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Cellular is a fairly unimportant little cellular automata program.
Staccato is a reminder program, which might have some ideas relating to intelligent input parsing somebody is trying to patent. It sets things up so entries in the info file are very easily done, with the 'API' extremely easy to master. I'm sure someone would try to patent that.
Sitebot is a particular method of keeping data files as plain text with a couple of easily added headers, and 'compiling' that into a website which can then be uploaded. If anybody means to patent a narrowly defined method for writing plaintext and having it read and turned into a web site with the same structure as the plaintext files and folders, Sitebot is prior art.
ROTSOS (Return of the Son of Spacewar) is the best yet, being a radically different approach to game engine design. It offers literally the ability to produce game 'maps' equivalent to data files billions of gigs in size, in fact the ability to have billions of worlds each with 'maps' (not all of which will be distinct, but for all practical purposes...). It requires that game map creation be an exploratory process rather than a creative process, a major innovation in map design IMHO as the person who came up with it after reading lots of stuff on AI and artificial life. Took some years to work out, and naturally I've had to produce flashy demos (mostly movies, others to come) to illustrate what's being done here.

What do all these software products have in common, from the trivial to the actually innovative?
They are _all_ Free Software under the GNU GPL. That is including ROTSOS, and I have every expectation that somebody else with ship a GPLed game before I can get one together. I understand that and approve of it. I also understand that I'm going to stay poor and won't get diddly from all this.

Then why on earth am I doing it?
Because I'm just another soldier in a different sort of war. This patent stuff is deadly serious, but it's not fought with guns (unless they are patentable ;) ). It's fought with ideas, and sacrifices have to be made. If intellectual property is not to be become a ball and chain, if people are to retain the ability to work with their minds and retain control over their own ideas and clever inventions, it seems the only safe haven anymore is the hardcore free (libre) software side- the determination to produce ideas and add them to the shared hoard. If these ideas are in use and known to be in existence, matching ideas cannot be patented. If the ideas are unsung and never seen by anybody, then lawyers will have a relatively easy time raising doubt that a matching idea came first. Publicity is the friend of free software, the handmaiden of 'prior art'.

So.... STEAL MY SOFTWARE!!!! That's right- go grovel through its ugly depths for any ideas that might make your open source project take off! Grab anything you want! Be grateful or not, say nice things about what neat ideas I have or not- the only requirement is that it stay GPL. Take all the credit for stuff that I came up with, while releasing it as GPL! Because as long as somebody gets publicity for a GPLed idea or algorithm or program, as long as that idea is obviously prior art and not ripe for a patent, that means I get to keep using it. And if the ideas languish in obscurity, it's all the more likely that some clown will patent some broad notion, hire better lawyers and enjoin me from ever using the idea that was mine in the first place. I'm not kidding. Wittingly or not, this is war now.

Write GPLed software (that being the most hardcore of the licenses)! Get glaring publicity! Anybody who can, _please_ make sure as many ideas (broad or specific) are within the camp of 'free software, prior art' as possible. Because it's a real problem, a serious danger, and these people trying to fight it by staking out defensive patents are only compounding the problem.

Time to choose sides!

Cellular is a fairly unimportant little cellular automata program.
Staccato is a reminder program, which might have some ideas relating to intelligent input parsing somebody is trying to patent. It sets things up so entries in the info file are very easily done, with the 'API' extremely easy to master. I'm sure someone would try to patent that.
Sitebot is a particular method of keeping data files as plain text with a couple of easily added headers, and 'compiling' that into a website which can then be uploaded. If anybody means to patent a narrowly defined method for writing plaintext and having it read and turned into a web site with the same structure as the plaintext files and folders, Sitebot is prior art.
ROTSOS (Return of the Son of Spacewar) is the best yet, being a radically different approach to game engine design. It offers literally the ability to produce game 'maps' equivalent to data files billions of gigs in size, in fact the ability to have billions of worlds each with 'maps' (not all of which will be distinct, but for all practical purposes...). It requires that game map creation be an exploratory process rather than a creative process, a major innovation in map design IMHO as the person who came up with it after reading lots of stuff on AI and artificial life. Took some years to work out, and naturally I've had to produce flashy demos (mostly movies, others to come) to illustrate what's being done here.

What do all these software products have in common, from the trivial to the actually innovative?
They are _all_ Free Software under the GNU GPL. That is including ROTSOS, and I have every expectation that somebody else with ship a GPLed game before I can get one together. I understand that and approve of it. I also understand that I'm going to stay poor and won't get diddly from all this.

Then why on earth am I doing it?
Because I'm just another soldier in a different sort of war. This patent stuff is deadly serious, but it's not fought with guns (unless they are patentable ;) ). It's fought with ideas, and sacrifices have to be made. If intellectual property is not to be become a ball and chain, if people are to retain the ability to work with their minds and retain control over their own ideas and clever inventions, it seems the only safe haven anymore is the hardcore free (libre) software side- the determination to produce ideas and add them to the shared hoard. If these ideas are in use and known to be in existence, matching ideas cannot be patented. If the ideas are unsung and never seen by anybody, then lawyers will have a relatively easy time raising doubt that a matching idea came first. Publicity is the friend of free software, the handmaiden of 'prior art'.

So.... STEAL MY SOFTWARE!!!! That's right- go grovel through its ugly depths for any ideas that might make your open source project take off! Grab anything you want! Be grateful or not, say nice things about what neat ideas I have or not- the only requirement is that it stay GPL. Take all the credit for stuff that I came up with, while releasing it as GPL! Because as long as somebody gets publicity for a GPLed idea or algorithm or program, as long as that idea is obviously prior art and not ripe for a patent, that means I get to keep using it. And if the ideas languish in obscurity, it's all the more likely that some clown will patent some broad notion, hire better lawyers and enjoin me from ever using the idea that was mine in the first place. I'm not kidding. Wittingly or not, this is war now.

Write GPLed software (that being the most hardcore of the licenses)! Get glaring publicity! Anybody who can, _please_ make sure as many ideas (broad or specific) are within the camp of 'free software, prior art' as possible. Because it's a real problem, a serious danger, and these people trying to fight it by staking out defensive patents are only compounding the problem.

Time to choose sides!

Cellular is a fairly unimportant little cellular automata program.
Staccato is a reminder program, which might have some ideas relating to intelligent input parsing somebody is trying to patent. It sets things up so entries in the info file are very easily done, with the 'API' extremely easy to master. I'm sure someone would try to patent that.
Sitebot is a particular method of keeping data files as plain text with a couple of easily added headers, and 'compiling' that into a website which can then be uploaded. If anybody means to patent a narrowly defined method for writing plaintext and having it read and turned into a web site with the same structure as the plaintext files and folders, Sitebot is prior art.
ROTSOS (Return of the Son of Spacewar) is the best yet, being a radically different approach to game engine design. It offers literally the ability to produce game 'maps' equivalent to data files billions of gigs in size, in fact the ability to have billions of worlds each with 'maps' (not all of which will be distinct, but for all practical purposes...). It requires that game map creation be an exploratory process rather than a creative process, a major innovation in map design IMHO as the person who came up with it after reading lots of stuff on AI and artificial life. Took some years to work out, and naturally I've had to produce flashy demos (mostly movies, others to come) to illustrate what's being done here.

What do all these software products have in common, from the trivial to the actually innovative?
They are _all_ Free Software under the GNU GPL. That is including ROTSOS, and I have every expectation that somebody else with ship a GPLed game before I can get one together. I understand that and approve of it. I also understand that I'm going to stay poor and won't get diddly from all this.

Then why on earth am I doing it?
Because I'm just another soldier in a different sort of war. This patent stuff is deadly serious, but it's not fought with guns (unless they are patentable ;) ). It's fought with ideas, and sacrifices have to be made. If intellectual property is not to be become a ball and chain, if people are to retain the ability to work with their minds and retain control over their own ideas and clever inventions, it seems the only safe haven anymore is the hardcore free (libre) software side- the determination to produce ideas and add them to the shared hoard. If these ideas are in use and known to be in existence, matching ideas cannot be patented. If the ideas are unsung and never seen by anybody, then lawyers will have a relatively easy time raising doubt that a matching idea came first. Publicity is the friend of free software, the handmaiden of 'prior art'.

So.... STEAL MY SOFTWARE!!!! That's right- go grovel through its ugly depths for any ideas that might make your open source project take off! Grab anything you want! Be grateful or not, say nice things about what neat ideas I have or not- the only requirement is that it stay GPL. Take all the credit for stuff that I came up with, while releasing it as GPL! Because as long as somebody gets publicity for a GPLed idea or algorithm or program, as long as that idea is obviously prior art and not ripe for a patent, that means I get to keep using it. And if the ideas languish in obscurity, it's all the more likely that some clown will patent some broad notion, hire better lawyers and enjoin me from ever using the idea that was mine in the first place. I'm not kidding. Wittingly or not, this is war now.

Write GPLed software (that being the most hardcore of the licenses)! Get glaring publicity! Anybody who can, _please_ make sure as many ideas (broad or specific) are within the camp of 'free software, prior art' as possible. Because it's a real problem, a serious danger, and these people trying to fight it by staking out defensive patents are only compounding the problem.

Time to choose sides!

Cellular is a fairly unimportant little cellular automata program.
Staccato is a reminder program, which might have some ideas relating to intelligent input parsing somebody is trying to patent. It sets things up so entries in the info file are very easily done, with the 'API' extremely easy to master. I'm sure someone would try to patent that.
Sitebot is a particular method of keeping data files as plain text with a couple of easily added headers, and 'compiling' that into a website which can then be uploaded. If anybody means to patent a narrowly defined method for writing plaintext and having it read and turned into a web site with the same structure as the plaintext files and folders, Sitebot is prior art.
ROTSOS (Return of the Son of Spacewar) is the best yet, being a radically different approach to game engine design. It offers literally the ability to produce game 'maps' equivalent to data files billions of gigs in size, in fact the ability to have billions of worlds each with 'maps' (not all of which will be distinct, but for all practical purposes...). It requires that game map creation be an exploratory process rather than a creative process, a major innovation in map design IMHO as the person who came up with it after reading lots of stuff on AI and artificial life. Took some years to work out, and naturally I've had to produce flashy demos (mostly movies, others to come) to illustrate what's being done here.

What do all these software products have in common, from the trivial to the actually innovative?
They are _all_ Free Software under the GNU GPL. That is including ROTSOS, and I have every expectation that somebody else with ship a GPLed game before I can get one together. I understand that and approve of it. I also understand that I'm going to stay poor and won't get diddly from all this.

Then why on earth am I doing it?
Because I'm just another soldier in a different sort of war. This patent stuff is deadly serious, but it's not fought with guns (unless they are patentable ;) ). It's fought with ideas, and sacrifices have to be made. If intellectual property is not to be become a ball and chain, if people are to retain the ability to work with their minds and retain control over their own ideas and clever inventions, it seems the only safe haven anymore is the hardcore free (libre) software side- the determination to produce ideas and add them to the shared hoard. If these ideas are in use and known to be in existence, matching ideas cannot be patented. If the ideas are unsung and never seen by anybody, then lawyers will have a relatively easy time raising doubt that a matching idea came first. Publicity is the friend of free software, the handmaiden of 'prior art'.

So.... STEAL MY SOFTWARE!!!! That's right- go grovel through its ugly depths for any ideas that might make your open source project take off! Grab anything you want! Be grateful or not, say nice things about what neat ideas I have or not- the only requirement is that it stay GPL. Take all the credit for stuff that I came up with, while releasing it as GPL! Because as long as somebody gets publicity for a GPLed idea or algorithm or program, as long as that idea is obviously prior art and not ripe for a patent, that means I get to keep using it. And if the ideas languish in obscurity, it's all the more likely that some clown will patent some broad notion, hire better lawyers and enjoin me from ever using the idea that was mine in the first place. I'm not kidding. Wittingly or not, this is war now.

Write GPLed software (that being the most hardcore of the licenses)! Get glaring publicity! Anybody who can, _please_ make sure as many ideas (broad or specific) are within the camp of 'free software, prior art' as possible. Because it's a real problem, a serious danger, and these people trying to fight it by staking out defensive patents are only compounding the problem.

Time to choose sides!

It is not _instantly_ recognizable as Markov-chain travesty (which is the process by which this travesty was generated, Markov chaining- I have a twisted little story edited from Markov chained output, called Speak Roughly To Your Evidence)
Instead, this Katz travesty requires a moment of actual reading to discover that its incoherency and sloppiness is not Katz's usual sort, but far worse and more random. That's kind of scary :) normal writers can be instantly distinguished from travesty. Katz already shows some behavior that is similar to travesty, for instance the surprising fact that the first and third lines of his story start with the exact same six words and punctuation, and the second line is a sentence fragment.
What is Katz, really? This travesty and the disturbing realisation that it shares more with the original source than one would expect raises some unusual questions. Katz _is_ a living human being, unless Rob Malda is playing some really, really weird mind game with us- so what is happening with these very Markov-like writing habits? Is this a suggestion that the human thought processes draw more from Markov chaining than we'd like to admit- and that clarity and coherency are derived from a sort of 'overseer' level in the brain that looks at the entire work as a whole, and censors redundancies and incompleted thoughts- a 'censor' level that in Jon Katz is not working effectively?

Sure. The engine is not the game. The engine is also not necessarily the cheat.
I'm personally developing some enginelike stuff as GPLed free software: currently it's some terrain generation and universe generation code and ideas. (end plug ;) )
As far as open source gaming is concerned, there are some things becoming apparent. The actual direction of a game has to be 'steered': I've seen projects that worked and projects that tanked and the difference is leadership and the willingness to say 'No, your idea is rejected', particularly in the realm of artistic decisions. If you go with pure committee-like democratic rule, you lose: someone has to be the hatchetman, and you have to pick people capable of fulfulling their roles.
Given that, the question is kind of like 'if you can get the source to Apache and hack it, doesn't that make all Apache web sites insecure dead meat?'. Certainly not- it's a question of what sort of API you let a client use to communicate with a server. Ideally you work things out very carefully, and also make _no_ allowance for anybody to 'adjust' the game, not even the game authors. With a hidden API for adjusting player parameters, you're toast- in fact any critical data that you store on the client is toast, somebody will hack it even if it has to be done by hex editing. So the concepts that are important are keeping vital data on the server, and implementing no way of adjusting this data except by the normal playing of the game. Basically, if you the game developer can do it then somebody else can, with sufficient determination, even if that would mean getting physical access to the machine, social engineering etc, bribery or whatever. This does require that the game mechanics be really thoroughly worked out in advance, particularly areas that could be abused.

I'll add http://www.golgotha.org/, which isn't as dead as it looks, and will toot my own horn in a subdued manner *toot*
Return Of The Son Of Spacewar (ROTSOS) is my codename for a collection of GPLed sample programs that do terrain generation, with some very impressive possibilities. There is a lot of information on what the algorithms/hacks are and why, and more to come, and GPLed code (think of it as pseudocode, it's 'REALbasic' Mac code) for everything, and there are pictures and movies there too. I made a special effort to make MPEG video despite not being able to afford the real tools (ASTARTE Mpack) to do it- anyone who was able to view the Phantom Menace trailers will be able to see longer movies in Sorenson Quicktime format. There are pictures illustrating the concept behind the terrain generation, and plots of the distribution of the universe generation algorithms.
Who else is working on stuff that can be used for GPLed games? Come on, go public, the time is now! The more we can use good bits of each other's ideas, the better the whole field will be, without too much effort on any one developer's part. For instance, it's dead trivial to take the object placement variation on my terrain-gen code and use it to produce a consistent, godawfulhuge 2D map- and you could easily scale down the large dataset I use to produce a fairly large map from a very small datafile. You'd be basing it on tiles and getting specific index numbers for the tiles from the big virtual map- and would set up the distribution so that the result emerged with a style you liked. In some circumstances this could produce a map too large for any person to explore, so you might have a Warcraft-like thing in which network players would explore the world and discover neat clearings or forests or juxtapositions of natural resources and features like rivers or lakes- potential map situations that you the designer did not specifically put there, but which were emergent from the algorithms.
Put stuff out there! Mix and match :)

I don't see Jon Katz lifting a damn finger to see to it that people listen to _me_. I could be the cleverest guy around, I could be incredibly karmically gifted (eh- '45' is semi karmically gifted for Slashdot) but Katz doesn't care. He isn't the least bit interested in fighting for my 'right' to publicity and free Slashdot stories.
And this is okay, because I don't _have_ such a right. If I work hard enough (like with my work-in-progress GPLed game terrain engine concepts, eventually I would get that attention. It might take years, but I don't need Katz's help.
The problem is, he feels very differently about any of _his_ thoughts. To him, there is a _right_ to publicity, Slashdot story posting access (just for him! Not for the common people), and even to criticise that makes a person a CENSOR. My wanting him to lose story posting access makes me a CENSOR.
Well, tough. He does not have a right to publicity. It is a privilege he abuses, it's granted to him through Rob Malda and not by some global sense of the fitness of things, and it should be taken away. Katz needs to put the same effort into his thoughts and work as the rest of us have to. It's extremely annoying to see him justify clinging to his unreasonably nepotistic position by accusing critics of censorship. We are not born with write privileges to the world, nor with a stage conveniently growing out of our feet. If we want such exciting abilities to communicate on a broad basis, we have to go out and earn them, and convince someone with the means that our voice deserves amplification. Having done that, we become privileged, and that can be very transient.

Sorry, no: you're badly misinterpreting the situation. Katz gets a free ride- he has the ability to post stories unedited and without direction. He abuses this privilege.
Look- I tried to contribute something to Slashdot, too. I erred in thinking self-promotion would work, I erred in underestimating the need for specifically Linux stuff- what I suggested was this page of mine: http://www.airwindows.com/rotsos/index. html. This is the first appearance of a GPLed game terrain engine, more accurately of a method for deriving insanely detailed data from a particular sort of datafile of limited size (16M).
I have movies up, I have pictures, I have the (REALbasic, but think of it as 'pseudo-code') GPLed source code up. I've put months, _years_ into this work, there's lots more still to do, and I wanted to get serious publicity for it specifically so that any ideas worth keeping from it couldn't ever be patented. To me that was worth giving up any notion of profit or control from the ideas themselves (on the other hand, it'd be fun to make a game from such ideas and try to sell the art and concept around the game, with the engine being completely open but the story and art copyrighted works being sold).
Well, I miscalculated, and I accept that. Silly of me to even try self-promoting and submitting my own story in hopes of it being run on Slashdot (not to mention not having Linux binaries, but that's more than I can do currently). Rejection sucks, but it happens when you and your audience mismatch. (I'm not going to try and go to Freshmeat until I can come up with proper Linux code, which might be a while yet, as I'm getting no help from anyone on any of this).
And meanwhile, blithely, Jon Katz takes up the space I was denied- not working hard and trying to bring innovative ideas to Slashdotters like I was, oh no! Instead, he's a rabblerouser! He's descended to where he is only restating other Slashdot articles, in the most inflammatory manner possible, couching it in tired rhetoric.
I have no problem whatsoever with Slashdot using editorial judgement and witholding publicity from me personally, or any ideas I might have. Decisions have to be made and there are worse things than not being given a story on slashdot (if you're a server, the 'worse thing' might _be_ getting a story on slashdot ;) ). However, I and most Slashdot readers have a problem with Katz not being subject to editorial judgement, not being subject to the standards any normal person would be held to when trying to get stories on Slashdot.
I agree with you on one point only. Let Katz write- on the privacy of his own Mac. There is no reason for him to be 'published', and if you are for one second suggesting that his empty restatement of the Singer story is 'ideas more valuable' than the months of GPLed game engine algorithm work I tried to bring to Slashdotters' attention as a story, you're out of your mind.
It's not even that what I had to offer was so great- I think it's pretty cool, and you could adapt the ideas to many things, and those ideas can be kept safe from patents with glaring publicity, but what the hey, it's just some fun code. But compared to this?
Let Katz write- don't let him POST. He can put his ideas in the queue like anybody else. He doesn't deserve special treatment, he doesn't deserve editorial status. Let him post comments like your average MEEPT!.

Tain't much, but that's what it does. I wrote it because I needed it. It's a Mac program as that's what I wake up to :) hey, that means Jon could run it! Here it is:
http://www.airwindows.com/s hareware/staccato/index.html
It's going to be relocating fairly soon for various reasons- first, I'm doing a major site overhaul to free up some space and re-organize, and second, I'm putting it at root level because it's essentially free software, and it's kind of ludicrous to suggest voluntary shareware payment. Nobody's ever given me a dime for any of my GPLed stuff (though I have to blame lack of publicity first), and even the words 'shareware' and 'GPL' don't really go together. So Staccato is no longer going to be contained in a directory called 'Shareware'.
Anyway- I use this daily. It's the equivalent of keeping a long list with date-equivalences, and then showing a MOTD every day with only those entries significant to that day, sorted by priority. I think the significance of this is in the parsing- you can do many things, but the main rule is this- date to the left of a parenthetical number, entry to the right. Like(2)this. I think that would be parsed as 'no valid date, show every day' at priority level 2, and would say 'this.'.
It's a 'Clotho', but a totally unjudgemental one. It's my tool for offloading some of the stuff I need to keep track of- _it_ will keep track of that, and I can trust it to be predictable and reliable. Jon seems to want a robot to be judgemental for him. He can't have that (in any reasonable form), but he can run this anytime he wants- it's GPL but he won't even need a port as it originated on the Mac. (Actually it'd be a port to Windows (which I'm not going to do), for Linux it would be a slightly elaborate shell script, nothing more- wouldn't even require a _program_. The only suggestion I'd make is this- keep the parsing functionality the way it is, it's like that for a reason. You should only have to remember one rule, the 'date(priority)entry' rule, with no other restrictions on syntax.
If anybody wants to go implement this on Linux before I get around to doing it, go get 'em- I'll probably use your conversion :)

Here is MPW for download at no cost (if that's what you really meant). Here is the direct link to the FTP site for downloading it. Here is a big list of Mac open source software, which also includes my own stuff, mostly GPLed (anything serious is GPLed).
:)

This article is powerful stuff. It's interesting to consider the implications.
Firstly. I'm incredibly reminded of the music industry. This is not a compliment. The music industry is incredibly exploitative- ask a Steve Albini, ask an insider, ask an indie player of some sort. It's really quite sick and horrible.
In this light, the kids yelling 'Whiner!' are worthy of contempt- they've bought into the fantasy, but I think none of them are actually living the reality. I'm not living that reality either, but I retain a fascination with the stories of those who are :) at any rate, simply _insisting_ that the world is filled with opportunity does not make it be true. In some places there is opportunity. In others there is not. And many of these exploited game programmers will develop physical ailments such as ulcers which are life threatening and _not_ things that one automatically gets by being poor.
My own choice? I'm setting out to write free software (i.e. GPL), and expect not to be able to make any money with it- so I have to be devious. I and some fellow techies have founded a web hosting service for nonprofits, we are _becoming_ a nonprofit, and we are setting out to offer ISP services. If we can do that and lose money doing great things, we can compete for grants effectively- and our job descriptions specifically cite 'writing software for nonprofits and people in general' without getting very specific as to _what_ software this would be...
If we can have an ISP, then we will be able to release games that use a game server, and that's the plan. I'm thinking in terms of rather low bandwidth- for instance, I've mocked up an interface for an oil supertanker game- simple raycasting view from the helm, but the _depth_ of the game would be much more intense, and one vital part of it is that you'd be setting out on tanker journeys in real time, and your tanker would be steaming away unattended while you slept or tuned out- you'd go on line and fire up the client to control the ship, but it continues to exist without you (possibly running into other tankers if you ignore it). Kind of like tamagotchis only several billion times heavier and filled with oil ;)
There's a whole level of detail in just the oil pipe routing and tank filling alone- this would be pretty nearly a hardcore sim.
There's also a space-based concept I'm putting a lot of work into, that's on a scale way beyond anything anyone's currently doing or contemplating, because it's based on emergent detail rather than the designer playing god and specifying everything accurately.
The common factor here is this: I gotta make these work _first_. I have every intention of releasing all source as GPL and trying to entice Linux ports of it all (and working hard to help that to happen) but I don't believe for a second it'll happen unless there's already a playable game there, so the initial phase has to be 'produce something that plays' no matter how long it takes. It's extremely likely that these will be coming out on the Mac first. That doesn't mean there's no Linux interest, it means I can't program Linux yet :) and won't wait until I can release on all platforms to release something.
I do have a sample or two of the space engine, at least. What you're seeing in the first one is the universe, which contains over ten million discrete stars (to be exact, 10,884,297). In this picture, every fully white pixel represents 255 stars or more, in an orthographic projection. Every star appears at a specific 32 bit by 32 bit by 32 bit location. The total data file that generates all this is sixteen megs... In the second picture you see a single slice through the universe, one sector deep, which shows the type of aliasing the algorithms produce. This engine is geared for speed of lookup, and the full map drawing program plotted the positions of 10,884,297 stars in about four hours on a 200Mhz 604 using a terribly unoptimised OOP basic (this, despite the fact that the engine is intentionally set up to make maximum use of bitshifts and rapid divides and multiplies, and also optimises the use of a PowerPC 'branch if equal' loop terminator)...
Again- this isn't going to make me any money (and God knows how many people even bothered to follow the link and read my whole, typically-long diatribe). However, it _will_ make a deeper sort of game possible, on lots of levels- I've studied the dynamics of many online multiplayer games (I'm talking Warbirds here, not quake deathmatches- _large_ scale stuff), and am also ready to extend other areas (such as ship automated systems) into mostly uncharted areas, i.e. only RoboWar has done what I'm suggesting, and even that is a very different flavor- I've been designing a special set of opcodes for player assembly language programming for computer aided ship handling- assuming computer cores that run at about 60Hz- again, yes I know I could have one running much faster, but I'm planning on having _thousands_ all running in one large-scale engagement. On having superbattleships built by the cooperation of dozens of players who must get together and arrange duty rosters in order to be able to run the huge beast effectively.... there are really interesting issues involving gameplay and how to get people working together to wipe out others (instead of just trying to go and directly wipe out others) ;)
You'll be hearing about this- and it'll see Linux- but it won't make me money, and it won't ever be mainstream. So much the worse for the mainstream ;)

This article is powerful stuff. It's interesting to consider the implications.
Firstly. I'm incredibly reminded of the music industry. This is not a compliment. The music industry is incredibly exploitative- ask a Steve Albini, ask an insider, ask an indie player of some sort. It's really quite sick and horrible.
In this light, the kids yelling 'Whiner!' are worthy of contempt- they've bought into the fantasy, but I think none of them are actually living the reality. I'm not living that reality either, but I retain a fascination with the stories of those who are :) at any rate, simply _insisting_ that the world is filled with opportunity does not make it be true. In some places there is opportunity. In others there is not. And many of these exploited game programmers will develop physical ailments such as ulcers which are life threatening and _not_ things that one automatically gets by being poor.
My own choice? I'm setting out to write free software (i.e. GPL), and expect not to be able to make any money with it- so I have to be devious. I and some fellow techies have founded a web hosting service for nonprofits, we are _becoming_ a nonprofit, and we are setting out to offer ISP services. If we can do that and lose money doing great things, we can compete for grants effectively- and our job descriptions specifically cite 'writing software for nonprofits and people in general' without getting very specific as to _what_ software this would be...
If we can have an ISP, then we will be able to release games that use a game server, and that's the plan. I'm thinking in terms of rather low bandwidth- for instance, I've mocked up an interface for an oil supertanker game- simple raycasting view from the helm, but the _depth_ of the game would be much more intense, and one vital part of it is that you'd be setting out on tanker journeys in real time, and your tanker would be steaming away unattended while you slept or tuned out- you'd go on line and fire up the client to control the ship, but it continues to exist without you (possibly running into other tankers if you ignore it). Kind of like tamagotchis only several billion times heavier and filled with oil ;)
There's a whole level of detail in just the oil pipe routing and tank filling alone- this would be pretty nearly a hardcore sim.
There's also a space-based concept I'm putting a lot of work into, that's on a scale way beyond anything anyone's currently doing or contemplating, because it's based on emergent detail rather than the designer playing god and specifying everything accurately.
The common factor here is this: I gotta make these work _first_. I have every intention of releasing all source as GPL and trying to entice Linux ports of it all (and working hard to help that to happen) but I don't believe for a second it'll happen unless there's already a playable game there, so the initial phase has to be 'produce something that plays' no matter how long it takes. It's extremely likely that these will be coming out on the Mac first. That doesn't mean there's no Linux interest, it means I can't program Linux yet :) and won't wait until I can release on all platforms to release something.
I do have a sample or two of the space engine, at least. What you're seeing in the first one is the universe, which contains over ten million discrete stars (to be exact, 10,884,297). In this picture, every fully white pixel represents 255 stars or more, in an orthographic projection. Every star appears at a specific 32 bit by 32 bit by 32 bit location. The total data file that generates all this is sixteen megs... In the second picture you see a single slice through the universe, one sector deep, which shows the type of aliasing the algorithms produce. This engine is geared for speed of lookup, and the full map drawing program plotted the positions of 10,884,297 stars in about four hours on a 200Mhz 604 using a terribly unoptimised OOP basic (this, despite the fact that the engine is intentionally set up to make maximum use of bitshifts and rapid divides and multiplies, and also optimises the use of a PowerPC 'branch if equal' loop terminator)...
Again- this isn't going to make me any money (and God knows how many people even bothered to follow the link and read my whole, typically-long diatribe). However, it _will_ make a deeper sort of game possible, on lots of levels- I've studied the dynamics of many online multiplayer games (I'm talking Warbirds here, not quake deathmatches- _large_ scale stuff), and am also ready to extend other areas (such as ship automated systems) into mostly uncharted areas, i.e. only RoboWar has done what I'm suggesting, and even that is a very different flavor- I've been designing a special set of opcodes for player assembly language programming for computer aided ship handling- assuming computer cores that run at about 60Hz- again, yes I know I could have one running much faster, but I'm planning on having _thousands_ all running in one large-scale engagement. On having superbattleships built by the cooperation of dozens of players who must get together and arrange duty rosters in order to be able to run the huge beast effectively.... there are really interesting issues involving gameplay and how to get people working together to wipe out others (instead of just trying to go and directly wipe out others) ;)
You'll be hearing about this- and it'll see Linux- but it won't make me money, and it won't ever be mainstream. So much the worse for the mainstream ;)

The Anagrams Page.
Try to spot which companies and individuals and products are being talked about!
"(Vast Lord Linus) had a gleam in his eye that looked like UNIX- except it wasn't going to be expensive corporate wares. No, what (Snarl... I'd Volt Us) had in mind was (In Flexure), and (Felix Rune), though still more cryptic than the simplified GUI operating systems, developed its own loyal following..." (written in October 1996!)
Volt me, linus! ;)

The First Computer Person
Maybe not incredibly technical (this is a _story_ not a proposal), but the idea isn't unheard of. It's a question of being able to make use of a vast number of extra gates- very much a neural net problem rather than a Von Neumann architecture.
I suspect the 'maybe logic' I went on about in the story might be as important a concept: it fascinates me that in _all_ the digital circuits we depend on, there's the capacity for non-boolean logic values. This simply depends on analog characteristics of the digital circuits, which in some cases is quite predictable and in other cases not- but the resolution is phenomenal and there's no delay time for calculating relationships- I've been meaning to torture some random CMOS logic chips with non-logic values and see what comes out the output. Has anybody done this? So far I only know that inverters are relatively linear, which is hardly surprising :)

You talk like somebody who registered a bunch of .com names and is trying to hock them on ebay ;P
I grabbed airwindows.com a long time ago to guard against just such people as you :P so nyaaah!
(no, I did not homestead a directory on slashdot. oops :) ) And it doesn't have anything to do with Windows(tm), it's just an interesting juxtaposition originally meant as a metaphor for high end audio equipment, years ago :)

You talk like somebody who registered a bunch of .com names and is trying to hock them on ebay ;P
I grabbed airwindows.com a long time ago to guard against just such people as you :P so nyaaah!
And it doesn't have anything to do with Windows(tm), it's just an interesting juxtaposition originally meant as a metaphor for high end audio equipment, years ago :)

• if you want windows so badly, Microsoft is happy to sell you it
• cheapbytes. Who pays the packager/distributor $80 for what is free, particularly if it isn't in turn funding the Rastermans of the world? Who'll pay Red Hat to make Linux more like Windows? Not me, I'll tell you. They are just another distribution.

There are some nifty essays here. I've been doing essays for a while now, and mostly they've just sat on my website. Occasionally I link to one in a Slashdot post. Please do add my essays directory to your list :)

There are some nifty essays here. I've been doing essays for a while now, and mostly they've just sat on my website. Occasionally I link to one in a Slashdot post. Please do add my essays directory to your list :)

This is the 90s. Musicians _already_ have to go on tour _and_ pay for their own promotion _and_ merchandising and do that all themselves and still won't make any money.
If you are really _serious_ about business _and_ play brilliant music you might be able to be self-supporting through it, but 2/3 of your work will be running the business.
What do you think this is, the 60s or something? ;P
Me, I have two mp3s up. I produced an album with good pop songs years ago but couldn't get anywhere with it. As soon as I have the technical capability, I'll be finding a way to release the whole album freely as mp3, as I have nothing to lose. I hope eventually to be burning CDs and selling those over the net- that isn't likely to be self-supporting either but it could be a nice source of pocket change- I am a damn good engineer and the CDs would sound markedly better than the mp3s.
Another point is that this poverty-stricken situation is rather liberating musically- it doesn't matter if my music fits a mold (like the pop-ready album I recorded). I could put out singles rather than try and accumulate entire albums. I could put out long experimental musical pieces that'd never ever be played on the radio. ever ;)
I can't even be angry at the RIAA. They have done nothing for me, ever. They've done nothing for the musicians I listen to either- if you're educated you know that the industry is a damned slaughterhouse and musicians are the cattle. That just is, there's no changing it from the inside under these conditions. So I am grateful I _didn't_ try so hard to make it on their terms. I'll be happier and very possibly make more money by doing it on my terms.
Here, have some mp3 instrumentals (due to lack of money and RAM for editing these are sections of longer pieces, and they are likely to be remixed in future to make them even better)
TreacherousCretins.mp3
ExtendedPlay.mp3

This is the 90s. Musicians _already_ have to go on tour _and_ pay for their own promotion _and_ merchandising and do that all themselves and still won't make any money.
If you are really _serious_ about business _and_ play brilliant music you might be able to be self-supporting through it, but 2/3 of your work will be running the business.
What do you think this is, the 60s or something? ;P
Me, I have two mp3s up. I produced an album with good pop songs years ago but couldn't get anywhere with it. As soon as I have the technical capability, I'll be finding a way to release the whole album freely as mp3, as I have nothing to lose. I hope eventually to be burning CDs and selling those over the net- that isn't likely to be self-supporting either but it could be a nice source of pocket change- I am a damn good engineer and the CDs would sound markedly better than the mp3s.
Another point is that this poverty-stricken situation is rather liberating musically- it doesn't matter if my music fits a mold (like the pop-ready album I recorded). I could put out singles rather than try and accumulate entire albums. I could put out long experimental musical pieces that'd never ever be played on the radio. ever ;)
I can't even be angry at the RIAA. They have done nothing for me, ever. They've done nothing for the musicians I listen to either- if you're educated you know that the industry is a damned slaughterhouse and musicians are the cattle. That just is, there's no changing it from the inside under these conditions. So I am grateful I _didn't_ try so hard to make it on their terms. I'll be happier and very possibly make more money by doing it on my terms.
Here, have some mp3 instrumentals (due to lack of money and RAM for editing these are sections of longer pieces, and they are likely to be remixed in future to make them even better)
TreacherousCretins.mp3
ExtendedPlay.mp3

What about when you're maintaining a site with over 100 pages? I'm sorry- even in this reply it is plain that FrontPage has its priorities wrong. Rename an image? How about adding a page in a category and having all the related pages seamlessly update to include the new link. How about a timestamp with creation and modification dates for pages to give a time context to the content you're providing? How about taking inline graphics and transparently adding size tags to help browsers lay out quicker? I don't believe FrontPage is good enough, and it certainly isn't good enough to handle airwindows.com. It'd be a Sisyphean task maintaining a site like that with such a tool.
Instead I use Sitebot for the job. Stands to reason, after all I wrote it. It's a Mac program, but since the source is GPLed and online, anyone who wants to take any or all of it and make a Linux program out of it is quite welcome to do so.
At any rate, when you talk about elegant handling of site management, I have to laugh, because _none_ of the WYSIWYG tools _or_ a plain text editor is really up to the task. I use Sitebot, and Slashdot uses perl scripts, and any really serious site with a lot of content is _forced_ to use something suitable, otherwise it just won't be possible to manage the site at all. This means scripting or some form of site compiling- sitebot is more the latter and works from a directory structure on my hard disk. You can also use stuff like Frontier or Slashdot's perl scripts to dynamically generate the pages from a collection of data.
That data is not HTML, and this is the key point you're missing. It's just not feasible to have your actual data be in HTML. Instead it needs to be something editable and workable which is _turned_ into HTML as needed, producing HTML pages that are either disposable (Slashdot's generate-on-the-fly pages) or freely replaceable (my SiteBot's output, overwritten every time I run the bot- the original data is never touched.)
Do you understand this yet? 20 pages is _nothing_. 20 pages is corporate HTML art wankery-ville. Try 200 or 2000 and see how you do. At a certain point you hit a paradigm shift. Do you think news.com uses FrontPage? They, too, are using some custom software. Hell, man, even MSNBC is not using FrontPage. FRONTPAGE IS NOT SERIOUS, and to some extent neither is a standalone text editor all by itself- when you start dealing with really _demanding_ web tasks, it becomes specialized software, and the data you feed it might well be handled in a text editor- or you could be generating the data in a word processor and having the software translate the styling to HTML. But you won't be using FrontPage: it is inadequate.

What about when you're maintaining a site with over 100 pages? I'm sorry- even in this reply it is plain that FrontPage has its priorities wrong. Rename an image? How about adding a page in a category and having all the related pages seamlessly update to include the new link. How about a timestamp with creation and modification dates for pages to give a time context to the content you're providing? How about taking inline graphics and transparently adding size tags to help browsers lay out quicker? I don't believe FrontPage is good enough, and it certainly isn't good enough to handle airwindows.com. It'd be a Sisyphean task maintaining a site like that with such a tool.
Instead I use Sitebot for the job. Stands to reason, after all I wrote it. It's a Mac program, but since the source is GPLed and online, anyone who wants to take any or all of it and make a Linux program out of it is quite welcome to do so.
At any rate, when you talk about elegant handling of site management, I have to laugh, because _none_ of the WYSIWYG tools _or_ a plain text editor is really up to the task. I use Sitebot, and Slashdot uses perl scripts, and any really serious site with a lot of content is _forced_ to use something suitable, otherwise it just won't be possible to manage the site at all. This means scripting or some form of site compiling- sitebot is more the latter and works from a directory structure on my hard disk. You can also use stuff like Frontier or Slashdot's perl scripts to dynamically generate the pages from a collection of data.
That data is not HTML, and this is the key point you're missing. It's just not feasible to have your actual data be in HTML. Instead it needs to be something editable and workable which is _turned_ into HTML as needed, producing HTML pages that are either disposable (Slashdot's generate-on-the-fly pages) or freely replaceable (my SiteBot's output, overwritten every time I run the bot- the original data is never touched.)
Do you understand this yet? 20 pages is _nothing_. 20 pages is corporate HTML art wankery-ville. Try 200 or 2000 and see how you do. At a certain point you hit a paradigm shift. Do you think news.com uses FrontPage? They, too, are using some custom software. Hell, man, even MSNBC is not using FrontPage. FRONTPAGE IS NOT SERIOUS, and to some extent neither is a standalone text editor all by itself- when you start dealing with really _demanding_ web tasks, it becomes specialized software, and the data you feed it might well be handled in a text editor- or you could be generating the data in a word processor and having the software translate the styling to HTML. But you won't be using FrontPage: it is inadequate.

You're taking a shortsighted view, Jon, but you've really hit on something here, and I'd like to encourage that if I may.
I just had a guest over, for the sole purpose of showing him my Linux dualboot. He actually never saw the Mac side- he's seen those before, nothing special. Instead I was showing him all that was resident in Linux- the scope of possibility there.
On airwindows.com (and you better believe I snapped up the dotcom address- it was a primary motivator for my homesteading that domain when I did), I have desktop backgrounds and tiles and titlebars for Linux, and more specifically for Window Maker. However, it doesn't stop there...
I stole the animated desktops from Afterstep and put them in WM, editing them and picking different ones and throwing on extra parameters to tailor the behavior. I have menus mapped to fkeys so I can use my one-button mouse comfortably. I have four different kinds of xterm (all aterms!) fired off menu selections that have fkeys, all borderless minimalist purist rectangles that can be meta-dragged, or closed with F3 (window properties) or F4- xkill on a button! The rectangles have no titlebar or resize bar and come in black on white, white on black, black text on transparent and white text on transparent. I made icons for all of them in the GIMP.
I am, it would appear, a damned good, creative, virtual interior decorator. *grin*
What does this mean? Well, for starters, it means I am interested enough in my virtual home to want to make it my own- on a structural level as well as eyecandy, evidenced by the minimal term-rects and the evolving method of managing everything. I love Window Maker because it seems especially suited to this sort of adaptation. I was telling my friend that you could have a fkey that invisibly fired a menu option that ran a _script_ that launched your aterm under a different name for every day of the week, letting you have it automatically be a different background color for each day. Only an hour later did I realise that you could make it a different transparent tint for every day of the week. Granted, you have to control the root window's decoration to be able to get away with such tints- like running the Sonar theme which is _very_ suited to transparent terms and a personal favorite (the only theme I use regularly that I didn't create myself)- but then that's the point isn't it?
This sort of work is a weird hybrid between interface design, GFX and a touch of programming or at least scripting- and it could become roughly as valid a job as real interior decorating- most people wouldn't even consider it, but then you visit some places and go 'whoooa!' and it turns out Somebody Did It, some person was _hired_ to create the effect and it wasn't always the homeowner. The same thing could happen on the desktop (with Linux, much less plausibly with any other OS I know of, and I'm a Mac dude ;) )
The flip side of this issue is something I've written an essay about- at what point do virtual spaces become personal property, and what civil liberties apply? If I write to Bill Gates and ask him for a can opener, and he mails me one, the can opener does not emit a small bomb which explodes and blows up all my other appliances. If he sells me a house, the house does not extend a robotic arm and smash up my previous house, dumping the shattered rubble into a dumpster. These things would be considered criminal and real world stuff doesn't work that way (at least with can openers). However, if I ask him for a movie viewer, it is extremely likely that what he gives me will at least 'put the other movie viewers into the closet' (seize control of linking procedures like Internet Config) and in some cases even fight me, repeatedly changing settings if I dare to change things back. In the worst case, installing of OSes, there is a real danger that what Bill provides will seek out other disk drives, and if it does not find data it understands, reformat them, obliterating my property.
Why is this not illegal? A failure in imagination. Computers are new enough that not everyone accepts that their contents are property. A home is a physical object and it's hard to see how a buncha bits can equate to a coffee table when the fact is, one can spend a comparable time and effort just setting up a computer to be an appealing environment. Nobody has permission to smash up your coffee table at random, but virtual 'coffee tables', arrangements of preferences or clever scripts you make to do things, are not given the same protection, especially when they are uses of existing software that some other software needs configured differently. The tendency is to assume 'Well, of course you want me to nuke your prefs so you can see this amazing new program!'. I don't think that's defensible, but computer virtual space is such a fledgeling concept that few people have made that connection. Even stuff like PGP is about protecting a person's communication- it isn't about protecting the state of your applications menu or what icons go where on the desktop.
Some communities, like Mac users, have grown up with a different tradition- Macs tend to be very user-centric in this respect and will leave icons and things where you left them, making it a very high priority to retain the virtual space in the condition you left it- though even there you see troubles, and once you get beneath the surface, the condition of your software ceases to be your property- even the Apple Menu, very user-editable, is routinely messed with by installers, or software (speech recognition) will insist on having something there whether you want it there or not.
I think that of all OSes, Linux has the best shot at delivering genuine virtual property and the right to maintain the state of one's own computer unmolested by vendors. But it would help if more people understood the issues involved.

You're taking a shortsighted view, Jon, but you've really hit on something here, and I'd like to encourage that if I may.
I just had a guest over, for the sole purpose of showing him my Linux dualboot. He actually never saw the Mac side- he's seen those before, nothing special. Instead I was showing him all that was resident in Linux- the scope of possibility there.
On airwindows.com (and you better believe I snapped up the dotcom address- it was a primary motivator for my homesteading that domain when I did), I have desktop backgrounds and tiles and titlebars for Linux, and more specifically for Window Maker. However, it doesn't stop there...
I stole the animated desktops from Afterstep and put them in WM, editing them and picking different ones and throwing on extra parameters to tailor the behavior. I have menus mapped to fkeys so I can use my one-button mouse comfortably. I have four different kinds of xterm (all aterms!) fired off menu selections that have fkeys, all borderless minimalist purist rectangles that can be meta-dragged, or closed with F3 (window properties) or F4- xkill on a button! The rectangles have no titlebar or resize bar and come in black on white, white on black, black text on transparent and white text on transparent. I made icons for all of them in the GIMP.
I am, it would appear, a damned good, creative, virtual interior decorator. *grin*
What does this mean? Well, for starters, it means I am interested enough in my virtual home to want to make it my own- on a structural level as well as eyecandy, evidenced by the minimal term-rects and the evolving method of managing everything. I love Window Maker because it seems especially suited to this sort of adaptation. I was telling my friend that you could have a fkey that invisibly fired a menu option that ran a _script_ that launched your aterm under a different name for every day of the week, letting you have it automatically be a different background color for each day. Only an hour later did I realise that you could make it a different transparent tint for every day of the week. Granted, you have to control the root window's decoration to be able to get away with such tints- like running the Sonar theme which is _very_ suited to transparent terms and a personal favorite (the only theme I use regularly that I didn't create myself)- but then that's the point isn't it?
This sort of work is a weird hybrid between interface design, GFX and a touch of programming or at least scripting- and it could become roughly as valid a job as real interior decorating- most people wouldn't even consider it, but then you visit some places and go 'whoooa!' and it turns out Somebody Did It, some person was _hired_ to create the effect and it wasn't always the homeowner. The same thing could happen on the desktop (with Linux, much less plausibly with any other OS I know of, and I'm a Mac dude ;) )
The flip side of this issue is something I've written an essay about- at what point do virtual spaces become personal property, and what civil liberties apply? If I write to Bill Gates and ask him for a can opener, and he mails me one, the can opener does not emit a small bomb which explodes and blows up all my other appliances. If he sells me a house, the house does not extend a robotic arm and smash up my previous house, dumping the shattered rubble into a dumpster. These things would be considered criminal and real world stuff doesn't work that way (at least with can openers). However, if I ask him for a movie viewer, it is extremely likely that what he gives me will at least 'put the other movie viewers into the closet' (seize control of linking procedures like Internet Config) and in some cases even fight me, repeatedly changing settings if I dare to change things back. In the worst case, installing of OSes, there is a real danger that what Bill provides will seek out other disk drives, and if it does not find data it understands, reformat them, obliterating my property.
Why is this not illegal? A failure in imagination. Computers are new enough that not everyone accepts that their contents are property. A home is a physical object and it's hard to see how a buncha bits can equate to a coffee table when the fact is, one can spend a comparable time and effort just setting up a computer to be an appealing environment. Nobody has permission to smash up your coffee table at random, but virtual 'coffee tables', arrangements of preferences or clever scripts you make to do things, are not given the same protection, especially when they are uses of existing software that some other software needs configured differently. The tendency is to assume 'Well, of course you want me to nuke your prefs so you can see this amazing new program!'. I don't think that's defensible, but computer virtual space is such a fledgeling concept that few people have made that connection. Even stuff like PGP is about protecting a person's communication- it isn't about protecting the state of your applications menu or what icons go where on the desktop.
Some communities, like Mac users, have grown up with a different tradition- Macs tend to be very user-centric in this respect and will leave icons and things where you left them, making it a very high priority to retain the virtual space in the condition you left it- though even there you see troubles, and once you get beneath the surface, the condition of your software ceases to be your property- even the Apple Menu, very user-editable, is routinely messed with by installers, or software (speech recognition) will insist on having something there whether you want it there or not.
I think that of all OSes, Linux has the best shot at delivering genuine virtual property and the right to maintain the state of one's own computer unmolested by vendors. But it would help if more people understood the issues involved.

CDs already ruin sounds like that, so MP3 isn't significantly worse. Either are more or less okay, as long as you're not really _serious_ about sound quality, and you can also pre-emphasize the input to get as much out of it as you can. For an MP3 this would definitely translate to larger file size at the same bitrate encoding- you'd be basically feeding it more detail, working the decoder like an instrument.
A sample, of sorts- I can do a lot better once I build certain equipment, but that page contains an MP3 excerpt from a long musical piece I recorded.

Cellular2DSource. txt
SiteBotSource.txt
StaccatoSource.txt

Sorry RMS- free software is bigger than you are, and more important than wars over some company's stupidities (serious Mac users love and hate Apple's inimitable little ways- we know they're nuts, but they're _our_ nuts)
There's at least three GPLed programs that run on MacOS- FSF supported in the sense that they are just as GPLed as anything else, the license is serious and doesn't become invalid when used on a platform RMS doesn't like.
He can hold whatever grudges he wants. They do not affect the license he wrote that I use. I don't see that the revisions change it for me. If he does do something that changes it for me, I will fork it and hold it at a previous level which does not ruin the plain and clear GPL concept by playing politics with companies.

Cellular2DSource. txt
SiteBotSource.txt
StaccatoSource.txt

Sorry RMS- free software is bigger than you are, and more important than wars over some company's stupidities (serious Mac users love and hate Apple's inimitable little ways- we know they're nuts, but they're _our_ nuts)
There's at least three GPLed programs that run on MacOS- FSF supported in the sense that they are just as GPLed as anything else, the license is serious and doesn't become invalid when used on a platform RMS doesn't like.
He can hold whatever grudges he wants. They do not affect the license he wrote that I use. I don't see that the revisions change it for me. If he does do something that changes it for me, I will fork it and hold it at a previous level which does not ruin the plain and clear GPL concept by playing politics with companies.

Cellular2DSource. txt
SiteBotSource.txt
StaccatoSource.txt

Sorry RMS- free software is bigger than you are, and more important than wars over some company's stupidities (serious Mac users love and hate Apple's inimitable little ways- we know they're nuts, but they're _our_ nuts)
There's at least three GPLed programs that run on MacOS- FSF supported in the sense that they are just as GPLed as anything else, the license is serious and doesn't become invalid when used on a platform RMS doesn't like.
He can hold whatever grudges he wants. They do not affect the license he wrote that I use. I don't see that the revisions change it for me. If he does do something that changes it for me, I will fork it and hold it at a previous level which does not ruin the plain and clear GPL concept by playing politics with companies.

"How many of you out there have sat down at your computer, logged in to the net and read a novel? Probably none."

There's so much data in the world, and it's so conflicting, that people are increasingly desperate for ways of weeding out the nonsense and getting to a coherent picture of reality.
This is important because in a world where it's arguably possible for someone to literally drop a spy satellite on your head, or (my own example) actively marginalise your choice of information tool (such as linux maybe?), it's important to have a coherent picture of reality to know what is threatening you before it stomps you completely.
Computer hackers (in the old school sense) are particularly well suited to making such a sensible picture of reality, because they are accustomed to making sense of a computer system, which you can't con- if your underlying assumptions are wrong, the computer program is almost certainly not going to work. This forces an examination of the underlying assumptions, which is also the best way to maintain a coherent picture of reality.

Mac Truck

Another Mac Truck

Still Another Mac Truck

Yes, that's right- GPLed Mac software, there's the source right there ;) whether it's great isn't the point (I consider it good work otherwise I wouldn't have released it), the point is, here comes the Mac Truck! There is open source outside of just linux- it's _bigger_ than just linux.

Mind you, when I am up to it I'll be putting out linux apps right alongside the Mac apps, but the source _is_ open, even now. Things are already rolling in places that might surprise some people.

All Hail the Mac Truck! ;)

Mac Truck

Another Mac Truck

Still Another Mac Truck

Yes, that's right- GPLed Mac software, there's the source right there ;) whether it's great isn't the point (I consider it good work otherwise I wouldn't have released it), the point is, here comes the Mac Truck! There is open source outside of just linux- it's _bigger_ than just linux.

Mind you, when I am up to it I'll be putting out linux apps right alongside the Mac apps, but the source _is_ open, even now. Things are already rolling in places that might surprise some people.

All Hail the Mac Truck! ;)

Mac Truck

Another Mac Truck

Still Another Mac Truck

Yes, that's right- GPLed Mac software, there's the source right there ;) whether it's great isn't the point (I consider it good work otherwise I wouldn't have released it), the point is, here comes the Mac Truck! There is open source outside of just linux- it's _bigger_ than just linux.

Mind you, when I am up to it I'll be putting out linux apps right alongside the Mac apps, but the source _is_ open, even now. Things are already rolling in places that might surprise some people.

All Hail the Mac Truck! ;)

Hey: that perfectly describes the JPEG software I have. Mind you, not _all_ jpeg will do that- I'm talking Boxtop Software 'ProJPEG'. It takes noticably longer than generic JPEG to run, because it's doing things like (if I remember correctly) optimizing huffman coding of whatever the hell it's doing... *boggle* at any rate, the 'curve' of this is striking. It's not that much greater than, say, Photoshop's version, for super high quality that's supposed to look lossless. Still looks like a jpeg, maybe a bit smaller. However, when you start getting ruthless, look out! I think my limit was nearer to 400:1. This looks ugly and it's more usable to go with between 30:1 and 90:1...

Examples? Easy: my art pages (which also include a bunch of linux tiles and titlebars in XPM) have background pictures that are JPEG. They are all 1024x768 and are around 100K in size. They are here. (And I should give my mac/linux dualboot box up and start doing everything in Windows for what, exactly, mister proprietary compression vendor sir? Feh)

Open Rant/Letter
It's disturbing to see Slashdot used as a publicity vehicle for, as I most unkindly said the last article, an aging hippie writer. "This site has become my spiritual and literal Web home". How many people can, without embarrassment, make statements about their spiritual web homes? One thing for damn sure- this is part of the reason why Katz doesn't get along with genX.
I have to confess to a little personal anger and frustration, though, and this tends to make me harsher than I might otherwise be. I am a writer, too. In fact, in a previous Katz thread, a couple people were saying 'ditch Katz and hire the Chris!' *hehe*
That's not going to happen, as near as I can tell. One thing that is happening is that I'm trying to help out the Golgotha project's story team- this is almost the writer equivalent of open source. It's not going to pay me anything, but it might be a foot in the door of something somewhere, if Golgotha can be made to be not embarrassingly dim :)
Also, while Jon Katz is getting tremendous support for a non-Linux related book that he's selling at Amazon, I've never seen any publicity for my novels- of which, one ("Kings of Rainmoor") is actually finished. For personal reasons I ended up putting all this work on the web so it could be enjoyed by people, because I felt that the business was so locked up by people like Jon Katz that I had no hope of breaking in. I gave up a lot to do this, to 'free' this work (it is still copyright Chris Johnson, mind you, but I'm not charging to read it). I gave up hope, to give this to people. It makes it hard to justify writing more of it, since it can't buy me food or shelter, since it displaces other activity that might help me survive.
Now here comes Katz, making big bucks off Slashdot publicity. That stings.
I hope, I seriously hope, that Katz's exploits here will change the way internet publication is viewed. All this time I've been quite certain that my own open publishing of my work has completely scuttled any hope of ever actually _selling_ it. I would be delighted to be proved wrong- and I have always secretly hoped someone would read my site and go, at best, 'Hey, can we have paperback rights? Lot of people without Web access you know', or more plausibly, 'Do you have anything like that which is _not_ all up on the web? We can use this web one as a publicity angle'. I'd willingly do that- though I'm not being given the opportunity at the moment.
The situation of the internet artist is a dicey one. It would be terrific to see this change. However, from the perspective of someone who's actually made the choice to give something to the largely distracted community- I don't see Katz's experience as a blow for freedom. I see it as an aging hippie unthinkingly using a community as his soapbox, for personal gain. I don't think this is his primary intention, but he isn't doing anything that the typical slashdot reader would have as an option.
Again: Katz angers me with this. I'm offended that he can so easily cash in on slashdot and be praised for it, and all I seem to have available is to put up work I've sweated blood over, and watch mostly nothing happen. I am _not_ a writer luser. However, I'm out of the loop.
If Katz's 'self-discovery through publishing contracts' makes it easier for people to find and understand _me_ (hey, even if I still can't make a fscking cent from the art I love and have slaved over!) then it is, in some way, a good thing. If it makes it more likely that somehow, in some way, I or someone like me can actually get some bread money from writing 'customers' (readers, publishers...) then this is a very good thing. If this never goes beyond one person's ability to use an unrelated community for personal gain, then it's not a good omen.
In the meantime, you can be damn sure I'm going to add the link to my novels again. That's something I can do, and it's even somewhat relevant. I am very aware, right now, when trying to slashdot myself, that I haven't set up for personal gain from this publication at all. If you want to, and can get to a Mac, you could register one of my GPLed shareware programs- they are set up through Kagi Shareware. I worked hard on those too, and made them available to all, including source up on the web and in the downloads. Some people have greatly admired this, and thought it was just great. Nobody has ever registered even one program through Kagi. I am going now to put computer-repair paycheck money into the back and pay a fee from one of my checks bouncing- this will reduce the amount of groceries I can afford for the rest of the month.
Katz, I can't buy your book. I'm having trouble buying food. I've been sharing a lot, over the years. I don't know if I can do this dance much longer. But then, you're not doing it at all, are you? Do _you_ think there is value in giving to the community? What is the direction you're actually going in- what is the message you have for publishers? For fellow artists? Please think about this. If my views disturb you, they should- I've been harsh. It's easy to be harsh when you're out of the loop, and it's easy to not mind it when you have it made- but it seems that you do have vulnerabilities, after all, and one thing that truly hurts you is being attacked on your sincerity.
Please decide where you really stand. Are you with us, or are you not? If you are, then you're suddenly in a hell of a position to help us. You, not CmdrTaco, not I, are the one who might be doing talk shows, plugging this book, working the angle about how suddenly Internet publicity made it take off. You are the one who can choose between basking in the attention, or evangelizing like Eric Raymond that there are _people_ out there, who care and work hard and are getting nothing but some random links on other people's web pages. Tell them about us, about Golgotha, about me. Tell them it's a gold mine, that one could trawl the web like a Hollywood director trolling for starlets, and grab up fully realized talents that were rotting in the digital equivalent of Paducah. Tell them that it's true, that people with no inside track can take their case to the people on the Web, and that you can package it and sell it without removing it from the freedom of the Web- you can have virtual and paperback both, they don't have to be mutually exclusive. It can hardly be more of a crapshoot than publishing already is, and you can get vital publicity through Web grassroots. Sell them the dream... and in so doing, you'll finally find a role far beyond linux dilettante and cheerleader, a role that perhaps you're meant for, a role that's come to you if you have the guts to take it.
Please, Jon, give it a try. For us.

Open Rant/Letter
It's disturbing to see Slashdot used as a publicity vehicle for, as I most unkindly said the last article, an aging hippie writer. "This site has become my spiritual and literal Web home". How many people can, without embarrassment, make statements about their spiritual web homes? One thing for damn sure- this is part of the reason why Katz doesn't get along with genX.
I have to confess to a little personal anger and frustration, though, and this tends to make me harsher than I might otherwise be. I am a writer, too. In fact, in a previous Katz thread, a couple people were saying 'ditch Katz and hire the Chris!' *hehe*
That's not going to happen, as near as I can tell. One thing that is happening is that I'm trying to help out the Golgotha project's story team- this is almost the writer equivalent of open source. It's not going to pay me anything, but it might be a foot in the door of something somewhere, if Golgotha can be made to be not embarrassingly dim :)
Also, while Jon Katz is getting tremendous support for a non-Linux related book that he's selling at Amazon, I've never seen any publicity for my novels- of which, one ("Kings of Rainmoor") is actually finished. For personal reasons I ended up putting all this work on the web so it could be enjoyed by people, because I felt that the business was so locked up by people like Jon Katz that I had no hope of breaking in. I gave up a lot to do this, to 'free' this work (it is still copyright Chris Johnson, mind you, but I'm not charging to read it). I gave up hope, to give this to people. It makes it hard to justify writing more of it, since it can't buy me food or shelter, since it displaces other activity that might help me survive.
Now here comes Katz, making big bucks off Slashdot publicity. That stings.
I hope, I seriously hope, that Katz's exploits here will change the way internet publication is viewed. All this time I've been quite certain that my own open publishing of my work has completely scuttled any hope of ever actually _selling_ it. I would be delighted to be proved wrong- and I have always secretly hoped someone would read my site and go, at best, 'Hey, can we have paperback rights? Lot of people without Web access you know', or more plausibly, 'Do you have anything like that which is _not_ all up on the web? We can use this web one as a publicity angle'. I'd willingly do that- though I'm not being given the opportunity at the moment.
The situation of the internet artist is a dicey one. It would be terrific to see this change. However, from the perspective of someone who's actually made the choice to give something to the largely distracted community- I don't see Katz's experience as a blow for freedom. I see it as an aging hippie unthinkingly using a community as his soapbox, for personal gain. I don't think this is his primary intention, but he isn't doing anything that the typical slashdot reader would have as an option.
Again: Katz angers me with this. I'm offended that he can so easily cash in on slashdot and be praised for it, and all I seem to have available is to put up work I've sweated blood over, and watch mostly nothing happen. I am _not_ a writer luser. However, I'm out of the loop.
If Katz's 'self-discovery through publishing contracts' makes it easier for people to find and understand _me_ (hey, even if I still can't make a fscking cent from the art I love and have slaved over!) then it is, in some way, a good thing. If it makes it more likely that somehow, in some way, I or someone like me can actually get some bread money from writing 'customers' (readers, publishers...) then this is a very good thing. If this never goes beyond one person's ability to use an unrelated community for personal gain, then it's not a good omen.
In the meantime, you can be damn sure I'm going to add the link to my novels again. That's something I can do, and it's even somewhat relevant. I am very aware, right now, when trying to slashdot myself, that I haven't set up for personal gain from this publication at all. If you want to, and can get to a Mac, you could register one of my GPLed shareware programs- they are set up through Kagi Shareware. I worked hard on those too, and made them available to all, including source up on the web and in the downloads. Some people have greatly admired this, and thought it was just great. Nobody has ever registered even one program through Kagi. I am going now to put computer-repair paycheck money into the back and pay a fee from one of my checks bouncing- this will reduce the amount of groceries I can afford for the rest of the month.
Katz, I can't buy your book. I'm having trouble buying food. I've been sharing a lot, over the years. I don't know if I can do this dance much longer. But then, you're not doing it at all, are you? Do _you_ think there is value in giving to the community? What is the direction you're actually going in- what is the message you have for publishers? For fellow artists? Please think about this. If my views disturb you, they should- I've been harsh. It's easy to be harsh when you're out of the loop, and it's easy to not mind it when you have it made- but it seems that you do have vulnerabilities, after all, and one thing that truly hurts you is being attacked on your sincerity.
Please decide where you really stand. Are you with us, or are you not? If you are, then you're suddenly in a hell of a position to help us. You, not CmdrTaco, not I, are the one who might be doing talk shows, plugging this book, working the angle about how suddenly Internet publicity made it take off. You are the one who can choose between basking in the attention, or evangelizing like Eric Raymond that there are _people_ out there, who care and work hard and are getting nothing but some random links on other people's web pages. Tell them about us, about Golgotha, about me. Tell them it's a gold mine, that one could trawl the web like a Hollywood director trolling for starlets, and grab up fully realized talents that were rotting in the digital equivalent of Paducah. Tell them that it's true, that people with no inside track can take their case to the people on the Web, and that you can package it and sell it without removing it from the freedom of the Web- you can have virtual and paperback both, they don't have to be mutually exclusive. It can hardly be more of a crapshoot than publishing already is, and you can get vital publicity through Web grassroots. Sell them the dream... and in so doing, you'll finally find a role far beyond linux dilettante and cheerleader, a role that perhaps you're meant for, a role that's come to you if you have the guts to take it.
Please, Jon, give it a try. For us.

Borg Me, Linux
I'll be the brain, personality and instincts. I'm good at that, but I cannot add with any serious impressiveness.
You be the nervous system doing my every whim ;)

Well, fair enough, though I would point out that Jon exemplifies a type of user that you- we? Linux folk are going to be dealing with. For convenience's sake: my Email but honestly, if Katz is actually _using_ linux at all, I think he's interesting and amusing to hear from. It's like a tagalong kid brother, determined to fit in, and with such a relentlessly upbeat attitude that you can't help but warm to him eventually- Katz makes Linux sound quite hard, but _cool_, because of his relentless hero worship.
I'm a different breed of Katz... er, I mean, quite another type of linux user ;) I may be fairly lost on Linux, but I've been saying all along: there are Mac hackers, too, just as there are watercolor-painting geeks and slab pottery gurus out there. Frankly, the 'hacking curve' on a Mac has discontinuities- there's a pretty sharp break between resource hacking and system comprehension, and MacOS programming, and the latter requires the skills of a guru, or the purchase of expensive software from Metrowerks that has libs which can handle much of the sheer complexity of MacOS.
I never quite got to that point, but you can't stop a hacker personality from fiddling with stuff, and so I'm currently looking at a MacOS desktop that looks like a weird NeXTStep design, with antialiased fonts, and with a desktop picture that has stuff to remember drawn on top of it like a more visually appealing 'root-tail' (meaning it's antialiased against the 2X picture and scaled back to size).
However, doing this has meant rebooting after every picture update, because Desktop Pictures seems to not appreciate having its picture changed out from under it while it's running. I can do something like this simply using root-tail- it is far less sophisticated in some ways (my alpha MacOS tool can set all entries to different sizes and you can set positions by clicking in a little window with a small representation of the resulting screen) but it is less _fragile_, and that means it's more accessible- something you can _do_ without it blowing up in your face.
THIS is what I am learning 'using the beast'.
There are things I do with MacOS that I just plain like, and that I don't see a parallel to in Linux- yet. But MacOS was never intended to be customized to the extent you can customize Linux- and this is the direction I expect to be going. And, frankly, I don't think it is appropriate for Apple to take OSX in that direction- even if they can.
I don't need a Slashdot license to write essays, for better or worse I am already doing that, perhaps in a less focussed manner because most of those essays began as my own Usenet posts- or Slashdot posts ;)
I am pleased at the kind word, AC- I'm a writer too, and we live and die by style. ;) I don't think Katz should stop doing articles. There's a place for his breathless optimism and desire to belong. My own angle is more conceptual BOFHishness and gentle cynicism, combined with simple enjoyment of computer tricks and a relentless fascination with what these things _mean_ in society- and if CmdrTaco wants to find me, he knows where to look (at least now he does, since I've posted my Email ;) )
As a final campaign promise, I assure you all that I don't own a copy of Microsoft Word and will not be generating mangled ASCII. Though I do own Excel. (c) 1985- the version that fits on an 800K floppy :) I believe I actually ran it once. For that matter, I also own Microsoft Typing Tutor- the 16K cassette tape version (seriously!) I have it on display in the customer area in the fixit shop where I work, but I think I ought to take it back home- nobody finds it as amusing as I do, and if they did, they'd probably steal it, and where am I going to get another copy, Redmond? ;)
But I digress. Am I as longwinded as Jon Katz yet? ;)

Want a complementary (not compl_I_mentary, compl_e_mentary- I am a writer _too_ ;) ) set of articles?
I'm getting tired enough of watching Katz to consider trying his job myself instead of just complaining. Qualifications? I'm a Mac user, always more techie about it than Jon, and two weekends ago I spent 18 hours downloading linuxppc- ever since I have been setting it up and getting more and more out of it.
That means 'fighting with it merrily for late night after late night' ;)
I started with KDE, and I might be the first person (or among the first) to run Window Maker on linuxppc. My inexperienced but tenacious onslaught on this migration to a truly personal linux box has been fraught with curiosity, shock, frustration and triumph. You can run those Afterstep animated backgrounds on WindowMaker! (shock) they are nothing more than a screensaver in the root window! You can use the resources of a mac graphics weenie to make tiles and killer backgrounds that are great on linux! www.airwindows.com/art/index.html (triumph. enjoy) You can discover that KDE does let you point and drool your way to dialup PPP access, but it _fakes_ configuring etc/resolve.conf and gets rid of its configurations afterward, leaving you hosed when you try to make wmppp work as a total newbie! (outrage) You can get really aggravated with the demented random keybindings and discover that MacOS is infinitely more supportive of keyboard shortcuts, and that many X apps are sorely lacking in keyboard shortcuts (emacs does _not_ count ;) )! (astonishment)
Yep, you heard right: two weeks and I'm already running Window Maker, have a smattering of themes I made myself (currently I still need to macweenie more tiling patterns to do titlebars and menu backgrounds), and last night I even got wmppp to fully work and never have to invoke kppp again! I also crashed under netscape and kppp and had to boot to manually fsck the disks, and for the very first time I figured out to go 'fsck dev/sdb5' and it worked! Nobody told me and the first time that'd happened, I didn't clue quickly enough, and simply reinstalled everything, figuring it wouldn't hurt to walk through all that again...
Anyway, here I am- having a morning MacOS session (hey, I don't _run_ a server, and you can boot to MacOS for games and stuff, no harm in it) but I could just as well be posting from linuxppc and writing essays in vi in a transparent aterm (another hack I figured out through stubborn persistence). *wave* hey Rob! CmdrTaco! If you must have a Mac-fellow essaying about Linux, would you care to have one who can actually sit down and run it? I'm still a newbie- hell, I'm having trouble setting up any account other than root, so I daren't IRC to #slashdot yet- but I'd humbly suggest my experience could be every bit as valid as Jon's. I am _using_ linux. I don't think it rules the universe- but there are sure some things it does that'd be tough to do anywhere else, and I look forward to exploring that.
And, again: here, I saw fit to take pretty much my entire MacOS personal texture and pattern collection, and my desktop pictures (all mine, original works) and put them up on my site for Linux people, approximately quadrupling the natural-media tile quotient I've seen out there ;)
www.airwindows.com/art/index.html
Because it's good to share with friends. Also because I'm curious to see if slashdot will exceed the hammering I got from macintouch.com when my essay on Microsoft's ClearType and hand-antialiased fonts got mentioned.
So, Rob, care for a different perspective on newbie issues and why to run Linux? :)

Want a complementary (not compl_I_mentary, compl_e_mentary- I am a writer _too_ ;) ) set of articles?
I'm getting tired enough of watching Katz to consider trying his job myself instead of just complaining. Qualifications? I'm a Mac user, always more techie about it than Jon, and two weekends ago I spent 18 hours downloading linuxppc- ever since I have been setting it up and getting more and more out of it.
That means 'fighting with it merrily for late night after late night' ;)
I started with KDE, and I might be the first person (or among the first) to run Window Maker on linuxppc. My inexperienced but tenacious onslaught on this migration to a truly personal linux box has been fraught with curiosity, shock, frustration and triumph. You can run those Afterstep animated backgrounds on WindowMaker! (shock) they are nothing more than a screensaver in the root window! You can use the resources of a mac graphics weenie to make tiles and killer backgrounds that are great on linux! www.airwindows.com/art/index.html (triumph. enjoy) You can discover that KDE does let you point and drool your way to dialup PPP access, but it _fakes_ configuring etc/resolve.conf and gets rid of its configurations afterward, leaving you hosed when you try to make wmppp work as a total newbie! (outrage) You can get really aggravated with the demented random keybindings and discover that MacOS is infinitely more supportive of keyboard shortcuts, and that many X apps are sorely lacking in keyboard shortcuts (emacs does _not_ count ;) )! (astonishment)
Yep, you heard right: two weeks and I'm already running Window Maker, have a smattering of themes I made myself (currently I still need to macweenie more tiling patterns to do titlebars and menu backgrounds), and last night I even got wmppp to fully work and never have to invoke kppp again! I also crashed under netscape and kppp and had to boot to manually fsck the disks, and for the very first time I figured out to go 'fsck dev/sdb5' and it worked! Nobody told me and the first time that'd happened, I didn't clue quickly enough, and simply reinstalled everything, figuring it wouldn't hurt to walk through all that again...
Anyway, here I am- having a morning MacOS session (hey, I don't _run_ a server, and you can boot to MacOS for games and stuff, no harm in it) but I could just as well be posting from linuxppc and writing essays in vi in a transparent aterm (another hack I figured out through stubborn persistence). *wave* hey Rob! CmdrTaco! If you must have a Mac-fellow essaying about Linux, would you care to have one who can actually sit down and run it? I'm still a newbie- hell, I'm having trouble setting up any account other than root, so I daren't IRC to #slashdot yet- but I'd humbly suggest my experience could be every bit as valid as Jon's. I am _using_ linux. I don't think it rules the universe- but there are sure some things it does that'd be tough to do anywhere else, and I look forward to exploring that.
And, again: here, I saw fit to take pretty much my entire MacOS personal texture and pattern collection, and my desktop pictures (all mine, original works) and put them up on my site for Linux people, approximately quadrupling the natural-media tile quotient I've seen out there ;)
www.airwindows.com/art/index.html
Because it's good to share with friends. Also because I'm curious to see if slashdot will exceed the hammering I got from macintouch.com when my essay on Microsoft's ClearType and hand-antialiased fonts got mentioned.
So, Rob, care for a different perspective on newbie issues and why to run Linux? :)