I think you're wrong about id's dedication to writing good 3D engines for the hardware of the times, regardless of complexity. Quake3's engine, for instance, allowed for multithreaded rendering when nobody else was even considering multiple CPUs.
It wasn't completely stable -- and I wonder how many people actually turned the feature on -- but it was multithreading *way* ahead of its time on the gaming front.
Remember the stories of the tech support call complaining that the user couldn't fit any more floppies in the drive? Because the onscreen instructions only said to insert disks, and not remove previously inserted ones first?
That asshole must have had a lot of kids. Typical.
Why couldn't Einstein have bred like a rabbit? The world would have been a better place.
It seems like people are criticizing the effort because they've only considered the code that will be saved, or that the game itself wasn't very good, or that nobody will be able to run it with commercial success. But what about the various other assets like art (models, textures) and music that would be saved?
I think it would kick ass for smaller dev groups to have a production-ready (well, it's been used in production, anyway...) library of (L?)GPL-ed art to pick from, even if it was just to have available at production time and not polishing/shipping time. All that stuff sucks up resources and gets in the way of little shops producing anything commercially viable.
Granted, it ain't Oblivion but it's sure better than looking at a blank page to start with. C
The things you're citing from the article are high-level problems that actually could have used government intervention to guide a common effort into a better place for everybody. They have been identified for a long time as something that needs real leadership on (energy sustainability, equity of opportunity for economic advancement of the young and poor, etc.) as these issues require concessions to be made on all sides and real leaders to broker a compromise between the competing interests. Sadly, we get none.
These people are there to serve the public interest, and not line their pockets in a perpetual job. They have lost sight of this.
For the author to essentially complain that "They asked us for transparency, and then bitched and moaned because what they saw on the inside was rotten to the core," is absurd. Of course we should complain! We aren't and weren't normally afforded the insight and oversight to make sure the current state of affairs never came to pass. We elected our representatives and expected them (naively) to do their jobs. And many of those representatives have had their positions for longer than much of their constituency has been alive (hyperbole, but not by much), at least here in the States. I'm not sure how easy it is for an incumbent to be re-elected in England but if it's anything like the States then said representative complaining that the constituency is restless probably is/was/has been part of the problem to begin with.
People say you get the government you deserve -- I believe this is true only if the government is truly accountable to the people. In the US, for at least as long as I've been alive, this has not been the case.
Remember, to be a threat to privacy, the government actually has to be a credible threat.
The Greeks can barely get their shit together enough to host an event where the entire world is going to be watching (the Olympics) -- granted, they had to do a lot of work to get the infrastructure in place, but they did most of it in the 11th hour.
They're my people, and I love them, but run an effective government? Not since Pericles... C
Dungeon Keeper 1 & 2 get this guy a free pass from me in most cases.
Those and Theme Park and (of course) Populous.
I was underwhelmed by Fable and Black & White, but that didn't make either of them trash. I actually thought Fable was pretty fun once I resigned myself to the fact that it was designed for the XBox and I expected something akin to a PC Adventure/RPG (which is what was promised, clearly, and not delivered -- the final result was still fun for me, though).
That's what I don't get about XAML and such: it's really just the Microsoft alternative to XUL and SVG+SMIL. Both of which have an excellent implementation that by most current estimates is used by about 10% of the surfers out there (I mean, of course, Firefox).
Now, I'll concede that last I checked Firefox didn't have a working SMIL implementation in their SVG stuff, but my point is this: it's already here, it does what WPE is supposed to do (which I haven't seen in the wild at all), and it's an open standard.
Why does everybody -- worst of all, developers that should know better -- count out XUL + SVG from the gate? Haven't web developers learned from the pain that was the last Browser War? C
One thing I'm not clear on, as I'm not a TiVo owner:
How can they push software updates down on you without your consent? Is this consent granted in perpetuity on purchase of a TiVo? From my point of view, I have bought a TiVo with a specific feature/function set, and their remote access and update without permission effectively adds up to electronic trespass and vandalism in my mind.
It what USA does an unpaid invoice not equal harassment by credit and collection agencies for non-payment? Whose credit report is this not going to go on? Why will they stop at just an invoice if they can make an example of this poor guy and seek similar profits elsewhere (think SCO's "licensing fee" extortion money that people willingly paid to not have to go to court)? This guy is financially fucked for the forseeable future unless he goes to court to get this bullshit stopped, which he probably can't afford to do anyway.
As far as holding your breath for unrealistic ideals -- I'm afraid I agree with you there. However, that doesn't mean we have to idly accept the situation as the status quo and go on with our lives. Indeed, not holding your breath for unrealistic ideals means you have to go out and affect change, even if it's only to complain to the assholes that are supposed to be representing your interests in the public forum. Blind cynicism is only useful for identifying the problem -- it doesn't help to fix it. C
You're absolutely wrong, and clearly didn't read the article:
The other current patent attack against Open Source faces Bob Jacobsen, the developer of the JMRI model-railroad control software. Jacobsen gives his work away, with full source code. He is faced with an invoice for over $200,000 from Michael A. Katzer and his company KAM, $19 for every copy of JMRI that Jacobsen gave away. KAM filed a patent making a broad claim covering the transmission of model-railroad control commands between multiple devices in 2002. Again, there's prior art: this technology probably goes back to the MIT Model Railroad Club in the 1960's. But Jacobsen could easily go bankrupt in defending himself or paying KAM's claim. Because the cost of a patent defense is many times the net worth of the typical Open Source developer, it's difficult to see how there can be justice for the little guy.
It seems very much like a hobbyist who's sharing his code with the rest of the world is being royally fucked by some vested commercial interest. Much like any other OS project could be. Wanna run the risk writing code that somebody making money off the same thing will get pissed off and decide to sue you personally for millions of dollars because you're fucking with their business model? No?
It doesn't matter that we're all criminals already for other things anyway -- that's part of a greater problem in our government and not related to the problem at hand. This is something that should have been nipped in the bud, as Perens says, a decade ago. C
Cedega is a modified Wine designed to run games better. It's not free.
Wine is a pain in the ass at best when it comes to running Windows apps, although it does work in many cases. I've never used Cedega, but I have used CrossoverOffice (from the guys that write Wine) to run Office. It worked reasonably well, but there were clear glitches and performance issues.
It's not a native solution, and most people won't consider it a viable option.
Thanks for the numbers, but I think it's about more than just marketshare on the XBox. Remember, Microsoft has Windows to worry about as well.
One of the main things keeping people from moving to Linux is games and entertainment software. If nothing else, the XBox and its forced use of DirectX instead of OpenGL is keeping Microsoft's Windows games platform alive. Of course, I don't know if that's even enough anymore, so they've started buying studios (poor Lionhead...)
4 billion is probably an acceptable investment in keeping Linux out of the home (indirectly, anyway) and helping the Windows crackpipe last a little longer for people that know better (...shame on me...)
Well, for instance, the Fourth and Fifth Amendments are pretty soundly trashed by the PATRIOT Act.
The surveillance powers granted are in direct circumvention of the Fourth Amendment, whereby a judge must be asked for a warrant for law enforcement to conduct any action against a citizen. The argument against is that informing the "Terrorists" of what is going to be searched/siezed in advance (which is what the Constitution requires) is inexpedient. The problem being that, if you're not a terrorist, you're pretty much screwed and have no recourse because any warrants issued (if they were issued at all -- see the National Wiretapping problem) were issued in secrecy and to talk about them is a crime according to other sections of the PATRIOT Act.
The Fifth Amendment is violated because the actions law enforcement takes deprive you of due process. You're not allowed to see the "evidence" against you until you've been exported to Egypt for "questioning" and returned.
Basically: the whole reason the Fourth and Fifth Amendments exist -- to protect citizens against overreaching Executive law enforcement powers -- is trampled by the PATRIOT Act.
Workplace standards in China mean that it might be politically or economically expedient for corporations to move all their operations to China and not have to face problems like paying American workers a living wage or dealing with labor they can't simply dictate terms to. But that's my own little, self-interested perspective on the matter.
The larger picture is that the very basis of our government, whereby we as Americans declare that human beings have certain qualities and liberties which must not and cannot be taken from them without invalidating the government, is brought into question and we as a whole are exposed as hypocrites for doing nothing.
And, you're right, this is about money and, more often than not, it's bigger than politics. It should not, however, be bigger than the philosophy on which we base our lives because then we become products, bought and sold like anything else, worshipping the almighty dollar. The dollar exists to serve us, not the other way around (much like government, now that I'm completely dreaming...), and it's a little galling to have our aggregate greed, apathy and hypocrisy thrown in our faces like this over and over and over again.
I agree with you. Unfortunately, the sad truth is that our own system is screwed.
The likely scenario: Google stands up for freedom and says that China will not receive service. Great, but: 1) The shareholders would oust the executive board immediately and install people who could see past all that "human rights" baggage to do business with 1.2 billion potential customers; 2) The shareholders would also sue under American Law that makes it illegal for a corporation to do anything purely humanitarian (see: Henry Ford); 3) Google would be signing their own death warrant, as Microsoft and Yahoo! serve the Chinese market, making tons and tons of money and reinvesting at least part of it (if they were at all smart, enough to ensure that Google died) back into the search business.
So, I can forgive Google to some extent. It's a shitty situation but they honestly had no choice from a business perspective. Until our government gives up this ridiculous idea that a little taste of democracy and freedom will have the rest of the world screaming for it in due course (see: recent Palestinian and other Middle Eastern elections), nothing will come of this. We'll continue to see our manufacturing and other industries outsourced to countries that have no labor protections and totalitarian governments with an agenda using our products to oppress their own people.
This isn't something Google can fix. This is one of those things where the government has to wake up, realize that the invisible hand isn't doing a goddamn thing to change these people's lives for the better (Nixon opened our markets and diplomats to China, and we're talking about them 40 years later the same way we were in the 60's), and take action.
The problem is that taking action means, literally, putting our money where our mouth is, which I don't think many Americans have the stomach for.
You DO, however, compile against and link to glibc, which will also change. I don't know that there are other C runtimes with as much penetration in the OS world.
Well, I think the internet has done a shitty job of regulating itself so far, specifically wrt the browser wars and the overwhelming dependence on Internet Explorer's busted handling of *HTML.
The web is also about interoperability, isn't it? Microsoft has done a good job trying to keep that buttoned down so far, and has subsequently made my life as a web developer miserable (judging from the complaints from other web developers, their lives are similarly unneccessarily complicated). Deliberately breaking the standard or continuing to use behavior that should be disabled by default (box model problems, doctype standards compliance switching, etc., etc.) stifles innovation instead of fostering it because you're constantly "fixing" your site to work with a crappy browser that has dominated the market for no good reason apart from inertia.
This is a serious problem. This keeps technically superior solutions/technologies from ever gaining traction.
I agree that I'm uncomfortable with having the way I develop software dictated by an outside party. But at the same time, unless someone explicitly forces these constraints on people, nothing will ever change. Making sites work properly across browsers is entirely too hard as it is on a single hardware platform (the PC) that has relatively uniform capabilities wrt display technology across nodes. Add portable devices to the mix and you can forget about most people adding support -- it's too expensive.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you're wrong about id's dedication to writing good 3D engines for the hardware of the times, regardless of complexity. Quake3's engine, for instance, allowed for multithreaded rendering when nobody else was even considering multiple CPUs.
It wasn't completely stable -- and I wonder how many people actually turned the feature on -- but it was multithreading *way* ahead of its time on the gaming front.
C
Remember the stories of the tech support call complaining that the user couldn't fit any more floppies in the drive? Because the onscreen instructions only said to insert disks, and not remove previously inserted ones first?
That asshole must have had a lot of kids. Typical.
Why couldn't Einstein have bred like a rabbit? The world would have been a better place.
C
It seems like people are criticizing the effort because they've only considered the code that will be saved, or that the game itself wasn't very good, or that nobody will be able to run it with commercial success. But what about the various other assets like art (models, textures) and music that would be saved?
I think it would kick ass for smaller dev groups to have a production-ready (well, it's been used in production, anyway...) library of (L?)GPL-ed art to pick from, even if it was just to have available at production time and not polishing/shipping time. All that stuff sucks up resources and gets in the way of little shops producing anything commercially viable.
Granted, it ain't Oblivion but it's sure better than looking at a blank page to start with.
C
The things you're citing from the article are high-level problems that actually could have used government intervention to guide a common effort into a better place for everybody. They have been identified for a long time as something that needs real leadership on (energy sustainability, equity of opportunity for economic advancement of the young and poor, etc.) as these issues require concessions to be made on all sides and real leaders to broker a compromise between the competing interests. Sadly, we get none.
These people are there to serve the public interest, and not line their pockets in a perpetual job. They have lost sight of this.
For the author to essentially complain that "They asked us for transparency, and then bitched and moaned because what they saw on the inside was rotten to the core," is absurd. Of course we should complain! We aren't and weren't normally afforded the insight and oversight to make sure the current state of affairs never came to pass. We elected our representatives and expected them (naively) to do their jobs. And many of those representatives have had their positions for longer than much of their constituency has been alive (hyperbole, but not by much), at least here in the States. I'm not sure how easy it is for an incumbent to be re-elected in England but if it's anything like the States then said representative complaining that the constituency is restless probably is/was/has been part of the problem to begin with.
People say you get the government you deserve -- I believe this is true only if the government is truly accountable to the people. In the US, for at least as long as I've been alive, this has not been the case.
C
Remember, to be a threat to privacy, the government actually has to be a credible threat.
The Greeks can barely get their shit together enough to host an event where the entire world is going to be watching (the Olympics) -- granted, they had to do a lot of work to get the infrastructure in place, but they did most of it in the 11th hour.
They're my people, and I love them, but run an effective government? Not since Pericles...
C
Dungeon Keeper 1 & 2 get this guy a free pass from me in most cases.
Those and Theme Park and (of course) Populous.
I was underwhelmed by Fable and Black & White, but that didn't make either of them trash. I actually thought Fable was pretty fun once I resigned myself to the fact that it was designed for the XBox and I expected something akin to a PC Adventure/RPG (which is what was promised, clearly, and not delivered -- the final result was still fun for me, though).
C
Like the poster above: use a UPS for your network gear.
I have Vonage at home, and all my networking gear, from the modem to the router to the adapter, is plugged in to a fairly hefty UPS.
It's great to still have net access when the power goes out :)
C
That's what I don't get about XAML and such: it's really just the Microsoft alternative to XUL and SVG+SMIL. Both of which have an excellent implementation that by most current estimates is used by about 10% of the surfers out there (I mean, of course, Firefox).
Now, I'll concede that last I checked Firefox didn't have a working SMIL implementation in their SVG stuff, but my point is this: it's already here, it does what WPE is supposed to do (which I haven't seen in the wild at all), and it's an open standard.
Why does everybody -- worst of all, developers that should know better -- count out XUL + SVG from the gate? Haven't web developers learned from the pain that was the last Browser War?
C
They've already widened my tube to the point I can barely sit anymore.
Thanks, but no thanks.
One thing I'm not clear on, as I'm not a TiVo owner:
How can they push software updates down on you without your consent? Is this consent granted in perpetuity on purchase of a TiVo? From my point of view, I have bought a TiVo with a specific feature/function set, and their remote access and update without permission effectively adds up to electronic trespass and vandalism in my mind.
Anyone?
C
This is *very* illegal. How do they manage customs?
It what USA does an unpaid invoice not equal harassment by credit and collection agencies for non-payment? Whose credit report is this not going to go on? Why will they stop at just an invoice if they can make an example of this poor guy and seek similar profits elsewhere (think SCO's "licensing fee" extortion money that people willingly paid to not have to go to court)? This guy is financially fucked for the forseeable future unless he goes to court to get this bullshit stopped, which he probably can't afford to do anyway.
As far as holding your breath for unrealistic ideals -- I'm afraid I agree with you there. However, that doesn't mean we have to idly accept the situation as the status quo and go on with our lives. Indeed, not holding your breath for unrealistic ideals means you have to go out and affect change, even if it's only to complain to the assholes that are supposed to be representing your interests in the public forum. Blind cynicism is only useful for identifying the problem -- it doesn't help to fix it.
C
Actually, sir, you're an anarchist.
Communism is about setting up a large entity (Government or otherwise) to control production and resources as common property of all citizens.
You're absolutely wrong, and clearly didn't read the article:
It seems very much like a hobbyist who's sharing his code with the rest of the world is being royally fucked by some vested commercial interest. Much like any other OS project could be. Wanna run the risk writing code that somebody making money off the same thing will get pissed off and decide to sue you personally for millions of dollars because you're fucking with their business model? No?
It doesn't matter that we're all criminals already for other things anyway -- that's part of a greater problem in our government and not related to the problem at hand. This is something that should have been nipped in the bud, as Perens says, a decade ago.
C
Actually, ATI is much more in bed with Microsoft than nVidia is at this point.
Traditionally, ATI has given their best support to their DirectX implementations, whereas nVidia has always paid close attention to OpenGL.
Further, this generation of consoles has seen Microsoft and Nintendo choose ATI, while Sony has nVidia in their PS3.
I think nVidia has been a much better member of the community (re. their Linux and OpenGL support) than ATI has ever been.
C
Cedega is a modified Wine designed to run games better. It's not free.
Wine is a pain in the ass at best when it comes to running Windows apps, although it does work in many cases. I've never used Cedega, but I have used CrossoverOffice (from the guys that write Wine) to run Office. It worked reasonably well, but there were clear glitches and performance issues.
It's not a native solution, and most people won't consider it a viable option.
Thanks for the numbers, but I think it's about more than just marketshare on the XBox. Remember, Microsoft has Windows to worry about as well.
One of the main things keeping people from moving to Linux is games and entertainment software. If nothing else, the XBox and its forced use of DirectX instead of OpenGL is keeping Microsoft's Windows games platform alive. Of course, I don't know if that's even enough anymore, so they've started buying studios (poor Lionhead...)
4 billion is probably an acceptable investment in keeping Linux out of the home (indirectly, anyway) and helping the Windows crackpipe last a little longer for people that know better (...shame on me...)
Well, for instance, the Fourth and Fifth Amendments are pretty soundly trashed by the PATRIOT Act.
The surveillance powers granted are in direct circumvention of the Fourth Amendment, whereby a judge must be asked for a warrant for law enforcement to conduct any action against a citizen. The argument against is that informing the "Terrorists" of what is going to be searched/siezed in advance (which is what the Constitution requires) is inexpedient. The problem being that, if you're not a terrorist, you're pretty much screwed and have no recourse because any warrants issued (if they were issued at all -- see the National Wiretapping problem) were issued in secrecy and to talk about them is a crime according to other sections of the PATRIOT Act.
The Fifth Amendment is violated because the actions law enforcement takes deprive you of due process. You're not allowed to see the "evidence" against you until you've been exported to Egypt for "questioning" and returned.
Basically: the whole reason the Fourth and Fifth Amendments exist -- to protect citizens against overreaching Executive law enforcement powers -- is trampled by the PATRIOT Act.
Please see: The Bill of Rights
Are you also anxiously awaiting their terms of service?
Last I checked, they block HTTP service from your account and various other ports on which they have a competing product.
Basically, VoIP through Vonage is a likely candidate for "quality problems" through Verizon as well.
C
Actually, yeah, I do.
Workplace standards in China mean that it might be politically or economically expedient for corporations to move all their operations to China and not have to face problems like paying American workers a living wage or dealing with labor they can't simply dictate terms to. But that's my own little, self-interested perspective on the matter.
The larger picture is that the very basis of our government, whereby we as Americans declare that human beings have certain qualities and liberties which must not and cannot be taken from them without invalidating the government, is brought into question and we as a whole are exposed as hypocrites for doing nothing.
And, you're right, this is about money and, more often than not, it's bigger than politics. It should not, however, be bigger than the philosophy on which we base our lives because then we become products, bought and sold like anything else, worshipping the almighty dollar. The dollar exists to serve us, not the other way around (much like government, now that I'm completely dreaming...), and it's a little galling to have our aggregate greed, apathy and hypocrisy thrown in our faces like this over and over and over again.
I agree with you. Unfortunately, the sad truth is that our own system is screwed.
The likely scenario: Google stands up for freedom and says that China will not receive service. Great, but: 1) The shareholders would oust the executive board immediately and install people who could see past all that "human rights" baggage to do business with 1.2 billion potential customers; 2) The shareholders would also sue under American Law that makes it illegal for a corporation to do anything purely humanitarian (see: Henry Ford); 3) Google would be signing their own death warrant, as Microsoft and Yahoo! serve the Chinese market, making tons and tons of money and reinvesting at least part of it (if they were at all smart, enough to ensure that Google died) back into the search business.
So, I can forgive Google to some extent. It's a shitty situation but they honestly had no choice from a business perspective. Until our government gives up this ridiculous idea that a little taste of democracy and freedom will have the rest of the world screaming for it in due course (see: recent Palestinian and other Middle Eastern elections), nothing will come of this. We'll continue to see our manufacturing and other industries outsourced to countries that have no labor protections and totalitarian governments with an agenda using our products to oppress their own people.
This isn't something Google can fix. This is one of those things where the government has to wake up, realize that the invisible hand isn't doing a goddamn thing to change these people's lives for the better (Nixon opened our markets and diplomats to China, and we're talking about them 40 years later the same way we were in the 60's), and take action.
The problem is that taking action means, literally, putting our money where our mouth is, which I don't think many Americans have the stomach for.
C
You DO, however, compile against and link to glibc, which will also change. I don't know that there are other C runtimes with as much penetration in the OS world.
Pretty funny :)
Unfortunately, I think the sad truth is so that they can criminalize searches for "Nazi Memorabilia".
You know, the thing they tried to enforce on Google and eBay a year or two ago. Does anyone know if they actually complied?
C
You're misquoting.
It goes (*ahem*): "That which does not kill me really hurts like a bitch."
Totally consistent with my experience, I'd say.
C
Well, I think the internet has done a shitty job of regulating itself so far, specifically wrt the browser wars and the overwhelming dependence on Internet Explorer's busted handling of *HTML.
The web is also about interoperability, isn't it? Microsoft has done a good job trying to keep that buttoned down so far, and has subsequently made my life as a web developer miserable (judging from the complaints from other web developers, their lives are similarly unneccessarily complicated). Deliberately breaking the standard or continuing to use behavior that should be disabled by default (box model problems, doctype standards compliance switching, etc., etc.) stifles innovation instead of fostering it because you're constantly "fixing" your site to work with a crappy browser that has dominated the market for no good reason apart from inertia.
This is a serious problem. This keeps technically superior solutions/technologies from ever gaining traction.
I agree that I'm uncomfortable with having the way I develop software dictated by an outside party. But at the same time, unless someone explicitly forces these constraints on people, nothing will ever change. Making sites work properly across browsers is entirely too hard as it is on a single hardware platform (the PC) that has relatively uniform capabilities wrt display technology across nodes. Add portable devices to the mix and you can forget about most people adding support -- it's too expensive.
I say: a qualified "huzzah"