Re:But Gentoo?
on
Gentoo Games
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Just 6 hours to reach into the future and compile UT2006? Hell, where do I sign up!
Perhaps I can download other classics from the distant future, like Doom 4, Red Alert 7 and Duke Nukem Forever...
Re:Is this the answer?
on
Gentoo Games
·
· Score: 1
Hell, I would love it if even 1% of games over 1 year old were available.
Think about being able to play real classics like Dungeon Keeper again - on Linux - for a start it would probably cost you only $15 a copy or so, you wouldn't have to worry about your next upgrade breaking it (at worse a couple of extra kernels would be required).
New games are horribly expensive, so I just wait a year and get them from the bargain selection, with the exception of Unreal Tournament 2003 (which I paid my $50 for). If there were Linux installers for things like DK and Hogs Of War (both currently retailling at around $8 here), I would pay $20 for a copy without hesitation, it's a bargain at that kind of price.
But this isn't "mandated" in any way. If you have a computer that automatically downloads and executes a file from a URL, then that's *your* problem, isn't it?
Yes, but the people who put the file there cannot really claim that they didn't know that the file would be downloaded without the knowlage of computer users onto their machine. They could have just deleted the file.
Especially since there are ways to avoid such things from happening... (Starting with personal firewall that blocks IE from accessing the network, and use some other browser...)
Indeed, I have little pitty for anyone who chooses to use IE.
How is automatically downloading a antivirus any more legal or ethical than automatically downloading a virus without user permission?
I applaud the sentiment, but do the ends justify the means? I don't think Joe Slashdotter would be too happy with the idea of enforced antivirus affecting _his_ PC, for example if the government mandated it, because you can be sure that that precident would soon be followed by anti-piracy, anti-crypto, anti-free-speech, anti-everything-else in short order.
I suppose you could argue that 'we aren't inserting the data ourselves, we just made it available' - but that's little more than sophistry.
"In order to edit somebody in, the video'd have to be recompressed, and that would be noticable upon analysis."
Because of the way the quantizer _probably_ works (depends on the comrepssion method) you may as well just hang a guilty sign around your neck. It's pretty easy to pick up image areas where the recompression algorythm has picked a different set of pixels to group than the original encoding, as it causes a distinctive visual artifact.
"It'd actually be easier to pull that off with plain old VHS camcorders."
It's much harder than you would think - very few editing systems can transfer video with no spectrum clipping, and even then the ammount of data you can pull up with a decent analyzer is pretty impressive. (Particularly by looking at the frequencies present in shadows from one frame to the next.)
The guys they have working in video analysis labs are very good at this kind of thing, and faking a video that could fool them is hard enough without them being able to lay their hands on the original kit - once they have the lens available to map with a laser as well as the code to the compression algorythm then even Pixar or ILM couldn't pout together something that would fool them.
Hey, the video card market is great. I picked up a GForce3 Ti 500 for under $90 new, and when I managed to melt it with NVclock I got a new GForce 4 Ti 4200 for less than $20 more (the fan died so they refinded it despite the overclocking - sweet) just three weeks later.
Thats a card that would have been over $220 3 months ago, for $110. It'll run everything I want it to for a fair while, then live a long and productive life in one of my non-games boxes.
"The only violations they can really tackle are those that occured before they released the code under the GPL themselves"
Well technically one would have to go back to their released version of the code, fork it, then regenerate all following changes (obviously untouched modules would not present a problem). That should take about, oh, 15 minutes?
"And Standard Oil had an end-to-end monopoly, much different than Microsoft, which doesn't make computer components (except mice and keyboards), whole systems, or own any retail outlets."
Microsoft make the Xbox and the home entertainment PC, which are a whole systems. They are looking at moving into the hardware market in a bigger way with a lot of conept work in this area. None of these systems have been opened up to allow consumer choice, but instead create huge barriers to entry for the software market.
As for retail outlets, they apply pressure either by offering money (ion the UK they pay a fortune to PCWorld for preferential treatment) or by just implying that should a smaller retailer stock Linux their OEM status for Windows will be removed. (As happened to my local vendor.)
"There is nothing, absolutely nothing, stopping you or your business from using any number of different versions of GNU/Linux, BSD, other Unix OS's, or Macintosh."
How about deliberatly breaking APIs to make sure that you can't integrate properly unless you are using just windows as desktop clients? How about making Windows>UNIX software porting at best hard (Visual C++) and at worst impossible (C#)?
"Any one of us could easily start a firm to custom build and sell Linux machines, our barriers to entry would not that high."
Yet, but a lot of Microsofts current effort is focused on making this much harder - the crowning achievement is the slow march towards TCPA.
"The question is: could you convince Best Buy, Circuit City, and Fry's to carry the machines the way Wal-Mart is carrying Lindows machines online?"
Wal-mart had nothing to loose in taking on Linux products, whereas more dedicated computer vendors could quite literally be put out of business overnight.
"What stability? There's a new "Security Patch" issued every two days that must be thoroughly tested to insure that it doesn't bring the entire office down in flames."
When tsting and applying an OSS product, I can almsot always (excepting the kernel, naturally) patch, compile and test on the production box without having to take down the unpatched service or reboot. Once it's certified ok, it just needs a >1 sec switchover.
Windows patches are highly intrusive to your operations, OSS patches are, on the whole, not.
"Great. SCO is giving Microsoft the best anti Linux ammo it could hope for."
Only in the short term - in the long term it'll permanently dispell the SCO/UNIX/Licensing FUD that MS keep pushing so hard.
Given the speed that the courts move, it should all be worked out just around the time of the release of Longhorn - giving Linux a clean bill of health just in time to get in the way of Windows 2005.
"I've always found that very easy. Most hard thinkers like a break from thinking now and then. What's hard to find is someone willing to pay a Ph.D to that kind of work when they can pay a temp 1/10th as much."
When I was doing my A-levels I used to do my best thinking whilst I was working on a till - it's fairly easy to do your math homework in your head and still have enough capacity left over to handle customers reasonably well.
Now I do my best thinking while I'm running, and my fastest running when I'm thinking. It keeps me in better shape than punching buttons on a till and it's not as degrading:o)
It's called managing expectations, and no one excells at the black art more than Microsoft.
Everyone expected WinXP to be crap, and they were so relieved that it wasn't as bad as they thought they forgot to complain about the problems that do exist, as evidenced by the number of people who say "WinXP is great, compared to Win98 it's very stable and pretty fast, even though I did have to buy a new PC to run it, but that's just progress, isn't it?" when you ask them what they think of it.
I already get most of my radio via the BBC's 'listen again' service (sometimes available on ogg, mostly on WMA and RM). I can listen when I want, pause, fast forward, rewind and everything else. All I need is broadband to my car (or an in-car MP3 player since I have a RM-MP3 converter) and it'll be perfect.
For this reason I can't see a radio TiVo selling to well here, since all the decent ad-free radio (comedy for me but also classical music, serious discussion, various other public service stuff) is on the BBC anyway and the independants are endless loops of tripe that need no time shifting - they repeat themselves on a regular basis anyway.
I just turned 'follow mouse for focus' on in fluxbox and it's made things so much better - it feels like I'm not fighting things any more. (Especially Pan and Xchat.)
I never bothered before because my old SPARC had a drifting mouse that made it a massive nightmare, but I'm loving it now.
For all those people doubting it, give it a go, you probably won't switch back.
In what way would the world be a worse place if music was not protected by copyright?
Music would be created by talented people doing it for free (bias)like the best software(/bias) and distributed over the net by the people that wanted it. Good music would spread, bad music would die - no artist could ride on past sucess.
Musicians could get a real job (performing or working in McD's - their choice) and perform their art for art's sake. It might get some of the talentless greedy hacks out of the industry.
They would also be free to create derivative works, improving on the original and enhancing it. That way old music would get better. (Well, sure there would be some crap, but no one would d'load it.)
Sure, extend IP rights to valuable things like new power sources for limited periods (assigned on a case by case basis) to allow stimulation for innovation, but copyright of music is totally uncessary for music to thrive and so it should be removed as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, it seems that banned-cartoon afficionados never heard of MPEG4, so most are 100+MB MPEG1/2 files and on slow hosts. The quality often leaves something to be desired.
Actually according to doom9.org the best codec to use to compress cartoons is Real Video 9. Thankfully you can now play that back through Xine (as well as Quicktime and everything else) and avoid the horrible RealOne interface:o)
_Your_ workstation may be flakey, but real workstations are not:
peu@elrsr-4 peu $ uptime
19:33:50 up 140 days, 2:01, 3 users, load average: 0.26, 0.26, 0.14
So grid computing gives you just one more reason to move your company desktops to AIX, Linux, BSD, IRIX, or other competent operating system of your choice.
"It may look funny, but what if the next version of Windows comes embedded with this kind of thing?"
It already comes with an enabling technology - the Outlook Express Scripting Engine.
Possibly one day it'll be more lucrative to exploit OE for grid computing than for opening a SMTP relay - then we will know that it has really arrived as a mature technology.
Slashdot Mirror
Just 6 hours to reach into the future and compile UT2006? Hell, where do I sign up!
Perhaps I can download other classics from the distant future, like Doom 4, Red Alert 7 and Duke Nukem Forever...
Hell, I would love it if even 1% of games over 1 year old were available.
Think about being able to play real classics like Dungeon Keeper again - on Linux - for a start it would probably cost you only $15 a copy or so, you wouldn't have to worry about your next upgrade breaking it (at worse a couple of extra kernels would be required).
New games are horribly expensive, so I just wait a year and get them from the bargain selection, with the exception of Unreal Tournament 2003 (which I paid my $50 for). If there were Linux installers for things like DK and Hogs Of War (both currently retailling at around $8 here), I would pay $20 for a copy without hesitation, it's a bargain at that kind of price.
But this isn't "mandated" in any way. If you have a computer that automatically downloads and executes a file from a URL, then that's *your* problem, isn't it?
Yes, but the people who put the file there cannot really claim that they didn't know that the file would be downloaded without the knowlage of computer users onto their machine. They could have just deleted the file.
Especially since there are ways to avoid such things from happening... (Starting with personal firewall that blocks IE from accessing the network, and use some other browser...)
Indeed, I have little pitty for anyone who chooses to use IE.
How is automatically downloading a antivirus any more legal or ethical than automatically downloading a virus without user permission?
I applaud the sentiment, but do the ends justify the means? I don't think Joe Slashdotter would be too happy with the idea of enforced antivirus affecting _his_ PC, for example if the government mandated it, because you can be sure that that precident would soon be followed by anti-piracy, anti-crypto, anti-free-speech, anti-everything-else in short order.
I suppose you could argue that 'we aren't inserting the data ourselves, we just made it available' - but that's little more than sophistry.
"In order to edit somebody in, the video'd have to be recompressed, and that would be noticable upon analysis."
Because of the way the quantizer _probably_ works (depends on the comrepssion method) you may as well just hang a guilty sign around your neck. It's pretty easy to pick up image areas where the recompression algorythm has picked a different set of pixels to group than the original encoding, as it causes a distinctive visual artifact.
"It'd actually be easier to pull that off with plain old VHS camcorders."
It's much harder than you would think - very few editing systems can transfer video with no spectrum clipping, and even then the ammount of data you can pull up with a decent analyzer is pretty impressive. (Particularly by looking at the frequencies present in shadows from one frame to the next.)
The guys they have working in video analysis labs are very good at this kind of thing, and faking a video that could fool them is hard enough without them being able to lay their hands on the original kit - once they have the lens available to map with a laser as well as the code to the compression algorythm then even Pixar or ILM couldn't pout together something that would fool them.
Hey, the video card market is great. I picked up a GForce3 Ti 500 for under $90 new, and when I managed to melt it with NVclock I got a new GForce 4 Ti 4200 for less than $20 more (the fan died so they refinded it despite the overclocking - sweet) just three weeks later.
Thats a card that would have been over $220 3 months ago, for $110. It'll run everything I want it to for a fair while, then live a long and productive life in one of my non-games boxes.
So, don't knock it, just enjoy the bargains!
"The only violations they can really tackle are those that occured before they released the code under the GPL themselves"
Well technically one would have to go back to their released version of the code, fork it, then regenerate all following changes (obviously untouched modules would not present a problem). That should take about, oh, 15 minutes?
"And Standard Oil had an end-to-end monopoly, much different than Microsoft, which doesn't make computer components (except mice and keyboards), whole systems, or own any retail outlets."
Microsoft make the Xbox and the home entertainment PC, which are a whole systems. They are looking at moving into the hardware market in a bigger way with a lot of conept work in this area. None of these systems have been opened up to allow consumer choice, but instead create huge barriers to entry for the software market.
As for retail outlets, they apply pressure either by offering money (ion the UK they pay a fortune to PCWorld for preferential treatment) or by just implying that should a smaller retailer stock Linux their OEM status for Windows will be removed. (As happened to my local vendor.)
"There is nothing, absolutely nothing, stopping you or your business from using any number of different versions of GNU/Linux, BSD, other Unix OS's, or Macintosh."
How about deliberatly breaking APIs to make sure that you can't integrate properly unless you are using just windows as desktop clients? How about making Windows>UNIX software porting at best hard (Visual C++) and at worst impossible (C#)?
"Any one of us could easily start a firm to custom build and sell Linux machines, our barriers to entry would not that high."
Yet, but a lot of Microsofts current effort is focused on making this much harder - the crowning achievement is the slow march towards TCPA.
"The question is: could you convince Best Buy, Circuit City, and Fry's to carry the machines the way Wal-Mart is carrying Lindows machines online?"
Wal-mart had nothing to loose in taking on Linux products, whereas more dedicated computer vendors could quite literally be put out of business overnight.
"What stability? There's a new "Security Patch" issued every two days that must be thoroughly tested to insure that it doesn't bring the entire office down in flames."
When tsting and applying an OSS product, I can almsot always (excepting the kernel, naturally) patch, compile and test on the production box without having to take down the unpatched service or reboot. Once it's certified ok, it just needs a >1 sec switchover.
Windows patches are highly intrusive to your operations, OSS patches are, on the whole, not.
"Great. SCO is giving Microsoft the best anti Linux ammo it could hope for."
Only in the short term - in the long term it'll permanently dispell the SCO/UNIX/Licensing FUD that MS keep pushing so hard.
Given the speed that the courts move, it should all be worked out just around the time of the release of Longhorn - giving Linux a clean bill of health just in time to get in the way of Windows 2005.
"superior Linux-based products from Debian, Red Hat, and Caldera."
/. - we don't do Caldera (aka SCO) here, except in the context of 'do with a large stick'.
This is
Propogating a computing monocolture where exploitable flaws persist between not only minor versions but major versions.
"The PPC 970 will not really make the Macintosh competitive with modern PC's. It will make it competitive with PC's from the beginning of this year"
Then how did a 32 way P970 system from IBM beat the shit out of a 64 way itanium 2 system from HP in the TPC tests?
Dual Itanium 2 speed for Apples? Yes please. (Hell, I'm just waiting for Linux to get ported to that hardware - should be well worth the money.)
Isn't this a waste of valuable AI grad student time?
"I've always found that very easy. Most hard thinkers like a break from thinking now and then. What's hard to find is someone willing to pay a Ph.D to that kind of work when they can pay a temp 1/10th as much."
:o)
When I was doing my A-levels I used to do my best thinking whilst I was working on a till - it's fairly easy to do your math homework in your head and still have enough capacity left over to handle customers reasonably well.
Now I do my best thinking while I'm running, and my fastest running when I'm thinking. It keeps me in better shape than punching buttons on a till and it's not as degrading
It's called managing expectations, and no one excells at the black art more than Microsoft.
Everyone expected WinXP to be crap, and they were so relieved that it wasn't as bad as they thought they forgot to complain about the problems that do exist, as evidenced by the number of people who say "WinXP is great, compared to Win98 it's very stable and pretty fast, even though I did have to buy a new PC to run it, but that's just progress, isn't it?" when you ask them what they think of it.
I already get most of my radio via the BBC's 'listen again' service (sometimes available on ogg, mostly on WMA and RM). I can listen when I want, pause, fast forward, rewind and everything else. All I need is broadband to my car (or an in-car MP3 player since I have a RM-MP3 converter) and it'll be perfect.
For this reason I can't see a radio TiVo selling to well here, since all the decent ad-free radio (comedy for me but also classical music, serious discussion, various other public service stuff) is on the BBC anyway and the independants are endless loops of tripe that need no time shifting - they repeat themselves on a regular basis anyway.
Wow, thank you so much.
I just turned 'follow mouse for focus' on in fluxbox and it's made things so much better - it feels like I'm not fighting things any more. (Especially Pan and Xchat.)
I never bothered before because my old SPARC had a drifting mouse that made it a massive nightmare, but I'm loving it now.
For all those people doubting it, give it a go, you probably won't switch back.
Right up to the point where they download their first XviD video file. Then, like anyone else, they'll pay the price and install the darn codec
XviD is free - and installation is hardly difficult, unless you can't remember what 'apt-get xvid' or 'emerge xvid' does.
I assume it's as easy under Windows, right?
In what way would the world be a worse place if music was not protected by copyright?
Music would be created by talented people doing it for free (bias)like the best software(/bias) and distributed over the net by the people that wanted it. Good music would spread, bad music would die - no artist could ride on past sucess.
Musicians could get a real job (performing or working in McD's - their choice) and perform their art for art's sake. It might get some of the talentless greedy hacks out of the industry.
They would also be free to create derivative works, improving on the original and enhancing it. That way old music would get better. (Well, sure there would be some crap, but no one would d'load it.)
Sure, extend IP rights to valuable things like new power sources for limited periods (assigned on a case by case basis) to allow stimulation for innovation, but copyright of music is totally uncessary for music to thrive and so it should be removed as soon as possible.
And your ABS ECU doesn't have CTRL ALT DELETE , does it?
;o)
Since BMW were looking at using embedded WinCE in their cars, one day it may well do.
Just another reason not to drive a BMW then
what good does "Media Studies" do to anyone?
:o)
Gives you three years to smoke pot?
Perhaps they should charge media studies, artists and pol/sci people double to subsidise engineers, mathematicians and the like
Unfortunately, it seems that banned-cartoon afficionados never heard of MPEG4, so most are 100+MB MPEG1/2 files and on slow hosts. The quality often leaves something to be desired.
:o)
Actually according to doom9.org the best codec to use to compress cartoons is Real Video 9. Thankfully you can now play that back through Xine (as well as Quicktime and everything else) and avoid the horrible RealOne interface
3) Worsktations are flaky:
_Your_ workstation may be flakey, but real workstations are not:
peu@elrsr-4 peu $ uptime 19:33:50 up 140 days, 2:01, 3 users, load average: 0.26, 0.26, 0.14
So grid computing gives you just one more reason to move your company desktops to AIX, Linux, BSD, IRIX, or other competent operating system of your choice.
"It may look funny, but what if the next version of Windows comes embedded with this kind of thing?"
It already comes with an enabling technology - the Outlook Express Scripting Engine.
Possibly one day it'll be more lucrative to exploit OE for grid computing than for opening a SMTP relay - then we will know that it has really arrived as a mature technology.