Note the one now appearing in the index was _not_ the original post of the article - look at the posted time...10:16 AM whereas the original here was posted at 9.11am.
Ie at it was pulled then reposted. At the time I posted it was pulled... like I said, maybe it was a coincidence...
That's all I said, so the rest of your rant is a little offtopic - I'll just say this - for me Slashdot is just one site amongst many and I think that if they want to keep that 1 billion or so valuation then being 'yet another' site is not an option - probably the reason they are sooo keen to parade their editorial independance?....
Hmm a news article about a potential competitor to VA linux was replaced by this article aobut editorial independance... probably just a coincidence.....
The OMG (www.omg.org) is a standards body with a membership list of over 800 companies - one which reads like a who's-who in the industry. It's mission is interoperability - helping different vendors software work together.
Microsoft is a member and yet appears to ignore the resulting standards. Microsoft continues to push it's own propriority solutions.
Does Microsoft really believe these 800 other companies are wrong? Or is it safe to conclude that Microsoft is not interested in interoperability, the innovation that releases and the customer choice that this engenders [1].
Gab
[1] For instance there is one vendor of the Microsoft 'Application Server' solution (DCOM) - Microsoft, and about 20 vendors of application servers based on the OMG standard (CORBA).
Nope - for the enterprise this issue is irrelavent - IS departments normally wipe each new computer they buy and install the 'company standard install'. So they can put Sun's or IBM's etc JRE on the system.
People are interested in java _want_ the program to be crossplatform and will test it... so if MS makes it hard to ship crossplatform java then people won't use their tools. Obviously a few people will be caught out.. but not serious developers.
Your not forced to use MS products, they just make it easy for you to choose to. If they upped the stakes such that they blocked other peoples JVM's working on their systems then, yes this would be a problem - but also a nobrainer court case - even for the Appeal court.
And as I pointed out - most people don't want to do serious server side development on NT - now there are good development tools for UNIX - ie java, there is no need. Obviously these people don't give a toss about MS's irrelavent posturing
In my view the court case is about breach of contract pure and simple.
You don't need Microsoft to do java on win32, IBM have made sure of that by producing a very fine JDK.
Java is fantastic for the enterprise - multi-tier, multithreaded, multiplatform distributed code. It's great with CORBA and XML. Most of java's problems are in the multiplatform UI's (not an easy problem to solve) and these are not as bad as most people seem to think. Unix is a natural host for these types of enterprise applications - again making Microsofts position irrelavent.
Java for complicated distributed heterogenous information systems.
linux for standard file, printer and web services and large scale number crunching.
NT for ??? - that's microsofts problem - NT tries to be everything to everyone - Jack of all trades, master of none.
Gab (Desktop? - let users choose their own - if it doesn't support X or java or a webbrowser then serves them right:-))
Yes very true, cheating is a BIG BIG problem. But you can reduce it by simply not giving the client information it doesn't use. Ie removing fog of war is not possible as long as you don't do something stupid like send them the whole map plus a fog mask. - Make the client very very thin.
For instance using sophisticated clients (with auto-triggers) in combat based Muds is almost the norm - it's considered part of the game - not really cheating. ie everyone's client is as sophisticated as the information it's sent allows - a level playing field.
Yes minimal information is a pain, because it doesn't allow you to do things like deadreckoning for smoothing out lag, or downloading the map in one go to reduce bandwidth usage. This is why games such as xpilot (on which you can cheat but cheating isn't a huge problem) tend to be high-bandwidth only games.
Remember - obscurity is not security - open source or not, as you said, people cheat, you need to deal with this in your design of the game - by which I mean design of the actual game play and game architecture, not design of obscure packet formats. Of course another aspect is being able to choose not to play with people you think are cheating - again games design in the way you set up, control and join games. Cheating has been a big problem with commercial games because people didn't really think when they added multiplayer options to essentially single player games.. if you look at opensource/public games you'll actually find it's been dealt with better in the design.
Counting "different" as more important than "better" flatly contradicts the whole point of how bazaar mode software development works, and that's why we haven't yet seen any spectacular games coming from the Internet.
I guess that depends on your definition of spectacular. Spectacular to look at or spectacular successes. Games like nethack were a spectacular success when they came out, other games like nettrek/xpilot/freeciv and muds etc have been spectacular successes in that people still play them, even many years after they originally appeared (though they have gradually evolved over time).
Yes the engine isn't everything, but neither is the art - it's the 'gameplay'. This is hard to define but definately largely involves how the game engine responds to the player - from speed, to ironing out annoying bugs/network problems, to the interface design. At the end of the day it comes down to the skill of the programmer. Great looking games that are irritating to play are... irritating - not fun.
I think the author makes some valid points but takes it a little too far. I'm not saying a 'precompetitive' engine wouldn't be a good thing.
It's very easy to think up the storyline to the greatest 3D first person RPG - to think of this feature and that, it's very hard to program the game so that the player interacts with the world in what feels a natural way for anything other than running around and shooting. This (IMO) is the next great challenge and it's essentially a programming one (as you have to implement all your ideas in the end) and cutting edge games will need to employ cutting edge programmers
I may be a cynic but I would suspect that the game industry prefers to produce 'consumable' games with low replay value rather than long lasting games because it can then sell more - built in obselence. I think the sort of games you find made on the internet (see above) are more of the 'slow burn' variety - but they are games nevertheless and successful at that.
Let's be clear, blame is being thrown around because this isn't a random event, it was a conscious action by people who had a reason to do what they did. (though not necessarily a reasonable one...)
It's not an isolated incident, it's associated with a particular culture, Western in general and US in particular. Clearly cultural elements play a part, the question is which ones and how much!
I don't believe that the internet or DOOM are to 'blame'. Though clearly easy access to ideas, just as easy access to guns, can be a facilitator.
The reason seems to be clear to me; anger, alienation. The difficulty of growing up in a world with so many choices. I know nothing about their circumstances other than the filter of the media, but one thing that struck me that I don't think has been mentioned - people have said here,
"Hey they were angry because they were made outcasts, all we need is more tolerance of diversity"
I'd like to propose a different view, teenagers like to rebel, make their mark. They did this in quite a visible way, yet nobody at school or at home seems to have taken any real notice, so they escalate, up and up... still nobody gives a shit and they can't really come in the next day without trench coats and glasses as that would seem like admitting defeat.. so they make people notice....
Maybe all they need was somebody to show them how to stop being a prat and do something constructive with all that intelligence and energy, that it takes more courage to live than die, more courage to change than to go to extremes; courage to admit your wrong.
Here I see the internet, in particular, as potentially a great outlet for creativity... but you have to be brave, not sneer.
Of course that's just speculation, but as I hadn't seen this particular perspective aired...
Slashdot Mirror
Here you are doing hypertext over a 'phone' network using 'keyboard' navigation.
Could this be a better target for BT?
Gab
Note the one now appearing in the index was _not_ the original post of the article - look at the posted time...10:16 AM whereas the original here was posted at 9.11am.
Ie at it was pulled then reposted. At the time I posted it was pulled... like I said, maybe it was a coincidence...
That's all I said, so the rest of your rant is a little offtopic - I'll just say this - for me Slashdot is just one site amongst many and I think that if they want to keep that 1 billion or so valuation then being 'yet another' site is not an option - probably the reason they are sooo keen to parade their editorial independance?....
To misquote the bard...
Me hopes they don't protest too much....
Gab
The article is here....
Corel takeover Inprise Gab
Gab
The OMG (www.omg.org) is a standards body with a membership list of over 800 companies - one which reads like a who's-who in the industry. It's mission is interoperability - helping different vendors software work together.
Microsoft is a member and yet appears to ignore the resulting standards. Microsoft continues to push it's own propriority solutions.
Does Microsoft really believe these 800 other companies are wrong? Or is it safe to conclude that Microsoft is not interested in interoperability, the innovation that releases and the customer choice that this engenders [1].
Gab
[1] For instance there is one vendor of the Microsoft 'Application Server' solution (DCOM) - Microsoft, and about 20 vendors of application servers based on the OMG standard (CORBA).
People are interested in java _want_ the program to be crossplatform and will test it... so if MS makes it hard to ship crossplatform java then people won't use their tools. Obviously a few people will be caught out .. but not serious developers.
Your not forced to use MS products, they just make it easy for you to choose to. If they upped the stakes such that they blocked other peoples JVM's working on their systems then, yes this would be a problem - but also a nobrainer court case - even for the Appeal court.
And as I pointed out - most people don't want to do serious server side development on NT - now there are good development tools for UNIX - ie java, there is no need. Obviously these people don't give a toss about MS's irrelavent posturing
In my view the court case is about breach of contract pure and simple.
Gab
Java is fantastic for the enterprise - multi-tier, multithreaded, multiplatform distributed code.
It's great with CORBA and XML. Most of java's problems are in the multiplatform UI's (not an easy problem to solve) and these are not as bad as most people seem to think.
Unix is a natural host for these types of enterprise applications - again making Microsofts position irrelavent.
Java for complicated distributed heterogenous information systems.
linux for standard file, printer and web services and large scale number crunching.
NT for ??? - that's microsofts problem - NT tries to be everything to everyone -
Jack of all trades, master of none.
Gab (Desktop? - let users choose their own - if it doesn't support X or java or a webbrowser then serves them right :-))
Yes very true, cheating is a BIG BIG problem. But you can reduce it by simply not giving the client information it doesn't use. Ie removing fog of war is not possible as long as you don't do something stupid like send them the whole map plus a fog mask. - Make the client very very thin.
For instance using sophisticated clients (with auto-triggers) in combat based Muds is almost the norm - it's considered part of the game - not really cheating. ie everyone's client is as sophisticated as the information it's sent allows - a level playing field.
Yes minimal information is a pain, because it doesn't allow you to do things like deadreckoning for smoothing out lag, or downloading the map in one go to reduce bandwidth usage. This is why games such as xpilot (on which you can cheat but cheating isn't a huge problem) tend to be high-bandwidth only games.
Remember - obscurity is not security - open source or not, as you said, people cheat, you need to deal with this in your design of the game - by which I mean design of the actual game play and game architecture, not design of obscure packet formats. Of course another aspect is being able to choose not to play with people you think are cheating - again games design in the way you set up, control and join games. Cheating has been a big problem with commercial games because people didn't really think when they added multiplayer options to essentially single player games.. if you look at opensource/public games you'll actually find it's been dealt with better in the design.
Gab
I guess that depends on your definition of spectacular. Spectacular to look at or spectacular successes. Games like nethack were a spectacular success when they came out, other games like nettrek/xpilot/freeciv and muds etc have been spectacular successes in that people still play them, even many years after they originally appeared (though they have gradually evolved over time).
Yes the engine isn't everything, but neither is the art - it's the 'gameplay'. This is hard to define but definately largely involves how the game engine responds to the player - from speed, to ironing out annoying bugs/network problems, to the interface design. At the end of the day it comes down to the skill of the programmer. Great looking games that are irritating to play are ... irritating - not fun.
I think the author makes some valid points but takes it a little too far. I'm not saying a 'precompetitive' engine wouldn't be a good thing.
It's very easy to think up the storyline to the greatest 3D first person RPG - to think of this feature and that, it's very hard to program the game so that the player interacts with the world in what feels a natural way for anything other than running around and shooting. This (IMO) is the next great challenge and it's essentially a programming one (as you have to implement all your ideas in the end) and cutting edge games will need to employ cutting edge programmers
I may be a cynic but I would suspect that the game industry prefers to produce 'consumable' games with low replay value rather than long lasting games because it can then sell more - built in obselence. I think the sort of games you find made on the internet (see above) are more of the 'slow burn' variety - but they are games nevertheless and successful at that.
Gab
On the Register
It's not an isolated incident, it's associated with a particular culture, Western in general and US in particular. Clearly cultural elements play a part, the question is which ones and how much!
I don't believe that the internet or DOOM are to 'blame'. Though clearly easy access to ideas, just as easy access to guns, can be a facilitator.
The reason seems to be clear to me; anger, alienation. The difficulty of growing up in a world with so many choices. I know nothing about their circumstances other than the filter of the media, but one thing that struck me that I don't think has been mentioned - people have said here,
"Hey they were angry because they were made outcasts, all we need is more tolerance of diversity"
I'd like to propose a different view, teenagers like to rebel, make their mark. They did this in quite a visible way, yet nobody at school or at home seems to have taken any real notice, so they escalate, up and up... still nobody gives a shit and they can't really come in the next day without trench coats and glasses as that would seem like admitting defeat.. so they make people notice....
Maybe all they need was somebody to show them how to stop being a prat and do something constructive with all that intelligence and energy, that it takes more courage to live than die, more courage to change than to go to extremes; courage to admit your wrong.
Here I see the internet, in particular, as potentially a great outlet for creativity... but you have to be brave, not sneer.
Of course that's just speculation, but as I hadn't seen this particular perspective aired...
Gab