In fact not too many good open source stories or even a good plot.
I wonder. Coming so far before the OSS movement and being invitation-only, The Scoop may not be a good example of an Open Source story, but it comes pretty close.
For those who don't know about it, The Scoop was written by a group of mystery writers, including Agatha Christie and dorothy L. Sayers and, due to it's writing-by-group nature, may well be considered something close to Open Source. Certainly the methodology is well known...
Film/game companies exist to make money. Why should they release art films/games that don't make any money?
For the good of the culture they exist in? Because, although it's denied often, the people who make up the companies, including management, are human and will benefit from things that add to humanity in a significant way?
Fair enough, though. I know that arguments like those will be greeted by derision, jokes, etc. So in that spirit we might as well give up on any artistic or philosophical endeavor that doesn't have a net result of More Money. That means, of course, no more Open Source, but who cares, eh?
Nothing, per se. The trouble is that funding for movies tends to go to films calculated primarily for maximum profit at the expense of quality and real social relevance. Leaving smaller, more "important" films out in the cold.
For a relevant example, take a look at what happened to Looking Glass when Daikatana sucked up their funding. A great many/.ers were outraged. But the same thing happens all the time in the movie and music industries and we hear very little of it.
Congratulations, Jon, you are now the proud winner of the First Annual Oscar Meyer Award for Gratuitous Filler!!
Honestly, I am amazed at your victory. I would never have thought it possible to take a couple of statistics from a single source and stretch it, with the aid of only a few buzzwords and headlines, to a full-blown article. Your talent at content-free bafflegab has been acknowledged at long last.
That's the problem with text-based games -- unline games such as Monkey Island, there aren't any visual clues as to what you do next.
For a solution to this, I would recommend Hugo, whihc is an engine with the potential to combine the level of descriptive storyline available in text adv entures with the visual cues that help make the gaming experience more intuitive.
According to their site information, apparently this has the potential to deal with multiple storyline branches as well, which is something I'd like to see. For that matter, once I've had a chance to play with it a bit, I may consider working on something along those lines.
But the Grue was far scarier than anything in Doom or Quake, because you never see it.
That's actually an important distinction. I don't recall the precise wording, but vincent Price is famous for saying (among other smart things) that once you show the audience the monster, it isn't scary any more.
Most of the scariest movies and books I've seen are ones where the nature and form of the monster, or stalker, or whatever are kept vague. See, for instance, H.P. Lovecraft's wonderful "The Colour Out of Space". Or, more dramatically, the mini-series versions of Stephen King's "It" and "The Langoliers". Both were creepy and suspenseful until the monster was revealed. After that, they were jokes.
Too many game creators fail to take advantage of the value of a good creep-out.
I think perhaps the ultimate game (which does not exist yet) is a game with absolutely no plot, yet so complex that it could be confused with reality.
Why not just go outdoors?
But all facetiousness aside, what you suggest is anathema to what I look for in a game. Which is simply the same sorts of things I look for in a novel. A compelling story, believable and interesting characters, immersive environments. That's why I've been a fan of Japanese-style RPGs for so long. There, you can find the sorts of things that make books, theatre, movies, what-have-you so enjoyable.
But I don't think they're perfect, either. What I would personally like to see is a game of the Japanese sort, but with many divergent storylines that depend on choices the player makes. Sure, this would be relatively difficult to accomplish, but the focus here would be on the writing, rather than the programming. Such games are possible right now.
It still wouldn't be perfect, of course, since not everyone likes that sort of game. but who cares? Instead of striving for "perfetion", let's just aim for "damn cool".
Why not withhold the last chapter to those who buy the book.
Personally, I'd feel like I was cheating the readers.
This may be a viable business model, but I can't shake the feeling that there's something wrong with not making the full story available in the same format, without having to change horses to get the ending.
Besides, it feels a little too much like kidnapping.
"Buy this book or you'll never see the last chapter alive!!"
This is a very important point, I think, and I'd love to see more (can you e-mail me, user? I'd love to hear more about this from you).
Actually, this is the sort of thing that bears more open discussion, so I'm replying here.
The tactics I mentioned (interior illustration, extra story) are elements which I plan to use in a current project of my own, which is a novel set in the world of the upcoming open source RPG, Adonthell. The novel is intended, with the cover art, to be freely available on the Adonthell site and freely distrubuted. But the purchasers of the physical publication would also receive interior illustrations, a bonus short story not available on the site, and the satisfaction of having something you can put on your bookshelf.
However, I don't claim to be an authority, and I'm sure that there's more I can learn between now and the time the novel is ready for publication (I judge roughly a year, by which time the first demo and a good part of the actual Adonthell game will be completed). So I invite anyone with good ideas or experience at this sort of thing add their opinions to this discussion. I, for one, would be eager to learn as much as possible.
I also have learned a great deal from this site, and I would recommend anyone involved in the discussion look here as well.
The real significance of Napster appears completely lost on publishing executives, however. File-sharing is what the Net was made for, but is it really what publishers want: readers passing their e-books around for free on file-sharing sites?
Which is why adding value to the product is an important concept.
I'd personally like to see a model where the text of books are deliberately given to file-sharing sites and their kin, while the physical, printed version has some extra that isn't available in the free version. This can be a number of things, such as interior art, extra content (like a related short story) or some other bonus. Even aside from that, there is a tangible quality to reading a printed book, a mystique, shall we say, that e-books will likely never reproduce, and is undoubtedly a marketable quality that should not be forgotten.
You would need to have some music on the napster clients to begin with. Considering that most students won't pay for the music in the first place, where is it going to come from?
Don't say you would pay if you could. You won't.
Bullshit. I did when I went to University. So did everyone I knew. for that matter, so do most of the students I'm currently friends with, some of whom use Napster extensively as well.
For the most part, the students I know buy far more CDs more often than the ones who have graduated. You can assign the reasoning for that where you will, but the fact is that my observations lead to believe that students are more likely to buy, not less. Perhaps that's why there seems to be a correlation between Napster use rising together with overall CD sales.
The outright lie; Mozilla has been coded "from the ground up". Like hell. If this is the case, why does it have anything to do with Netscape at all? Why, indeed, did the OPen Source Community need to wait for Netscape to open the code base, if there were all these people around who could code a browser "from the ground up". Mozilla has been coded, at best, from the scaffolding.
That's actually wrong, but it's easy to see why you'd think so.
The fact is, Mozilla was initially intended to start wtih Netscape's code, which is why they waited for the code to be opened. they, like pretty much everyone else at the time, thought it would be a massive waste of time and effort to start from scratch.
However, as has been mentioned on/. over and over again, they abandoned the Netscape code and rewrote it. Starting, as they say, from the ground up.
To use your analogy, they didn't so much use the scaffolding as tear it down and reuse some of the same planks when they built new scaffolding
But you have to consider the advantages that a unionized IT labor force would have.
Heh. Judging by the response your suggestion has garnered thus far, I wonder how many of our happy crew of/. union-bashers put their money where their collective mouths were and worked on Labour Day for their standard rate?
I've noticed most of the postings here thus far have treated College/University in much the same way most parents seem to treat it - as a glorified vocational school.
Is it possible to look at College as more than just a place to train for an upcoming job? Perhaps someplace to broaden your horizons, learn something outside of your chosen profession. Perhaps acquire some intimate knowledge with the humanities, or some science not directly related to the tech industry, like geology or oceanography?
With that in mind, there seems to be no reason why someone who has gone directly into the tech sector couldn't consider some form of part-time degree program. Certainly the Colleges and Universities in my area provide courses for varying levels of involvement, and any number of credits per year depending on interest, availability and funds. Why not go straight into the industry, but carry a load of, say, one or two credits per year of literature, or theatre, or biology in your spare time? You wouldn't be the first, and you'd certainly not be wasting your time.
Unions and guilds tend to promote the self-interest of their current members. That self-interest lies in restricting the supply of workers.
Pardon while I yawn. This sounds so terribly like the traditional right-wing anti-union party line that I may succumb to ennui
The fact is, the practicesation you describe are already being done now, except it's by the employers who have an interest in maximizing profits at the expense of employee and consumer. How would organizing, with the well-established benefit of raising the bars of quality, relevant training and decent pay for services rendered make the situation worse?
So what if foreign workers will drive down our wages a bit? It's drive up their wages a *lot.* That's why they're willing to come over here. More to the point, it'll benefit the rest of society because prices for IT services will be cheaper.
Actually, that's one reason why a guild (not necessarily a union, although I am pro-union for many reasons) would be a positive thing.
Instead of discouraging the infusion of foreign expertise, an infusion which all countries need from time to time, a decently run guild with any smarts at all would embrace them. Set up standards by which immgrant professionals may be judged in terms domestic employers may understand and compare to the existing local work force. In many cases those skills may be better than what's present, but unless you have a common baseline to judge by, the qualifications a foreign professional brings may be misunderstood, sometimes intentionally so in order to take advantage of foreign workers to their detriment.
By establishing common standards, a guild system could be of benefit to foreign and domestic workers, as well as the public at large and employers who are willing to pay for the excellent service they receive.
Pick an irrelevant candidate (any third party, write in, whatever)... the second means that your vote is basically useless: You voted, but you will not under any circumstances be represented. The only advantage to this over not voting is really just to artificially enhance the voter turnout numbers, to no particular advantage to your position.
I suppose that if you're force-fed lies all your life, you'll come to believe Lies are Good Food.
I've noticed since I was a child that the media, particularly in the US, spends a great deal of time discouraging votors from voting for third party candidates. As such, most Americans seem to have come to the conclusion that third party candidates are a wasted vote and nothing will change that.
I've never been sure what underlies this sort of misinformation. Is it that the media has a vested interest in keeping the same sorts of parties in power and thus have little potential change to the playing field they have mastered? Is it that they don't wish to offend powerful corporate interests that may well be harmed by the policies of third party candidates, should they be successful? Perhaps it could be the long-standing "US Number One" myth that holds that the US political system is superior to all others and thus has no need for change? I really don't know. It could be none of these, yet the myth persists.
Others have pointed out exceptions to this spurious rule (or rather, self-fulfilling prophecy, when spread witht he weight of the American Media Machine) such as Jesse Ventura. Let me add the entire Canadian system. At one point no one took the New Democratic Party seriously. Nobody thought the Bloc Quebeqois would evern amount to anything outside of Quebec. The Reform Party was just a regional party full of reactionary rednecks. Yet they have all prospered on the Federal stage. rightly or wrongly, whether I agree with their policies or not, their presence, and their use of votes which have definitely not been wasted, has stimulated debate on political issues in this country on an unprecedented level.
Personally, I believe the US political system has a great deal of potential, if only you can abandon your cherished myths against third party candidates and allow new voices into the mix.
Sure, you can listen to the CDs you own, and the backups of those CDs that you own, but you cannot listen to backups other people made.
Shouldn't that be that you cannot take possession of backups other people made? You could likely listen legally as much as you like, but of course IANAL. I just work for one.
BUT: somehow, you say that the expense of producing copies of an artist's work without permission is OK as long as you pay for it?
The trouble is, the person you replied to (and the people who replied to you) didn't word this very clearly. the concept is simple:
The powers that be assume you'll steal, so they charge you via a tax for this potentially stolen material.
Since you haven't actually done anything yet, you've just paid for a product that you haven't received.
Therefore, you are the one who has been stolen from. So in order to make this transaction complete and valid, you now need to get something in exchange for your money from them. Which is to say, downloading some piece of music.
All of the above, of course, means that since you've already bought the song via a tax, there is no real basis for them to claim they're losing money off Napster (or whatever) downloads and CD-Rs.
Hopefully, that's a little more clear.
Re:Is this a game I've never heard of?
on
Mage The Ascension
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· Score: 1
It seems that a number of those corrections were posted while I was typing it. When I started typing, there were only two messages posted.
To horribly misquote; It comes from the barrel of a gun.
My previous flippant answer notwithstanding, I submit that you are more accurate than you realize. Power, real power that is, does come from the barrel of a gun.
But I suggest that a symbolic gun, that is superior information and know-how, is more powerful than a literal gun, which is of a very limited scope.
Think about it. A gun, oreven an army's worth of guns, can only control so well. Examples abound of regimes that have tried to rule through force and have faced opposition nonetheless. Ruling through force is a terrible drain on resources and is terribly hard to enforce. How much easier, and more effective, is it to control the populace through an intimate knowledge of what buttons to push to keep them off your back, complete with a media machine that keeps them happy enough not to notice their rights being raped.
If you want real power, there are more effective "firearms" than those manufactured by Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson.
To horribly misquote; It comes from the barrel of a gun. Even a gang member in LA can tell you that.
Sure, there's a success story I'd want to emulate.
LA gangs have all kinds of guns. Why haven't they toppled the government? For that matter, why hasn't the gang with more guns taken over all the smaller gangs?
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder. Coming so far before the OSS movement and being invitation-only, The Scoop may not be a good example of an Open Source story, but it comes pretty close.
For those who don't know about it, The Scoop was written by a group of mystery writers, including Agatha Christie and dorothy L. Sayers and, due to it's writing-by-group nature, may well be considered something close to Open Source. Certainly the methodology is well known...
For the good of the culture they exist in? Because, although it's denied often, the people who make up the companies, including management, are human and will benefit from things that add to humanity in a significant way?
Fair enough, though. I know that arguments like those will be greeted by derision, jokes, etc. So in that spirit we might as well give up on any artistic or philosophical endeavor that doesn't have a net result of More Money. That means, of course, no more Open Source, but who cares, eh?
Nothing, per se. The trouble is that funding for movies tends to go to films calculated primarily for maximum profit at the expense of quality and real social relevance. Leaving smaller, more "important" films out in the cold.
For a relevant example, take a look at what happened to Looking Glass when Daikatana sucked up their funding. A great many /.ers were outraged. But the same thing happens all the time in the movie and music industries and we hear very little of it.
Honestly, I am amazed at your victory. I would never have thought it possible to take a couple of statistics from a single source and stretch it, with the aid of only a few buzzwords and headlines, to a full-blown article. Your talent at content-free bafflegab has been acknowledged at long last.
For a solution to this, I would recommend Hugo, whihc is an engine with the potential to combine the level of descriptive storyline available in text adv entures with the visual cues that help make the gaming experience more intuitive.
According to their site information, apparently this has the potential to deal with multiple storyline branches as well, which is something I'd like to see. For that matter, once I've had a chance to play with it a bit, I may consider working on something along those lines.
That's actually an important distinction. I don't recall the precise wording, but vincent Price is famous for saying (among other smart things) that once you show the audience the monster, it isn't scary any more.
Most of the scariest movies and books I've seen are ones where the nature and form of the monster, or stalker, or whatever are kept vague. See, for instance, H.P. Lovecraft's wonderful "The Colour Out of Space". Or, more dramatically, the mini-series versions of Stephen King's "It" and "The Langoliers". Both were creepy and suspenseful until the monster was revealed. After that, they were jokes.
Too many game creators fail to take advantage of the value of a good creep-out.
How do you know that wasn't a female talking? I know loads of females who hate games produced in North America because all the men are repulsive.
Why not just go outdoors?
But all facetiousness aside, what you suggest is anathema to what I look for in a game. Which is simply the same sorts of things I look for in a novel. A compelling story, believable and interesting characters, immersive environments. That's why I've been a fan of Japanese-style RPGs for so long. There, you can find the sorts of things that make books, theatre, movies, what-have-you so enjoyable.
But I don't think they're perfect, either. What I would personally like to see is a game of the Japanese sort, but with many divergent storylines that depend on choices the player makes. Sure, this would be relatively difficult to accomplish, but the focus here would be on the writing, rather than the programming. Such games are possible right now.
It still wouldn't be perfect, of course, since not everyone likes that sort of game. but who cares? Instead of striving for "perfetion", let's just aim for "damn cool".
I never paid for the Windows version of AIM, as far as I know, it's still available as freeware. So where are they getting any revenue that way?
Personally, I'd feel like I was cheating the readers.
This may be a viable business model, but I can't shake the feeling that there's something wrong with not making the full story available in the same format, without having to change horses to get the ending.
Besides, it feels a little too much like kidnapping.
"Buy this book or you'll never see the last chapter alive!!"
Actually, this is the sort of thing that bears more open discussion, so I'm replying here.
The tactics I mentioned (interior illustration, extra story) are elements which I plan to use in a current project of my own, which is a novel set in the world of the upcoming open source RPG, Adonthell. The novel is intended, with the cover art, to be freely available on the Adonthell site and freely distrubuted. But the purchasers of the physical publication would also receive interior illustrations, a bonus short story not available on the site, and the satisfaction of having something you can put on your bookshelf.
However, I don't claim to be an authority, and I'm sure that there's more I can learn between now and the time the novel is ready for publication (I judge roughly a year, by which time the first demo and a good part of the actual Adonthell game will be completed). So I invite anyone with good ideas or experience at this sort of thing add their opinions to this discussion. I, for one, would be eager to learn as much as possible.
I also have learned a great deal from this site, and I would recommend anyone involved in the discussion look here as well.
Which is why adding value to the product is an important concept.
I'd personally like to see a model where the text of books are deliberately given to file-sharing sites and their kin, while the physical, printed version has some extra that isn't available in the free version. This can be a number of things, such as interior art, extra content (like a related short story) or some other bonus. Even aside from that, there is a tangible quality to reading a printed book, a mystique, shall we say, that e-books will likely never reproduce, and is undoubtedly a marketable quality that should not be forgotten.
Bullshit. I did when I went to University. So did everyone I knew. for that matter, so do most of the students I'm currently friends with, some of whom use Napster extensively as well.
For the most part, the students I know buy far more CDs more often than the ones who have graduated. You can assign the reasoning for that where you will, but the fact is that my observations lead to believe that students are more likely to buy, not less. Perhaps that's why there seems to be a correlation between Napster use rising together with overall CD sales.
"Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it. " - Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
That's actually wrong, but it's easy to see why you'd think so.
The fact is, Mozilla was initially intended to start wtih Netscape's code, which is why they waited for the code to be opened. they, like pretty much everyone else at the time, thought it would be a massive waste of time and effort to start from scratch.
However, as has been mentioned on /. over and over again, they abandoned the Netscape code and rewrote it. Starting, as they say, from the ground up.
To use your analogy, they didn't so much use the scaffolding as tear it down and reuse some of the same planks when they built new scaffolding
Heh. Judging by the response your suggestion has garnered thus far, I wonder how many of our happy crew of /. union-bashers put their money where their collective mouths were and worked on Labour Day for their standard rate?
Is it possible to look at College as more than just a place to train for an upcoming job? Perhaps someplace to broaden your horizons, learn something outside of your chosen profession. Perhaps acquire some intimate knowledge with the humanities, or some science not directly related to the tech industry, like geology or oceanography?
With that in mind, there seems to be no reason why someone who has gone directly into the tech sector couldn't consider some form of part-time degree program. Certainly the Colleges and Universities in my area provide courses for varying levels of involvement, and any number of credits per year depending on interest, availability and funds. Why not go straight into the industry, but carry a load of, say, one or two credits per year of literature, or theatre, or biology in your spare time? You wouldn't be the first, and you'd certainly not be wasting your time.
Pardon while I yawn. This sounds so terribly like the traditional right-wing anti-union party line that I may succumb to ennui
The fact is, the practicesation you describe are already being done now, except it's by the employers who have an interest in maximizing profits at the expense of employee and consumer. How would organizing, with the well-established benefit of raising the bars of quality, relevant training and decent pay for services rendered make the situation worse?
Actually, that's one reason why a guild (not necessarily a union, although I am pro-union for many reasons) would be a positive thing.
Instead of discouraging the infusion of foreign expertise, an infusion which all countries need from time to time, a decently run guild with any smarts at all would embrace them. Set up standards by which immgrant professionals may be judged in terms domestic employers may understand and compare to the existing local work force. In many cases those skills may be better than what's present, but unless you have a common baseline to judge by, the qualifications a foreign professional brings may be misunderstood, sometimes intentionally so in order to take advantage of foreign workers to their detriment.
By establishing common standards, a guild system could be of benefit to foreign and domestic workers, as well as the public at large and employers who are willing to pay for the excellent service they receive.
I suppose that if you're force-fed lies all your life, you'll come to believe Lies are Good Food.
I've noticed since I was a child that the media, particularly in the US, spends a great deal of time discouraging votors from voting for third party candidates. As such, most Americans seem to have come to the conclusion that third party candidates are a wasted vote and nothing will change that.
I've never been sure what underlies this sort of misinformation. Is it that the media has a vested interest in keeping the same sorts of parties in power and thus have little potential change to the playing field they have mastered? Is it that they don't wish to offend powerful corporate interests that may well be harmed by the policies of third party candidates, should they be successful? Perhaps it could be the long-standing "US Number One" myth that holds that the US political system is superior to all others and thus has no need for change? I really don't know. It could be none of these, yet the myth persists.
Others have pointed out exceptions to this spurious rule (or rather, self-fulfilling prophecy, when spread witht he weight of the American Media Machine) such as Jesse Ventura. Let me add the entire Canadian system. At one point no one took the New Democratic Party seriously. Nobody thought the Bloc Quebeqois would evern amount to anything outside of Quebec. The Reform Party was just a regional party full of reactionary rednecks. Yet they have all prospered on the Federal stage. rightly or wrongly, whether I agree with their policies or not, their presence, and their use of votes which have definitely not been wasted, has stimulated debate on political issues in this country on an unprecedented level.
Personally, I believe the US political system has a great deal of potential, if only you can abandon your cherished myths against third party candidates and allow new voices into the mix.
Shouldn't that be that you cannot take possession of backups other people made? You could likely listen legally as much as you like, but of course IANAL. I just work for one.
Yes, indeed you are.
BUT: somehow, you say that the expense of producing copies of an artist's work without permission is OK as long as you pay for it?
The trouble is, the person you replied to (and the people who replied to you) didn't word this very clearly. the concept is simple:
The powers that be assume you'll steal, so they charge you via a tax for this potentially stolen material.
Since you haven't actually done anything yet, you've just paid for a product that you haven't received.
Therefore, you are the one who has been stolen from. So in order to make this transaction complete and valid, you now need to get something in exchange for your money from them. Which is to say, downloading some piece of music.
All of the above, of course, means that since you've already bought the song via a tax, there is no real basis for them to claim they're losing money off Napster (or whatever) downloads and CD-Rs.
Hopefully, that's a little more clear.
It seems that a number of those corrections were posted while I was typing it. When I started typing, there were only two messages posted.
My previous flippant answer notwithstanding, I submit that you are more accurate than you realize. Power, real power that is, does come from the barrel of a gun.
But I suggest that a symbolic gun, that is superior information and know-how, is more powerful than a literal gun, which is of a very limited scope.
Think about it. A gun, oreven an army's worth of guns, can only control so well. Examples abound of regimes that have tried to rule through force and have faced opposition nonetheless. Ruling through force is a terrible drain on resources and is terribly hard to enforce. How much easier, and more effective, is it to control the populace through an intimate knowledge of what buttons to push to keep them off your back, complete with a media machine that keeps them happy enough not to notice their rights being raped.
If you want real power, there are more effective "firearms" than those manufactured by Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson.
Sure, there's a success story I'd want to emulate.
LA gangs have all kinds of guns. Why haven't they toppled the government? For that matter, why hasn't the gang with more guns taken over all the smaller gangs?