Re:Looks like you need another LART
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Spy v. Spy
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· Score: 1
In the most polite way I can say this, you are a fuckwit.
I would have to say you've just proven that, as I suspected, you are incapable of being polite.
I wish I could remove your ability to use the expression clue-by-four[...]
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
[...], as you should have read the ruling definition of virus and found you were wrong. It does not need to "reproduce".
In fact it does, and even the jargon file (which is hardly a "ruling" authority on this - instead you should see some of the early work by AI people who first conceived of the possibility of a computer virus) makes this clear, and indeed even your own rephrasing of the jargon file entry also makes this clear. Think about it.
Instead you got patronizing and insulting.
Apparently you can dish it out but you can't take it. Your post was patronising and insulting, mine simply replied in kind.
Let me guess? You have a hard time making friends because people think you are condesending?
Let me guess, you have a hard time making friends because you're a know-it-all, condescending amateur Freud who likes to get confrontational and tell everyone you meet what "their problem" is?
Let me give you some advice, don't insult people who can back a claim. Don't insult people when it isn't warranted, period, for that matter. It makes you look like, well, a fuckwit.
Advice you would do well to heed yourself.
No, the infection is referred to as 'embedding' - a process very different than reproduction. Repeat after me, reproduction != embed. In the sense of reproduction you were talking about originally, is one of self-duplication. A virus does not need to do this. It can simply infect X bytes of it's Y byte size, where X = Y and it's not reproducing, just infecting an object file.
This is where you are fooling yourself. It's a simple, if glaring, error. Let's parse what you just said with a little finer grain. If X = Y (and, indeed, it does and must) then we can call them both X. Viruses "reproduce" by copying themselves - "embedding" themselves if you prefer. Using the word "embed" instead of "reproduce" doesn't change the fact that they make new copies of themselves - in analogy to biological organisms that reproduce asexually.
A good question here, do you even know assembly (x86, as is relevent)
It's been years since I actively hacked x86 asm, but I did, at one time, and I'm perfectly capable of parsing a dissassembly. Are you? If so why don't you take this discussion to my journal and tell me again how that bit of code "embeds" itself in.com files without actually reproducing?
push ax, 3
int 11h
That's saving the contents of ax (you'll want to restore it afterwards with pop) and then calling a bios service to get a list of equipment. Pushing ax first is a good idea because int11 returns to ax.
Here's how that's a virus though, to save yourself some time. It embeds a portion of itself (100% is still a portion) into an object file.
And thus reproduces itself, just as I said.
Looks like you need another LART
on
Spy v. Spy
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· Score: 1
Do me a favor, from now on, even if you think you are absolutely 100% right do a quick check against the jargon files before arguing definitions, k?
/me winces in sympathy as the clue-by-four goes up the side of your head, again.
Ok, let's look at your definitions.
virus n.
[from the obvious analogy with biological viruses, via SF] A cracker program that searches out other programs and `infects' them by embedding a copy of itself in them
Your difficulty, perhaps, has to do with realizing that what the jargon file here refers to as "infection" is in fact the same process that I referred to as "reproduction"? The difference in usage probably has something to do with the fact that the writer of that particular node appears to have gotten the term from sci-fi, whereas I first heard of the concept from computer science/ai people, who had a slightly more direct link. But if you actually read the definition, he's clearly talking about viral reproduction. As for instance the Virus whose dissassembly slashdot won't allow in comments. It's on a journal entry, feel free to go take a look. http://slashdot.org/~Arker/journal/
It reproduces by copying itself, all 163 bytes, into existing com files. That's the "infection" he's talking about. And he doesn't say that some viruses don't infect, which is the way you would say, using his language, what you're trying to say.
I was using anti-aliased fonts in X11 (WindowMaker+Gnome) at least 2, 2.5 years ago. X has had anti-aliasing for quite awhile.
However, at the time I am talking about I did it with a hack that relied on having copies of MS fonts to use, so that particular method would be a hassle in certain settings. I understand things have improved in that area too however.
The "control panel" system has one huge advantage over/etc. (note: I'm assuming configuration is done by editing text files, without a GUI front end to the settings)
In a control panel, every available option is visible. When I want to add a network connection, I get a list of available protocols. When I enter a parameter, my input is checked for validity.
Contrast this with text files. Yes, you do have access to all the options, and yes, for an experienced user it can be faster than having to go through a wizard. But one typo can result in a nonfunctional system. The only way to make sure your input is correct is by manually checking everything, consulting with the manpage on every step.
However these are not the only options. A gui wraparound to a text based system configuration system can easily be even easier to use than a control panel metaphor. It can also be just as fast in the hands of an expert.
Is this guy serious? Does he think that artist will sacrifice royalties and instead try to make a living by being on the road for all the months of the year that they aren't in the studio. Sorry I just don't see this happening at all for one major reason: royalties mean that a few months of work in the studio will continue to pay for years to come. It has worked for ages and will continue to work.
The vast majority of professional musicians already work and are paid in that fashion. Only a small percentage are ever picked up by a major record label. The rest work desperately for a break while playing gig after gig and lucky if they don't have to work day jobs too, to support their careers. These musicians are likely to find signing such a license attractive. It makes them money indirectly, by giving them a chance to make new markets for themselves. Get better gigs. The better the gigs the more chance that the record companies get them.
You obviously don't understand your terminology
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Spy v. Spy
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· Score: 2
A virus is a chunk of machine code that reproduces. Period. Whether it does any damage or not, whether it interferes with normal usage or not, if it reproduces, it's a virus.
For instance, here is a dissassembly of the "Tiny Virus" aka 163 Com.
Well, I meant to post the dissassembly but unfortunately slashdots bloody stupid lameness filter won't let me. I'll put it on my homepage if some nanny code doesn't stop me there. Anyway, the point was...
Does it do anything destructive? Well, no, not really. It's 163 bytes of executable code which prepends itself to.com files and reproduces indefinately, without any payload, without interfering in any way other than taking a miniscule amount of disk space and a few processor cycles each time it executes. This is one of the smallest viruses ever found, it satisfies the minimal requirements to be a virus and does nothing else.
A program which does NOT reproduce, but does as you say prohibit "the normal functions of applications the computer" would not be a virus. It would, assuming it's inserted under false pretenses (and who would place it on their system otherwise?), be a trojan horse program, but not a virus.
A worm, on the other hand, is a much larger viral program or collection of programs which work together, specifically to reproduce across a network.
Now, of these three types of programs, the only one this spyware could possibly be is a trojan horse. Viruses *by definition* reproduce themselves, and I've not seen any evidence that this thing does that.
This software is a virus, and I suspect that if you read the current crop of computer crimes, you'd probably be able to classify this software as such.
WTF are you talking about? It reproduces and spreads itself? Where on earth did you get that from?
It looks like a pretty reprehensible piece of spy-ware, but I saw nothing about it reproducing and spreading autonomously.
Re:This is a trojan horse, plain and simple.
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Spy v. Spy
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· Score: 4, Funny
So what?
If you think EULAs are agreements I have a nice big stretch of seaside property in Oklahoma for you.
EULAs are just stray scritti that superstitious publishers make you click through. No one reads them. No one agrees to them. They are no more contractually binding than my next two sentences are.
By clicking reply you agree to transfer to me your firstborn daughter, along with the sum of $50,000, at whatever point in the future I request. If your firstborn daughter is over the age of majority at that time, I may, at my option, take a younger daughter, a son, or an automobile, in place of her. You agree that I may, if I feel it necessary, take those items you have agreed to provide me without informing you until afterwards. You agree to hold me harmless and without blame for any incidental property damage or criminal charges that may result from such action on my part.
There, I even bolded it to make sure you read it, unlike those silly little EULAs.
Only on Slashdot would anybody complain that that is not enough information about a type of computer system which is historically completely closed to all but those who spend $20,000 and are hand picked by the manufacturer.
Me complaining? Hardly that. I don't care whether they release it, one way or the other, I don't have one and I don't plan to get one so why would I care?
Why would anyone care? Well if I were a stockholder I'd care, because this will probably get them some free (as in beer) R&D. Would I care if I owned one? No, I'd play games on it so I wouldn't care. If I wanted a supercomputer I'd buy a decent rackmount. I'm not sure why anyone should care about this unless they own a PS2 and no PC and want to learn about TCP/IP? Which can't be a great big audience really.
If you want one, and you care, by all means, go ahead. I wasn't challenging your right to be excited about whatever you want to be. I was just pointing out some facts not covered in the article.
"Of course, the TV set is not so great for Linux," Okamoto explained, smiling. So the kit will also include a converter cable to allow you to hook your PS2 to a high-resolution monitor. The kit will run about $200. And yes, it was running Linux, completely compatible with all Linux software and able to compile anything. The kit is mostly for non-commercial hobbyists. What does Sony gain? An audience of avid PS2 users experimenting with a robust TCP/IP (Internet communication) protocol. Fans will also receive complete documentation with the kit, which includes all the technical details of the PS2 hardware. Normally this info is only available to game developers. An interesting project indeed.
Now I'm not a bit surprised that Sony wants to keep control over how people use their consoles. I'm not even surprised that Sony is dead set on using hardware to prevent their customers from being able to assert their legal rights under copyright law. But I am a little bit surprised that their representative and/or the journalist who wrote that story will blatantly lie and claim to be giving people "complete documentation" and the like, when obviously they aren't going to do anything of the kind.
And I do think that potential buyers of the product, many of whom may read this article, deserve to know the truth. It may or may not make a difference in whether or not any given person will buy it, but at the very least you should know the truth before you make that decision.
It sounds more like it emulates linux in a VM rather than actually loading it as the actual machine OS. This allows them to use all kinds of proprietary code without violating the GPL, and to build in all sorts of copy and "ip" "protection."
Fair use quote:
This is how the Runtime Environment (RTE) works. In order to get Linux running on your PS2, you must boot the system using the PS2 Linux DVD. During boot, after all the copy-protection stuff is taken care of, the system lays down the Runtime Environment. This is basically a layer that hides access to the SPU2 (Sound Processing Unit), the input/output processor, the hard drive, the CD/DVD-ROM system, the controllers, memory cards, USB, i.Link and other peripherals. The RTE does supply hardware looking hooks, an educated guess being faux-memory address and registers. Then the Linux kernel is loaded on top of this. There are Linux device drivers that accesses the Runtime Environment that are open source, but it's just a device driver calling in all actuality, another device driver that's closed.
What you can and can't do with the system is limited.
You have no ability to read a normal PSX or PS2 memory card directly. For example you can't open a Final Fantasy X save, edit how much cash you have, and save it again. Through the RTE you can format a whole memory card(!) and mount it like an 8 meg hard drive, but that card would be worthless for saving normal PS2 games. Once you put the Linux formatted card without Linux running (i.e. you are in the browser) it asks to reformat the card.
The RTE also not allow audio CDs to be identified. It also can tell if you have put in a CD-R or not (it can see a wobble track, which all CD-Rs have ) and likewise not allow the disk to be seen. A PS2 can read CD-Rs fine, the RTE is just doing copy protection first to make sure you can't. You will also have no access to the CSS portion of the MPEG decoder, but you can decode raw MPEG-4. Direct access to the Dolby subsystem is also denied. Anything dealing with region locks are also restricted.
The first DVD (The boot disk) has a Linux boot loader and the RTE on it. This disk is not allowed to be copied. It also has the manuals on it too, which I'm sure are also copyrighted and not allowed to be publicly distributed. The Linux kernel is on the second disk and also on the hard drive after it's installed. In order to use a monitor, you must one that is "Sync on Green". This means that the refresh rate is only in the green channel. The monitor must use that sync pulse to sync red and blue channels so they all get painted in the screen at the same time. The reason why you have to use that is because a PS2 can turn it's sync on green ability on and off. If you try and use the monitor adapter for playing PS2 games or watching DVDs, sync on green will be turned off and only the green channel will show up. Direct video output defeats Macrovision. Sony doesn't want you making copies of DVDs to tape. Keep in mind that your network adapter is going to have a MAC address that Sony, no doubt, knows. Also removing the PS2 hard drive and attempting to mount in a PC will also likely not work and possibly damage the drive.
you mean that NT was yet another MS 'innovation' that was bought and not developed?
Doh!
NT kernel and architecte was the one thing that I actually gave them some respect for.
Well, this is not to say they didn't do a lot of work on it themselves - the original components weren't even a working OS after all. Microsoft hired away key parts of Digital Equipments VMS team to work on it, IBM programmers worked on it for a bit too, before IBM and MS parted ways. But yeah, in essence, has MS ever innovated anything? Of course not. They buy things that have promise, polish them, and market them.
Yes, QDOS was "Quick and Dirty Operating System." It was written in 1979 by Tim Patterson of the Seattle Computer Company, as a personal stopgap while Gary Killdall at Digital Research was busy doing a proper CP/M port for the i8086. Since CP/M source was available under a license somewhat like todays "shared source" agreements, it wasn't all that difficult to hack up a functional CP/M, even if it was a little rough. Gates managed to buy this hack for a pittance and build an empire on it... the rest, as they say, is history.
NT stands for Northern Telecom (Nortel) who originally developed it. However, after MS acquired it, they also referred to it as "New Technology." It's not in any sense a unix implementation, although it is in some senses a VMS implementation. Digital Equipment sued over that and got paid off several years ago.
According to 'Hackers', Bill's BASIC program for the MITS Altair was big, slow, bloated, late, didn't work well, and (here's the kicker) required an expensive 4k memory expansion board from MITS that basically didn't work.
Never used Altair basic, so I won't diss it, but since the versions that MS has produced since then (GW Basic, Qbasic, VBasic) are pretty incredibly shoddy compared to implementations that predated DOS I am guessing the criticism is probably fair.
Everytime someone claims Bill Gates is a "geek" let alone implying he's some sort of superlative geek, I must say I take that as a personal attack on all true geeks. In a sense it's true. I mean, well, look at him - obviously that was his social assignment in high school, yes. But he's about the worst example of a geek ever. He's simply never shown competence at anything except management and marketing.
Also, refactorable code is really more efficient to produce, because of its longevity, but in the short turn takes longer, if only because in order to write it the programmers would have to slow production" and no bean-counter would ever agree to that. It's totally counterintuitive to that deeply entrenched and enriched tie wearin boss man mindset. But if you want to write code that's going to be easy to update and fix, you have to slow down, think things through... bosses, however, are genetically programmed to want to see their employees working long hours, brows furrowed, pounding out code at a frantic pace on their keyboards.
Sure, there are a few exceptions. But most of them are just passin.
I doubt that it will be enough for WINE developers to catch up with Win95. No one uses the out-of-the-box version of Win95 anymore, do they? There's all sorts of updates you need to get your software running and, yes, those updates include additions/changes to the API.
Yes and no. There are a lot more people than ever before using that MS-VMS^^^^^NT^^XP brand of OS than before, but a great many people still use win 9x^^CE^^ME. And the vast majority of programs still run just fine on 95OSR2. The key framework of the API is there in 95OSR2. 98 adds some bugfixes (which you can download anyway, and actually aren't all that common - the real F-ups seem to come from the application division) and "Active Desktop" aka "Active Pain in the Rear" which gets chopped on a lot of machines anyway. ME adds little of note beyond the removal of the "DOS" Mode boot option. If you don't run one of these MS programs you may not be able to run other MS products, but your ability to run world class applications that don't try to take over your computer like Pegasus Mail,Opera, StarOffice, etc. should be just fine. If they can keep DirectX less than a year or two behind I won't even need to reboot for games anymore.
A good solid WINE/Win95 compatibility would allow a lot of people to switch to a Free OS (gratuitous link) and quit paying the microsoft tax with minimal impact.
Even if you manage to strip all the patches out, you then need to make sure that the replacement patches aren't borrowing any ideas from the old intellectual property.
I believe you are mistaken. You would have to do that if a patent were involved, but that's not likely. More likely the only worry is copyright infringement, and copyright does not apply to ideas, but to specific sequences of words (or notes or numbers or what have you.) So you can use the same ideas without problem - just make sure you don't use the same coder, or an obvious derivation of it (changing only variable names, for instance, won't cut it.)
Microsoft shouldn't pay people that use their spare time to help their competitors... Geeze...
Nonsense. Microsoft, like every other employer in the world, needs to accept the fact that they don't own their employees and have absolutely no right to tell them what to do or not do after they clock out and go home.
I've done this also, and even one absolutely horrible company that wound up screwing me over ruthlessly didn't make a big deal over the contract editing.
If a potential employer is put off by a reasonable edit of your contract, there are two possible explanations. One is that they really want to f*ck you hard and take the ability to do that to their employees for granted. If that's the case you really don't want to work there. Even if it means stocking shelves or something similar to pay the bills while you look for a real job.
The other possibility is only a little better. It may be that they just don't understand what you are doing, and/or that they are so conditioned to do things totally by the book that they don't know how to parse what is going on. In this case, you may well be able to negotiate your terms by getting someone higher in the organisation involved, who actually feels that they can take initiative and think independently. However, I would still take it as a bad sign that the people you are dealing with to begin with do NOT feel like they are allowed to do such things.
and your point is? I'm not a karma whore, i'm a comment recycler. There is nothing in the/. rules against recycling your post. It was a good post the first time, it's ontopic to the current post, and I just didn't feel like retyping the damn thing.
It was a good post. I enjoyed it the first time. Now I wonder if you made it up.
The argument for reposting it here can be made, I won't contest that. But presenting it as a new post is dishonest. At the very least you should have added a line to let the reader know it was a repost. Failing to do that calls your honesty into question.
To note, i've also recycled other people's +5 posts. A good post is a good post regardless. If you're really that desperate for karma maybe you should dig through the archives for +5 posts, and paste them to new articles.
If you're "desperate for karma" then you just don't get it anyway. Karma doesn't mean squat. I've had a +2 posting bonus for years - does that make me better than someone else? Of course not. There's a cap for a reason you know - to discourage people like you from karma whoring. What on earth do you gain from it? Unless you are burning karma on trolls and page widening and worthless crap like that?
Reposting someone elses comments, without attributing them, is absolutely indefensible.
Exactly! When you go through one of those registrations that requires an email, make it, for instance, abuse@their.dom or even better abuse@their_upstream.dom. Don't opt in for anything, if they're good guys nothing happens. If they are spammers, they spam themselves, or their upstream.
Those old Amigas truly rocked for video performance, there is no doubt. Small parts of that had to do with AmigaOS, but it's my understanding that the real key to that amazing performance was always the custom hardware. Amiga DMA was stellar, allowing offboard hardware (such as the VideoToaster) to do their own thing without having to wait on the slow CPU, the whole setup with the blitter and the copper - all of this was way ahead of its time, and made for the sort of performance that makes it impossible to even discuss those old boxes today with people that never had the opportunity to use one without sounding like you're telling tall tales.
Now maybe I'm missing something, but I just don't see any chance of the new Amigas being able to live up to those days. The custom hardware, obviously, has long been passed by and the very concept abandoned. The OS is, still, very nice. Put it on this sort of modern hardware and, well, you might well have a better Mac. But hardly an Amiga as-of-old, right?
I must point out, though, that this board would make a base for a positively bitchin' Linux/PPC box.
Slashdot Mirror
http://community.wow.net/grt/qdgpg.html
http://community.wow.net/grt/nsdpgp.html
I would have to say you've just proven that, as I suspected, you are incapable of being polite.
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
In fact it does, and even the jargon file (which is hardly a "ruling" authority on this - instead you should see some of the early work by AI people who first conceived of the possibility of a computer virus) makes this clear, and indeed even your own rephrasing of the jargon file entry also makes this clear. Think about it.
Apparently you can dish it out but you can't take it. Your post was patronising and insulting, mine simply replied in kind.
Let me guess, you have a hard time making friends because you're a know-it-all, condescending amateur Freud who likes to get confrontational and tell everyone you meet what "their problem" is?
Advice you would do well to heed yourself.
This is where you are fooling yourself. It's a simple, if glaring, error. Let's parse what you just said with a little finer grain. If X = Y (and, indeed, it does and must) then we can call them both X. Viruses "reproduce" by copying themselves - "embedding" themselves if you prefer. Using the word "embed" instead of "reproduce" doesn't change the fact that they make new copies of themselves - in analogy to biological organisms that reproduce asexually.
It's been years since I actively hacked x86 asm, but I did, at one time, and I'm perfectly capable of parsing a dissassembly. Are you? If so why don't you take this discussion to my journal and tell me again how that bit of code "embeds" itself in .com files without actually reproducing?
That's saving the contents of ax (you'll want to restore it afterwards with pop) and then calling a bios service to get a list of equipment. Pushing ax first is a good idea because int11 returns to ax.
And thus reproduces itself, just as I said.
/me winces in sympathy as the clue-by-four goes up the side of your head, again.
Ok, let's look at your definitions.
Your difficulty, perhaps, has to do with realizing that what the jargon file here refers to as "infection" is in fact the same process that I referred to as "reproduction"? The difference in usage probably has something to do with the fact that the writer of that particular node appears to have gotten the term from sci-fi, whereas I first heard of the concept from computer science/ai people, who had a slightly more direct link. But if you actually read the definition, he's clearly talking about viral reproduction. As for instance the Virus whose dissassembly slashdot won't allow in comments. It's on a journal entry, feel free to go take a look. http://slashdot.org/~Arker/journal/
It reproduces by copying itself, all 163 bytes, into existing com files. That's the "infection" he's talking about. And he doesn't say that some viruses don't infect, which is the way you would say, using his language, what you're trying to say.
I was using anti-aliased fonts in X11 (WindowMaker+Gnome) at least 2, 2.5 years ago. X has had anti-aliasing for quite awhile.
However, at the time I am talking about I did it with a hack that relied on having copies of MS fonts to use, so that particular method would be a hassle in certain settings. I understand things have improved in that area too however.
However these are not the only options. A gui wraparound to a text based system configuration system can easily be even easier to use than a control panel metaphor. It can also be just as fast in the hands of an expert.
The vast majority of professional musicians already work and are paid in that fashion. Only a small percentage are ever picked up by a major record label. The rest work desperately for a break while playing gig after gig and lucky if they don't have to work day jobs too, to support their careers. These musicians are likely to find signing such a license attractive. It makes them money indirectly, by giving them a chance to make new markets for themselves. Get better gigs. The better the gigs the more chance that the record companies get them.
A virus is a chunk of machine code that reproduces. Period. Whether it does any damage or not, whether it interferes with normal usage or not, if it reproduces, it's a virus.
For instance, here is a dissassembly of the "Tiny Virus" aka 163 Com.
Well, I meant to post the dissassembly but unfortunately slashdots bloody stupid lameness filter won't let me. I'll put it on my homepage if some nanny code doesn't stop me there. Anyway, the point was...
Does it do anything destructive? Well, no, not really. It's 163 bytes of executable code which prepends itself to .com files and reproduces indefinately, without any payload, without interfering in any way other than taking a miniscule amount of disk space and a few processor cycles each time it executes. This is one of the smallest viruses ever found, it satisfies the minimal requirements to be a virus and does nothing else.
A program which does NOT reproduce, but does as you say prohibit "the normal functions of applications the computer" would not be a virus. It would, assuming it's inserted under false pretenses (and who would place it on their system otherwise?), be a trojan horse program, but not a virus.
A worm, on the other hand, is a much larger viral program or collection of programs which work together, specifically to reproduce across a network.
Now, of these three types of programs, the only one this spyware could possibly be is a trojan horse. Viruses *by definition* reproduce themselves, and I've not seen any evidence that this thing does that.
WTF are you talking about? It reproduces and spreads itself? Where on earth did you get that from?
It looks like a pretty reprehensible piece of spy-ware, but I saw nothing about it reproducing and spreading autonomously.
So what?
If you think EULAs are agreements I have a nice big stretch of seaside property in Oklahoma for you.
EULAs are just stray scritti that superstitious publishers make you click through. No one reads them. No one agrees to them. They are no more contractually binding than my next two sentences are.
By clicking reply you agree to transfer to me your firstborn daughter, along with the sum of $50,000, at whatever point in the future I request. If your firstborn daughter is over the age of majority at that time, I may, at my option, take a younger daughter, a son, or an automobile, in place of her. You agree that I may, if I feel it necessary, take those items you have agreed to provide me without informing you until afterwards. You agree to hold me harmless and without blame for any incidental property damage or criminal charges that may result from such action on my part.
There, I even bolded it to make sure you read it, unlike those silly little EULAs.
Me complaining? Hardly that. I don't care whether they release it, one way or the other, I don't have one and I don't plan to get one so why would I care?
Why would anyone care? Well if I were a stockholder I'd care, because this will probably get them some free (as in beer) R&D. Would I care if I owned one? No, I'd play games on it so I wouldn't care. If I wanted a supercomputer I'd buy a decent rackmount. I'm not sure why anyone should care about this unless they own a PS2 and no PC and want to learn about TCP/IP? Which can't be a great big audience really.
If you want one, and you care, by all means, go ahead. I wasn't challenging your right to be excited about whatever you want to be. I was just pointing out some facts not covered in the article.
From the article.
Now I'm not a bit surprised that Sony wants to keep control over how people use their consoles. I'm not even surprised that Sony is dead set on using hardware to prevent their customers from being able to assert their legal rights under copyright law. But I am a little bit surprised that their representative and/or the journalist who wrote that story will blatantly lie and claim to be giving people "complete documentation" and the like, when obviously they aren't going to do anything of the kind.
And I do think that potential buyers of the product, many of whom may read this article, deserve to know the truth. It may or may not make a difference in whether or not any given person will buy it, but at the very least you should know the truth before you make that decision.
Here's a good link if you're interested in this - http://www.execpc.com/~halkun/PS2/
It sounds more like it emulates linux in a VM rather than actually loading it as the actual machine OS. This allows them to use all kinds of proprietary code without violating the GPL, and to build in all sorts of copy and "ip" "protection."
Fair use quote:
This is how the Runtime Environment (RTE) works. In order to get Linux running
on your PS2, you must boot the system using the PS2 Linux DVD.
During boot, after all the copy-protection stuff is taken care of, the system
lays down the Runtime Environment. This is basically a layer that hides access
to the SPU2 (Sound Processing Unit), the input/output processor, the hard drive,
the CD/DVD-ROM system, the controllers, memory cards, USB, i.Link and other
peripherals. The RTE does supply hardware looking hooks, an educated guess
being faux-memory address and registers. Then the Linux kernel is loaded on top
of this. There are Linux device drivers that accesses the Runtime Environment
that are open source, but it's just a device driver calling in all actuality,
another device driver that's closed.
What you can and can't do with the system is limited.
You have no ability to read a normal PSX or PS2 memory card directly. For
example you can't open a Final Fantasy X save, edit how much cash you have,
and save it again. Through the RTE you can format a whole memory card(!)
and mount it like an 8 meg hard drive, but that card would be worthless
for saving normal PS2 games. Once you put the Linux formatted card
without Linux running (i.e. you are in the browser) it asks to reformat
the card.
The RTE also not allow audio CDs to be identified.
It also can tell if you have put in a CD-R or not (it can see a wobble track,
which all CD-Rs have ) and likewise not allow the disk to be seen. A PS2 can
read CD-Rs fine, the RTE is just doing copy protection first to make sure you
can't. You will also have no access to the CSS portion of the MPEG decoder,
but you can decode raw MPEG-4. Direct access to the Dolby subsystem is also
denied. Anything dealing with region locks are also restricted.
The first DVD (The boot disk) has a Linux boot loader and the RTE on it.
This disk is not allowed to be copied. It also has the manuals on it too,
which I'm sure are also copyrighted and not allowed to be publicly distributed.
The Linux kernel is on the second disk and also on the hard drive after it's
installed.
In order to use a monitor, you must one that is "Sync on Green". This means
that the refresh rate is only in the green channel. The monitor must use that
sync pulse to sync red and blue channels so they all get painted in the screen
at the same time. The reason why you have to use that is because a PS2 can turn
it's sync on green ability on and off. If you try and use the monitor
adapter for playing PS2 games or watching DVDs, sync on green will be turned
off and only the green channel will show up. Direct video output defeats Macrovision.
Sony doesn't want you making copies of DVDs to tape. Keep in mind that your
network adapter is going to have a MAC address that Sony, no doubt, knows.
Also removing the PS2 hard drive and attempting to mount in a PC will also
likely not work and possibly damage the drive.
Doh!
Well, this is not to say they didn't do a lot of work on it themselves - the original components weren't even a working OS after all. Microsoft hired away key parts of Digital Equipments VMS team to work on it, IBM programmers worked on it for a bit too, before IBM and MS parted ways. But yeah, in essence, has MS ever innovated anything? Of course not. They buy things that have promise, polish them, and market them.
Yes, QDOS was "Quick and Dirty Operating System." It was written in 1979 by Tim Patterson of the Seattle Computer Company, as a personal stopgap while Gary Killdall at Digital Research was busy doing a proper CP/M port for the i8086. Since CP/M source was available under a license somewhat like todays "shared source" agreements, it wasn't all that difficult to hack up a functional CP/M, even if it was a little rough. Gates managed to buy this hack for a pittance and build an empire on it... the rest, as they say, is history.
NT stands for Northern Telecom (Nortel) who originally developed it. However, after MS acquired it, they also referred to it as "New Technology." It's not in any sense a unix implementation, although it is in some senses a VMS implementation. Digital Equipment sued over that and got paid off several years ago.
Never used Altair basic, so I won't diss it, but since the versions that MS has produced since then (GW Basic, Qbasic, VBasic) are pretty incredibly shoddy compared to implementations that predated DOS I am guessing the criticism is probably fair.
Everytime someone claims Bill Gates is a "geek" let alone implying he's some sort of superlative geek, I must say I take that as a personal attack on all true geeks. In a sense it's true. I mean, well, look at him - obviously that was his social assignment in high school, yes. But he's about the worst example of a geek ever. He's simply never shown competence at anything except management and marketing.
Umm all of them?
I would assume. They'd have to do something pretty damn lame to break pppd.
http://www.linuxhelp.net/guides/janou/pppoe.shtml
Also, refactorable code is really more efficient to produce, because of its longevity, but in the short turn takes longer, if only because in order to write it the programmers would have to slow production" and no bean-counter would ever agree to that. It's totally counterintuitive to that deeply entrenched and enriched tie wearin boss man mindset. But if you want to write code that's going to be easy to update and fix, you have to slow down, think things through... bosses, however, are genetically programmed to want to see their employees working long hours, brows furrowed, pounding out code at a frantic pace on their keyboards.
Sure, there are a few exceptions. But most of them are just passin.
Yes and no. There are a lot more people than ever before using that MS-VMS^^^^^NT^^XP brand of OS than before, but a great many people still use win 9x^^CE^^ME. And the vast majority of programs still run just fine on 95OSR2. The key framework of the API is there in 95OSR2. 98 adds some bugfixes (which you can download anyway, and actually aren't all that common - the real F-ups seem to come from the application division) and "Active Desktop" aka "Active Pain in the Rear" which gets chopped on a lot of machines anyway. ME adds little of note beyond the removal of the "DOS" Mode boot option. If you don't run one of these MS programs you may not be able to run other MS products, but your ability to run world class applications that don't try to take over your computer like Pegasus Mail, Opera, StarOffice, etc. should be just fine. If they can keep DirectX less than a year or two behind I won't even need to reboot for games anymore.
A good solid WINE/Win95 compatibility would allow a lot of people to switch to a Free OS (gratuitous link) and quit paying the microsoft tax with minimal impact.
I believe you are mistaken. You would have to do that if a patent were involved, but that's not likely. More likely the only worry is copyright infringement, and copyright does not apply to ideas, but to specific sequences of words (or notes or numbers or what have you.) So you can use the same ideas without problem - just make sure you don't use the same coder, or an obvious derivation of it (changing only variable names, for instance, won't cut it.)
Nonsense. Microsoft, like every other employer in the world, needs to accept the fact that they don't own their employees and have absolutely no right to tell them what to do or not do after they clock out and go home.
I've done this also, and even one absolutely horrible company that wound up screwing me over ruthlessly didn't make a big deal over the contract editing.
If a potential employer is put off by a reasonable edit of your contract, there are two possible explanations. One is that they really want to f*ck you hard and take the ability to do that to their employees for granted. If that's the case you really don't want to work there. Even if it means stocking shelves or something similar to pay the bills while you look for a real job.
The other possibility is only a little better. It may be that they just don't understand what you are doing, and/or that they are so conditioned to do things totally by the book that they don't know how to parse what is going on. In this case, you may well be able to negotiate your terms by getting someone higher in the organisation involved, who actually feels that they can take initiative and think independently. However, I would still take it as a bad sign that the people you are dealing with to begin with do NOT feel like they are allowed to do such things.
It was a good post. I enjoyed it the first time. Now I wonder if you made it up.
The argument for reposting it here can be made, I won't contest that. But presenting it as a new post is dishonest. At the very least you should have added a line to let the reader know it was a repost. Failing to do that calls your honesty into question.
If you're "desperate for karma" then you just don't get it anyway. Karma doesn't mean squat. I've had a +2 posting bonus for years - does that make me better than someone else? Of course not. There's a cap for a reason you know - to discourage people like you from karma whoring. What on earth do you gain from it? Unless you are burning karma on trolls and page widening and worthless crap like that?
Reposting someone elses comments, without attributing them, is absolutely indefensible.
Exactly! When you go through one of those registrations that requires an email, make it, for instance, abuse@their.dom or even better abuse@their_upstream.dom. Don't opt in for anything, if they're good guys nothing happens. If they are spammers, they spam themselves, or their upstream.
Those old Amigas truly rocked for video performance, there is no doubt. Small parts of that had to do with AmigaOS, but it's my understanding that the real key to that amazing performance was always the custom hardware. Amiga DMA was stellar, allowing offboard hardware (such as the VideoToaster) to do their own thing without having to wait on the slow CPU, the whole setup with the blitter and the copper - all of this was way ahead of its time, and made for the sort of performance that makes it impossible to even discuss those old boxes today with people that never had the opportunity to use one without sounding like you're telling tall tales.
Now maybe I'm missing something, but I just don't see any chance of the new Amigas being able to live up to those days. The custom hardware, obviously, has long been passed by and the very concept abandoned. The OS is, still, very nice. Put it on this sort of modern hardware and, well, you might well have a better Mac. But hardly an Amiga as-of-old, right?
I must point out, though, that this board would make a base for a positively bitchin' Linux/PPC box.