Due to the population explosion and increased traffic, people will stay at home much, much more. We'll have little cameras everywhere in our homes and videoconference almost all the time. Want to have a party for New Years Eve? Send a video mail to all your friends so you can all get together in a video chat room 5 minutes before midnight. Television will be on demand; pay per view and all the "good" sites on the net will be pay per view. Everything will be ordered on-line and anonymity will be impossible.
Does it piss you off to have to fill out a card at the grocery store to get "discount" pricing? Ha that's a drop in the bucket compared to what they'll know about us in another decade or two.
They opened up the GPS... why? Think about it what possible good thing can from them opening up the GPS? They want us all to GPS's that also send out position back up. Severe weather watchers have been using this kind of stuff for years.
The ability to open up your PC and mess around will be gone. The PC will be little box that's encased in epoxy with a really fast USB-like port, that handles video and sound output, with some kind of encryption (to keep us from recording movies we watch or music we hear), and a couple of IR ports for input. Monitors will be 4' X 8' flat panels that hang on the wall. The new net will handle all our phone calls, television, mail, court summons, paychecks, etc.
It's not all bleak though. There will still be hackers and crackers and the job of admining all this stuff will still fall to the geeks, as the average working stiff won't be smart enough to keep the hackers and crackers out. We'll still have horrible personal sites only instead of "Here's a picture of my dog Rusty" we'll get to see glorious high res movies of ol Rusty. The routers will be setup to scan packets for keywords and simply deny a route to sites that contain certain keywords. We'll just misspell these words (like Filez Warez etc.) and the elite will still be able to get around the BS.
Apps and drive space will be stored on central servers on the net and we'll pay as we go. Our little boxes won't have any non-volatile storage space whatsoever. We'll get around all that but it will be a pain in the ass. It'll be ruled illegal to use any non government sanctioned software on their network so as to keep a lid on cracking etc. We'll get around that too but more and more of us will go to jail and for reasons that have nothing to do with hacking, cracking or pirating (sorry). We'll goto jail for using our own rigs and software on their network. We won't buy those those little boxes we'll rent them just like we do cable boxes. The powers that be will occasionally ask for them back to "give" us the smaller faster ones just to make sure we aren't tampering with their little boxes. They'll send a signal to the GPS system to let the powers that be know where they are at all times. It'll be for our protection from theft of course. The little boxes in our cars will do the same.
I honestly didn't intend for my reply to attack, but I was in a mood and I can see how it came across that way and am sorry. Still, I can't agree with the concept of "balanced" nature.
From the dinosaur's point of view... I bet they'd have something to say about nature's balance. That is if we're talking about nature in the sense that the earth is a tiny little ball of mud in the universe and asteroids etc. are natural.
As the supposedly most inteligent species on the planet then it falls to us to keep it habitable for as long as possible. But the planet will run out of natural resources at some point in time no matter what we do.... unless of course we all die and our bodies decompose and replenish the natural resources for the next inteligent species to use.
Awe c'mon you think that early humans were just running around eating berries and having free love and playing volleyball?:) Ever heard of volcanos? A decent sized volcanic erruption can do a helluva lot of environmental damage real quick. Remember those tigers... what do you think they like to eat? The whole "natural" thing pisses me off. Cow farts are natural and contribute a helluva lot to the carbon monoxide level. Tar is "natural", venomous snakes and spiders are "natural" volcanos and earthquakes and hurricanes and tornados and floods and forest fires and lightning and birth defects and malaria and sharks and carp and radiation and... well you get the idea. I'm not saying we shouldn't try to use our resources as efficiently as possible but looking back to the "good old days" isn't a very good argument.
I think we're weaking the gene pool by fixing birth defects (even my glasses for near-sightedness) and not allowing the whole survival of the fittest to run it's course. I'm damn glad they made my glasses and took my gall bladder out a few months ago. If you want to walk to work and not undergo surgery when your gut really hurts and not wear glasses and run around naked in the winter and live in a cave, then I will support your decision by all means. However I like my computers and my car and my house and I'm not going to give them up.
Guess I'm a selfish bastard.... I'd heard that but I never really knew till now:)
"Star Office has done more for Linux than just about any other application, Love said."
Aw bullshit... there are three apps that put Linux on the map, Apache, Sendmail and Samba. All of which are Open Source, I've been a Linux user for years and I've downloaded Star Office twice. It's great and everything but I can certainly live without it.
Maybe from Caldera's "let's put Linux on the desktop" approach, Star Office plays a major role but from my perspective as an admin Star Office is just fluff... good fluff but fluff nonetheless. Just my $.02
The University couldn't afford not to have a PBX. They either run one phone line from the telco to each room (big monthly bill), have party lines (anyone here besides me remeber these? god they sucked), or use a handful of lines from the telco and a butlload of extensions, one for each room thereby lowering their monthly telco costs dramatically.
No...not really a modem as you know it. Most likely they're connected to a PBX which is usually a proprietary digital phone system. Older PBX's could pass data at speeds around 19200 (some were even slower) with tons of latency. I've never understood how they could do digital voice so well but suck so bad at data.
Based on the state of the dorm I'm sure they had a pretty old PBX in that building. A "modem" like this would be useless out in the real world unless you happened to come across a phone system that was compatable and you only wanted to go a little faster than a 14.4 modem. Besides they couldn't even use the damn thing during business hours which would be pretty irritating to say the least.
Maybe they were somewhat out of line but this "incident" should have been handled internally IMHO. I wonder if they were ever warned to stop it.
Anyway my kids won't be going there.. of course I really wasn't thinking about OSU since we live in the lovely "There's more than corn in Indana but not much" state.
Let's pretend that there's a big problem at OSU with students not paying the $24 per semester for net access and they're going to "by God make an example" of these four students. Let's say there are 1000 students stealing net access. OSU has lost out on a possible $24,000 per semester. Now I don't know how much it costs to goto a state college anymore but based on the prices in my day I'd guess it costs at least $6,000 per semester. So if this action makes 4 people choose not to go to OSU then the college has broken even. I can think of 4 people right now who might be putting in those transfer papers right as I type and I seriously doubt my 3 kids will be attending a non-airconditioned, netless throw little Billy in jail and cable-impaired school. Talk about bad PR:)
I've had this idea for a long time now and this jpeg2000 stuff seems kinda similar.
Why couldn't we take samples of millions of textures, catalog them, and distribute them to every browser in the world (big honking download, one time). The image creation software could sample an image and find similarities between patches of the image and textures in the generic library and simply send the shape/location of the patch and it's corresponding texture ID. The viewer would pull that texture out of the library and paint it into the corresponding patch in the image. The truly unique information in the image could be super-imposed over the "patches" to make the final product. Seems like an image could be described in this manner with much less info. It wouldn't be "real" but what's real anyway? My arm doesn't have jagged edges like "real" digital images make it out to be. This idea is similar to vrml and if we take it a step further....
For $50 we all run down to Kinkos or some other copy place and get 3d scanned. We smile and frown and talk and so on in order to get a good representation of our expression, posture etc. They put our 3d representations on a CD(s) or eventually on a DVD and we give copies to all our friends. Now when we want to videoconference, our friend pops in their simulation of us and we theirs, and we're video conferencing ALA deathmatch. Facial expressions, movements etc. are simply codes telling the viewer's puter which slides of our sim to play/morph blend whatever. Might not work too well on 28.8modem but maybe it would. Sort of a Max Headroom (old people like me will remember) kinda thing but maybe better. Quake 5 will have the ability to load our sims and put our avatars directly into the game. Of course, fiber running into my house would make this obsolete pretty quick but I doubt I'll see any serious bandwidth at home for years.
Computer security is just like a contract, a door lock, or a security system... all can be beaten if there's enough determination and/or money and/or time. Most of us lock our homes with a pidly little pot-metal thing that does what exactly? The alternative is to put in an expensive security systems that can, of course, be beaten as well. The hassle of paying for that fancy security system, swiping my card/whatever, etc. isn't worth it to me. If I want to play a net game with you I'm going to have to trust you a bit. If I'm going to enter into a contract with you then I'm also going to have to trust you a bit. If I invite you into my home to see my stuff then I'm also going to have to trust you a bit. (sounds like security through obscurity huh:)
The task of creating a reasonably secure environment to play Q1 using 33.6 modems isn't worth the effort if it's even possible IMHO. If Q1 had been constructed by OS from the ground up more time would have been spent patching it than playing it as a new hack would've come out weekly. The "final" OS product may have been more secure and robust than the current Q1 version but it would have been much more painful for the players along the way.
Obscurity doesn't work but it does slow things down a bit. the Quake 1 players had a couple of good hack-free years playing Q1 because ID didn't make it too easy. ID opened Q1 up and all the hacks that were held back by obscurity flooded in.
So if B&N renames the "Order Button" to a "Buy Now" button wouldn't they be OK? ")
"Method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications network
Abstract A method and system for placing an order to purchase an item via the Internet. The order is placed by a purchaser at a client system and received by a server system. The server system receives purchaser information including identification of the purchaser, payment information, and shipment information from the client system. The server system then assigns a client identifier to the client system and associates the assigned client identifier with the received purchaser information. The server system sends to the client system the assigned client identifier and an HTML document identifying the item and including an order button. The client system receives and stores the assigned client identifier and receives and displays the HTML document. In response to the selection of the order button, the client system sends to the server system a request to purchase the identified item. The server system receives the request and combines the purchaser information associated with the client identifier of the client system to generate an order to purchase the item in accordance with the billing and shipment information whereby the purchaser effects the ordering of the product by selection of the order button."
Assuming that Canadian law demands that Corel discriminate against minors:
Read section 7 of the GPL, here's an excerpt.
"7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all."
Seems pretty straightforward to me. My interpretation:
If you can't follow the rules for whatever reason you can't play.
Section 8 says:
"8. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License."
Now if Corel won't or can't change their EULA then we must act swiftly and brutally. If we give an inch, we set precedent that will eternally weaken the GPL. If Canada is indeed the culprit then Section 10 might be a way out for Corel:
"10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author to ask for permission."
If Canadian law isn't the bad guy here and Corel is just totally clueless then we need to be hit them as hard and as fast as possible because they're testing the waters. According to many of the articles here on slashdot we're loosing our rights left and right:) We're loosing these rights IMHO because we're too lazy to keep our governments at bay. Same thing here people if we let this slide then Corel or someone else will keep chipping away at the GPL like the American government has been chipping away at constitution of the US.
A friend of mine owns a computer store here in the midwest and he's had all kinds of problems like this. He does about 5 million a year in sales used to constantly wheel and deal to get better pricing. He's been sold hundreds of remarked chips, perfect illegal counterfeit copies of windows and office, complete with the holograms and perfect copies of microsoft's wheel mouse. Once he realized what was happening he started buying boxed set processors from one vendor and all his software from another. Even though none of his customers ever found out (that I'm aware of anyway) it caused him some pretty serious probs. The overclocked chips crash more often, run hotter and die a lot quicker. I'm not totally against overclocking as long as you know what you're doing and cool accordingly, but to overclock a chip 3 or 4 steps up without some serious cooling is just asking for trouble IMHO. Of course there are exceptions to every rule (including this one:).
The big players order chips months in advance and when they guestimate too optimistically they aree stuck with thousands of chips. They sell these to a chip broker who unloads them to the mail order places etc. If the broker is legit then you're ok, if they're not then the chips get marked up. I've seen a few and you can't tell if a chip has been remarked, they do a really good job. I have a copy of Office97 that looks perfect but it's a counterfeit.
Well let me remember..... I sold hamburgers at McDondald's, plasma, my car, beer (I had a drinking age connection) and tons of other stuff I don't remember. Yeah I probably would've sold sold my notes.:) BTW I got and agree with your point but it's pretty easy now that I'm a little better off.
Or hack some computers. Come on.... that's just silly. War is war and it's hell. Of course they're going to crack. I would in second... unless of course I was afraid of pissing off the enemy and forcing them to crack me back. Cracking could be the one real leveler of the global playing field. It would only take a few really sharp Serbs to play havock with the entire US network. The bigger the country the more security holes in their networks.
Pretty soon these crackers that keep getting busted will be trained in a secret underground facility in Viriginia and will become truly elite.
Capture an X windows Desktop with the following image being created with the Gimp. Tux is chained to a wall in a dark and depressing dungeon. The chains that bind him are made up of the micrsoft windows logo and the apple logo. Tus has just broken free and the little windows and apple logo links are falling to the floor.
Or Tux is standing at the top of a bunch of steps (if there are any buildings in Redmond that fit this description that's be a plus for anyone who recognized it) with a huge throng of people below cheering. It's a nice sunshiny day and Tux is tosssing out free copies of Debian, Redhat, Suse, Caldera etc.
Or Tux is trying desperately to push his way through a bunch of evil-looking guys in dark suits who're holding him back to get to the families, kids, etc. on the other side while wearing a Santa Claus suit with a bag full distros. The guys holding him back should be riot police with a microsoft logo on them and Tux should be almost free of them. There could be black microsoft helicopters flying above Apple tanks etc.
I have 2 17" Monitors on my 98 box. They're the only reason I keep 98 around. Photoshop is sooo nice when all the toolbars are on one and the image you're working on is on the other. And you can change screen resoution and color depth independently on each monitor.
I had a matrox that had 2 outputs but it sucked for me. It treats both monitors as one... when you maximize a window it maximies it across both monitors. It's pretty irritating to read text across one monitor to the other. I hope Xfree 4 will handle maximizing windows like 98 does.
I had three 17" monitors hooked up for awhile, but they were all three different brands and I couldn't get the refresh rates high enough and the same and I got bad headaches from it.
I started out playing with a commodore 64, Timex Sinclair and then finally I got my first XT. Times have changed so much since I added that 20 meg harddrive and V-20 processor upgrade to the XT, I'm almost ashamed to admit I build a PC occasionally.
Wireless networking is barreling down on the wirepullers and they'll be if they lucky to even pull phone wire for another couple of years.
Embedded operating systems will become the norm very soon, even on desktop PCs'. You want to upgrade to Redhat 9? buy the chip and plug it in (alla nintendo cartridge) or download the file and flash it to your old chip or maybe just buy a new PC and pitch the old one. Or maybe the bulk of the os will sit on the net and we'll boot to the Internet.
PC's will become so cheap and they'll be sealed like the computers that run our cars and they'll be sold by people like Proctor Silex and will be on the shelves at Wall mart next to the toasters. Dell, gateway, and the other biggies might survive if they watch the trend closely enough and dump all their tech support people. Fred's computers won't... Fred will be unable to buy these toaster computers and a decent price and since there will be no serviceable parts they'll be gone.
The various Linux distributions will get weeded out and we'll see distros designed for a particular use like serving webpages, network file servers, email servers, desktops for graphics designers, desktops for accountants, distros for teachers, desktops for engineers etc. When you buy that toaster PC you'll pick up the one that suits your needs.
The file server distro will run named and dchp and will be so easy to config from it's web-based wizards that a 3 year old could set it up. Plug in an accounting cpu box and the server will pick it up and away you go.
Most ISP's will be run out by the big big players and those of us who run a little web server will be out of business in 2 years because we won't be able to compete with the big companies who host billions of sites and have the coolest wizards in place to make e-commerce a snap etc.
If windows worked like it's supposed to I'd be out of a job. If Liunx does indeed take over and works as advertised and it get's as easy to admin as windows seems to be, then a huge segment of tech support people will be un-needed.
The very best of the best, will be offered jobs at the big big companies who're writing that accounting version of Linux or writing the cgi for those giant web farms. The only jobs left for the middle of the road dim-witted types like me might be to provide questionable web content. Everyone else will be pumping gas or asking if you'd like fries with that. Of course I could be wrong about everything:)
I don't have Descent installed anymore ( I don;t know why getting old I guess) but wasn't the executable pretty big? I've played with vrml off and on since the beginning and am pretty proficent with Truespace and Blender. If a scene this simple was developed as a truespace or vrml scene it would be pretty dinky indeed. However truespace.exe (ver4)is a meg plus all the various dlls another 15 meg (granted it edits not just views). This is the "scene" and the viewer. I haven't played with any linux vrml browsers yet but I know that windows vrml browsers are a couple of meg easy.
Not ony that, notice the waves lapping on the shore... they may not be mathmatically perfect but they look "right" (albeit very fast and crude) to me.
If I'm wrong (I have been before:) please educate me.
This is the coolest 74K ever. It's the smoothest VRML browser I've ever seen and an animated scene all in a 74K app! Granted it's not Q2 yet but it's damned impressive. Download it.
no I'm not afiliated with this guy/company I'm just real impressed.
I agree with you. The fault is not Slashdot's, nor Linus's, nor those of us who use and (for the most part) love Linux. However Microsoft has their own zealous counterparts but they have a clear advantage. They can (for the most part;) control their people. We as an open-source community cannot and probably should not try. We can however not go out of our way to fuel the fires of our zealots.
Upon further inspection of my original post and of this post I must conclude my very proposal is about as diametrically opposed to the spirit of Open Source as anything could be. I guess we have to take the good with the bad and hope for the best.
Already we're seeing posts like "why don't the hackers leave the Linux box alone and go for the nt machine". My god how could anyone post this here at Slashdot? Think of the quote you just gave Microsoft:
"Users at the respected Linux website, Slashdot, plead with hackers to pick on NT and to leave their Linux server alone"
And how about this one. "it was a third party closed source script and not the os's fault".
Here's the headline "Security Update: CGI-script designed to run on Linux/Apache server allows root access" (I don't think that's what happened but hey once it's in print who cares)
This article would go on to read: A cgi-script written for the free Linux operating system and the free Apache found faulty. Sources won't reveal the name of the script and no attempt has been made to correct this problem. Guess you get what you pay for.
written by our fav Jessie B
We can't stop these stupid contests from going on but we can use some of the tools that the "man" uses to our benefit. Ignoring them comes to mind. Slashdot has to walk a fine line... they are a news page first and foremost and they happen to like Linux a lot. Slashdot has an obligation? to report and no one is paying them to kill a story unlike, I'm sure, some of the other news sites/journals.
Please Slashdot just say no(tm) to stupid hype and don't post every friggin contest that comes down the pike. These articles may make for interesting/inflammatory reading but they're doing a disservice to the Linux community, nay the entire computing public.
Slashdot Mirror
Due to the population explosion and increased traffic, people will stay at home much, much more. We'll have little cameras everywhere in our homes and videoconference almost all the time. Want to have a party for New Years Eve? Send a video mail to all your friends so you can all get together in a video chat room 5 minutes before midnight. Television will be on demand; pay per view and all the "good" sites on the net will be pay per view. Everything will be ordered on-line and anonymity will be impossible.
:)
Does it piss you off to have to fill out a card at the grocery store to get "discount" pricing? Ha that's a drop in the bucket compared to what they'll know about us in another decade or two.
They opened up the GPS... why? Think about it what possible good thing can from them opening up the GPS? They want us all to GPS's that also send out position back up. Severe weather watchers have been using this kind of stuff for years.
The ability to open up your PC and mess around will be gone. The PC will be little box that's encased in epoxy with a really fast USB-like port, that handles video and sound output, with some kind of encryption (to keep us from recording movies we watch or music we hear), and a couple of IR ports for input. Monitors will be 4' X 8' flat panels that hang on the wall. The new net will handle all our phone calls, television, mail, court summons, paychecks, etc.
It's not all bleak though. There will still be hackers and crackers and the job of admining all this stuff will still fall to the geeks, as the average working stiff won't be smart enough to keep the hackers and crackers out. We'll still have horrible personal sites only instead of "Here's a picture of my dog Rusty" we'll get to see glorious high res movies of ol Rusty. The routers will be setup to scan packets for keywords and simply deny a route to sites that contain certain keywords. We'll just misspell these words (like Filez Warez etc.) and the elite will still be able to get around the BS.
Apps and drive space will be stored on central servers on the net and we'll pay as we go. Our little boxes won't have any non-volatile storage space whatsoever. We'll get around all that but it will be a pain in the ass. It'll be ruled illegal to use any non government sanctioned software on their network so as to keep a lid on cracking etc. We'll get around that too but more and more of us will go to jail and for reasons that have nothing to do with hacking, cracking or pirating (sorry). We'll goto jail for using our own rigs and software on their network. We won't buy those those little boxes we'll rent them just like we do cable boxes. The powers that be will occasionally ask for them back to "give" us the smaller faster ones just to make sure we aren't tampering with their little boxes. They'll send a signal to the GPS system to let the powers that be know where they are at all times. It'll be for our protection from theft of course. The little boxes in our cars will do the same.
Of course I could be wrong about everything
I honestly didn't intend for my reply to attack, but I was in a mood and I can see how it came across that way and am sorry. Still, I can't agree with the concept of "balanced" nature.
From the dinosaur's point of view... I bet they'd have something to say about nature's balance. That is if we're talking about nature in the sense that the earth is a tiny little ball of mud in the universe and asteroids etc. are natural.
As the supposedly most inteligent species on the planet then it falls to us to keep it habitable for as long as possible. But the planet will run out of natural resources at some point in time no matter what we do.... unless of course we all die and our bodies decompose and replenish the natural resources for the next inteligent species to use.
Greg
Awe c'mon you think that early humans were just running around eating berries and having free love and playing volleyball? :) Ever heard of volcanos? A decent sized volcanic erruption can do a helluva lot of environmental damage real quick. Remember those tigers... what do you think they like to eat? The whole "natural" thing pisses me off. Cow farts are natural and contribute a helluva lot to the carbon monoxide level. Tar is "natural", venomous snakes and spiders are "natural" volcanos and earthquakes and hurricanes and tornados and floods and forest fires and lightning and birth defects and malaria and sharks and carp and radiation and... well you get the idea. I'm not saying we shouldn't try to use our resources as efficiently as possible but looking back to the "good old days" isn't a very good argument.
:)
I think we're weaking the gene pool by fixing birth defects (even my glasses for near-sightedness) and not allowing the whole survival of the fittest to run it's course. I'm damn glad they made my glasses and took my gall bladder out a few months ago. If you want to walk to work and not undergo surgery when your gut really hurts and not wear glasses and run around naked in the winter and live in a cave, then I will support your decision by all means. However I like my computers and my car and my house and I'm not going to give them up.
Guess I'm a selfish bastard.... I'd heard that but I never really knew till now
YEAH I agree... I kinda forgot about GCC.
"Star Office has done more for Linux than just about any other application, Love said."
Aw bullshit... there are three apps that put Linux on the map, Apache, Sendmail and Samba. All of which are Open Source, I've been a Linux user for years and I've downloaded Star Office twice. It's great and everything but I can certainly live without it.
Maybe from Caldera's "let's put Linux on the desktop" approach, Star Office plays a major role but from my perspective as an admin Star Office is just fluff... good fluff but fluff nonetheless. Just my $.02
The University couldn't afford not to have a PBX. They either run one phone line from the telco to each room (big monthly bill), have party lines (anyone here besides me remeber these? god they sucked), or use a handful of lines from the telco and a butlload of extensions, one for each room thereby lowering their monthly telco costs dramatically.
G
No...not really a modem as you know it. Most likely they're connected to a PBX which is usually a proprietary digital phone system. Older PBX's could pass data at speeds around 19200 (some were even slower) with tons of latency. I've never understood how they could do digital voice so well but suck so bad at data.
Based on the state of the dorm I'm sure they had a pretty old PBX in that building. A "modem" like this would be useless out in the real world unless you happened to come across a phone system that was compatable and you only wanted to go a little faster than a 14.4 modem. Besides they couldn't even use the damn thing during business hours which would be pretty irritating to say the least.
Maybe they were somewhat out of line but this "incident" should have been handled internally IMHO. I wonder if they were ever warned to stop it.
Anyway my kids won't be going there.. of course I really wasn't thinking about OSU since we live in the lovely "There's more than corn in Indana but not much" state.
G
Let's pretend that there's a big problem at OSU with students not paying the $24 per semester for net access and they're going to "by God make an example" of these four students. Let's say there are 1000 students stealing net access. OSU has lost out on a possible $24,000 per semester. Now I don't know how much it costs to goto a state college anymore but based on the prices in my day I'd guess it costs at least $6,000 per semester. So if this action makes 4 people choose not to go to OSU then the college has broken even. I can think of 4 people right now who might be putting in those transfer papers right as I type and I seriously doubt my 3 kids will be attending a non-airconditioned, netless throw little Billy in jail and cable-impaired school. Talk about bad PR :)
G
I've had this idea for a long time now and this jpeg2000 stuff seems kinda similar.
Why couldn't we take samples of millions of textures, catalog them, and distribute them to every browser in the world (big honking download, one time). The image creation software could sample an image and find similarities between patches of the image and textures in the generic library and simply send the shape/location of the patch and it's corresponding texture ID. The viewer would pull that texture out of the library and paint it into the corresponding patch in the image. The truly unique information in the image could be super-imposed over the "patches" to make the final product. Seems like an image could be described in this manner with much less info. It wouldn't be "real" but what's real anyway? My arm doesn't have jagged edges like "real" digital images make it out to be. This idea is similar to vrml and if we take it a step further....
For $50 we all run down to Kinkos or some other copy place and get 3d scanned. We smile and frown and talk and so on in order to get a good representation of our expression, posture etc. They put our 3d representations on a CD(s) or eventually on a DVD and we give copies to all our friends. Now when we want to videoconference, our friend pops in their simulation of us and we theirs, and we're video conferencing ALA deathmatch. Facial expressions, movements etc. are simply codes telling the viewer's puter which slides of our sim to play/morph blend whatever. Might not work too well on 28.8modem but maybe it would. Sort of a Max Headroom (old people like me will remember) kinda thing but maybe better. Quake 5 will have the ability to load our sims and put our avatars directly into the game. Of course, fiber running into my house would make this obsolete pretty quick but I doubt I'll see any serious bandwidth at home for years.
Computer security is just like a contract, a door lock, or a security system... all can be beaten if there's enough determination and/or money and/or time. Most of us lock our homes with a pidly little pot-metal thing that does what exactly? The alternative is to put in an expensive security systems that can, of course, be beaten as well. The hassle of paying for that fancy security system, swiping my card/whatever, etc. isn't worth it to me. If I want to play a net game with you I'm going to have to trust you a bit. If I'm going to enter into a contract with you then I'm also going to have to trust you a bit. If I invite you into my home to see my stuff then I'm also going to have to trust you a bit. (sounds like security through obscurity huh :)
The task of creating a reasonably secure environment to play Q1 using 33.6 modems isn't worth the effort if it's even possible IMHO. If Q1 had been constructed by OS from the ground up more time would have been spent patching it than playing it as a new hack would've come out weekly. The "final" OS product may have been more secure and robust than the current Q1 version but it would have been much more painful for the players along the way.
Obscurity doesn't work but it does slow things down a bit. the Quake 1 players had a couple of good hack-free years playing Q1 because ID didn't make it too easy. ID opened Q1 up and all the hacks that were held back by obscurity flooded in.
Just my 2 cents
Not only *can* they distribute the hacks, they are forced to by the GPL :) OS has it's place, that's for sure, but net games may not be the place.
So if B&N renames the "Order Button" to a "Buy Now" button wouldn't they be OK? ")
"Method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications network
Abstract
A method and system for placing an order to purchase an item via the Internet. The order is placed by a purchaser at a client system and received by a server system. The server system receives purchaser information including identification of the purchaser, payment information, and shipment information from the client system. The server system then assigns a client identifier to the client system and associates the assigned client identifier with the received purchaser information. The server system sends to the client system the assigned client identifier and an HTML document identifying the item and including an order button. The client system receives and stores the assigned client identifier and receives and displays the HTML document. In response to the selection of the order button, the client system sends to the server system a request to purchase the identified item. The server system receives the request and combines the purchaser information associated with the client identifier of the client system to generate an order to purchase the item in accordance with the billing and shipment information whereby the purchaser effects the ordering of the product by selection of the order button."
Maybe NSI or one of it's employess lost that domain on purpose for some cash under the table. Seems fairly possible to me.
Assuming that Canadian law demands that Corel discriminate against minors:
:) We're loosing these rights IMHO because we're too lazy to keep our governments at bay. Same thing here people if we let this slide then Corel or someone else will keep chipping away at the GPL like the American government has been chipping away at constitution of the US.
Read section 7 of the GPL, here's an excerpt.
"7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent
issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this
License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your
obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at
all."
Seems pretty straightforward to me. My interpretation:
If you can't follow the rules for whatever reason you can't play.
Section 8 says:
"8. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces,
the original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this
License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License."
Now if Corel won't or can't change their EULA then we must act swiftly and brutally. If we give an inch, we set precedent that will eternally weaken the GPL. If Canada is indeed the culprit then Section 10 might be a way out for Corel:
"10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to
the author to ask for permission."
If Canadian law isn't the bad guy here and Corel is just totally clueless then we need to be hit them as hard and as fast as possible because they're testing the waters. According to many of the articles here on slashdot we're loosing our rights left and right
A friend of mine owns a computer store here in the midwest and he's had all kinds of problems like this. He does about 5 million a year in sales used to constantly wheel and deal to get better pricing. He's been sold hundreds of remarked chips, perfect illegal counterfeit copies of windows and office, complete with the holograms and perfect copies of microsoft's wheel mouse. Once he realized what was happening he started buying boxed set processors from one vendor and all his software from another. Even though none of his customers ever found out (that I'm aware of anyway) it caused him some pretty serious probs. The overclocked chips crash more often, run hotter and die a lot quicker. I'm not totally against overclocking as long as you know what you're doing and cool accordingly, but to overclock a chip 3 or 4 steps up without some serious cooling is just asking for trouble IMHO. Of course there are exceptions to every rule (including this one :).
The big players order chips months in advance and when they guestimate too optimistically they aree stuck with thousands of chips. They sell these to a chip broker who unloads them to the mail order places etc. If the broker is legit then you're ok, if they're not then the chips get marked up. I've seen a few and you can't tell if a chip has been remarked, they do a really good job. I have a copy of Office97 that looks perfect but it's a counterfeit.
It's a major problem
So if I tell you not to kill someone does that mean I'm practicing law without a license?
Well let me remember..... I sold hamburgers at McDondald's, plasma, my car, beer (I had a drinking age connection) and tons of other stuff I don't remember. Yeah I probably would've sold sold my notes. :) BTW I got and agree with your point but it's pretty easy now that I'm a little better off.
Or hack some computers. Come on.... that's just silly. War is war and it's hell. Of course they're going to crack. I would in second... unless of course I was afraid of pissing off the enemy and forcing them to crack me back. Cracking could be the one real leveler of the global playing field. It would only take a few really sharp Serbs to play havock with the entire US network. The bigger the country the more security holes in their networks.
Pretty soon these crackers that keep getting busted will be trained in a secret underground facility in Viriginia and will become truly elite.
Capture an X windows Desktop with the following image being created with the Gimp. Tux is chained to a wall in a dark and depressing dungeon. The chains that bind him are made up of the micrsoft windows logo and the apple logo. Tus has just broken free and the little windows and apple logo links are falling to the floor.
Or Tux is standing at the top of a bunch of steps (if there are any buildings in Redmond that fit this description that's be a plus for anyone who recognized it) with a huge throng of people below cheering. It's a nice sunshiny day and Tux is tosssing out free copies of Debian, Redhat, Suse, Caldera etc.
Or Tux is trying desperately to push his way through a bunch of evil-looking guys in dark suits who're holding him back to get to the families, kids, etc. on the other side while wearing a Santa Claus suit with a bag full distros. The guys holding him back should be riot police with a microsoft logo on them and Tux should be almost free of them. There could be black microsoft helicopters flying above Apple tanks etc.
I have 2 17" Monitors on my 98 box. They're the only reason I keep 98 around. Photoshop is sooo nice when all the toolbars are on one and the image you're working on is on the other. And you can change screen resoution and color depth independently on each monitor.
I had a matrox that had 2 outputs but it sucked for me. It treats both monitors as one... when you maximize a window it maximies it across both monitors. It's pretty irritating to read text across one monitor to the other. I hope Xfree 4 will handle maximizing windows like 98 does.
I had three 17" monitors hooked up for awhile, but they were all three different brands and I couldn't get the refresh rates high enough and the same and I got bad headaches from it.
just my 2 cents.
I started out playing with a commodore 64, Timex Sinclair and then finally I got my first XT. Times have changed so much since I added that 20 meg harddrive and V-20 processor upgrade to the XT, I'm almost ashamed to admit I build a PC occasionally.
:)
Wireless networking is barreling down on the wirepullers and they'll be if they lucky to even pull phone wire for another couple of years.
Embedded operating systems will become the norm very soon, even on desktop PCs'. You want to upgrade to Redhat 9? buy the chip and plug it in (alla nintendo cartridge) or download the file and flash it to your old chip or maybe just buy a new PC and pitch the old one. Or maybe the bulk of the os will sit on the net and we'll boot to the Internet.
PC's will become so cheap and they'll be sealed like the computers that run our cars and they'll be sold by people like Proctor Silex and will be on the shelves at Wall mart next to the toasters. Dell, gateway, and the other biggies might survive if they watch the trend closely enough and dump all their tech support people. Fred's computers won't... Fred will be unable to buy these toaster computers and a decent price and since there will be no serviceable parts they'll be gone.
The various Linux distributions will get weeded out and we'll see distros designed for a particular use like serving webpages, network file servers, email servers, desktops for graphics designers, desktops for accountants, distros for teachers, desktops for engineers etc.
When you buy that toaster PC you'll pick up the one that suits your needs.
The file server distro will run named and dchp and will be so easy to config from it's web-based wizards that a 3 year old could set it up. Plug in an accounting cpu box and the server will pick it up and away you go.
Most ISP's will be run out by the big big players and those of us who run a little web server will be out of business in 2 years because we won't be able to compete with the big companies who host billions of sites and have the coolest wizards in place to make e-commerce a snap etc.
If windows worked like it's supposed to I'd be out of a job. If Liunx does indeed take over and works as advertised and it get's as easy to admin as windows seems to be, then a huge segment of tech support people will be un-needed.
The very best of the best, will be offered jobs at the big big companies who're writing that accounting version of Linux or writing the cgi for those giant web farms. The only jobs left for the middle of the road dim-witted types like me might be to provide questionable web content. Everyone else will be pumping gas or asking if you'd like fries with that. Of course I could be wrong about everything
I don't have Descent installed anymore ( I don;t know why getting old I guess) but wasn't the executable pretty big? I've played with vrml off and on since the beginning and am pretty proficent with Truespace and Blender. If a scene this simple was developed as a truespace or vrml scene it would be pretty dinky indeed. However truespace.exe (ver4)is a meg plus all the various dlls another 15 meg (granted it edits not just views). This is the "scene" and the viewer. I haven't played with any linux vrml browsers yet but I know that windows vrml browsers are a couple of meg easy.
:) please educate me.
Not ony that, notice the waves lapping on the shore... they may not be mathmatically perfect but they look "right" (albeit very fast and crude) to me.
If I'm wrong (I have been before
Best Regards,
Greg
This is the coolest 74K ever. It's the smoothest VRML browser I've ever seen and an animated scene all in a 74K app! Granted it's not Q2 yet but it's damned impressive. Download it.
no I'm not afiliated with this guy/company I'm just real impressed.
I agree with you. The fault is not Slashdot's, nor Linus's, nor those of us who use and (for the most part) love Linux. However Microsoft has their own zealous counterparts but they have a clear advantage. They can (for the most part;) control their people. We as an open-source community cannot and probably should not try. We can however not go out of our way to fuel the fires of our zealots.
Upon further inspection of my original post and of this post I must conclude my very proposal is about as diametrically opposed to the spirit of Open Source as anything could be. I guess we have to take the good with the bad and hope for the best.
Already we're seeing posts like "why don't the hackers leave the Linux box alone and go for the nt machine". My god how could anyone post this here at Slashdot? Think of the quote you just gave Microsoft:
"Users at the respected Linux website, Slashdot, plead with hackers to pick on NT and to leave their Linux server alone"
And how about this one. "it was a third party closed source script and not the os's fault".
Here's the headline
"Security Update: CGI-script designed to run on Linux/Apache server allows root access" (I don't think that's what happened but hey once it's in print who cares)
This article would go on to read:
A cgi-script written for the free Linux operating system and the free Apache found faulty. Sources won't reveal the name of the script and no attempt has been made to correct this problem.
Guess you get what you pay for.
written by our fav
Jessie B
We can't stop these stupid contests from going on but we can use some of the tools that the "man" uses to our benefit. Ignoring them comes to mind.
Slashdot has to walk a fine line... they are a news page first and foremost and they happen to like Linux a lot. Slashdot has an obligation? to report and no one is paying them to kill a story unlike, I'm sure, some of the other news sites/journals.
Please Slashdot just say no(tm) to stupid hype and don't post every friggin contest that comes down the pike. These articles may make for interesting/inflammatory reading but they're doing a disservice to the Linux community, nay the entire computing public.