You obviously know NOTHING about porting. It's hundreds, nay, thousands of times more complex than your misguided and bizarre impression of it. Mac IE and Office are nothing close to an "easy recompile" of the Windows versions. If this were true, it would mean there'd be no point in not porting anything except for wanting to shut someone else out.
The most important difference is that Windows and Mac use vastly different APIs (Windows's is called Win32, I believe, and the Mac uses Carbon and Cocoa). All the API calls need to be changed, and a lot of data structures have to be changed to the other side's API-specific structures. There are also different interface demands (Apple has particular UI guidelines, like you have to have certain items under certain menus; Windows probably has something similar, but I'm not familiar with it). There's a lot more, but I've never ported anything, so I don't know offhand what it is, and it would go on for too long anyway. And that's certainly more than enough.
Anyway, you're an idiot. They can't just "recompile their software to run on the Mac if they [feel] like it"; that's what the whole Mac Business Unit is for, porting to the Mac. This is, of course, a totally different issue than what the poster is talking about. So, have a nice day!
Hmm...you seem to be reading rather a lot into my remarks about high salaries. I think that having a range of salaries is a great idea. I just don't think they need to go up over about $1 million, somewhere in there. I don't see any good reason for people to make more than that, particularly the people who do.
As to your other point, I said that I don't know how to fix it. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try, or that companies should always pass on the costs to consumers.
An obvious solution is (through whatever means; I'm talking theoretically here) to reduce the salaries of those with the insanely huge ones, and use that money to pay the taxes & other stuff.
Hmmm....I think I see where you're coming from, and you do have a point. I'm not sure if anything can be done about it, either...but I am sure that this is a separate issue from taxing wealthy individuals more. Also, you mention that "the solution is always to raise taxes on the 'undertaxed', never to reduce taxes on the overtaxed." I would note that what the current administration is doing is reducing taxes on what they call the "overtaxed." Again, I'm not an economist, and I don't know how soon such a tax cut would show results, but right now, it doesn't seem to be showing good results. Furthermore, various economists, including Alan Greenspan himself, have said that the tax cut probably would not have any "stimulative" effect on the economy, and since this seems to be what you're advocating, it doesn't speak well for your theory as a whole.
But I do see your point about taxing transactions. I just think it's not the whole story. (also, I think that how it should work is if a tax is raised on a business, they should first consider cutting the highest salaries, like the ones above $500,000. I realize not all businesses have such high salaries; small businesses probably would have to pass costs on to the consumer).
Hmm...I admit that I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say here, but it sounds like you're saying that taxing the rich affects the poor...? (This is going to be long and ramble/ranty)
"Progressive" means "your tax percentage is higher the higher your income is". I am no economist, but it seems to me that someone making $1,000,000/yr can more easily afford $500,000 in taxes than someone making $20,000/yr can afford $5,000 in taxes (ie, the millionaire can handle a 50% tax, but it's hard for the lower-class-person to handle a 25% tax). Also, if you raise the millionaire's taxes by a few percent, that is easily absorbed by investments & other nonliquid assets. If you raise a lower class person's taxes by a few percent, that comes out of food, home maintenance, etc. My family'd be willing to pay a few extra percent on our taxes (we make around $60K, not sure about just how much right now) if it meant that people making half what we do pay a few percent less in taxes.
All of which is a long way of saying it's only Someone Else if you're not Someone Rich. And I realize that many businesses don't actually pay taxes. That's not a reason to not raise taxes on the wealthy; on the contrary, it's a reason to enforce tax laws to make sure that they do pay every penny of what they're supposed to. Maybe then we wouldn't have a crippling federal deficit looming just at the time the Baby Boomers are going to be clamoring for their Social Security checks.
You talk some sense, but I think your economics are a little off.
You're quite right, but aside from the safety features others are mentioning, someone can't pour sugar into your car from anywhere in the world and leave minimal traces. There are some limits to what we should require of software/OS programmers, I certainly agree with that. However, there are also limits to how far the computer == car analogy will take you. The digital world is far more mutable than the physical, and everyone's a step away from everyone else's doorstep. There should be precautions in place to make sure people can't pour sugar in your computer unless you're darn sure you want it to get a taste for the stuff.
Well, I admit I haven't shopped around too much, but I want the Magic modchip from modchip.ca, which will let me play original imports with the fewest number of solder points. That's about $40 (US). There's a clip you can get which further reduces the number of solder points--about another $25. Then, I don't have a fine-tip soldering iron, which seems pretty necessary for the job, another $12. OK, so that's about $80--it's gone down from the last time I checked. I guess the US dollar is doing a little better. But it's still expensive.
How about having to pay an extra $200-300 and have an extra box to worry about? I've already got a PS2, and it would have no problem running the code in a Japanese PS2 game, if the stupid region locking didn't prevent it from even realizing it's a PS2 game in the first place. I consider the region locking to be draconian, unnecessary, and certainly not a legal or moral hurdle, merely a technological one. It's only there to get the company more money.
As I've mentioned a couple of times before in this thread, I want to use this (and was planning to get a modchip) to play games I have legally imported from Japan. I know that many people won't believe me, and that, unfortunately, that won't be the primary use of this exploit, but I know of no law that prohibits running region-locked games out of their region. I realize that it's possible the DMCA covers this, but if so, it really shouldn't. I paid for the PS2, I paid for the game, so why the heck shouldn't I be able to run it?
If this can really work (I haven't gotten the guy's code to compile, see one of my posts, above), it would be really great. I could use a $30 memory card reader/writer to let me play imported games, rather than a $100 modchip kit, which I would have to solder onto the PS2's motherboard. And those things look extremely fiddly.
So, yes, there is at least one legitimate use. And the point of our opposition to the DMCA is not (at least not for anyone who would have any chance against it) "so I can keep pirating stuff." My argument against it is that it probably will allow Sony to sue anyone who uses this hack, whatever purpose they put it to. It stops you from using certain devices or processes because they could be used for piracy or copyright infringement, even if you would truly, honestly, never use them for that purpose.
OK, I'm going to rant at the troll, here, for a minute, so anyone who's not interested can go away now.
And I suppose thinking that you deserve to have everything for free must then be synonymous with being a Linux user?
Actually, I'm in no way that bigoted. But I think that most people with any sense will agree that "paying the standard price for software" as opposed to "pirating software" (which is what I'm trying to do) is very different from "paying too much for hard/software" as opposed to....I'm not sure what. Running Linux on a $200 beige-box built from parts, I guess. Well, we've got one of those here, too, but it's not actually mine (yeah, I still live with my parents; it's cheaper than a grad school dorm). Someday, I do plan to make my own x86 box for cheap. But I use a Mac for everyday stuff. You're free to use whatever you want.
But please observe the difference between piracy and getting things for free/cheap.
Actually, it's from Babylon 5. It's sort of the motto/code/slogan (or something) of the Rangers. And it's a Tolkien reference, to boot. I don't know about you, Random AC, but I think it's cool. B)
I tried compiling his titleman utility, since I don't have any of the games already in the title.lst file, but it seems like some stuff is missing...do you need to have a PS2 devkit of some sort to do this? His makefile seems to suggest it.....
Cool. Do you know, does it appear as just an ordinary USB disk? 'Cause I don't have an x86 box, but I've got lots of Macs, which are usually pretty good about mounting things that look like disks. I could probably also use some sort of utility built for Linux (and friends) under OS X to get at the data, if there is such a thing.
Does anyone know if there's a memory card reader out there that is in any way compatible with a Mac?
For obvious reasons.
And actually, I honestly do want to play legal imports on my PS2. If there's a game I want to play, I usually think it's worth supporting the people who make it.
If I can get my American PS2 to run Japanese PS2 games without having to pay $100 and do a lot of fiddly soldering, that's worth it. I don't know how much it would actually cost to get a memory card reader, since I don't have one, but I doubt one would have to pay $200.
When your Athlon 2400+ can support 8 GB of RAM, give me a call...
Umm...with a 64-bit processor, like the G5, or AMD's offering (the Opteron, is it? Sorry, I'm a little fuzzy on it...), you can support not 8GB, not 16GB, but 1.7*10^10GB of RAM! That's 16 exabytes! I really, really hope we're not going to need a bigger addressing space any time soon...
MusicXML looks like a great notation system, for those of us who like markup languages. However, though it ought not to be too difficult to write some sort of editor and/or printable output generator for it, I haven't yet seen one that's not part of one of the really expensive music suites (like Finale). Does anyone know of an open-source or cheap shareware (or cheap commercial, though preferably with some sort of demo) piece of software that does this?
I've installed Lilypond through Fink, and every time I try to get a printable output from it, the notes have no heads, and it looks...really ugly (even apart from that). That makes it pretty useless...unless someone knows why this is happening, and/or how to fix it...?
That's possible. I was thinking about it in terms of management, who I'm sure sometimes listen to their techies (of whatever stripe). However, judging by what I've read various places, particularly the Computerworld SharkTank, they also often don't listen to their techies, instead listening only to the most persuasive marketing.
I didn't catch the original, and I don't know where it was publicized or anything, but I imagine it was in places that make it look legit. More importantly, it was in places that people who don't already use Linux might be likely to look. Rebuttals like this are nearly useless unless they are prominently placed in some widely read medium--and by "widely read" I mean someplace that at least an average techie, even if entirely M$-biased, would be likely to at least see the headline. I admit that I have no knowledge at all of the world of journalism, online or otherwise, but I think that people who write studies/rebuttals/articles/etc like this, showing up Microsoft and their precious status quo, should make significant efforts to get them in mainstream media.
Unless someone already likes Linux, they're not likely to frequent LinuxDevices.com. Someone who already likes Linux is not the target audience for such journalism, or shouldn't be. We need to target it at the others, the people who don't like Linux, because it's articles like this that might make them like it, and it's studies like the one it's rebutting that make them not like it.
Excuse me, but what about Apple? Unless you meant "only competition on x86 hardware", Apple has (arguably) a significantly bigger piece of the pie than *nix, at least on the desktop. While I agree with the point behind what you are saying (that it would be monopolistic for M$ to do this themselves), it seriously bugs me when people don't even think about Apple as a factor in the OS market.
I know I'm going to get people saying "But Apple's dying", "Apple's not Free/Open", "Apple's just as evil", and whatever (assuming anyone even reads this;-) ), but Apple's desktop offering is considerably better aimed at Userland than Linux's is, and is, and will continue to be a serious player.
Someone mentioned Bungie earlier, but said nothing about their flagship title: the Marathon series. It was originally Mac-only (with a port of Marathon 2 to Win95), but the source was released some time ago, and there has been a massive effort to bring Marathon into the 21st century. The results can be found at source.bungie.org: the Aleph One project. They've added all sorts of things, like scriptability (not so interesting for netplay), OpenGL support, and lots of other cool stuff. They've also, quite recently, done major rewrites of the net code, making it not only possible but pleasant to play over the Internet, and also even better over LAN. It works crossplatform, of course, and it's free and Free. What more could you want?
There is no one "root language" that underlies all languages (at least, no vestige of one remains); however, there is a language underlying all European and Indic languages: it's called Indo-European, and it's the ancestor of languages spoken in India (whose names I'm not familiar with), as well as Latin and all the old Germanic languages. It is in no way related to Japanese; however, interestingly enough, Hungarian is in the same language family as Japanese: a relic of the time when the Huns invaded all the way to there, then stopped.
Actually, "thou" was only the informal singular. Similar to "tu" in French. I believe that "you" was used in formal contexts even when talking to a single person, as "vous" is in French.
This is why, when, at the Episcopal convention to revise the prayerbook in the late 1940s, someone objected to the replacement of "thou"s with "you"s, etc, as "losing our respectful distance from God," anyone who knew what they were talking about looked at him funny. The "thou" was showing our closeness with God, not our distance.
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All right, I'll bite.
You obviously know NOTHING about porting. It's hundreds, nay, thousands of times more complex than your misguided and bizarre impression of it. Mac IE and Office are nothing close to an "easy recompile" of the Windows versions. If this were true, it would mean there'd be no point in not porting anything except for wanting to shut someone else out.
The most important difference is that Windows and Mac use vastly different APIs (Windows's is called Win32, I believe, and the Mac uses Carbon and Cocoa). All the API calls need to be changed, and a lot of data structures have to be changed to the other side's API-specific structures. There are also different interface demands (Apple has particular UI guidelines, like you have to have certain items under certain menus; Windows probably has something similar, but I'm not familiar with it). There's a lot more, but I've never ported anything, so I don't know offhand what it is, and it would go on for too long anyway. And that's certainly more than enough.
Anyway, you're an idiot. They can't just "recompile their software to run on the Mac if they [feel] like it"; that's what the whole Mac Business Unit is for, porting to the Mac. This is, of course, a totally different issue than what the poster is talking about. So, have a nice day!
Dan Aris
PS Yeah, I fed a troll. So sue me.
Hmm...you seem to be reading rather a lot into my remarks about high salaries. I think that having a range of salaries is a great idea. I just don't think they need to go up over about $1 million, somewhere in there. I don't see any good reason for people to make more than that, particularly the people who do.
As to your other point, I said that I don't know how to fix it. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try, or that companies should always pass on the costs to consumers.
An obvious solution is (through whatever means; I'm talking theoretically here) to reduce the salaries of those with the insanely huge ones, and use that money to pay the taxes & other stuff.
Dan Aris
Hmmm....I think I see where you're coming from, and you do have a point. I'm not sure if anything can be done about it, either...but I am sure that this is a separate issue from taxing wealthy individuals more. Also, you mention that "the solution is always to raise taxes on the 'undertaxed', never to reduce taxes on the overtaxed." I would note that what the current administration is doing is reducing taxes on what they call the "overtaxed." Again, I'm not an economist, and I don't know how soon such a tax cut would show results, but right now, it doesn't seem to be showing good results. Furthermore, various economists, including Alan Greenspan himself, have said that the tax cut probably would not have any "stimulative" effect on the economy, and since this seems to be what you're advocating, it doesn't speak well for your theory as a whole.
But I do see your point about taxing transactions. I just think it's not the whole story. (also, I think that how it should work is if a tax is raised on a business, they should first consider cutting the highest salaries, like the ones above $500,000. I realize not all businesses have such high salaries; small businesses probably would have to pass costs on to the consumer).
Dan Aris
Hmm...I admit that I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say here, but it sounds like you're saying that taxing the rich affects the poor...? (This is going to be long and ramble/ranty)
"Progressive" means "your tax percentage is higher the higher your income is". I am no economist, but it seems to me that someone making $1,000,000/yr can more easily afford $500,000 in taxes than someone making $20,000/yr can afford $5,000 in taxes (ie, the millionaire can handle a 50% tax, but it's hard for the lower-class-person to handle a 25% tax). Also, if you raise the millionaire's taxes by a few percent, that is easily absorbed by investments & other nonliquid assets. If you raise a lower class person's taxes by a few percent, that comes out of food, home maintenance, etc. My family'd be willing to pay a few extra percent on our taxes (we make around $60K, not sure about just how much right now) if it meant that people making half what we do pay a few percent less in taxes.
All of which is a long way of saying it's only Someone Else if you're not Someone Rich. And I realize that many businesses don't actually pay taxes. That's not a reason to not raise taxes on the wealthy; on the contrary, it's a reason to enforce tax laws to make sure that they do pay every penny of what they're supposed to. Maybe then we wouldn't have a crippling federal deficit looming just at the time the Baby Boomers are going to be clamoring for their Social Security checks.
You talk some sense, but I think your economics are a little off.
Dan Aris
*sigh* You're posting as an AC, lunkhead. You are new here, aren't you?
Dan Aris
You're quite right, but aside from the safety features others are mentioning, someone can't pour sugar into your car from anywhere in the world and leave minimal traces. There are some limits to what we should require of software/OS programmers, I certainly agree with that. However, there are also limits to how far the computer == car analogy will take you. The digital world is far more mutable than the physical, and everyone's a step away from everyone else's doorstep. There should be precautions in place to make sure people can't pour sugar in your computer unless you're darn sure you want it to get a taste for the stuff.
Dan Aris
Well, I admit I haven't shopped around too much, but I want the Magic modchip from modchip.ca, which will let me play original imports with the fewest number of solder points. That's about $40 (US). There's a clip you can get which further reduces the number of solder points--about another $25. Then, I don't have a fine-tip soldering iron, which seems pretty necessary for the job, another $12. OK, so that's about $80--it's gone down from the last time I checked. I guess the US dollar is doing a little better. But it's still expensive.
Dan Aris
Hey, thanks! That's just what I was looking for.
Dan Aris
How about having to pay an extra $200-300 and have an extra box to worry about? I've already got a PS2, and it would have no problem running the code in a Japanese PS2 game, if the stupid region locking didn't prevent it from even realizing it's a PS2 game in the first place. I consider the region locking to be draconian, unnecessary, and certainly not a legal or moral hurdle, merely a technological one. It's only there to get the company more money.
Dan Aris
As I've mentioned a couple of times before in this thread, I want to use this (and was planning to get a modchip) to play games I have legally imported from Japan. I know that many people won't believe me, and that, unfortunately, that won't be the primary use of this exploit, but I know of no law that prohibits running region-locked games out of their region. I realize that it's possible the DMCA covers this, but if so, it really shouldn't. I paid for the PS2, I paid for the game, so why the heck shouldn't I be able to run it?
If this can really work (I haven't gotten the guy's code to compile, see one of my posts, above), it would be really great. I could use a $30 memory card reader/writer to let me play imported games, rather than a $100 modchip kit, which I would have to solder onto the PS2's motherboard. And those things look extremely fiddly.
So, yes, there is at least one legitimate use. And the point of our opposition to the DMCA is not (at least not for anyone who would have any chance against it) "so I can keep pirating stuff." My argument against it is that it probably will allow Sony to sue anyone who uses this hack, whatever purpose they put it to. It stops you from using certain devices or processes because they could be used for piracy or copyright infringement, even if you would truly, honestly, never use them for that purpose.
Dan Aris
OK, I'm going to rant at the troll, here, for a minute, so anyone who's not interested can go away now.
And I suppose thinking that you deserve to have everything for free must then be synonymous with being a Linux user?
Actually, I'm in no way that bigoted. But I think that most people with any sense will agree that "paying the standard price for software" as opposed to "pirating software" (which is what I'm trying to do) is very different from "paying too much for hard/software" as opposed to....I'm not sure what. Running Linux on a $200 beige-box built from parts, I guess. Well, we've got one of those here, too, but it's not actually mine (yeah, I still live with my parents; it's cheaper than a grad school dorm). Someday, I do plan to make my own x86 box for cheap. But I use a Mac for everyday stuff. You're free to use whatever you want.
But please observe the difference between piracy and getting things for free/cheap.
Dan Aris
Actually, it's from Babylon 5. It's sort of the motto/code/slogan (or something) of the Rangers. And it's a Tolkien reference, to boot. I don't know about you, Random AC, but I think it's cool. B)
Dan Aris
I tried compiling his titleman utility, since I don't have any of the games already in the title.lst file, but it seems like some stuff is missing...do you need to have a PS2 devkit of some sort to do this? His makefile seems to suggest it.....
Dan Aris
Cool. Do you know, does it appear as just an ordinary USB disk? 'Cause I don't have an x86 box, but I've got lots of Macs, which are usually pretty good about mounting things that look like disks. I could probably also use some sort of utility built for Linux (and friends) under OS X to get at the data, if there is such a thing.
Thanks a lot!
Dan Aris
Does anyone know if there's a memory card reader out there that is in any way compatible with a Mac? For obvious reasons.
And actually, I honestly do want to play legal imports on my PS2. If there's a game I want to play, I usually think it's worth supporting the people who make it.
Dan Aris
If I can get my American PS2 to run Japanese PS2 games without having to pay $100 and do a lot of fiddly soldering, that's worth it. I don't know how much it would actually cost to get a memory card reader, since I don't have one, but I doubt one would have to pay $200.
Dan Aris
Dan Aris
MusicXML looks like a great notation system, for those of us who like markup languages. However, though it ought not to be too difficult to write some sort of editor and/or printable output generator for it, I haven't yet seen one that's not part of one of the really expensive music suites (like Finale). Does anyone know of an open-source or cheap shareware (or cheap commercial, though preferably with some sort of demo) piece of software that does this?
Dan Aris
I've installed Lilypond through Fink, and every time I try to get a printable output from it, the notes have no heads, and it looks...really ugly (even apart from that). That makes it pretty useless...unless someone knows why this is happening, and/or how to fix it...?
Dan Aris
That's possible. I was thinking about it in terms of management, who I'm sure sometimes listen to their techies (of whatever stripe). However, judging by what I've read various places, particularly the Computerworld SharkTank, they also often don't listen to their techies, instead listening only to the most persuasive marketing.
Dan Aris
I didn't catch the original, and I don't know where it was publicized or anything, but I imagine it was in places that make it look legit. More importantly, it was in places that people who don't already use Linux might be likely to look. Rebuttals like this are nearly useless unless they are prominently placed in some widely read medium--and by "widely read" I mean someplace that at least an average techie, even if entirely M$-biased, would be likely to at least see the headline. I admit that I have no knowledge at all of the world of journalism, online or otherwise, but I think that people who write studies/rebuttals/articles/etc like this, showing up Microsoft and their precious status quo, should make significant efforts to get them in mainstream media.
Unless someone already likes Linux, they're not likely to frequent LinuxDevices.com. Someone who already likes Linux is not the target audience for such journalism, or shouldn't be. We need to target it at the others, the people who don't like Linux, because it's articles like this that might make them like it, and it's studies like the one it's rebutting that make them not like it.
Dan Aris
Excuse me, but what about Apple? Unless you meant "only competition on x86 hardware", Apple has (arguably) a significantly bigger piece of the pie than *nix, at least on the desktop. While I agree with the point behind what you are saying (that it would be monopolistic for M$ to do this themselves), it seriously bugs me when people don't even think about Apple as a factor in the OS market.
;-) ), but Apple's desktop offering is considerably better aimed at Userland than Linux's is, and is, and will continue to be a serious player.
I know I'm going to get people saying "But Apple's dying", "Apple's not Free/Open", "Apple's just as evil", and whatever (assuming anyone even reads this
Dan Aris
Someone mentioned Bungie earlier, but said nothing about their flagship title: the Marathon series. It was originally Mac-only (with a port of Marathon 2 to Win95), but the source was released some time ago, and there has been a massive effort to bring Marathon into the 21st century. The results can be found at source.bungie.org: the Aleph One project. They've added all sorts of things, like scriptability (not so interesting for netplay), OpenGL support, and lots of other cool stuff. They've also, quite recently, done major rewrites of the net code, making it not only possible but pleasant to play over the Internet, and also even better over LAN. It works crossplatform, of course, and it's free and Free. What more could you want?
Dan Aris
There is no one "root language" that underlies all languages (at least, no vestige of one remains); however, there is a language underlying all European and Indic languages: it's called Indo-European, and it's the ancestor of languages spoken in India (whose names I'm not familiar with), as well as Latin and all the old Germanic languages. It is in no way related to Japanese; however, interestingly enough, Hungarian is in the same language family as Japanese: a relic of the time when the Huns invaded all the way to there, then stopped.
Dan Aris
Actually, "thou" was only the informal singular. Similar to "tu" in French. I believe that "you" was used in formal contexts even when talking to a single person, as "vous" is in French.
This is why, when, at the Episcopal convention to revise the prayerbook in the late 1940s, someone objected to the replacement of "thou"s with "you"s, etc, as "losing our respectful distance from God," anyone who knew what they were talking about looked at him funny. The "thou" was showing our closeness with God, not our distance.
Dan Aris