Software makers do program for other OSes. You just aren't using those programs because you aren't open enough to other options to even consider using these other OSes and the applications that go with them. Thus you go with the flock and continue using Windows, and thus the majority of software developers cater to said flock. Yet there still is a lucrative business in programming non-Windows applications. Look at Apple. Look at IBM. Look practically anywhere around you. Look at Microsoft! Even Microsoft makes money supporting other OSes. And Microsoft does not (and cannot) "make sure you will program for their os."
MS has a monopoly in OSes for x86 systems. While many other OSes exist, none is even remotely as powerful in the market as Windows is. Please try to tell me that that's not the case, I need a good laugh.
No wonder you are so dependent upon Microsoft, with this sort of mindset. When one defines the market so narrowly, of course Microsoft is the only option. Perhaps, instead of sending your government bloodhounds after the big boys with what you seem to think is your OS, try considering expanding your options. Why does using MacOS require investments in new hardware and software? Doesn't using Windows require investments in new hardware and software too? First you're complaining that Windows is too expensive and you have no choice but to buy it, next you're complaining that other options are too expensive or simply aren't Windows. Such a narrow definition of the market does not a monopoly make. Apparently you couldn't survive without Windows. Yet still you clamor to destroy those that support you. Why?
MS only charges $180 for Windows 98 CDs because they can.
Well, in a true capitalist society they can charge whatever the hell they want.
If MS took the price up to $500 for Windows 98, everyone would get madly screwed, because, where else would you turn for what Windows has to offer to home users? Nowhere! So that is why it is bad.
Then you redefine what it is you want to use at home.
Your problem is that you've allowed yourself to be suckered into being completely dependent upon Microsoft. There's no reason you have to be, you just like the attachment. So if Microsoft goes along and in some way makes it more difficult for you to continue this attachment, you create an uproar, whining about how you have been harmed and that it's somehow your right to continue this attachment. Sort of like leeches in nature, except leeches don't whine to the government.
I'm sure it was, and I'm willing to bet that none of those 71 students was distributing only legal mp3s. I'm not saying it's okay to ban mp3s, but CMU hasn't done that, and I think they acted entirely within the bounds of reason and common sense.
The likelihood (or lack thereof) of legal activity occurring does not remove the necessity of due process. I'd be willing to bet at least one person was unjustly punished in this fiasco.
CMU has effectively made mp3s an "underground" scene. People will be frightened to even associate themselves with the mp3 extension, for fear that the almighty CMU will revoke their access. This is effectively a ban on distributing mp3s (legal or otherwise).
Everyone I've seen attacking CMU has been grasping at straws or fabricating scenarios that make CMU's network admins out to be some kind of commando death squad that came knocking in the night.
I didn't fabricate a scenario. I go to college, distribute legal mp3s here and there, and quite often distribute mp3s to myself that would otherwise be illegal to distribute. If I had been a Windows user attending CMU, it's very likely I would have been punished for perfectly legal activities.
I don't know exactly how CMU carried out their actions. I would like to know how they determined that a given set of mp3s were illegal to have or distribute. Despite my doubts here, I still do not think of CMU's network administrators as some sort of evil fascist entity. They just employed some rather crude methods, which I fear might have unjustly punished many students. In the end I blame the RIAA for abusing their power in the first place, but that's not going to stop unless someone takes a stand against them. I like the idea that some other commenter posted, suggesting we all use mp3 for every audio purpose. The RIAA is trying to foster the ignorant image of mp3s as inherently evil and illegal, and it would be a shame to see them win (as they apparently did with CMU).
How do you know the files were violating copyright? Perhaps it's obvious in instances of the Dilbert cartoons and such that they mentioned, but what about the mp3s? Did they somehow trace the audio back to its original source and read the licensing agreement? I don't see how anyone can enforce copyright laws without actual knowledge of the copyright owner's wishes. Perhaps it's obvious to tell if all the mp3s were pop songs that even network administrators would recognize, but what if I'm writing and distributing my own music? I'd like to see the method they used to determine whether or not a given mp3 was in violation of a copyright. Hopefully it wasn't the hideously crude "it has mp3 as its filename extension, therefore it is illegal."
Did the school ever prove that the students were actually distributing music they didn't have permission to distribute? Or did they not bother? It's a scary thought to think that perhaps the RIAA simply told them that there were illegal activities going on and the school simply took their word for it. How many innocent students were punished?
I work for the networking department of my school, where I have a much faster computer than my own at home and a very fast link. So that's the computer I rip and encode my cds on so I can listen to music all day. Am I going to get fired because the filenames are publicly viewable?
I also often download mp3s -- the legal kind. Some of my favorite bands at least allow one or two mp3s to be freely distributed (often bootlegs). These files I'll even put in a publicly accessable directory. Will I get fired for that?
Sometimes I download my mp3s to my machine at home. This is over a modem line, so it's not always feasible, but I still sometimes do it. Is it illegal to distribute copyrighted material to oneself? I'm waiting for the day some power happy administrator with a sniffer is going to turn me in for breaking the backs of the poor exploited American musical artist through the horrible act of listening to and supporting their music.
So how many students at CMU were only distributing mp3s legitimately? How many of them simply only had their own mp3s, but weren't technologically competent enough to make them private? How far did the school go to locate these files, and in contrast how far did they go to prove that these files were indeed illegal? I'm afraid I didn't see any of these questions answered in the article. Are there any other sources of information?
logan (eagerly awaiting RIAA to come to his school, though they probably have already)
1) The judge ruled that there is high barrier to entry in the commercial software market. Anyone can make a hamburger, very few can develop an OS. Microsoft's attempts to artificially raise this barrier stifles competition.
Very few can develop an OS in comparison to making a hamburger, but that doesn't mean operating systems are rare. Look at the diversity of OSes that are available around you. Courses on OS design are standard fare for CS curriculum, I believe. Plus, I probably couldn't make a good hamburger to save my life.
2) McDonald's shouldn't be penalized for making a damn good burger. However, what if instead of competing on the merits of their burgers, they also ran commercials stating that Burger King burgers taste like garbage while implying that that they will also cause polio, lower sperm count, and mild retardation in your children?
This is highly irrelevant. The above would be slander, not antitrust. I don't see how this supports your argument.
3) Remember that 1995 consent decree to which MS agreed? The government had every right to prosecute MS in the event that it violated the terms of the decree. One of those terms was that MS could not bundle software with the OS for the purpose of stifling competition. The DOJ said this happened while MS screamed innovation. Which do you truly think it was?
But why did MS have to agree in the first place? MS really shot themselves in the foot by playing the government's game in the first place and trying to deny government's allegations rather than attacking the vague, arbitrary, and illegal antitrust laws. Perhaps they screwed up playing the government's game (through the consent decree and their other numerous screwups), but does that mean they should have been attacked in the first place?
Boy does this sound familiar. I'll have to reread that story again. (Is saying "again" after already saying "reread" redundant? Maybe I'll get a "redundant" moderation).
This article starts off on good ground, citing publicly available statistics regarding a few specific areas of performance. However, the remaining myths are jokes.
Their only real point concerning reliability is the lack of a journaling filesystem. Just because someone out there (such as Microsoft) is willing to guarantee uptime for NT does not automatically make NT stable and Linux unstable. Perhaps Linux doesn't need such a silly guarantee (though someone could make some easy money that way). Sure, they can list some big names that use NT, but there's big names using just about every OS on the face of the planet. That really isn't enough information to prove or disprove that one OS is more stable than the other. In fact, it's really difficult to compare stability through anything other than anecdotal evidence (polling system administrators?).
The article does a good job discounting the free beer myth, but it does not prove in any way that the total cost of ownership for NT is less than that for Linux. It simply says that it has supposedly been proven that NT is cheaper than UNIX, and then tries to apply that to Linux. We then once again see the tired argument that there are no "certified engineers" for Linux. If Linux is so much like UNIX, why not borrow from the pool of UNIX "certified engineers"?
Linux's security model is in no way weak. At worst, it's a tad bit crude. Security is not all or nothing. That's what groups are for. That's why I can listen to music without su'ing to root. Again Microsoft's tired and flawed arguments are provided. Apparently since NT can achieve a government security rating (which they didn't even bother to define), NT is more secure than Linux, since no one's ever tried to certify Linux. I don't really believe that NT also doesn't require "an administrator to be an expert in the intricacies of the operating system and how components interact." I think here the crude simplicity of the UNIX security model actually wins out, if that's their argument.
As for Microsoft's argument against Linux on the desktop, they contradict themselves once again. If NT is supposedly so much more complex, powerful, and well designed than Linux, why would the "complexity of the Linux operating system" inhibit Linux's acceptance on the desktop (assuming NT would be accepted:P).
I think whoever wrote this article worked very hard on the first section. Then they must have gotten sick of the task and simply dozed through the remainder. The article starts out with some nice facts and figures, and even a convincing argument or two, but then suddenly degrades into the same tired old dogma. A lot of it is entirely self-contradictory and quite disingenuous (but what do you expect?). As always, Microsoft only strives to convince the idiot.:P
Would this be the same thing as "Pepsi One" here in the states? Do they have ridiculous commercials trying to hype up a sugar-free drink as a cool exciting thing to drink? *grin*
If taxation were so simple, we would know exactly how much money is being robbed from us and we might actually be able to determine where it's all going. You know the government doesn't want that.:P
Hmm, wasn't Bush the one that said something like "freedom should be limited"? I believe it was in regards to the Internet, as well. I think both halves are just two sides of the same coin.
A few of your problems don't seem to be real problems.
Problem #3: The install script has a flaky parser. If you put a trailing slash on the install path, the result is that the install script tries to use a double slash (DOH)
I don't see how this could be a problem. I haven't seen the script in question, but in general,/usr/local//games is the same directory as/usr/local/games.
Problem #4: None of the symbolic links placed all over my filesystem worked. They weren't flagged as executable by the script (DOH!) This was just plain sloppy of Loki, IMO.
Symbolic links don't have permissions. They simply appear to take on the permissions of whatever they are linked to. Perhaps the sources of these links had improper permissions.
Problem #5: Start the game up, no sound. Seems this requires OSS sound drivers to run. It says so on the fine print on the box so I can't be too mad at Loki for that. Had to recompile my kernel though.
Well, no offense intended, but -- duh.:P
Problem #6: I can't play the game under KDE or Gnome. Even with the panel hidden, enough of it is sptill there to sufficiently block a good bit of the game. I started X with no window manager in order to play the game.
The Gnome panel, when you slide it to the side, only takes up a few pixels. Surely these can't be crucial? Why not just kill -9 the panel if you have to? Just a suggestion. Again, I haven't tried the game, so I don't really know how the panel affects the game exactly.
The only real problems I see from your list are the lack of install instructions (of the physical variety) and the segmentation faults. All this speculation reminds me that I still need to buy this game.:P
I have the same setup (only I have a voodoo1 instead), and Q3 is quite playable. You just have to go without a few features like high resolutions, curved surfaces, dynamic lighting, etc. Some parts are still a little choppy, but it's not too bad.
Oh, but surely the highly-realistic and impressive physics and car damage effects (in II, at least) float your boat. The fact that this is the only driving game I've ever played that seems the least bit realistic is the most addictive aspect for me. No other game maker seems to have the guts to make their games realistic, yet the realism of Carmageddon makes much better screenshots than any cheesy contrived effects you'd find elsewhere in three-dimensionally-impaired games (like all those games that are afraid to let you wreck... you either always land on your wheels or automatically recover, what's up with that?).
And no, I've never even felt the slightest urge to run someone over in my real car. And I don't expect my car to go from 0-120 MPH in 1 second like in most racing games. It's odd that so many people denounce today's obsession with the detached viewing of violence, as if it's against human nature and bad for us somehow. What about all those gladiators thousands of years ago? What about Lovecraft or Poe? They must've been way ahead of their time. The idea that the advent of television and video games have caused the general degradation of society is hilarious. I think they're trying to hide from the real causes. How devastating for the media would it be if the media blamed itself? I wonder who the scapegoat was 20 years ago, or 50 years ago, or centuries ago.
In my experience the only devices Windows setup ever manages to detect during installation are the really "simple" devices (that is, IDE drives, serial mouse, that's about it). Maybe I'm just too dumb and incompetent to install Windows properly.:P
I don't believe the feature made any mention of AOL in this context. In fact, the quote from the detective was "all these conversations are logged." I run a mud, and I never log any of the conversations there, so that proves his statement false by contradiction. Only on commercial endeavours, where the providers of the forum are either irrationally afraid of ridiculous lawsuits, are fascist scums, or are both, will one find such logs.
Look, if you're a Randite Libertarian, the whole thing comes down to getting money when you supply something of value, right?
If so, anybody with money is a potential customer.
If you reserve the right to not supply your value to people for irrelevant reasons (i.e. anything but they don't have enough money), then you're not living your philosophy, you're contradicting it.
I never said that. My philosophical standpoint is that you have no right to impose your philosophy upon me to the extent that you violate the same rights that you pretend to support and protect.
Businesses don't have the same rights as people. The Constitution doesn't say "We the businesses"
Let me see if I've got this straight. First, we are all born as "people," and given the rights typically given to "people." At some point in our lives we decide to interact with our fellow human beings. As soon as that happens, we cease to become "people" and thus lose all our rights?
Slashdot Mirror
logan
No wonder you are so dependent upon Microsoft, with this sort of mindset. When one defines the market so narrowly, of course Microsoft is the only option. Perhaps, instead of sending your government bloodhounds after the big boys with what you seem to think is your OS, try considering expanding your options. Why does using MacOS require investments in new hardware and software? Doesn't using Windows require investments in new hardware and software too? First you're complaining that Windows is too expensive and you have no choice but to buy it, next you're complaining that other options are too expensive or simply aren't Windows. Such a narrow definition of the market does not a monopoly make. Apparently you couldn't survive without Windows. Yet still you clamor to destroy those that support you. Why?
logan
Well, in a true capitalist society they can charge whatever the hell they want.
If MS took the price up to $500 for Windows 98, everyone would get madly screwed, because, where else would you turn for what Windows has to offer to home users? Nowhere! So that is why it is bad.
Then you redefine what it is you want to use at home.
Your problem is that you've allowed yourself to be suckered into being completely dependent upon Microsoft. There's no reason you have to be, you just like the attachment. So if Microsoft goes along and in some way makes it more difficult for you to continue this attachment, you create an uproar, whining about how you have been harmed and that it's somehow your right to continue this attachment. Sort of like leeches in nature, except leeches don't whine to the government.
logan
The likelihood (or lack thereof) of legal activity occurring does not remove the necessity of due process. I'd be willing to bet at least one person was unjustly punished in this fiasco.
CMU has effectively made mp3s an "underground" scene. People will be frightened to even associate themselves with the mp3 extension, for fear that the almighty CMU will revoke their access. This is effectively a ban on distributing mp3s (legal or otherwise).
Everyone I've seen attacking CMU has been grasping at straws or fabricating scenarios that make CMU's network admins out to be some kind of commando death squad that came knocking in the night.
I didn't fabricate a scenario. I go to college, distribute legal mp3s here and there, and quite often distribute mp3s to myself that would otherwise be illegal to distribute. If I had been a Windows user attending CMU, it's very likely I would have been punished for perfectly legal activities.
I don't know exactly how CMU carried out their actions. I would like to know how they determined that a given set of mp3s were illegal to have or distribute. Despite my doubts here, I still do not think of CMU's network administrators as some sort of evil fascist entity. They just employed some rather crude methods, which I fear might have unjustly punished many students. In the end I blame the RIAA for abusing their power in the first place, but that's not going to stop unless someone takes a stand against them. I like the idea that some other commenter posted, suggesting we all use mp3 for every audio purpose. The RIAA is trying to foster the ignorant image of mp3s as inherently evil and illegal, and it would be a shame to see them win (as they apparently did with CMU).
logan
logan
I work for the networking department of my school, where I have a much faster computer than my own at home and a very fast link. So that's the computer I rip and encode my cds on so I can listen to music all day. Am I going to get fired because the filenames are publicly viewable?
I also often download mp3s -- the legal kind. Some of my favorite bands at least allow one or two mp3s to be freely distributed (often bootlegs). These files I'll even put in a publicly accessable directory. Will I get fired for that?
Sometimes I download my mp3s to my machine at home. This is over a modem line, so it's not always feasible, but I still sometimes do it. Is it illegal to distribute copyrighted material to oneself? I'm waiting for the day some power happy administrator with a sniffer is going to turn me in for breaking the backs of the poor exploited American musical artist through the horrible act of listening to and supporting their music.
So how many students at CMU were only distributing mp3s legitimately? How many of them simply only had their own mp3s, but weren't technologically competent enough to make them private? How far did the school go to locate these files, and in contrast how far did they go to prove that these files were indeed illegal? I'm afraid I didn't see any of these questions answered in the article. Are there any other sources of information?
logan
(eagerly awaiting RIAA to come to his school, though they probably have already)
Very few can develop an OS in comparison to making a hamburger, but that doesn't mean operating systems are rare. Look at the diversity of OSes that are available around you. Courses on OS design are standard fare for CS curriculum, I believe. Plus, I probably couldn't make a good hamburger to save my life.
2) McDonald's shouldn't be penalized for making a damn good burger. However, what if instead of competing on the merits of their burgers, they also ran commercials stating that Burger King burgers taste like garbage while implying that that they will also cause polio, lower sperm count, and mild retardation in your children?
This is highly irrelevant. The above would be slander, not antitrust. I don't see how this supports your argument.
3) Remember that 1995 consent decree to which MS agreed? The government had every right to prosecute MS in the event that it violated the terms of the decree. One of those terms was that MS could not bundle software with the OS for the purpose of stifling competition. The DOJ said this happened while MS screamed innovation. Which do you truly think it was?
But why did MS have to agree in the first place? MS really shot themselves in the foot by playing the government's game in the first place and trying to deny government's allegations rather than attacking the vague, arbitrary, and illegal antitrust laws. Perhaps they screwed up playing the government's game (through the consent decree and their other numerous screwups), but does that mean they should have been attacked in the first place?
logan
logan
logan
Their only real point concerning reliability is the lack of a journaling filesystem. Just because someone out there (such as Microsoft) is willing to guarantee uptime for NT does not automatically make NT stable and Linux unstable. Perhaps Linux doesn't need such a silly guarantee (though someone could make some easy money that way). Sure, they can list some big names that use NT, but there's big names using just about every OS on the face of the planet. That really isn't enough information to prove or disprove that one OS is more stable than the other. In fact, it's really difficult to compare stability through anything other than anecdotal evidence (polling system administrators?).
The article does a good job discounting the free beer myth, but it does not prove in any way that the total cost of ownership for NT is less than that for Linux. It simply says that it has supposedly been proven that NT is cheaper than UNIX, and then tries to apply that to Linux. We then once again see the tired argument that there are no "certified engineers" for Linux. If Linux is so much like UNIX, why not borrow from the pool of UNIX "certified engineers"?
Linux's security model is in no way weak. At worst, it's a tad bit crude. Security is not all or nothing. That's what groups are for. That's why I can listen to music without su'ing to root. Again Microsoft's tired and flawed arguments are provided. Apparently since NT can achieve a government security rating (which they didn't even bother to define), NT is more secure than Linux, since no one's ever tried to certify Linux. I don't really believe that NT also doesn't require "an administrator to be an expert in the intricacies of the operating system and how components interact." I think here the crude simplicity of the UNIX security model actually wins out, if that's their argument.
As for Microsoft's argument against Linux on the desktop, they contradict themselves once again. If NT is supposedly so much more complex, powerful, and well designed than Linux, why would the "complexity of the Linux operating system" inhibit Linux's acceptance on the desktop (assuming NT would be accepted :P).
I think whoever wrote this article worked very hard on the first section. Then they must have gotten sick of the task and simply dozed through the remainder. The article starts out with some nice facts and figures, and even a convincing argument or two, but then suddenly degrades into the same tired old dogma. A lot of it is entirely self-contradictory and quite disingenuous (but what do you expect?). As always, Microsoft only strives to convince the idiot. :P
logan
logan
logan
logan
Problem #3: The install script has a flaky parser. If you put a trailing slash on the install path, the result is that the install script tries to use a double slash (DOH)
I don't see how this could be a problem. I haven't seen the script in question, but in general, /usr/local//games is the same directory as /usr/local/games.
Problem #4: None of the symbolic links placed all over my filesystem worked. They weren't flagged as executable by the script (DOH!) This was just plain sloppy of Loki, IMO.
Symbolic links don't have permissions. They simply appear to take on the permissions of whatever they are linked to. Perhaps the sources of these links had improper permissions.
Problem #5: Start the game up, no sound. Seems this requires OSS sound drivers to run. It says so on the fine print on the box so I can't be too mad at Loki for that. Had to recompile my kernel though.
Well, no offense intended, but -- duh. :P
Problem #6: I can't play the game under KDE or Gnome. Even with the panel hidden, enough of it is sptill there to sufficiently block a good bit of the game. I started X with no window manager in order to play the game.
The Gnome panel, when you slide it to the side, only takes up a few pixels. Surely these can't be crucial? Why not just kill -9 the panel if you have to? Just a suggestion. Again, I haven't tried the game, so I don't really know how the panel affects the game exactly.
The only real problems I see from your list are the lack of install instructions (of the physical variety) and the segmentation faults. All this speculation reminds me that I still need to buy this game. :P
logan
2 + 4 - (5 + 9) / (7 + 3)
15 keystrokes. If you're going to make a big deal about two extra keystrokes, you're making a big deal out of the little stuff.
logan
logan
How redundant. How does one compare two incomparable systems? I suppose this is the "new" ground Microsoft and Mindcraft are breaking together. :P
logan
logan
And no, I've never even felt the slightest urge to run someone over in my real car. And I don't expect my car to go from 0-120 MPH in 1 second like in most racing games. It's odd that so many people denounce today's obsession with the detached viewing of violence, as if it's against human nature and bad for us somehow. What about all those gladiators thousands of years ago? What about Lovecraft or Poe? They must've been way ahead of their time. The idea that the advent of television and video games have caused the general degradation of society is hilarious. I think they're trying to hide from the real causes. How devastating for the media would it be if the media blamed itself? I wonder who the scapegoat was 20 years ago, or 50 years ago, or centuries ago.
logan
logan
logan
logan
If so, anybody with money is a potential customer.
If you reserve the right to not supply your value to people for irrelevant reasons (i.e. anything but they don't have enough money), then you're not living your philosophy, you're contradicting it.
I never said that. My philosophical standpoint is that you have no right to impose your philosophy upon me to the extent that you violate the same rights that you pretend to support and protect.
logan
Let me see if I've got this straight. First, we are all born as "people," and given the rights typically given to "people." At some point in our lives we decide to interact with our fellow human beings. As soon as that happens, we cease to become "people" and thus lose all our rights?
logan