"I can't see why anyone would want to ban these literary icons from schools or libraries, when the dissection of each only lends to the ability to think freely and creatively, and develop critical thinking and reasoning skills."
Unless you wish to supress free thinking and critical analysis. Like, say, certain governments which consider anyone who doesn't toe the party line to be a terrorist. I'm talking about China of course, who did you think I meant?
There was a time about half a century ago that people weren't too keen on the idea of "cutting to the core of racism". Large sections of the US, in particular regions in the South East, might not have been very favorable to having their children influenced by such a work. Many of those regions still have communities where people are rather proud of their ethnic heritage and don't necessarily consider their beliefs of ethnic superiority to be racist (or if they realize that they are racist, don't consider racism to be a bad thing).
Those games had very limited systems for "creating" creatures. You had a "head" part and a "body" part and so on...
While this has some aspects of that - there are limits to what you can add - the method is much larger in scope. Full skeletal creation, complete virtual-clay interface for modifying sizes of various components, algorithmic ability to determine walking style (he showed off all sorts of bizarre possibilities) and so on...
So yes, it's like those, and yet, very much not like them. The algorithmic basis for all of the content is what's really revolutionary, though, at least for the game devs.;)
Actually, the Napster ruling applies here. The indexing is centralized, and he has direct control over what gets indexed. He could specifically exclude mp3s or make a good faith attempt at excluding copyrighted materials. Altavista and Google could be sued on similar grounds (and would likely lose under precedent of the Napster ruling, at least initially).
Grokster and Morpheus are tools which index independantly of the service. There's absolutely no way the people behind Grokster or Morpheus could fliter out those sorts of files. That's the key difference.
However, it should be noted that the majority of the suit would have been for songs actually on his machine at the time. They sent an abbreviated list of a few hundred of those songs and would have sued for $150,000 per song in addition to the headline suit that this is about the search service. That should also answer a different poster's question about how they selected the students being charged... they were ones who could be convicted of something no matter what and would therefore be willing to settle on everything rather than win the electronics rights to search engine use battle but lose the much nastier one that'd cost them everything they'd ever earn.
Start sending him mail "Postage Due". That's how he's sending spam... you pay for him to send it by paying for your bandwidth which he clogs. So send him mail, and make him pay for each letter you send.
No, no, no... they want a shooter for the X-box as in, a gun capable of shooting the X-box. Imagine: X-boxen dropping out of the sky, crushing the opposing army...
"My biggest question - from reading this, this would actually work correctly on other competing VCards... why did nVidia create it?"
Simple - they want applications written to support vertex and pixel shaders... At this point, they're interested in market saturation. They need apps (mostly games) that use this technology in order to cause people to buy the cards (increasing the number of apps that will use it and so on).
Now... if they created a language that would never work with other cards, most programmers wouldn't bother using it. What was needed was a generic high-level language that could compile to low-level shader code. This is just the high-level portion... If ATI wanted to tap into this, they'd need to write their own compiler (for efficiency purposes, anyways).
Perhaps papers like these should actually focus on the real reason that DOS attacks are so easy. Crappy code. Since when did Eudora or Pegasus start spreading viruses? It's all Outlook Express.
Actually, while it may be about crappy code in the end, you can't use this to bash MS whilst sparing the competition. Eudora did spread viruses at one time... when it was in common usage. It still does now, but we don't hear much about it because it doesn't have the same market coverage that Outlook / Outlook Express does.
It's all about numbers. It is more than likely possible to create a virus that could use to spawn new copies. In some cases it may be exceptionally difficult, but more than likely some small hole will always remain. However, it isn't worth trying it against a Eudora user if you're out to hit as many people as possible. The number of Eudora users is probably equal to or less than the number of people who have every address in a Outlook (Express) account's address book being another Outlook (Express) user. This is simply a case of MS having too much market penetration and therefore being the one every single person is hammering against. Were Linux to top the usage charts, you can be sure that viruses that found Linux / Linux server app. exploits would start appearing (though probably harder to create and be quashed, likely, much faster) but at that time your argument could be turned around to say 'No one attacks MS boxes, they must have better code...'
I agree with your sentiments about poorly written netcode being the ultimate problem, but don't add in unneeded attacks against MS. It's a problem shared by nearly all the netcode ever written until all the easy bugs have been found and patched...
I think you have the technology here reversed. I believe this matches the music to your pitch / tempo, rather than matching your voice to the music. So... this is perfect for people who intentionally change tempo... now the music will follow your lead.
As IANAL, I grew curious after the bnetd stuff, and even more so now after reading this article... What would happen if you never agreed to the liscense? In the case of a net-app, this is harder to understand, but in the case of Starcraft, for example, what if I went to the store, bought myself some physical object which I then took home and modified in some way to skip the liscense agreement during the install process. I never agreed to it, so they can't find my liable under it. Standard copyright still applies (so I can't go distributing it) but then anything additional they might have thrown in wouldn't apply to me, and I could use the CD in any manner I chose as available to my under standard laws.
To clarify a bit... I have purchased a physical object at the store. A box with a CD, likely a manual and a jewel case. I may also have purchased a liscense. Now, if I ignore the liscense (as I might ignore the warranty purchased with a VCR, for example) and tinker with the CD and the information stored there using the tools I have available to me (as I might crack open the VCR case and solder things around, or pull out my set of highliters and emphasize particular passages in a book I've just gotten), what recourse does the company that has produced the CD have against me, if any, prior to my acceptance of the EULA?
In other words, what would prevent me from this act? I void the warranty (as I would with almost any physical electronic object purchased that I personally modified) and I, perhaps, forfeit customer support. On the other hand, by not agreeing I am entitled to deface or rearrange their code as I please (as I am allowed to write in a book I have purchased), reverse-engineer to my heart's content, and otherwise do those things expressly forbidden in the EULA.
So I ask again, what would prevent me from this act (except the lack of knowledge of how to bypass said screen during installation)? What laws exist that state that this is not allowed? And if it is allowed, then what right does BDE, in this case, have to your spare CPU cycles? Could you charge them (as in, make them pay-per-cycle), or use the PATRIOT act (mentioned in another post) against them?
Just a few thoughts that have been building up... Hopefully someone is still looking through the 300-odd comments here and will notice this...
4.4 KaZaA reserves the right to change or modify any of the terms and conditions of this licence and any of the policies governing the Software at any time in its sole discretion without direct notice to you. Your continued use of the Software following these changes will constitute your acceptance of such changes.
Just because it isn't there now doesn't mean it can't appear suddenly.
Additionally, this is the liscense for KaZaA, as you mentioned, which is not the software in question. KaZaA, according to the article is distributed by Sharman, not BDE. If you'd read the article, you'd notice that the software mentioned is distributed with, but separate from, the KaZaA software. If it exists at all.
Well, you could always write down the date you got the code, or something... If all it does is test the date, then resetting your system clock would be enough to handle this. I don't see how this is stopping anything except stupid people... Oh wait, they write software for Macs. Perfect scheme!:P
You sound somewhat like I did 3 years ago... At that point, there was good reason to dislike MS. Win98 had finally begun replacing Win95b, and while it was much better... it still sucked. We used to have competitions in the dorm as to how long a person could keep AIM connected (as both AIM and Windows were flaky). The longest ended up being over a month, mainly because the person left their machine on over break. Anytime you did any sort of multi-tasking, your computer would crash badly.
Win98SE fixed many of those problems. Fullscreen games ran properly, and you could actually break out of them, do something small, and go back into the game without any errors being thrown. So, reasons to dislike MS subsided somewhat...
At about the same time, our core CS classes switched to MS Visual Studio, since it had a complete version of STL implemented (I believe one of our profs did some extensive research in STL, and templating in general, so he wanted to teach using it). As a side note, here, I like STL as a teaching tool, and as a programming aide... Not wonderfully optimized yet, but still good. Anyway, the switch from the former UNIX-centric (AIX, I think) CS program to MS was odd, but turned out well enough...
The UNIX servers are still in place, and the CS servers are all runnning various BSD and Linux distros, so those professors who wanted to teach in the older style (or in non-MS languages) had the opportunity to do so. Those who wanted to tap in to MFC and STL could do so. After the first 2 years, I don't think I've had a language dictated to me by a professor. We're told to get the project running, use whatever we want (normally... on occasion, we'll be restricted to 3 or 4 languages so the TAs can be able to help if we have trouble).
So... All of that as background, freshman year I wanted to get away from MS as much as possible. It simply wasn't a decent work platform, but I didn't have much choice as the core classes were Visual Studio. I got used to the inconsitsencies of MSVC++ and did what I needed to pass... And I learned Perl and Java on the side.
Everything I learned about MS made me dislike it a bit more. Various attidues regarding Open-Source, predatory market practices, ridiculous naming conventions, buggy software. Trying to write code for windows was painful without the pre-generated code chunks from the wizards... and the wizard code was nearly impossible to read effectively (at the time).
As time went on, I learned a lot more about the whys of MS' practices, and I began to care less about it. The naming notation makes sense (eventually), the bugs have slowly been worked out... and in the end they produce good software. I suppose if I ever had to pay for it, I might think less of it... but the academic liscenses available through the school computer store make it cheap enough to be worth using.
That opinion might not have changed as much except for one release... Win2k. By this time I'd started getting Linux functioning on my computer, but I hadn't really had time to hack it or tweak it much... I still played too many games to make it a dedicated Linux box, and I didn't have the funding to get a second machine. About this time I was ready for my semi-annual Windows reformat and reload... So I figured I'd try the new version, and I ended up removing Linux entirely shortly thereafter. I think I've had Win2k crash once, mainly because I was tinkering in bad ways with DirectX and other things... Other than that, my (now 4 years old) machine has run perfectly well on Win2k with no problems.
I'm not going to defend any other MS OS, mainly from lack of interest in switching. XP sounded good, but I haven't heard the best things about it from other programmers (non-programmers seem to like it just fine). ME frankly sucked.
In the end, I use Visual C++ as my IDE for when I do C++, Eclipse for my Java and a generic text-editor for perl. I know several other languages, but generally don't bother using them. And so... I'd be perfectly happy coding in an MS environment or out. And, in fact, I wouldn't mind working for MS itself, albeit, in a game developer position rather than Apps.
To summarize my rambling... Frosh year, I ended up not liking MS. By around Junior, I realized that it really wasn't all that bad (from a CS standpoint). The legacy code support and addition of requested 'features' lends itself to bloated code. At the end of senior year, I'd be happy to work with MS, or without it. It really doesn't make a difference.
And, in more direct response to a few things...
Media player runs fine for me, though I generally use Zoom Player and Playa (for Divx) due to the additional features in them...
Product Activation is a stupid idea, IMHO, but... The price may not have gone down, but it also didn't go up.
I'm still running the same machine I entered college with using MS products, so I'm not feeling your pain in regards to needing the latest hardware to get reasonable speed.
If your machine requires a full minute for Word to load, then you have something very badly configured (Linux can take a half-hour to load, if you don't configure it right). Word loads in a few seconds for me, and I'm on a 400 Mhz, 128 MB RAM machine... Your inability to tweak Windows is not MS' fault.
Re:Oh my goodness, what a surprise
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iWarez
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Gee, I feel backwards... Back in the 80's I always copied my stuff to the store machine so I could try it on the better hardware.
Poor sight is naturally corrected by a fair margin by the brain. I didn't realize how bad my sight was until I got glasses... and then took them off 20 minutes later. My optic nerves had been compensating for the deficiences of my eyes. The glasses lead to fewer headaches... and poorer uncorrected eyesight.
Additionally, once society forms, good sight is no longer a required trait. A smith hardly needs the ability to see out a sparrow on a tree a mile distant, whereas a hunter in a desert might need to be able to see a snake in a crack in some rocks a mile distant... All about what's necessary for survival in the current environment. Genetics-wise, we stopped following natural selection when we started having larger-than-a-tribe societies and started to care for the sick.
The previous comments pretty well cover the issue, but I had a few other ideas to share on this...
Is it not the parent's responsibility to give their offspring every positive chance in life they can get?
No, actually, it's not. I am a parent, and I would argue that it's my responsibility to let my children screw up as much as possible. Why? Because we as humans tend to learn through our mistakes, not our successes. By encouraging my childrens opportunities to make mistakes, they learn that daddy is not going to be around to fix their problems, so perhaps they'd better start thinking about how to fix the problems that they create for themselves.
Allowing your children to screw up is fine. Forcing your children to screw up is not. Give them the best chance you can to succeed. If the job is to type a text file on the computer, give them a functional keyboard and computer to type on, not a Typewriter with no ink and 3 keys missing. If they screw up when they've had a chance in the first place, fine... if they screw up because you refused to give them the proper equipment (and you had the chance to do so), that's bad parenting. In the words of the original poster, give them a positive *chance* at success, not a slim margin of comfortable survival.
The problem with this assumption is that you don't know what other things you're screening out when you screen out the disease. A somewhat contrived example of this is Stephen Hawking. Of course no really knows the cause of ALS, but suppose it turns out to be genetic. Stephen Hawking would have been screened out of existance, and consequently all of his contributions to science.
If Hawking's genius appears elsewhere in his genetic code than the screened out gene (plus the environmental factors which would have been nearly identical, I believe, since his condition didn't appear until around age 20 or so and wasn't diagnosed until shortly after his 21st birthday) he might have made all his contributions without having to suffer from ALS, thus likely granting him an extended lifespan (since according to the statistics he should be dead already...) in which to make contributions.
The bandwidth 'guarantees' mentioned were in that IPX only works over ethernet, therefore it was built to rely on that speed. TCP/IP has no such inherent bandwidth.
TCP/IP on an internal LAN will work fine if you have an internal IP server and router. Otherwise you may go to external routers and (depending on your uplink type) you may have severe problems related to this. For instance, if you have a half-duplex uplink, your 'LAN' game no longer is, it's an internet game and has all sorts of related lag issues. IPX obviates all these concerns by simply not working outside a LAN setup. Additionally, for those who have no IP server, IPX functions fine connected to a hub alone. It is sometimes a bit more difficult to get TCP/IP running stand-alone in that fashion (by the masses, not you network geeks).
Because, for LAN games, IPX is a better protocol. It bypasses a lot of routing issues that happen otherwise, and is simply faster. Try running a game that supports both (loke Age of Empires 2) via TCP/IP, and then one via IPX to the same person. You'll experience a lot more lag on the TCP/IP game, in general. I'm not certain of the reasons behind this, but I know that IPX has a 'guaranteed' bandwidth that TCP/IP lacks since it can only be used in LAN settings.
Or from submitting an Ask Slashdot, for that matter.
It's very different from Ask Slashdot, since these people might actually have a decent chance of knowing what they're talking about in regards to law... Fewer IANAL (well, Law Student...) posts and such.
I don't know... when I send something off to be recycled, I expect it to be recycled, not tossed in a heap that looks mighty akin to a landfill or possibly incinerated to extract (ridiculously small amounts of) precious metals... I consider things recycled when a majority of those parts which can be reused, are. Such as melting and reshaping plastic (not burning it), or shredding paper to make new paper.
I could care less where the recycling occurs, but I expect recycling if such is offered... This is as bad as when I saw the local garbage collectors tossing both trash and recycling into the same truck.
It wouldn't bother me quite so much if it wasn't called 'recycling' at my end. Name it properly, and then I can complain appropriately that no recycling program exists.
Your English has little to do with you gettingyour point across. The problem is that your point is invalid in this case. bnetd, from my understanding, allows people an alternative to BattleNet at the protocol level. If it allowed pirates to hack into BattleNet servers, then it would allow pirates to play it exactly as if they had bought it. As it is, it does not.
BattleNet is good for playing against random people. bnetd is an efficient way for small groups of friends to play together without going through BattleNet.
Your point might be valid if BattleNet games required BattleNet to play in all cases. However, if I were a pirate (or even a casual CD-copier), I could play all Blizzard games to my heart's content without ever touching BattleNet or bnetd. As a legal user, I, in fact, avoid BattleNet like the plague. Diablo 2 doesn't even require BattleNet for online play, you can always just set up an Open server... so explain to me, if you can, how bnetd interferes with Blizzard's present model in any way, shape or form?
If the game required one to be online to play (such as Tribes 2), then this might be construed as a violation of the DMCA. However, with the case being that one can play LAN games and single-player all day without ever connecting to a Battle.net server, I hardly consider it copy protection on the game.
At best, the 'copy protection' is on the Battle.net server. If bnetd allowed one to log in to the real Battle.net server, then I might agree that something illegal was going on (not necessarily DMCA, though), since you were bypassing the in-place protection scheme on the server to gain access. However, benetd does not. It simply allows a person to set up a packet router/splitter (for all intents and purposes).
This method has been done, only worse. Spyro: Year of the Dragon took months to crack (as in, create a patched execuatable, in this case) because when the system detected a variation on the code it would cause a critcal item to disappear int he game... So you'd be running around looking for the blue key to get through the blue door, and no blue key would exist (or whatever... I've never actually played Spyro... I just know about the copy-protection). If it used a CD-key, a similar circumvention could have been applied, such that the player wouldn't even know that their hack hadn't worked unless they'd played through a real version first... ie. no crash indicating that something had gone wrong.
Few, if any, of the airport restrictions put in place in the last week would have had any effect on this attack. None of them would have prevented it.
I'd expect that the Air Marshals being placed on commercial air traffic would likely have had a large effect on this. Considering that the terrorists used razors to take control of the plane, it isn't hard to imagine that a trained guard couldn't have prevented at least one or two of the hijackings that occured.
Slashdot Mirror
"I can't see why anyone would want to ban these literary icons from schools or libraries, when the dissection of each only lends to the ability to think freely and creatively, and develop critical thinking and reasoning skills."
Unless you wish to supress free thinking and critical analysis. Like, say, certain governments which consider anyone who doesn't toe the party line to be a terrorist. I'm talking about China of course, who did you think I meant?
There was a time about half a century ago that people weren't too keen on the idea of "cutting to the core of racism". Large sections of the US, in particular regions in the South East, might not have been very favorable to having their children influenced by such a work. Many of those regions still have communities where people are rather proud of their ethnic heritage and don't necessarily consider their beliefs of ethnic superiority to be racist (or if they realize that they are racist, don't consider racism to be a bad thing).
Those games had very limited systems for "creating" creatures. You had a "head" part and a "body" part and so on...
;)
While this has some aspects of that - there are limits to what you can add - the method is much larger in scope. Full skeletal creation, complete virtual-clay interface for modifying sizes of various components, algorithmic ability to determine walking style (he showed off all sorts of bizarre possibilities) and so on...
So yes, it's like those, and yet, very much not like them. The algorithmic basis for all of the content is what's really revolutionary, though, at least for the game devs.
You'd think so, but Wright actually mentioned it during his talk.
Actually, the Napster ruling applies here. The indexing is centralized, and he has direct control over what gets indexed. He could specifically exclude mp3s or make a good faith attempt at excluding copyrighted materials. Altavista and Google could be sued on similar grounds (and would likely lose under precedent of the Napster ruling, at least initially).
Grokster and Morpheus are tools which index independantly of the service. There's absolutely no way the people behind Grokster or Morpheus could fliter out those sorts of files. That's the key difference.
However, it should be noted that the majority of the suit would have been for songs actually on his machine at the time. They sent an abbreviated list of a few hundred of those songs and would have sued for $150,000 per song in addition to the headline suit that this is about the search service. That should also answer a different poster's question about how they selected the students being charged... they were ones who could be convicted of something no matter what and would therefore be willing to settle on everything rather than win the electronics rights to search engine use battle but lose the much nastier one that'd cost them everything they'd ever earn.
Start sending him mail "Postage Due". That's how he's sending spam... you pay for him to send it by paying for your bandwidth which he clogs. So send him mail, and make him pay for each letter you send.
No, no, no... they want a shooter for the X-box as in, a gun capable of shooting the X-box. Imagine: X-boxen dropping out of the sky, crushing the opposing army...
"My biggest question - from reading this, this would actually work correctly on other competing VCards... why did nVidia create it?"
Simple - they want applications written to support vertex and pixel shaders... At this point, they're interested in market saturation. They need apps (mostly games) that use this technology in order to cause people to buy the cards (increasing the number of apps that will use it and so on).
Now... if they created a language that would never work with other cards, most programmers wouldn't bother using it. What was needed was a generic high-level language that could compile to low-level shader code. This is just the high-level portion... If ATI wanted to tap into this, they'd need to write their own compiler (for efficiency purposes, anyways).
Actually, while it may be about crappy code in the end, you can't use this to bash MS whilst sparing the competition. Eudora did spread viruses at one time... when it was in common usage. It still does now, but we don't hear much about it because it doesn't have the same market coverage that Outlook / Outlook Express does.
It's all about numbers. It is more than likely possible to create a virus that could use to spawn new copies. In some cases it may be exceptionally difficult, but more than likely some small hole will always remain. However, it isn't worth trying it against a Eudora user if you're out to hit as many people as possible. The number of Eudora users is probably equal to or less than the number of people who have every address in a Outlook (Express) account's address book being another Outlook (Express) user. This is simply a case of MS having too much market penetration and therefore being the one every single person is hammering against. Were Linux to top the usage charts, you can be sure that viruses that found Linux / Linux server app. exploits would start appearing (though probably harder to create and be quashed, likely, much faster) but at that time your argument could be turned around to say 'No one attacks MS boxes, they must have better code...'
I agree with your sentiments about poorly written netcode being the ultimate problem, but don't add in unneeded attacks against MS. It's a problem shared by nearly all the netcode ever written until all the easy bugs have been found and patched...
I think you have the technology here reversed. I believe this matches the music to your pitch / tempo, rather than matching your voice to the music. So... this is perfect for people who intentionally change tempo... now the music will follow your lead.
As IANAL, I grew curious after the bnetd stuff, and even more so now after reading this article... What would happen if you never agreed to the liscense? In the case of a net-app, this is harder to understand, but in the case of Starcraft, for example, what if I went to the store, bought myself some physical object which I then took home and modified in some way to skip the liscense agreement during the install process. I never agreed to it, so they can't find my liable under it. Standard copyright still applies (so I can't go distributing it) but then anything additional they might have thrown in wouldn't apply to me, and I could use the CD in any manner I chose as available to my under standard laws.
To clarify a bit... I have purchased a physical object at the store. A box with a CD, likely a manual and a jewel case. I may also have purchased a liscense. Now, if I ignore the liscense (as I might ignore the warranty purchased with a VCR, for example) and tinker with the CD and the information stored there using the tools I have available to me (as I might crack open the VCR case and solder things around, or pull out my set of highliters and emphasize particular passages in a book I've just gotten), what recourse does the company that has produced the CD have against me, if any, prior to my acceptance of the EULA?
In other words, what would prevent me from this act? I void the warranty (as I would with almost any physical electronic object purchased that I personally modified) and I, perhaps, forfeit customer support. On the other hand, by not agreeing I am entitled to deface or rearrange their code as I please (as I am allowed to write in a book I have purchased), reverse-engineer to my heart's content, and otherwise do those things expressly forbidden in the EULA.
So I ask again, what would prevent me from this act (except the lack of knowledge of how to bypass said screen during installation)? What laws exist that state that this is not allowed? And if it is allowed, then what right does BDE, in this case, have to your spare CPU cycles? Could you charge them (as in, make them pay-per-cycle), or use the PATRIOT act (mentioned in another post) against them?
Just a few thoughts that have been building up... Hopefully someone is still looking through the 300-odd comments here and will notice this...
Just because it isn't there now doesn't mean it can't appear suddenly.
Additionally, this is the liscense for KaZaA, as you mentioned, which is not the software in question. KaZaA, according to the article is distributed by Sharman, not BDE. If you'd read the article, you'd notice that the software mentioned is distributed with, but separate from, the KaZaA software. If it exists at all.
Well, you could always write down the date you got the code, or something... If all it does is test the date, then resetting your system clock would be enough to handle this. I don't see how this is stopping anything except stupid people... Oh wait, they write software for Macs. Perfect scheme! :P
You sound somewhat like I did 3 years ago... At that point, there was good reason to dislike MS. Win98 had finally begun replacing Win95b, and while it was much better... it still sucked. We used to have competitions in the dorm as to how long a person could keep AIM connected (as both AIM and Windows were flaky). The longest ended up being over a month, mainly because the person left their machine on over break. Anytime you did any sort of multi-tasking, your computer would crash badly.
Win98SE fixed many of those problems. Fullscreen games ran properly, and you could actually break out of them, do something small, and go back into the game without any errors being thrown. So, reasons to dislike MS subsided somewhat...
At about the same time, our core CS classes switched to MS Visual Studio, since it had a complete version of STL implemented (I believe one of our profs did some extensive research in STL, and templating in general, so he wanted to teach using it). As a side note, here, I like STL as a teaching tool, and as a programming aide... Not wonderfully optimized yet, but still good. Anyway, the switch from the former UNIX-centric (AIX, I think) CS program to MS was odd, but turned out well enough...
The UNIX servers are still in place, and the CS servers are all runnning various BSD and Linux distros, so those professors who wanted to teach in the older style (or in non-MS languages) had the opportunity to do so. Those who wanted to tap in to MFC and STL could do so. After the first 2 years, I don't think I've had a language dictated to me by a professor. We're told to get the project running, use whatever we want (normally... on occasion, we'll be restricted to 3 or 4 languages so the TAs can be able to help if we have trouble).
So... All of that as background, freshman year I wanted to get away from MS as much as possible. It simply wasn't a decent work platform, but I didn't have much choice as the core classes were Visual Studio. I got used to the inconsitsencies of MSVC++ and did what I needed to pass... And I learned Perl and Java on the side.
Everything I learned about MS made me dislike it a bit more. Various attidues regarding Open-Source, predatory market practices, ridiculous naming conventions, buggy software. Trying to write code for windows was painful without the pre-generated code chunks from the wizards... and the wizard code was nearly impossible to read effectively (at the time).
As time went on, I learned a lot more about the whys of MS' practices, and I began to care less about it. The naming notation makes sense (eventually), the bugs have slowly been worked out... and in the end they produce good software. I suppose if I ever had to pay for it, I might think less of it... but the academic liscenses available through the school computer store make it cheap enough to be worth using.
That opinion might not have changed as much except for one release... Win2k. By this time I'd started getting Linux functioning on my computer, but I hadn't really had time to hack it or tweak it much... I still played too many games to make it a dedicated Linux box, and I didn't have the funding to get a second machine. About this time I was ready for my semi-annual Windows reformat and reload... So I figured I'd try the new version, and I ended up removing Linux entirely shortly thereafter. I think I've had Win2k crash once, mainly because I was tinkering in bad ways with DirectX and other things... Other than that, my (now 4 years old) machine has run perfectly well on Win2k with no problems.
I'm not going to defend any other MS OS, mainly from lack of interest in switching. XP sounded good, but I haven't heard the best things about it from other programmers (non-programmers seem to like it just fine). ME frankly sucked.
In the end, I use Visual C++ as my IDE for when I do C++, Eclipse for my Java and a generic text-editor for perl. I know several other languages, but generally don't bother using them. And so... I'd be perfectly happy coding in an MS environment or out. And, in fact, I wouldn't mind working for MS itself, albeit, in a game developer position rather than Apps.
To summarize my rambling... Frosh year, I ended up not liking MS. By around Junior, I realized that it really wasn't all that bad (from a CS standpoint). The legacy code support and addition of requested 'features' lends itself to bloated code. At the end of senior year, I'd be happy to work with MS, or without it. It really doesn't make a difference.
And, in more direct response to a few things...
Media player runs fine for me, though I generally use Zoom Player and Playa (for Divx) due to the additional features in them...
Product Activation is a stupid idea, IMHO, but... The price may not have gone down, but it also didn't go up.
I'm still running the same machine I entered college with using MS products, so I'm not feeling your pain in regards to needing the latest hardware to get reasonable speed.
If your machine requires a full minute for Word to load, then you have something very badly configured (Linux can take a half-hour to load, if you don't configure it right). Word loads in a few seconds for me, and I'm on a 400 Mhz, 128 MB RAM machine... Your inability to tweak Windows is not MS' fault.
Gee, I feel backwards... Back in the 80's I always copied my stuff to the store machine so I could try it on the better hardware.
Poor sight is naturally corrected by a fair margin by the brain. I didn't realize how bad my sight was until I got glasses... and then took them off 20 minutes later. My optic nerves had been compensating for the deficiences of my eyes. The glasses lead to fewer headaches... and poorer uncorrected eyesight.
Additionally, once society forms, good sight is no longer a required trait. A smith hardly needs the ability to see out a sparrow on a tree a mile distant, whereas a hunter in a desert might need to be able to see a snake in a crack in some rocks a mile distant... All about what's necessary for survival in the current environment. Genetics-wise, we stopped following natural selection when we started having larger-than-a-tribe societies and started to care for the sick.
Allowing your children to screw up is fine. Forcing your children to screw up is not. Give them the best chance you can to succeed. If the job is to type a text file on the computer, give them a functional keyboard and computer to type on, not a Typewriter with no ink and 3 keys missing. If they screw up when they've had a chance in the first place, fine... if they screw up because you refused to give them the proper equipment (and you had the chance to do so), that's bad parenting. In the words of the original poster, give them a positive *chance* at success, not a slim margin of comfortable survival.
If Hawking's genius appears elsewhere in his genetic code than the screened out gene (plus the environmental factors which would have been nearly identical, I believe, since his condition didn't appear until around age 20 or so and wasn't diagnosed until shortly after his 21st birthday) he might have made all his contributions without having to suffer from ALS, thus likely granting him an extended lifespan (since according to the statistics he should be dead already...) in which to make contributions.
The bandwidth 'guarantees' mentioned were in that IPX only works over ethernet, therefore it was built to rely on that speed. TCP/IP has no such inherent bandwidth.
TCP/IP on an internal LAN will work fine if you have an internal IP server and router. Otherwise you may go to external routers and (depending on your uplink type) you may have severe problems related to this. For instance, if you have a half-duplex uplink, your 'LAN' game no longer is, it's an internet game and has all sorts of related lag issues. IPX obviates all these concerns by simply not working outside a LAN setup. Additionally, for those who have no IP server, IPX functions fine connected to a hub alone. It is sometimes a bit more difficult to get TCP/IP running stand-alone in that fashion (by the masses, not you network geeks).
Because, for LAN games, IPX is a better protocol. It bypasses a lot of routing issues that happen otherwise, and is simply faster. Try running a game that supports both (loke Age of Empires 2) via TCP/IP, and then one via IPX to the same person. You'll experience a lot more lag on the TCP/IP game, in general. I'm not certain of the reasons behind this, but I know that IPX has a 'guaranteed' bandwidth that TCP/IP lacks since it can only be used in LAN settings.
And... I though Mac did support IPX...
It's very different from Ask Slashdot, since these people might actually have a decent chance of knowing what they're talking about in regards to law... Fewer IANAL (well, Law Student...) posts and such.
I don't know... when I send something off to be recycled, I expect it to be recycled, not tossed in a heap that looks mighty akin to a landfill or possibly incinerated to extract (ridiculously small amounts of) precious metals... I consider things recycled when a majority of those parts which can be reused, are. Such as melting and reshaping plastic (not burning it), or shredding paper to make new paper.
I could care less where the recycling occurs, but I expect recycling if such is offered... This is as bad as when I saw the local garbage collectors tossing both trash and recycling into the same truck.
It wouldn't bother me quite so much if it wasn't called 'recycling' at my end. Name it properly, and then I can complain appropriately that no recycling program exists.
Your English has little to do with you gettingyour point across. The problem is that your point is invalid in this case. bnetd, from my understanding, allows people an alternative to BattleNet at the protocol level. If it allowed pirates to hack into BattleNet servers, then it would allow pirates to play it exactly as if they had bought it. As it is, it does not.
BattleNet is good for playing against random people. bnetd is an efficient way for small groups of friends to play together without going through BattleNet.
Your point might be valid if BattleNet games required BattleNet to play in all cases. However, if I were a pirate (or even a casual CD-copier), I could play all Blizzard games to my heart's content without ever touching BattleNet or bnetd. As a legal user, I, in fact, avoid BattleNet like the plague. Diablo 2 doesn't even require BattleNet for online play, you can always just set up an Open server... so explain to me, if you can, how bnetd interferes with Blizzard's present model in any way, shape or form?
If the game required one to be online to play (such as Tribes 2), then this might be construed as a violation of the DMCA. However, with the case being that one can play LAN games and single-player all day without ever connecting to a Battle.net server, I hardly consider it copy protection on the game.
At best, the 'copy protection' is on the Battle.net server. If bnetd allowed one to log in to the real Battle.net server, then I might agree that something illegal was going on (not necessarily DMCA, though), since you were bypassing the in-place protection scheme on the server to gain access. However, benetd does not. It simply allows a person to set up a packet router/splitter (for all intents and purposes).
This method has been done, only worse. Spyro: Year of the Dragon took months to crack (as in, create a patched execuatable, in this case) because when the system detected a variation on the code it would cause a critcal item to disappear int he game... So you'd be running around looking for the blue key to get through the blue door, and no blue key would exist (or whatever... I've never actually played Spyro... I just know about the copy-protection). If it used a CD-key, a similar circumvention could have been applied, such that the player wouldn't even know that their hack hadn't worked unless they'd played through a real version first... ie. no crash indicating that something had gone wrong.
More information available here.
I'd expect that the Air Marshals being placed on commercial air traffic would likely have had a large effect on this. Considering that the terrorists used razors to take control of the plane, it isn't hard to imagine that a trained guard couldn't have prevented at least one or two of the hijackings that occured.