Quoting: Appelsin

Quoting: GoboStatistically they have sold more than one copy for every current citizen of Denmark, one of the regions where vikings originated from. Or more than the whole population of Scandinavia 200 years ago. With one game. By five people.

~1,03 copies for every danske.
~1,11 copies for every nordmann.

(Based on population numbers from wikipedia)

Which means means that if they ever publish which contries bought the game, we'll see that half was sold in Denmark, and the other half sold in Norway. Stands to reason.

And they have sold 153 copies for every citizen living today in the city Iron Gate comes from (Skövde, Sweden) :-)

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That this game is free is almost insulting

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Quoting: PinguinoCould anyone give me a one-sentence summary on the difference between emulators and translation layers? I've done some searching and I think I got the gist of it (low-level emulators are basically trying to recreate the emulated OS instead of just wrapping individual functions), but I couldn't see much distinction between high-level emulation and a translator.

A one-sentence summary would be quite hard, but basically you have done it yourself. An emulator emulates the entire system, so WINE as an emulator would be emulating bios+cpu+kernel+windows (and a specific version of it), while WINE as a translator only translates as much of the system calls provided by the Windows kernel that applications and games needs in order to run, and the application is executed by Linux and not by any emulated Windows.

WINE the emulator would allow you to say run amd64 applications on your arm/sparc/68k machine while WINE the translator requires you to run on the exact same hardware that the Windows application thinks it runs on.

My take on low-level emulation vs high-level emulation is that low-level emulation would emulate the hardware on a chip basis while high-level emulation would be emulating the hardware on a functional level. I.e most software emulators are high-level (if they have any form of performance) while FPGA emulators (and some very very slow software emulators) are low-level emulators.

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Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: MordragReally sad to see...
Out of curiosity, if now someone would write specifications based on that code, and another one would write another engine reimplementation based on that specifications, would be it legal ?

Depends on how many lawyers get involved. The thing is, clean lab reverse engineering is perfectly legal. From my understanding of it, if it wasn't the PC as it is today would not exist, as IBM's architecture was open, but their BIOS was not, and it was reverse engineered.
In this day and age though, all that needs to be done is for a company to cry foul (claim DMCA) and the project goes away.
The process that is illegal is if they had someone from tge original project working with them, then it would not be considered 'clean'.
(Not a lawyer, juat remembered it from reading things years ago when people were doing similar things with other games.)

Well it depends, AFAIK the concept of clean room reverse-engineering does not exist in the legal system. Phoenix did it the way they did when they created their version of IBM:s BIOS not to avoid the copyright of the BIOS but that of the IBM Technical Reference Manuals which is what IBM had put a license on.

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Quoting: Arehandoro

Quoting: EikeThere's no real question Linux already is dominating the world, from the smallest to the largest, from most people's pockets to even Mars.

Except one little village called desktop.

Technically, not the world but our Solar Systtem :D

Honest question: Has there ever been any mention on what kind of OS any of the other probes* had? I assume it was some bespoke system? Or maybe a Unix system? Maybe Windows even? xD

* Not only probes but also the Rover for example.

As others have already hinted at here, NASA have used VxWorks for all of the other rovers, probes and orbiters. Before that they used NASA custom computer systems without any operating system as such.

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Quoting: EagleDelta

Quoting: GuestSaw this one coming. I hope Github doesn't get hate for this like they did with Youtube-dl. Github are not to blame for this, they have no choice but to comply with the awful DMCA

So, that's no actually true. I'll have to dig up the appropriate video, but a particular Business Lawyer clarified the DMCA provisions relating to takedowns. There is no requirement to takedown content from a DMCA request. All that provision does is protect the platform owner from liability on both sides. Basically, it protects hosts from being "caught in the middle" of a copyright dispute and facing a lawsuit from the organization requesting the takedown and from the users affected by the takedown.

But, as can be seen with a recent copyright case between Cox Communications and Sony Music, if a company doesn't actually comply with the DMCA takedown, they lose the immunity to lawsuits.... making them liable for an infringement by their users.

Yes if Github does not comply with every single DMCA takedown they will loose their safe harbour status and will instead be liable for every single thing that their end users upload to Github. So in practice Github have no choice but to comply.

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Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: GuestIf it was a clean-room implementation there wouldn't be as much of a problem, however this was reverse engineered directly from the binaries it seems. That's a bit more of an issue as far as countries with dmca style laws go.

There was a point in time where reverse engineering was perfectly legal. I'm not sure if it is at this point. But for the most part there has to be some form of being able to read the data files to be able to recreate the game, and the term reverse engineering could technically be pinned to that. Pretty sure they weren't full on creating the engine through such means, were they?

I think the 'brings more sales' argument is shot down by sales, as they'd rather sell you new games instead of people being able to buy cheap old games. Plus with it being opened, they're afraid new content will be created for the old games, again hampering sales of new games.

Basically anti-consumer, pro-company thoughts.

Depends on if there are clauses against reverse engineering in the EULA of the original game since it was declared in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowers_v._Baystate_Technologies,_Inc. that such an EULA override the copyright law that expressly permits reverse engineering. However it has also to be said that Baystate did sell a competing application to Bowers and reverse engineered Bowers application to add new features to their own so that case is not 100% comparable with this situation.

However defending your position in court even if you are 100% sure that you will win is extremely expensive in the US so many smaller entities will not defend themselves even when they are in the right paving the way for big corporations to bully their way through the court system.

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Quoting: Cyril

Quoting: DaiKaiser93

Quoting: Cyril

Quoting: IggiThis is Deep Silver as the publisher. I wouldn't expect them to support anything besides Steam...

They're also the publisher of Wasteland 3 and yet the Linux/macOS versions are on GOG...

The Linux versions for the Saint Rows games and the first 2 Metro games are still missing from GOG.

Yeah I know, it's a pity. But just to say Deep Silver itself isn't the cause. But yeah I'm afraid it will ending like the "Desperados III case".
And if that's the case for Metro Exodus too, seriously... too bad they choose the "wrong" publisher but I won't buy the game.
It's just not right, don't sell your game on a store if you just don't want to support all versions.
It's normal to lack the Linux version on EGS, but not on GOG, there is no excuse.

Well there is an excuse, adding a store is way more than just press a button, and that is for every single update you later do for your game as well.

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Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: F.UltraNot trying to defend Google here (I have no love for them) but the problem on Youtube is the DMCA itself and not Google/YouTube. As a provider you are not allowed to judge if a DMCA request is valid or fraudulent, you have to obey the request at all times.

Yes and no.
YouTube only has to enable such tools for the industry because they are reliant on ad revenue from the industry. Other services that function without ad revenue are much friendlier towards content creators and not so much towards others.

Of course, there are some legal concerns about copyright here, but those would not have to be ruled in favor of the plaintiff by default as is the case on Google. It is absurdly easy to file a DMCA request, but next to impossible to fight it, even if it is nonsense - every content creator can sing you a song about this.
It should be exactly the other way around.

That anyone can just file such a claim and the video gets taken down immediately is totally bonkers.

I think that you are mixing the DMCA with the "find copyrighted materials" tool that YouTube provides the music industry, they are two different things (although connected in a way).

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Quoting: EagleDelta

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: kerossinGoogle is great at coming up with new tech solutions and running systems at a global scale but boy do they suck at supporting their customers. We've seen this countless on YouTube with dubious DMCA claims taking down channels and only after a big enough uproar do things get looked at by someone at Google.

At this rate Google will make the owner of https://killedbygoogle.com/ bankrupt because of constantly having to upgrade the hosting plan to accommodate all the dead Google projects lol.

Also, Liam makes a good point about relying on one provider for a lot of things. While it is convenient having one account but the risk of losing everything is too high. At the very least moving your email to a different provider might be good enough since email is used as a recovery method for most services so you could also lose access to other non-Google accounts if Google decides to terminate your account.

Not trying to defend Google here (I have no love for them) but the problem on Youtube is the DMCA itself and not Google/YouTube. As a provider you are not allowed to judge if a DMCA request is valid or fraudulent, you have to obey the request at all times.

They aren't required to obey any DMCA requests, there are no direct legal ramifications to ignoring DMCA requests. That said, if those requests ARE valid and they refuse to follow them, then Google/YouTube becomes liable in a civil suite for any damages. All DMCA does is remove liability for lawsuits/damages for copyright violations.

My interpretation is that if they don't obey all DMCA requests they loose their OSP status for all future requests and not just that single DMCA according to title II:

QuoteDMCA Title II, the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act ("OCILLA"), creates a safe harbor for online service providers (OSPs, including ISPs) against copyright infringement liability, provided they meet specific requirements. OSPs must adhere to and qualify for certain prescribed safe harbor guidelines and promptly block access to alleged infringing material (or remove such material from their systems) when they receive notification of an infringement claim from a copyright holder or the copyright holder's agent (a "notice and takedown" process). OCILLA also includes a counternotification provision that offers OSPs a safe harbor from liability to their users when users claim that the material in question is not, in fact, infringing. OCILLA also facilitates issuing of subpoenas against OSPs to provide their users' identity.

Too me that is legal ramifications that means that Google's only choice is to either obey every single DMCA takedown or close down shop completely.

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