movie like Shenmue does." It is like an movie. You can passively watch a great many prescripted scenes. If you fail in one of the many action scenes, you get to retry it over and over again until you get it right so the movie can continue. Is it time to return home or return to work, you have no option to ignore it. Want to practice fighting when you want in the first third of the game, sorry, no. Most of the game is wandering around taling to people until you talk to the right person to advance the plot. You're free to do as much non-plot advancing stuff as you want (playing arcade games, buying toys, drinking soda), but you have no real control over the plot elements.
The "Magic Weather" is cute, but not a real gameplay element.
Shenmue is some of the most self-indulgent crap Sega has dumped on gamers.
Sega's "famed designer" Yu Suzuki is a joke. His previous experience making arcade racing games and fighting games in no way prepared him for creating either an adventure game.
Two years ago I saw Nintendo head designer, Shigeru Miyamoto at the Game Developer's conference. His keynote spoke to his equals, other game developers. He talked of his hopes, his dreams, and his work. He discussed playability and the line between designers and programmers. It was a great talk.
Last year Suzuki gave a keynote. Instead of a talk, he was "interviewed" by a Sega marketing person. He was fed shamelessly fluffy questions. He didn't talk about the difficulties. He didn't talk about game design. He didn't discuss making a game playable. He pimped Shenmue's pretty graphics and technical tricks. I was sleazy marketing drivel. It was the worst talk I've ever seen.
The only thing Shenmue has going for it is the graphics. It is very pretty. But it's not playable. Save your money. Get something else.
Crazy Taxi justifies the price of a Dreamcast by itself. Highly original and amazingly fun. $100 to get you three blocks in 20 seconds? Done! When played in 3 minute mode, a great party game.
Jet Grind Radio is an acquired taste. Dodging traffic, spraypainting tags. The cel-shader on the characters is kinda neat.
Tony Hawk 2. Even cooler than the excellent Tony Hawk. And the Dreamcast version is nicer looking than the Playstation (1) version.
Re:EULA enforcability is a fiction...
on
EULA In Games
·
· Score: 3
In response to "EULA...are...nothing but legal fiction", Chester K replied "Awesome! That means I don't have to distribute the source code to modifications I make to GPLed software when I
distribute the binaries, right?"
Umm, no. Actually, you don't need to agree to the GPL. If you don't, you are bound by standard copyright laws. You can use the software, rewrite it, and generally do what you will with it, but you many not redistribute copies. You only need to agree to the GPL is you want to gain additional rights normally withheld by copyright law. This is why the GPL is traditionally distributed in a file called COPYING. In fact, this is why the GPL is clearly legal, it doesn't take away rights in exchange for nothing (like most EULAs). It actually gives you additional rights, it takes none away. Without the GPL you can't distribute modified software at all, with or without the source.
You don't need to agree to the GPL (and GPL software that makes you agree in the installer isn't really doing it right... but that's a different story.)
If software manufacters want to give end users additional rights if they agree to a EULA, that would be a different story.
...there will be a Linux version
probably "unsupported", however).... Going forward, I fully anticipate that we will continue to push the platform in the hopes that one day soon Linux will be a viable platform for retail commercial entertainment software distribution.
...
All said, we will continue to be a leading supporter of the Linux platform because we believe it is a technically sound OS and is the OS of choice for many server ops.
He admits that it wasn't terribly successful, but chooses to keep pushing it anyway. They're planning on continuing to release versions for Linux, just not in boxes... for now. Darn, a Linux version of a game requiring end users to install additional drivers and shipping later than the Windows release didn't do so well. I feel so underwhelmed.
Linux still isn't a "plug it in and go" as Windows. 3D acceleration is pretty iffy. There is nothing as smooth as GLSetup. But it's getting there. And when I plug something in and it doesn't go, Linux is much better at recovering and helping me fix it.
Have a bit of patience. As XFree 4 stabilizes and 3D acceleration becomes easier to install and maintain, I definately expect to the see the situation improve.
I eagerly look forward to removing my Windows partition.
You know the only reason they are asking is to either try to sell you something or sell your phone number to somebody
else trying to sell you something.
Actually, there is another reason. Your phone number is fairly strong unique identifier for a person. A given phone number is likely to remain valid for at least a year. If you only move a short distance (apartment hopping) you can often keep the same number. Any given (private) phone number will generally map to no more than a handful of people. With a reverse lookup directory, you can easily determine where someone works from a work number. A phone number provides a relatively accuration location (with the area code and the next three digits, usually within a few miles). Lastly, it's a number almost everyone has and you can legally ask for (there are limitations on using a Social Security Number).
It's by no means a perfect tool, but it's better than nothing. This is one of the reasons that many businesses demand your phone number on your checks. It's yet another tool for tracking you down if you bounce the check. It's another tool for tracking your spending habits.
How many starving musicians work at record stores and at least don't totally hate it? How does Best Buy
stack up as a cultural center vs. your local record store? Where are you more likely to find out about the local scene?
How is this any different from MS bundling IE?
What are you gibbering on about? There is close to no similarity. First, Microsoft is the sole (legal) original distributor of Windows, IE, and Office. Best Buy is the sole original distributor of nothing. They buy from companies above them. Microsoft used their position of power to force other companies (ISPs, Apple) to limit distribution of Netscape. Has Best Buy used their position to limit distribution of music to other stores? If so, please let us know, that would be very important news!
The only similarity is that Best Buy appears to be taking a loss on certain CDs, perhaps with the intention of undercutting and ruining their competition. Microsoft's use of this technique (giving IE away for free), was a relatively unimportant action.
I don't see any real risk from Best Buy. If any company is going to crush local stores, I'm guessing it will be Walmart.
I suspect you missed the fact that the search box at the top of the results page begins with "Refine this search:". So, you're getting fewer and fewer hits because you're asking for a smaller and smaller subset. You need to return to the front page to do a new search.
A search for porn from the front page returned 95 hits.
The state isn't stored in a cookie or anything, it's right in the URL, take a look.
In my experience Java tends to attract people who want their code to reflect what its intended to do, whereas C++
tends to attract people who like to write obscure code for "performance reasons" because it makes them feel clever.
Actually some of us prefer C++ over Java because C++ better reflects what I intend to do. Code crunching BigNums is very frustrating to write without operator overloading. Some real live code at my job reads:
"s = (k - x*r) % q;" where s, k, x, r and q are all BigNums. I can easily compare this to the product's specification of this equation. Without operator overloading I'm stuck with something like "s = mod(subtract(k, multiply(x, r)), q);" Ick.
(Many people complain that operator overloading is too dangerous since operator*(BigNum lhs, BugNum rhs) might not mean what you think it means. Fair enough. Of course, there is not certainty that multiply(BigNum lhs, BugNum rhs) does what you think it means either.)
As you say, laziness. I must say, however,
that I've seen this kind of thing in C and C++ much more than in Java, as their lack of class libraries tempts people to
do things in stupid ways to avoid having to write the code needed to do it properly.
Ripping on C++ for lack of class libraries is simply foolish. The core features of the STL are pervasive now. Modern compilers all have solid support for the fringier features. Having worked with a large, standard library of typesafe containers and algorithms for arbitrary types makes coding Java frustrating.
Java is a great language. C++ is very dangerous in the hands of beginners (It's a loaded machine gun helpfully pointed at your feet with the safety off). Java keeps it simple. But Java is less expressive. Larger, more dangerous languages give you more power to say what you mean, or to blow your foot off. Don't project Java's faults onto C++. If you want to find fault with C++, complain that it's too powerful (and thus dangerous) for your average programmer.
Should it work the same way for liability? If your tottering grandmother runs over a millionaire, should she be fined 500,000 to make restitution for the victim's family, so they can maintain their standard of living?
That's not a fair comparison. The purpose of a fine for minor violations is a sort of punishment, not restitution. (The effectiveness of that punishment is debatable.) If you level flat fines, wealthy individuals will view the fine as simply the price they pay for the privelege of speeding. From my experience, many people view it exactly that way. For the punishment to have any value, it needs to be more than a slap on a wrist. $500 is serious money to me (I could buy a new CPU!), but it's not worth picking up off the street to Bill Gates.
I find your statement particullarly funny given that the driver in question didn't challenge the fine and seemed to find it reasonable.
People generally don't buy a system for the system's sake. They buy it for the games. A killer game can sell huge numbers of systems. As far back as the Atari 2600 (which had killer games of Asteroids and Pac Man) this has been the case. Super Mario 64 and Zelda: Ocarina of Time sold me a Nintendo 64. Crazy Taxi and Tony Hawk sold me a Dreamcast. If Indrema ships a few exceptional games, I'll buy a system. Until then, it's just a nice dream.
Linux is the perfect platform for amateur game developers.
[snip] But we're seeing very, very little from indie game groups. Little enough that
I wouldn't expect to see *any* independently developed pro-quality games for the Indrema.
I think you're coming at this from the wrong angle. Lots of amateur game developers want to get their games into the hands of as many people as possible. Right now, Win32 is the best way to do that, since most amateur's can't afford to target license heavy consoles like the Playstation. If the Indrema gets a non-trivial market share, the close to zero cost to ship demos will draw developers looking to make cool stuff for ego's sake.
If he's not willing to sell it for $16,200, why didn't he just set the price to his mimimum? The only reason I see for setting a reserve is so you can set it absurdly high to get a sense of what your stuff is worth. If you really want to sell it, why isn't the minimum bid equal to your reserve?
Putting something up that you don't really intend to sell just to find it's value seems sleezy to me. Perhaps someone can explain this behavoir.
This is "Insightful"? Because he's got no sense of humor? It's a time honored tradition to poke fun at those in power, and Intel most certainly is in power. The more successful a person or company is, the more they need to be brought back down to earth.
Slashdot Mirror
If Gnutella takes off, ISPs won't be able to prohibit their customers from using it. Cutting off Napster is a good way for an ISP to lose a lot of customers right now. If a sizable chunk of their customers want to use Gnutella, Napster, or something else, they'll serve thier customers if they can make money. If necessary, they'll implement bandwidth restrictions or raise the rates.
Ah, yes. The good old days of Slashdot. Back then articles were carefully researched, double posts never occurred, and CmdrTaco carefully spell-checked everything. The site never crashed, it was solid as a rock. It was a rock. Mind you, we had to work for our articles. Back then, we didn't have this new fangled atch-tea-em-elle and atch-tea-tea-pea. We had raw text and gopher, and we liked it. To get the comments we had to carry a heavy bucket to CmdrTaco's apartment and carry the bits back ourselves. And it was uphill. Both ways.
Maybe you read a different post than you replied to, FFFish didn't argue for legitimized theft. He argued for boycotting industries whose behavoir he didn't agree with. Just like you asked. Perhaps you're replying to "The government never gave two shakes about whether you and I swapped software, music or video." Actually, swapping music and video is still (basically) legal. Copyright was never intended to restrict sale, trade, or gifting of materials, but to restrict copying (thus the copy in copyright). Swapping copies is restricted, but he never said he was doing so.
He's not whining that the RIAA, MPAA, and SIIA are "protecting their constitutionally guaranteed right." He's complaining that those organization are trying to pervert the constitution. Copyright was supposed to be granted for a limited time. Thanks to the recent extensions on the terms, I don't anticipate ever seeing the copyright expire on anything created during my lifetime. Or my parents lifetime. I'm pretty sure that's not what our forefathers meant by limited. Thanks to the DMCA, anything on a medium with access controls is effectively protected forever. Maybe I can legally copy it after copyright expires, but I can't legally create or purchase tools to do the copying.
These organizations are attempting to steal our right to resell our copies of music, movies, or software. Our rights to timeshift media, to translate a media's format, to watch media on whatever technology we like.
These organizations aren't protecting their constitutionally guaranteed right. Please, take a look at the constitution. There isn't much in there about rights granted to people or corporations. It's mostly about the rights that the government has. The single, lonely sentence in question simply says "The Congress shall have Power..." "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;". Yippee. Congress can choose to create copyright. They did choose to do so. They can just as easily choose to undo it. This isn't a protected right. It's right up there with Congress's power to create a post office system. If you're going to claim that the US was founded on intellectual property, you're also going to have to claim that the US was founded on establishing the USMail.
If you're looking for guaranteed rights for the people, you'll need to take a peek at the amendments. The concept of intellectual property didn't seem to make the list.
"If you had the equipment to burn the CDs and print the labels on them (if you were so concerned about appearing cool) you would be a damn fool to pay the money for the CD."
And yet, though I have the equipment to burn CDs and print labels on them, though I make heavy use of Napster, I continue to purchase CDs. Lots of CDs. I'm a bit insulted at being called a fool.
I want to give artists I enjoy money. The artist is alot more likely to create more music if I'm paying him. Purchasing a CD is a convient way to do this. (Sadly, musicians see very little of that money, but that's a different problem.) A CD also marks someone as a real fan.
I have a fairly technical group of friends. They all have easy access to CD burners and high quality printing. They make heavy use of Napster. They uniformly purchase lots of CDs.
Sure there are people who will happily leech this free content. But if these people don't feel ethically bound to pay up, why will they pay up if it isn't available for free legally? The risks of copyright infringement for an individual are negligable. Sure enough, some people have always built up libraries of copied tapes. You're not losing potential revenues if they weren't going to pay anyway.
This doesn't seem to have stopped the sales of controlled substances in the US. With a bit of work I'm sure I could purchase some illegal drugs. PSX mod chips make their manufacturers good money (either directly through sales of the chips, or indirectly through sales of imported games). So long as there is a sizable market of customers, someone will be willing to take the risk for the money. Capitalism cuts both ways.
Of course, "real" computers need versions of Minesweeper and Tetris. And all modern gaming systems have first person 3D games.
If you're armed with an emulator you can download ROMs of various games, classic and new.
I suspect you don't understand the value of firewalls.
You can still stop external computers from initiating connections to local computers. No need for the whole world to see my intranet web server. So blocking incoming port 80 is still valuable. Maybe I have a public web server behind my firewall, I can block incoming port 80 for all destinations except my public web server. The rule of thumb that you should firewall all incoming ports you don't need remains useful.
This leaves outgoing ports. If you open HTTP, a desperate enough program or user can always sneak out through the port. If it's possible to tunnel IP over DNS, it's darn well possible to tunnel IP over HTTP.
All you've lost is your false sense of security.
Obiwan Kenobi points out that this sort of law is necessary because films are released at different times.
Movies are released at different times in different zones for business reasons. That's it. If the motion picture companies wanted to release movies simultaneously throughout the world, they most certainly could. They don't for financial reasons.
Because a customer could purchase the movie from another zone, he is provided more options. Suddenly the local distributor has to compete against internatial distributors. The customer is no longer at the mercy of arbitrary release dates.
By restricting the import of Zone 1 DVDs until the local version comes out, the French government is granting a brief monopoly to the local distributors. No longer can the customer choose to get the movie now internationally. He has the single choice granted by the local distributor: to wait.
The question here is why the French government feels it necessary to help large corporations keep choice away from consumers.
Obiwan also commented, "So you wonder, why would the Italians bother seeing it at all if they could get the DVD in a few weeks?" Perhaps because they enjoy seeing movies on bigger screens than they can afford with better sound than they can afford. There will always be a demand for quality theatres. A local theatre recently re-ran The Matrix and drew solid crowds wanting to recapture the magic of the big screen. Many of these people already owned the DVD.
In Summary: Man in the middle attacks are a tough problem, but solvable so long as the end user pays attention.
No one seriously concerned about security should be surprised. (If you are suprised, perhaps your serious concern should lead you to do a bit of research.)
I was a bit dismayed to find the error, (Regarding man in the middle attacks on SSH) "If this is the first time you are connecting to a host and you do not have the server's public key locally, you will be none the wiser." Actually, the first time you connect to a host, SSH 1 generously mentions "Host key not found from the list of known hosts. Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?" (You can disable this behavior, but that's a Bad Idea (tm).) If you're really concerned, you can get the server's public key through a secure channel.
That's not really fair. Did the week I spent reading The Hobbit delay revenues of the newest Harry Potter book?
The demand for classic games is minimal. The majority of customers would look at the classic title and turn up their noses. The hard core gamers will buy Ultima 2001 ASAP as soon as possible anyway. The bitter old fogies won't buy Ultima 2000 at all.
Actually independent development doesn't help you avoid patent infringement at all. It probably did help Apple avoid paying to use Adobe's copyright on their Display PS/PDF system, but if Apple used techniques that Adobe has patents on, they are liable.
Again, this means nothing. GIF writing software, including GPL'd software, was widely available for years before Unisys decided to start enforcing their patent. Unisys won (sorta, in reality most free software ignores the patent and Unisys ignores them. But commericial software makers most certainly cough up the fee to Unisys.
That said, I have no idea if Adobe has any patents on the techniques in question, no idea if Adobe enforces such patents, and no idea if Apple is paying for such patents.
The government granted monopoly of a patent does not expire just because it isn't enforced. That's part of the danger of patents, you can wait for a technique to become a standard, then you can start charging.
Stay away from Shenmue. I wasted my money on it, perhaps I can help someone else save their money.
The above poster commented, "Shenmue--no other game on ANY system approaches what amounts to an interactive movie like Shenmue does." It is like an movie. You can passively watch a great many prescripted scenes. If you fail in one of the many action scenes, you get to retry it over and over again until you get it right so the movie can continue. Is it time to return home or return to work, you have no option to ignore it. Want to practice fighting when you want in the first third of the game, sorry, no. Most of the game is wandering around taling to people until you talk to the right person to advance the plot. You're free to do as much non-plot advancing stuff as you want (playing arcade games, buying toys, drinking soda), but you have no real control over the plot elements. The "Magic Weather" is cute, but not a real gameplay element. Shenmue is some of the most self-indulgent crap Sega has dumped on gamers.
Sega's "famed designer" Yu Suzuki is a joke. His previous experience making arcade racing games and fighting games in no way prepared him for creating either an adventure game.
Two years ago I saw Nintendo head designer, Shigeru Miyamoto at the Game Developer's conference. His keynote spoke to his equals, other game developers. He talked of his hopes, his dreams, and his work. He discussed playability and the line between designers and programmers. It was a great talk.
Last year Suzuki gave a keynote. Instead of a talk, he was "interviewed" by a Sega marketing person. He was fed shamelessly fluffy questions. He didn't talk about the difficulties. He didn't talk about game design. He didn't discuss making a game playable. He pimped Shenmue's pretty graphics and technical tricks. I was sleazy marketing drivel. It was the worst talk I've ever seen.
The only thing Shenmue has going for it is the graphics. It is very pretty. But it's not playable. Save your money. Get something else.
Crazy Taxi justifies the price of a Dreamcast by itself. Highly original and amazingly fun. $100 to get you three blocks in 20 seconds? Done! When played in 3 minute mode, a great party game.
Jet Grind Radio is an acquired taste. Dodging traffic, spraypainting tags. The cel-shader on the characters is kinda neat.
Tony Hawk 2. Even cooler than the excellent Tony Hawk. And the Dreamcast version is nicer looking than the Playstation (1) version.
In response to "EULA...are...nothing but legal fiction", Chester K replied "Awesome! That means I don't have to distribute the source code to modifications I make to GPLed software when I distribute the binaries, right?"
Umm, no. Actually, you don't need to agree to the GPL. If you don't, you are bound by standard copyright laws. You can use the software, rewrite it, and generally do what you will with it, but you many not redistribute copies. You only need to agree to the GPL is you want to gain additional rights normally withheld by copyright law. This is why the GPL is traditionally distributed in a file called COPYING. In fact, this is why the GPL is clearly legal, it doesn't take away rights in exchange for nothing (like most EULAs). It actually gives you additional rights, it takes none away. Without the GPL you can't distribute modified software at all, with or without the source.
You don't need to agree to the GPL (and GPL software that makes you agree in the installer isn't really doing it right... but that's a different story.)
If software manufacters want to give end users additional rights if they agree to a EULA, that would be a different story.
He admits that it wasn't terribly successful, but chooses to keep pushing it anyway. They're planning on continuing to release versions for Linux, just not in boxes... for now. Darn, a Linux version of a game requiring end users to install additional drivers and shipping later than the Windows release didn't do so well. I feel so underwhelmed.
Linux still isn't a "plug it in and go" as Windows. 3D acceleration is pretty iffy. There is nothing as smooth as GLSetup. But it's getting there. And when I plug something in and it doesn't go, Linux is much better at recovering and helping me fix it.
Have a bit of patience. As XFree 4 stabilizes and 3D acceleration becomes easier to install and maintain, I definately expect to the see the situation improve.
I eagerly look forward to removing my Windows partition.
Jamie provided a link to Seth's home page, but not the article itself. Definately give his article, SmartFilter - I've Got A Little List, a read. His Anticensorware Investigations has links to his older work.
Actually, there is another reason. Your phone number is fairly strong unique identifier for a person. A given phone number is likely to remain valid for at least a year. If you only move a short distance (apartment hopping) you can often keep the same number. Any given (private) phone number will generally map to no more than a handful of people. With a reverse lookup directory, you can easily determine where someone works from a work number. A phone number provides a relatively accuration location (with the area code and the next three digits, usually within a few miles). Lastly, it's a number almost everyone has and you can legally ask for (there are limitations on using a Social Security Number).
It's by no means a perfect tool, but it's better than nothing. This is one of the reasons that many businesses demand your phone number on your checks. It's yet another tool for tracking you down if you bounce the check. It's another tool for tracking your spending habits.
What are you gibbering on about? There is close to no similarity. First, Microsoft is the sole (legal) original distributor of Windows, IE, and Office. Best Buy is the sole original distributor of nothing. They buy from companies above them. Microsoft used their position of power to force other companies (ISPs, Apple) to limit distribution of Netscape. Has Best Buy used their position to limit distribution of music to other stores? If so, please let us know, that would be very important news!
The only similarity is that Best Buy appears to be taking a loss on certain CDs, perhaps with the intention of undercutting and ruining their competition. Microsoft's use of this technique (giving IE away for free), was a relatively unimportant action.
I don't see any real risk from Best Buy. If any company is going to crush local stores, I'm guessing it will be Walmart.
I suspect you missed the fact that the search box at the top of the results page begins with "Refine this search:". So, you're getting fewer and fewer hits because you're asking for a smaller and smaller subset. You need to return to the front page to do a new search.
A search for porn from the front page returned 95 hits.
The state isn't stored in a cookie or anything, it's right in the URL, take a look.
Actually some of us prefer C++ over Java because C++ better reflects what I intend to do. Code crunching BigNums is very frustrating to write without operator overloading. Some real live code at my job reads: "s = (k - x*r) % q;" where s, k, x, r and q are all BigNums. I can easily compare this to the product's specification of this equation. Without operator overloading I'm stuck with something like "s = mod(subtract(k, multiply(x, r)), q);" Ick.
(Many people complain that operator overloading is too dangerous since operator*(BigNum lhs, BugNum rhs) might not mean what you think it means. Fair enough. Of course, there is not certainty that multiply(BigNum lhs, BugNum rhs) does what you think it means either.)
Ripping on C++ for lack of class libraries is simply foolish. The core features of the STL are pervasive now. Modern compilers all have solid support for the fringier features. Having worked with a large, standard library of typesafe containers and algorithms for arbitrary types makes coding Java frustrating.
Java is a great language. C++ is very dangerous in the hands of beginners (It's a loaded machine gun helpfully pointed at your feet with the safety off). Java keeps it simple. But Java is less expressive. Larger, more dangerous languages give you more power to say what you mean, or to blow your foot off. Don't project Java's faults onto C++. If you want to find fault with C++, complain that it's too powerful (and thus dangerous) for your average programmer.
That's not a fair comparison. The purpose of a fine for minor violations is a sort of punishment, not restitution. (The effectiveness of that punishment is debatable.) If you level flat fines, wealthy individuals will view the fine as simply the price they pay for the privelege of speeding. From my experience, many people view it exactly that way. For the punishment to have any value, it needs to be more than a slap on a wrist. $500 is serious money to me (I could buy a new CPU!), but it's not worth picking up off the street to Bill Gates.
I find your statement particullarly funny given that the driver in question didn't challenge the fine and seemed to find it reasonable.
People generally don't buy a system for the system's sake. They buy it for the games. A killer game can sell huge numbers of systems. As far back as the Atari 2600 (which had killer games of Asteroids and Pac Man) this has been the case. Super Mario 64 and Zelda: Ocarina of Time sold me a Nintendo 64. Crazy Taxi and Tony Hawk sold me a Dreamcast. If Indrema ships a few exceptional games, I'll buy a system. Until then, it's just a nice dream.
I think you're coming at this from the wrong angle. Lots of amateur game developers want to get their games into the hands of as many people as possible. Right now, Win32 is the best way to do that, since most amateur's can't afford to target license heavy consoles like the Playstation. If the Indrema gets a non-trivial market share, the close to zero cost to ship demos will draw developers looking to make cool stuff for ego's sake.
So speaketh eBay:
If he's not willing to sell it for $16,200, why didn't he just set the price to his mimimum? The only reason I see for setting a reserve is so you can set it absurdly high to get a sense of what your stuff is worth. If you really want to sell it, why isn't the minimum bid equal to your reserve? Putting something up that you don't really intend to sell just to find it's value seems sleezy to me. Perhaps someone can explain this behavoir.
This is "Insightful"? Because he's got no sense of humor? It's a time honored tradition to poke fun at those in power, and Intel most certainly is in power. The more successful a person or company is, the more they need to be brought back down to earth.