"What relevance at all does spamming have to do with the Olympics?"
Spammers surreptitiously install malicious software on people's computers against the computer owner's will or knowledge. It is illegal in the U.S.A, the U.K., and probably in Australia. I think criminal activity is enough to bar one from competition in the Olympics.
I am not a lawyer, but copying law seems very simple to me on a fundamental level, both legally and morally.
1) A copyright holder of any given work has the exclusive right to license and distribute that work.
2) Anyone else can acquire that work only with the permission of the copyright holder.
3) In the case of music, the copyright holders require a certain amount of money in exchange for granting you permission to acquire that work for personal use.
4) If you acquire the work, but don't pay the copyright holder, you are denying the copyright holder his legal due while profiting at his expense (you have his work, but he doesn't have your money). You have taken something from the copyright holder without recompense. This is stealing.
On a moral level, copyright holders are entitled to dictate what they will accept as compensation to give you the fruits of their work. You are entitled to refuse, but then are not entitled to the copyright holder's work.
I fail to see the confusion. It is very simple.
Note that I am purposely not getting into the complications of exceptions via deal making, nor am I getting to arguments about copyright duration or the irrelevancies of how musicians are treated by the music cartel since they are both red herrings.
Oh yeah, and let's not forget "All the music today is shitty, so I download it and listen to it instead of buying it."
Most of today's music is shitty, so I don't listen to it. That translates directly into not buying it either. I have yet to hear shitty music as an excuse for downloading it, though. I have heard it used extensively as reason for not listening to it.
Modern "music" is so loaded with complete crap that I haven't listened to the radio regularly for about 5 years now. I may have spent as much as 2 hours total listening to the radio in that time. I just can't stand the complete tone deafness that passes for singing, and the lyrics that require a person to have not progressed past the 5th grade to enjoy. This has always been an issue with popular music, but it has dramatically degraded over time.
It's not that there aren't some people who say stupid things to justify copyright infringement, but I think you are taking stories like mine and painting a large part of the populace with a somewhat mangled shade of them.
"What is that thing about developers having to turn over their private keys? I don't think anything that stupid is even considered for GPLv3."
The GPL has always required all derivatives of GPL software, when redistributed, to be redistributed in their entirely. The GPLv3 clarifies what is meant by the phrase, "in their entirety" by including any access codes or encryption keys needed to access and run the licensed software.
Note that it does NOT say that the encryption keys needed to access any content created by software licensed under the GPL must be redistributed. This, I think, is what Linus misinterpreted that phrase to mean.
"...one media pundit was being subjected to derision because of his outlandish idea that viruses might be spread by email."
And is was an outlandish idea. Yet again, something so stupid and bad as to be unthinkable was made possible by Microsoft's horrendously bad software development practices. Note that of all the software in the entire world, only Microsoft's makes this kind of idiocy not only possible, but extremely common.
I like the new clauses, and the clarifications of older clauses. I expect to be releasing my new (and old, since I rarely used the, "...or...any later version" clause) under this license.
One of the interesting clarifications regards GPL derivatives. Formerly, a developer could not use the GPL as a basis for a new license. That meant, depending on interpretation, that all that software licensed with terms that said stuff like, "this software is released under the terms of the GPL, but with the following changes" may have been violating the FSF copyright on the GPL license itself. Version 3 specifically allows for this behavior.
"And moderators, use those offtopic mods to steer the discussion towards the subject of the article, not the flavor of the month conspiracy theory about story selection."
I think you made a point that may help. Moderation is a privilege granted by Slashdot to responsible users. At least, that's the way I hope moderation is granted. In that regard, moderation is like a driver's license -- it's a privilege that can be revoked for bad behavior.
Slashdot lays down guidelines for moderators, with wide latitude given for personal judgment. In the end, though, Slashdot's administration is the final authority of whether moderators are taking their privilege seriously. If some moderators are doing a particularly bad job (such as modding up the-messenger-is-the-discussion flamebait), then perhaps those accounts shouldn't be given moderator points anymore. Moderator points are given in exchange for the implied promise of assisting Slashdot's administration in enforcing Slashdot's moderation guidelines. They are not given to promote an individual's agenda.
I presume that Slashdot has a mechanism in place to track how moderators applied their points (I haven't reviewed the published Slashcode), so the effort required to see who has been abusing their points for this particular agenda should be outweighed by the end result of improving the signal to noise ratio in those types of discussions.
"Get over it. He doesn't have any alterior[sic] motives here. There's no smoke and mirrors. He's just continuing to do what he has done for decades."
So if I stole people's ideas and fortunes, claimed them as my own, and destroyed an entire industry which was flourishing with brilliant ideas until I nearly single-handedly brought it to stagnation, you'd be okay with that so long as I gave 2% of my spoils to charity?
"Uranus was an early Greek God of the Sky, Son of Gaia."
My Greek Mythology instructor let us all get the giggles out of our system on the first day. Then, to avoid letting loose the child in us all, he said he was going to intentionally mispronounce it as "ooh raw nuss" for the rest of the semester.
It was a surprisingly effective ploy, as nobody made any more jokes about it.
"Put that price down to $5 and I won't download another movie. Even $10 works."
I can't sympathize with you on this. As recently as just ten years ago, VHS (that's right, the old tapes) movies were retailing for $80-120 each. Back then, I felt completely justified in going to the store to rent three movies and buy three blank video tapes.
Recently (6-8 years ago), the MPAA came to its senses and dramatically lowered prices across the board. Now a newly released A-title movie goes for an average of $20. Perhaps you're too young to appreciate the low prices we pay for movies today, but rest assured that the prices we pay today are entirely reasonable.
The movies industry is no longer gouging us on movie purchases, and hasn't been gouging us for a number of years (there are some rare exceptions). The notion that modern movies are insanely expensive at $20, and that entire seasons of TV shows are too expensive at $40-45 (on a tight average) is complete nonsense.
Before Napster, I trolled every record store in my city looking for songs from my childhood (the 80s). When I found a CD containing even one of those songs, I bought the entire CD for that one song. That happened exactly twice, since no record stores carried music that old. I had set aside hundreds of dollars to complete my collection list, but the record industry apparently didn't think my money was any good.
Then Napster came around, and I was able to complete some of my wish list. Even then, if the recording industry had just arranged for Napster to work on a subscription or per-song fee (I knew exactly what I wanted, so per-download fees would have been perfect) so it could collect and pay royalties, everything would be been just peachy.
Instead, the recording industry had to pursue the one and only course of action that guaranteed the beginning of the end of the recording industry as it exists today. The decline in music purchases can be largely attributed to one thing: the bad behavior/management of the recording industry itself.
Now I can't even buy from most musicians that were popular in my childhood, and who are still active on their own, out of fear that some of my money might go to the RIAA (or their overseas brethren).
For example, I still listen to the three tapes (TAPES!) of Samantha Fox that I bought in the 90s. She is still making and selling music, but I have no idea if she still pays money to the labels associated with the badly behaving industry groups. For that reason alone, I can't conscientiously buy her new stuff. If her site gave a clean indication that she was an independent, and that no money went to these groups, I would happily replace my tapes with CDs, and buy new stuff from her web site.
"The next planned widespread of 2005's most prolific e-mail worm, Sober...."
This is not an email virus. This is a Microsoft Windows virus. Actually, it's a Microsoft Outlook virus, but nowadays Microsoft ties everything together so tightly that it doesn't matter.
Anyone system not using any Microsoft software, such as systems running Linux and/or *BSD, is completely immune to this (and all the others).
I regularly view all these emails (I use Linux) for no good reason, other than for the fact that I can.
"...you would think the people with the purse strings would have an interest in this answer as well."
You and many others are falling victim to Microsoft's red herrings. Open Source has absolutely nothing to do with OpenDocument. Here are some answers (yet again):
1) OpenDocument is a format specification, not a program.
2) Any program, Open Source or proprietary, can implement OpenDocument filters. That is all that is necessary to support OpenDocument.
3) Microsoft is fighting OpenDocument by changing the subject. This is being done to maintain Microsoft's monopoly stranglehold on one of its two profitable rackets.
4) If people think Microsoft Office has better accessibility than OO.o/StarOffice, then they can continue using Microsoft Office. All Microsoft, and any other proprietary company, has to do is write an I/O filter to work with the OpenDocument format.
We need to keep our focus, and not allow ourselves to get diverted into senseless debates about irrelevancies.
The inability to invent the Internet today has nothing to do with technology. I agree whole-heartedly that the Internet (and many other technologies) cannot be invented anymore. However, it it only because the frivolous software patent environment that is destroying innovation in the U.S. and abroad prohibits this type of invention on a nearly absolute basis.
If individuals invented the Internet today, it would instantly drown in the sea of frivolous patent lawsuits that would inevitably follow.
I won't be using any non-Free (note the capital F) database for either myself or my contract clients. Oracle, DB2, and Microsoft SQL Server may be free (note lowercase L) of charge for some limited range of uses, but none of them are Free as in Rug. You know the rug I'm talking about. It's the one that proprietary vendors like to pull out from under the people who get hooked on proprietary products.
"You're missing quite a bit about this situation."
No I'm not. Reread my original posting until you understand the distinction. They are not going after people for using P2P software. They are going after people who are infringing copyrights using P2P software. There's a huge difference.
1) The guy didn't get arrested for using Bit Torrent to illegally distribute others' work. He was arrested for illegally distributing others' work (re-read that until you understand the distinction).
2) This was not an arrest for using file sharing software. This was an arrest for copyright infringement. The tool that was used is immaterial.
I haven't benchmarked inserts, but I haven't run into any noticeable slowdowns when inserting into tables with no foreign keys. However, my multi-million row tables are foreign key heavy, so resolving all of them for each insert causes noticeable lag when when inserting large batches.
If you're doing just a handful of writes in a batch, then indices certainly won't slow down the insertion process. If you're inserting large batches, then the general wisdom I've picked up on the newsgroups is to do them within a transaction. That will increase insert performance since PostgreSQL won't be auto-committing each one.
Index updates on insert shouldn't cause you any problems if you are using indices judiciously. More importantly, the strategic use of indices will more than pay for any insertion delay with the massive performance improvements on your selects. Good index placement is what allows me to get near-instant results on my complicated joins. Without the indices, some of the very same joins have been known to take 30-40 seconds.
Probably the best tip I can give you is to learn the basic usage of the explain keyword, and check that your queries are doing index scans rather than sequential scans (after you place your indices). Sometimes PostgreSQL will guess the wrong data type when you present it with multiple possibilities. If the data types in your where clause don't exactly match the data types of the columns that have been indexed, then the indices won't be used.
For example, all my tables use bigint for the primary key. When using a where clause like:...where pk = 5;
PostgreSQL will assume the 5 is an integer. That will not match the bigint data type of the primary key, and will cause PostgreSQL to ignore the indices. In cases like that, the solution is to cast the 5 to a bigint:...where pk = 5::bigint;
That will let PostgreSQL choose the right index for the table scan. Also, PostgreSQL will do a sequential scan if it thinks that it will have to touch a relatively large number of rows in the table(s) being queried. Aside from those two things, PostgreSQL makes good use of indices. The select times on unindexed verses indexed tables is very dramatic on large tables as your select criteria get more restrictive.
"May you elaborate on that? sounds like a lots of inserts in a simple log table. May be the volumen is high but not complex transactions or queries. Please correct me if my guess is wrong."
Consider yourself corrected. I am running a PostgreSQL database with complicated foreign key relationships among tables with millions of rows each. Most of the tables have a couple dozen columns. Joins on these schemas typically involve 5-10 tables. Result sets with appropriate where clauses are typically in the low thousands, but respectable.
These joins usually return instantaneously (or nearly so). I do have some odd cases that can take several seconds to run (and aggregate functions on these sets can take a very long time -- sometimes a couple minutes), but those are not common.
Our main PostgreSQL server handles all the image archiving for 5-6 departments, serves billable data to another primary department (I'm being vague on purpose to appease my boss' desire to not advertise who we are with what we do), serves as the back-end data source for our web server, and seems to just accumulate responsibilities as time goes on.
This is in addition to acting as a file server, internal web server, print server, mail server (not our primary one), and general purpose server as needed. Except for a couple bad warts (very slow aggregates, for example), PostgreSQL has been very good to us.
"Yeah, but don't forget that DOOM wasn't a huge widespread hit until GT Interactive picked it up, marketed it and got it into stores."
Doom isn't what launched ID Software. It was Castle Wolfenstein. As I remember, CW was published online through Apogee Software. It made ID Software an instant success. After that, Carmack could have released "The Crappiest Game You've Ever Played", and it would have sold half a bajillion copies just on Wolfenstein's momentum.
Slashdot Mirror
"What relevance at all does spamming have to do with the Olympics?"
Spammers surreptitiously install malicious software on people's computers against the computer owner's will or knowledge. It is illegal in the U.S.A, the U.K., and probably in Australia. I think criminal activity is enough to bar one from competition in the Olympics.
[snip price fixing and other legal irrelevancies]
I am not a lawyer, but copying law seems very simple to me on a fundamental level, both legally and morally.
1) A copyright holder of any given work has the exclusive right to license and distribute that work.
2) Anyone else can acquire that work only with the permission of the copyright holder.
3) In the case of music, the copyright holders require a certain amount of money in exchange for granting you permission to acquire that work for personal use.
4) If you acquire the work, but don't pay the copyright holder, you are denying the copyright holder his legal due while profiting at his expense (you have his work, but he doesn't have your money). You have taken something from the copyright holder without recompense. This is stealing.
On a moral level, copyright holders are entitled to dictate what they will accept as compensation to give you the fruits of their work. You are entitled to refuse, but then are not entitled to the copyright holder's work.
I fail to see the confusion. It is very simple.
Note that I am purposely not getting into the complications of exceptions via deal making, nor am I getting to arguments about copyright duration or the irrelevancies of how musicians are treated by the music cartel since they are both red herrings.
Oh yeah, and let's not forget "All the music today is shitty, so I download it and listen to it instead of buying it."
Most of today's music is shitty, so I don't listen to it. That translates directly into not buying it either. I have yet to hear shitty music as an excuse for downloading it, though. I have heard it used extensively as reason for not listening to it.
Modern "music" is so loaded with complete crap that I haven't listened to the radio regularly for about 5 years now. I may have spent as much as 2 hours total listening to the radio in that time. I just can't stand the complete tone deafness that passes for singing, and the lyrics that require a person to have not progressed past the 5th grade to enjoy. This has always been an issue with popular music, but it has dramatically degraded over time.
It's not that there aren't some people who say stupid things to justify copyright infringement, but I think you are taking stories like mine and painting a large part of the populace with a somewhat mangled shade of them.
"What is that thing about developers having to turn over their private keys? I don't think anything that stupid is even considered for GPLv3."
The GPL has always required all derivatives of GPL software, when redistributed, to be redistributed in their entirely. The GPLv3 clarifies what is meant by the phrase, "in their entirety" by including any access codes or encryption keys needed to access and run the licensed software.
Note that it does NOT say that the encryption keys needed to access any content created by software licensed under the GPL must be redistributed. This, I think, is what Linus misinterpreted that phrase to mean.
"...one media pundit was being subjected to derision because of his outlandish idea that viruses might be spread by email."
And is was an outlandish idea. Yet again, something so stupid and bad as to be unthinkable was made possible by Microsoft's horrendously bad software development practices. Note that of all the software in the entire world, only Microsoft's makes this kind of idiocy not only possible, but extremely common.
I like the new clauses, and the clarifications of older clauses. I expect to be releasing my new (and old, since I rarely used the, "...or...any later version" clause) under this license.
One of the interesting clarifications regards GPL derivatives. Formerly, a developer could not use the GPL as a basis for a new license. That meant, depending on interpretation, that all that software licensed with terms that said stuff like, "this software is released under the terms of the GPL, but with the following changes" may have been violating the FSF copyright on the GPL license itself. Version 3 specifically allows for this behavior.
"And moderators, use those offtopic mods to steer the discussion towards the subject of the article, not the flavor of the month conspiracy theory about story selection."
I think you made a point that may help. Moderation is a privilege granted by Slashdot to responsible users. At least, that's the way I hope moderation is granted. In that regard, moderation is like a driver's license -- it's a privilege that can be revoked for bad behavior.
Slashdot lays down guidelines for moderators, with wide latitude given for personal judgment. In the end, though, Slashdot's administration is the final authority of whether moderators are taking their privilege seriously. If some moderators are doing a particularly bad job (such as modding up the-messenger-is-the-discussion flamebait), then perhaps those accounts shouldn't be given moderator points anymore. Moderator points are given in exchange for the implied promise of assisting Slashdot's administration in enforcing Slashdot's moderation guidelines. They are not given to promote an individual's agenda.
I presume that Slashdot has a mechanism in place to track how moderators applied their points (I haven't reviewed the published Slashcode), so the effort required to see who has been abusing their points for this particular agenda should be outweighed by the end result of improving the signal to noise ratio in those types of discussions.
"Get over it. He doesn't have any alterior[sic] motives here. There's no smoke and mirrors. He's just continuing to do what he has done for decades."
So if I stole people's ideas and fortunes, claimed them as my own, and destroyed an entire industry which was flourishing with brilliant ideas until I nearly single-handedly brought it to stagnation, you'd be okay with that so long as I gave 2% of my spoils to charity?
Pardon me while I don't just "get over it".
"Uranus was an early Greek God of the Sky, Son of Gaia."
My Greek Mythology instructor let us all get the giggles out of our system on the first day. Then, to avoid letting loose the child in us all, he said he was going to intentionally mispronounce it as "ooh raw nuss" for the rest of the semester.
It was a surprisingly effective ploy, as nobody made any more jokes about it.
"Put that price down to $5 and I won't download another movie. Even $10 works."
I can't sympathize with you on this. As recently as just ten years ago, VHS (that's right, the old tapes) movies were retailing for $80-120 each. Back then, I felt completely justified in going to the store to rent three movies and buy three blank video tapes.
Recently (6-8 years ago), the MPAA came to its senses and dramatically lowered prices across the board. Now a newly released A-title movie goes for an average of $20. Perhaps you're too young to appreciate the low prices we pay for movies today, but rest assured that the prices we pay today are entirely reasonable.
The movies industry is no longer gouging us on movie purchases, and hasn't been gouging us for a number of years (there are some rare exceptions). The notion that modern movies are insanely expensive at $20, and that entire seasons of TV shows are too expensive at $40-45 (on a tight average) is complete nonsense.
Before Napster, I trolled every record store in my city looking for songs from my childhood (the 80s). When I found a CD containing even one of those songs, I bought the entire CD for that one song. That happened exactly twice, since no record stores carried music that old. I had set aside hundreds of dollars to complete my collection list, but the record industry apparently didn't think my money was any good.
Then Napster came around, and I was able to complete some of my wish list. Even then, if the recording industry had just arranged for Napster to work on a subscription or per-song fee (I knew exactly what I wanted, so per-download fees would have been perfect) so it could collect and pay royalties, everything would be been just peachy.
Instead, the recording industry had to pursue the one and only course of action that guaranteed the beginning of the end of the recording industry as it exists today. The decline in music purchases can be largely attributed to one thing: the bad behavior/management of the recording industry itself.
Now I can't even buy from most musicians that were popular in my childhood, and who are still active on their own, out of fear that some of my money might go to the RIAA (or their overseas brethren).
For example, I still listen to the three tapes (TAPES!) of Samantha Fox that I bought in the 90s. She is still making and selling music, but I have no idea if she still pays money to the labels associated with the badly behaving industry groups. For that reason alone, I can't conscientiously buy her new stuff. If her site gave a clean indication that she was an independent, and that no money went to these groups, I would happily replace my tapes with CDs, and buy new stuff from her web site.
"The next planned widespread of 2005's most prolific e-mail worm, Sober...."
This is not an email virus. This is a Microsoft Windows virus. Actually, it's a Microsoft Outlook virus, but nowadays Microsoft ties everything together so tightly that it doesn't matter.
Anyone system not using any Microsoft software, such as systems running Linux and/or *BSD, is completely immune to this (and all the others).
I regularly view all these emails (I use Linux) for no good reason, other than for the fact that I can.
"So far, every single time that MS has done something to support a standard or OSS, it turns out to be a trap."
You are absolutely correct. Even if all of our speculation on the details is incorrect, one thing is immutable: Microsoft cannot be trusted. Ever.
We can be certain that the receiving end of Microsoft's olive branch is poisoned.
"...you would think the people with the purse strings would have an interest in this answer as well."
You and many others are falling victim to Microsoft's red herrings. Open Source has absolutely nothing to do with OpenDocument. Here are some answers (yet again):
1) OpenDocument is a format specification, not a program.
2) Any program, Open Source or proprietary, can implement OpenDocument filters. That is all that is necessary to support OpenDocument.
3) Microsoft is fighting OpenDocument by changing the subject. This is being done to maintain Microsoft's monopoly stranglehold on one of its two profitable rackets.
4) If people think Microsoft Office has better accessibility than OO.o/StarOffice, then they can continue using Microsoft Office. All Microsoft, and any other proprietary company, has to do is write an I/O filter to work with the OpenDocument format.
We need to keep our focus, and not allow ourselves to get diverted into senseless debates about irrelevancies.
"Unbelievable. They ruin a distribution."
Cut Novell some slack. GNOME's only intractable problems are its user interface and API.
The inability to invent the Internet today has nothing to do with technology. I agree whole-heartedly that the Internet (and many other technologies) cannot be invented anymore. However, it it only because the frivolous software patent environment that is destroying innovation in the U.S. and abroad prohibits this type of invention on a nearly absolute basis.
If individuals invented the Internet today, it would instantly drown in the sea of frivolous patent lawsuits that would inevitably follow.
"Sure a woman can block pop ups, all she has to do is giggle."
Isn't that the cause of most popups?
I won't be using any non-Free (note the capital F) database for either myself or my contract clients. Oracle, DB2, and Microsoft SQL Server may be free (note lowercase L) of charge for some limited range of uses, but none of them are Free as in Rug. You know the rug I'm talking about. It's the one that proprietary vendors like to pull out from under the people who get hooked on proprietary products.
Been there, done that, won't ever do it again.
"You're missing quite a bit about this situation."
No I'm not. Reread my original posting until you understand the distinction. They are not going after people for using P2P software. They are going after people who are infringing copyrights using P2P software. There's a huge difference.
1) The guy didn't get arrested for using Bit Torrent to illegally distribute others' work. He was arrested for illegally distributing others' work (re-read that until you understand the distinction).
2) This was not an arrest for using file sharing software. This was an arrest for copyright infringement. The tool that was used is immaterial.
I haven't benchmarked inserts, but I haven't run into any noticeable slowdowns when inserting into tables with no foreign keys. However, my multi-million row tables are foreign key heavy, so resolving all of them for each insert causes noticeable lag when when inserting large batches.
...where pk = 5;
...where pk = 5::bigint;
If you're doing just a handful of writes in a batch, then indices certainly won't slow down the insertion process. If you're inserting large batches, then the general wisdom I've picked up on the newsgroups is to do them within a transaction. That will increase insert performance since PostgreSQL won't be auto-committing each one.
Index updates on insert shouldn't cause you any problems if you are using indices judiciously. More importantly, the strategic use of indices will more than pay for any insertion delay with the massive performance improvements on your selects. Good index placement is what allows me to get near-instant results on my complicated joins. Without the indices, some of the very same joins have been known to take 30-40 seconds.
Probably the best tip I can give you is to learn the basic usage of the explain keyword, and check that your queries are doing index scans rather than sequential scans (after you place your indices). Sometimes PostgreSQL will guess the wrong data type when you present it with multiple possibilities. If the data types in your where clause don't exactly match the data types of the columns that have been indexed, then the indices won't be used.
For example, all my tables use bigint for the primary key. When using a where clause like:
PostgreSQL will assume the 5 is an integer. That will not match the bigint data type of the primary key, and will cause PostgreSQL to ignore the indices. In cases like that, the solution is to cast the 5 to a bigint:
That will let PostgreSQL choose the right index for the table scan. Also, PostgreSQL will do a sequential scan if it thinks that it will have to touch a relatively large number of rows in the table(s) being queried. Aside from those two things, PostgreSQL makes good use of indices. The select times on unindexed verses indexed tables is very dramatic on large tables as your select criteria get more restrictive.
"May you elaborate on that? sounds like a lots of inserts in a simple log table. May be the volumen is high but not complex transactions or queries. Please correct me if my guess is wrong."
Consider yourself corrected. I am running a PostgreSQL database with complicated foreign key relationships among tables with millions of rows each. Most of the tables have a couple dozen columns. Joins on these schemas typically involve 5-10 tables. Result sets with appropriate where clauses are typically in the low thousands, but respectable.
These joins usually return instantaneously (or nearly so). I do have some odd cases that can take several seconds to run (and aggregate functions on these sets can take a very long time -- sometimes a couple minutes), but those are not common.
Our main PostgreSQL server handles all the image archiving for 5-6 departments, serves billable data to another primary department (I'm being vague on purpose to appease my boss' desire to not advertise who we are with what we do), serves as the back-end data source for our web server, and seems to just accumulate responsibilities as time goes on.
This is in addition to acting as a file server, internal web server, print server, mail server (not our primary one), and general purpose server as needed. Except for a couple bad warts (very slow aggregates, for example), PostgreSQL has been very good to us.
"Castle Wolfenstein? You mean Wolfenstein 3D."
You are correct. I did mean Wolfenstein 3D.
"Yeah, but don't forget that DOOM wasn't a huge widespread hit until GT Interactive picked it up, marketed it and got it into stores."
Doom isn't what launched ID Software. It was Castle Wolfenstein. As I remember, CW was published online through Apogee Software. It made ID Software an instant success. After that, Carmack could have released "The Crappiest Game You've Ever Played", and it would have sold half a bajillion copies just on Wolfenstein's momentum.
I just think it's a shame there wasn't a long series of "accidental" FBI firearm discharges in Ralsky's direction.