Apart from people wasting hours about arguing for/against their favourite licence, has there ever been an instance where an open source licence has disadvantaged users.
Most people are bothering about the potential for abuse. Has this ever occured? Is it ever likely to occur on a scale large enough to warrant the huge deal that people are making out of so-called licence problems.
Also, have any of these licences been tested in court?
Umm, how exactly is Microsoft in any way involved with open source (other than competing with it, of course), let alone "at the forefront of the open source movement"?
The're not, but I bet you can find a press release where they say they are.
I assume that this document is supposed to convince someone(a judge?) that these claims are true.
They are either truely ignorant in their own right or they are know what they are saying and are assuming that it would be too complicated for anyone to easily explain why they are wrong.
Given that open source has been trendy for a year or two now, every major computer company has jumped in front of the parade. If the DVD CAA want to make open source sound like a fringe movement the solution would be to show the judge a pile of press releases from companies like Microsoft,IBM,Corel etc. saying how they are at the forefront of the open source movement
These press releases always say that [company name] has always considered [trendy thing] to be an intergral part of the future of the computer industy. As such [company name] has played an active role in the development of [trendy thing]
blahblahblah, etc, etc.
Lets face it. There has to be some use for these press releases.
A few years I was working on a nice 2d Platform game. The project was dropped in favor of a First Person Shooter with the same name. The publishers wern't interested in a 2d platformer. It's been said before in this thread and it's certainly the case.
Publishers are only interested in clones of already sucessful games
It is a very rare event to see a game get published without being in the 'in' genre. Abes oddysee was one brilliant example. I'm not sure how they sold the idea but if you told most publishers that you were maging a paged screen 2d platform game they would be absolutely positive that the game would be a dud.
The stupid thing is that most games lose money which just makes the publishers more conservitive. 'We lost money on our last game, it obviously wasn't enough like that best seller.'
The game I'm working on has had trouble finding a publisher, mostly because it doesn't look like current bestsellers. I can't help noticing that my friends sit down for hours and play the thing though. I now have a likely publishing deal, Ironically it's part because my game is similar to one of their current games that is selling well.
I once had a possibility of having to do some GameBoy Color work. I saw the raw specs and was quite impressed and a little surprised that games for the GBC were not better than what I had seen.
I then saw the constraints on the system and it was so heartbreaking, The real killer was that you can't write to the display while the screen is updating. There were so many things that I'd learnt in my C64 days that I had planned that suddenly I couldn't do.
In many respects I would have prefered a C64 Handheld over a GBC.
So it has a decent CPU and it has pretty Screenshots, but as this link shows, even the GameBoy Color can do pretty pictures. It just can't move them very well. The proof of the GB Advance pudding will be when we see the moving images or the full hardware spec (With the big N the latter is hardly likely).
On second thoughts, What I would really like to see is A C64 handheld. Surely we have the tech to do one well now. Of course there are a few little changes that could be made here and there just to spiff things up a little.
Provide changable rgb defs for each of the colors.
Let the border be turned off without the hacks.
On third thoughts, what I would like to see is the video chipset from my second thoughts filling a frame buffer like a video signal and an Arm for the CPU. Then you'd have the possibility of
1. Run the Fancy Chipset emulate a 6510 on the arm and play old c64 games (cool)
2. Run the Fancy chipset and use the arm natively. (Lots and lots of tricks available then)
3. Just let the Arm write to the framebuffer directly (lets you do things the boring way).
On fourth thoughts, When are we going to get an Amiga Handheld?
There are four reasons I use Delphi and FreePascal over C++.(some only apply to FreePascal depending on switches)
1. No object instance variables. This means all objects are by referance which means you know when you are creating destroying and copying objects.
I wrote a base object in C++ once that reported when it was created and destroyed. I was horrified when I found out how many objects were created and destroyed automaticly doing relativly trivial operations. I resolved to only use pointers to objects in future in C++.
2. Properties, Delphi properties rock.
3. Published properties, There is no better way to support end-user visible properties of objects than in published properties.
4. 10 seconds for a complete rebuild of a major project.
Of course there are other minor things as well. virtual constructors, sets, nice string support, units instead of header files...
As formats get more features and capabilities they get more complex. I don't think JPEG would be worth implementing on my own since the amount of time it would take me to code the thing wouldn't be worth the benefits that JPEG2000 has over Standard JPEG or PNG (both of which have freely available implementations)
Hasbro didn't make these games. Atari didn't make these games. People made them.
Most of the games that Hasbro were suing over were very early on in the computer game industry. Were they as aware of intelectual property issues way back then as they are now?
It may be that Hasbro only realy has the trademarks. Did Atari have there employees under a contract where they got exclusive rights to the fundimental concepts involved in the games?
Does anyone know the answer to this. Does any one know of any devlopers for Atari at the time?
Many of the things that Tim Sweeney is after appear in Delphi.
I use Delphi as my language of choice. Many people challange me on this because most of the things I do isn't in the area of bulding guis from drag and drop controls. But Although that is a cool feature of Delphi it is not the reason I use it over C++. The language underneath is extremely well constructed.
Apart from the object orientation of the pacsal there are key new features.
there is Published Properties for Run time type information which is just plain cool. But other things are things like...
var
Wibble : Procedure;// good old procedure variable
Gleep : procedure of object;// Delphi enhancement.
Procedures of object let you call methods of instances of objects.
next
type
tFrogClass = Class of tFrog;
var
AFrog : tFrogClass
AFrog is a variable that refers to a type of object, not an instance of an object.
Parametric polymorphism is not supported yet. But the bones of the creature are there.
Imagine
MyFrogList:=tList.Create(tFrog);
The parameter of the contructor would be of type tFrogClass;
(Note - much of what is below is not actually in Delphi, I'm just pointing out possibilities for logical extentions)
There are two possible ways to do Parametric Polymorphism (PP from now). You could create a type staticly or Dynamicly.
Staticly would be akin to C templates. I think Dynamically would be More flexable, essentially Static PP would provide more compiler errors. Dynamic would have to throw exceptions.
Static PP would accept things like
type
tFroglist:= class(tList) with tFrog;
var
MyFrogList : tFroglist;
begin
MyFrogList:=tFrogList.Create;
Here a new type is constructed which would enable the compiler to do type checking on all items bing passed to and from that type.
Dynamic PP would accept things like
var
MyFrogList : tlist; MyCar : tCar;
begin
MyFrogList:=tList.Create(tFrog);
MyFrogList.Add(MyCar);
Here a cetain degree of Compiler type checking could be done. A smart compiler should be able to spot that a tCar cannot be passed to the list. The comiler would have to track all assignments to MyFrogList to ensure that no other objects of type list have been assigned. Tricky but not impossible.
Run time type checking would still have to be used if there is any chance of the compile time type checking missing anything.
Run time Type Checking would Cerainly be needed for something like the following
Firstly in my experience most people don't think those thoughts, just the smarter reflective ones.
Secondly the questions aren't the issue. It's the answers, and espesially the methods to find the answers that are important.
Philosophy is not about catergorizing difficult questions, it's about solving them. If you think philosopy is just a mechanism for efficiently expressing supposedly profound thoughts then you have missed the core of philosophy.
Unfortunately meny philosophers have also missed the core of philosophy.
The questions are uncertain. Philosophy is about solving those problems by providing arguments to suggest answers.
Philosophy is reasoning. It should be taught at an early age because people need to reason.
Many people believe that if A then B means disproving A also disproves B. I've come across it many times.
Look at an abortion clinic protest. You get pro choice and pro life people chanting slogans at each other. Most of them seem to have only a slight understanding of the real moral issues. Philosophy would give them the chance to analyze their own and their adversaries' arguments.
If the reasoning tools of philosiphy were taught at an early age (most aren't difficult, how to spot and avoid fallacies would be a good start) then they can use them in their day to day lives.
Just imagine how the average persons live would be different if they could spot fallacies reasonably well. Reading the newspaper would be an entirely different experience for them.
Now, just imagine how _OUR_ lives would be better if the average journalist knew how to spot a fallacy an also knew that their readership could as well.
My system seems to be suffering from the Y2k bug. It's 3:58am and my monitor is all blurry. My keyboard is broken too. The keys seem to be swimming around and trying to escape my fingers.
On the brighter side, my girlfriend is looking even cuter than usual.
Has any experimentation been done on creatures with differences in only their 'junk' DNA.
It just seems a bit iffy to say it's junk because it doesn't do something that we know other DNA does.
To reliably say it does nothing you would have to know how the whole system works, wouldn't you.
They should get more layers before releasing
on
A 140GB CD-ROM?
·
· Score: 1
If they want to take over from DVD ROM systems it would be better if they could increase the number of layers. Unless they can come up with a reader mechanismthat will support more layers that currently is out there (unlikely).
We don't need to upgrade and then find out that our 10 Layer system is old hat and they now have a 25 or more layer system.
(rambling now)
The credit card idea would be great for things like a Gameboy. GameBoy Riven? 10 Gig. On a Z80 I'm guessing you'd have to bank switch your bank switching registers:-).
Maybe the next generation Handhelds would be better.
I guess if the CreditCard reader device could be made small enough you could make a interface cart for handhelds. I'm not much for MP3s but the game potential is huge.
Hard to read some since the're signatures so many errors are possibe.
Jo?? Ca?ill Dan Beitman Scribble Risle Geiger Robert J. Mical (very arty too) 327002-01 REV A Ali??en E. Co????? Dave Moun Jay Miner Bel Pavireau Dave Dean Paw Print Darlaine Mc Donell E?levin Chu (Three non-acii chars follow) Carl Sassenrath Dave Nee?lle Ronald H. Nicholson j Se??n Dic?n Scribble Can't even tell which way is up. Mary McCoy Ste?? Shepard Neil Ma?in Bob "Kodiak" Burns Cheryl ?ill?ois Bill Kobb Mik? Di Fapp Mitchell ?ass Aki T_L Ca??? Neeues Bruce Thompson Don L??k ??ep M??t? Lau?i? jan Rusch Dale Due? Anne Mo?oles Jesn Belle? Joe Pillow Mike Slifeak Jeff L Tayler Lee Ho Dan R?i???qus Dave Doineman Something Lee Tall Scribble '85 Scribble Cris R Martin P??y?ybl??i Three chars (Angly lookin face, T hugging a square, and A guy looking at space panic) Another Scribble.
"While I think that his comparison of Socialism and Naziism is excessive, Socialism is a very repressive form of government. Yes, I've been to Europe and listened in amazement at the restrictions on personal freedom."
Overservations on societies are very subjective. I continually hear stories about American laws and regulations that amaze me. I haven't figured out this 'Land of the free' tag.
Censorship, encription, bodysearches at schools. It all sounds bad. Even if some of it isn't true the perception is there and you have to think about that when you consider your perception of other countries.
We got a small taste of some of this 'American Freedom' last month when Bill C was in town. He effectively has this human rights free zone 300feet around him.
We also had in the country last month the Sultan of Brunei and the Chinese head Honcho. Sure they had security, but they weren't as extereme as Bill C. The Sultan tipped better too.
ps. We also get World News Tonight with Pete J. It's really quite funny(and a little scary as to what counts as facts) if you don't live in the US. I guess you have to be under the propaganda blanket to take it seriously.
"He decided to use the Nintendo GameBoy as a standard for how much computing power a machine should have (in other words, very, very little)"
So why does their demo require Minimum of 100Mhz.
It's not hard to see how underwhelming this project is.
The reporter who wrote the Article about this appears to have swallowed someones marketing hype hook-line-and-sinker. He hasn't even done the usual journalist work of go to an analyst and get some sound bites (text bites?).
The best case scenario for Nervana is that they have been mis-represented by someone, maybe the writer of the article.
They might have a good model for terrain representation but that hardly constitutes a revolution in graphics. You still have to do everything else.
Using this as a base for graphics would be like the old days on the amiga when someone comes up with a neat video trick and tries to make a game based around it. Inevitably the result is a contrived usually crap (mostly never to be released) game.
This stuff could possibly work as an opengl extention, but only if it can be implemented in hardware.
This is the kind of writing that makes for wonderfull 'How to Be a Success' books. But it needs work to be anything more.
Scientific method exists for a reason. Coming up with labels and dogma are one thing but it doesn't really mean anything unless you can prove what you are saying is true.
You need a explicit definition of what a Mapper/Packer is. You need to categeorize the people with the labels Before you examine how ther react in a particular situation.
Retroactive labeling is infallible and consequently useless.
The claim is that Mapping/Packing is developed through environmental pressures. There should be a statistical correlation between certain environments and mapping/packing
If there are things that can change their Mapping/Packing status then it should be repeatable in experimental conditions.
To fill their goals they need
a Mapper Index (with test) Experiments to Show performance/index correlations. Experiments to show techniques to change the index Consistant correlations between induced index changes and performance.
The agreement mentioned in this article is a kludge. What is needed is a fix.
As we tend towards this information society that all pretentious journalists talk about, we are bound to come up with new bunches of information that would be worth something to someone. What is needed is a sensible approach to patenting, not sticking patches over the bits that look really bad and let the rest go.
The annoying thing is that most patent laws around the world seem to be relativly reasonable. The problem is that the people allocating patents seem to have only a passing interest in what the law says.
Some people say that software patents shouldn't be allowed and proceed to cite their favorite stupid soffware patents. But almost all of the absurd software patents shouldn't have been granted under the current laws.
I'm not sure if the EFF(or some other group) could sue the patent office for negligence. Something has to be done. Their ignorance regarding software patents is hurting the programming people. If a government misses patching an issue (like dna patenting) It could potentially hurt all people.
Something needs to be done. Is anybody in a position to do it?
Linux may not become the desktop operating system for the majority of users. But it hardly promised to be that. Being more common than windoze has only been talked about as a possibility, never a likelyhood.
What makes Linux strong is not what it promises but what it _is_. Linux is an operating system that some people like to use. It also does well some things that people want done well.
Even if the masses stopped using linux because it wasn't trendy or whatever the code for everything that is linux is still there, If developers leave then new developers can step in.
Since Linux is not a commecial venture it is never in danger of having devopment stopped because it is no longer financialy viable.
Also, since the devopment of linux is not profit driven it isn't being pushed into fields, trying to find a home like sun is doing to java.
Linux doesn't get targeted at a market. People use it if it does things they want.
There will always be people that find that linux does what they want.
Linux will always be improved because there will always be people that want linux to do just one more thing and have the ability to add that thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Apart from people wasting hours about arguing for/against their favourite licence, has there ever been an instance where an open source licence has disadvantaged users.
Most people are bothering about the potential for abuse. Has this ever occured? Is it ever likely to occur on a scale large enough to warrant the huge deal that people are making out of so-called licence problems.
Also, have any of these licences been tested in court?
[just wondering]
Umm, how exactly is Microsoft in any way involved with open source (other than competing with it, of course), let alone "at the forefront of the open source movement"?
The're not, but I bet you can find a press release where they say they are.
I assume that this document is supposed to convince someone(a judge?) that these claims are true.
They are either truely ignorant in their own right or they are know what they are saying and are assuming that it would be too complicated for anyone to easily explain why they are wrong.
Given that open source has been trendy for a year or two now, every major computer company has jumped in front of the parade. If the DVD CAA want to make open source sound like a fringe movement the solution would be to show the judge a pile of press releases from companies like Microsoft,IBM,Corel etc. saying how they are at the forefront of the open source movement
These press releases always say that [company name] has always considered [trendy thing] to be an intergral part of the future of the computer industy. As such [company name] has played an active role in the development of [trendy thing]
blahblahblah, etc, etc.
Lets face it. There has to be some use for these press releases.
A few years I was working on a nice 2d Platform game. The project was dropped in favor of a First Person Shooter with the same name. The publishers wern't interested in a 2d platformer. It's been said before in this thread and it's certainly the case.
Publishers are only interested in clones of already sucessful games
It is a very rare event to see a game get published without being in the 'in' genre. Abes oddysee was one brilliant example. I'm not sure how they sold the idea but if you told most publishers that you were maging a paged screen 2d platform game they would be absolutely positive that the game would be a dud.
The stupid thing is that most games lose money which just makes the publishers more conservitive. 'We lost money on our last game, it obviously wasn't enough like that best seller.'
The game I'm working on has had trouble finding a publisher, mostly because it doesn't look like current bestsellers. I can't help noticing that my friends sit down for hours and play the thing though. I now have a likely publishing deal, Ironically it's part because my game is similar to one of their current games that is selling well.
I once had a possibility of having to do some GameBoy Color work. I saw the raw specs and was quite impressed and a little surprised that games for the GBC were not better than what I had seen.
I then saw the constraints on the system and it was so heartbreaking, The real killer was that you can't write to the display while the screen is updating. There were so many things that I'd learnt in my C64 days that I had planned that suddenly I couldn't do.
In many respects I would have prefered a C64 Handheld over a GBC.
So it has a decent CPU and it has pretty Screenshots, but as this link shows, even the GameBoy Color can do pretty pictures. It just can't move them very well. The proof of the GB Advance pudding will be when we see the moving images or the full hardware spec (With the big N the latter is hardly likely).
On second thoughts, What I would really like to see is A C64 handheld. Surely we have the tech to do one well now. Of course there are a few little changes that could be made here and there just to spiff things up a little.
Provide changable rgb defs for each of the colors.
Let the border be turned off without the hacks.
On third thoughts, what I would like to see is the video chipset from my second thoughts filling a frame buffer like a video signal and an Arm for the CPU. Then you'd have the possibility of
1. Run the Fancy Chipset emulate a 6510 on the arm and play old c64 games (cool)
2. Run the Fancy chipset and use the arm natively. (Lots and lots of tricks available then)
3. Just let the Arm write to the framebuffer directly (lets you do things the boring way).
On fourth thoughts, When are we going to get an Amiga Handheld?
Actually, not supporting multiple inheritence and C++ style templates are two of the things that I think count in the favour of FreePascal.
I think there is room for a Template system I just don't like the idea of a template system that has the power to chuck type checking out the window.
Something where you could define a template and then have a line required to activate it
for instance if you have a swap(TypeA,TypeA) template then to be allowed to use it on Integers you need something along the lines of
Allow Swap(Integer,Integer);
This way You don't run as much risk of creating a new function from a template by mistake.
There are four reasons I use Delphi and FreePascal over C++.(some only apply to FreePascal depending on switches)
1. No object instance variables. This means all objects are by referance which means you know when you are creating destroying and copying objects.
I wrote a base object in C++ once that reported when it was created and destroyed. I was horrified when I found out how many objects were created and destroyed automaticly doing relativly trivial operations. I resolved to only use pointers to objects in future in C++.
2. Properties, Delphi properties rock.
3. Published properties, There is no better way to support end-user visible properties of objects than in published properties.
4. 10 seconds for a complete rebuild of a major project.
Of course there are other minor things as well. virtual constructors, sets, nice string support, units instead of header files...
They should give us JPEG2000Lib.
As formats get more features and capabilities they get more complex. I don't think JPEG would be worth implementing on my own since the amount of time it would take me to code the thing wouldn't be worth the benefits that JPEG2000 has over Standard JPEG or PNG (both of which have freely available implementations)
So...
Anyone want to write a system to use spare texture memory as swap. Presumably it would be a bit speedier than Hard Disk.
Hasbro didn't make these games. Atari didn't make these games. People made them.
Most of the games that Hasbro were suing over were very early on in the computer game industry. Were they as aware of intelectual property issues way back then as they are now?
It may be that Hasbro only realy has the trademarks. Did Atari have there employees under a contract where they got exclusive rights to the fundimental concepts involved in the games?
Does anyone know the answer to this. Does any one know of any devlopers for Atari at the time?
I'd be interested to hear.
Many of the things that Tim Sweeney is after appear in Delphi.
// good old procedure variable
// Delphi
:= class(tList) with tFrog;
:= tFrog;
:one of ContainerType);
I use Delphi as my language of choice. Many people challange me on this because most of the things I do isn't in the area of bulding guis from drag and drop controls. But Although that is a cool feature of Delphi it is not the reason I use it over C++. The language underneath is extremely well constructed.
Apart from the object orientation of the pacsal there are key new features.
there is Published Properties for Run time type information which is just plain cool. But other things are things like...
var
Wibble : Procedure;
Gleep : procedure of object;
enhancement.
Procedures of object let you call methods of instances of objects.
next
type
tFrogClass = Class of tFrog;
var
AFrog : tFrogClass
AFrog is a variable that refers to a type of object, not an instance of an object.
Parametric polymorphism is not supported yet. But the bones of the creature are there.
Imagine
MyFrogList:=tList.Create(tFrog);
The parameter of the contructor would be of type tFrogClass;
(Note - much of what is below is not actually in Delphi, I'm just pointing out possibilities for logical extentions)
There are two possible ways to do Parametric Polymorphism (PP from now). You could create a type staticly
or Dynamicly.
Staticly would be akin to C templates. I think Dynamically would be More flexable, essentially Static PP would provide more compiler errors. Dynamic would have to throw exceptions.
Static PP would accept things like
type
tFroglist
var
MyFrogList : tFroglist;
begin
MyFrogList:=tFrogList.Create;
Here a new type is constructed which would enable the compiler to do type checking on all items bing passed to and from that type.
Dynamic PP would accept things like
var
MyFrogList : tlist;
MyCar : tCar;
begin
MyFrogList:=tList.Create(tFrog);
MyFrogList.Add(MyCar);
Here a cetain degree of Compiler type checking could be done. A smart compiler should be able to spot that a tCar cannot be passed to the list.
The comiler would have to track all assignments to MyFrogList to ensure that no other objects of type list have been assigned. Tricky but not impossible.
Run time type checking would still have to be used if there is any chance of the compile time type checking missing anything.
Run time Type Checking would Cerainly be needed for something like the following
type
tClassOfAnything : class of tObject;
var
MyFrogList : tlist;
ListType : tClassOfAnything;
begin
ListType
MyFrogList:=tList.Create(ListType);
At the moment only one extra language feature would be required to support PP. A few more to make it nice.
You need to control function return types to be the class of the object used.
for instance Function tList.GetItem(index : integer) one of ContainerType;
This gets interesting because the return type is the contents of a variable of type Class of something.
Essentially the construct 'One of thing' is a type of checked type.
Similarly you could also provide the system for a parameter
Procedure tList.Add(NewItem
I'm relativly certain that something like this will happen eventually. Borland have always extended their pascal to support new language features.
I'm also quite confident that what they do to add this functionality will be much better than any design I could come up with.
I have already had bills restrict my internet access. Especially if I go over the timelimit.
Opposite-sex visits have been pretty expensive too..
If you take philosophy to a higher academic level a few more important questions arise.
Who is the head of department sleeping with?
Where is the coffee?
Good philosophy is essential.
Firstly in my experience most people don't think those thoughts, just the smarter reflective ones.
Secondly the questions aren't the issue. It's the answers, and espesially the methods to find the answers that are important.
Philosophy is not about catergorizing difficult questions, it's about solving them. If you think philosopy is just a mechanism for efficiently expressing supposedly profound thoughts then you have missed the core of philosophy.
Unfortunately meny philosophers have also missed the core of philosophy.
The questions are uncertain. Philosophy is about solving those problems by providing arguments to suggest answers.
Philosophy is reasoning. It should be taught at an early age because people need to reason.
Many people believe that if A then B means disproving A also disproves B. I've come across it many times.
Look at an abortion clinic protest. You get pro choice and pro life people chanting slogans at each other. Most of them seem to have only a slight understanding of the real moral issues. Philosophy would give them the chance to analyze their own and their adversaries' arguments.
If the reasoning tools of philosiphy were taught at an early age (most aren't difficult, how to spot and avoid fallacies would be a good start) then they can use them in their day to day lives.
Just imagine how the average persons live would be different if they could spot fallacies reasonably well. Reading the newspaper would be an entirely different experience for them.
Now, just imagine how _OUR_ lives would be better if the average journalist knew how to spot a fallacy an also knew that their readership could as well.
My system seems to be suffering from the Y2k bug. It's 3:58am and my monitor is all blurry. My keyboard is broken too. The keys seem to be swimming around and trying to escape my fingers.
On the brighter side, my girlfriend is looking even cuter than usual.
Has any experimentation been done on creatures with differences in only their 'junk' DNA.
It just seems a bit iffy to say it's junk because it doesn't do something that we know other DNA does.
To reliably say it does nothing you would have to know how the whole system works, wouldn't you.
If they want to take over from DVD ROM systems it would be better if they could increase the number of layers. Unless they can come up with a reader mechanismthat will support more layers that currently is out there (unlikely).
:-).
We don't need to upgrade and then find out that our 10 Layer system is old hat and they now have a 25 or more layer system.
(rambling now)
The credit card idea would be great for things like a Gameboy. GameBoy Riven? 10 Gig. On a Z80 I'm guessing you'd have to bank switch your bank switching registers
Maybe the next generation Handhelds would be better.
I guess if the CreditCard reader device could be made small enough you could make a interface cart for handhelds. I'm not much for MP3s but the game potential is huge.
I wonder how small a reader can be?
Hard to read some since the're signatures so many errors are possibe.
Jo?? Ca?ill
Dan Beitman
Scribble
Risle Geiger
Robert J. Mical (very arty too)
327002-01 REV A
Ali??en E. Co?????
Dave Moun
Jay Miner
Bel Pavireau
Dave Dean
Paw Print
Darlaine Mc Donell
E?levin Chu (Three non-acii chars follow)
Carl Sassenrath
Dave Nee?lle
Ronald H. Nicholson j
Se??n Dic?n
Scribble
Can't even tell which way is up.
Mary McCoy
Ste?? Shepard
Neil Ma?in
Bob "Kodiak" Burns
Cheryl ?ill?ois
Bill Kobb
Mik? Di Fapp
Mitchell ?ass
Aki T_L
Ca??? Neeues
Bruce Thompson
Don L??k
??ep M??t?
Lau?i? jan Rusch
Dale Due?
Anne Mo?oles
Jesn Belle?
Joe Pillow
Mike Slifeak
Jeff L Tayler
Lee Ho
Dan R?i???qus
Dave Doineman
Something Lee
Tall Scribble '85
Scribble
Cris R
Martin P??y?ybl??i
Three chars (Angly lookin face, T hugging a square, and A guy looking at space panic)
Another Scribble.
Couldn't this be done automaticly.
Mirror the page automaticly. Possibly even have that the default page. Have all links still go to the original site.
If you kept track of what links were followed on the mirror page You could absorb the commonly followed links into the mirror.
Another possiblity is to just have some software snoop the server type and do the mirror if it guesses that it is likely to be slashdotted.
I asked this a few years ago.
;-)
The response was that they didn't know where the source was, maybe gone forever.
OTOH NDA probably keeps me from saying the interesting bit
"While I think that his comparison of Socialism and Naziism is excessive, Socialism is a very repressive form of government. Yes, I've been to Europe and listened in amazement at the restrictions on personal freedom."
Overservations on societies are very subjective. I continually hear stories about American laws and regulations that amaze me. I haven't figured out this 'Land of the free' tag.
Censorship, encription, bodysearches at schools. It all sounds bad. Even if some of it isn't true the perception is there and you have to think about that when you consider your perception of other countries.
We got a small taste of some of this 'American Freedom' last month when Bill C was in town. He effectively has this human rights free zone 300feet around him.
We also had in the country last month the Sultan of Brunei and the Chinese head Honcho. Sure they had security, but they weren't as extereme as Bill C. The Sultan tipped better too.
ps. We also get World News Tonight with Pete J. It's really quite funny(and a little scary as to what counts as facts) if you don't live in the US. I guess you have to be under the propaganda blanket to take it seriously.
"He decided to use the Nintendo GameBoy as a standard for how much computing power a machine should have (in other words, very, very little)"
So why does their demo require Minimum of 100Mhz.
It's not hard to see how underwhelming this project is.
The reporter who wrote the Article about this appears to have swallowed someones marketing hype hook-line-and-sinker. He hasn't even done the usual journalist work of go to an analyst and get some sound bites (text bites?).
The best case scenario for Nervana is that they have been mis-represented by someone, maybe the writer of the article.
They might have a good model for terrain representation but that hardly constitutes a revolution in graphics. You still have to do everything else.
Using this as a base for graphics would be like the old days on the amiga when someone comes up with a neat video trick and tries to make a game based around it. Inevitably the result is a contrived usually crap (mostly never to be released) game.
This stuff could possibly work as an opengl extention, but only if it can be implemented in hardware.
This is the kind of writing that makes for wonderfull 'How to Be a Success' books. But it needs work to be anything more.
Scientific method exists for a reason. Coming up with labels and dogma are one thing but it doesn't really mean anything unless you can prove what you are saying is true.
You need a explicit definition of what a Mapper/Packer is. You need to categeorize the people with the labels Before you examine how ther react in a particular situation.
Retroactive labeling is infallible and consequently useless.
The claim is that Mapping/Packing is developed through environmental pressures. There should be a statistical correlation between certain environments and mapping/packing
If there are things that can change their Mapping/Packing status then it should be repeatable in experimental conditions.
To fill their goals they need
a Mapper Index (with test)
Experiments to Show performance/index correlations.
Experiments to show techniques to change the index
Consistant correlations between induced index changes and performance.
The agreement mentioned in this article is a kludge. What is needed is a fix.
As we tend towards this information society that all pretentious journalists talk about, we are bound to come up with new bunches of information that would be worth something to someone. What is needed is a sensible approach to patenting, not sticking patches over the bits that look really bad and let the rest go.
The annoying thing is that most patent laws around the world seem to be relativly reasonable. The problem is that the people allocating patents seem to have only a passing interest in what the law says.
Some people say that software patents shouldn't be allowed and proceed to cite their favorite stupid soffware patents. But almost all of the absurd software patents shouldn't have been granted under the current laws.
I'm not sure if the EFF(or some other group) could sue the patent office for negligence. Something has to be done. Their ignorance regarding software patents is hurting the programming people. If a government misses patching an issue (like dna patenting) It could potentially hurt all people.
Something needs to be done. Is anybody in a position to do it?
Linux may not become the desktop operating system for the majority of users. But it hardly promised to be that. Being more common than windoze has only been talked about as a possibility, never a likelyhood.
What makes Linux strong is not what it promises but what it _is_. Linux is an operating system that some people like to use. It also does well some things that people want done well.
Even if the masses stopped using linux because it wasn't trendy or whatever the code for everything that is linux is still there, If developers leave then new developers can step in.
Since Linux is not a commecial venture it is never in danger of having devopment stopped because it is no longer financialy viable.
Also, since the devopment of linux is not profit driven it isn't being pushed into fields, trying to find a home like sun is doing to java.
Linux doesn't get targeted at a market. People use it if it does things they want.
There will always be people that find that linux does what they want.
Linux will always be improved because there will always be people that want linux to do just one more thing and have the ability to add that thing.