>You are right, most people can get video with >drivers out of the box from Windows. They get >640x480 with 16 colors and a *BEEP* from the PC >Speaker for sound.
My Windows XP CD has drivers for most of the common motherboards, graphics cards, and sound cards. I've never had a problem with it finding them, and it even recognized a card that I couldn't. As I said, if you need other drivers you could just boot your normal OS installation.
>Most Windows games DO have the DirectX INSTALLER >on them. Big difference in size
The installer has all the files needed to run it, they're just compressed. The data on the CD could be compressed, too. Loading a compressed file would probably be faster than loading the uncompressed one, too. I doubt it's really all that big when installed, either.
>that would be wonderful for the.5% of game players who have Linux
I think Linux can use swap files stored on a filesystem.
>as well as the OS they have to include.... but with no OS
That's nonsensical. The whole point is that it does include the OS, and even you agree to that.
>drivers for the all the hardware
That is impractical. Including almost every driver that a Windows install cd does would be more sensible. I think Knoppix is already at that stage, but I haven't tried it. You can always play in your existing OS installation if it doesn't have the drivers you need.
>how about all the libraries. DirectX et al is not tiny, as well as the OS they have to include.
Last I checked, most Windows games ship with a copy of DirectX, so that library isn't much of a problem. The CD has to have all the drivers, the kernel, OpenGL, X, SDL, etc. but thankfully doesn't need a desktop environment or most of the misc. apps that typical distro has. How large would it be? I'd say less than 50 MB, but who knows. The gentoo game cd is, what, a 130 MB download including the UT2k3 demo? Compressing it on CD is always an option.
>Games frequently use swap
Knoppix can use existing swap partitions (or format its own). In most cases, the user probably has enough ram to run the game, though, so swap isn't a huge deal. If not, they'd need swap no matter where they boot from.
>(The project I'm currently on uses octrees and >per-poly collision against the world, and while >I believe it may be a little slower, it's vastly >more robust.)
I thought BSP trees were meant to be fast and cheap in comparison to per-poly tests, much like octrees. Is there some reason you can't use octrees alone? I'm betting it's because octrees have similar problems, which is why you get rid of as much as possible by octree culling and then do per-poly on as little as possible. You could have done that with BSP.
Well, say I'm a farmer and come up with a new way to transmit TV. I'm too poor to actually make a transmitter and receiver, and unless I make a transmitter I can't apply for a patent. I need a patent when I try to get support for my idea, because it protects me from investors (who would steal my idea before I'd get any money), or the manufacturors (who would steal my idea before agreeing to anything with me). I think a farmer thought up how we currently transmit TV, but this is supposed to be a hypothetical example because I probably got some facts wrong.
Kind of off-topic, but seeing "impossibly complex" and X-Window in the same sentence reminds me of those one-line descriptions of XFree like "You need X like a fish needs a bicycle." Can someone please post a link to a comprehensive source for these? I think there are some for Emacs, among others, as well, so please post links to any similar set of quips if you've got them.
>and any other programming language that runs by >relying on a "runtime environment"
You mean like C and C++? That msvcrt.dll actually stands for something, you know. Microsoft Visual C Run-Time. IIRC Linux has glibc, Mac OS X probably has glibc too.
If you were to program a Win32 application without msvcrt, you'd probably find, say, your malloc (using GlobalAlloc directly) to be a bit slower, because msvcrt's malloc is a bit better optimized for common usage. That, and having a malloc implimentation per program would require more space, startup time, etc. than having a shared library.
Using DirectX for what? Sound, networking, input, or graphics? Quake 3 (for windows) uses it for sound and input, but was easily ported to Linux and Mac. UT2k3 uses it for everything but networking, so they made an alternate OpenGL renderer for Windows, Linux and Mac. I think the original Half-Life uses it for everything but networking, and has OpenGL and software renderers, and that still had an (unreleased) Mac port.
It sounds like DirectDraw3D is hard to port, and DirectPlay is hard to keep compatibility with while porting, but everything else is fairly straightforward. I'd bet that Mac porters, especially the OSX ones, would have enough experience with porting from DirectX to do a port of Half-Life 2. Unfortunately, they'd have to port all the bug fixes and networking changes, and that might make it unfeasable like Sierra said the mac HL1 port was.
First, they've made enough units that they probably have an economy of scale. Second, they've made their designs and manufacturing more efficient since release.
That means that they're probably making a profit on each unit now, if they were even loosing on the initial units in the first place.
>If you decide not to buy something, you don't have it. >If you decide to get something for free, instead >of buying from me, you have it, and I don't have >my money.
Where I work we give out books of matches to people who want them. Some try to give us 25 cents in return, but most just want them for free. As it is now, less people would want one if we started selling them.
Maybe the number of takers would go up if we had always charged them for matches, but there are some people who still wouldn't pay though they want matches.
There are some people who would only download and listen to something if they can get it for free. Some of those people might then buy or delete the files, but the rest won't. It's illegal, and you say it's immoral, but that doesn't change the fact that one download doesn't mean one lost sale.
>What if you bought a TV set and broke it or >someone stole it from you, would you expect the >TV manufacturer to give you a new one?
No, but if there was a one-time tax per household TV, like in a made-up Britain, I'd demand that I not have to pay that tax when I buy another TV.
If I bought a CD and broke it or someone stole it, I'd demand that I could still listen to the near-free copies I can get through P2p. It doesn't cost the manufacturor anything.
I think that if anyone could take apart a car that a company spends 1000's of hours designing, then what would stop people from making a similar car? It would be too easy to steal designs/ideas from companies which spend millions of dollars coming up with them.
How do you think Ford ever got competition from the likes of GM, VW, Kia, etc.? How do you think Ford started making cars?
I think they can patent some ideas, based on non-obviousness and the rest of patent law, but when it comes down to it, Ford still buys all the newest GM models and takes them apart, just like everyone else.
US patent and copyright law was created to expand the public domain. To do this, it gives an incentive to people for inventing (patents) or creating (copyrights). If you ever stop people from learning how to invent or create, by stopping them from taking apart and investigating the products of others, then you are acting against the intent of the constitution.
I believe it was 18. The reason was because something else featured 18 in the title, so his publisher (friend?) suggested 22. I only know because I was half awake after the movie aired on the History channel, so don't quote me.
??? How can the wave move that fast? The molecules of metal start speeding up at one end, and 1 shake later I doubt the molecules at the other will be doing much of anything yet. I think you've run into the problem that all models are wrong, but some are useful. Your "simple thermodynamics" are wrong (to some extent), but are useable for your purposes within some constraints.
The Homer Simpson in Space episode of the Simpsons, I believe. The Shuttle's ant colony breaks open and Kent Brockman thinks it's an ant invasion. Therefore he says something like "I, for one, welcome our new alien ant overlords." If this is way off base then please feel free to correct.
The CEO has a duty to the shareholders (private or publicly traded shares, doesn't matter). If the CEO gets any extra incentive from the salesperson, but the shareholders don't, then the CEO'd be betraying the shareholders by accepting the offers.
Richard Feynman explains this pretty well in his book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman". He talks about his experiences evaluating text books for a school district. The publishers wanted to give him, say, $200, in the hopes that that money would give them a $2000000 competitive edge in the negotiations. Of course he turned them down, because it would be corrupt to gain $200 at the expense of the people he was working for.
It's actually the GNU General Public License. In their faq they state that the GNU can be omited when it is unambiguously taken to mean GNU General Public license.
>The GPL does not cover the output of the program.
I know MSVC++ puts lots of stub code from the MSVS distribution into every binary it links, so GCC might as well. If this code isn't shipped with the OS, then it isn't exempted from the clauses governing other sources. You just might end up with GPL output.
The fact remains that while there will always be a few teenage hobbyists who actually do use computers to run Linux, MOST kids use them to circumvent copy protection and play copied audio, video, or games. Anybody who argues to the contrary is only fooling him/her-self.
Umm... where I live, almost everyone leaves their house or unlocked at least some of the time, and especially when we're home. I think it's reasonable to allow this.
I'd say it's closer to engineering or practical architecture, but that's not really my decision.
>Yay, software piracy is for the 'greater good'.
Copyright was made to reward the public, and law provides protection from copyright infringement. Why did you bring up a straw man argument? What you said is similar to saying good will is communism.
>you can do what you want with your work until the time you aren't protected by that law
I said it's unfair to the public to only sell copies of this soundtrack in very lossy AAC instead of CDDA or Flac; I didn't say it's illegal. I don't even think it was worth making the movie in the first place, but the public still deserves to enjoy it if they can.
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>You are right, most people can get video with
.5% of game players who have Linux
>drivers out of the box from Windows. They get
>640x480 with 16 colors and a *BEEP* from the PC
>Speaker for sound.
My Windows XP CD has drivers for most of the common motherboards, graphics cards, and sound cards. I've never had a problem with it finding them, and it even recognized a card that I couldn't. As I said, if you need other drivers you could just boot your normal OS installation.
>Most Windows games DO have the DirectX INSTALLER
>on them. Big difference in size
The installer has all the files needed to run it, they're just compressed. The data on the CD could be compressed, too. Loading a compressed file would probably be faster than loading the uncompressed one, too. I doubt it's really all that big when installed, either.
>that would be wonderful for the
I think Linux can use swap files stored on a filesystem.
>as well as the OS they have to include.... but with no OS
That's nonsensical. The whole point is that it does include the OS, and even you agree to that.
>drivers for the all the hardware
That is impractical. Including almost every driver that a Windows install cd does would be more sensible. I think Knoppix is already at that stage, but I haven't tried it. You can always play in your existing OS installation if it doesn't have the drivers you need.
>how about all the libraries. DirectX et al is not tiny, as well as the OS they have to include.
Last I checked, most Windows games ship with a copy of DirectX, so that library isn't much of a problem. The CD has to have all the drivers, the kernel, OpenGL, X, SDL, etc. but thankfully doesn't need a desktop environment or most of the misc. apps that typical distro has. How large would it be? I'd say less than 50 MB, but who knows. The gentoo game cd is, what, a 130 MB download including the UT2k3 demo? Compressing it on CD is always an option.
>Games frequently use swap
Knoppix can use existing swap partitions (or format its own). In most cases, the user probably has enough ram to run the game, though, so swap isn't a huge deal. If not, they'd need swap no matter where they boot from.
>some kind of ramdisk for multidisk games
What of it?
Why not just use stdio in a console application?
>(The project I'm currently on uses octrees and
>per-poly collision against the world, and while
>I believe it may be a little slower, it's vastly
>more robust.)
I thought BSP trees were meant to be fast and cheap in comparison to per-poly tests, much like octrees. Is there some reason you can't use octrees alone? I'm betting it's because octrees have similar problems, which is why you get rid of as much as possible by octree culling and then do per-poly on as little as possible. You could have done that with BSP.
Well, say I'm a farmer and come up with a new way to transmit TV. I'm too poor to actually make a transmitter and receiver, and unless I make a transmitter I can't apply for a patent. I need a patent when I try to get support for my idea, because it protects me from investors (who would steal my idea before I'd get any money), or the manufacturors (who would steal my idea before agreeing to anything with me). I think a farmer thought up how we currently transmit TV, but this is supposed to be a hypothetical example because I probably got some facts wrong.
Some people do ;)
Kind of off-topic, but seeing "impossibly complex" and X-Window in the same sentence reminds me of those one-line descriptions of XFree like "You need X like a fish needs a bicycle." Can someone please post a link to a comprehensive source for these? I think there are some for Emacs, among others, as well, so please post links to any similar set of quips if you've got them.
>and any other programming language that runs by
>relying on a "runtime environment"
You mean like C and C++? That msvcrt.dll actually stands for something, you know. Microsoft Visual C Run-Time. IIRC Linux has glibc, Mac OS X probably has glibc too.
If you were to program a Win32 application without msvcrt, you'd probably find, say, your malloc (using GlobalAlloc directly) to be a bit slower, because msvcrt's malloc is a bit better optimized for common usage. That, and having a malloc implimentation per program would require more space, startup time, etc. than having a shared library.
Using DirectX for what? Sound, networking, input, or graphics? Quake 3 (for windows) uses it for sound and input, but was easily ported to Linux and Mac. UT2k3 uses it for everything but networking, so they made an alternate OpenGL renderer for Windows, Linux and Mac. I think the original Half-Life uses it for everything but networking, and has OpenGL and software renderers, and that still had an (unreleased) Mac port.
It sounds like DirectDraw3D is hard to port, and DirectPlay is hard to keep compatibility with while porting, but everything else is fairly straightforward. I'd bet that Mac porters, especially the OSX ones, would have enough experience with porting from DirectX to do a port of Half-Life 2. Unfortunately, they'd have to port all the bug fixes and networking changes, and that might make it unfeasable like Sierra said the mac HL1 port was.
The "settles" part in the title sounds like it didn't make it to court. That means it doesn't set a legal precedent at all.
First, they've made enough units that they probably have an economy of scale. Second, they've made their designs and manufacturing more efficient since release.
That means that they're probably making a profit on each unit now, if they were even loosing on the initial units in the first place.
>First of all p2p shares do not have copyright so
>they canno legally distribute the songs to anyone.
I guess you're right, but we'd probably need a lawyer to find out for sure.
>CD (error checking and correction during digital mastering and then during rip
That's not a creative process. If so, then those differences aren't copyrightable, and those copies might as well be exact.
>If you decide not to buy something, you don't have it.
>If you decide to get something for free, instead
>of buying from me, you have it, and I don't have
>my money.
Where I work we give out books of matches to people who want them. Some try to give us 25 cents in return, but most just want them for free. As it is now, less people would want one if we started selling them.
Maybe the number of takers would go up if we had always charged them for matches, but there are some people who still wouldn't pay though they want matches.
There are some people who would only download and listen to something if they can get it for free. Some of those people might then buy or delete the files, but the rest won't. It's illegal, and you say it's immoral, but that doesn't change the fact that one download doesn't mean one lost sale.
>What if you bought a TV set and broke it or
>someone stole it from you, would you expect the
>TV manufacturer to give you a new one?
No, but if there was a one-time tax per household TV, like in a made-up Britain, I'd demand that I not have to pay that tax when I buy another TV.
If I bought a CD and broke it or someone stole it, I'd demand that I could still listen to the near-free copies I can get through P2p. It doesn't cost the manufacturor anything.
I think that if anyone could take apart a car that a company spends 1000's of hours designing, then what would stop people from making a similar car? It would be too easy to steal designs/ideas from companies which spend millions of dollars coming up with them.
How do you think Ford ever got competition from the likes of GM, VW, Kia, etc.? How do you think Ford started making cars?
I think they can patent some ideas, based on non-obviousness and the rest of patent law, but when it comes down to it, Ford still buys all the newest GM models and takes them apart, just like everyone else.
US patent and copyright law was created to expand the public domain. To do this, it gives an incentive to people for inventing (patents) or creating (copyrights). If you ever stop people from learning how to invent or create, by stopping them from taking apart and investigating the products of others, then you are acting against the intent of the constitution.
I believe it was 18. The reason was because something else featured 18 in the title, so his publisher (friend?) suggested 22. I only know because I was half awake after the movie aired on the History channel, so don't quote me.
??? How can the wave move that fast? The molecules of metal start speeding up at one end, and 1 shake later I doubt the molecules at the other will be doing much of anything yet. I think you've run into the problem that all models are wrong, but some are useful. Your "simple thermodynamics" are wrong (to some extent), but are useable for your purposes within some constraints.
The Homer Simpson in Space episode of the Simpsons, I believe. The Shuttle's ant colony breaks open and Kent Brockman thinks it's an ant invasion. Therefore he says something like "I, for one, welcome our new alien ant overlords." If this is way off base then please feel free to correct.
The CEO has a duty to the shareholders (private or publicly traded shares, doesn't matter). If the CEO gets any extra incentive from the salesperson, but the shareholders don't, then the CEO'd be betraying the shareholders by accepting the offers.
Richard Feynman explains this pretty well in his book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman". He talks about his experiences evaluating text books for a school district. The publishers wanted to give him, say, $200, in the hopes that that money would give them a $2000000 competitive edge in the negotiations. Of course he turned them down, because it would be corrupt to gain $200 at the expense of the people he was working for.
>The GNU Public License
It's actually the GNU General Public License. In their faq they state that the GNU can be omited when it is unambiguously taken to mean GNU General Public license.
>The GPL does not cover the output of the program.
I know MSVC++ puts lots of stub code from the MSVS distribution into every binary it links, so GCC might as well. If this code isn't shipped with the OS, then it isn't exempted from the clauses governing other sources. You just might end up with GPL output.
How far can you take that?
The fact remains that while there will always be a few teenage hobbyists who actually do use computers to run Linux, MOST kids use them to circumvent copy protection and play copied audio, video, or games. Anybody who argues to the contrary is only fooling him/her-self.
>if you left your house unlocked
Umm... where I live, almost everyone leaves their house or unlocked at least some of the time, and especially when we're home. I think it's reasonable to allow this.
>Allowing inventors and creators to profit from their work before it goes to the people?
Which is why they are protected under copyright law, as I said.
>You insisted that copyright law is more for the public's good than protection of creation.
I insist that the protection of creation (as explained in the US constitution) is for the public's good.
>they don't care that much about super high fidelity either. They just want to enjoy it.
When the copyright expires, though, I'd rather have CDDA or Flac copies available to those who want them, instead of only have AAC.
>include 'code poetry'
I'd say it's closer to engineering or practical architecture, but that's not really my decision.
>Yay, software piracy is for the 'greater good'.
Copyright was made to reward the public, and law provides protection from copyright infringement. Why did you bring up a straw man argument? What you said is similar to saying good will is communism.
>you can do what you want with your work until the time you aren't protected by that law
I said it's unfair to the public to only sell copies of this soundtrack in very lossy AAC instead of CDDA or Flac; I didn't say it's illegal. I don't even think it was worth making the movie in the first place, but the public still deserves to enjoy it if they can.