>OTHER people can still offer it for download (via the GPL) and offer their derived work via the GPL as long as they want
If the license could be revoked, that would no longer be the case, as nothing else would give those other people permission to distribute it. Again, the possibility of revoking the license is controversial, but there is case law on both sides (even case law specific to computer software licenses!)
There's another reason for game developers to make some of the game content "bonus" DLC: It lets them kick the remainder of the game out the door complete with flowery promotions about the bonus content in the marketing materials and on the back of the box, to start the cash train from customers a-rollin', without having to have the bonus content finished for months.
Take Rock Band 2; from the official FAQ:
"[Q:] When will the Bonus Tracks be ready? [A:] While no official release date has been announced, we expect the 20 bonus songs to ready [sic] for download before the end of 2008."
In the case of the Rock Band 2 bonus content, I'm skeptical that the bonus code will be limited to one use, because nothing in the marketing describes it as a special offer or as being limited in any way, and doesn't the US FTC sort of frown on time- or use-limited offers that aren't described clearly as such?
I think I need to rain on your parade a little. =)
Judging by what I've read about StarDock (e.g. http://draginol.joeuser.com/article/303512/Piracy_PC_Gaming,) they aren't doing what they do to "take the high road" or to win a fanbase that will get them buzz, they're doing it to maximize the dollars they earn.
As I understand it, this means deliberately ignoring "game developer dreams" and choosing to make games that can be done on the cheap and will be bought the most.
As I see it, StarDock isn't against copy protection measures in general, they are against them when they do not make good business sense (i.e. when the number of sales lost due to piracy is small, and and the few of those sales that copy protection techniques would recover would not be enough to make it worthwhile).
In other words, StarDock isn't against copy protection on principle, they are against taking a stance against piracy on principle when it would lead to bad business decisions.
My assumption is that StarDock's corner of the game business doesn't have enough second-hand sales for them to bother adding bonus content for the reason suggested in the story.
>How could the company management take the project close source if it was open source?
I know it's controversial here, but some people have concluded that some open source licenses may be revoked by the copyright holder according to the laws in some places.
There's a missing piece here that comes in by implication: that drinking beer would be seen as a blemish on your image at all in the first place.
As a non-USian it's hard for me to attribute a reason to that. My first guesses would be:
- a tradition of puritanical views on drinking - an overwhelming law-abidingness that views even a single lapse of an insignificant regulation as a major character flaw
ITT, Large Hadron Collider conspiracy theories
on
LHC Success!
·
· Score: 1
Today, the first tests were conducted of the LHC's ability to accelerate protons. In other news, a timing error with Google's news aggregator caused several hundred million dollars worth of United Airlines market cap to evaporate overnight.
You've hit the nail on the head. If Google's employees are typical of those at non-unionized tech companies, when interviewing for a job they are prepared to have to negotiate for pay and benefits, and even if their job offer comes with few benefits, if they accept the job, they will be prepared to accept benefits other than vacation time at that same level for the entire time they work at the company. But what they won't do is smile and nod if their employer wants to change the rules after the game has already started.
With that said, business needs are what they are. However, Google should at least consider offering a lower quality child care option at a lower price if parents would settle for that (as I assume the lion's share of the value of on-site child care is convenience.)
"Reading something written in a gui word processor like word (or openoffice) hurts your eyes and your brain."
See, I tend to assume that the kind of people who dish out vague criticism like that without any further explanation are the kind of people who safeguard their ears and their brains from bad sound quality by taking green magic markers to their CD collections.
Perhaps you want to elaborate? Or I can make fun of you some more, if you like. =)
heh... FWIW on Windows people are stuck with only a few kB of command line and no shell wildcard expansion at all, and they don't seem to be crying in their beers (... it's the market leader last time I checked)
The (not-so-)secret is to not do things by passing big lists around using command line arguments. Back in unix land, you can do glob-filtered listings like the one you suggested with the find command. And even the basic commands like ls can take parameters via xargs instead of regular command line arguments. (As always, see the find and xargs manual pages for more information.)
Since the network-transparent design of X meant that, for years, everyone who had an X-capable workstation did run all the widgets in the server room, I'll just dispense with your question and ask the implied one: How do widgets sell servers?
Ease of use is part of it, at least for some people. But the real answer is that widgets sell workstations and desktops, and workstations and desktops along with poor interoperability between vendors sell servers.
In this era of free Windows file server software for Unix and bundled TCP/IP and free X for Windows, it's easy to forget what it was like in the not too distant past.
"HP promises blacker blacks and whiter whites - though TFoT quotes one source who notes that if they deliver this, it will be due to the back-lighting and not to the number of bits/pixel."
Don't monitors use linear DACs? And doesn't this mean more or less linear light level scales? (I'll admit that I don't know much about how LCDs operate.)
Cameras for digital tape based formats (like the DV/MiniDV-based HDV mentioned) are a special case; they provide a digital video interconnect (for real time streaming of video data to other devices) as opposed to a data storage interface (providing some other host piece of equipment the ability to burstily retrieve the video) because that's what the nature of tape calls for. Firewire is perfect as a real time digital interconnect, and USB doesn't fit this role much at all. This can be used as a computer interface, but it requires software to capture the data, and is limited to the realtime data rate (e.g. 30 megabits/sec for full HDV, IIRC)
For cameras that record to random access media, it makes more sense to focus on providing a data storage interface, since that interface can generally transfer data many times faster than realtime. There are a variety of interfaces used for this: Firewire, USB, Ethernet, SATA, etc. Firewire 400 beats USB 2.0 in performance for this; but USB 2.0 still finds support because of its larger installed base. For instance, AVCHD cameras, which variously use flash media, hard drives, or recordable DVDs, depending on what model you pick, have largely gone with USB interfaces. But obviously faster interfaces are on the horizon as they gain wider adoption.
I don't think that these guys are being deliberately antagonistic, it's just that, well,...
Relational databases are so routinely used in applications that they aren't a good fit for that I suspect many relational database "experts" aren't even acquainted with the practise of selecting network computing paradigms and technologies for an application that are a good fit for the application.
Slashdot Mirror
>OTHER people can still offer it for download (via the GPL) and offer their derived work via the GPL as long as they want
If the license could be revoked, that would no longer be the case, as nothing else would give those other people permission to distribute it. Again, the possibility of revoking the license is controversial, but there is case law on both sides (even case law specific to computer software licenses!)
Project "B Ark" is now complete.
Er... and by "frown" I mean the 8 1/2" x 14" kind of "frown"...
There's another reason for game developers to make some of the game content "bonus" DLC: It lets them kick the remainder of the game out the door complete with flowery promotions about the bonus content in the marketing materials and on the back of the box, to start the cash train from customers a-rollin', without having to have the bonus content finished for months.
Take Rock Band 2; from the official FAQ:
"[Q:] When will the Bonus Tracks be ready?
[A:] While no official release date has been announced, we expect the 20 bonus songs to ready [sic] for download before the end of 2008."
In the case of the Rock Band 2 bonus content, I'm skeptical that the bonus code will be limited to one use, because nothing in the marketing describes it as a special offer or as being limited in any way, and doesn't the US FTC sort of frown on time- or use-limited offers that aren't described clearly as such?
I think I need to rain on your parade a little. =)
Judging by what I've read about StarDock (e.g. http://draginol.joeuser.com/article/303512/Piracy_PC_Gaming ,) they aren't doing what they do to "take the high road" or to win a fanbase that will get them buzz, they're doing it to maximize the dollars they earn.
As I understand it, this means deliberately ignoring "game developer dreams" and choosing to make games that can be done on the cheap and will be bought the most.
As I see it, StarDock isn't against copy protection measures in general, they are against them when they do not make good business sense (i.e. when the number of sales lost due to piracy is small, and and the few of those sales that copy protection techniques would recover would not be enough to make it worthwhile).
In other words, StarDock isn't against copy protection on principle, they are against taking a stance against piracy on principle when it would lead to bad business decisions.
My assumption is that StarDock's corner of the game business doesn't have enough second-hand sales for them to bother adding bonus content for the reason suggested in the story.
>How could the company management take the project close source if it was open source?
I know it's controversial here, but some people have concluded that some open source licenses may be revoked by the copyright holder according to the laws in some places.
http://www.advogato.org/article/606.html#15
I don't know the specifics of this case, so I can't say if that's what happened here.
"Slimy"? Why?
It makes sense to establish some details of the project they're porting in the proposal, does it not?
I see... and I can keep condensed bits of them from falling on my head with this "umbrella concept"?
Okay "major character flaw" is a little strong; I should have said "significant character flaw".
There's a missing piece here that comes in by implication: that drinking beer would be seen as a blemish on your image at all in the first place.
As a non-USian it's hard for me to attribute a reason to that. My first guesses would be:
- a tradition of puritanical views on drinking
- an overwhelming law-abidingness that views even a single lapse of an insignificant regulation as a major character flaw
"unmolested park experience"
Word choice FTW.
Today, the first tests were conducted of the LHC's ability to accelerate protons. In other news, a timing error with Google's news aggregator caused several hundred million dollars worth of United Airlines market cap to evaporate overnight.
LMAO. Good work,
You've hit the nail on the head. If Google's employees are typical of those at non-unionized tech companies, when interviewing for a job they are prepared to have to negotiate for pay and benefits, and even if their job offer comes with few benefits, if they accept the job, they will be prepared to accept benefits other than vacation time at that same level for the entire time they work at the company. But what they won't do is smile and nod if their employer wants to change the rules after the game has already started.
With that said, business needs are what they are. However, Google should at least consider offering a lower quality child care option at a lower price if parents would settle for that (as I assume the lion's share of the value of on-site child care is convenience.)
"Reading something written in a gui word processor like word (or openoffice) hurts your eyes and your brain."
See, I tend to assume that the kind of people who dish out vague criticism like that without any further explanation are the kind of people who safeguard their ears and their brains from bad sound quality by taking green magic markers to their CD collections.
Perhaps you want to elaborate? Or I can make fun of you some more, if you like. =)
"Now Steve Jobs has to pull the same kind of antics that Microsoft was endlessly bashed for."
Do you think that's something new for Apple? I mean, the license terms of Mac OS have prohibited use on non-Apple hardware for a long time.
heh... FWIW on Windows people are stuck with only a few kB of command line and no shell wildcard expansion at all, and they don't seem to be crying in their beers (... it's the market leader last time I checked)
The (not-so-)secret is to not do things by passing big lists around using command line arguments. Back in unix land, you can do glob-filtered listings like the one you suggested with the find command. And even the basic commands like ls can take parameters via xargs instead of regular command line arguments. (As always, see the find and xargs manual pages for more information.)
Since the network-transparent design of X meant that, for years, everyone who had an X-capable workstation did run all the widgets in the server room, I'll just dispense with your question and ask the implied one: How do widgets sell servers?
Ease of use is part of it, at least for some people. But the real answer is that widgets sell workstations and desktops, and workstations and desktops along with poor interoperability between vendors sell servers.
In this era of free Windows file server software for Unix and bundled TCP/IP and free X for Windows, it's easy to forget what it was like in the not too distant past.
So you're saying that Wi-Fi is unreliable, and as an alternative you want... Bluetooth? I don't get it.
so that's what they're made out of...
"HP promises blacker blacks and whiter whites - though TFoT quotes one source who notes that if they deliver this, it will be due to the back-lighting and not to the number of bits/pixel."
Don't monitors use linear DACs? And doesn't this mean more or less linear light level scales? (I'll admit that I don't know much about how LCDs operate.)
Cameras for digital tape based formats (like the DV/MiniDV-based HDV mentioned) are a special case; they provide a digital video interconnect (for real time streaming of video data to other devices) as opposed to a data storage interface (providing some other host piece of equipment the ability to burstily retrieve the video) because that's what the nature of tape calls for. Firewire is perfect as a real time digital interconnect, and USB doesn't fit this role much at all. This can be used as a computer interface, but it requires software to capture the data, and is limited to the realtime data rate (e.g. 30 megabits/sec for full HDV, IIRC)
For cameras that record to random access media, it makes more sense to focus on providing a data storage interface, since that interface can generally transfer data many times faster than realtime. There are a variety of interfaces used for this: Firewire, USB, Ethernet, SATA, etc. Firewire 400 beats USB 2.0 in performance for this; but USB 2.0 still finds support because of its larger installed base. For instance, AVCHD cameras, which variously use flash media, hard drives, or recordable DVDs, depending on what model you pick, have largely gone with USB interfaces. But obviously faster interfaces are on the horizon as they gain wider adoption.
I don't think that these guys are being deliberately antagonistic, it's just that, well,...
Relational databases are so routinely used in applications that they aren't a good fit for that I suspect many relational database "experts" aren't even acquainted with the practise of selecting network computing paradigms and technologies for an application that are a good fit for the application.
Here's hoping China chills out a bit.
http://xkcd.com/340/
The original article and the RCMP quote in it are only about music sharing. That might be worth putting in the headline, eh?