Even if you didn't read the notices, that's fairly true.
Blizzard should not to have assumed that when playing on Battle.net you would always be talking to the actual Battle.net servers controled by Blizzard. They made an assumption that is not always going to be true.
On a side note, thinking about this battle.net thing, what if (in an alternate universe) Blizzard had gone bankrupt and the Battle.net service shut down? Without projects like bnetd, there would be no way to play these games multiplayer over the internet.
One thing that MS did to all other DOSes is all of a sudden, ms windows 9x ( a dos shell) wouldn't run on any dos except for MS-DOS. Now they could to have made it work. Dos is so damn stupid and simple that it should to have worked, but it didn't.
As far as you are concerned, everyone should also know everything about the enviroment they are programming in. They should probably know everything there is to know about a computer and such before programming. The point of java, Python and other languages is that they allow someone who doesn't understand what is really going on with a computer to program it. kinda like an automatic transmission helps you drive a car. C is a great language because it allows you to have as much performance as you want, while allowing you to also make versions that do extra checks and debug easily. IF anything, maybe it should be by default that C does bounds checking and garbage collecting and whatnot. Then you can turn it off when you make an EXPERT build of your program. C's main problem in my mind is that is makes it too easy to write bad code. One feature of C++ that I think can be bad is the assert statement. I've seen people write code that has critical side effects in assert statements, so that it only works in debug mode. Now you say, that's just a stupid programmer, but shouldn't the compiler and language design help to stop these kinds of stupid errors?
You cannot hack what you don't know, but at the same time, you cannot depend on other peoples ignorance to protect you.
I think that it's more important to look at factors like how often the software you are using is updated in response to security flaws and how easy it is for you to replace your software given an update.
Basically, if the software is never updated, or if the server cannot go down under any circumstance, then maybe the more obscure platforms/software maybe an answer.
I almost agree with you on the N64 issue, except that you are completly ignoring the fact that Nintendo may have had the number 2or 3 home gaming system, but they had the number one portable gameing system to make up for taht fact. The gameboy (and pokemon ) was a huge portion of their income during the time that the N64 was out. That's how they were able to so easily make the N64 what it was, they didn't need it to be a huge success because the GB was.
The problem with sharing mp3s is that the true effect of it is unknown on sales. Sure, some people buy more albums, some people just steal them outright, but the net effect on album sales is unknown by everyone. That truely scares companies in all markets when an unknown x factor starts to effect their revenue. Why? Because they don't know how to react. If a business knows that demand is high, then it will produce more and hence make more money, if demand is low, then the company will produce less, fire people, etc. to make more money. However, this whole sharing music thing really messes up the whole works for them. They cannot use the older methods of predicting album sales and that scares them. So they are trying to control the market with an iron fist ( the only thing they know how to do).
The GPL does not prevent profit! it just says that you have to release the source code if you modify the code.
BTW, the kits includes hw and sw, some sw is not GPLed and the kit also includes manuals on programming the PS2 low level ( assembly and whatnot) Anyway, you don't care cause you just want to bad mouth companies. Expecting a company to do something that is not in it's best intrest is just naive.
The problem is that the BeOS case is a chicken and egg problem. There needed to be an established base of customers to make it a viable software product but of course nobody would adopt it until it was a viable product. What is unknown is if BeOS would to have flourshed without the MS restrictions. What is known is that with them, adoption of BeOS was severley restricted. I knew one person that had a machine with it installed. If I had the money then I would to have bought the hardware to run it. (my vid card was not supported by them and my ethernet card too)
I don't think that there is a good solution to this problem, because for the most part, they seem to be attacking the wrong problem. For most of the trial it seemed that the DOJ and company were attacking the software end of MS, meaning the IE browser, the integrated-ness of the OS and such. When they should have ignored that completly. They should have attacked their business policys because that's what the problem really is. The problem with MS is that they used their position to destroy all other oses. DR-DOS, IBM-DOS, OS/2, etc. all dissapeared because MS played dirty pool and wouldn't let computer manufactures sell PCs with those OSes without penalizing them for doing so. It doesn't matter if IE can be removed or not, if MS wants to make it part of their product then so be it. If they want to integrate Office with their os then so be it. It's their product, if you don't like it, complain to MS or don't buy it. I feel that linux is now a real alternative to windows on the x86 platform. And if you really don't think so, then go buy a Mac. They are also good machines.
I don't know how they can pay for the deaths of the other software they killed by being a monopoly. I don't think that this settlement is enough punishment, but that's a biased opinion.
Same thing, but the difference here is that MS has integrated their products into the Web browser in places that it was unnecessary. Like the file browser, the help system, the media player. All these things should not require the HTML component of windows to function, but they do. Also, unlike your example of the TCP/IP stack, there was never a product that could replace IE functionality. There is no way that netscape could have written a dll to replace MSHTML.dll because the interface was never 'open'. On the other hand, tcp/ip stacks were more interchangable. (not 100%)
Re:They mention the need for plugin AMD compilers
on
If I Had a Hammer
·
· Score: 2
No, not really cause the os can just run in 32-bit mode. Yeah, they could just NOT port it to the new arch. They've already proven to the world that they don't really care about 64 bit all that much after pulling support for Alpha and not diverting enough resources to the IA64 project to get it to work as well as the linux port.
People keep saying this because nobody can see a site built with it!
I think that I'm fairly bleeding edge when it comes to technology, but I've not seen this. Guess I'm just behind the times.... Also, maybe I'm just brain dead but the link that you have there (phpbuilder.com) doesn't work. Well, the link works, but the example there doesn't. I can move the objects in the demo and stuff but the demo doesn't actually save anything. Maybe I'm just misinterpreting it, but whatever.
The biggest problems that flash has in my mind are:
Lack of standards in presentation
Every flash site is different, and usually you cannot resize them to take advantage of your screen. Or change font size.
Bad/no support for different languages. Maybe apache can do this for flash, but if you are really Hardcore then apache can serve up different version of your site for different languages automatically.
No cut and paste At least for text it would be nice to be able to cut and paste text easilly in ALL flash sites without having the author put that feature in.
Can search engines/robots search them? can google / altavista/ etc index flashfor searching?
What about dynamic flash content? Most websites worth going to have almost 100 percent dynamic content.
Basically, flash has a long way to go before it can even come close to replacing HTML.
Just give in.... you can't fight it. They will only sell your rebel bones on ebay if you resist. There is only one true god and it's name is the almighty dollar.
It's only an evolution twords a more efficient form of capitalism. If they can predict us consumers better then goods will only get cheaper you realize. They will know us better then we know ourselves. It's either that or move to a third world nation, or under a mountain where you won't be bothered.
Re:They mention the need for plugin AMD compilers
on
If I Had a Hammer
·
· Score: 2
Yeah, until MS releases a version of XP that actually runs in 64-bit mode the compiler will be useless. Since until then the processor will run in the 32-bit mode.
The real thing going on here I think is that these new Gnutella, Freenet are all self-discovering networks. DNS requires you to build a tree of servers that all know about each other, you can't just start a dns server without telling a root server about yourself (this has to be done by hand). Unlike other other protocols, gnutella and kin keep track of all the servers that are running.
I guess the real problem with all these servers is that they are trying to do the impossiable, that is they want to search the entire internet
yup. At least until you can predict what a person can do next, just like a machine. I'm saying that unlike machines, humans are unpredictable. Until you prove that people are predictable then I'll say that people are not machines. Are you saying that everything you think is the result of a predictable electro-chemical (or whatever else makes up us) process? That you and I and everyone else does what we do without real choice, that we are bound in the clutches of the machine that is the universe, without hope of escaping the destiny that was created for us before anyone was ever born?
I disagree, the human body is a machine, but a person is not a machine. Your body is not all that you are made of, there is more to a person then their physical charactistics. I just looked up machine @ dictionary.com just to see what they think is a machine, and they state that a human body (or other complex organic bodies) is a machine. But unlike traditional 'machines' people have many inputs and an undefined output. You can use the word when describing an aspect of people, but then you ignore many aspects of their character.
I agree with you as far as the beta goes, the people who hacked their beta clients so that they could play on WarForge should go back to battle.net. I was a beta tester for Diablo 2 and they really screwed us, the servers were down for long periods and overall it was a fairly crappy experience. However, as a beta tester you have to admit it's very cool being able to play a game before anyone else, they are doing you a favor to get a favor in return. It was beta testing after all, I don't blame them at all for taking the servers down for a day at a time to fix bugs because after all the testing they released a quality product. Not perfect, but way better then most. I know that bnetd will not get shut down forever because there are too many players that want it up. Either it will go more underground, or Blizzard will cave in and let people use it as well. This article makes it clear that bnetd is not violating any laws, it's marginally questionable that WarForge is.
Slashdot Mirror
Even if you didn't read the notices, that's fairly true.
Blizzard should not to have assumed that when playing on Battle.net you would always be talking to the actual Battle.net servers controled by Blizzard. They made an assumption that is not always going to be true.
On a side note, thinking about this battle.net thing, what if (in an alternate universe) Blizzard had gone bankrupt and the Battle.net service shut down? Without projects like bnetd, there would be no way to play these games multiplayer over the internet.
One thing that MS did to all other DOSes is all of a sudden, ms windows 9x ( a dos shell) wouldn't run on any dos except for MS-DOS. Now they could to have made it work. Dos is so damn stupid and simple that it should to have worked, but it didn't.
As far as you are concerned, everyone should also know everything about the enviroment they are programming in. They should probably know everything there is to know about a computer and such before programming. The point of java, Python and other languages is that they allow someone who doesn't understand what is really going on with a computer to program it. kinda like an automatic transmission helps you drive a car. C is a great language because it allows you to have as much performance as you want, while allowing you to also make versions that do extra checks and debug easily. IF anything, maybe it should be by default that C does bounds checking and garbage collecting and whatnot. Then you can turn it off when you make an EXPERT build of your program. C's main problem in my mind is that is makes it too easy to write bad code. One feature of C++ that I think can be bad is the assert statement. I've seen people write code that has critical side effects in assert statements, so that it only works in debug mode. Now you say, that's just a stupid programmer, but shouldn't the compiler and language design help to stop these kinds of stupid errors?
You cannot hack what you don't know, but at the same time, you cannot depend on other peoples ignorance to protect you.
I think that it's more important to look at factors like how often the software you are using is updated in response to security flaws and how easy it is for you to replace your software given an update.
Basically, if the software is never updated, or if the server cannot go down under any circumstance, then maybe the more obscure platforms/software maybe an answer.
I almost agree with you on the N64 issue, except that you are completly ignoring the fact that Nintendo may have had the number 2or 3 home gaming system, but they had the number one portable gameing system to make up for taht fact. The gameboy (and pokemon ) was a huge portion of their income during the time that the N64 was out. That's how they were able to so easily make the N64 what it was, they didn't need it to be a huge success because the GB was.
The problem with sharing mp3s is that the true effect of it is unknown on sales. Sure, some people buy more albums, some people just steal them outright, but the net effect on album sales is unknown by everyone. That truely scares companies in all markets when an unknown x factor starts to effect their revenue. Why? Because they don't know how to react. If a business knows that demand is high, then it will produce more and hence make more money, if demand is low, then the company will produce less, fire people, etc. to make more money. However, this whole sharing music thing really messes up the whole works for them. They cannot use the older methods of predicting album sales and that scares them. So they are trying to control the market with an iron fist ( the only thing they know how to do).
The GPL does not prevent profit! it just says that you have to release the source code if you modify the code.
BTW, the kits includes hw and sw, some sw is not GPLed and the kit also includes manuals on programming the PS2 low level ( assembly and whatnot) Anyway, you don't care cause you just want to bad mouth companies. Expecting a company to do something that is not in it's best intrest is just naive.
The problem is that the BeOS case is a chicken and egg problem. There needed to be an established base of customers to make it a viable software product but of course nobody would adopt it until it was a viable product. What is unknown is if BeOS would to have flourshed without the MS restrictions. What is known is that with them, adoption of BeOS was severley restricted. I knew one person that had a machine with it installed. If I had the money then I would to have bought the hardware to run it. (my vid card was not supported by them and my ethernet card too)
Yeah, but with the price of popcorn at movie theaters today, it won't buy them very much popcorn
:~(
I don't think that there is a good solution to this problem, because for the most part, they seem to be attacking the wrong problem. For most of the trial it seemed that the DOJ and company were attacking the software end of MS, meaning the IE browser, the integrated-ness of the OS and such.
When they should have ignored that completly. They should have attacked their business policys because that's what the problem really is. The problem with MS is that they used their position to destroy all other oses. DR-DOS, IBM-DOS, OS/2, etc. all dissapeared because MS played dirty pool and wouldn't let computer manufactures sell PCs with those OSes without penalizing them for doing so.
It doesn't matter if IE can be removed or not, if MS wants to make it part of their product then so be it. If they want to integrate Office with their os then so be it. It's their product, if you don't like it, complain to MS or don't buy it.
I feel that linux is now a real alternative to windows on the x86 platform. And if you really don't think so, then go buy a Mac. They are also good machines.
I don't know how they can pay for the deaths of the other software they killed by being a monopoly. I don't think that this settlement is enough punishment, but that's a biased opinion.
Same thing, but the difference here is that MS has integrated their products into the Web browser in places that it was unnecessary. Like the file browser, the help system, the media player. All these things should not require the HTML component of windows to function, but they do. Also, unlike your example of the TCP/IP stack, there was never a product that could replace IE functionality. There is no way that netscape could have written a dll to replace MSHTML.dll because the interface was never 'open'. On the other hand, tcp/ip stacks were more interchangable. (not 100%)
No, not really cause the os can just run in 32-bit mode. Yeah, they could just NOT port it to the new arch. They've already proven to the world that they don't really care about 64 bit all that much after pulling support for Alpha and not diverting enough resources to the IA64 project to get it to work as well as the linux port.
People keep saying this because nobody can see a site built with it!
I think that I'm fairly bleeding edge when it comes to technology, but I've not seen this. Guess I'm just behind the times.... Also, maybe I'm just brain dead but the link that you have there (phpbuilder.com) doesn't work. Well, the link works, but the example there doesn't. I can move the objects in the demo and stuff but the demo doesn't actually save anything. Maybe I'm just misinterpreting it, but whatever.
I'll tell you what they are smoking, money, great big bags of money!
"Do you like my hat? It's made of money!"
- Lack of standards in presentation
- Bad/no support for different languages.
- No cut and paste
- Can search engines/robots search them?
- What about dynamic flash content?
Basically, flash has a long way to go before it can even come close to replacing HTML.Every flash site is different, and usually you cannot resize them to take advantage of your screen. Or change font size.
Maybe apache can do this for flash, but if you are really Hardcore then apache can serve up different version of your site for different languages automatically.
At least for text it would be nice to be able to cut and paste text easilly in ALL flash sites without having the author put that feature in.
can google / altavista/ etc index flashfor searching?
Most websites worth going to have almost 100 percent dynamic content.
Just give in.... you can't fight it. They will only sell your rebel bones on ebay if you resist. There is only one true god and it's name is the almighty dollar.
Well, the exodus makes up for all the people that came here during the dot bomb. Change is a scary scary thing.
It's only an evolution twords a more efficient form of capitalism. If they can predict us consumers better then goods will only get cheaper you realize. They will know us better then we know ourselves. It's either that or move to a third world nation, or under a mountain where you won't be bothered.
Yeah, until MS releases a version of XP that actually runs in 64-bit mode the compiler will be useless. Since until then the processor will run in the 32-bit mode.
Probably because a real floppy drive and power supply were cheaper then a fake one?
The real thing going on here I think is that these new Gnutella, Freenet are all self-discovering networks. DNS requires you to build a tree of servers that all know about each other, you can't just start a dns server without telling a root server about yourself (this has to be done by hand). Unlike other other protocols, gnutella and kin keep track of all the servers that are running.
I guess the real problem with all these servers is that they are trying to do the impossiable, that is they want to search the entire internet
Just because you don't believe in something doesn't mean that it isn't true though.
Whoever said that I was trying to win? Maybe I'm just talking for the sake of talking. But if you want to win, then go right ahead.
yup. At least until you can predict what a person can do next, just like a machine. I'm saying that unlike machines, humans are unpredictable. Until you prove that people are predictable then I'll say that people are not machines. Are you saying that everything you think is the result of a predictable electro-chemical (or whatever else makes up us) process? That you and I and everyone else does what we do without real choice, that we are bound in the clutches of the machine that is the universe, without hope of escaping the destiny that was created for us before anyone was ever born?
I disagree, the human body is a machine, but a person is not a machine. Your body is not all that you are made of, there is more to a person then their physical charactistics.
I just looked up machine @ dictionary.com just to see what they think is a machine, and they state that a human body (or other complex organic bodies) is a machine. But unlike traditional 'machines' people have many inputs and an undefined output. You can use the word when describing an aspect of people, but then you ignore many aspects of their character.
I agree with you as far as the beta goes, the people who hacked their beta clients so that they could play on WarForge should go back to battle.net.
I was a beta tester for Diablo 2 and they really screwed us, the servers were down for long periods and overall it was a fairly crappy experience. However, as a beta tester you have to admit it's very cool being able to play a game before anyone else, they are doing you a favor to get a favor in return. It was beta testing after all, I don't blame them at all for taking the servers down for a day at a time to fix bugs because after all the testing they released a quality product. Not perfect, but way better then most.
I know that bnetd will not get shut down forever because there are too many players that want it up. Either it will go more underground, or Blizzard will cave in and let people use it as well.
This article makes it clear that bnetd is not violating any laws, it's marginally questionable that WarForge is.