Solaris is more secure, stable, scaleable and efficient than Linux.
...provided you are running it on Sun hardware of course.
It is backed by a solid American corporation with professional programmers who make REAL wages for working on it.
Wages != good programming
Really once Solaris is open source, there will be no more reason for Linux to even exist.
Once Solaris is open source, it will still have limited hardware support on x86 platforms compared to Linux. It won't support modern device management like Linux does in 2.6 kernels with udev - are Sun even going to Open Source the kernel?
Linux currently runs Open Source versions of just about any tool that Sun provides with Solaris.
A Sun server can be made to run just about any application you need fast and stable in an Enterprise environment. But on standard PC platforms, if you run Linux, don't bother changing to Solaris unless it's out of interest. You'll gain nothing.
Re:Governments Should Tax Their Profits More
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IBM to Lose 13,000 Jobs
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· Score: 1, Flamebait
What about all the money that domestic customers save as a result of outsourcing?
You can only save money if you earn money. If you don't have a job, as a result of outsourcing, you can't buy anything anyway.
It's exactly your kind of thinking that got us into this global-warming mess.
Erm, want to explain the logic behind this statement? I'd love to hear how you got "2+2" to equal "13,000,000"...
Correct me if I'm wrong here but Third World countries contribute to global warming through issues like high-pollution power stations, older technology high-exhaust emission vehicles, etc.
Put more jobs in those countries, you need more power & more older cars...
don't bother to consider that your near-term gains are screwing the future.
You've contradicted yourself, sorry, you lose the argument.
Outsourcing is for short-term gain - low wages --> better standard of living --> higher wage demands --> cheaper to oursource elsewhere.
Next time "engage brain" first, then type...
Governments Should Tax Their Profits More
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IBM to Lose 13,000 Jobs
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· Score: 1, Insightful
Okay, so I'm a techie geek but here's my solution to the whole issue.
If a corporation makes profits in your country then it takes money out of your country. By employing people in your country a corporation puts money back into your country.
Therefore, you subtract what it brings in from what it takes out and heavily tax the remainder.
Makes the corporation think twice about outsourcing and messing up local economies when thousands of job losses occur when a major facility in an area gets closed down...
No, they are corporations trying to find new ways to make money.
Do not confuse "immersion" with "expectation". Someone who plays Doom 3D expects the next 3D shooter to be even better graphically, have more features, whatever... that's what the games companies try to aim at.
But you can be "immersed" in something as simple as Manic Miner, even a Colossal Caves text adventure!
Sure, you're right saying photorealism is not the objective but I say that graphics of any type have nothing to do with it - it's more the case that players today expect excellent graphics and if they don't get them, they won't then let themselves be immersed by a modern game.
I don't personally think that Dvorak has much interesting to say at the best of times but the simple matter is, comparing video games of today to those of 15 years ago is like comparing a big production movie to one shot on a home video camera. Sure, you can shoot a good movie on a home camera and you can spend millions on a cinematic blockbuster movie that flops...
Personally, I'm a fan of the older stuff and old machine emulation but then I'm middle-aged and permanently hooked on JetPac, Atic Atac & Lords of Midnight... But the fact is, in those days it was possible to make a good game just by being a bedroom coder with a good idea and a few months left alone on a ZX Spectrum or a Commodore 64. Yes, you might have one guy help you with some graphics and another with some music but that was it.
With games today, players are going to feel ripped off if each brand new title they buy doesn't include a soundtrack by a current popular music artist and a huge cinematic intro sequence at the start - all of these add to the production costs of games which, in turn, adds to greater risks when releasing an innovative title that might flop. So why should games companies come out of the "safe zone"?
I'm not sticking up for games companies, I think all the major ones are money-grabbing corporate powermongers but then I don't buy that many games any more anyway - I'm more than happy tinkering with emulators and old PCs to play a lot of them again so why do I care?
Yes, there's not the range and variation in games that there used to be but the current younger generation of gamers, the target audience for these companies, seem pretty happy with what's out there so I say leave them to enjoy it.
The problem with the "old games are better" whingers is that they're just too damn lazy to go hunt down some games ROMs and a few emulators and go play those old games the way they were supposed to be - instead, they just want to throw money at some fat bloated corporation and expect a CD in return they can just throw in a drive in a PC or games machine without having to raise a finger or do any hard work.
You seem to have an inability to read my posting correctly so I'll simplify it for you.
Putting DDoS-type attacks aside, compromising a system, whether UNIX, Windows, whatever, involves attacking an application, not the stack. Therefore, whether you have a full or limited IP stack makes no difference to security - it's about what applications you're running.
If you honestly believe security is about accepting you'll be broken into but just mitigating the results of it, then it's you without the clue, my friend.
You don't run a virus scanner and never got a virus? Fine, I can believe that but then tell the whole story - you probably don't run Outlook for your email or, if you do, you're really careful about who you open emails from; you probably don't use IE and you've probably got your head screwed on properly when it comes to not downloading stuff from certain places on the Internet.
However, when most Windows users are "without-clue" Joe Sixpacks, raw-sockets and mitigation mean nothing, it's the vulnerabilities of the apps they run that are the problem.
How about you and I take a Joe Sixpack user each, put one in front of your fully secured Windows boxes and I put one in front of a fully secured Linux box? You set him up IE and Outlook, I'll give him Firefox and Thunderbird and we leave them both to it. Tell me, who's going to rife with spyware and one or two viruses after a week or two?
Like I said, it's the applications and nothing to do with lame excuses about stacks.
I run Linux and UNIX with my "insecure" full TCP/IP stack. My UNIX-y machines have an IP address, subnet mask, gateway, etc. etc. These machines do not get worms or viruses.
I run Windows 2000 with my "secure" limited TCP/IP stack. My Windows machine has an IP address, subnet mask, gateway, etc. etc. This machine would get virii if I didn't run a virus checker, firewall, etc.
There is one difference between the two scenarios above - the operating system!
Yes, my UNIX-y boxes are subject to attacks from the Internet but not random attacks like viri and worms.
An attack on my UNIX-y boxes comes from a single, person or script trying to get into my box and trying to (probably) buffer overflow a specific application daemon like FTP, Telnet, etc (not that I run either of these on the Internet anyway!)
So let's not blame it on the "TCP/IP" stack because all attacks are as a result of attacking applications that use the stack, not the stack itself.
We'll also remind ourselves here that UNIX was built around TCP/IP 25 years ago whereas MS refused to believe TCP/IP existed until 15 years ago after Windows 3.11 came out and they had to write a limited stack to install into Windows.
Remember too that all of their updates have been FREE
If you really believe this then I can only say that Microsoft's marketing has achieved exactly what it set out to do on you.
Let's put some of these "free" myths to bed now:
1. By the time you purchase your Windows OS, Microsoft have your money for that product. You handed over money, they gave you Windows - it's irrelevant, at your level, how many bugs are in it.
2. Shareholders want profits, profits come from new products, MS programmers make new MS products. Therefore, shareholders want MS programmers to working on new sellable products rather than providing free fixes or freebies for existing products.
3. Shareholders do not want their share values to decrease. Bad press makes share values drop, virus reports and insecurities in Windows make bad press. Therefore, shareholders want enough fixed in Windows to keep their share prices up. That's why Service Packs come out - not because of you, the insignificant user, but because of the computer journalists and CEOs of billion dollar corporations that review and use MS products.
4. You are not charged separately for IE, WMP, MSN messenger by MS but they are not "free". IE crowbars you into using proprietary MS web extensions best served by MS IIS which means more Windows server sales; WMP sneaks proprietary MS codecs in through the back door on you meaning that once you start using them, MS has more chance to charge media companies for encoding in them and eventually you for decoding with them; MSN Messenger is there to encourage you to use Hotmail & MSN subscription services - otherwise, why doesn't it support Yahoo, AOL, Jabber, etc?
5. Other "freebies" included with Windows are there to give you a feeling of "completeness" when you buy Windows - Paint, Notepad, Write, Hyperterminal, etc. However, also truly free are programs like Crimson Editor, The GIMP, Irfanview, Abiword, Open Office, PuTTY, etc. etc. All of these blow their MS-provided equivalents completely out of the water.
So please be under no illusions that MS gives anyone anything for free - they are a business, their one job is to make as much money as possible and anything you deem as "free" is as a result of clever marketing, not from any generosity on MS's part.
I've got to admit that I have heard about ReactOS isn the past but just now took a look at their web site to get a better idea of what they're doing.
Don't get me wrong, as far as I'm concerned any Open Source project that creates something useful to someone is worth supporting and I'll certainly keep in touch with their site in the future - might even try it on one of my machines.
But, as of today, isn't Linux/BSD/etc closer to providing Windows compatibility through Wine and Cedega? I'm sure the goal of ReactOS is to go further than that with compatibility (and, as I said, good luck to them) but at the moment it looks as though they've still got a bit of away to go with libraries, etc.
Compatibility be damned, nobody is going to move away from Windows anyway
I'm afraid you're contradicting yourself.
I'm sure Windows-types like you and Linux-types like me both agree that a major factor stopping people moving to Linux is compatibility with the existing software they own, use and like in their existing work or play.
It also follows that most Windows users upgrade through the various releases of Windows because they get some degree of compatibility to the point where most of the apps and games they ran on the old Windows can be run on the new one.
If MS drop the compatibility between releases, people won't be so ready to buy it - look at the lack of adoption of XP Service Pack 2 in businesses due to their perceptions of the amount of apps it breaks.
I have had the same problem with Linux, to a lesser degree, on certain closed-source games I bought some years ago that don't run on modern Linux systems - I have to keep an old RedHat installation kicking about just for that purpose.
Show me how to run Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, C&C Yuris Revenge, C&C Generals, C&C Renegade, V8 Supercar Race Driver and the other games in my collection (plus all the editing tools, mods, addons, expansions, enhancements and so on) on Linux and I would switch in a heartbeat.
That's the whole point though. From all the pre-release publicity MS seems to be pushing out about Longhorn, it looks as though it's a major architecture change to the point where the "reasonable" compatibility you've enjoyed between Windows releases in the past probably won't be there in Longhorn - apart from a software emulation mode you'll get, I suppose.
In other words, you probably won't be able to play those same games within Longhorn.
It's obviously one major reason MS have done this is to compete with VMWare - that's a given.
It's also obvious that a lot of existing MS customers probably want to at least give Linux a try.
Dual booting between two OSes in a corporate environment is not practical - even if you have an IT team with the knowledge to maintain two different operating systems on each PC, there is still the workload increase for them as a result.
Therefore, MS allowing Linux virtualisation means that they still keep their OS on each machine and therefore still get their revenues from each license of Windows.
Yes, in some sense it does give a lot more people the chance to try out Linux, OpenOffice etc. which is a good thing but the decision, from my perspective anyway as a Linux user, is that it's just a business decision that won't really affect their sales of Windows and MS Office but will allow them to take marketshare from VMWare.
I also wonder how much each license of Virtual Server will cost - if they keep the price of it high, it's not something that will be purchased for every PC user in the corporate environment anyway.
Some of people get enjoyment from what they do. Perhaps you ought to try that.
Please read my original post again. I am stating exactly that point - that it's the playing experience that's important, not the end goals.
But I argue that if you've earned every level and item for your character through hours of careful play, you will not be happy with some upstart buying in minutes what took you days or weeks to earn.
Not only are the weapons, classes, and monsters well-defined (deterministically so, in fact), but there is typically a much more coherent "progression" in terms of quests and tasks that characters fulfill.
In an AD&D game, for example, all the weapons, classes and monsters are well-defined within rule books - I fail to see the difference.
Also, progression and quests is purely about how good the GM is at putting the characters into interesting situations and confrontations.
I think we're getting to the point where we're arguing semantics so let's just summarise our disagreements and just go from there.
I am saying that it is perfectly valid to compare traditional RPGs and MMORPGs. Both of them provide a cohesive universe in which players can act out & develop characters, both of them provide a level and "experience" system & both of them are designed to provide players with pure escapism & entertainment. As far as I'm concerned, those are the only relevant points I need to make the comparison valid.
You say they are different because of two core issues; firstly, the number of players & secondly, lack of bias in a computer-governed (as opposed to human GM-governed) universe. I say you are wrong on both counts.
Firstly, as a human GM I can populate my world with thousands of people in exactly the same way a n MMORPG does - however, in my case I create NPCs (non-player characters) who only become relevant when they interact with my characters. In other words, if my characters are in, say, a medieval city, I don't need to worry about creating the tavern owner in an inn across the other side of the city until the players need to encounter that person. As long as I create that person in a cohesive fashion that follows the laws of my universe that the players are already accustomed to, then the game flows and the players are happy.
However, if the last time we played that inn was by, say, the city gates but the next time we played it I positioned it near the docks, then I lose cohesion, the players no longer understand the rules of my game and the game fails.
That's point one - it doesn't matter whether we are talking about an RPG or MMORPG here, if you give players rules about your universe and they create characters within that universe that they grow accustomed to then suddenly change those rules, you lose cohesion and destroy the fantasy; exactly what Sony is doing here.
Point two is about bias. I am saying that a good GM can perfectly happily run a game without bias and, in fact, the game is not good until he learns the skills how to do that. Sure, you may send the players off to go retreive a magical sword that the fighter in the group wants but you better make sure that in the near future, you give the wizard in the group the chance to use the party to retrieve that magical wand he wants. A good GM understands this and can tweak his game real-time to keep all the players in the party interested - in other words, if the fighters are up the front wading into a group of orcs and the wizard is sat at the back clicking his fingers, then how about we throw in an orc or two then and there that surprises him from behind...
That's point two - an experienced GM can keep a game balanced and unbiased. Sony's action creates bias towards those who can afford to buy their status in the universe.
Those two points are enough to kill the game for experienced, long-term players. End of story.
The first thing they do with ANY new game is google for cheat codes.
In my younger days with computer games, I used to put in "pokes" and "peeks" for infinite lives in games occasionally. However, whilst it was interesting for an hour or so to see other parts of the game I wasn't able to use skill to get to, it destroyed the game completely and I invariably never played it again after that.
I think it's a sad reflection on society as a whole. We live in a world where everyone is measured on a graph around some threshold value - you hit or exceed the value, you're a "winner" but if you don't then you're a loser.
I myself work in a support environment where my own work is summed up in about 5 statistical values based on how many faults I've rectified, how long I took to resolve each fault, etc. etc. Nothing measures the quality of my responses or the care I took in getting a resolution. Nobody in higher management comprehends the fact that some problems, like a patch or fimware update, takes minutes to resolve while investigating a network issue can take days.
The point I'm trying to make is that nobody focuses on "the experience" any more, its just whether you win or lose at the end. Even the design of most computer games is about "winning" to open up more racing tracks or levels, there's no real measure of what you did along the way...
This is the type of world we're bringing kids into and it's not surprising they see cheating as purely the path to winning, not as something that destroys the quality of the experience along the way...
Your analogy immediately starts out flawed. You had small games with a few friends, not massive worlds full of complete strangers.
I disagree. Both traditional RPGs and MMORPGs in an ideal world provide complete escapism and entertainment. In theory, an AD&D game could host a huge number of players, it's the rules and mechanics that simply restrict a GM for only "running" a game practically for a handful of people.
It could be argued that a computer performs precisely the same task in an MMORPG that a GM does in an RPG - i.e. define the game universe & ensure the players live within that universe's rules. It's just capable of doing that for a lot more players:-)
To be parity, you would've had to allow anybody to play, you would've had to have had a cover charge, and you would've had to have played the rules fairly with all participants.
Any players - We frequently did allow anyone to play with the realms of a gaming club with over 40 people in it.
Cover charge - just about every player I ever met invested money in one or more rulebooks that at least allowed character generation. This might equate to a cover charge that demonstrates some commitment to wanting to play.
Fair rules - Surely an unfair GM would soon find his/her games less popular if bias was shown towards particular players. Sure, I've seen it happen but as an ex-GM also, bias does detract from your fun as the moderator also.
An economy is not bribery. If there is a fair way to get a VB+5, the fact that there is a market for it in a foreign currency in no way impacts the game.
Of course it impacts! Imagine as a player in a fantasy world I have amassed enough wealth to own, say, a castle because I happen to be an experienced player? It doesn't mean that in real life I might not have a job, a good credit rating or even anywhere permanent to live.
Real-life wealth will allow new players to skip the system of the fantasy world that experienced players have worked hard to live within in order to make their characters successful.
What happens to the players' perception of the game world if, all of a sudden, the rules are changed on them in a way it couldn't possibly happen? The answer is, it shatters the illusion and the game ends.
they've introduced another currency that some people value more, but apparently some people value less, than online resources.
They've introduced a "currency" that makes your abilities as a player in the game universe completely meaningless - if you have more real-life disposable income, you can progress as a character within the game without having any game-playing skills.
If I was an experienced player who invested time and effort in creating a character through good gameplay only to find some upstart with a big bank balance has progressed quicker than me, I would be most angry! In just the same way as when I find out a player in Quake on the Internet is using a game cheat - no difference!
If people are leaving, it just means they game was never any fun, and they should have left a long time ago if that were true.
Rubbish! Many years ago, a friend of mine wrote and ran games within an AD&D world he created. We played in it for over a year, on and off, until we suddenly realised how linear his game and GM-ing had been. In other words, we, as players, had little influence over what was happening in his game world no matter what we did. The whole game died there and then.
Yes, we'd thoroughly enjoyed it for a year until we got to that realisation of linearity - it shattered the game world for us just like this will do to EQ now.
To me, such a move makes the game more interesting because it makes it more complex.
Then you've lost the point - the players and their interractions with each other determine the complexity of the game, not the rules.
No GM or MMORPG designer can create rules and scenarios fo
Look, I'm no spring chicken and I've never played an MMORPG in my life - online Quake or UT2004 is about my limit. But let me make an analogy...
Between 10 and 20 years ago I was into "pen and dice" role playing games big time. As the pre-cursor to MMORPGs, it was great fun escaping from the real life of mortgages & work to go have a few beers with some friends and pretending to be an elf for a while - I even miss RPGs occasionally today.
They were pleasant hours because of pure escapism and entertainment, nothing more. Yes, it was great going up a level as a character, killing a huge beast or solving a big mystery but part of the fun was also dying occasionally or making some huge mistake that made you and your character look like an idiot.
However, one thing that would have ruined it would have been to have a games master who was open to bribery - e.g. "Here's a ten pound note, make sure I get that +5 Vorpal Blade, okay?" It didn't happen and had it happened, the fun element would have dissipated quickly purely because the real world of money and bribery would have begun to influence that fantasy world in our heads.
One reason I never play MMORPGs is because while I believe most people play them for fun, just like our pen and dice games, a small rogue element in every game takes it far too seriously. These are people who need attention and power before escapism and fun, perhaps mirroring what they are like in real life. Thus real life (again!) creeps into a fantasy universe.
Now, Sony is proposing that yet more of "real life" creeps in because, all of a sudden, how much disposable income you have in real life influences how well you will do in EQ. Suddenly, escapism is not so much of an escape...
The real problem here is that it will ruin the escape for the people who do enjoy the fun of it (again, the majority). It's sad, but those people who have to seek attention and power now have a mechanism to buy that.
In my day, we called it "cheating" and all it does is start to destroy the fun of those players who genuinely play purely for to escape from the real world.
This will destroy Everquest, no question about it, because the people that make that universe fun will feel cheated and robbed and will no doubt find another MMORPG to go and play instead.
But quite frankly, if the cheats can make Sony richer in the short term, what do Sony really care?
Slashdot Mirror
It is backed by a solid American corporation with professional programmers who make REAL wages for working on it.
Wages != good programming
Really once Solaris is open source, there will be no more reason for Linux to even exist.
Once Solaris is open source, it will still have limited hardware support on x86 platforms compared to Linux. It won't support modern device management like Linux does in 2.6 kernels with udev - are Sun even going to Open Source the kernel?
Linux currently runs Open Source versions of just about any tool that Sun provides with Solaris.
A Sun server can be made to run just about any application you need fast and stable in an Enterprise environment. But on standard PC platforms, if you run Linux, don't bother changing to Solaris unless it's out of interest. You'll gain nothing.
You can only save money if you earn money. If you don't have a job, as a result of outsourcing, you can't buy anything anyway.
It's exactly your kind of thinking that got us into this global-warming mess.
Erm, want to explain the logic behind this statement? I'd love to hear how you got "2+2" to equal "13,000,000"...
Correct me if I'm wrong here but Third World countries contribute to global warming through issues like high-pollution power stations, older technology high-exhaust emission vehicles, etc. Put more jobs in those countries, you need more power & more older cars...
don't bother to consider that your near-term gains are screwing the future.
You've contradicted yourself, sorry, you lose the argument.
Outsourcing is for short-term gain - low wages --> better standard of living --> higher wage demands --> cheaper to oursource elsewhere.
Next time "engage brain" first, then type...
If a corporation makes profits in your country then it takes money out of your country. By employing people in your country a corporation puts money back into your country.
Therefore, you subtract what it brings in from what it takes out and heavily tax the remainder.
Makes the corporation think twice about outsourcing and messing up local economies when thousands of job losses occur when a major facility in an area gets closed down...
...so that will make it Mars' fault!
Sh*t! So that's how I never got to make to it to "Elite"...
Hey, it's Microsoft, okay? They'll tell us any bit of "good news" just to sell another copy of XP.
Now move along people...
No, they are corporations trying to find new ways to make money.
Do not confuse "immersion" with "expectation". Someone who plays Doom 3D expects the next 3D shooter to be even better graphically, have more features, whatever... that's what the games companies try to aim at.
But you can be "immersed" in something as simple as Manic Miner, even a Colossal Caves text adventure!
Sure, you're right saying photorealism is not the objective but I say that graphics of any type have nothing to do with it - it's more the case that players today expect excellent graphics and if they don't get them, they won't then let themselves be immersed by a modern game.
Personally, I'm a fan of the older stuff and old machine emulation but then I'm middle-aged and permanently hooked on JetPac, Atic Atac & Lords of Midnight... But the fact is, in those days it was possible to make a good game just by being a bedroom coder with a good idea and a few months left alone on a ZX Spectrum or a Commodore 64. Yes, you might have one guy help you with some graphics and another with some music but that was it.
With games today, players are going to feel ripped off if each brand new title they buy doesn't include a soundtrack by a current popular music artist and a huge cinematic intro sequence at the start - all of these add to the production costs of games which, in turn, adds to greater risks when releasing an innovative title that might flop. So why should games companies come out of the "safe zone"?
I'm not sticking up for games companies, I think all the major ones are money-grabbing corporate powermongers but then I don't buy that many games any more anyway - I'm more than happy tinkering with emulators and old PCs to play a lot of them again so why do I care?
Yes, there's not the range and variation in games that there used to be but the current younger generation of gamers, the target audience for these companies, seem pretty happy with what's out there so I say leave them to enjoy it.
The problem with the "old games are better" whingers is that they're just too damn lazy to go hunt down some games ROMs and a few emulators and go play those old games the way they were supposed to be - instead, they just want to throw money at some fat bloated corporation and expect a CD in return they can just throw in a drive in a PC or games machine without having to raise a finger or do any hard work.
Who wants to be the first person who walks into a hospital A&E and tries to give a sensible excuse as to how one of those got lodged up his bottom?
Putting DDoS-type attacks aside, compromising a system, whether UNIX, Windows, whatever, involves attacking an application, not the stack. Therefore, whether you have a full or limited IP stack makes no difference to security - it's about what applications you're running.
If you honestly believe security is about accepting you'll be broken into but just mitigating the results of it, then it's you without the clue, my friend.
You don't run a virus scanner and never got a virus? Fine, I can believe that but then tell the whole story - you probably don't run Outlook for your email or, if you do, you're really careful about who you open emails from; you probably don't use IE and you've probably got your head screwed on properly when it comes to not downloading stuff from certain places on the Internet.
However, when most Windows users are "without-clue" Joe Sixpacks, raw-sockets and mitigation mean nothing, it's the vulnerabilities of the apps they run that are the problem.
How about you and I take a Joe Sixpack user each, put one in front of your fully secured Windows boxes and I put one in front of a fully secured Linux box? You set him up IE and Outlook, I'll give him Firefox and Thunderbird and we leave them both to it. Tell me, who's going to rife with spyware and one or two viruses after a week or two?
Like I said, it's the applications and nothing to do with lame excuses about stacks.
I run Windows 2000 with my "secure" limited TCP/IP stack. My Windows machine has an IP address, subnet mask, gateway, etc. etc. This machine would get virii if I didn't run a virus checker, firewall, etc.
There is one difference between the two scenarios above - the operating system!
Yes, my UNIX-y boxes are subject to attacks from the Internet but not random attacks like viri and worms.
An attack on my UNIX-y boxes comes from a single, person or script trying to get into my box and trying to (probably) buffer overflow a specific application daemon like FTP, Telnet, etc (not that I run either of these on the Internet anyway!)
So let's not blame it on the "TCP/IP" stack because all attacks are as a result of attacking applications that use the stack, not the stack itself.
We'll also remind ourselves here that UNIX was built around TCP/IP 25 years ago whereas MS refused to believe TCP/IP existed until 15 years ago after Windows 3.11 came out and they had to write a limited stack to install into Windows.
If you really believe this then I can only say that Microsoft's marketing has achieved exactly what it set out to do on you.
Let's put some of these "free" myths to bed now:
1. By the time you purchase your Windows OS, Microsoft have your money for that product. You handed over money, they gave you Windows - it's irrelevant, at your level, how many bugs are in it.
2. Shareholders want profits, profits come from new products, MS programmers make new MS products. Therefore, shareholders want MS programmers to working on new sellable products rather than providing free fixes or freebies for existing products.
3. Shareholders do not want their share values to decrease. Bad press makes share values drop, virus reports and insecurities in Windows make bad press. Therefore, shareholders want enough fixed in Windows to keep their share prices up. That's why Service Packs come out - not because of you, the insignificant user, but because of the computer journalists and CEOs of billion dollar corporations that review and use MS products.
4. You are not charged separately for IE, WMP, MSN messenger by MS but they are not "free". IE crowbars you into using proprietary MS web extensions best served by MS IIS which means more Windows server sales; WMP sneaks proprietary MS codecs in through the back door on you meaning that once you start using them, MS has more chance to charge media companies for encoding in them and eventually you for decoding with them; MSN Messenger is there to encourage you to use Hotmail & MSN subscription services - otherwise, why doesn't it support Yahoo, AOL, Jabber, etc?
5. Other "freebies" included with Windows are there to give you a feeling of "completeness" when you buy Windows - Paint, Notepad, Write, Hyperterminal, etc. However, also truly free are programs like Crimson Editor, The GIMP, Irfanview, Abiword, Open Office, PuTTY, etc. etc. All of these blow their MS-provided equivalents completely out of the water.
So please be under no illusions that MS gives anyone anything for free - they are a business, their one job is to make as much money as possible and anything you deem as "free" is as a result of clever marketing, not from any generosity on MS's part.
Don't get me wrong, as far as I'm concerned any Open Source project that creates something useful to someone is worth supporting and I'll certainly keep in touch with their site in the future - might even try it on one of my machines.
But, as of today, isn't Linux/BSD/etc closer to providing Windows compatibility through Wine and Cedega? I'm sure the goal of ReactOS is to go further than that with compatibility (and, as I said, good luck to them) but at the moment it looks as though they've still got a bit of away to go with libraries, etc.
I'm afraid you're contradicting yourself.
I'm sure Windows-types like you and Linux-types like me both agree that a major factor stopping people moving to Linux is compatibility with the existing software they own, use and like in their existing work or play.
It also follows that most Windows users upgrade through the various releases of Windows because they get some degree of compatibility to the point where most of the apps and games they ran on the old Windows can be run on the new one.
If MS drop the compatibility between releases, people won't be so ready to buy it - look at the lack of adoption of XP Service Pack 2 in businesses due to their perceptions of the amount of apps it breaks.
I have had the same problem with Linux, to a lesser degree, on certain closed-source games I bought some years ago that don't run on modern Linux systems - I have to keep an old RedHat installation kicking about just for that purpose.
That's the whole point though. From all the pre-release publicity MS seems to be pushing out about Longhorn, it looks as though it's a major architecture change to the point where the "reasonable" compatibility you've enjoyed between Windows releases in the past probably won't be there in Longhorn - apart from a software emulation mode you'll get, I suppose.
In other words, you probably won't be able to play those same games within Longhorn.
Well, if you cannot hold an intelligent argument without turning to personal insults then I see no point continuing with this.
I thought we were having an interesting argument here but obviously not.
It's also obvious that a lot of existing MS customers probably want to at least give Linux a try.
Dual booting between two OSes in a corporate environment is not practical - even if you have an IT team with the knowledge to maintain two different operating systems on each PC, there is still the workload increase for them as a result.
Therefore, MS allowing Linux virtualisation means that they still keep their OS on each machine and therefore still get their revenues from each license of Windows.
Yes, in some sense it does give a lot more people the chance to try out Linux, OpenOffice etc. which is a good thing but the decision, from my perspective anyway as a Linux user, is that it's just a business decision that won't really affect their sales of Windows and MS Office but will allow them to take marketshare from VMWare.
I also wonder how much each license of Virtual Server will cost - if they keep the price of it high, it's not something that will be purchased for every PC user in the corporate environment anyway.
Please read my original post again. I am stating exactly that point - that it's the playing experience that's important, not the end goals.
But I argue that if you've earned every level and item for your character through hours of careful play, you will not be happy with some upstart buying in minutes what took you days or weeks to earn.
In an AD&D game, for example, all the weapons, classes and monsters are well-defined within rule books - I fail to see the difference.
Also, progression and quests is purely about how good the GM is at putting the characters into interesting situations and confrontations.
I am saying that it is perfectly valid to compare traditional RPGs and MMORPGs. Both of them provide a cohesive universe in which players can act out & develop characters, both of them provide a level and "experience" system & both of them are designed to provide players with pure escapism & entertainment. As far as I'm concerned, those are the only relevant points I need to make the comparison valid.
You say they are different because of two core issues; firstly, the number of players & secondly, lack of bias in a computer-governed (as opposed to human GM-governed) universe. I say you are wrong on both counts.
Firstly, as a human GM I can populate my world with thousands of people in exactly the same way a n MMORPG does - however, in my case I create NPCs (non-player characters) who only become relevant when they interact with my characters. In other words, if my characters are in, say, a medieval city, I don't need to worry about creating the tavern owner in an inn across the other side of the city until the players need to encounter that person. As long as I create that person in a cohesive fashion that follows the laws of my universe that the players are already accustomed to, then the game flows and the players are happy.
However, if the last time we played that inn was by, say, the city gates but the next time we played it I positioned it near the docks, then I lose cohesion, the players no longer understand the rules of my game and the game fails.
That's point one - it doesn't matter whether we are talking about an RPG or MMORPG here, if you give players rules about your universe and they create characters within that universe that they grow accustomed to then suddenly change those rules, you lose cohesion and destroy the fantasy; exactly what Sony is doing here.
Point two is about bias. I am saying that a good GM can perfectly happily run a game without bias and, in fact, the game is not good until he learns the skills how to do that. Sure, you may send the players off to go retreive a magical sword that the fighter in the group wants but you better make sure that in the near future, you give the wizard in the group the chance to use the party to retrieve that magical wand he wants. A good GM understands this and can tweak his game real-time to keep all the players in the party interested - in other words, if the fighters are up the front wading into a group of orcs and the wizard is sat at the back clicking his fingers, then how about we throw in an orc or two then and there that surprises him from behind...
That's point two - an experienced GM can keep a game balanced and unbiased. Sony's action creates bias towards those who can afford to buy their status in the universe.
Those two points are enough to kill the game for experienced, long-term players. End of story.
In my younger days with computer games, I used to put in "pokes" and "peeks" for infinite lives in games occasionally. However, whilst it was interesting for an hour or so to see other parts of the game I wasn't able to use skill to get to, it destroyed the game completely and I invariably never played it again after that.
I think it's a sad reflection on society as a whole. We live in a world where everyone is measured on a graph around some threshold value - you hit or exceed the value, you're a "winner" but if you don't then you're a loser.
I myself work in a support environment where my own work is summed up in about 5 statistical values based on how many faults I've rectified, how long I took to resolve each fault, etc. etc. Nothing measures the quality of my responses or the care I took in getting a resolution. Nobody in higher management comprehends the fact that some problems, like a patch or fimware update, takes minutes to resolve while investigating a network issue can take days.
The point I'm trying to make is that nobody focuses on "the experience" any more, its just whether you win or lose at the end. Even the design of most computer games is about "winning" to open up more racing tracks or levels, there's no real measure of what you did along the way...
This is the type of world we're bringing kids into and it's not surprising they see cheating as purely the path to winning, not as something that destroys the quality of the experience along the way...
I disagree. Both traditional RPGs and MMORPGs in an ideal world provide complete escapism and entertainment. In theory, an AD&D game could host a huge number of players, it's the rules and mechanics that simply restrict a GM for only "running" a game practically for a handful of people.
It could be argued that a computer performs precisely the same task in an MMORPG that a GM does in an RPG - i.e. define the game universe & ensure the players live within that universe's rules. It's just capable of doing that for a lot more players :-)
To be parity, you would've had to allow anybody to play, you would've had to have had a cover charge, and you would've had to have played the rules fairly with all participants.
Any players - We frequently did allow anyone to play with the realms of a gaming club with over 40 people in it.
Cover charge - just about every player I ever met invested money in one or more rulebooks that at least allowed character generation. This might equate to a cover charge that demonstrates some commitment to wanting to play.
Fair rules - Surely an unfair GM would soon find his/her games less popular if bias was shown towards particular players. Sure, I've seen it happen but as an ex-GM also, bias does detract from your fun as the moderator also.
An economy is not bribery. If there is a fair way to get a VB+5, the fact that there is a market for it in a foreign currency in no way impacts the game.
Of course it impacts! Imagine as a player in a fantasy world I have amassed enough wealth to own, say, a castle because I happen to be an experienced player? It doesn't mean that in real life I might not have a job, a good credit rating or even anywhere permanent to live.
Real-life wealth will allow new players to skip the system of the fantasy world that experienced players have worked hard to live within in order to make their characters successful.
What happens to the players' perception of the game world if, all of a sudden, the rules are changed on them in a way it couldn't possibly happen? The answer is, it shatters the illusion and the game ends.
they've introduced another currency that some people value more, but apparently some people value less, than online resources.
They've introduced a "currency" that makes your abilities as a player in the game universe completely meaningless - if you have more real-life disposable income, you can progress as a character within the game without having any game-playing skills.
If I was an experienced player who invested time and effort in creating a character through good gameplay only to find some upstart with a big bank balance has progressed quicker than me, I would be most angry! In just the same way as when I find out a player in Quake on the Internet is using a game cheat - no difference!
If people are leaving, it just means they game was never any fun, and they should have left a long time ago if that were true.
Rubbish! Many years ago, a friend of mine wrote and ran games within an AD&D world he created. We played in it for over a year, on and off, until we suddenly realised how linear his game and GM-ing had been. In other words, we, as players, had little influence over what was happening in his game world no matter what we did. The whole game died there and then.
Yes, we'd thoroughly enjoyed it for a year until we got to that realisation of linearity - it shattered the game world for us just like this will do to EQ now.
To me, such a move makes the game more interesting because it makes it more complex.
Then you've lost the point - the players and their interractions with each other determine the complexity of the game, not the rules.
No GM or MMORPG designer can create rules and scenarios fo
Between 10 and 20 years ago I was into "pen and dice" role playing games big time. As the pre-cursor to MMORPGs, it was great fun escaping from the real life of mortgages & work to go have a few beers with some friends and pretending to be an elf for a while - I even miss RPGs occasionally today.
They were pleasant hours because of pure escapism and entertainment, nothing more. Yes, it was great going up a level as a character, killing a huge beast or solving a big mystery but part of the fun was also dying occasionally or making some huge mistake that made you and your character look like an idiot.
However, one thing that would have ruined it would have been to have a games master who was open to bribery - e.g. "Here's a ten pound note, make sure I get that +5 Vorpal Blade, okay?" It didn't happen and had it happened, the fun element would have dissipated quickly purely because the real world of money and bribery would have begun to influence that fantasy world in our heads.
One reason I never play MMORPGs is because while I believe most people play them for fun, just like our pen and dice games, a small rogue element in every game takes it far too seriously. These are people who need attention and power before escapism and fun, perhaps mirroring what they are like in real life. Thus real life (again!) creeps into a fantasy universe.
Now, Sony is proposing that yet more of "real life" creeps in because, all of a sudden, how much disposable income you have in real life influences how well you will do in EQ. Suddenly, escapism is not so much of an escape...
The real problem here is that it will ruin the escape for the people who do enjoy the fun of it (again, the majority). It's sad, but those people who have to seek attention and power now have a mechanism to buy that.
In my day, we called it "cheating" and all it does is start to destroy the fun of those players who genuinely play purely for to escape from the real world.
This will destroy Everquest, no question about it, because the people that make that universe fun will feel cheated and robbed and will no doubt find another MMORPG to go and play instead.
But quite frankly, if the cheats can make Sony richer in the short term, what do Sony really care?
However, I am already buying enough tangible shit from Sony like Michael Jackson & Jessica Simpson CDs without needing to spend any more with you.
At least with the tangible shit, I have something to throw at the cat or at the TV screen when I realise you guys have ripped me off again.
Regards
Blah blah blah
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