I suspect this Y2K patent will fail to stand up in court
If challenged, it certainly should. The amount of prior art is just untrue. But that's not the whole problem. Here's a quote from the article:
I suspect many companies will end up paying off as some form of nuisance fee
And this I would probably agree with. That's what's so sick about today's legal framework (and not just over in the US): it doesn't uphold the law as designed when organisations can be bullied into giving in rather than risk ludicrously large sums on going to court.
Anyway. Isn't saying "all 2-digit years are in the range 1900 to 1999" just another form of windowing?
This article seems to blur the difference between geeks, and the technology industry. Let's be honest: these are NOT the same thing.
Yup. Exactly what I was going to say.
What do we want? - where "we" is some stereotypical/. reader... okay, geek if you like.
The freedom to manage information - including software - without annoying restrictions that don't make any sense; specifically, we don't like silly encoding schemes that attempt to stop us copying music for our own purposes, or the likes of DIVX - even though all such schemes have proven in the end to be ineffectual;
The freedom to create information without annoying restrictions that don't make any sense; specifically, we don't like software patents that can stop us using simple ideas and algorithms - even when we thought of them ourselves;
The freedom to distribute information without annoying restrictions that don't make any sense; specifically, we don't like crypto regulations that can stop us from using universally well-known algorithms anywhere we like - even though these rules, too, are ineffectual.
Now, what does the average company boss or political lobbyist want?
The freedom to make as much money as possible, when necessary by using any annoying restrictions they can make legal.
It's an issue of control, I think. We don't like it. Many companies love it. Overly glib, perhaps, but I believe there's something there.
I'm confused. Slashdot has given me mod points over the weekend when I can only use my non-cookie browser and Lynx. I can't even *see* this story on the former, and hitting 'Off-topic' on the latter ended up giving this first post a +1. Any idea wtf is going on? Anyone?
Anyway, I apologise for the dodgy moderating. If this post even manages to get through. Hmm. -- This comment was brought to you by And Clover.
Another/. story about how a some new technology is going to give us large, inexpensive, flexible flat-panel displays?
Is it just the same thing being invented over and over again every few months or so for the last five years?
It would be really, really nice to retire the bulky, heavy, hot-running and unreliable CRT - I certianly never want to buy a traditional monitor again. But there's still not much competition; low yields keep TFT very expensive.
So please, could someone, somewhere develop a workable display from one of the technologies we've read press releases about for years. I don't want to still be using a CRT in another five years' time...
Deja vu? Oh yeah, I posted more or less the same thing the last time too.:-)
When was the last time Coke ever ran out of supply of it's product? Never to the best of my knowledge, so the argument of supply and demand is moot.
Well the Coke machine outside the CS lab at my university used to run out all the time. How about a machine which charges more for a drink when there are only a few cans left?
I haven't seen the poll, but it's scary to think that many people have chosen Visual Basic as their favorite.
I don't think this is actually the case - the CNet item seems to state that the report was on the ubiquity of usage of programming languages rather than how well-liked they are by the developers who have to use them. Hence the preponderance of VB.
Actually the CNet report isn't really interested in that at all, it's just another poor piece of Java-bashing journalism[1]. I don't know if the Zona study itself takes this line too[2].
Actually I think Java comes out of the report pretty damned well given its age. But I'd be interested to know how well the other languages fared, esp. Perl, Python and the like.
[1] Not that I especially like Java personally. Well, the language is nice, but the standard libraries really bug my balls.
[2] (Who are Zona Research, anyway? Is there any good reason we couldn't set up a bogus market research company and forward studies to the media made up entirely of our own opinions?)
Erm. It seems its the same price as RedHat Standard, except that a chunk of the price goes to the FSF. So if you happened to want a set of RedHat Standard and you like GNU (WHO DOESNT!!!! -Mr. Nutty [er, I mean, RMS]) it comes out as a better deal.
As long as you dont want StarOffice, or Qt, or Netscape, anyways. Funny marketing, that, advertising it as "better because it contains less!". But theres theology for you. HOORAY FOR FSF!!
Back in the good old days, on good old RISC OS, we didn't need installers. To install a good old program, one copied its good old 'application directory' (that's enough goodness and oldness. -Ed.) from a CD, floppy or the 'net onto wherever you wanted it to be on the hard disc. To move it, you moved the application directory. To run it, you double-clicked on it. To remove it, you just deleted it. It didn't hide stuff in lib or man. It didn't scatter keys about the registry with reckless abandon. No shortcuts copied into a start menu, no changes to user paths, it just worked.(*)
I would really, really love to see a decent form of application encapsulation on Unix OSes and, even more, on Windows, where a half-installed application more often than not requires a complete OS re-install. Which is a bit crap. In case you didn't notice.
* - well, it just worked, until some of the bigger software companies decided to start using installers, usually in order to implement some hideous copy-protection scheme, or because installers were the trendy way Windows did it, or sometimes just to be contrary. After that, one tended to find that moving programs didn't work, upgrading the OS didn't work, installing them on newer versions of the OS or hardware didn't work, and applications would occasionally just refuse to run, claiming they were corrupt. Just like good old Windows. (That was a sarcastic "good old", BTW, so it doesn't count.)
An installer is just one more part of an application that can go wrong. I wish we could rid the universe of 'em.
Please, someone, put the Cathode Ray Tube out of its misery. They're bulky, heavy, they go wrong all the time and they an all-round pain in the bum.
Every few months for the last five years we've read stories about how some smashing new technology is going to produce new flatpanel-type displays that may be larger or brighter than before, but always cheaper.
But for now all we've got is still-damned-pricey TFTs. How much longer do I have to wait? 'Cos I ain't never buying me another CRT. So there.
Well, maybe. I'd really really like to believe that this story is true and Monsanto have decided they can make a profit from providing a product that people actually want and that benefits the world in general, as opposed to their normal tactic of trying to accrue wealth through control (cf. Terminator) and corporate bullying. But it all sounds too good to be true.
Certainly, Monsanto could really do with some good publicity about now, and this sort of "Look! Genetic engineering is a Good Thing after all!" story is exactly that.
Just a little note from cynicsville. Personally most of my problems with GM are social rather than strictly scientific. And I'd love to see Monsanto doing something useful for a change.
To me, free will is necessary for me to view my life as a worthwhile pursuit.
And this is, of course, the nub of the matter. Because a being that does not believe in free will is unlikely to survive, we could have simply have evolved the whole 'consciousness' memeplex without it actually having to exist.
Or maybe not. Maybe it does exist. Maybe it's something to do with quantum effects. Dunno.
produces or makes available a computer program or a series of program commands designed to endanger data processing
Hmm. Could that be a loophole? What about a virus intended merely to spread, not actually to mangle everyone's data - a payload-free virus. Which would generally tend to spread more easily than a malicious one.
(Of course, many viruses can cause damage without intending to do so, generally because the writer is a bit crap at it.)
makes available instructions to produce a computer program
This is, of course, a lot more worrying, as it affects not only the writing of viruses but the writing of anti-virus software. But then, sometimes the AV companies behave at least as dodgily as virus writers.;-)
My guess is they've been slaving away on the technology behind the next generation of gaming, a new breed of interactive fiction with incredible lifelike gameplay.
Though shadowy contacts with Transmeta's sinister agents I have managed to obtain this transcript, which should hopefully convey some the raw excitement on offer.
Transmeta Adventure An Interactive Next-Generation Gaming Experience by Linux Torwald and David Ditzy
You are in a cave there is BILL GATES here!!!
What do you want to do now TELL ME! > smell bill
BILL GATES smell of POO!!!
> shoot bill
You shoot the BILL GATES with GUN! He disappears in a puff of smoke! Very good!
(Your score has gone up by two points.)
> release new software release beating windows
Yes! You have won!! and You get yoghurt!
(--end of transcript--)
Apparently the full version will also feature a section where you have to get the treasure and successfully negotiate a maze of twisty little stock options, all alike. Personally I can't wait.
(Look, none of us have a clue what's they're doing, so why not fill this article up with off-topic rubbish? Well that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.)
It's good to hear anonther big company coming out against the patently wrong Way Things Are.
But maybe it might have more impact if they allowed free software authors run of their patents (through the FSF?)
I'd personally like to see a clause granting free use of software patents to any organisations who do not themselves hold software patents.
Not that I'm planning to write a free RDBMS, but still...
--
I like ratings. (Eh, controversial or what?)
on
Three on Munich
·
· Score: 1
Okay. This may shock and surprise, but I actually like the idea of having some sort of ratings - in theory at least.
Many an apparently innocuous search or link can unexpectedly turn up pr0n, at least in part because many of the worst sites (the click farms and the 'adult verification' scams, and the pages with browser-maining Javascripts) care not for the average user (minor or not) who might accidentally stumble on their site, as long as they get their hits.
So I'd like to see a reliable, ratings-based way of filtering, but:
I still agree with everything said here about ratings leading to censorship. And I can't see any way of allowing users, parents or employers the ability to filter out selected material which does not also give governments - or ISPs under the thumbs of governments(*) - the power to filter as well.
So therefore my fantastic solution the the problems of the internet is:
Er, dunno.
(*) - this is even worse, IMO. A government banning something has to justify itself; an ISP can, when asked by a government, decline to provide access to anything. As many ISPs in the UK did when the police leaned on them to ban a whole tranche of newsgroups, many entirely unconnected to porn.
Isn't every Cringely on Slashdot now? And given that Baloney! doesn't seem to have much recent updating, is he acknowledging/. as the uber-forum for discussion of *everything*?
Hmm... getting a lot of server errors today, will this affect Andover's share price?:-)
This is frankly amazing. Not only that such a large, allegedly net-savvy company could make an elementary security blunder(*), but that they even thought to was a viable business plan.
After all, all existing domain holders already have valid contact addresses(**) and don't need another poxy webmail account. They're also likely to be the kind of net users who'd not use webmail for importantish stuff. Maybe they just wanted to be able to claim X current users to advertisers, whilst not telling them none of the actually use the service.
Just glad they don't seem to have included any domains I'm involved in...
(*) Hey! Has anyone tried to get root at NSI using the password 'nsinsi' or something?
(**) Except for the spammers, obv. Maybe NSI were aiming the service at spammers. That would certainly fit their modus operandi.
[the BBC is] currently being trounced by ITV (and even Channel 5) in the weekly ratings tracker
Not massively more than normal(*). ITV has been slightly ahead of BBC1 for a long, long time. BBC managers like to claim that this is because BBC1 is deliberatly less populist than ITV. Which is probably partly true; I'll brave accusations of éliteism to admit there's not a lot on ITV I can bear to watch.
Channel 5, despite recent gains through licensing a few select films and football gains, is nowhere near BBC1 in terms of share.
(*) - the recent Who Wants To Be a Millionaire debacle aside, anyway. Actually I think Who Wants... is an entertaining, pretty clever and incredibly well-produced show despite the apparent simplicity of the format. But anyway.
The BBC is nervous about the digital market and wants its pound of flesh from those that subscribe to digital on top of the pound of flesh they get from you if you just happen to own a TV
Nervous about digital? Hardly. The BBC was one of the very few early backers of DAB (radio) and DTT (TV), putting a lot of time and money into it when no-one else was paying attention.
And the digital license fee was proposed by a Government committee, not the BBC, where many oppose it.
BBC outsourced most of its programme making a few years back in a Dilbert-esque move
True, which is why it's World of Wonder producing this and not the BBC itself. WoW has been around for a long time; before the BBC started using outside production firms IIRC.
This all adds up to the fact that the Beeb wants to screen a popularist programme on the internet probably with the Luddite Tabloid bias.
I don't believe so. Given that it's about "internet communities" - a bit of a minority subject - and it's made by WoW, I expect this doc to end up on the rather less populist BBC2. Like The Net and other such fairly dodgy computer-related stuff the Beeb have shown in the post-BBC-Micro era.
It might even be good, you never know.:-)
Here's a good link for British TV-related news. Having just moved away to Germany, I really miss British TV...
it should be fairly trivial to add multiplayer code
I don't know, it's not just the language object model that needs to be made multiple-Player-Character aware, it's the library. I don't know enough about Hugo's library to comment accurately, but I expect it's (like most of Hugo) sort of like Inform and TADS, only cleaned up. And that would require more than just a simple bodge because the library contains a lot of game logic, and game logic is wildly different when there is more than one PC, especially on massively-multiple-PC MU** systems.
I guess the reason for the difference is that a single-PC game is telling a story and knows a lot about what has happened so far; it can provide very specific responses which may aspire to being actual literature and that. Whereas a multi-PC game has far more possible states and cannot hope to give the same sort of response as single-player IF; its reponses are by necessity much more formulaic, and less suitable for story-telling.
The exception, perhaps, is games that don't attempt to tell a story; simple collections of puzzles like the original Zork, Colossal Cave and so on. But it is still extremely difficult to design puzzles that can equally be solved by a single player or multiple concurrent players.
So what I'm saying, I think, is that single-player IF is a sufficiently different beastie from MUD-style to make a common framework system for both not especially useful. And I don't think it's possible to design a satisfying text game that can work equally as a single- or multiple-PC experience.
Why is it that free software written by hackers in their basements almost always better than something you would pay for? It all comes down to money... people are rushed to release their programs, and try to patch it together from others' code to try and save time.
I've noticed it going more and more this way recently too.
The best software is usually that which is written to solve a particular problem or implement a particular system that its author(s) themselves wanted to do, rather than for commercial purposes. That doesn't necessarily mean it is released as freeware, or open-sourced, but it was definitely not designed to make money.
Software designed for primarily commercial reasons may often suffer from:
being rushed, as you mention;
being deliberately badly-designed in order to be able to 'upgrade' it in the future (it happens);
copy protection and commercial user-annoyance of all forms;
being deliberately crippled to encourage users to spend more money on the same company's higher-priced sibling product;
justification of a high price through bloat and making the software seem more complicated than it actually is.
The latter point is becoming more and more pernicious in commercial software, I think. It's often just not possible to buy a simple tool for a simple task.
Argh! Just think how many man-hours of work time is already lost to the behemoth Slashdot! How much worse will it be if users are encouraged to compete for karma, having to read and reply to articles as soon as they appear to accumulate the best high score?
All over the world, productivity will slump, causing a global stock exchange crisis! Unattended nuclear power plants will go critical! The moon will blow up! And the French will take over the world!
The Boston Globe puts a punctuation mistake in its headline?
Lesson's of a waylaid 'giant-slayer'
Not impressed. With that, or the fact that the report seems to be cobbled together from interviews with those well-known impartial industry commentators, Microsoft. They say Linux and Java aren't much good.
Well, duh.
What's interesting is that the aforementioned executives give some ground up - "Linux and Java are quite good for running servers with", though of course not as good as W2K will be, cheers cheers ect.
The emphasis seems to be that both these products are up against Windows so they must be the same. Perhaps some of the more rabid Linux and Java advocates might see it like that too. But do we really want Linux, or indeed Java to "take over the world"? I don't think so.
Slashdot Mirror
If challenged, it certainly should. The amount of prior art is just untrue. But that's not the whole problem. Here's a quote from the article:
And this I would probably agree with. That's what's so sick about today's legal framework (and not just over in the US): it doesn't uphold the law as designed when organisations can be bullied into giving in rather than risk ludicrously large sums on going to court.
Anyway. Isn't saying "all 2-digit years are in the range 1900 to 1999" just another form of windowing?
--
This comment was brought to you by And Clover.
Yup. Exactly what I was going to say.
What do we want? - where "we" is some stereotypical /. reader... okay, geek if you like.
Now, what does the average company boss or political lobbyist want?
It's an issue of control, I think. We don't like it. Many companies love it. Overly glib, perhaps, but I believe there's something there.
--
This comment was brought to you by And Clover.
Okay... what I'd like to see:
In Nested mode, a control to open/close comment bodies without having to send another request to /., using DHTML's display property.
Course, it won't work on much other than IE, and Javascript is still Evil (obv.) but I reckon it'd be useful, anyway.
--
This comment was brought to you by And Clover.
Anyway, I apologise for the dodgy moderating. If this post even manages to get through. Hmm.
--
This comment was brought to you by And Clover.
It's a perceptive post!
Because it's flexible, mankind can finally realise the dream of a breast-shaped computer display.
Otherwise, the unfortunate Ms. Portman would have to be viewed on a flat screen.
Er... or something.
--
This comment was brought to you by And Clover.
What, again?
Another /. story about how a some new technology is going to give us large, inexpensive, flexible flat-panel displays?
Is it just the same thing being invented over and over again every few months or so for the last five years?
It would be really, really nice to retire the bulky, heavy, hot-running and unreliable CRT - I certianly never want to buy a traditional monitor again. But there's still not much competition; low yields keep TFT very expensive.
So please, could someone, somewhere develop a workable display from one of the technologies we've read press releases about for years. I don't want to still be using a CRT in another five years' time...
Deja vu? Oh yeah, I posted more or less the same thing the last time too. :-)
--
This comment was brought to you by And Clover.
Well the Coke machine outside the CS lab at my university used to run out all the time. How about a machine which charges more for a drink when there are only a few cans left?
--
This comment was brought to you by And Clover.
I don't think this is actually the case - the CNet item seems to state that the report was on the ubiquity of usage of programming languages rather than how well-liked they are by the developers who have to use them. Hence the preponderance of VB.
Actually the CNet report isn't really interested in that at all, it's just another poor piece of Java-bashing journalism[1]. I don't know if the Zona study itself takes this line too[2].
Actually I think Java comes out of the report pretty damned well given its age. But I'd be interested to know how well the other languages fared, esp. Perl, Python and the like.
[1] Not that I especially like Java personally. Well, the language is nice, but the standard libraries really bug my balls.
[2] (Who are Zona Research, anyway? Is there any good reason we couldn't set up a bogus market research company and forward studies to the media made up entirely of our own opinions?)
--
This comment was brought to you by And Clover.
Erm. It seems its the same price as RedHat Standard, except that a chunk of the price goes to the FSF. So if you happened to want a set of RedHat Standard and you like GNU (WHO DOESNT!!!! -Mr. Nutty [er, I mean, RMS]) it comes out as a better deal.
As long as you dont want StarOffice, or Qt, or Netscape, anyways. Funny marketing, that, advertising it as "better because it contains less!". But theres theology for you. HOORAY FOR FSF!!
--
This comment was brought to you by And Clover.
Back in the good old days, on good old RISC OS, we didn't need installers. To install a good old program, one copied its good old 'application directory' (that's enough goodness and oldness. -Ed.) from a CD, floppy or the 'net onto wherever you wanted it to be on the hard disc. To move it, you moved the application directory. To run it, you double-clicked on it. To remove it, you just deleted it. It didn't hide stuff in lib or man. It didn't scatter keys about the registry with reckless abandon. No shortcuts copied into a start menu, no changes to user paths, it just worked.(*)
I would really, really love to see a decent form of application encapsulation on Unix OSes and, even more, on Windows, where a half-installed application more often than not requires a complete OS re-install. Which is a bit crap. In case you didn't notice.
* - well, it just worked, until some of the bigger software companies decided to start using installers, usually in order to implement some hideous copy-protection scheme, or because installers were the trendy way Windows did it, or sometimes just to be contrary. After that, one tended to find that moving programs didn't work, upgrading the OS didn't work, installing them on newer versions of the OS or hardware didn't work, and applications would occasionally just refuse to run, claiming they were corrupt. Just like good old Windows. (That was a sarcastic "good old", BTW, so it doesn't count.)
An installer is just one more part of an application that can go wrong. I wish we could rid the universe of 'em.
--
This comment was brought to you by And Clover.
Please, someone, put the Cathode Ray Tube out of its misery. They're bulky, heavy, they go wrong all the time and they an all-round pain in the bum.
Every few months for the last five years we've read stories about how some smashing new technology is going to produce new flatpanel-type displays that may be larger or brighter than before, but always cheaper.
But for now all we've got is still-damned-pricey TFTs. How much longer do I have to wait? 'Cos I ain't never buying me another CRT. So there.
--
This comment was brought to you by And Clover.
Monsatan in being-good-rather-than-evil shock!
Well, maybe. I'd really really like to believe that this story is true and Monsanto have decided they can make a profit from providing a product that people actually want and that benefits the world in general, as opposed to their normal tactic of trying to accrue wealth through control (cf. Terminator) and corporate bullying. But it all sounds too good to be true.
Certainly, Monsanto could really do with some good publicity about now, and this sort of "Look! Genetic engineering is a Good Thing after all!" story is exactly that.
Just a little note from cynicsville. Personally most of my problems with GM are social rather than strictly scientific. And I'd love to see Monsanto doing something useful for a change.
--
And this is, of course, the nub of the matter. Because a being that does not believe in free will is unlikely to survive, we could have simply have evolved the whole 'consciousness' memeplex without it actually having to exist.
Or maybe not. Maybe it does exist. Maybe it's something to do with quantum effects. Dunno.
So, for now, we get on with living, yeah?
Okay...
--
Hmm. Could that be a loophole? What about a virus intended merely to spread, not actually to mangle everyone's data - a payload-free virus. Which would generally tend to spread more easily than a malicious one.
(Of course, many viruses can cause damage without intending to do so, generally because the writer is a bit crap at it.)
This is, of course, a lot more worrying, as it affects not only the writing of viruses but the writing of anti-virus software. But then, sometimes the AV companies behave at least as dodgily as virus writers. ;-)
--
My guess is they've been slaving away on the technology behind the next generation of gaming, a new breed of interactive fiction with incredible lifelike gameplay.
Though shadowy contacts with Transmeta's sinister agents I have managed to obtain this transcript, which should hopefully convey some the raw excitement on offer.
Transmeta Adventure
An Interactive Next-Generation Gaming Experience
by Linux Torwald and David Ditzy
You are in a cave there is BILL GATES here!!!
What do you want to do now TELL ME!
> smell bill
BILL GATES smell of POO!!!
> shoot bill
You shoot the BILL GATES with GUN! He disappears in a puff of smoke! Very good!
(Your score has gone up by two points.)
> release new software release beating windows
Yes! You have won!! and You get yoghurt!
(--end of transcript--)
Apparently the full version will also feature a section where you have to get the treasure and successfully negotiate a maze of twisty little stock options, all alike. Personally I can't wait.
(Look, none of us have a clue what's they're doing, so why not fill this article up with off-topic rubbish? Well that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.)
--
It's good to hear anonther big company coming out against the patently wrong Way Things Are.
But maybe it might have more impact if they allowed free software authors run of their patents (through the FSF?)
I'd personally like to see a clause granting free use of software patents to any organisations who do not themselves hold software patents.
Not that I'm planning to write a free RDBMS, but still...
--
Okay. This may shock and surprise, but I actually like the idea of having some sort of ratings - in theory at least.
Many an apparently innocuous search or link can unexpectedly turn up pr0n, at least in part because many of the worst sites (the click farms and the 'adult verification' scams, and the pages with browser-maining Javascripts) care not for the average user (minor or not) who might accidentally stumble on their site, as long as they get their hits.
So I'd like to see a reliable, ratings-based way of filtering, but:
I still agree with everything said here about ratings leading to censorship. And I can't see any way of allowing users, parents or employers the ability to filter out selected material which does not also give governments - or ISPs under the thumbs of governments(*) - the power to filter as well.
So therefore my fantastic solution the the problems of the internet is:
(*) - this is even worse, IMO. A government banning something has to justify itself; an ISP can, when asked by a government, decline to provide access to anything. As many ISPs in the UK did when the police leaned on them to ban a whole tranche of newsgroups, many entirely unconnected to porn.
--
Isn't every Cringely on Slashdot now? And given that Baloney! doesn't seem to have much recent updating, is he acknowledging /. as the uber-forum for discussion of *everything*?
Hmm... getting a lot of server errors today, will this affect Andover's share price? :-)
--
This is frankly amazing. Not only that such a large, allegedly net-savvy company could make an elementary security blunder(*), but that they even thought to was a viable business plan.
After all, all existing domain holders already have valid contact addresses(**) and don't need another poxy webmail account. They're also likely to be the kind of net users who'd not use webmail for importantish stuff. Maybe they just wanted to be able to claim X current users to advertisers, whilst not telling them none of the actually use the service.
Just glad they don't seem to have included any domains I'm involved in...
(*) Hey! Has anyone tried to get root at NSI using the password 'nsinsi' or something?
(**) Except for the spammers, obv. Maybe NSI were aiming the service at spammers. That would certainly fit their modus operandi.
--
Eh? AmigaLux, are you really from the UK?
Not massively more than normal(*). ITV has been slightly ahead of BBC1 for a long, long time. BBC managers like to claim that this is because BBC1 is deliberatly less populist than ITV. Which is probably partly true; I'll brave accusations of éliteism to admit there's not a lot on ITV I can bear to watch.
Channel 5, despite recent gains through licensing a few select films and football gains, is nowhere near BBC1 in terms of share.
(*) - the recent Who Wants To Be a Millionaire debacle aside, anyway. Actually I think Who Wants... is an entertaining, pretty clever and incredibly well-produced show despite the apparent simplicity of the format. But anyway.
Nervous about digital? Hardly. The BBC was one of the very few early backers of DAB (radio) and DTT (TV), putting a lot of time and money into it when no-one else was paying attention.
And the digital license fee was proposed by a Government committee, not the BBC, where many oppose it.
True, which is why it's World of Wonder producing this and not the BBC itself. WoW has been around for a long time; before the BBC started using outside production firms IIRC.
I don't believe so. Given that it's about "internet communities" - a bit of a minority subject - and it's made by WoW, I expect this doc to end up on the rather less populist BBC2. Like The Net and other such fairly dodgy computer-related stuff the Beeb have shown in the post-BBC-Micro era.
It might even be good, you never know. :-)
Here's a good link for British TV-related news. Having just moved away to Germany, I really miss British TV...
--
I don't know, it's not just the language object model that needs to be made multiple-Player-Character aware, it's the library. I don't know enough about Hugo's library to comment accurately, but I expect it's (like most of Hugo) sort of like Inform and TADS, only cleaned up. And that would require more than just a simple bodge because the library contains a lot of game logic, and game logic is wildly different when there is more than one PC, especially on massively-multiple-PC MU** systems.
I guess the reason for the difference is that a single-PC game is telling a story and knows a lot about what has happened so far; it can provide very specific responses which may aspire to being actual literature and that. Whereas a multi-PC game has far more possible states and cannot hope to give the same sort of response as single-player IF; its reponses are by necessity much more formulaic, and less suitable for story-telling.
The exception, perhaps, is games that don't attempt to tell a story; simple collections of puzzles like the original Zork, Colossal Cave and so on. But it is still extremely difficult to design puzzles that can equally be solved by a single player or multiple concurrent players.
So what I'm saying, I think, is that single-player IF is a sufficiently different beastie from MUD-style to make a common framework system for both not especially useful. And I don't think it's possible to design a satisfying text game that can work equally as a single- or multiple-PC experience.
Unless anyone wants to prove me wrong...
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I've noticed it going more and more this way recently too.
The best software is usually that which is written to solve a particular problem or implement a particular system that its author(s) themselves wanted to do, rather than for commercial purposes. That doesn't necessarily mean it is released as freeware, or open-sourced, but it was definitely not designed to make money.
Software designed for primarily commercial reasons may often suffer from:
The latter point is becoming more and more pernicious in commercial software, I think. It's often just not possible to buy a simple tool for a simple task.
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Argh! Just think how many man-hours of work time is already lost to the behemoth Slashdot! How much worse will it be if users are encouraged to compete for karma, having to read and reply to articles as soon as they appear to accumulate the best high score?
All over the world, productivity will slump, causing a global stock exchange crisis! Unattended nuclear power plants will go critical! The moon will blow up! And the French will take over the world!
Or something.
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Maybe fewer misunderstandings might be provoked if the 'final' score was not shown on the M2 page at all.
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The Boston Globe puts a punctuation mistake in its headline?
Not impressed. With that, or the fact that the report seems to be cobbled together from interviews with those well-known impartial industry commentators, Microsoft. They say Linux and Java aren't much good.
Well, duh.
What's interesting is that the aforementioned executives give some ground up - "Linux and Java are quite good for running servers with", though of course not as good as W2K will be, cheers cheers ect.
The emphasis seems to be that both these products are up against Windows so they must be the same. Perhaps some of the more rabid Linux and Java advocates might see it like that too. But do we really want Linux, or indeed Java to "take over the world"? I don't think so.
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