I've owned a.org for seven years now. I intend it to be for a non-profit charity, whenever I'm rich enough to found one. I'm not yet. =)
I wouldn't want it taken away because I'm not able to use it for its intended purpose at this time. There's no guarantee someone else would be as nice about it.
Smedley Getting the Axe at SOE. This is a bonus entry, not from GDC. Something I was actually told last week and wanted to sit on and fact gather. At this point with Raph gone and SWG in question... it's hard to think this wouldn't be on the table.
I wouldn't expect Smedley to say anything else.
Him leaving wouldn't change my opinion though: I will never play an SoE game again.
For one thing, AM radio stations often carry much farther at night than they do during the day -- does such a station only get regulated at night?
Because of the nature of AM broadcasts, and the need for AM superchannels, they would need to be regulated by the FCC. I specifically had them in mind when I wrote this post earlier.
If broadcasts from Michigan cross the border into Canada, but not into another U.S. state, does the FCC have jurisdiction?
The constitution also gives the federal government control of international issues, so again this would be another case where the FCC can retain some control.
Then there's the hardware issue. Does anybody really want a TV that only works in Iowa?
Do you actually think any hardware manufacturer would do this with a broadcast-type medium? The hardware manufacturers and the states would agree on set frequencies, most likely the frequencies already in use for such broadcasts.
Just because the states control something, it doesn't mean the states cannot get together and coordinate. This is still sufficiently different from the federal government regulating arbitrarily in ways not authorized by the constitution. Heck, because of the need to coordinate at state and internation boundaries, the FCC would still be in on these talks - but as a participant, not a dictator.
Then the big advantage is that states control who uses each part of the spectrum, after it has been divided. Some states might choose to let 100 private, low-power broadcasters transmit in the same bandwidth that another state lets three high-power superstations, who bleed into neighboring slots. The "low power FM stations" goal of the FCC could be realized in states that choose to allow it. Moreover, the FCC would no longer have regulatory control over the content of those broadcasts. Some states might create more restrictive controls, but some states would be more lenient. If obscenity and indecency are supposed to be set by the community standards, why not let the communities set the standards?
Unless the broadcast is strong enough to cross a state line at some threshold power (arbitrarily set by congress or the courts), then it is none of the FCC's business.*
Let the states regulate broadcasts that are only available inside state lines.
* Exceptions for national defense would allow the government to block transmitters at certain frequencies, just as they would effectively control major commercial broadcasts in some states (like Rhode Island) because it isn't possible to keep the signal from crossing state lines with sufficient power to cause interference.
When comparing old games to new, similar games, one might expect the new games to be, well, similar to older ones.
They didn't compare any recent "rolling around gravity balls to collect objects and build stars" games to the equivalent from 1985 because there wasn't one back then to compare.
How much more would I have to pay so that the domain I have parked with GoDaddy wasn't plastered with advertisements?
I switched it to GoDaddy from Register.com last year. Before that I had it parked for seven years, and they never covered my page with ads. I'm paying GoDaddy to reserve the domain for me so no one else can have it, not to flood the internet with more superfluous advertisement.
I haven't yet switched my other domains from Register.com. Why should I move any others to GoDaddy versus other low-cost alternatives?
If I recall correctly, previous announcements had indicated that IE7 would only be available for Windows Vista. In other words, users of Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows ME, etc., who use IE6 and wish to upgrade would be SOL.
Today, Microsoft's announcement indicated that Windows XP users would be able to upgrade to IE7. Thus, this is a "new feature" for IE7 that IE7 did not have before today - backward compatibility with older operating systems.
I saw the world premiere of High Score yesterday at SXSW. The film documents a person's quest to break the 25-year high score record for Missile Command, which requires him to be able to play for around 55 hours straight.
I think many folks on Slashdot would agree that 50 hours non-stop in any game doing the same thing over and over and over and over is really boring. And yet, watching a documentary about someone else doing it was actually very enthralling. (Of course they didn't just point a camera at the screen and leave; the filmmaker actually made a film.)
Anyway, so I think that the gold farmer documentary, if done well, might also be interesting. And I think that the gamer Slashdot crowd ought to check out High Score. (Both the star and director were quite nice; they invited me to the after-premiere party, where I had a chance to talk with them, and get autographs and a free T-Shirt.)
As a quick off-topic question, what are you using for the HD video source? Do you only have OTA television broadcasts, or are you interfacing with a cable or satellite TV box?
We have satellite TV as the local cable company is very bad. I would love to buy a Mac Mini, but I don't see how I could make it work with anything except the three OTA HDTV broadcasts in my area.
I wouldn't consider anything at all related to the Debian movement to be a sign of "monopoly". The word is even less appropriate when you consider the wide range of derivative Linux distributions that look nothing like their parent.
That is your choice of words and your opinion alone.
On the other hand, there was applause at the end of Good Night, and Good Luck when I saw it last week at the Alamo. That made me proud of my community.
Even if it is basically just the Crucible being retold.;p
Yes, RMS scares off business. But he doesn't care, because he doesn't believe in open source for the business reasons.
In this case, a Microsoft-paid columnist is further hyping these religious ideas. Thus, no matter how the words are framed, the feeling taken from the article is one of open source software being wrong for a business environment.
I have a pass to the SXSW Film Festival next week, which I plan to utilize fully. I think a week of independent films, world premieres, and short movies will be a good cultural experience, and is money well spent.
And the first movie I'm going to catch tomorrow night is called Fuck.
I'm currently playing Wizard's Crown from the 1980s. The copy protection is, at random times, questions popping up on the screen that require responses from the manual.
Sadly, the version I have for PC was a licensed rereleased collection (from 1990 or so) that I bought on eBay. I have its manual, but it is also a reprint and doesn't contain the answers to most of the questions. Sucks. (Maybe they disabled the copy protection; I dunno. Rather than find a 5.25" floppy drive I just downloaded another copy of the game.)
I have the original manual in the original box for my Commodore version somewhere, but I haven't bothered to go dig it out. If you get the questions wrong the game closes but can just be restarted, and through trial-and-error I've learned the answers to most of them.
When the whole album is one track and one contiguous work, or is themed in such a way as to make it one work (i.e. the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's or Pink Floyd's the Wall), then one could argue that it is one work and should be sold as a unit, maybe.
When there is no correlation between the songs, especially when the song order was chosen by a record company executive, and some songs are just used as filler to make the collection CD length, then this argument is not valid.
Artists know how to create larger contiguous works. See Inna-gadda-da-vida. (Note that IIRC the whole song sells for $0.99 on iTunes.)
Whether or not Google is actually adhering to that mantra is debatable, but beside the point. When Google went public, they became obligated to the stockholders, regardless of any preexisting 'mantras'.
Absolutely incorrect. This is in their business plan, which was made a public document before the stock went public.
Anyone who purchased stock did so with the knowledge and understanding that Google was limiting its business practices to those events which "do no evil". This is no different from a McDonald's business plan which says that they are a retail food vendor. If the stock purchaser didn't read the company's public documents, it is not the fault of the company.
In either case, if the company strays from its business model, it is the duty, nee the responsibility, of the board and the stockholders to force the company back in line. In the case of Google, if the company did do something that was arguable "evil", the stockholders could sue, claiming the executives were acting against their business model, and possibly lowering company value as those who bought Google for its "goodness" dump shares.
I would consider a "core platform" to be more like.deb, for example.
Suppose Red Hat abandoned RPMs and moved to Debian packages. SuSe, too, would move from whatever-they-use to.deb. Perhaps both distributions would even agree to base their latest release on the latest, most stable Debian.
If that were to happen, then almost every major distribution would share a common update system, and would share a common "core" of code. Theoretically, you could install core stable Debian, then use apt-get to "upgrade" to Ubuntu, Red Hat, SuSe, or any other distribution, minus any proprietary bits that some derivates might supply.
In such a situation, I could see Dell shipping machines with Debian stable preinstalled, or even one of its derivates.
The KDE/Gnome thing might also be on his "core platform convergence" list.
In the case of Dish Network DVRs, the audio and video files themselves (IIRC, I'm a user, not a developer) are in a basic MPEG format, with some changes to the file headers and indexes. In other words, the raw data is in a published standard format, but the headers and so forth make it a proprietary file.
Such an implementation makes it much easier to distinguish encryption from encoding. For the newer DVRs, it is very possible and quite likely that they have made only very minor modifications to the file storage (perhaps storing 32 bit words as bits 30 downto 0, then bit 31) so that they are effectively "encrypted" and yet they can easily be streamed from disk without added hardware and cost.
Slashdot Mirror
I've owned a .org for seven years now. I intend it to be for a non-profit charity, whenever I'm rich enough to found one. I'm not yet. =)
I wouldn't want it taken away because I'm not able to use it for its intended purpose at this time. There's no guarantee someone else would be as nice about it.
Given that one of the other rumors is:
Smedley Getting the Axe at SOE. This is a bonus entry, not from GDC. Something I was actually told last week and wanted to sit on and fact gather. At this point with Raph gone and SWG in question... it's hard to think this wouldn't be on the table.
I wouldn't expect Smedley to say anything else.
Him leaving wouldn't change my opinion though: I will never play an SoE game again.
Yeah, it's suprising to see games based on movie licenses doing so badly.
I expect next year's E.T. MMORPG to be a smashing success...
All innovation takes is a new idea, fostered by a good imagination.
Budget is only somewhat related, in that you have to be able to pay people with good imaginations.
Budget is more involved with the cost of graphic designers, codes, etc. None of that is necessarily needed to implement an innovative idea.
For one thing, AM radio stations often carry much farther at night than they do during the day -- does such a station only get regulated at night?
Because of the nature of AM broadcasts, and the need for AM superchannels, they would need to be regulated by the FCC. I specifically had them in mind when I wrote this post earlier.
If broadcasts from Michigan cross the border into Canada, but not into another U.S. state, does the FCC have jurisdiction?
The constitution also gives the federal government control of international issues, so again this would be another case where the FCC can retain some control.
Then there's the hardware issue. Does anybody really want a TV that only works in Iowa?
Do you actually think any hardware manufacturer would do this with a broadcast-type medium? The hardware manufacturers and the states would agree on set frequencies, most likely the frequencies already in use for such broadcasts.
Just because the states control something, it doesn't mean the states cannot get together and coordinate. This is still sufficiently different from the federal government regulating arbitrarily in ways not authorized by the constitution. Heck, because of the need to coordinate at state and internation boundaries, the FCC would still be in on these talks - but as a participant, not a dictator.
Then the big advantage is that states control who uses each part of the spectrum, after it has been divided. Some states might choose to let 100 private, low-power broadcasters transmit in the same bandwidth that another state lets three high-power superstations, who bleed into neighboring slots. The "low power FM stations" goal of the FCC could be realized in states that choose to allow it. Moreover, the FCC would no longer have regulatory control over the content of those broadcasts. Some states might create more restrictive controls, but some states would be more lenient. If obscenity and indecency are supposed to be set by the community standards, why not let the communities set the standards?
I only read this story because IE and Windows integration was a major part of the antitrust story.
I don't read developer stories about IE or Vista.
http://www.bricklink.com/
Unless the broadcast is strong enough to cross a state line at some threshold power (arbitrarily set by congress or the courts), then it is none of the FCC's business.*
Let the states regulate broadcasts that are only available inside state lines.
* Exceptions for national defense would allow the government to block transmitters at certain frequencies, just as they would effectively control major commercial broadcasts in some states (like Rhode Island) because it isn't possible to keep the signal from crossing state lines with sufficient power to cause interference.
When comparing old games to new, similar games, one might expect the new games to be, well, similar to older ones.
They didn't compare any recent "rolling around gravity balls to collect objects and build stars" games to the equivalent from 1985 because there wasn't one back then to compare.
How much more would I have to pay so that the domain I have parked with GoDaddy wasn't plastered with advertisements?
I switched it to GoDaddy from Register.com last year. Before that I had it parked for seven years, and they never covered my page with ads. I'm paying GoDaddy to reserve the domain for me so no one else can have it, not to flood the internet with more superfluous advertisement.
I haven't yet switched my other domains from Register.com. Why should I move any others to GoDaddy versus other low-cost alternatives?
If I recall correctly, previous announcements had indicated that IE7 would only be available for Windows Vista. In other words, users of Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows ME, etc., who use IE6 and wish to upgrade would be SOL.
Today, Microsoft's announcement indicated that Windows XP users would be able to upgrade to IE7. Thus, this is a "new feature" for IE7 that IE7 did not have before today - backward compatibility with older operating systems.
But then how would you view slashdot.xxx?
Given that I just said Fuck, this site is clearly "harmful to minors" and thus must move to xxx as well.
italics used for sarcasm
I saw the world premiere of High Score yesterday at SXSW. The film documents a person's quest to break the 25-year high score record for Missile Command, which requires him to be able to play for around 55 hours straight.
I think many folks on Slashdot would agree that 50 hours non-stop in any game doing the same thing over and over and over and over is really boring. And yet, watching a documentary about someone else doing it was actually very enthralling. (Of course they didn't just point a camera at the screen and leave; the filmmaker actually made a film.)
Anyway, so I think that the gold farmer documentary, if done well, might also be interesting. And I think that the gamer Slashdot crowd ought to check out High Score. (Both the star and director were quite nice; they invited me to the after-premiere party, where I had a chance to talk with them, and get autographs and a free T-Shirt.)
As a quick off-topic question, what are you using for the HD video source? Do you only have OTA television broadcasts, or are you interfacing with a cable or satellite TV box?
We have satellite TV as the local cable company is very bad. I would love to buy a Mac Mini, but I don't see how I could make it work with anything except the three OTA HDTV broadcasts in my area.
I wouldn't consider anything at all related to the Debian movement to be a sign of "monopoly". The word is even less appropriate when you consider the wide range of derivative Linux distributions that look nothing like their parent.
That is your choice of words and your opinion alone.
On the other hand, there was applause at the end of Good Night, and Good Luck when I saw it last week at the Alamo. That made me proud of my community.
;p
Even if it is basically just the Crucible being retold.
Then you need to keep RMS out of the picture.
Yes, RMS scares off business. But he doesn't care, because he doesn't believe in open source for the business reasons.
In this case, a Microsoft-paid columnist is further hyping these religious ideas. Thus, no matter how the words are framed, the feeling taken from the article is one of open source software being wrong for a business environment.
I have a pass to the SXSW Film Festival next week, which I plan to utilize fully. I think a week of independent films, world premieres, and short movies will be a good cultural experience, and is money well spent.
And the first movie I'm going to catch tomorrow night is called Fuck.
I'm currently playing Wizard's Crown from the 1980s. The copy protection is, at random times, questions popping up on the screen that require responses from the manual.
Sadly, the version I have for PC was a licensed rereleased collection (from 1990 or so) that I bought on eBay. I have its manual, but it is also a reprint and doesn't contain the answers to most of the questions. Sucks. (Maybe they disabled the copy protection; I dunno. Rather than find a 5.25" floppy drive I just downloaded another copy of the game.)
I have the original manual in the original box for my Commodore version somewhere, but I haven't bothered to go dig it out. If you get the questions wrong the game closes but can just be restarted, and through trial-and-error I've learned the answers to most of them.
When the whole album is one track and one contiguous work, or is themed in such a way as to make it one work (i.e. the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's or Pink Floyd's the Wall), then one could argue that it is one work and should be sold as a unit, maybe.
When there is no correlation between the songs, especially when the song order was chosen by a record company executive, and some songs are just used as filler to make the collection CD length, then this argument is not valid.
Artists know how to create larger contiguous works. See Inna-gadda-da-vida. (Note that IIRC the whole song sells for $0.99 on iTunes.)
Whether or not Google is actually adhering to that mantra is debatable, but beside the point. When Google went public, they became obligated to the stockholders, regardless of any preexisting 'mantras'.
Absolutely incorrect. This is in their business plan, which was made a public document before the stock went public.
Anyone who purchased stock did so with the knowledge and understanding that Google was limiting its business practices to those events which "do no evil". This is no different from a McDonald's business plan which says that they are a retail food vendor. If the stock purchaser didn't read the company's public documents, it is not the fault of the company.
In either case, if the company strays from its business model, it is the duty, nee the responsibility, of the board and the stockholders to force the company back in line. In the case of Google, if the company did do something that was arguable "evil", the stockholders could sue, claiming the executives were acting against their business model, and possibly lowering company value as those who bought Google for its "goodness" dump shares.
Besides, in this case, he appears to be arguing against something that would benefit Microsoft.
I think any time you start using religious parallels to describe the open source movement, you are hurting that movement in the eyes of business.
That isn't at all how I interpreted it.
.deb, for example.
.deb. Perhaps both distributions would even agree to base their latest release on the latest, most stable Debian.
I would consider a "core platform" to be more like
Suppose Red Hat abandoned RPMs and moved to Debian packages. SuSe, too, would move from whatever-they-use to
If that were to happen, then almost every major distribution would share a common update system, and would share a common "core" of code. Theoretically, you could install core stable Debian, then use apt-get to "upgrade" to Ubuntu, Red Hat, SuSe, or any other distribution, minus any proprietary bits that some derivates might supply.
In such a situation, I could see Dell shipping machines with Debian stable preinstalled, or even one of its derivates.
The KDE/Gnome thing might also be on his "core platform convergence" list.
In the case of Dish Network DVRs, the audio and video files themselves (IIRC, I'm a user, not a developer) are in a basic MPEG format, with some changes to the file headers and indexes. In other words, the raw data is in a published standard format, but the headers and so forth make it a proprietary file.
Such an implementation makes it much easier to distinguish encryption from encoding. For the newer DVRs, it is very possible and quite likely that they have made only very minor modifications to the file storage (perhaps storing 32 bit words as bits 30 downto 0, then bit 31) so that they are effectively "encrypted" and yet they can easily be streamed from disk without added hardware and cost.
Bin Laden has a huge heap of money. Most people with similar sized money-heaps in the US are pretty free too...
... as long as they don't use part of that money to pay down a debt ...