The good news is that there's nothing stopping you, for sake of argument assumed to be a person of little means, from getting the money you need. All you have to do is find a rich person and convince him that you've got a good idea. Because the world is chock full of stupid rich people, you don't even have to necessarily have a good idea in order to pull this little trick.
And the whole reason I should have to do that is, what now? So companies like Apple can monopolize things that other people have done before/could easily come up with themselves/is so fucking obvious the patent examiner should be shot...
Gent bent... No, really. It's a ridiculous patent, and you shouldn't fucking encourage this kind of ridiculous bullshit from the patent office.
There is nothing original about the iTunes interface. Is it a good interface? Sure. Is it new? Sure, in it's _exact_ implementation. Is it original? Not by a fucking longshot. There have been other media players that allow you to view music by artist, genre, etc. That's part of the point for meta-data in media files in the first place for fuck's sake.
Do I think lsongs is a blatant ripoff? Sure, except it kind of looks like shit, and they should take screenshots running a better theme... But let it compete on its own merits, dammit!
Someone put this guy out of our misery, *please! Programmers here in the states are having a hard enough time as it is, and now this fucker wants to put an extra tax on our trade? Here's a better idea, all politicians who try to pass a stupid tax, bill, constitutional ammendment, etc. while in office should have their sphincter removed so their shit can more easily flow out the proper hole.
Seriously, do we have any politicians in this country who are even somewhat in touch with their consituents? Instead of more taxes, how 'bout we reduce the ridiculous pay many politicians get these days. Aren't they supposed to be public servants? Why does it seem that more often we are serving them?
* just to clarify, I mean by voting him out, not killing him:D
I have never been a laissez-faire right-winger. Anyway, these days I can best be described as a slightly hawkish progressive.
Heh, just FYI, I voted for Nader. Not that I like Nader much, it was really a protest vote. This year, I am firmly in the "anyone but Bush" camp.
I used to think myself a left libertarian, however, I am far to pragmatic to associate with libertarians, who are generally 100% dogmatic. Being a pragmatist, I am against ideology costing lives(or causing serious damage to so many millions), be it regarding economics, war, weapons, etc. OTOH, I recognize that the price of freedom is sometimes the lives of a few.
So there you go, greenrd! It's been a while since I've argued with you -- I am a bit more moderate these days, so we may be less at odds.
To answer your question, no, I am not concerned about my career. What concerns me is that so many skilled people can't put their skills to use, the level of corruption in our government(eg. the DMCA, laws literally being written by industry big-wigs -- gotta love Word(TM) meta-data), "free trade" being largely a one-way street and only for large corporations, etc., etc.
As usual, I'm betting on the lawyers being the only winners while the companies themselves suffer death by a thousand paper cuts from all of the legal documents...
If you've said it a thousand times, you still haven't said it enough. While tech companies bleed off programmers and other skilled employees and move development overseas, lawyers are getting paid more and more to do... what exactly?
Now while the U.S. is falling way behind in engineering and sciences, lawyers are becoming even more numerous. Well, what the hell are they going to do in court when we as a country no longer do ANYTHING? The less we do, the pettier the lawsuits become.
Of course, this doesn't just apply to the U.S., but I think the U.S. is the leader taking all of us down this path.
And you come off like an elitist idiot who knows far less than he thinks, especially when you blather on about "versions" of Linux. I pointed out a good list of organizations and individuals who successfully distribute binary-only code on Linux. So, pray tell, what the fuck are you talking about regarding "versions" of Linux, when it's obvious that people who really care don't have too considerably much trouble distributing binary-only apps on Linux. As I said, I have done so myself, internally in my company.
Regarding wine, the interface is slow, but video playback is perhaps 50% slower than in Windows.
Here's the facts:
1. QT has already been ported to Linux, and is licensed by embedded device developers.
2. QT runs acceptably well in wine, and is even supported by codeweavers. On newer machines, 1.5Ghz+, it runs fine.
3. Many people successfully distribute binary-only apps for Linux. Those that care to do so don't run into too much difficulty with "different versions" of Linux.
4. Considering points 1, 2 and 3, there is no reason QT couldn't easily be distributed for Linux.
5. You are talking out of your ass and resorting to attacking my personality instead of admitting you may be wrong.
And yet YOU like to troll all the Linux stories and make up bullshit about how you have insider SCO information and that they have a real case against Linux...
What the fuck is wrong with you, man?
Re:Languages and Libraries
on
Pike 7.6 Released
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· Score: 2, Insightful
What the hell are you talking about?
Perl, for example, whose language and syntax is frightingly complicated because of the inbreeding between language and library.
Care to qualify that at all? How are perl libraries any different than in any other language? They don't alter the core language in any way(at least not without serious voodoo). In fact, perl 6 is going to allow libraries to introduce new syntax, which seems to contradict what you were saying about it.
I may not know the precise manner in which QT works, and I may be a complete fucking idiot, but I _am_ a developer, and I'm not so fucking stupid that I don't understand what the dumbass was saying, and it's simply garbage. Add the fact that it fucking runs in wine just fine without any special kernel hooks...
Meaning, it'd be pretty fucking easy to port QT to Linux, especially considering it's already fucking been done. Fuck... Any special kernel interaction can be replaced, considering that is what is happening when running in wine.
I don't know how the fuck QT works, but there is no reason it simply HAS to interact with the kernel directly. For Christ sake, it works in wine just fine, meaning the app can run entirely in user-space without major performance hurdles.
Second, I still play games from Loki that are 5 years old, on a fully up-to-date Gentoo box. I have never had a problem with binary compatability with any commercial binary-only Linux program. IBM, Sun, Loki, CodeWeavers, Garage-Games, Linux Games Publishing, ID, Epic, Ryan "Icculus" Gordon etc., etc. all ship binary-only software in a generic manner that works fine on all the major distros. Fuck, I'm a goddam idiot, and I have put together generic, binary packages for Linux that have had no problems working across all major distros.
You are completely full of shit. Pure, unadulterated, goddam fucking bullshit.
That is patently ridiculous. Apple supports QT on Windows. They have free downloads for Windows. It wouldn't cost any more to have free downloads for a couple *nixes.
I suspect Apple doesn't want to give *nix users a reason to not switch to Apple. They are forced to support QT on windows because if they don't, it won't stay relevent.
Plus, I believe several companies license QT from Apple for use on embedded systems running Linux, so porting it is not cost prohibitive.
But who gives a "flying fuck" anyway? I believe the Xine developers already reverse-engineered the codec and have a native version for Linux. Oh, right... Patents... *sigh*
You are both wrong. What is happening here is a larger divide between rich and poor. The rich American CEOs are getting richer, and we are becoming poor, and people in other places are getting somewhat less poor. Yes, it is true that an equilibrium is being reached, but only for the poor masses of the world. Wealth, and then prices will equalize throughout the world, until we are all on the same level. In the short term, people in third-world countries getting good jobs are living pretty comfortably, but that's because their paltry salaries are a lot for where they live. As those areas get wealthier, prices will go up, etc., etc. Eventually we will be on roughly equal footing.
And that's good for them, bad for us(especially in the short term), but the people who are benefitting the most are the American CEOs.
In fact, American isn't quite right, but right now it's mostly American CEOs. It will spread throughout the world, as "free trade" expands.
The wealthy have been getting their fingers deeper and deeper into the governments around the world, and they will eventually have total control. They will be our lords, and we their subjects.
And then of course, we will have new revolutions. A lot of blood will be shed. Periodically, the poor masses will acheive brief periods of comfort, influence, even partial control. But as always, new kings, emperors, lords, deities, whatever... will gain control and force the masses to do their bidding, again. History repeats itself.
Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe we truly are "civilized" now, and will remain free of such extreme tyranny forever. Heh, yeah right...
<whisper>wow, this new armchair is comfy</whisper>
I don't think you'd get far arguing your anti-Microsoft points with Raymond.
Huh? Ok, I read a good bit of his blog for the current month, and looked at the titles for March, and I have found absolutely nothing to link his blog to what you said.
That is, I don't get it. What are you talking about?
The first thing I install on a windows machine(I use it, get over it) is Linux.
The first things I install on a Linux machine, in no particular order, gvim(gtk+-2), gnome, galeon(requires mozilla), kde(mostly for konqueror), rhythmbox, mutt, and gimp.
What are you saying? That pure ideas should be copyrightable?
If that's the case, then... wow, we have to throw away EVERYTHING WE HAVE EVER DONE. Hey! Isn't that a linked list there? That was someone else's idea!
No, of course that's not the case. Ideas can only be protected by trade secret and patents, patents supposedly only covering implementations of ideas.
I've never used any of SCO's products, but from what I understand from friends who have been in the unfortuneate position of having to use them, Microsoft shouldn't have been worried about it anyway.
Look, I never said that game developers aren't fallible, and I even admitted that there are sometimes problems, but as a long-time gamer, I have seen far more people complain who simply suck, than those that are good and just don't like one of the gameplay elements and conclude it's a flaw.
In general, your arguments should not be contingent upon any specific facts of the person you are debating with. One, it's invalid reasoning, and two, it makes you look especially silly when those assumptions turn out incorrect.
Huh? WTF are you talking about? What arguments have I made that are contingent upon facts about you? Sure, in jest I said, "you just suck," but no argument I have made depends on anything about you. This is a discussion about gaming, afterall. Lighten the fuck up.
But, whatever. Back on-topic.
Take the example of Soul Calibur. A beginner player is extremely dangerous, because button mashing is quite an effective technique in SC. However, once one begins to master the game, a button masher can be put down with a few swift, well-timed attacks.
The FPS genre is over 10 years old now, and spawn point camping has been an issue for a long time. Some games have tried to completely eliminate the "problem", while others have only made it a bit more difficult to get away with.
Therefore, it stands to reason that developers are quite aware that people can camp near spawn points, and it's up to the players to deal with it however possible in the game.
But in the end, it comes down to communities. Some will have specific rules that you're expected to follow, others, not so much. Behave like a reasonable human being, wherever you are playing. If you don't like the way a group of people play, tough luck. Don't bitch or whine, just go somewhere else.
I disagree with you. Most games do not have huge flaws that destroy the balance. Just because something in a game is difficult to overcome, for you, doesn't mean it was an oversight of the developer.
I've been playing FPSs for over ten years as well, my favorite probably having to have been the original UT. I didn't play the specific map you mention much, but I was a damn good sniper, and in a good match I have never been able to freely sit and target spawn points. But I was usually the guy wiping the map with the wanna-be sniper who was trying to target spawn points. Wherever you can see other players, they can see you too, meaning snipers are far from invincible. If the other team is sniping spawn points, you setup your own sniper to guard them. Anything the other team/guy can do, so can you.
Like I said, though, administrators are free to implement their own rules.
And of COURSE people should behave as gentlemen. If the consensus with a group of people is that spawn camping isn't allowed, well, don't fucking do it. But don't play on someone else's server and whine about the way they play the game.
What do you mean there's nothing you can do about spawn camping? Defeating spawn campers is easy. They can't camp near EVERY spawn point! If spawn camping is winning someone matches, those matches are pretty pathetic. Get better, and then when you stomp on the pathetic campers, find some real gamers to play with.
And your analogies to real life are ridiculous. In real life tennis or whatnot, there are rules. Shooting someone in the knee is against the rules. If you did that in a real match, you'd be disqualified, and then arrested. In an FPS, the rules are built into the game and breaking them would consist of using an aim bot, turning off clipping, seeing through walls, etc., all which require modifying the game in some manner.
Now don't get me wrong, an admin is free to add rules to the game, or even remove rules! If you want to ban spawn camping on your server, more power to you. In fact, it's not a bad idea, as it will force the pathetic campers to get better, and when everyone is better, cheesy tactics won't work so well anymore. Similarly, if you want to allow disabling of clipping and seeing through walls, well, have fun with that.
The one thing I hate most about gaming is people whining! I want to kick whiners in the face!
If there's an easy-but-powerful move in a game, the best thing you can do is learn how best to counter it.
I've put a great many hours into Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Soul Calibur, Q3A, etc., and in all those games, there are "cheesy" moves, but they're not unbalancing for a hardened fighter.
OTOH, there are times when there's a bug in a game that gives one side an advantage. Eg. In EA's NHL 93 or 94, if you circled the goal while being the player defending the "bottom" goal (IIRC, could be the other way 'round), the goalie would get "stuck" and leave the goal wide open every time. And being a console game, no patching:-/
But bugs that benefit one side are rare, and anything that's not a bug is fair game.
Yes, even spawn point sniping! If some jerk is sniping spawn points, fucking punish him. There's no reason you can't say, "Hey everyone, gang up on FUckfAce until he quits spawn point sniping!"
Besides, any time spawn point sniping is beneficial enough to win a match, said match simply wasn't intense enough. Don't whine like a pussy, get better!
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And the whole reason I should have to do that is, what now? So companies like Apple can monopolize things that other people have done before/could easily come up with themselves/is so fucking obvious the patent examiner should be shot...
There is nothing original about the iTunes interface. Is it a good interface? Sure. Is it new? Sure, in it's _exact_ implementation. Is it original? Not by a fucking longshot. There have been other media players that allow you to view music by artist, genre, etc. That's part of the point for meta-data in media files in the first place for fuck's sake.
Do I think lsongs is a blatant ripoff? Sure, except it kind of looks like shit, and they should take screenshots running a better theme... But let it compete on its own merits, dammit!
Someone put this guy out of our misery, *please! Programmers here in the states are having a hard enough time as it is, and now this fucker wants to put an extra tax on our trade? Here's a better idea, all politicians who try to pass a stupid tax, bill, constitutional ammendment, etc. while in office should have their sphincter removed so their shit can more easily flow out the proper hole.
Seriously, do we have any politicians in this country who are even somewhat in touch with their consituents? Instead of more taxes, how 'bout we reduce the ridiculous pay many politicians get these days. Aren't they supposed to be public servants? Why does it seem that more often we are serving them?
* just to clarify, I mean by voting him out, not killing him :D
Heh, just FYI, I voted for Nader. Not that I like Nader much, it was really a protest vote. This year, I am firmly in the "anyone but Bush" camp.
I used to think myself a left libertarian, however, I am far to pragmatic to associate with libertarians, who are generally 100% dogmatic. Being a pragmatist, I am against ideology costing lives(or causing serious damage to so many millions), be it regarding economics, war, weapons, etc. OTOH, I recognize that the price of freedom is sometimes the lives of a few.
So there you go, greenrd! It's been a while since I've argued with you -- I am a bit more moderate these days, so we may be less at odds.
To answer your question, no, I am not concerned about my career. What concerns me is that so many skilled people can't put their skills to use, the level of corruption in our government(eg. the DMCA, laws literally being written by industry big-wigs -- gotta love Word(TM) meta-data), "free trade" being largely a one-way street and only for large corporations, etc., etc.
Cheers!
If you've said it a thousand times, you still haven't said it enough. While tech companies bleed off programmers and other skilled employees and move development overseas, lawyers are getting paid more and more to do... what exactly?
Now while the U.S. is falling way behind in engineering and sciences, lawyers are becoming even more numerous. Well, what the hell are they going to do in court when we as a country no longer do ANYTHING? The less we do, the pettier the lawsuits become.
Of course, this doesn't just apply to the U.S., but I think the U.S. is the leader taking all of us down this path.
Regarding wine, the interface is slow, but video playback is perhaps 50% slower than in Windows.
Here's the facts:
1. QT has already been ported to Linux, and is licensed by embedded device developers.
2. QT runs acceptably well in wine, and is even supported by codeweavers. On newer machines, 1.5Ghz+, it runs fine.
3. Many people successfully distribute binary-only apps for Linux. Those that care to do so don't run into too much difficulty with "different versions" of Linux.
4. Considering points 1, 2 and 3, there is no reason QT couldn't easily be distributed for Linux.
5. You are talking out of your ass and resorting to attacking my personality instead of admitting you may be wrong.
What the fuck is wrong with you, man?
Perl, for example, whose language and syntax is frightingly complicated because of the inbreeding between language and library.
Care to qualify that at all? How are perl libraries any different than in any other language? They don't alter the core language in any way(at least not without serious voodoo). In fact, perl 6 is going to allow libraries to introduce new syntax, which seems to contradict what you were saying about it.
I may not know the precise manner in which QT works, and I may be a complete fucking idiot, but I _am_ a developer, and I'm not so fucking stupid that I don't understand what the dumbass was saying, and it's simply garbage. Add the fact that it fucking runs in wine just fine without any special kernel hooks...
Meaning, it'd be pretty fucking easy to port QT to Linux, especially considering it's already fucking been done. Fuck... Any special kernel interaction can be replaced, considering that is what is happening when running in wine.
Second, I still play games from Loki that are 5 years old, on a fully up-to-date Gentoo box. I have never had a problem with binary compatability with any commercial binary-only Linux program. IBM, Sun, Loki, CodeWeavers, Garage-Games, Linux Games Publishing, ID, Epic, Ryan "Icculus" Gordon etc., etc. all ship binary-only software in a generic manner that works fine on all the major distros. Fuck, I'm a goddam idiot, and I have put together generic, binary packages for Linux that have had no problems working across all major distros.
You are completely full of shit. Pure, unadulterated, goddam fucking bullshit.
I suspect Apple doesn't want to give *nix users a reason to not switch to Apple. They are forced to support QT on windows because if they don't, it won't stay relevent.
Plus, I believe several companies license QT from Apple for use on embedded systems running Linux, so porting it is not cost prohibitive.
But who gives a "flying fuck" anyway? I believe the Xine developers already reverse-engineered the codec and have a native version for Linux. Oh, right... Patents... *sigh*
And that's good for them, bad for us(especially in the short term), but the people who are benefitting the most are the American CEOs.
In fact, American isn't quite right, but right now it's mostly American CEOs. It will spread throughout the world, as "free trade" expands.
The wealthy have been getting their fingers deeper and deeper into the governments around the world, and they will eventually have total control. They will be our lords, and we their subjects.
And then of course, we will have new revolutions. A lot of blood will be shed. Periodically, the poor masses will acheive brief periods of comfort, influence, even partial control. But as always, new kings, emperors, lords, deities, whatever... will gain control and force the masses to do their bidding, again. History repeats itself.
Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe we truly are "civilized" now, and will remain free of such extreme tyranny forever. Heh, yeah right...
<whisper>wow, this new armchair is comfy</whisper>
Huh? Ok, I read a good bit of his blog for the current month, and looked at the titles for March, and I have found absolutely nothing to link his blog to what you said.
That is, I don't get it. What are you talking about?
Just because Windows is pervasive in the world of personal computing does not make UNIX any less pervasive in the world of "serious" computing.
In the world in which many people work, UNIX _is_ everywhere, and by extension, so is vi. Many peoples' jobs are to administer UNIX machines...
Your post is off-topic, and should have been modded accordingly, but ignorance abounds.
The first things I install on a Linux machine, in no particular order, gvim(gtk+-2), gnome, galeon(requires mozilla), kde(mostly for konqueror), rhythmbox, mutt, and gimp.
If that's the case, then... wow, we have to throw away EVERYTHING WE HAVE EVER DONE. Hey! Isn't that a linked list there? That was someone else's idea!
No, of course that's not the case. Ideas can only be protected by trade secret and patents, patents supposedly only covering implementations of ideas.
I've never used any of SCO's products, but from what I understand from friends who have been in the unfortuneate position of having to use them, Microsoft shouldn't have been worried about it anyway.
In general, your arguments should not be contingent upon any specific facts of the person you are debating with. One, it's invalid reasoning, and two, it makes you look especially silly when those assumptions turn out incorrect.
Huh? WTF are you talking about? What arguments have I made that are contingent upon facts about you? Sure, in jest I said, "you just suck," but no argument I have made depends on anything about you. This is a discussion about gaming, afterall. Lighten the fuck up.
But, whatever. Back on-topic.
Take the example of Soul Calibur. A beginner player is extremely dangerous, because button mashing is quite an effective technique in SC. However, once one begins to master the game, a button masher can be put down with a few swift, well-timed attacks.
The FPS genre is over 10 years old now, and spawn point camping has been an issue for a long time. Some games have tried to completely eliminate the "problem", while others have only made it a bit more difficult to get away with.
Therefore, it stands to reason that developers are quite aware that people can camp near spawn points, and it's up to the players to deal with it however possible in the game.
But in the end, it comes down to communities. Some will have specific rules that you're expected to follow, others, not so much. Behave like a reasonable human being, wherever you are playing. If you don't like the way a group of people play, tough luck. Don't bitch or whine, just go somewhere else.
I've been playing FPSs for over ten years as well, my favorite probably having to have been the original UT. I didn't play the specific map you mention much, but I was a damn good sniper, and in a good match I have never been able to freely sit and target spawn points. But I was usually the guy wiping the map with the wanna-be sniper who was trying to target spawn points. Wherever you can see other players, they can see you too, meaning snipers are far from invincible. If the other team is sniping spawn points, you setup your own sniper to guard them. Anything the other team/guy can do, so can you.
Like I said, though, administrators are free to implement their own rules.
And of COURSE people should behave as gentlemen. If the consensus with a group of people is that spawn camping isn't allowed, well, don't fucking do it. But don't play on someone else's server and whine about the way they play the game.
And your analogies to real life are ridiculous. In real life tennis or whatnot, there are rules. Shooting someone in the knee is against the rules. If you did that in a real match, you'd be disqualified, and then arrested. In an FPS, the rules are built into the game and breaking them would consist of using an aim bot, turning off clipping, seeing through walls, etc., all which require modifying the game in some manner.
Now don't get me wrong, an admin is free to add rules to the game, or even remove rules! If you want to ban spawn camping on your server, more power to you. In fact, it's not a bad idea, as it will force the pathetic campers to get better, and when everyone is better, cheesy tactics won't work so well anymore. Similarly, if you want to allow disabling of clipping and seeing through walls, well, have fun with that.
If there's an easy-but-powerful move in a game, the best thing you can do is learn how best to counter it.
I've put a great many hours into Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Soul Calibur, Q3A, etc., and in all those games, there are "cheesy" moves, but they're not unbalancing for a hardened fighter.
OTOH, there are times when there's a bug in a game that gives one side an advantage. Eg. In EA's NHL 93 or 94, if you circled the goal while being the player defending the "bottom" goal (IIRC, could be the other way 'round), the goalie would get "stuck" and leave the goal wide open every time. And being a console game, no patching :-/
But bugs that benefit one side are rare, and anything that's not a bug is fair game.
Yes, even spawn point sniping! If some jerk is sniping spawn points, fucking punish him. There's no reason you can't say, "Hey everyone, gang up on FUckfAce until he quits spawn point sniping!"
Besides, any time spawn point sniping is beneficial enough to win a match, said match simply wasn't intense enough. Don't whine like a pussy, get better!