Bullshit. We can bitch about it being C#, but I'd prefer C# to Excel any day......and yet, when someone builds a 3D engine in Excel, they deserve some geek cred.
Of course, if he's trying to claim it's useful, then we might immediately respond with, "Why C#? Why not [insert option here]?"
Ok, yes, there's the "because I can" motivation behind things like hanoimania, and if you don't think that's awesome, I don't know what you're doing on Slashdot.
But there is a more serious reason this would be useful, either in C# or.NET: A managed memory OS would likely be more secure and more stable than one written in, say, C. They're also playing up the idea of having it be entirely verified. It's also nice in that if apps are all bytecode, it should be transparently portable across hardware.
Such a beast would likely not be a replacement for current OSes for a long time, because of performance. I'd love to be proven wrong here. Still, even if it comes at a heavy performance penalty, I know there are a lot of places I would gladly take an 80% performance hit for better security and stability, especially on today's hardware. In fact, that's a reason to run web apps. At the very least, there are small apps like the ragemaker which are useful despite whatever imperceptible performance penalty there is, but which there is no way in hell I'm going to run outside of that sort of sandbox. And, similarly, there's no way in hell I could expect its author to release a Linux/ARM version, but if it runs in the browser, it runs on whatever platform/OS I want.
I think that's a valid criticism of GP's point, but there are still reasons hardware and software are different here, and why it's more important for software to be open, particularly in this case.
There does seem to be real competition in hardware production, and there's also the fact that fabrication is still sufficiently expensive that free and open hardware designs aren't terribly useful to your average hacker, nor does it make any sense for a mid-size business to modify and contribute to their CPU designs if they don't have the resources to actually manufacture them.
Software is different. For one thing, it's entirely possible to operate at a level of abstraction such that the entire hardware stack may be swapped out for a competitor's, so we're hardly locked in. For another, an individual programmer can hack on open source software, let alone medium-sized businesses. Google can hack on Linux and make it do things no OS does, without having to start from scratch, and it often makes economical sense to submit such changes upstream.
I think here the main concern is how tightly this open-source project is coupled to proprietary technology. If Microsoft does something they don't like, they're fucked -- it is not likely to be trivial for them to port to Mono, let alone an entirely different platform, and any patents which affect.NET are likely to affect Mono. By contrast, if Intel does something they don't like, there's always ARM, PPC, and more exotic systems.
It also doesn't help that Microsoft is still in the OS business, and still cares about the OS business, which means this product directly competes with Microsoft, which means that if it ever took off, Microsoft would have the means and motive to kill it. Intel doesn't really have either -- it's designed to be portable to other platforms, and Intel has a motive to make things pleasant for their developers -- they're happy if it runs on Intel but not, say, ARM.
Given that Microsoft keeps adding stuff to C# and.NET, and that they aren't exactly contributing to Mono, it's not really surprising that things are the way they are. It may technically be better than Wine, especially if you explicitly target Mono, but that's essentially what we're dealing with here.
One way to avoid managing different code bases and ensuring the best levels of performance could be for iCloud to also run on Windows on AWS.
So we don't really know whether they're using Windows on both, which would again be a surprising choice. There are, after all, multiple services right now which will give you a Linux-based cloud.
It used to be possible to burn through those 6.5 hours very quickly, and often for the same reason -- if you didn't have an instance constantly running, you'd burn CPU spinning one up if you got a request every few minutes, because the instance would spin down after a few minutes.
But if you ping it repeatedly, that's a significant amount of CPU lost just keeping it running.
An instance makes a lot more sense. If my app actually fits comfortably in the free tier, I'm probably not getting enough traffic for several simultaneous instances to be needed. Running one instance 24/7 for free makes sense, and is going to be a lot more responsive in that "a hit every few minutes" category of usage.
And while they might fire up another instance in response to traffic, that seems unlikely for a low-traffic app -- "1 request at a time" isn't a big deal when you consider that this concerns just the actual processing of the request -- other requests can pile up behind that, and you have a hard limit in how long a request can take anyway.
Actually, I seem to remember someone re-implementing the App Engine Python API on EC2. The dm-appengine layer for appengine-jruby is also relevant -- while that project could use a bit of love, it means you should be able to migrate to other datastores reasonably easily.
IIRC, they used to have 6.5 hours of CPU time free, now you get a full day. Doesn't help if you get Slashdotted, but it's still a significant difference.
It does, however, show that they are not pro-Life period. If they can put conditions on it (the life must be innocent), so can I (the life must be intelligent).
Or we can change the conversation and stop insisting that life alone is what's valuable.
But using it for Python? I don't really see the point, unless you're actually planning to deploy Python-on-Javascript, in which case, I'd say you're Doing It Wrong.
Competing with multiple vendors on the same platform is not to the manufacturer's benefit.
That depends. For example:
A customer choosing a Windows PC from HP implicitly also "un-chooses" one from Dell, Asus etc.
But Dell, Asus, etc. didn't have to write Windows. Apple may have no competition for "machines which run iOS", but they also bear the costs of initial development and continued maintenance of iOS, not to mention improvements. If I bought a Droid with an unlocked bootloader, I could make it better (thus making me more satisfied with Motorola) by installing an upgrade from Google, at zero cost to Motorola.
This is why Microsoft is the company that makes any profit in the consumer desktop market.
They aren't the only one that benefits, though. Say what you will about Macs being superior; competition has driven PC hardware forward to the benefit of consumers. I think Apple switching to Intel was a pretty striking verdict on that.
I'm also not sure what any of this has to do with the earlier discussion of who has more marketshare currently. Whatever the motivation, the reality is that consumers are overwhelmingly choosing Android over iOS, which handily counters the claim that "Complain all you want about Apple's "Walled Garden," but I bet 95% of consumers would prefer..."
There are already a few "zen"-like games which work via biometrics -- you're supposed to calm down (or get really excited) to cause certain things to happen in-game.
But really, I don't see the point in an actual game. What effect would my emotions have on gameplay? Do I really want them to have an effect? I can only think of two games I've played recently where the player could really effect their character's emotional state:
Penumbra. In this series, if I'm hiding and I look directly at a monster, my character will slowly start to panic, eventually making enough noise to draw attention to himself and get eaten. So I have to look away to stay calm. This is partly scary because it's now left to my imagination what the monsters look like, and partly because as my character starts to get nervous, I get nervous...
Imagine if the game instead read my emotional state. It might read it as "panic" regardless, or maybe as "calm" anyway, considering I have a savegame a few seconds ago and I know I'm really sitting in a chair playing a game, not hiding behind a crate from a Lovecraftian horror. I suppose it could work, but it seems like it'd either translate into always panicking or never panicking. And in any case, I doubt any of these will make me actually physically panic the way my character does, to where I'm actually making noise...
Or, Mass Effect, or anything similar where I can choose a "good" or "bad" path. But convincing the game to do what I want is hard enough without this -- the menu options are often deceptive. Mass Effect 2 will often provide an opportunity to intervene during a cutscene, but it's already decided whether it's a "Paragon" or "Renegade" action to do so...
But these are role playing games. One thing that makes them so much fun, and so replayable, is to see what happens if I choose renegade. I don't want to be choosing renegade options because I had a bad day at work, or paragon options because I just got laid.
The only way I can see this being useful is with MMOs, but even there, my complaint is with the number of ways my character can emote, not that I have to tell it to be happy or sad. I suspect this would have similar problems to adding voice chat, in any case -- just as voice chat kills the ability of a guy to play a girl, or a 12-year-old nerd to play a 25-year-old hero or a 150-year-old drunken dwarf, sensing my actual emotions would make it much more difficult to play a character who reacts differently than I would to a given situation.
Actually, it's still worth complaining about, because there's a definite network effect here. While there are things Apple won't let me do with the iPhone that I want to do, the fact is, the more people use iOS, the more software development jobs are for iOS, and the more apps are for iOS -- and the more likely it is for a larger portion of these to be iOS-exclusive, and for at least one of them to be something I need...
This is exactly what happens with Windows. The more people use other platforms like cell phones or even Macs, the more companies are forced to migrate to something at least semi-portable, like the Web -- and the more I get to use stuff I want, like Android or outright Linux on the desktop. Or, failing that, at least we get the stuff that needs to be native on Android, too.
Except this would be worse than Windows. Apple is already going this direction on the desktop, and it really seems like too many people are moving in the direction of making iOS-like machines the norm... meaning the days when I can expect to buy a typical desktop computer and hack together some software to share with my friends may be numbered. The days a child can take the computer they have for other purposes and just use it to pick up software development may also be numbered.
So, complaining loudly about it, if it convinces anyone to avoid iOS and adopt anything moderately open, is still valid.
Suppose the Macbook was the most popular single laptop. Does that make OS X the most popular laptop OS?
Of course not. OS X is restricted to a few models of Macbook, while I can order laptops running Windows from Dell, Toshiba, HP, Asus, and each might have more models under a single one of their brands (say, Dell XPS) than there are models of Macbook.
Or was your point that Android is a weak enough brand that people don't understand the difference between Apple, Android, and some random other phone that claims to be smart?
1 It is the responsibility of the Father to A support his children B keep his [redacted} fly shut PERIOD
And why is it not also the responsibility of the Mother to do the same?
Regardless, what you are saying is that no one should ever have sex unless prepared to have children. That is a bit extreme, especially when you later encourage adoption centers. I'm really not sure how it's more responsible to give a child up for adoption.
2 Abortion should be the result of a doctor having to choose between the mother and the child (as in both will die RIGHT NOW) not any kind of "convenience"
Your use of the word "child" already gives your opinion away. At what point does it stop being a zygote or an embryo and start being a person?
If you said "conception", you have a pretty absurdly low bar for "person".
3 We need to fund research into artificial "Creche" tech to allow for premies to be supported (and in cases where a C-Section has to be done to save the mother)
Still going to be cases where your #2 happens.
4 Penalties for raping an adult needs to be severe (Life No Parole or Death)...
So you're "pro-Life", but you support the Death penalty? Interesting.
I'm also not sure what this has to do with the issue where a girl has been forcefully violated and is now going to be forced to bear the rapists' child for nine months, go through the incredibly painful process of childbirth, then choose to either raise the rapists' spawn as her own or give it up for adoption, and I'm sorry, but that is disgusting.
5 any org that is anti-abortion should also fund adoption centers (you have to do something with the kids)
Given that being anti-abortion already tends towards a higher birth rate, what you're suggesting would lead to a higher population overall, and also relatively fewer potential adopting parents.
Again, the Humble Indie Bundle (at least the latest one) includes Steam activation codes. If you remember, almost all of the original Humble Indie Bundle games released their source....
Since the Humble Indie Bundle not only doesn't require steam, but can be had mostly open source, clearly having a Steam version isn't an impediment to having a non-Steam version, or even an open source version. And clearly having the source to the non-Steam version doesn't compromise Steam's DRM.
Well, and Vimeo allows some videos to be downloaded with free registration, so that might be the friendliest...
One weird thing, though. Remember all the fury about Chrome dropping H.264 in HTML5? Just went to youtube.com/html5 with Chrome 13 and found it's supported.
Steam is very good with the DRM... I haven't had any problems with it.
FWIW, From Dust is available on Steam, likely with the same DRM. Steam sometimes warns when a game includes "3rd-party DRM", and From Dust now includes that warning.
But what makes Steam work is that it's not just DRM, it also offers something for the customer, too. Set up a new desktop recently, I downloaded the Steam client, entered my username/password, and downloaded a game I was halfway through. Took half an hour to download (on fiber), and included all my settings (keybindings, even!) and savegames. I just fired it up, cranked up the detail (it was a new desktop, after all), and hit "resume".
Having some amount of mild DRM in return for that is a fair trade.
If it was just invisible, then no deal. I had no problem with DRM that checked my CD, but that's a ticking time bomb -- it'd break on new OSes where the game would otherwise run just fine (no reason a game needs to install a driver other than DRM), it'd break when the CD is scratched, etc. Steam is also a ticking time bomb -- if Valve goes under, for whatever reason, it seems unlikely we'd get the patches they promise, and difficult for them to pull off even if they have all the good faith in the world. It's just that Steam provides a few things that make it worth the risk.
Why does Notch expect them to sell-out their morals and instincts for a few fleeting moments of fun and chance to be the bigger person over something they're making a bigger deal about than necessary?
Because if they accept, they get tons of good press, way more than the current bad press they're getting for suing over a single word. In fact, I'd imagine it would turn out better for them than if they'd never sued at all.
sorry but i rather not be treated as a pirate first and a customer second.
You say that, but you then admit a few things Steam does, which you just don't care about:
i did not want to trade being treated well as a customer for the 'oh shiny' aspect of being able to piss off my isp for downloading multi-gig games and a in game chat function with other people playing other games.
Well, I do like those things, except my current ISP doesn't suck.
I like being able to buy a game, go do something for 15 minutes, and then have it ready to play, without having to leave the house. At the moment (for the next few days, at least), I'm in a small enough town that the only other real option is buying discs from, say, Wall-Mart -- which isn't exactly convenient, considering I'd then need to do some research and find out if I need to keep the disc around, how I can make backups of that game, etc.
I like being able to buy a new computer, type my Steam username and password, and within a few hours, have all the games I care about installed -- and, surprisingly, with my savegames, keybindings, and other settings included.
I like being able to message a friend, in or out of game, and just jump into whatever game they're playing (assuming we both own the same game), or invite them into mine. For that matter, I like that the Steam dashboard seems to apply to most Steam games, even the ones which (thanks, EA) try to get me to sign up for their own competing service -- I can instantly pull that up and see the current time, a web browser, etc. I can click a player's name from an in-game menu and have it pop the browser open to their Steam profile. All this without alt-tabbing, in a nice translucent overlay so I can see what's happening in-game.
I like that all my games stay patched without me having to check them individually, and I've known Steam to even bother me to update my video drivers occasionally. If I could do everything through a similar package manager (like Windows Update, maybe), I would, but better a unified platform like Steam than each game adding something to my system tray, or having to check each game's website for updates.
If I can find a game without DRM, I'll buy it over Steam any day -- but, surprisingly, the Humble Indie Bundle included Steam activation anyway. If a game includes extra DRM on top of Steam, I won't buy it, which means I still have to pay attention -- I was a hair away from buying Arkham Asylum when I realized it had SecuROM on top of Steam -- and I think Steam itself warned me about this. Most of the time, I'll stick to indie games with Linux ports.
But Portal 2 was one of the best games I've ever played, and I'm not going to miss out on that experience because I can't play it on Linux, or... wait, is there anything else I actually want to do with a game that Steam prevents me from doing?
Sadly though this also means that the release of the doom3 source code will most likely be the last time id releases their engine source code to the community. like it or not steam is a drm platform first and foremost.
Bullshit. Again, the Humble Indie Bundle (at least the latest one) includes Steam activation codes. If you remember, almost all of the original Humble Indie Bundle games released their source. For that matter, you can buy Quake 3 Arena on Steam, and its source is released -- and I seem to remember that id games have included things like CD checks in the past. I much prefer Steam to putting a CD in the drive every time I play -- I've got a terabyte hard drive in my gaming rig, there's no excuse for that.
So by tying in steam into id tech 5 means that the release of the source code will be a no go because it might allow others to de-steam other titles easier.
If so, why wouldn't they have the same problem have existed with other engines? Quake 4 shipped with a CD check
They'll handwave away any problems as "something that happens with normal currency", ignoring the fact that they're claiming the system is better because it avoids problems with normal currency.
Wait, how is that a handwave?
Bitcoin does avoid a number of problems with normal currency. It maintains other problems with normal currency. That's like complaining that pocket calculators aren't an improvement over slide-rules because when you put the wrong numbers in, you get the wrong numbers out, and calculator enthusiasts handwave this as something that happens with other methods of calculating, also.
So, for example: Unlike cash, Bitcoin cannot be controlled by a central government, and is trivial to transfer around the world. Like cash, Bitcoins can be stolen, and you have little recourse if they are.
Or, another example:
Real resources can be mined by slaves who aren't compensates. BitCoins can be mined by slaves who aren't compensated.
Except in this case, the "slaves" are computers. This trojan sucks, but it's still better than actual slaves actually working and dying in actual gold mines.
Now, if Bitcoins had exactly the same problems as gold or other currencies, I'd agree. But it seems to have a different set of problems.
Slashdot Mirror
Bullshit. We can bitch about it being C#, but I'd prefer C# to Excel any day... ...and yet, when someone builds a 3D engine in Excel, they deserve some geek cred.
Of course, if he's trying to claim it's useful, then we might immediately respond with, "Why C#? Why not [insert option here]?"
Ok, yes, there's the "because I can" motivation behind things like hanoimania, and if you don't think that's awesome, I don't know what you're doing on Slashdot.
But there is a more serious reason this would be useful, either in C# or .NET: A managed memory OS would likely be more secure and more stable than one written in, say, C. They're also playing up the idea of having it be entirely verified. It's also nice in that if apps are all bytecode, it should be transparently portable across hardware.
Such a beast would likely not be a replacement for current OSes for a long time, because of performance. I'd love to be proven wrong here. Still, even if it comes at a heavy performance penalty, I know there are a lot of places I would gladly take an 80% performance hit for better security and stability, especially on today's hardware. In fact, that's a reason to run web apps. At the very least, there are small apps like the ragemaker which are useful despite whatever imperceptible performance penalty there is, but which there is no way in hell I'm going to run outside of that sort of sandbox. And, similarly, there's no way in hell I could expect its author to release a Linux/ARM version, but if it runs in the browser, it runs on whatever platform/OS I want.
Linux is written mainly in C, but there's also inline assembly.
I think that's a valid criticism of GP's point, but there are still reasons hardware and software are different here, and why it's more important for software to be open, particularly in this case.
There does seem to be real competition in hardware production, and there's also the fact that fabrication is still sufficiently expensive that free and open hardware designs aren't terribly useful to your average hacker, nor does it make any sense for a mid-size business to modify and contribute to their CPU designs if they don't have the resources to actually manufacture them.
Software is different. For one thing, it's entirely possible to operate at a level of abstraction such that the entire hardware stack may be swapped out for a competitor's, so we're hardly locked in. For another, an individual programmer can hack on open source software, let alone medium-sized businesses. Google can hack on Linux and make it do things no OS does, without having to start from scratch, and it often makes economical sense to submit such changes upstream.
I think here the main concern is how tightly this open-source project is coupled to proprietary technology. If Microsoft does something they don't like, they're fucked -- it is not likely to be trivial for them to port to Mono, let alone an entirely different platform, and any patents which affect .NET are likely to affect Mono. By contrast, if Intel does something they don't like, there's always ARM, PPC, and more exotic systems.
It also doesn't help that Microsoft is still in the OS business, and still cares about the OS business, which means this product directly competes with Microsoft, which means that if it ever took off, Microsoft would have the means and motive to kill it. Intel doesn't really have either -- it's designed to be portable to other platforms, and Intel has a motive to make things pleasant for their developers -- they're happy if it runs on Intel but not, say, ARM.
s/can't be arsed/don't have the resources.
Given that Microsoft keeps adding stuff to C# and .NET, and that they aren't exactly contributing to Mono, it's not really surprising that things are the way they are. It may technically be better than Wine, especially if you explicitly target Mono, but that's essentially what we're dealing with here.
TFA is short on sources, but mentions:
One way to avoid managing different code bases and ensuring the best levels of performance could be for iCloud to also run on Windows on AWS.
So we don't really know whether they're using Windows on both, which would again be a surprising choice. There are, after all, multiple services right now which will give you a Linux-based cloud.
Still surprising, given that they are about control, that they went with Azure rather than, say, Linux on Amazon EC2, or something like that.
It used to be possible to burn through those 6.5 hours very quickly, and often for the same reason -- if you didn't have an instance constantly running, you'd burn CPU spinning one up if you got a request every few minutes, because the instance would spin down after a few minutes.
But if you ping it repeatedly, that's a significant amount of CPU lost just keeping it running.
An instance makes a lot more sense. If my app actually fits comfortably in the free tier, I'm probably not getting enough traffic for several simultaneous instances to be needed. Running one instance 24/7 for free makes sense, and is going to be a lot more responsive in that "a hit every few minutes" category of usage.
And while they might fire up another instance in response to traffic, that seems unlikely for a low-traffic app -- "1 request at a time" isn't a big deal when you consider that this concerns just the actual processing of the request -- other requests can pile up behind that, and you have a hard limit in how long a request can take anyway.
Actually, I seem to remember someone re-implementing the App Engine Python API on EC2. The dm-appengine layer for appengine-jruby is also relevant -- while that project could use a bit of love, it means you should be able to migrate to other datastores reasonably easily.
IIRC, they used to have 6.5 hours of CPU time free, now you get a full day. Doesn't help if you get Slashdotted, but it's still a significant difference.
It does, however, show that they are not pro-Life period. If they can put conditions on it (the life must be innocent), so can I (the life must be intelligent).
Or we can change the conversation and stop insisting that life alone is what's valuable.
But using it for Python? I don't really see the point, unless you're actually planning to deploy Python-on-Javascript, in which case, I'd say you're Doing It Wrong.
Competing with multiple vendors on the same platform is not to the manufacturer's benefit.
That depends. For example:
A customer choosing a Windows PC from HP implicitly also "un-chooses" one from Dell, Asus etc.
But Dell, Asus, etc. didn't have to write Windows. Apple may have no competition for "machines which run iOS", but they also bear the costs of initial development and continued maintenance of iOS, not to mention improvements. If I bought a Droid with an unlocked bootloader, I could make it better (thus making me more satisfied with Motorola) by installing an upgrade from Google, at zero cost to Motorola.
This is why Microsoft is the company that makes any profit in the consumer desktop market.
They aren't the only one that benefits, though. Say what you will about Macs being superior; competition has driven PC hardware forward to the benefit of consumers. I think Apple switching to Intel was a pretty striking verdict on that.
I'm also not sure what any of this has to do with the earlier discussion of who has more marketshare currently. Whatever the motivation, the reality is that consumers are overwhelmingly choosing Android over iOS, which handily counters the claim that "Complain all you want about Apple's "Walled Garden," but I bet 95% of consumers would prefer..."
There are already a few "zen"-like games which work via biometrics -- you're supposed to calm down (or get really excited) to cause certain things to happen in-game.
But really, I don't see the point in an actual game. What effect would my emotions have on gameplay? Do I really want them to have an effect? I can only think of two games I've played recently where the player could really effect their character's emotional state:
Penumbra. In this series, if I'm hiding and I look directly at a monster, my character will slowly start to panic, eventually making enough noise to draw attention to himself and get eaten. So I have to look away to stay calm. This is partly scary because it's now left to my imagination what the monsters look like, and partly because as my character starts to get nervous, I get nervous...
Imagine if the game instead read my emotional state. It might read it as "panic" regardless, or maybe as "calm" anyway, considering I have a savegame a few seconds ago and I know I'm really sitting in a chair playing a game, not hiding behind a crate from a Lovecraftian horror. I suppose it could work, but it seems like it'd either translate into always panicking or never panicking. And in any case, I doubt any of these will make me actually physically panic the way my character does, to where I'm actually making noise...
Or, Mass Effect, or anything similar where I can choose a "good" or "bad" path. But convincing the game to do what I want is hard enough without this -- the menu options are often deceptive. Mass Effect 2 will often provide an opportunity to intervene during a cutscene, but it's already decided whether it's a "Paragon" or "Renegade" action to do so...
But these are role playing games. One thing that makes them so much fun, and so replayable, is to see what happens if I choose renegade. I don't want to be choosing renegade options because I had a bad day at work, or paragon options because I just got laid.
The only way I can see this being useful is with MMOs, but even there, my complaint is with the number of ways my character can emote, not that I have to tell it to be happy or sad. I suspect this would have similar problems to adding voice chat, in any case -- just as voice chat kills the ability of a guy to play a girl, or a 12-year-old nerd to play a 25-year-old hero or a 150-year-old drunken dwarf, sensing my actual emotions would make it much more difficult to play a character who reacts differently than I would to a given situation.
Actually, it's still worth complaining about, because there's a definite network effect here. While there are things Apple won't let me do with the iPhone that I want to do, the fact is, the more people use iOS, the more software development jobs are for iOS, and the more apps are for iOS -- and the more likely it is for a larger portion of these to be iOS-exclusive, and for at least one of them to be something I need...
This is exactly what happens with Windows. The more people use other platforms like cell phones or even Macs, the more companies are forced to migrate to something at least semi-portable, like the Web -- and the more I get to use stuff I want, like Android or outright Linux on the desktop. Or, failing that, at least we get the stuff that needs to be native on Android, too.
Except this would be worse than Windows. Apple is already going this direction on the desktop, and it really seems like too many people are moving in the direction of making iOS-like machines the norm... meaning the days when I can expect to buy a typical desktop computer and hack together some software to share with my friends may be numbered. The days a child can take the computer they have for other purposes and just use it to pick up software development may also be numbered.
So, complaining loudly about it, if it convinces anyone to avoid iOS and adopt anything moderately open, is still valid.
Suppose the Macbook was the most popular single laptop. Does that make OS X the most popular laptop OS?
Of course not. OS X is restricted to a few models of Macbook, while I can order laptops running Windows from Dell, Toshiba, HP, Asus, and each might have more models under a single one of their brands (say, Dell XPS) than there are models of Macbook.
Or was your point that Android is a weak enough brand that people don't understand the difference between Apple, Android, and some random other phone that claims to be smart?
1 It is the responsibility of the Father to A support his children B keep his [redacted} fly shut PERIOD
And why is it not also the responsibility of the Mother to do the same?
Regardless, what you are saying is that no one should ever have sex unless prepared to have children. That is a bit extreme, especially when you later encourage adoption centers. I'm really not sure how it's more responsible to give a child up for adoption.
2 Abortion should be the result of a doctor having to choose between the mother and the child (as in both will die RIGHT NOW) not any kind of "convenience"
Your use of the word "child" already gives your opinion away. At what point does it stop being a zygote or an embryo and start being a person?
If you said "conception", you have a pretty absurdly low bar for "person".
3 We need to fund research into artificial "Creche" tech to allow for premies to be supported (and in cases where a C-Section has to be done to save the mother)
Still going to be cases where your #2 happens.
4 Penalties for raping an adult needs to be severe (Life No Parole or Death)...
So you're "pro-Life", but you support the Death penalty? Interesting.
I'm also not sure what this has to do with the issue where a girl has been forcefully violated and is now going to be forced to bear the rapists' child for nine months, go through the incredibly painful process of childbirth, then choose to either raise the rapists' spawn as her own or give it up for adoption, and I'm sorry, but that is disgusting.
5 any org that is anti-abortion should also fund adoption centers (you have to do something with the kids)
Given that being anti-abortion already tends towards a higher birth rate, what you're suggesting would lead to a higher population overall, and also relatively fewer potential adopting parents.
The Humble Indie Bundle doesn't require Steam.
That was actually one of my main points:
Again, the Humble Indie Bundle (at least the latest one) includes Steam activation codes. If you remember, almost all of the original Humble Indie Bundle games released their source....
Since the Humble Indie Bundle not only doesn't require steam, but can be had mostly open source, clearly having a Steam version isn't an impediment to having a non-Steam version, or even an open source version. And clearly having the source to the non-Steam version doesn't compromise Steam's DRM.
Well, and Vimeo allows some videos to be downloaded with free registration, so that might be the friendliest...
One weird thing, though. Remember all the fury about Chrome dropping H.264 in HTML5? Just went to youtube.com/html5 with Chrome 13 and found it's supported.
Steam is very good with the DRM... I haven't had any problems with it.
FWIW, From Dust is available on Steam, likely with the same DRM. Steam sometimes warns when a game includes "3rd-party DRM", and From Dust now includes that warning.
But what makes Steam work is that it's not just DRM, it also offers something for the customer, too. Set up a new desktop recently, I downloaded the Steam client, entered my username/password, and downloaded a game I was halfway through. Took half an hour to download (on fiber), and included all my settings (keybindings, even!) and savegames. I just fired it up, cranked up the detail (it was a new desktop, after all), and hit "resume".
Having some amount of mild DRM in return for that is a fair trade.
If it was just invisible, then no deal. I had no problem with DRM that checked my CD, but that's a ticking time bomb -- it'd break on new OSes where the game would otherwise run just fine (no reason a game needs to install a driver other than DRM), it'd break when the CD is scratched, etc. Steam is also a ticking time bomb -- if Valve goes under, for whatever reason, it seems unlikely we'd get the patches they promise, and difficult for them to pull off even if they have all the good faith in the world. It's just that Steam provides a few things that make it worth the risk.
Why does Notch expect them to sell-out their morals and instincts for a few fleeting moments of fun and chance to be the bigger person over something they're making a bigger deal about than necessary?
Because if they accept, they get tons of good press, way more than the current bad press they're getting for suing over a single word. In fact, I'd imagine it would turn out better for them than if they'd never sued at all.
...but I do like Steam.
sorry but i rather not be treated as a pirate first and a customer second.
You say that, but you then admit a few things Steam does, which you just don't care about:
i did not want to trade being treated well as a customer for the 'oh shiny' aspect of being able to piss off my isp for downloading multi-gig games and a in game chat function with other people playing other games.
Well, I do like those things, except my current ISP doesn't suck.
I like being able to buy a game, go do something for 15 minutes, and then have it ready to play, without having to leave the house. At the moment (for the next few days, at least), I'm in a small enough town that the only other real option is buying discs from, say, Wall-Mart -- which isn't exactly convenient, considering I'd then need to do some research and find out if I need to keep the disc around, how I can make backups of that game, etc.
I like being able to buy a new computer, type my Steam username and password, and within a few hours, have all the games I care about installed -- and, surprisingly, with my savegames, keybindings, and other settings included.
I like being able to message a friend, in or out of game, and just jump into whatever game they're playing (assuming we both own the same game), or invite them into mine. For that matter, I like that the Steam dashboard seems to apply to most Steam games, even the ones which (thanks, EA) try to get me to sign up for their own competing service -- I can instantly pull that up and see the current time, a web browser, etc. I can click a player's name from an in-game menu and have it pop the browser open to their Steam profile. All this without alt-tabbing, in a nice translucent overlay so I can see what's happening in-game.
I like that all my games stay patched without me having to check them individually, and I've known Steam to even bother me to update my video drivers occasionally. If I could do everything through a similar package manager (like Windows Update, maybe), I would, but better a unified platform like Steam than each game adding something to my system tray, or having to check each game's website for updates.
If I can find a game without DRM, I'll buy it over Steam any day -- but, surprisingly, the Humble Indie Bundle included Steam activation anyway. If a game includes extra DRM on top of Steam, I won't buy it, which means I still have to pay attention -- I was a hair away from buying Arkham Asylum when I realized it had SecuROM on top of Steam -- and I think Steam itself warned me about this. Most of the time, I'll stick to indie games with Linux ports.
But Portal 2 was one of the best games I've ever played, and I'm not going to miss out on that experience because I can't play it on Linux, or... wait, is there anything else I actually want to do with a game that Steam prevents me from doing?
Sadly though this also means that the release of the doom3 source code will most likely be the last time id releases their engine source code to the community. like it or not steam is a drm platform first and foremost.
Bullshit. Again, the Humble Indie Bundle (at least the latest one) includes Steam activation codes. If you remember, almost all of the original Humble Indie Bundle games released their source. For that matter, you can buy Quake 3 Arena on Steam, and its source is released -- and I seem to remember that id games have included things like CD checks in the past. I much prefer Steam to putting a CD in the drive every time I play -- I've got a terabyte hard drive in my gaming rig, there's no excuse for that.
So by tying in steam into id tech 5 means that the release of the source code will be a no go because it might allow others to de-steam other titles easier.
If so, why wouldn't they have the same problem have existed with other engines? Quake 4 shipped with a CD check
Neither Youtube nor Vimeo are the most Linux-friendly way to do this. That said, I have no idea what they chose instead, or why...
They'll handwave away any problems as "something that happens with normal currency", ignoring the fact that they're claiming the system is better because it avoids problems with normal currency.
Wait, how is that a handwave?
Bitcoin does avoid a number of problems with normal currency. It maintains other problems with normal currency. That's like complaining that pocket calculators aren't an improvement over slide-rules because when you put the wrong numbers in, you get the wrong numbers out, and calculator enthusiasts handwave this as something that happens with other methods of calculating, also.
So, for example: Unlike cash, Bitcoin cannot be controlled by a central government, and is trivial to transfer around the world. Like cash, Bitcoins can be stolen, and you have little recourse if they are.
Or, another example:
Real resources can be mined by slaves who aren't compensates. BitCoins can be mined by slaves who aren't compensated.
Except in this case, the "slaves" are computers. This trojan sucks, but it's still better than actual slaves actually working and dying in actual gold mines.
Now, if Bitcoins had exactly the same problems as gold or other currencies, I'd agree. But it seems to have a different set of problems.
game developers don't care about whether you can play old games on new hardware.
Yet I can, whether they care about it or not. I'd like to be able to keep doing that, so...
That's not their business model.
...I don't plan to be buying games which target a specific piece of hardware if I can avoid it.