---Your reading it wrong. That statement was in reference to SCO, and yes, Slashdot as a community is generally of the opinion that SCO are "Bad Guys". I'm not sure I 100% agree with that,
Bad to whom? IBM and Linux in general.. though it doesnt seem too good for them now.
---but I certainly am more willing to accept that characterization than I am to accept it refering to Microsoft, the way you seem to have taken it. Microsoft is motivated by profits and little else,
Any Public company has a FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION to make money in the interest of the stockholders. If a company does not put profits in front of everything, they are sued for failure to communicate fiduciary duty for the stockholders.
---but they do continue to produce some things which benefit the public at large to some (perhaps insufficient for the impact they have) degree.
All that matters is that they make the most money they can. The products are a means to that.
---SCO on the other hand really isn't doing enough for the world to merit sucking up my air.
The directors at SCO still have that fiduciary responsibility. If making lawsuits and collecting are how they do it, they satisfy that responsibility, even if they no longer "create" a product.
And if the store STILL refuses to give money back, call your credit card (you DID pay with CC, right) and say they will NOT accept a refund on non-working merchandise.
Hear hear, fishbowl, I was talking about the original parent, PasteEater.
He says he has never touched it.
Then he goes on to extoll how it sucks, it wont work, and two other very overpriced programs are "somehow" better.
Perhaps it's just a "conspiracy" theory, but it would seem in character to the way advertising is getting. Word of mouth is the best marketing, bar none. To use that idea and apply it to a webform would mean hiring a few monkeys, watch the big technews sites and blasting the open-source ones.
If you watch that, you'll see a lot of this "I never used it but it probably sucks" comments. And they're the ones that're watched.
You know, it wouldnt surprise me if certain software companies and trade groups paid people to denounce pieces of software in the OSS arena..
Trade groups for software almost always have bearing for the big names only. And they dislike or even hate open source.
Though, in the Linux arena of software, software usually starts kinda sucky, and then if it hits a chord (heh), people use and help make it better. It's like comparing Linux network support to Windows network support, or MPlayer, or OGG, or the many many server daemons.
I wouldnt be surprised if Bungee is paying/. to propigate this too.
This "I love bees" garbage is the new era of advertsing. Stealth, no one person, dont say product outright. And if you make people question what "it" is, they'll probably care later on.
A side analogy that goes well with this "gaming registration" is part of my small computer consult business.
I have one client who uses a Win3.1 machine with some certain hardware hooked up to it. ALl it requires is the serial in a file called serial.txt . It would normally require a dongle, but a big device connects over the paralell port.
This machine is 2.5 years old. I was called in because no other consultation business would touch Win3.1.
Now, 6 years down the road, when WinXP is made for medical equipment (which is undoubtedly will), how will I manage to reinstall XP when it dies one way or another?
Sayeth MS: " We're sorry Mr Crawler, but your copy of Microsoft Windows XP is no longer supported, and we do not hand out unlock codes any more. Thank you and come again.."
And really, I fail to understand the "its online, its new" apologists. I pay for it, I expect to control it. And no, my businesses will NOT accept cracked software, as some have said I should do after it comes out.
6 years down the line, I can still install Win98 on an old machine, provided I have the drivers to run the hardware. Never the less, it will still install and work. The same goes for Windows 95, 3X, NT, and 2000.
The same cannot be said for Windows XP. Can you guarantee that when WinXP goes out of support, MS will still hand out unlock codes? My greatest fear is not putting the CD in when a program runs, or having some dumb dongle, or some gimmick. My biggest fear is putting the power to run YOUR computer software in the hands of some company that can decide not to support it whenever they wish, and there's not a damned thing you can do about it.
A likely scenerio I can see Valve going through is thus:
1: They produce a forced online-register for new game. 2: A while passes, and game is "old". 3: More time passes, and they start loosing revenue. 4: They decide to sell themselves (and their IP) to another company 5: That company cares not if further "registrations" go on, and let the online register servers die. 6: That money you paid for to get that game is now suddenly... worthless, and the new parent comapny cares not.
Case in point: Aureal sound cards... Creative bought the rights to them, and now do absolutely nothing with them. Any work done is on Linux, and reverse engineered from Windows drivers.
All geeks support such a company who disregards all computer users as theifs, criminals and crooks?
Their program needs nannyware to even start up. As a geek, I find that reprehensible. Thats also why I use only windows 2000.. So I dont have to deal with MS's "change some hardware and fuck up your system" crap.
I also know that many geeks refuse to touch this flaming pile of crap (even if the game content is good). Provide a respectable way for us to play without resorting to demeaning us as criminals, by default, and Ill buy it.
Main windows support machine. It plays games ok, and gets the Windows crap done. The people I support use windows, so if I want money, I have to support it too.
--Dell Optiplex GX1 400MHz p2, PCI=>pcmcia gateway (dell wireless card: AP mode), ISA=>pcmcia gateway(lucent 2.4GHz, symbol 2.4 hopper), dvd reader, sb16, ati r128 all in wonder, 2 network cards (and 1 onboard), 384 MB ram.
Pure Linux testing machine. Serves as a Desktop that accompanies my windows box. Has up to 2 802.11B cards and 1 Symbol freq hopper card, and 3 wired connections. Runs Debian testing. I found this machine in the TRASH at a local college. Some idiot didnt plug the ram in correctly and it didnt boot up.
Pure linux, no desktop, serves NFS and SMB mounts, fileserver. Got it free after a small place I did work for got better hardware.
I can play games, listen to music, encode stuff on the fly, and play movies. I dont need any better yet. I am eyeing the 8Byte athlons and Linux. Possibly using that with Cinelerra..
I fully understand the GPL requires US copyright law. If the GPL is non-functioning, cpyright kicks in, and all 3'rd parties have 0 rights. And you only accept the GPL if you distribute.
What would you do if PARTS of the contract requiring source being shown was found to be unlawful by the courts?
It ws probably said with tounge really hard in cheek.. but it does have a meritous basis.
The founding fathers saw it fit only landowners could vote. They saw if they allowed everybody to vote, the poor could vote themselves more and more "welfare".
It was a sort of minimum requesite to participate. After all, would you vote somebody who's giving you handouts down to someone who'd cut you off of that same system?
(QUOTE) An OEM is required to sort through a potential legal morass of licensing issues around the GPL if it wants to protect its intellectual property rights. This creates extra costs from both a development and legal perspective. An example of this risk can be taken from nVidia. An nVidia programmer, in the course of developing a driver for one of its products, used a portion of code from a freely available video driver. The developer failed to realise the code was licensed under the GPL and would therefore require nVidia to release the source code for its entire driver. Because nVidia did not want to release the source code to its commercial software, the company incurred substantial costs to develop a new driver that did not contain the GPL code. (/QUOTE)
Slashdot Mirror
---Your reading it wrong. That statement was in reference to SCO, and yes, Slashdot as a community is generally of the opinion that SCO are "Bad Guys". I'm not sure I 100% agree with that,
Bad to whom? IBM and Linux in general.. though it doesnt seem too good for them now.
---but I certainly am more willing to accept that characterization than I am to accept it refering to Microsoft, the way you seem to have taken it. Microsoft is motivated by profits and little else,
Any Public company has a FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION to make money in the interest of the stockholders. If a company does not put profits in front of everything, they are sued for failure to communicate fiduciary duty for the stockholders.
---but they do continue to produce some things which benefit the public at large to some (perhaps insufficient for the impact they have) degree.
All that matters is that they make the most money they can. The products are a means to that.
---SCO on the other hand really isn't doing enough for the world to merit sucking up my air.
The directors at SCO still have that fiduciary responsibility. If making lawsuits and collecting are how they do it, they satisfy that responsibility, even if they no longer "create" a product.
And if the store STILL refuses to give money back, call your credit card (you DID pay with CC, right) and say they will NOT accept a refund on non-working merchandise.
Chargeback the fuckers.
Actually, I'll think they will be bought out, and the new owners wont give a rats ass what happens to the STEAM servers.
After all, look at them now? Pile of steaming shit. Pay 50$ and you MIGHT be able to play.
And then promptly found ;P
ObOntarget: They believe Atlantis is off of Spain..
Whether you download it off the net or BUY THE BOXED VERSION, it will NOT RUN without "internet authentication".
How do I put it nicely.. YOu're fucked either way.
You're right. Un-fucked executables with current game-data.
It's playable. It's fun. It's free.
Here's the bittorrent care of Suprnova!
;)
Link 1
Link 2
Link 3
Notice the 2 links are "Fixed".. Wonder what's fixed about them
Hear hear, fishbowl, I was talking about the original parent, PasteEater.
He says he has never touched it.
Then he goes on to extoll how it sucks, it wont work, and two other very overpriced programs are "somehow" better.
Perhaps it's just a "conspiracy" theory, but it would seem in character to the way advertising is getting. Word of mouth is the best marketing, bar none. To use that idea and apply it to a webform would mean hiring a few monkeys, watch the big technews sites and blasting the open-source ones.
If you watch that, you'll see a lot of this "I never used it but it probably sucks" comments. And they're the ones that're watched.
Moral issues? Care to explain?
You know, it wouldnt surprise me if certain software companies and trade groups paid people to denounce pieces of software in the OSS arena..
Trade groups for software almost always have bearing for the big names only. And they dislike or even hate open source.
Though, in the Linux arena of software, software usually starts kinda sucky, and then if it hits a chord (heh), people use and help make it better. It's like comparing Linux network support to Windows network support, or MPlayer, or OGG, or the many many server daemons.
Open frequency selectable 2.4 GHz card with capability of larger spectrum sizes..
You know, for the ham operators? Where's THEIR cards at?
That was a "news" post on April 1. None were all too sure if it was really true or not...
Guess it is.
I wouldnt be surprised if Bungee is paying /. to propigate this too.
This "I love bees" garbage is the new era of advertsing. Stealth, no one person, dont say product outright. And if you make people question what "it" is, they'll probably care later on.
This anthology has been on suprnova for at least 2 days. It just moved from the front page yesterday.
The torrent link
I was just thinking of "Not workstation, not desktop".
;-)
X86 with PCI is a slug of a computer.. What I was thinking of a start of enterprise was a machine with the bus of a SGI-type computer.
You got me
Thank you much, mr AC.
.
A side analogy that goes well with this "gaming registration" is part of my small computer consult business.
I have one client who uses a Win3.1 machine with some certain hardware hooked up to it. ALl it requires is the serial in a file called serial.txt . It would normally require a dongle, but a big device connects over the paralell port.
This machine is 2.5 years old. I was called in because no other consultation business would touch Win3.1
Now, 6 years down the road, when WinXP is made for medical equipment (which is undoubtedly will), how will I manage to reinstall XP when it dies one way or another?
Sayeth MS: " We're sorry Mr Crawler, but your copy of Microsoft Windows XP is no longer supported, and we do not hand out unlock codes any more. Thank you and come again.."
And really, I fail to understand the "its online, its new" apologists. I pay for it, I expect to control it. And no, my businesses will NOT accept cracked software, as some have said I should do after it comes out.
I'd consider defining "enterprise" as any multi-cpu computer that uses interconnects faster (and more i/o) than a PCI-express bus.
Enterprise: Heavy sun stuff, heavy IBM stuff, heavy HP stuff
not enterprise: X86, PPC
6 years down the line, I can still install Win98 on an old machine, provided I have the drivers to run the hardware. Never the less, it will still install and work. The same goes for Windows 95, 3X, NT, and 2000.
The same cannot be said for Windows XP. Can you guarantee that when WinXP goes out of support, MS will still hand out unlock codes? My greatest fear is not putting the CD in when a program runs, or having some dumb dongle, or some gimmick. My biggest fear is putting the power to run YOUR computer software in the hands of some company that can decide not to support it whenever they wish, and there's not a damned thing you can do about it.
A likely scenerio I can see Valve going through is thus:
1: They produce a forced online-register for new game.
2: A while passes, and game is "old".
3: More time passes, and they start loosing revenue.
4: They decide to sell themselves (and their IP) to another company
5: That company cares not if further "registrations" go on, and let the online register servers die.
6: That money you paid for to get that game is now suddenly... worthless, and the new parent comapny cares not.
Case in point: Aureal sound cards... Creative bought the rights to them, and now do absolutely nothing with them. Any work done is on Linux, and reverse engineered from Windows drivers.
All geeks support such a company who disregards all computer users as theifs, criminals and crooks?
Their program needs nannyware to even start up. As a geek, I find that reprehensible. Thats also why I use only windows 2000.. So I dont have to deal with MS's "change some hardware and fuck up your system" crap.
I also know that many geeks refuse to touch this flaming pile of crap (even if the game content is good). Provide a respectable way for us to play without resorting to demeaning us as criminals, by default, and Ill buy it.
If not, fuck Valve.
PS: I was a paying customer of 3 sets of HL1.
3 running machines..
--1 GHz athlon. SBlive, GeForce 4200, 1 gig ram, DVD+- burner, cd burner, 4 HD's. (windows 2k mainly)
Main windows support machine. It plays games ok, and gets the Windows crap done. The people I support use windows, so if I want money, I have to support it too.
--Dell Optiplex GX1 400MHz p2, PCI=>pcmcia gateway (dell wireless card: AP mode), ISA=>pcmcia gateway(lucent 2.4GHz, symbol 2.4 hopper), dvd reader, sb16, ati r128 all in wonder, 2 network cards (and 1 onboard), 384 MB ram.
Pure Linux testing machine. Serves as a Desktop that accompanies my windows box. Has up to 2 802.11B cards and 1 Symbol freq hopper card, and 3 wired connections. Runs Debian testing. I found this machine in the TRASH at a local college. Some idiot didnt plug the ram in correctly and it didnt boot up.
--Dual PPro 200 MHz Compaq Proliant server, onboard wired network, isa=>pcmcia(lucent 2.4GHz card), Adaptec scsi card, onboard scsi, shitload of 4/8 Gig scsi/sca drives.
Pure linux, no desktop, serves NFS and SMB mounts, fileserver. Got it free after a small place I did work for got better hardware.
I can play games, listen to music, encode stuff on the fly, and play movies. I dont need any better yet. I am eyeing the 8Byte athlons and Linux. Possibly using that with Cinelerra..
"""Because nVidia did not want to release the source code to its commercial software"""
"Did not want to" implies that they CAN. Can not would infer third party reasons why they cant.
SO.. YOu just didnt read it carefully enough. I know what Im talking about.
I fully understand the GPL requires US copyright law. If the GPL is non-functioning, cpyright kicks in, and all 3'rd parties have 0 rights. And you only accept the GPL if you distribute.
What would you do if PARTS of the contract requiring source being shown was found to be unlawful by the courts?
It ws probably said with tounge really hard in cheek.. but it does have a meritous basis.
The founding fathers saw it fit only landowners could vote. They saw if they allowed everybody to vote, the poor could vote themselves more and more "welfare".
It was a sort of minimum requesite to participate. After all, would you vote somebody who's giving you handouts down to someone who'd cut you off of that same system?
WHat? Third party stuff? I call bullshit. Nvidia just didnt want their stuff to be GPL'ed.. Source..(cannot find original MS article)
3 7,00.htm
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,39020381,21010
(QUOTE) An OEM is required to sort through a potential legal morass of licensing issues around the GPL if it wants to protect its intellectual property rights. This creates extra costs from both a development and legal perspective. An example of this risk can be taken from nVidia. An nVidia programmer, in the course of developing a driver for one of its products, used a portion of code from a freely available video driver. The developer failed to realise the code was licensed under the GPL and would therefore require nVidia to release the source code for its entire driver. Because nVidia did not want to release the source code to its commercial software, the company incurred substantial costs to develop a new driver that did not contain the GPL code. (/QUOTE)
Of course I'm flamebait. Anyone who tells the truth on slashdot is... but I'm RIGHT.