I've been using Skype while playing mutliplayer games with my friends, and I'm very happy with it. However, I'm not impressed with SkypeOut so far. Mind you, I've only used it to make calls within the Greater Toronto Area. I'm sure it's much better in other locales, but in Toronto it sounds like you're calling from an extremely bad mobile.
I installed Windows XP (yes, a "genuine" copy) just so I could play this game on my desktop. Basically it comes complete with crappy/annoying copy protection. It installs some weird driver that requires you to reboot(!) after installation. You then have to enter two keys: one from the manual and one from the disc case. Then you are allowed to play the game that you just laid down $60 for. They sure invested a lot of time in copy protection. Not that it did them any good - I looked and found plenty of pre-cracked torrents for the damn game. So, basically all the copy protection did was turn me from a satisfied customer into a pissed off customer. The weirdest aspect: the installer analyzes your PC before installing the game. However, the analysis isn't able to determine whether or not you can run it. That particular bit of data is calculated after you install, reboot and enter your keys.
GNU/Linux on an EPIA box. You can even do it fanless. Heck, use an ATA CF reader and you can have a solid-state desktop that uses way less power than a Mac Mini. For the average computer user (who needs/wants web browsing, e-mail (usually through a web interface anyway), and solitaire) it's more than enough, and maybe a bit cheaper.
Check out They Might Be Downloads. Their prices compete with iTMS, but you get high-quality, LAME-encoded MP3s without any DRM. You can also pay a little extra to get FLAC rips of selected albums.
Give away some songs for free (maybe enter Songfight! once in a while and link to it), but just let people know that the songs are for sale and that they're DRM-free for the customer's convenience, and that you trust them. Charge a reasonable price and make the site easy to use and you'll get customers.
/me disables AIM in Adium Sadly most people I IM with a) have no interest in online privacy (the old "I've nothing to hide!") and b) use the evil MSN Messenger anyway. I love Jabber, but until it catches up, I'm recommending Skype as the IM platform for the home user. Everything is encrypted and just works, and the official (but unfortunately only) client is available on three platforms.
I wrote my MP the first time this was proposed, and again the second time it was proposed. Luckily he seems pretty sharp on some fronts, so I can probably leave him alone this third time. It's going to come back over and over again, though. I always write the same thing: "I've got this software installed called Tor. It makes my online traffic completely private and anonymous, and it's free. I don't use it for everything, but I can easily switch. Please don't waste my tax dollars." Maybe I'll just remind him ever five years.
I know you're joking, but it was the constant tweaking and tinkering that got me into GNU/Linux in the first place. Windows took a lot of work to keep running, but it wasn't anything that involved... thought. Linux at least posed a daily noodle-scratcher to keep going.
They are using proprietary protocols and they made it clear that they do not intend to standardize. So? Look at Skype's features:
Voice chat
Instant messaging
File transfer
Avatars
Every major IM app has these features! In fact, the only IM protocol that doesn't do voice chat, file transfer and avatars is Jabber* - the one based on open standards.
It seems to me that Skype is building an IM product that does voice chat extremely well, not a VoIP service that intends to compete with Vonage. Heck, even MSN Messenger had the ability to dial PSTN numbers from the client for a small fee. It's just that a) Skype's fee is smaller and b) Skype actually works.
Add in that Skype is ad-free, has the official client ported to four platforms, and encrypts ALL communication with 256-bit AES and Skype starts to look like the best IM service on the market.
*Okay, I like and use Jabber, but they just can't seem to agree on a standard for these things. As a result, I've never used a client that could do file transfer with anyone but people using the exact same client
System.Windows.Forms is a part of the.Net libraries like any other, so I don't see why Mono's Cairo-based implementation would be any different from the rest of the reimplemented classes. Cairo plays with X11, so it'll run on any platform with an X server (i.e. GNU/Linux, *BSD or Mac OS X). Perhaps when the Mac Mono matures we'll see Quartzified/Cocoafied S.W.F. implementation.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately Hopefully they'll port Office to.Net to coincide with Longhorn. Then they'd only have one codebase to maintain, while the lucky consumers will get to run the same version of Office on Windows, GNU/Linux and OS X (especially if Mono's System.Windows.Forms implementation can be Aqua-fied.)
Do Canadians get fingerprinted and photographed at the border like all us other foreign criminals?
I considered myself lucky to make it through the border last year when driving to New York. Thankfully the guard didn't ask for more details. She asked how we (people in the car) knew each other (from church) but not which church (Unitarian Universalists) and where we were going (a conference in NYC) but not which conference (Hackers on Planet Earth).
For all she knew we were a bunch of baptists going to a sing-along... or whatever baptists do.
I've heard that we will be fingerprinted "soon." If that's so, no HOPE-6 for me.
Here's what I'd have liked to see: Windows XP Professional, at the Home price, shipping with SP2 preinstalled. The product also includes MS Antispyware and MS Antivirus with free updates for the life of Windows XP. The default install comes locked down - firewall on, IE security cranked up to High, Messenger and other unnecessary services turned off, user accounts are by default Users and not Administrators. There is no nagging about associating your Windows account with your Passport, and IE will cleanly uninstall with no complaints. Explorer does not treat you like an idiot and lets you navigate into any folder you choose without having to opt in.
Then I would say that Windows is OKAY. So, maybe these antitrust guys can keep Microsoft on its toes and get them to produce an OKAY Windows.
Great insurance against future antitrust stuff: port Office to.Net. Then just say, "Look, our stuff runs on OS X and that Linux thing! Mono!" At least they'll still be selling copies of Office.
I don't know about you, but I'm happy to pay taxes. They pay for a lot of stuff that I rely on (health care, transit, school, police, fire department).
Here is a completely insane idea:
Educate people!
We can continue building better, faster, more accurate spam blockers, spyware hunters and virus scanners... but why not just tell people:
Don't use Outlook
E-mail is as private as a postcard
Never buy anything that you've been spammed about, no mater what
Etc, etc, etc
The majority of people who drive can tell you what the muffler is, what a mile/kilometre is, whether they have manual or automatic transmission, etc. The majority of people who use computers hear things like, "This is a 20GB iPod" and reply "That means nothing to me!" This is what we expect to hear, so we talk about the number of songs that it could hold.
Whereas:
"I don't know! Help me! Auuuugh!"
sounds insane.
Are iPods really more complicated than cars?
So, we should limit account permissions and use software that was designed with security in mind, but maybe we (as an industry) should stop thinking of every user as being completely unable to learn new things.
Instead of "Mac OS X for Dummies," why not "Mac OS X for Jesus Christ Are You Saying That People Like Issac Newton Were From Another Species Or Something Grow Up Already Goddammit!"
The enemy of my enemy is still a piece of shit. Frankly I don't care who wins, so long as they both blow lots and lots of money on this case. I guess I'd rather have KaZaA obliterated so its users would move to a more sane, less spyware-laden application (Shareaza comes to mind).
I know you were just joking, but I think that Onslaught is one of the most innovative game types I've ever seen. However, since the Vengeance team decided to piss in the face of the Linux Tribes players by failing to even produce a port of the dedicated server, my interest in and loyalty to Tribes has waned.:P
Otellini said he believed that future consumer versions of Intel's Entertainment PC would gain favor over traditional video game machines.
"Hey, guess what I got for Christmas? Extreme Deer Hunter for Intel Entertainment PC!"
"PS3? Pssshht. InEnPC's got way better... core temperature monitoring."
Sorry Mr. Otellini, I tried. Intel will never succeed in the console market. Don't waste your investors' money.
Here's a thought: stick with processors. Put a lot of money into doing x86-64 better than AMD ever will. Put out the first mobile version, or something. Then, when that platform stagnates, create a new one that is not patent-encrusted, and do that better than anyone else ever will.
Your messages are travelling across any number of hops to a central server owned by AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo! or some guy who wanted to donate his bandwidth to Jabber. This is really just adding one more hop. Unless you're encrypting your conversations, you can't assume for a minute that you have any kind of privacy online.
Yes, but what's stopping a developer from starting out with, say, SDL in the first place? It seems like portability can be trivial if you start the project with portability as a goal. Valve's probably got more money behind it that Epic, and it certainly has more money than Running With Scissiors, and they have their games ported to Linux. They could have at least started with an OpenGL renderer and then paid Icculus to handle the rest.
I think that Valve owes the community a client because they're more than happy to let us do the server-side grunt work. Let's face it: the more high-quality, dedicated servers out there, the more copies they're going to sell. So what if it won't make them another million bucks? Let the sysadmins play, too!
You can be a socialist Slashdotter and hate that they treat their employees, their suppliers, and their supplier's employees (i.e. fire your American staff and relocate to Indonesia or we're dropping your product) like shit. Or you can be a privacy-advocate Slashdotter and hate that they want RFID tags in everything.
Or you can be a Republican or Libertarian Slashdotter and admire that Wal-Mart opposes government interference in business (you do NOT tell Wal-Mart how to operate). Or you can be an apolitical Slashdotter and just agree that, for some products, it's the cheapest place to go.
I'm the socialist Slashdotter. I know it's not much better but if I need something that I know is at a big retailer I make the trip to Zeller's first. SILE (Solution Involving Least Evil)
Slashdot Mirror
I've been using Skype while playing mutliplayer games with my friends, and I'm very happy with it.
However, I'm not impressed with SkypeOut so far. Mind you, I've only used it to make calls within the Greater Toronto Area. I'm sure it's much better in other locales, but in Toronto it sounds like you're calling from an extremely bad mobile.
I installed Windows XP (yes, a "genuine" copy) just so I could play this game on my desktop.
Basically it comes complete with crappy/annoying copy protection. It installs some weird driver that requires you to reboot(!) after installation. You then have to enter two keys: one from the manual and one from the disc case. Then you are allowed to play the game that you just laid down $60 for.
They sure invested a lot of time in copy protection. Not that it did them any good - I looked and found plenty of pre-cracked torrents for the damn game. So, basically all the copy protection did was turn me from a satisfied customer into a pissed off customer.
The weirdest aspect: the installer analyzes your PC before installing the game. However, the analysis isn't able to determine whether or not you can run it. That particular bit of data is calculated after you install, reboot and enter your keys.
GNU/Linux on an EPIA box. You can even do it fanless. Heck, use an ATA CF reader and you can have a solid-state desktop that uses way less power than a Mac Mini. For the average computer user (who needs/wants web browsing, e-mail (usually through a web interface anyway), and solitaire) it's more than enough, and maybe a bit cheaper.
Check out They Might Be Downloads. Their prices compete with iTMS, but you get high-quality, LAME-encoded MP3s without any DRM. You can also pay a little extra to get FLAC rips of selected albums.
Give away some songs for free (maybe enter Songfight! once in a while and link to it), but just let people know that the songs are for sale and that they're DRM-free for the customer's convenience, and that you trust them. Charge a reasonable price and make the site easy to use and you'll get customers.
/me disables AIM in Adium
Sadly most people I IM with a) have no interest in online privacy (the old "I've nothing to hide!") and b) use the evil MSN Messenger anyway.
I love Jabber, but until it catches up, I'm recommending Skype as the IM platform for the home user. Everything is encrypted and just works, and the official (but unfortunately only) client is available on three platforms.
I wrote my MP the first time this was proposed, and again the second time it was proposed. Luckily he seems pretty sharp on some fronts, so I can probably leave him alone this third time.
It's going to come back over and over again, though. I always write the same thing: "I've got this software installed called Tor. It makes my online traffic completely private and anonymous, and it's free. I don't use it for everything, but I can easily switch. Please don't waste my tax dollars."
Maybe I'll just remind him ever five years.
I know you're joking, but it was the constant tweaking and tinkering that got me into GNU/Linux in the first place. Windows took a lot of work to keep running, but it wasn't anything that involved... thought. Linux at least posed a daily noodle-scratcher to keep going.
HUFFDUFF???
So? Look at Skype's features:
Every major IM app has these features! In fact, the only IM protocol that doesn't do voice chat, file transfer and avatars is Jabber* - the one based on open standards.
It seems to me that Skype is building an IM product that does voice chat extremely well, not a VoIP service that intends to compete with Vonage. Heck, even MSN Messenger had the ability to dial PSTN numbers from the client for a small fee. It's just that a) Skype's fee is smaller and b) Skype actually works.
Add in that Skype is ad-free, has the official client ported to four platforms, and encrypts ALL communication with 256-bit AES and Skype starts to look like the best IM service on the market.
*Okay, I like and use Jabber, but they just can't seem to agree on a standard for these things. As a result, I've never used a client that could do file transfer with anyone but people using the exact same client
System.Windows.Forms is a part of the .Net libraries like any other, so I don't see why Mono's Cairo-based implementation would be any different from the rest of the reimplemented classes. Cairo plays with X11, so it'll run on any platform with an X server (i.e. GNU/Linux, *BSD or Mac OS X).
Perhaps when the Mac Mono matures we'll see Quartzified/Cocoafied S.W.F. implementation.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately .Net to coincide with Longhorn. Then they'd only have one codebase to maintain, while the lucky consumers will get to run the same version of Office on Windows, GNU/Linux and OS X (especially if Mono's System.Windows.Forms implementation can be Aqua-fied.)
Hopefully they'll port Office to
Do Canadians get fingerprinted and photographed at the border like all us other foreign criminals?
I considered myself lucky to make it through the border last year when driving to New York. Thankfully the guard didn't ask for more details. She asked how we (people in the car) knew each other (from church) but not which church (Unitarian Universalists) and where we were going (a conference in NYC) but not which conference (Hackers on Planet Earth).
For all she knew we were a bunch of baptists going to a sing-along... or whatever baptists do.
I've heard that we will be fingerprinted "soon." If that's so, no HOPE-6 for me.
Here's what I'd have liked to see:
.Net. Then just say, "Look, our stuff runs on OS X and that Linux thing! Mono!" At least they'll still be selling copies of Office.
Windows XP Professional, at the Home price, shipping with SP2 preinstalled. The product also includes MS Antispyware and MS Antivirus with free updates for the life of Windows XP.
The default install comes locked down - firewall on, IE security cranked up to High, Messenger and other unnecessary services turned off, user accounts are by default Users and not Administrators.
There is no nagging about associating your Windows account with your Passport, and IE will cleanly uninstall with no complaints. Explorer does not treat you like an idiot and lets you navigate into any folder you choose without having to opt in.
Then I would say that Windows is OKAY. So, maybe these antitrust guys can keep Microsoft on its toes and get them to produce an OKAY Windows.
Great insurance against future antitrust stuff: port Office to
I don't know about you, but I'm happy to pay taxes. They pay for a lot of stuff that I rely on (health care, transit, school, police, fire department).
Hm... is it just me, or is Slashdot turning into del.icio.us/popular?
We can continue building better, faster, more accurate spam blockers, spyware hunters and virus scanners... but why not just tell people:
- Don't use Outlook
- E-mail is as private as a postcard
- Never buy anything that you've been spammed about, no mater what
- Etc, etc, etc
The majority of people who drive can tell you what the muffler is, what a mile/kilometre is, whether they have manual or automatic transmission, etc. The majority of people who use computers hear things like, "This is a 20GB iPod" and reply "That means nothing to me!" This is what we expect to hear, so we talk about the number of songs that it could hold.Whereas:
"I don't know! Help me! Auuuugh!"
sounds insane.
Are iPods really more complicated than cars?
So, we should limit account permissions and use software that was designed with security in mind, but maybe we (as an industry) should stop thinking of every user as being completely unable to learn new things.
Instead of "Mac OS X for Dummies," why not "Mac OS X for Jesus Christ Are You Saying That People Like Issac Newton Were From Another Species Or Something Grow Up Already Goddammit!"
enemy
:)
1. One who feels hatred toward another
So, technically... no. I'm not. Unless the RIAA/MPAA has a secret file on me (unlikely).
But it was still a very nice retort.
The enemy of my enemy is still a piece of shit.
Frankly I don't care who wins, so long as they both blow lots and lots of money on this case.
I guess I'd rather have KaZaA obliterated so its users would move to a more sane, less spyware-laden application (Shareaza comes to mind).
I know you were just joking, but I think that Onslaught is one of the most innovative game types I've ever seen. :P
However, since the Vengeance team decided to piss in the face of the Linux Tribes players by failing to even produce a port of the dedicated server, my interest in and loyalty to Tribes has waned.
Otellini said he believed that future consumer versions of Intel's Entertainment PC would gain favor over traditional video game machines.
"Hey, guess what I got for Christmas? Extreme Deer Hunter for Intel Entertainment PC!"
"PS3? Pssshht. InEnPC's got way better... core temperature monitoring."
Sorry Mr. Otellini, I tried. Intel will never succeed in the console market. Don't waste your investors' money.
Here's a thought: stick with processors. Put a lot of money into doing x86-64 better than AMD ever will. Put out the first mobile version, or something. Then, when that platform stagnates, create a new one that is not patent-encrusted, and do that better than anyone else ever will.
I wish I could afford an iPod so I could wish I could afford a Mac.
Your messages are travelling across any number of hops to a central server owned by AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo! or some guy who wanted to donate his bandwidth to Jabber. This is really just adding one more hop.
Unless you're encrypting your conversations, you can't assume for a minute that you have any kind of privacy online.
Yes, but what's stopping a developer from starting out with, say, SDL in the first place? It seems like portability can be trivial if you start the project with portability as a goal.
Valve's probably got more money behind it that Epic, and it certainly has more money than Running With Scissiors, and they have their games ported to Linux. They could have at least started with an OpenGL renderer and then paid Icculus to handle the rest.
I think that Valve owes the community a client because they're more than happy to let us do the server-side grunt work. Let's face it: the more high-quality, dedicated servers out there, the more copies they're going to sell. So what if it won't make them another million bucks? Let the sysadmins play, too!
Just wait 'til Microsoft redoes Office for .Net. Then run it on Mono or DotGNU.
You can be a socialist Slashdotter and hate that they treat their employees, their suppliers, and their supplier's employees (i.e. fire your American staff and relocate to Indonesia or we're dropping your product) like shit.
Or you can be a privacy-advocate Slashdotter and hate that they want RFID tags in everything.
Or you can be a Republican or Libertarian Slashdotter and admire that Wal-Mart opposes government interference in business (you do NOT tell Wal-Mart how to operate).
Or you can be an apolitical Slashdotter and just agree that, for some products, it's the cheapest place to go.
I'm the socialist Slashdotter. I know it's not much better but if I need something that I know is at a big retailer I make the trip to Zeller's first. SILE (Solution Involving Least Evil)