As stated above, these are one possible route to undermining NSI's total grip on the "domain name market". But is it really all that impossible to get a new TLD widely listed? What about fine examples like.nu or.us? Heck, if you get enough important sysadmins to go along with it, you could have all kind of crazy TLDs flying around in the near future... (how about.alt,.biz,.fsf, or maybe even.slash?:o) )
If it wasn't for those giant, "evil" corporations, technology on the level of the Nintendo 64 wouldn't exist in the first place. That kind of R&D is only possible with the promise of major profit return. Like it or not, it is only natural that the creators of these technologies would defend their right to keep them proprietary. This isn't anything new, it goes back to Nintendo attacking the unlicensed NES carts and the Game Genie and has only recently come to include attacks on emulators and unlicensed acessories. If you created a technology and others tried to profit off it, you'd be just as quick to attack it as Sony was to attack Connectix.
On a side note, the DexDrive has been out for a few months now and there hasn't been even a murmur of threat from Sony or Nintendo, so I really don't see it being likely that legal action will be taken.
This rather lengthy post was obviously meant for the RH5.2/kernel2.2 article... Not much of a suprise something like this would happen with slashdot's database problems. Don't be so quick to eat this AC alive, give the benefit of the doubt I always say...
Once upon a time, after getting fed up with my first distribution (slack 3.3 -- so maybe I am a youngin'!), I switched over to RH5.1 thinking RPMs would make my life generally easier. After a few months, I have come to realize, they are a PAIN IN THE POSTERIOR. I have nothing against the use of RPMs for some things, but if you can upgrade your kernel without RPMs then you should probally learn to upgrade its required programs without RPMs too. Not that RPMs don't work just fine most of the time, but it is a pain having to wait on RedHat to release seemingly vital components a few weeks after the new kernel is out. Plus, using precompiled binaries is sometimes a risky situation. (Lord knows how many times I destroyed my dynamically linked libraries with RPMs before weening myself off of them...)
Ah yes, what fun it is to exploit idiots. I found that leaving a message on their desktops usually has no effect (not that I'm suprised, most commercial Windows systems now adays have desktops almost completely covered with icons out of the box). It's much easier to get all the files from their "Windows\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook Express\Mail" and read around in them until you figure out their e-mail address and send them a letter about it. Not that I would advocate violating someone's security...
It is true that the manufacture cost for most CD based home games is way less than $50 or even $15. Unfortunately, the artists, programmers, cgi artists, etcetera are not volunteers and have to get paid too. With the amount of money going into multi-million dollar productions like FF8, they would have to sell approximately 7 zillion copies to break even at $15. (Okay, I made that number up, but you get the point.)
I'm already tired of typing this. For more of my unresearched nonsensical rambling on the subject, go read my comment back on one of the N64 emulation articles.
But, I just thought that I would point out that Internet Explorer 4.72.3110 under Windows 98 handles this test quickly and flawlessly, while Netscape 4.07 under XFree 3.3.2 and Linux 2.2.1 creeps along forever and produces barely passing results...
Well DUH! Some of the arguments on here make it sound like Nintendo should be giving their games away. (specifically, a particularly well written one from WaReZDuDe...) Well I hate to burst your bubble, but Nintendo doesn't just pull games out of some magic hat and then sell them at $80 a piece to rip off the "gamerz". A large part of that $80 goes to the programs, artists, sound techs, and people who work long and hard to produce the highly advanced games on the market today. Nintendo's employees are not volunteers, folks. If you think Nintendo "only cares about money" and is out to "cheat the gamerz", then you obviously believe that all of the game's creators should be working for free. If you want free games designed by volunteers, why not learn to program and get together with other programs and start a project aimed in that direction (as so many others have done). If all software was free, the quality of the software would quickly deteriorate because not everyone is willing to work for nothing. This is why Nintendo has a history of releasing good games, investing money in programmers and R&D. Get over the fact that Nintendo is a company, of course they want your money, they deserve it.
Slashdot boxers would be a seriously good idea, and would probally sell like wildfire too! (At least, I HOPE that most of the/. audience doesn't wear white tighties.) After all, MetroWerks has them and I'm pretty sure that Red Hat has at some point too.
I think there are alot of possible solutions to the problem of kiddies getting internet porn, but most of them (such as the port sugesstion) require some basic knowledge about the network. Alas, this will never come to pass, because it is not the geeks who are trying to regulate their network, but rather Washington lawmakers who couldn't operate an ATM without hiring $150/hr. technical aids.
The cycle will continue: Washington comes up with some mis-informed piece of legislation, a judge with half a clue strikes it down, geeks everywhere cheer, Washington tries again.
Yeah, the Windows environment is no doubt going to cause crashes and data loss and all that (unless NASA & gang are very lucky). But important scientific data being lost? C'mon, the ISS is about international politics, there is going to be very little in the way of science going on up there. There is only so much that can be learned by bouncing around in reduced gravitiy while feeding rats. Who cares if some of their "important data" is lost, it will just give them an excuse to shovel millions more in taxpayer dollars up there to upgrade their systems...
I think I saw this posted before, maybe not, too lazy to check the archives...
Anyhow, I just find this highly amusing because all around here (in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area) there are these giant yellow billboards that say something like "COME STARE AT OUR NUDE MODELS". Of course, they are referring to an unfinished furniture store...
I think my only problem with RedHat software is that they sometimes put Linux in a market where it is not fully understood and customers are not ready for it. Some people see RedHat or Linux (and some do not know the difference...) growing popular and they jump on the bandwagon to get those pretty RedHat boxes into their stores. While I'm definately not against mass-Linux in the marketplace, I think some merchants are confused by what RedHat Linux is and can't help their customers get aquainted with their operating system.
Okay, it seems like I'm rambling, so here's a case of what I'm talking about: When I was at my university's bookstore (you must understand that our school has almost 0 nerd presence) the other day I saw that they had ordered massive amounts of RedHat 5.2 for Sparc and Alpha. When I asked the clerk why there were no copies of it for Intel (which is all anyone uses around here), he looked at me like I'm stupid and told me "Most of our students already have Intel computers and don't need a Unix emulator for that platform."
Unix emulator, indeed. These are the same people that are supposed to be convincing people to buy the software on their shelves. I think RedHat needs to do something to educate the retail outlets about their software before they continue to flood the market, or else it could give Linux as a whole a bad name (since as far as most people know, RedHat IS Linux).
I can see why any company would try to hunt down and kill the emulators (even if I don't agree with it), but I think Sony stands to succeed where Nintendo failed simply for the profit return factor. The law will definately look at this instance differently since Connectix stands to make money off of technology developed by Sony while the makers of SNes9x and such didn't recieve any profits. While it is true that Sony doesn't make much (if any) off the sale of Playstation hardware units, it does make since that they would want to keep the platform proprietary and ensure sell-through quality to the consumer. If Connectix's emulator is released and becomes rather sucessful, it is no doubt that the market would soon be flooded with emulators most likely of lesser quality. A sea of semi compatible commercial emulators of poor quality would be bad for the image of the Playstation platform reguardless of Sony's involvement in their creation. VGS is facing this lawsuit because it is the first of its kind, bleem will no doubt face similar problems in the future if it goes commercial.
In short, I really don't like this lawsuit. But, it makes a hell of a lot of sense for Sony.
I know I will probally sound like a complete fool, but what the heck is NUTTYX-2.2.0 and which 2.2pre whatever was it derived from? Other than changes to the documentation and some measures to fool uname, it would seem to be the linux kernel version 2.2 or so. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, information (well, very little) is at http://www.yellow5.com/nuttyx/. And yes, it does seem to have something to do with the ever popular Pokey the Penguin.
Slashdot Mirror
What fun it would be to be seeing them in person... I sure hope you all lucky enough to be at the show are having a great time!
As stated above, these are one possible route to undermining NSI's total grip on the "domain name market". But is it really all that impossible to get a new TLD widely listed? What about fine examples like .nu or .us? Heck, if you get enough important sysadmins to go along with it, you could have all kind of crazy TLDs flying around in the near future... (how about .alt, .biz, .fsf, or maybe even .slash? :o) )
If it wasn't for those giant, "evil" corporations, technology on the level of the Nintendo 64 wouldn't exist in the first place. That kind of R&D is only possible with the promise of major profit return. Like it or not, it is only natural that the creators of these technologies would defend their right to keep them proprietary. This isn't anything new, it goes back to Nintendo attacking the unlicensed NES carts and the Game Genie and has only recently come to include attacks on emulators and unlicensed acessories. If you created a technology and others tried to profit off it, you'd be just as quick to attack it as Sony was to attack Connectix.
On a side note, the DexDrive has been out for a few months now and there hasn't been even a murmur of threat from Sony or Nintendo, so I really don't see it being likely that legal action will be taken.
This rather lengthy post was obviously meant for the RH5.2/kernel2.2 article... Not much of a suprise something like this would happen with slashdot's database problems. Don't be so quick to eat this AC alive, give the benefit of the doubt I always say...
Once upon a time, after getting fed up with my first distribution (slack 3.3 -- so maybe I am a youngin'!), I switched over to RH5.1 thinking RPMs would make my life generally easier. After a few months, I have come to realize, they are a PAIN IN THE POSTERIOR. I have nothing against the use of RPMs for some things, but if you can upgrade your kernel without RPMs then you should probally learn to upgrade its required programs without RPMs too. Not that RPMs don't work just fine most of the time, but it is a pain having to wait on RedHat to release seemingly vital components a few weeks after the new kernel is out. Plus, using precompiled binaries is sometimes a risky situation. (Lord knows how many times I destroyed my dynamically linked libraries with RPMs before weening myself off of them...)
Ah yes, what fun it is to exploit idiots. I found that leaving a message on their desktops usually has no effect (not that I'm suprised, most commercial Windows systems now adays have desktops almost completely covered with icons out of the box). It's much easier to get all the files from their "Windows\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook Express\Mail" and read around in them until you figure out their e-mail address and send them a letter about it. Not that I would advocate violating someone's security...
It is true that the manufacture cost for most CD based home games is way less than $50 or even $15. Unfortunately, the artists, programmers, cgi artists, etcetera are not volunteers and have to get paid too. With the amount of money going into multi-million dollar productions like FF8, they would have to sell approximately 7 zillion copies to break even at $15. (Okay, I made that number up, but you get the point.)
I'm already tired of typing this. For more of my unresearched nonsensical rambling on the subject, go read my comment back on one of the N64 emulation articles.
But, I just thought that I would point out that Internet Explorer 4.72.3110 under Windows 98 handles this test quickly and flawlessly, while Netscape 4.07 under XFree 3.3.2 and Linux 2.2.1 creeps along forever and produces barely passing results...
*Crawling into the flame proof suit...
Well DUH! Some of the arguments on here make it sound like Nintendo should be giving their games away. (specifically, a particularly well written one from WaReZDuDe...) Well I hate to burst your bubble, but Nintendo doesn't just pull games out of some magic hat and then sell them at $80 a piece to rip off the "gamerz". A large part of that $80 goes to the programs, artists, sound techs, and people who work long and hard to produce the highly advanced games on the market today. Nintendo's employees are not volunteers, folks. If you think Nintendo "only cares about money" and is out to "cheat the gamerz", then you obviously believe that all of the game's creators should be working for free. If you want free games designed by volunteers, why not learn to program and get together with other programs and start a project aimed in that direction (as so many others have done). If all software was free, the quality of the software would quickly deteriorate because not everyone is willing to work for nothing. This is why Nintendo has a history of releasing good games, investing money in programmers and R&D. Get over the fact that Nintendo is a company, of course they want your money, they deserve it.
Slashdot boxers would be a seriously good idea, and would probally sell like wildfire too! (At least, I HOPE that most of the /. audience doesn't wear white tighties.) After all, MetroWerks has them and I'm pretty sure that Red Hat has at some point too.
The cycle will continue: Washington comes up with some mis-informed piece of legislation, a judge with half a clue strikes it down, geeks everywhere cheer, Washington tries again.
Yeah, the Windows environment is no doubt going to cause crashes and data loss and all that (unless NASA & gang are very lucky). But important scientific data being lost? C'mon, the ISS is about international politics, there is going to be very little in the way of science going on up there. There is only so much that can be learned by bouncing around in reduced gravitiy while feeding rats. Who cares if some of their "important data" is lost, it will just give them an excuse to shovel millions more in taxpayer dollars up there to upgrade their systems...
Anyhow, I just find this highly amusing because all around here (in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area) there are these giant yellow billboards that say something like "COME STARE AT OUR NUDE MODELS". Of course, they are referring to an unfinished furniture store...
Okay, it seems like I'm rambling, so here's a case of what I'm talking about: When I was at my university's bookstore (you must understand that our school has almost 0 nerd presence) the other day I saw that they had ordered massive amounts of RedHat 5.2 for Sparc and Alpha. When I asked the clerk why there were no copies of it for Intel (which is all anyone uses around here), he looked at me like I'm stupid and told me "Most of our students already have Intel computers and don't need a Unix emulator for that platform."
Unix emulator, indeed. These are the same people that are supposed to be convincing people to buy the software on their shelves. I think RedHat needs to do something to educate the retail outlets about their software before they continue to flood the market, or else it could give Linux as a whole a bad name (since as far as most people know, RedHat IS Linux).
I can see why any company would try to hunt down and kill the emulators (even if I don't agree with it), but I think Sony stands to succeed where Nintendo failed simply for the profit return factor. The law will definately look at this instance differently since Connectix stands to make money off of technology developed by Sony while the makers of SNes9x and such didn't recieve any profits. While it is true that Sony doesn't make much (if any) off the sale of Playstation hardware units, it does make since that they would want to keep the platform proprietary and ensure sell-through quality to the consumer. If Connectix's emulator is released and becomes rather sucessful, it is no doubt that the market would soon be flooded with emulators most likely of lesser quality. A sea of semi compatible commercial emulators of poor quality would be bad for the image of the Playstation platform reguardless of Sony's involvement in their creation. VGS is facing this lawsuit because it is the first of its kind, bleem will no doubt face similar problems in the future if it goes commercial.
In short, I really don't like this lawsuit. But, it makes a hell of a lot of sense for Sony.
I know I will probally sound like a complete fool, but what the heck is NUTTYX-2.2.0 and which 2.2pre whatever was it derived from? Other than changes to the documentation and some measures to fool uname, it would seem to be the linux kernel version 2.2 or so. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, information (well, very little) is at http://www.yellow5.com/nuttyx/. And yes, it does seem to have something to do with the ever popular Pokey the Penguin.
It compiles and runs just fine, BTW...