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I decompiled it, there's no similarity.

All the graphics are different.. you don't even need a decompiler to see that.

Here's the main routine of the Chinese game.

And here's the routines from the other one.

Even without understanding action script anyone can tell they are completely different.

And besides, why would you bother ripping off the code for something so trivial? Any decent Flash jockey could re-write this game in an hour or two.

I decompiled it, there's no similarity.

All the graphics are different.. you don't even need a decompiler to see that.

Here's the main routine of the Chinese game.

And here's the routines from the other one.

Even without understanding action script anyone can tell they are completely different.

And besides, why would you bother ripping off the code for something so trivial? Any decent Flash jockey could re-write this game in an hour or two.

Umm.. did you miss the part where the Emperor said the second Death Star *wasn't* under construction and that it was all an elaborate trap? I can understand, seeing as he talks like this all the time, but it was kind of a big plot point. The second Death Star was identical to the first.. it was built at the same time as the first.. the Emperor just wanted the Rebels to think it was built in response to the first being destroyed.

Folks, you let this guy get you all riled up.

You should have listened to this guy instead.

His advice?

Don't feed the trolls!

Sage advice, from someone who knows. Heed it next time.

Yes, the guy is a weirdo.. but so are a lot of people I respect. He rubbed me the wrong way about a decade ago and I wrote the guy off, but after reading this I came to see that I was just being too damn harsh. Which led me to write this. I try to be more tolerate these days, but I tell ya, posting on Slashdot really doesn't help in that department.

you're not just whistl'n Dixey brother.

Which do you want? LiveCD or emulation?

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OS_images_for_emulation

is certainly your best bet. here's a screenshot.

Or you can try to boot off a usb disk:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OS_images_for_USB_disks

which I'm about to give a go now. Looks harder.

You trust a site.. on the internet. You are an idiot.

Hot. Why do you make software available for download from your website then? Should I assume the pirated software in question is there for the benefit of "idiots"?

1. local exploits
2. see my page on jumping su and sudo.

http://rtfm.insomnia.org/~qg/trolls-need-attention.php

Don't make me make a car analogy.

I actually agree with you.. mind you, I also believe squatting laws in the UK are awesome.

I once reverse engineered the classic id software game Commander Keen. John Carmack did some cool stuff in that code.. each sprite had two function pointers in it, one was called when the sprite came into contact with another sprite, the other was called every frame to animate the sprite (he called it the "think" function). When you killed a monster the sprite was replaced with a "body" which was just like a sprite but had a few less fields (so it took up less memory). One of the neatest things he did was use this exact same framework of sprites and bodies to animate the "static" parts of the game. For example, the color coded doors that you have to get the key cards to open were sprites with a contact function that checked if the player had the right key card, at which time they would "die" and be replaced by a body that had a think function would make them slide out of the way.

For anyone who would like to take a look, I've put the re-engineered source code up.

Yeah, I know, I even tried searching for "ALDI Cola" which is the only store chain in Australia where you can buy the stuff and couldn't find an image :(

Here's some I took with my camera phone:

http://rtfm.insomnia.org/~qg/regalcola1.jpg
http://rtfm.insomnia.org/~qg/regalcola2.jpg
http://rtfm.insomnia.org/~qg/regalcola3.jpg
http://rtfm.insomnia.org/~qg/regalcola4.jpg

and proof that camera phones still suck.

Yeah, I know, I even tried searching for "ALDI Cola" which is the only store chain in Australia where you can buy the stuff and couldn't find an image :(

Here's some I took with my camera phone:

http://rtfm.insomnia.org/~qg/regalcola1.jpg
http://rtfm.insomnia.org/~qg/regalcola2.jpg
http://rtfm.insomnia.org/~qg/regalcola3.jpg
http://rtfm.insomnia.org/~qg/regalcola4.jpg

and proof that camera phones still suck.

Yeah, I know, I even tried searching for "ALDI Cola" which is the only store chain in Australia where you can buy the stuff and couldn't find an image :(

Here's some I took with my camera phone:

http://rtfm.insomnia.org/~qg/regalcola1.jpg
http://rtfm.insomnia.org/~qg/regalcola2.jpg
http://rtfm.insomnia.org/~qg/regalcola3.jpg
http://rtfm.insomnia.org/~qg/regalcola4.jpg

and proof that camera phones still suck.

Yeah, I know, I even tried searching for "ALDI Cola" which is the only store chain in Australia where you can buy the stuff and couldn't find an image :(

Here's some I took with my camera phone:

http://rtfm.insomnia.org/~qg/regalcola1.jpg
http://rtfm.insomnia.org/~qg/regalcola2.jpg
http://rtfm.insomnia.org/~qg/regalcola3.jpg
http://rtfm.insomnia.org/~qg/regalcola4.jpg

and proof that camera phones still suck.

You're absolutely right. Quite apart from the fact that this is a game, and therefore obviously a real economy is not going to work. Why? Because real economies are based on work and who wants to do work in a game. The purpose of economics in a MMORPG is to balance everyone's ability to have fun whilst maintaining some level of challenge. I wish that real economies were interested in those goals.

Anyway, I mirror an article by Gil Breau called Online World Economy which you might find remotely interesting, if you're into these sorts of things.

Here's a little page I whipped up with the different fonts from five different combinations of browser and OS.

Personally, I've never really been able to tell the difference between one font or another :)

More in the vein of this thread, the parent said "Society no longer sees restrictions on copying entertainment to be for its own benefit." This is in contrast to how you copied information which, I would argue, does not benefit society.

I looked at your homepage and was surprised by a few things in light of your comment.

First of all, you prefer the GPL over the BSD license. This is interesting, as the GPL requires copyright law in order to be enforceable. If the author doesn't have the right to control distribution and users do have the right to copy whatever they want, however they want, wouldn't that be a view closer to that of the BSD license?

Second, you sell shareware. This is a source of income which relies on copyright law. Presumably, you'd be unhappy if someone distributed a cracked version. (I'm unsure what's limited in the evaluation version, but the fact that you use a serial system would seem to indicate that SOMETHING is.) You even include a copyright notice on your program.

So...how do you reconcile these views?

I looked at your homepage and was surprised by a few things in light of your comment.

First of all, you prefer the GPL over the BSD license. This is interesting, as the GPL requires copyright law in order to be enforceable. If the author doesn't have the right to control distribution and users do have the right to copy whatever they want, however they want, wouldn't that be a view closer to that of the BSD license?

Second, you sell shareware. This is a source of income which relies on copyright law. Presumably, you'd be unhappy if someone distributed a cracked version. (I'm unsure what's limited in the evaluation version, but the fact that you use a serial system would seem to indicate that SOMETHING is.) You even include a copyright notice on your program.

So...how do you reconcile these views?

I guess around the time someone cares. You seem to care, why don't you do it? Or pay someone to do it? I use dosbox to run Syndicate to test if I'm doing the right thing in FreeSynd and it works good enough for me. It works good enough for a lot of people, that's why it doesn't get much improvement.

It doesn't look that complex to me. It's big because it isn't optimized and it contains 9221 procedures, many of which are 40 bytes long when they could be inlined to a single instruction. Yes, they don't even compile their graphics driver with -finline-functions -fomit-frame-pointer. Nvidia are lying.

the creator of Syndicate, 'nuff said.

Which is what the guy said. What you enjoys is working on software with a deadline. Some of the most enjoyable working experiences I've ever had was working at a startup and literally living in the office. Dear god why? Because the company in question was smart enough to keep the management away from the engineers and let the engineers form their own society.

Right, which is about maximizing the number of users with freedom. BSD-like licenses are an attempt to make developers more free to do what they want with a piece of source code they come across. It's an admirable goal, but it falls down because 99% of us are not developers. The end goal of the BSD license is a sort of guild where developers are free to use any other developer's code to exploit users.

Grab a copy of my software and monitor your network usage. If you happen to find blatantly obvious spyware running on your machine, try some of the automatic spyware removal tools available. If you're still infected, the best course of action is a reinstall.

Way off topic, but your link says Glenn Martyna moved to IBM/Watson. Christ, better buy some IBM stock.

By the way, a trivial point with respect to this: Isn't it relativity, not QM, that forbids superluminal communication? I seem to recall non-relativistic QM with instantaneous action at a distance (e.g. Coulomb's Law) being alive and well in the realm of quantum chemistry, or perhaps really anywhere pair creation is not an issue.

I wrote a rant about the BSD vs GPL debate a while ago. You might find it interesting (not that you'll come back to read this comment as you're posting anonymously so I'm just wasting my time).

Bah.. there's good scientific reasons why physicists can't fight, I'm sure astronomers would be no different.

It's not spyware, it's voyeurware. If that's what you're into then all the more power to you, but I think the majority of us would prefer not to share our private browsing habits with Google.

I get this popup when I go to http://www.spacedaily.com/. I am using Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0. This idea of "only the popups you request" (by clicking on a link) has always pissed me off. When I select the option "no popups" I mean NO POPUPS. Clicking on a link that has Javascript do a popup should just result in the taskbar saying "popup blocked".

Why Physicists Can't Fight

For people who want to make these kinds of additions to Planeshift I'd suggest moving to a distributed form of revision control. I'd like to recommend GNU Arch but it's still not up for the task. This kind of control over developers is exactly the reason why the Linux developers don't use CVS. Those who control the centralized server, control the project. Linux developers now use bitkeeper, and I'm not aware of any other revision control system that is up for the task. Hopefully GNU arch will improve or some other open source revision control system will actually start letting people know they are available.

actually it's worse than that. Planeshift are now demanding copyright assignment for code as well as art. This is why I am no longer contributing to the project.

In regards to your sig, you might want to read a comical rant I made about the Copenhagen interpretation, it's called Why Physicists Can't Fight.