Hey, I pirate stuff. Don't tell anyone. And I speed. And I tear the mattress tag off. But I'm not too worried about privacy. I'm one of the few that doesn't mind the government keeping track of all purchases. Often this is a great means for identifying and fighting large-scale crime and terrorism.
However, I can't see how anyone would justify sending this information back to retailers.
That's odd. Galactic Civilizations was released as a downloadable game with no copy protection, and it sold extremely well.
Perhaps the secret to selling a game is releasing a good game in the first place, listening to your customers, marketing it well, and offering real incentive to pay for it.
I find the best way to combat piracy is offer exclusive content, or multiplayer modes that require validation. Hell, let people pirate the game for it's single player and sell them on it. Watch them turn around and then buy the game for the multiplayer, and other downloads.
Atari has openly paid for reviews in the past. Anyone remember the plethora of 9 and 9.9 scores for Driv3r? I am not bothered that most games rate a 7-9. I'd assume that most AAA titles should be on the good end of the scale. What bothers me is how many games receive a 9, 9.9 or 10. Shouldn't those be reserved for the truly exceptional? Or are there 10 games released every year that are TEH GREATEST EVA?
That's why the LSB exists. You can decide what packages you want, how you want to compile them, and how you want to configure them. You can customize your kernel, and even choose from a plethora of file systems. Linux supports massive servers, cutting edge technology, and small embedded devices. If every distro followed the LSB, you'd still have a great deal of freedom, but developers could write code and know that it works out of the box on every distro.
However, that isn't the case.
If you write for the Windows API, then you know it will work for every Windows user.
In the GNU/Linux world, we can't even agree on one standard for distributing packages and installing them. For better or worse, the LSB states that packages should be distributed in RPMs. And while RPMs are extremely common, many distros openly oppose them.
If I'm a developer, I don't want to have to release a Debian package, a SUSE package, a Gentoo package, etc.
Your response makes little to no sense. I'm talking about developing. I didn't say that Linux is too hard for an end-user. Developers enjoy standards.
I never said Windows was more secure, or better on the whole. So don't place such things in my mouth.
I said that because of the complexity of the GNU/Linux world, it is more difficult to develop an application for a broad user-base, and that is the truth.
I think you homed in on what the real message is here. And there is some truth to it.
For a large software developer, they want to reach a wide audience. That is why they develop for Windows, which has the largest user base. Even if they want to reach out to a Linux user base, there are so many different distros and ways of doing things, that you cut that audience into even smaller shares.
I'm all for freedom, but I find it silly that different distros keep configuration files in different locations, use different init scripts, use different install methods, have varying level of compliance with the LSB, are focused on either Gnome or KDE predominately, etc.
It does make it more difficult for a large company to develop for a Linux crowd in general.
I haven't read over GPLv3, but past versions of the GPL support multiple licenses, and general flexibility in that regard. I've even heard that the GPLv3 allows you to specify which restrictions you want to use, and which not to use.
Just because one part of the kernel shifts to GPLv3, I don't think that requires the entire kernel to migrate to the new license.
You seem to suggest that if Linus isn't using this, then there is no point to the license. Given the number of committees that worked on this, and their connection to major software projects, their involvement all but guarantees that many major software projects will use the new GPL license.
I am very grateful for the contributions Linus has made to the world. But he can be an ass from time to time.
And when he said that nothing much changed between the second and third drafts, he was not only being flippant, but ignorant. Many of the changes were in direct response to criticisms he made.
GPLv3 will happen regardless of whether or not it is accepted for the Linux kernel. I'm not sure they need to make Linus happy. I think the GPL crew needs to make the license best suit their needs.
Regardless, I don't think Linus will back down and accept it any time in the future. He has been very clear that the kernel is to be licensed under GPLv2 and GPLv2 exclusively.
That's news to me. I bought my mod chip in a store legally here in the US. You can sell modded XBox'es on Ebay so long as you don't include games on the HDD. Every time I see someone busted in the news, it wasn't for the mod chip itself, but rather including pirated games on the XBox. And xbox-scene.com is run out of the US, which provides full modding tutorials.
I never considered that angle before. Your two examples are covered by specific legislation. As it stands in this country, the sale and use of mod chips is legal in and of itself, and there is no legislation preventing the use of a mod chip, only legislation preventing the piracy of games (which is how it should be).
However, a gun has no real purpose other than killing things, which is rarely legal. A fully automatic weapon isn't exactly necessary for hunting geese. If you modify your radio to transmit on AM/FM bands, you may interfere with others from receiving radio signals. There are victims here in these cases, and that is why legislation has stepped in.
A modded XBox can be used for illegal activity and often is with piracy. However, a modded XBox does have valid legal uses, such as media center functionality and other such homebrew apps.
What I'm advocating is a middle ground. Allow people to develop homebrew software and have Microsoft digitally sign it. Microsoft still fights piracy with digital signatures, but creative people can still do nifty things with their hardware that they purchased.
Andre Vrignaud hit the 3 main reasons people mod their consoles and argued why these are bad. He says piracy is bad. I think most people can agree on principle, you shouldn't pirate, regardless of whether or not you actually partake in such practices.
What gets me is when Andre suggests that you don't have a right to do something with hardware you purchased because you got it below it's real value. If someone wants to sell you something cheap, that doesn't mean that you own it less.
Bill Gates honestly seems to have changed his outlook on life in many ways. He went from publicly saying he doesn't believe in charity to becoming Time's Man of the Year for charity work. He claims that he wants to change Microsoft's business practices to be less confrontational, perhaps forced by the EU's fines.
I'm not shocked that Gates wants to reach out to creative people who are using the XBox in innovative ways. I believe that you can encourage this market, and use it as a means to showcase the power of your console, while at the same time discouraging piracy.
Right now despite all the anti-Sony sentiment, I'm seriously considering the $500 PS3 which I believe provides more value in the end than the $400 360. (Both have HDD's, neither have HDMI, PS3 has more power, Blu-Ray and free online play). Sony is also talking about allowing Linux on the PS3 out of the box, and allowing full homebrew development. If the 360 allowed me to run stuff like XBox Media Center, perhaps I'd be more interested in the 360. But given that the XBox is largely an x86 PC that runs a gimped version of Direct X, if the PS3 does allow for proper homebrew applications, I wouldn't be totally surprised to see an XBox emulator on the PS3. Hell, I have a PS1 and N64 emulator on my XBox right now.
Can you imagine a PS3 that plays PS3/2/1 and XBox games?
Actually from what I've seen Nintendo has hosted contests for small indie developers to design on the DS, and Sony has talked about allowing Linux and full homebrew applications on the PS3.
If Microsoft has smart, they'd allow indie developers to submit apps to them to get signed for XBox Live. I know they are pushing XBox Live Arcade games, but most of these are ports of old arcade games.
I don't know if any of you actually have modded consoles, but my favorite aspect of my hacked XBox is XBoxMediaCenter (XBMC). I'd love to have this functionality on the 360. Quite frankly, the main reason I haven't bought a 360 because it many areas of functionality, it would be a step back from what I get with my hacked XBox.
For the business world, being able to work collaboratively on documents is huge. And for people who spend a good deal of time working in the Office suite, the new intuitive UI saves time and makes life easier.
I don't doubt the average user would be just as happy with an old version of Office, or OpenOffice for that matter. However what gets people is the evolving document format. If I save a document in Office 2003's format, you need Office 2003 to open it up. That is the primary reason most people buy the new versions.
Groups of people are prone to drama. People eventually become asshats in numbers, especially with a veil of relative anonymity that the interwebs provide.
He didn't air the dirty laundry. He doesn't want to explain what drove him away. I say he is a better person for not dignifying it. He made his contributions and I hope he finds another project to give back on in the future, if that is his wish.
Let me get this straight. People are making pretty nasty judgments based on one terse post that may or may not be legitimate. And in that moment we forget and discount everything he has done over the past six years.
As a volunteer he gave a great deal back to the world. You call him childish. I say he is entitled to walk away without having to explain himself.
There are Linux advocates at companies like HP, Sun, Google, IBM, etc. Let them do their jobs, and let Linus code. Don't expect the coders to be PR whores.
Linus just dismissed it out of hand saying nothing has changed. A great deal has changed since the first draft, including two key points that have been altered largely to appease him.
I owe a great deal of thanks to Linus for his contributions to the world. But he can sure be a stubborn ass from time to time.
He just walked away and as a volunteer, he has that right. Given his intricate knowledge of the codebase, I'm sure they'd take him back in a heartbeat later down the road.
I think Israel rushed into this and took a gamble. When they decided to strike against Hezbollah they took the "Bush position". Either you're with us or against us. Either Lebanon would cooperate in rooting out criminals, or they sided with terrorists against Israel. If they threaten embargo right away, then they accuse and insinuate right off the bat that all of Lebanon was responsible. With this move, they gave Lebanon an opportunity to choose sides. However the window for that decision was awful small.
What I would have done was ask for assistance first. Don't mention embargo. See how Lebanon responds, and allow them to either cooperate (win-win) or possibly incriminate themselves in the public eye. Israel no doubt seriously escalated the situation, which makes them appear as the aggressor if you look at this as a single incident.
I think that Israel is seeing this as the culmination of many years however, which makes the incident a little more complex.
First of all, I'm liberal on all my major political beliefs save for one. Yet you respond with personal attacks, and again with zero facts. Perhaps you need to look up the definition of troll. You seem confused.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, I pirate stuff. Don't tell anyone. And I speed. And I tear the mattress tag off. But I'm not too worried about privacy. I'm one of the few that doesn't mind the government keeping track of all purchases. Often this is a great means for identifying and fighting large-scale crime and terrorism.
However, I can't see how anyone would justify sending this information back to retailers.
That's odd. Galactic Civilizations was released as a downloadable game with no copy protection, and it sold extremely well.
Perhaps the secret to selling a game is releasing a good game in the first place, listening to your customers, marketing it well, and offering real incentive to pay for it.
I find the best way to combat piracy is offer exclusive content, or multiplayer modes that require validation. Hell, let people pirate the game for it's single player and sell them on it. Watch them turn around and then buy the game for the multiplayer, and other downloads.
Atari has openly paid for reviews in the past. Anyone remember the plethora of 9 and 9.9 scores for Driv3r? I am not bothered that most games rate a 7-9. I'd assume that most AAA titles should be on the good end of the scale. What bothers me is how many games receive a 9, 9.9 or 10. Shouldn't those be reserved for the truly exceptional? Or are there 10 games released every year that are TEH GREATEST EVA?
That's why the LSB exists. You can decide what packages you want, how you want to compile them, and how you want to configure them. You can customize your kernel, and even choose from a plethora of file systems. Linux supports massive servers, cutting edge technology, and small embedded devices. If every distro followed the LSB, you'd still have a great deal of freedom, but developers could write code and know that it works out of the box on every distro.
However, that isn't the case.
If you write for the Windows API, then you know it will work for every Windows user.
In the GNU/Linux world, we can't even agree on one standard for distributing packages and installing them. For better or worse, the LSB states that packages should be distributed in RPMs. And while RPMs are extremely common, many distros openly oppose them.
If I'm a developer, I don't want to have to release a Debian package, a SUSE package, a Gentoo package, etc.
Your response makes little to no sense. I'm talking about developing. I didn't say that Linux is too hard for an end-user. Developers enjoy standards.
I never said Windows was more secure, or better on the whole. So don't place such things in my mouth.
I said that because of the complexity of the GNU/Linux world, it is more difficult to develop an application for a broad user-base, and that is the truth.
I think you homed in on what the real message is here. And there is some truth to it.
For a large software developer, they want to reach a wide audience. That is why they develop for Windows, which has the largest user base. Even if they want to reach out to a Linux user base, there are so many different distros and ways of doing things, that you cut that audience into even smaller shares.
I'm all for freedom, but I find it silly that different distros keep configuration files in different locations, use different init scripts, use different install methods, have varying level of compliance with the LSB, are focused on either Gnome or KDE predominately, etc.
It does make it more difficult for a large company to develop for a Linux crowd in general.
I haven't read over GPLv3, but past versions of the GPL support multiple licenses, and general flexibility in that regard. I've even heard that the GPLv3 allows you to specify which restrictions you want to use, and which not to use.
Just because one part of the kernel shifts to GPLv3, I don't think that requires the entire kernel to migrate to the new license.
You seem to suggest that if Linus isn't using this, then there is no point to the license. Given the number of committees that worked on this, and their connection to major software projects, their involvement all but guarantees that many major software projects will use the new GPL license.
Nope. The license covers the program itself, not things you create with the program.
Just because an office suite might be under the GPL, that does not mean documents created by it are under the GPL.
I am very grateful for the contributions Linus has made to the world. But he can be an ass from time to time.
And when he said that nothing much changed between the second and third drafts, he was not only being flippant, but ignorant. Many of the changes were in direct response to criticisms he made.
GPLv3 will happen regardless of whether or not it is accepted for the Linux kernel. I'm not sure they need to make Linus happy. I think the GPL crew needs to make the license best suit their needs.
Regardless, I don't think Linus will back down and accept it any time in the future. He has been very clear that the kernel is to be licensed under GPLv2 and GPLv2 exclusively.
That's news to me. I bought my mod chip in a store legally here in the US. You can sell modded XBox'es on Ebay so long as you don't include games on the HDD. Every time I see someone busted in the news, it wasn't for the mod chip itself, but rather including pirated games on the XBox. And xbox-scene.com is run out of the US, which provides full modding tutorials.
I never considered that angle before. Your two examples are covered by specific legislation. As it stands in this country, the sale and use of mod chips is legal in and of itself, and there is no legislation preventing the use of a mod chip, only legislation preventing the piracy of games (which is how it should be).
However, a gun has no real purpose other than killing things, which is rarely legal. A fully automatic weapon isn't exactly necessary for hunting geese. If you modify your radio to transmit on AM/FM bands, you may interfere with others from receiving radio signals. There are victims here in these cases, and that is why legislation has stepped in.
A modded XBox can be used for illegal activity and often is with piracy. However, a modded XBox does have valid legal uses, such as media center functionality and other such homebrew apps.
What I'm advocating is a middle ground. Allow people to develop homebrew software and have Microsoft digitally sign it. Microsoft still fights piracy with digital signatures, but creative people can still do nifty things with their hardware that they purchased.
Andre Vrignaud hit the 3 main reasons people mod their consoles and argued why these are bad. He says piracy is bad. I think most people can agree on principle, you shouldn't pirate, regardless of whether or not you actually partake in such practices.
What gets me is when Andre suggests that you don't have a right to do something with hardware you purchased because you got it below it's real value. If someone wants to sell you something cheap, that doesn't mean that you own it less.
Bill Gates honestly seems to have changed his outlook on life in many ways. He went from publicly saying he doesn't believe in charity to becoming Time's Man of the Year for charity work. He claims that he wants to change Microsoft's business practices to be less confrontational, perhaps forced by the EU's fines.
I'm not shocked that Gates wants to reach out to creative people who are using the XBox in innovative ways. I believe that you can encourage this market, and use it as a means to showcase the power of your console, while at the same time discouraging piracy.
Right now despite all the anti-Sony sentiment, I'm seriously considering the $500 PS3 which I believe provides more value in the end than the $400 360. (Both have HDD's, neither have HDMI, PS3 has more power, Blu-Ray and free online play). Sony is also talking about allowing Linux on the PS3 out of the box, and allowing full homebrew development. If the 360 allowed me to run stuff like XBox Media Center, perhaps I'd be more interested in the 360. But given that the XBox is largely an x86 PC that runs a gimped version of Direct X, if the PS3 does allow for proper homebrew applications, I wouldn't be totally surprised to see an XBox emulator on the PS3. Hell, I have a PS1 and N64 emulator on my XBox right now.
Can you imagine a PS3 that plays PS3/2/1 and XBox games?
I think I need a wet-nap.
Actually from what I've seen Nintendo has hosted contests for small indie developers to design on the DS, and Sony has talked about allowing Linux and full homebrew applications on the PS3.
If Microsoft has smart, they'd allow indie developers to submit apps to them to get signed for XBox Live. I know they are pushing XBox Live Arcade games, but most of these are ports of old arcade games.
I don't know if any of you actually have modded consoles, but my favorite aspect of my hacked XBox is XBoxMediaCenter (XBMC). I'd love to have this functionality on the 360. Quite frankly, the main reason I haven't bought a 360 because it many areas of functionality, it would be a step back from what I get with my hacked XBox.
http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/
Yes, but the person submitting the story to Slashdot when preparing their little blurb could have spilled the results.
Not quite as embarrassing as the Windows 98 BSOD, but more entertaining than the Ballmer developer's video.
http://www.ntk.net/media/developers.mpg
I agree. People seem hell bent on twisting and villianizing every single action of Microsoft. But this move seems reasonable to me.
For the business world, being able to work collaboratively on documents is huge. And for people who spend a good deal of time working in the Office suite, the new intuitive UI saves time and makes life easier.
I don't doubt the average user would be just as happy with an old version of Office, or OpenOffice for that matter. However what gets people is the evolving document format. If I save a document in Office 2003's format, you need Office 2003 to open it up. That is the primary reason most people buy the new versions.
Groups of people are prone to drama. People eventually become asshats in numbers, especially with a veil of relative anonymity that the interwebs provide.
He didn't air the dirty laundry. He doesn't want to explain what drove him away. I say he is a better person for not dignifying it. He made his contributions and I hope he finds another project to give back on in the future, if that is his wish.
Let me get this straight. People are making pretty nasty judgments based on one terse post that may or may not be legitimate. And in that moment we forget and discount everything he has done over the past six years.
As a volunteer he gave a great deal back to the world. You call him childish. I say he is entitled to walk away without having to explain himself.
There are Linux advocates at companies like HP, Sun, Google, IBM, etc. Let them do their jobs, and let Linus code. Don't expect the coders to be PR whores.
Linus just dismissed it out of hand saying nothing has changed. A great deal has changed since the first draft, including two key points that have been altered largely to appease him.
I owe a great deal of thanks to Linus for his contributions to the world. But he can sure be a stubborn ass from time to time.
Why? Did he sabotage the project or screw anyone?
He just walked away and as a volunteer, he has that right. Given his intricate knowledge of the codebase, I'm sure they'd take him back in a heartbeat later down the road.
I think Israel rushed into this and took a gamble. When they decided to strike against Hezbollah they took the "Bush position". Either you're with us or against us. Either Lebanon would cooperate in rooting out criminals, or they sided with terrorists against Israel. If they threaten embargo right away, then they accuse and insinuate right off the bat that all of Lebanon was responsible. With this move, they gave Lebanon an opportunity to choose sides. However the window for that decision was awful small.
What I would have done was ask for assistance first. Don't mention embargo. See how Lebanon responds, and allow them to either cooperate (win-win) or possibly incriminate themselves in the public eye. Israel no doubt seriously escalated the situation, which makes them appear as the aggressor if you look at this as a single incident.
I think that Israel is seeing this as the culmination of many years however, which makes the incident a little more complex.
First of all, I'm liberal on all my major political beliefs save for one. Yet you respond with personal attacks, and again with zero facts. Perhaps you need to look up the definition of troll. You seem confused.