DirectX is a lot more than Direct3D and DirectDraw. Sure, SDl provides input handling, but not at the level of DirectInput, it doesn't provide anything even close to DirectSound (yes, there's OpenAL, but that's another dependency, and the Linux branch is pretty much stalled) and even DirectDraw is more than just framebuffer access. There's video codec handling and graphics loading in there.
And you're confusing cost of software with cost of development. Sure, you can go out and dowload DevC++, SDL, openAL.. but then you have to get a team of keyboard monkeys working on bringing the libraries up to scratch, checking your additions work properly on all platforms and generally catching up to the stuff that you would already have if you paid for VC++ and DXSDK - buying the latter is going to be cheaper than getting the software for free but emplying people to fix everything up.
They aren't using SDL because it doesn't offer anywhere near enough features - it is at best a bare-bones framework that needs a lot of additional work to be really usable. OpenGL is rather more low-level than Direct3D and, even if you can avoid problems with vendor-specfic extensions (which you can't), you then hit the problem that Windows OpenGL implementations tend to suck, seriously suck, because everyone on Windows concentrates on writing Direct3D drivers rather than well-written OpenGL implementations. So you then end up writing openGL and Direct3D...
Or, put another way, why go to the expense when you can just get a copy of VisualC++ and the DirectX SDK? (BTW, I am a Linux user, and would love to see more companies behaving like ID, but I'm also under no illusions about how likely that is given that publishers are only staffed by beancounters and lawyers these days)
Which assumes that he'd care less. Given that he has the biggest military on the planet, he doesn't really need to. Not that he'd probably understand anyway.
... and the EU brought it in at the behest of WIPO. Which happens to be little more than a international legislation recommendation body sock puppet for US corporate interests.
Which is actually quite amusing, since Sony are still selling their NetMD minidisc walkmans (walkmen?) in the UK. In case you aren't aware of it these devices come with software that allows you to rip CDs or convert mp3s, wma or wav to ATRAC3 to write to minidisc via usb. As far as I have been able to find, there are no warnings in the manual about ripping CDs or writing downloaded mp3s (indeed the manual actually says "You can record audio data to your computer from sources such as audio CDs and the Internet... You can transfer audio data stored in your computer to an MD").
Erm, Mandrake, and always has been, rpm based. Do you mean "the rpms wouldn't install because they required some obscure library" or "the rpms wouldn't work because I don't know how install them"?
You know that, I know that, probably every remotely sane gamer on the planet knows that. Unfortunately it isn't you, me or sane gamers who say which games get made - the blame lies with the publishers, and they tend to be run by suits who haven't got the faintest clue about anything other than counting cash. they certainly haven't got a hope games-wise. And while these... individuals are in charge, expect more of the same.
It's easier shield a whole facility against EMPs though - just make sure that the structure contains a faraday cage and that all vital electronics that need connections to the outside world pass those connections though em filters. Individual computers for use in the field arehard, but buildings and some vehicles aren't.
SPEWs blocks netblocks, and that seems pretty popular. What you say is correct, as long as all you're concerned about is mail coming into your system. However, that isn't my problem - I don't use blacklists on principle. No, the problem I have is that I'm one of the people sat in a blacklisted data center who can't send mail to people at ISPs or organisations that believe in the Carpet Bombing approach to blacklisting.
IME the situation is even worse than that. If DNSBLs were run by people who made an effort to only blacklist specific IPs that were known to be generating spam right now then it may work better. But they aren't. They're run by people who think it is a good idea to blacklist entire datacentre netblocks because one guy was running a vulnerable formmail, and once blacklisted getting off the blacklist is often nearly impossible because they seem to want everything up to, and including, stone tablets carved by the hand of God as proof that the problem has been delt with.
While the real spammers just move to another IP address.
"you'd think it obvious that any time machine breakthrough would be all over the news right!"
Sure. In a naive and innocent world. Even in a world that wasn't run by massive military industrial bodies with considerable interest in exclusive ownership of technology rights, actually telling the public as a whole that you've managed time travel (let along telling them how) would be too dangerous. Human beings can do enough damage without screwing around with causality as well.
It will always be negative. Always. Those who support copy protection tend to be in two camps - those who believe copy protection actually works (also known as the group who have their head so far up their arse that they can count their own teeth) and those who admit that copy protection doesn't prevent the pros copying the product, but it does prevent "casual piracy". The former group obviously has a connection with the planet more tenuous than that held by someone on an LSD trip so they can be ignored. The latter group sounds reasonable, until you realise that, on the whole, "casual piracy" isn't Joe Sixpack giving his mate a copy of the original CD, it's Joe Sixpack giving his mate a copy of the cracked CD. So It doesn't even have that much effect on so-called casual piracy either. So you piss off your customer base for a tiny reduction in copying, while the number of cracked versions in the wild will probably increase because the customers that actually want to use the product, but don't want to put up with the activation, will use the cracked version.
It is utter, complete and total stupidity.
The only explanations I can come up with for companues that actually waste their time on this crap is that the decision makers don't even know what these computer things are, they need their collective braincell examining or it's related to insurance premium reduction.
Lighning is rather more than "50 thousand volts". A typical strike can deliver tens of millions of volts at tens of thousands of amperes (typically 25,000 to 30,000). People are hurt by the sound of a strike - punctured eardrums and even inner-ear damage can occur among people close to a strike, but the actual force a lightning strike can exert on the body is nowhere near the same league as a rocket engine or bomb blast. Lightning involves the extremely short-term ionisation of a fairly thin channel of air, the blast from it isn't really all that big. On the other hand, a rocket or bomb blast is putting the air under thousands or millions of pounds of pressure for a relatively sustained period.
"A cease and desist letter crafted by a lawyer carries no more legal weight than one written by an individual"
Legally, perhaps. But phsycologically, which is more likely to get someone to listen? A letter sent by a lawyer or solicitor indicates that you have already obtained legal advice and you have employed someone who may have considerably knowledge of copyright law. On the other hand, a letter sent by an individual, with a normal house address and obviously based on a stock online letter with words filled in is likely to have less of an impression. Yes, they have the same legal weight, but the former certainly gives the impression of someone more determined to follow through if the C&D is not adhered to.
No, a proper C&D, drawn up and sent by a real live lawyer (or as alive as undead bloodsuckers can get) on behalf of someone who owns the copyright on th ecode that SCO is distributing is the way to go.
Petitions are the last resort of the helpless attempting to achieve the impossible through the rediculous.
Slashdot Mirror
DirectX is a lot more than Direct3D and DirectDraw. Sure, SDl provides input handling, but not at the level of DirectInput, it doesn't provide anything even close to DirectSound (yes, there's OpenAL, but that's another dependency, and the Linux branch is pretty much stalled) and even DirectDraw is more than just framebuffer access. There's video codec handling and graphics loading in there.
And you're confusing cost of software with cost of development. Sure, you can go out and dowload DevC++, SDL, openAL.. but then you have to get a team of keyboard monkeys working on bringing the libraries up to scratch, checking your additions work properly on all platforms and generally catching up to the stuff that you would already have if you paid for VC++ and DXSDK - buying the latter is going to be cheaper than getting the software for free but emplying people to fix everything up.
They aren't using SDL because it doesn't offer anywhere near enough features - it is at best a bare-bones framework that needs a lot of additional work to be really usable. OpenGL is rather more low-level than Direct3D and, even if you can avoid problems with vendor-specfic extensions (which you can't), you then hit the problem that Windows OpenGL implementations tend to suck, seriously suck, because everyone on Windows concentrates on writing Direct3D drivers rather than well-written OpenGL implementations. So you then end up writing openGL and Direct3D...
Or, put another way, why go to the expense when you can just get a copy of VisualC++ and the DirectX SDK? (BTW, I am a Linux user, and would love to see more companies behaving like ID, but I'm also under no illusions about how likely that is given that publishers are only staffed by beancounters and lawyers these days)
Which assumes that he'd care less. Given that he has the biggest military on the planet, he doesn't really need to. Not that he'd probably understand anyway.
... and the EU brought it in at the behest of WIPO. Which happens to be little more than a international legislation recommendation body sock puppet for US corporate interests.
Which is actually quite amusing, since Sony are still selling their NetMD minidisc walkmans (walkmen?) in the UK. In case you aren't aware of it these devices come with software that allows you to rip CDs or convert mp3s, wma or wav to ATRAC3 to write to minidisc via usb. As far as I have been able to find, there are no warnings in the manual about ripping CDs or writing downloaded mp3s (indeed the manual actually says "You can record audio data to your computer from sources such as audio CDs and the Internet... You can transfer audio data stored in your computer to an MD").
"I have Mandrake and .rpms won't run for me."
Erm, Mandrake, and always has been, rpm based. Do you mean "the rpms wouldn't install because they required some obscure library" or "the rpms wouldn't work because I don't know how install them"?
"America is the only nation to have gone from barbarism to decadence without an intervening period of civilisation." - Georges Clemenceau
;)
Hence the reason that things frowned on in civil societies happen in America
Even better then: it not only stops spammers, it ensures that only people with a real need actually fill the form in.
Maybe it could be modified so that only people with >120 IQ can fill in the form too.... hmmmm.....
So what do they get if SCO is hung out to dry and nobody buys them?
Meh, you just renamed them, didn't you?
Oh for mod points, I couldn't agree with you more!
You know that, I know that, probably every remotely sane gamer on the planet knows that. Unfortunately it isn't you, me or sane gamers who say which games get made - the blame lies with the publishers, and they tend to be run by suits who haven't got the faintest clue about anything other than counting cash. they certainly haven't got a hope games-wise. And while these ... individuals are in charge, expect more of the same.
It's easier shield a whole facility against EMPs though - just make sure that the structure contains a faraday cage and that all vital electronics that need connections to the outside world pass those connections though em filters. Individual computers for use in the field arehard, but buildings and some vehicles aren't.
"IS THE SUN DYING?!"
;)
Yes. It depends what timescale you're talking about though
SPEWs blocks netblocks, and that seems pretty popular. What you say is correct, as long as all you're concerned about is mail coming into your system. However, that isn't my problem - I don't use blacklists on principle. No, the problem I have is that I'm one of the people sat in a blacklisted data center who can't send mail to people at ISPs or organisations that believe in the Carpet Bombing approach to blacklisting.
IME the situation is even worse than that. If DNSBLs were run by people who made an effort to only blacklist specific IPs that were known to be generating spam right now then it may work better. But they aren't. They're run by people who think it is a good idea to blacklist entire datacentre netblocks because one guy was running a vulnerable formmail, and once blacklisted getting off the blacklist is often nearly impossible because they seem to want everything up to, and including, stone tablets carved by the hand of God as proof that the problem has been delt with.
While the real spammers just move to another IP address.
Ah, you've not encountered the protection system known as "BlueTac" then? :)
Sounds like a load of crap to me.
"you'd think it obvious that any time machine breakthrough would be all over the news right!"
Sure. In a naive and innocent world. Even in a world that wasn't run by massive military industrial bodies with considerable interest in exclusive ownership of technology rights, actually telling the public as a whole that you've managed time travel (let along telling them how) would be too dangerous. Human beings can do enough damage without screwing around with causality as well.
It will always be negative. Always. Those who support copy protection tend to be in two camps - those who believe copy protection actually works (also known as the group who have their head so far up their arse that they can count their own teeth) and those who admit that copy protection doesn't prevent the pros copying the product, but it does prevent "casual piracy". The former group obviously has a connection with the planet more tenuous than that held by someone on an LSD trip so they can be ignored. The latter group sounds reasonable, until you realise that, on the whole, "casual piracy" isn't Joe Sixpack giving his mate a copy of the original CD, it's Joe Sixpack giving his mate a copy of the cracked CD. So It doesn't even have that much effect on so-called casual piracy either. So you piss off your customer base for a tiny reduction in copying, while the number of cracked versions in the wild will probably increase because the customers that actually want to use the product, but don't want to put up with the activation, will use the cracked version.
It is utter, complete and total stupidity.
The only explanations I can come up with for companues that actually waste their time on this crap is that the decision makers don't even know what these computer things are, they need their collective braincell examining or it's related to insurance premium reduction.
Lighning is rather more than "50 thousand volts". A typical strike can deliver tens of millions of volts at tens of thousands of amperes (typically 25,000 to 30,000). People are hurt by the sound of a strike - punctured eardrums and even inner-ear damage can occur among people close to a strike, but the actual force a lightning strike can exert on the body is nowhere near the same league as a rocket engine or bomb blast. Lightning involves the extremely short-term ionisation of a fairly thin channel of air, the blast from it isn't really all that big. On the other hand, a rocket or bomb blast is putting the air under thousands or millions of pounds of pressure for a relatively sustained period.
"A cease and desist letter crafted by a lawyer carries no more legal weight than one written by an individual"
Legally, perhaps. But phsycologically, which is more likely to get someone to listen? A letter sent by a lawyer or solicitor indicates that you have already obtained legal advice and you have employed someone who may have considerably knowledge of copyright law. On the other hand, a letter sent by an individual, with a normal house address and obviously based on a stock online letter with words filled in is likely to have less of an impression. Yes, they have the same legal weight, but the former certainly gives the impression of someone more determined to follow through if the C&D is not adhered to.
Thank you, now I have to go and get the brain soap again. You do know how much cleaning up that sort of thign hurts, don't you?
No, a proper C&D, drawn up and sent by a real live lawyer (or as alive as undead bloodsuckers can get) on behalf of someone who owns the copyright on th ecode that SCO is distributing is the way to go.
Petitions are the last resort of the helpless attempting to achieve the impossible through the rediculous.
"What if Longhorn does indeed provide more security, not only in default settings, but more inherently in the OpenSource?"
Then we'll finally know that Duke Nukem Forever is about to go gold.