Ok, there's that small matter of the DMCA, but with a small amount of work an XBox can be turned into the best media playing device around. Some of the features:
- Dolby 5.1 and High definition and progressive video support through component connection options - DVD, VCD, SVCD, MPEG1&2, DivX, XViD, Ogg, MP3, RM, Quicktime, WMV, TiVo, Shoutcast, JPG and many other formats - Remote control available - Built in 100BaseT, with optional 802.11x - SOFTWARE UPGRADEABLE, with multiple applications already available and lots more on the way.
Hell, the thing even has a games player built in!
For $250 CDN, this is the best value piece of home theater hardware you can buy, period.
I for one would like to see this kind of thing settled and create a legal precident. Two questions I'd like to see answered are:
1. Is the GPL enforceable?
2. Can you award monetary damages for the unlicensed use of software that was being provided at no financial gain in the first place (i.e. what is the "harm" done?)
Interestingly enough though, even though companies don't want to end up in court and have a decision go against them, the FSF probably have more to lose. If a test case went against them they would be in deep trouble. This may be why they always settle out of court.
I sure wish SOMEONE would decide this thing once and for all.
Don't worry, if they want to listen to it on a better system so they can review it, all they need to do is go to Kazaa, download it, burn it and put it in their own audio system:)
Now if the record companies were really serious about this, they would glue their employees to their desks (without internet access of course). That's where most of the pre-release stuff comes from.
Some advocates for Open Source Software are always getting up in arms the second someone uses GPL covered software in some way that slightly contravenes the license agreement. "If you don't like the license, don't use the software" they say.
And yet these people appear to have no problem going to all sorts of lengths to circumvent the advertising that is effectively a condition of use of web sites that are advertising supported. How is this different?
IMNSHO, if you don't want the ads, don't use the website. It's really that simple.
The three books I have found the most helpful, and recommended to the most people over the last many years would be:
1. Code Complete by Steve McConnell -- A briliant text on all aspects of software creation, language neutral
2. Software Project Survival Guide, also by Steve McConnell -- All you wanted to know about the best processes for executing a software project and getting it shipped with your career in one piece
3. Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment by W. Richard Stevens -- no intro necessary.
Make sure that the amp (or "controller" as they're known as these days) has LOTS of S-video and optical/coaxial digital sound inputs. Ideally, you'll want S-video inputs for DSS, DVD and a couple of spares, plus at least two S-video outputs (one for TV, one for VCR or TiVo type unit).
Also, if you can find an amp that has multiple sets of Component Video inputs and can switch between them, (3xRCA jacks per video signal) you'll be laughing -- that would give you the highest quality image on your monitor without having to switch the input at more that a single place. Unfortunately, these beasts are harder to find and are more expensive.
I'm afraid that you are in danger of losing your job -- unless of course your job is to know how to manage networks but not necessarily to know how they work.
The author of the article knows exactly what he is talking about. The two modes he mentions would work as follows:
Brokering - Napster does this. It allows two independent peers to "find" each other and then establish a direct correction, much like DCC in IRC. This follows the definition of a "broker" very well.
Relaying - basically like proxying, except that it allows two "clients" to communicate with each other. Both clients connect to the same server, which establishes a "virtual" connection between them by storing and forwarding the data between them, sort of like a bridge. The reason why this would require huge amounts of bandwidth is that the server would have to be able to handle the traffic for both ends of all connections that it relayed in this way. Seems pretty obvious right?
The other technique that the author hints at is "connection splicing". This is a mechanism whereby an intermediate basically "joins" two TCP connections together. There are a number of difficulties in doing this -- mostly to do with the unpredictablity of TCP sequence numbers. It probably would not work in this scenario. You really have to be in the middle to rewrite all packets that go between the two parties - e.g. as a bridge. It's pretty impossible to switch the endpoint IP addresses of a TCP connection midstream.
Like I say, maybe you're just a troll, but I would say that the main lesson here is don't go shooting your mouth off unless you are pretty sure that you know what you're talking about.
If you thought the schedule for Mozilla got stretched out over a long time, just wait until you see the results of a "real" democracy.
In my experience, developers (including me) basically never want to release their code because there is always refinements needed. The pressure, and eventual mandate, to release always comes from "above".
This new model proposes that effectively there would be no "above" -- the corollary of that is that there would be a tendancy towards bloated schedules, feature creep and gold-plating in order to satisfy the desires of the majority on the team.
That may be great for team satisfaction, but it doesn't generally produce great results from the end user perspective. something now is almost always better than something better a year later.
In politics, it is sometimes said that "democracy is the worst system of government, except for all the other ones". In software development, I would tend to say the opposite.
Where did you get the idea that IIS runs in kernel space? It is a service, granted, but it is _not_ a device driver, nor is it part of the main OS kernel.
Maybe you know something that I don't, but I'm pretty sure it runs in userland.
I don't want to be cruel here, but it seems to me that if this is a commercial venture, and the current publisher doesn't want to fund a second edition, then it can't be a very successful commercial venture.
Don't get me wrong, I have a very strong, and very very commercial need for this information. I have had to hand reverse-engineer the Linux IPv4 stack to make some custom mods for work purposes. And, in fact, I almost bought the first edition of this book. The reasons I didn't were - 1. The book didn't go into _nearly_ enough detail for my needs - I felt that it gave overview information that was of academic interest to readers who didn't need to actually change the code but not enough meat for those who did - and 2. It was already out of date (a subject that the authors are trying to address here).
Unfortunately, when we are talking about a Free OS, and particularly about an area of documentation that is of interest to only a very specific subset of readers. It is a very difficult commercial proposition. The intersection of the set of people who are willing to spend the money on this information (generally business reasons) and the set of people for whom this level of detail is sufficient (probably more students and more casual readers) is rather small.
This is the classic area where the community has provided grass-roots documentation, (HOWTOs, FAQs etc.) rather than commercial interests getting involved.
Sorry to be harsh, but there's probably a good reason why Coriolis doesn't want to continue this publication. They're in it for the $$$.
In an ideal Open Source world, everyone will take the software, add functionality and share their changes with the world, for the greater good of all.
In reality though, we're seeing certain corporate interests using Free software to reduce their costs and increase their profitability. The percentage of sharing back compared to simple usage in very small.
The exact same situation happens with "sharing" tools like Gnutella, Napster etc. People are only too happy to "share" someone else's bandwidth to download stuff they want. Allowing somebody else to share their bandwidth is another matter.
I guess the bottom line is, people want to take if they can get something for nothing. Only some of those want to give back too.
Sure, call my cynical - I regard that as one of my better traits;)
for a grand total of 2855 executable modules and around 367 megabytes of binary (non debug) code.
And that isn't even the Server version.
What is classed as the operating system here is far more than just the kernel and associated drivers. How many of these defects are user interface glitches in Minesweeper and Pinball do you think?
I have to wonder, if there was a system that tracked all reported bugs, annoyances and imperfections in every RPM distributed with RedHat, how many "defects" the equivilant database would contain.
...a keyboard and mouse is no longer the fastest method of input. Give me real speech recognition, or even better, thought recognition, and I'll take that hand-held, wireless-yet-100 megabit/sec networked, ultra hi-res TI computer and throw away my Pentium IX or Itanium V or whatever I have by then.
Attempting to blackmail a company like Visa for ten million seems a little lame. If the crackers had anything major you would think they would shoot for a bit more than that from a company who does in the trillions of dollars of business a year.
Also the fact that this breach happend last July would point to the probability that Visa isn't particularly worried.
I'd say this is just another case of the media trying to make a frenzy out of a minor security infraction.
Just my 2 pence.
GPL'ing the source code is great but...
on
Quake 1 GPL'ed
·
· Score: 1
...putting out the design documentation would be even better:) As someone who's spent quite a bit of time trying to extend an open source project with little or no docs, I can attest to the fact that availablity of the source code is only half the problem - understanding it is the other half.
With a system so complex and presumably huge as Quake, knowing where to start is going to be quite a challenge (and I don't mean at main(argc, argv)!) A little background knowledge would go a VERY long way - how about it JC?
huge props to id though - leading the industry by example once again.
When Netscape went big they were in the right place at the right time. Few of the big guys had clued in on the web and Netscape got a BIG head start and made a name for themselves before anyone else caught up.
This time is different. In the last few weeks, both Sun and M$ have announced their plans for web-hosted applications. If Andreesen thinks he can "rule this space" he is suffering from extreme delusions of grandeour.
Slashdot Mirror
or should that be "studio dick head Cook"?
Ok, there's that small matter of the DMCA, but with a small amount of work an XBox can be turned into the best media playing device around. Some of the features:
- Dolby 5.1 and High definition and progressive video support through component connection options
- DVD, VCD, SVCD, MPEG1&2, DivX, XViD, Ogg, MP3, RM, Quicktime, WMV, TiVo, Shoutcast, JPG and many other formats
- Remote control available
- Built in 100BaseT, with optional 802.11x
- SOFTWARE UPGRADEABLE, with multiple applications already available and lots more on the way.
Hell, the thing even has a games player built in!
For $250 CDN, this is the best value piece of home theater hardware you can buy, period.
Just don't fart in the suit, that could distract you from your phone call ;)
I for one would like to see this kind of thing settled and create a legal precident. Two questions I'd like to see answered are:
1. Is the GPL enforceable?
2. Can you award monetary damages for the unlicensed use of software that was being provided at no financial gain in the first place (i.e. what is the "harm" done?)
Interestingly enough though, even though companies don't want to end up in court and have a decision go against them, the FSF probably have more to lose. If a test case went against them they would be in deep trouble. This may be why they always settle out of court.
I sure wish SOMEONE would decide this thing once and for all.
Don't worry, if they want to listen to it on a better system so they can review it, all they need to do is go to Kazaa, download it, burn it and put it in their own audio system :)
Now if the record companies were really serious about this, they would glue their employees to their desks (without internet access of course). That's where most of the pre-release stuff comes from.
... a battery farm of these?
Would you like your Pentium in Original or Extra Crispy?
Sony are trying to get people who rip music off CDs killed in horrific car crashes ;)
Some advocates for Open Source Software are always getting up in arms the second someone uses GPL covered software in some way that slightly contravenes the license agreement. "If you don't like the license, don't use the software" they say.
And yet these people appear to have no problem going to all sorts of lengths to circumvent the advertising that is effectively a condition of use of web sites that are advertising supported. How is this different?
IMNSHO, if you don't want the ads, don't use the website. It's really that simple.
The three books I have found the most helpful, and recommended to the most people over the last many years would be:
1. Code Complete by Steve McConnell -- A briliant text on all aspects of software creation, language neutral
2. Software Project Survival Guide, also by Steve McConnell -- All you wanted to know about the best processes for executing a software project and getting it shipped with your career in one piece
3. Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment by W. Richard Stevens -- no intro necessary.
Make sure that the amp (or "controller" as they're known as these days) has LOTS of S-video and optical/coaxial digital sound inputs. Ideally, you'll want S-video inputs for DSS, DVD and a couple of spares, plus at least two S-video outputs (one for TV, one for VCR or TiVo type unit).
Also, if you can find an amp that has multiple sets of Component Video inputs and can switch between them, (3xRCA jacks per video signal) you'll be laughing -- that would give you the highest quality image on your monitor without having to switch the input at more that a single place. Unfortunately, these beasts are harder to find and are more expensive.
Maybe I'm falling for a troll here but...
I'm afraid that you are in danger of losing your job -- unless of course your job is to know how to manage networks but not necessarily to know how they work.
The author of the article knows exactly what he is talking about. The two modes he mentions would work as follows:
Brokering - Napster does this. It allows two independent peers to "find" each other and then establish a direct correction, much like DCC in IRC. This follows the definition of a "broker" very well.
Relaying - basically like proxying, except that it allows two "clients" to communicate with each other. Both clients connect to the same server, which establishes a "virtual" connection between them by storing and forwarding the data between them, sort of like a bridge. The reason why this would require huge amounts of bandwidth is that the server would have to be able to handle the traffic for both ends of all connections that it relayed in this way. Seems pretty obvious right?
The other technique that the author hints at is "connection splicing". This is a mechanism whereby an intermediate basically "joins" two TCP connections together. There are a number of difficulties in doing this -- mostly to do with the unpredictablity of TCP sequence numbers. It probably would not work in this scenario. You really have to be in the middle to rewrite all packets that go between the two parties - e.g. as a bridge. It's pretty impossible to switch the endpoint IP addresses of a TCP connection midstream.
Like I say, maybe you're just a troll, but I would say that the main lesson here is don't go shooting your mouth off unless you are pretty sure that you know what you're talking about.
If you thought the schedule for Mozilla got stretched out over a long time, just wait until you see the results of a "real" democracy.
In my experience, developers (including me) basically never want to release their code because there is always refinements needed. The pressure, and eventual mandate, to release always comes from "above".
This new model proposes that effectively there would be no "above" -- the corollary of that is that there would be a tendancy towards bloated schedules, feature creep and gold-plating in order to satisfy the desires of the majority on the team.
That may be great for team satisfaction, but it doesn't generally produce great results from the end user perspective. something now is almost always better than something better a year later.
In politics, it is sometimes said that "democracy is the worst system of government, except for all the other ones". In software development, I would tend to say the opposite.
I could have sworn what he really said was...
"It was a mistake to rely on Gates for performance"
Hmmm....
Where did you get the idea that IIS runs in kernel space? It is a service, granted, but it is _not_ a device driver, nor is it part of the main OS kernel.
Maybe you know something that I don't, but I'm pretty sure it runs in userland.
Seems to me that the standard multicast backbone for ISOs and software of all kinds uses NNTP - it's known as alt.binaries.* ;)
Of course there's usually too many dropped packets for reliability using this method too!
I don't want to be cruel here, but it seems to me that if this is a commercial venture, and the current publisher doesn't want to fund a second edition, then it can't be a very successful commercial venture.
Don't get me wrong, I have a very strong, and very very commercial need for this information. I have had to hand reverse-engineer the Linux IPv4 stack to make some custom mods for work purposes. And, in fact, I almost bought the first edition of this book. The reasons I didn't were - 1. The book didn't go into _nearly_ enough detail for my needs - I felt that it gave overview information that was of academic interest to readers who didn't need to actually change the code but not enough meat for those who did - and 2. It was already out of date (a subject that the authors are trying to address here).
Unfortunately, when we are talking about a Free OS, and particularly about an area of documentation that is of interest to only a very specific subset of readers. It is a very difficult commercial proposition. The intersection of the set of people who are willing to spend the money on this information (generally business reasons) and the set of people for whom this level of detail is sufficient (probably more students and more casual readers) is rather small.
This is the classic area where the community has provided grass-roots documentation, (HOWTOs, FAQs etc.) rather than commercial interests getting involved.
Sorry to be harsh, but there's probably a good reason why Coriolis doesn't want to continue this publication. They're in it for the $$$.
In an ideal Open Source world, everyone will take the software, add functionality and share their changes with the world, for the greater good of all.
;)
In reality though, we're seeing certain corporate interests using Free software to reduce their costs and increase their profitability. The percentage of sharing back compared to simple usage in very small.
The exact same situation happens with "sharing" tools like Gnutella, Napster etc. People are only too happy to "share" someone else's bandwidth to download stuff they want. Allowing somebody else to share their bandwidth is another matter.
I guess the bottom line is, people want to take if they can get something for nothing. Only some of those want to give back too.
Sure, call my cynical - I regard that as one of my better traits
There's something mindless, isolating and arrogant about browsing porn too, but that never stopped anyone :)
Just as a sanity check here, my install of Win2K professional contains the following:
;)
625 executables totalling 50 megabytes
2230 dynamic libraries totalling 317 megabytes
for a grand total of 2855 executable modules and around 367 megabytes of binary (non debug) code.
And that isn't even the Server version.
What is classed as the operating system here is far more than just the kernel and associated drivers. How many of these defects are user interface glitches in Minesweeper and Pinball do you think?
I have to wonder, if there was a system that tracked all reported bugs, annoyances and imperfections in every RPM distributed with RedHat, how many "defects" the equivilant database would contain.
Now I guess I'll go get my asbestos underwear
...a keyboard and mouse is no longer the fastest method of input.
Give me real speech recognition, or even better, thought recognition, and I'll take that hand-held, wireless-yet-100 megabit/sec networked, ultra hi-res TI computer and throw away my Pentium IX or Itanium V or whatever I have by then.
Attempting to blackmail a company like Visa for ten million seems a little lame. If the crackers had anything major you would think they would shoot for a bit more than that from a company who does in the trillions of dollars of business a year.
Also the fact that this breach happend last July would point to the probability that Visa isn't particularly worried.
I'd say this is just another case of the media trying to make a frenzy out of a minor security infraction.
Just my 2 pence.
...putting out the design documentation would be even better :) As someone who's spent quite a bit of time trying to extend an open source project with little or no docs, I can attest to the fact that availablity of the source code is only half the problem - understanding it is the other half.
With a system so complex and presumably huge as Quake, knowing where to start is going to be quite a challenge (and I don't mean at main(argc, argv)!) A little background knowledge would go a VERY long way - how about it JC?
huge props to id though - leading the industry by example once again.
When Netscape went big they were in the right place at the right time. Few of the big guys had clued in on the web and Netscape got a BIG head start and made a name for themselves before anyone else caught up.
This time is different. In the last few weeks, both Sun and M$ have announced their plans for web-hosted applications. If Andreesen thinks he can "rule this space" he is suffering from extreme delusions of grandeour.
Just my $0.02
How about World of Linux vs. World of Windows grudge match? The Mac guys could moderate :)