Two suggestions.. first off don't put crap comments in your code and do a good job the first time.
Second recruit a small group of opensource developers, that you'll be handing the project over to, and ask them to carefully clean the code of anything such as these problems before they make the first release to the public.
This would be sort of like getting someone to clean your house if your letting them have a part in it.:)
I think companies should be required to release drivers source after so many years. I have a cheap scanner I bought like 4 years ago, best I've ever owned including expensive ones, and it won't work under either Linux or current Windows OS's and the company went out of business. Over the years it seems there is always one or two such devices I'm having to replace and it really irks me to be throwing perfectly good devices in landfills.
I'll agree with you on this. I'm always very nervous about releasing code to the public eye as you put a lot on the line by doing so. Everyone can see you and judge you without exposing their own skills to anyones judgement. However this drives me to do a much better job. I make more effort to make sure my code is easy to understand, resuable, maintainable, well documented, and stable. Far more effort than I'd go through if I wasn't letting others see what I'd been doing. There is a sort of a high when you release some code and people download it, ask questions, use it, like it, etc. For every negative comment there are usually 100's of positive comments (assuming you made the extra effort) so I think most people that release their code once keep releasing. Even if your code sucks people will still likely use it and they'll be nice enough to fix it and send you the patches.:)
All to true. Some companies are better than others but most companies have just enough people like this to make life hard for the rest of us. It certainly isn't the fault of guest workers but many companies do abuse them and anyone else they can get that will work dirt cheap. Just hope that with the high levels of Xmas sales online and of electronic gizmos that tech will boom again soon. I certainly would not quit right now unless you have another job lined up first. Unemployment really sucks especially when your unemployment benefits have run out. Especially if you have a family to take care of.
I got my first paying job as a computer technician when I was 14. They only paid me something like $3/hr and no more than about 10 hours a week but it was a real job and I gained a lot of experience from it. Figuring out how to network ancient Apple, PC, Amiga, Atari, and TI machines together was incredibly tricky. The job also included some programming (I won an award in a state contest for one of the programs). I've been working on computers sense that time and I know all about living with discremination because of your age or lack of a degree. Even now that I'm 23 a lot of companies act like they can treat me like a kid even if their whole business relies on me to keep running.
Finding a job in the current economy is a nightmare too. Submit a resume like mine to Burger King and they think I'm insane.. submit it anywhere that hires more advanced employees and they take a look at me and trash it. I almost never get interviews but I've been hired by almost every company that has ever interviewed me even once.
If I could afford to live in a hotel at $200 a night I'd take my date to Milan and find a nice Italian resturant for dinner. I think at that point she'd be perfectly okay with staying in the hotel room with me. Who needs more than one room to live in when you can afford to go anywhere you want? I hate living in a house or apartment. Who wants to live the same place every single day. Yick.:)
I think an important thing to clarify is that documentation is good and comments usually mean your code is bad. Comments are not documentation.
I attempt to keep a documentation/history somewhere for each function, class, or any other major component. In this documentation I typically explain what the code is for, it's inputs and outputs, and a history of why certain things were done in the way they were. This is often just one or two lines but despite good naming practices and good coding there are times where it just isn't obvious that on platform Foo you have to do it this way or you see Bar bug. I don't however go through code line by line commenting what it's doing and why. That should be perfectly obvious if your code is any good.
If anything OS X will finally bring the Mac back to a level to compete with Windows at every level. This, and the growing strength of Linux (and FreeBSD, etc) will help convince hardware developers that they need to make sure their hardware works with more than just Windows and software developers that their software needs to be designed around portability.
OS X will pull both current Mac users and Windows users into the Unix world and as any Unix geek knows once you learn it on one OS most of it translates pretty easily to any other Unix OS. After all these people learn Unix enough to accomplish their daily tasks they'll be much more likely to consider the free (as in beer and freedom) alternatives they keep hearing about.
Software ported to OS X should be easy to port to FreeBSD, Linux, and any Unix OS so this should mean a lot more commercial apps and games available for these Unix platforms and more programmers remembering the things that make Unix great.
Both Gnome and KDE are very strong platforms these days. They don't have the polish of the Mac GUI but it's my experience that they are more flexible and lighter in general. They are improving rapidly. Much more so than I would have expected possible a couple years ago.
Almost every basic home or business app that could be desired now exists for Linux, mostly as opensource, including games. With the extra pull Mac OS gives us we can seriously expect to start seeing the Windows empire crack even in their desktop stronghold.
I don't think Windows or Mac OS is going anywhere any time soon but if anything Mac OS and Linux will work together to end Microsoft's monopoly. A solution to fit every need.
To stumble into somebody else's computer system. To be someplace you're really not supposed to be. And to get the strange feeling that it really does matter. "LOGON PLEASE:" is all you get to start with. That's it. From there, it's up to you. If you're clever enough and smart enough, you could discover a world you've never before experienced on your computer. Very tempting.
LOGON PLEASE:
What's going on here? Who are these guys? What are they doing? What am I doing?
If you don't like it the thing to do is to create a better standard, make it 100% free, write a software encoder/decoder and opensource it, make the plans for the hardware decoder and open them to. That'll make adding support for the format as easy as possible for those making players. Then make some movies, good movies, encode those movies in your format and give them away too. The titles that are released only in your format are what will drive support.
I think there are already decent open codecs for video encoding so if it were me I'd probably use one of those. I think using XML and/or Python as standard formats for defining on-screen menus and extras would be good. Being able to burn a cd or dvd myself and create my own menus and everything would be awesome. That is what I want.
I loved the look of this case too. Very stylish. If one of these projects to make a Linux based console wanted to hire somebody with some experience and a groovy sense of style this guy would be the guy. I only wish he could mass produce these and sell them.
I code for fun, reputation, and to scratch an itch. I'd rather code than play games or watch tv. I enjoy knowing people are downloading and using my code and love feedback. I enjoy watching the download statistics for my newest releases. I always want to do new things and experiment so I do. I never buy software I write my own that does exactly what I want and again lets me enjoy myself while making it.
I do put my code on my resume but thus far it's never made a difference for me so I do it mostly to show off. I'd love to be paid to write opensourced software and would love someone to like my work enough to make donations but that is not why I do it. Even when I've had a good job I've still written opensourced software. It is true that I've been more active since being unemployed but that is directly related to the amount of free time I've had to scratch itches and keep myself busy. I hope it does help me find a job but I think that sending resumes out is more effective than coding.. but coding is more fun.:)
This was an interesting article and I'd like to see deeper studies that included other opensourced projects. I strongly suspect that the U.S. would have a high number of new projects as we've always been creative as a nation. I also suspect that if you broke us down into states and drew a line between hacker-types and visual basic weenies that our numbers would be much more interesting. You also should consider how strong capitalism is here and how strong the internal battle sometimes is between our giving nature and our greed. Take 9-11 as an example. Billions of dollars and lots of time have been given to help those harmed. At the same time you have lots of companies trying to cash in by getting government gifts, selling patriotic crap, and trying to make people think that buying makes them more American. More so than any other country America is buried into capitalism so it makes plenty sense that while many of us are generous and giving we also have a strong materialistic side.
I think the X-Box will boom for a while due to it's power but the GameCube will eat into that market a lot. Unless they get some good games they will sink. So far Halo seems to be their only winning game. DOA3 will be another good one I think. But is that enough for that price tag?
If X-Box wants to live they need to take on Playstation which while not so powerful has a lot of really good games and programmers experienced in writing those good games. They could try to convert all those programmers to writing X-Box games and eventually they'd get good games coming in but they'd never catch up. I can see Microsoft buying off the dead Bleem and using that technology to make PSX games playable on the X-Box. They have the money to fight Sony endlessly in court over the legality of the move and in the mean time they'd suddenly be making thousands of games people already own playable on their own box.. possibly better than they play on the PS2. Of course little profit is made from making those games playable but if they can convert those gamers over and feed them their new games then they might just be able to severly dent the Playstation market. If they could make the X-Box also play PS2 games and match the price of the PS2 they might even be able to kill off the Playstation. With Microsoft's history of dirty tricks I can see them making such a move.
Playstation is my love but this Christmas I'm buying myself a Dreamcast. At $50 each I just can't help it. Hey it runs Linux and keyboard, mouse, and net connection are available. Get the damn thing a decent PSX-style controller and it ain't half bad. Skies of Arcadia is the #1 game on my list for it and Omikron is a possible 2nd. Toy Commander looks like a fun 3rd. My only question.. did Bleem ever release their Final Fantasy discs for Dreamcast?
Way back in the days of 2400 baud modems I had a lil research project for online VR sex. My girlfriend at the time was going to school halfway across the country which as every geek knows leads to lots of online flirting. Both of us being geeks we were developing a pair of suits that would stimulate each user according to what the other was doing. It couldn't handle live images/sound but it could playback canned samples to fit the situation as best as possible and certain lil toys would be stimilated in the suits depending on your actions together. I've sometimes wondered if something like that would sell. It's not the real thing but it's better than most toys.;)
One of my current projects is a combination of Google's image search and Slashdot's community. Allowing images to be searched, user moderated, discussed, put in albums, etc. If I had a financial backer I'm sure I could turn it into something very cool but there is just no way I can afford a server with the needed bandwidth and harddrive space to make the site into a real business.
I didn't mean to say that users won't use a site if the owner does well. I meant that users won't use a sucky site, contribute 100% of the content, etc just so someone can get rich with little effort. Users don't give a damn about your business plan.. users want something interesting or useful. Having a strong user community doesn't mean you'll make money though. A successful site needs both a business plan and an interested community.
*shrugs* If/. went PPV I'd probably dump them simply because they don't provide enough unique content to be worth my while of paying for./. is a strong enough site to be my homepage but not strong enough to make me pay for their service.
Actually porn doesn't really work very well. I've tried it. There is just so much of it available that it's difficult to generate actual interest unless you can really put some advertising dollars in.
If you try to start a community like a business it's going to suck. Nobody wants to join a site just so the site owner can retire to six mansions. Do something you're interested in and make an effort to do it well and then just build in ways the community can add on to what your already doing.
Advertise. It sucks but yes if you want to get your site going quickly the best way to do so is to find newspapers, magazines, etc about the same topic and advertise your site. If people don't know about your site nobody will come to it.
I've worked with the disabled and poor before also and it has led me to think that sometimes it can actually be more useful to provide tech support than to provide food.
The disabled benefit a lot by hackers like us donating time, code, plans, etc. Setting up a computer with a voice reader, writing a more handicapped friendly UI to a common program, or donating opensourced wheelchair designs could be incredibly helpful. I do hope everyone here knows that the average childrens wheelchair is kludged together by idiots who've never sat in a wheelchair (and thus make some pretty horrible designs), has about the same number of parts as a bicycle, and typically cost about $5000. If you could provide a good design for common items such as a wheelchair that were opensource and had a charity that would build them and give them away at cost you'd be doing an incredible favor.
As for the poor I take the opinion that you're better off letting others feed them but pick some that are being fed and teach them some useful skills. Advanced farming techniques, programming, engineering, etc. Teaching poor people to read Bible lessons or plow a field the old way is pretty useless if you're trying to break them off the starvation/welfare cycle. Skills are what makes the difference. That gives them some pride and the ability to compete on equal ground with the best of us.
The point isn't only to boycott, that only works if you have a LOT of people actively boycotting that were actively buying before. If you want to fight the MPAA then it is a must to produce alternative products to the ones they offer.
Of course the opensource community isn't likely to make huge multimillion dollar movies at this time but we should be active in the independent films and in promoting alternative DVD technology. No-region unencrypted DVD's that don't pay the MPAA protection money. When you seriously challenge someone at their own game they take you more seriously than if they just think your a pirate. At the same time you're making more options for other consumers to avoid those tainted products.:)
Not to be overly radical but if you don't like such anti-American laws as the DMCA then the best solution is to stop buying all products from the companies buying such laws. We probably can't afford to buy back our government but we can cut off the money our enemies use to buy the votes in the first place.
Sure then you have to accept your own responsibility. If you are lazy (we all are sometimes) you just bootleg the product. A better solution is to create high-quality alternate products and offer them to others without all the legal bullshit we're against. Open your specs, open your code, open your documentation, give away what you can and sell the rest without these unethical restrictions. It is our responsibility to make the world better. Whining doesn't do a damn thing.
I've never seen any science taught to a computer. A computer is a glorified calculator. It doesn't understand beauty and it doesn't understand the abstract connections the mind makes in science either. There is a process by which we 'prove' theories but the innovation involved is very non-linear.
I believe the argument is that code is like law in that it sets the rules by which the world runs and in order to maintain our freedom over these rules they must be available for all to see and know and make changes to. I could be wrong.. feel free to correct my impression.
As a programmer and artist I don't mind giving away ALL my work and I don't really see a line between science and art. Very few people make a very good living off either and they are usually both appreciated most long after they are dead.
I was sort of disappointed to see them close some of the source. I really hope they open it back up after they've earned back the money they invested. We all deserve to pay our bills if we are willing to work but it doesn't hurt to give as much as we can to the public good. Sure a game isn't life or death but even entertainment can do people good.
Anyway it looks great and I'll buy a copy. I'd buy a copy regardless of license if I like it.. especially if it comes with some fun extras like manuals, pretty cd's, posters, stickers, etc. Hope to see some more games from this company.:)
Transparency in menus makes lots of sense to me but transparency in apps means eye strain I think. I like high contrast interfaces without to many nasty color clashes.. something my eyes can work with easily. Not see-thru apps. I don't want to see four windows stacked at the same time. I want more powerful menus that let me access what I want faster. I wasn't impressed with transparent windows in Linux or MacOS and I'm not impressed to see it on Windows.:)
Blackmarket hosts files! Alright a way to pay my bills even during the tech recession using nothing but my mad Unix skills. Okay who will be the first bidder of the day!:)
Slashdot Mirror
Two suggestions.. first off don't put crap comments in your code and do a good job the first time.
:)
Second recruit a small group of opensource developers, that you'll be handing the project over to, and ask them to carefully clean the code of anything such as these problems before they make the first release to the public.
This would be sort of like getting someone to clean your house if your letting them have a part in it.
I think companies should be required to release drivers source after so many years. I have a cheap scanner I bought like 4 years ago, best I've ever owned including expensive ones, and it won't work under either Linux or current Windows OS's and the company went out of business. Over the years it seems there is always one or two such devices I'm having to replace and it really irks me to be throwing perfectly good devices in landfills.
I'll agree with you on this. I'm always very nervous about releasing code to the public eye as you put a lot on the line by doing so. Everyone can see you and judge you without exposing their own skills to anyones judgement. However this drives me to do a much better job. I make more effort to make sure my code is easy to understand, resuable, maintainable, well documented, and stable. Far more effort than I'd go through if I wasn't letting others see what I'd been doing. There is a sort of a high when you release some code and people download it, ask questions, use it, like it, etc. For every negative comment there are usually 100's of positive comments (assuming you made the extra effort) so I think most people that release their code once keep releasing. Even if your code sucks people will still likely use it and they'll be nice enough to fix it and send you the patches. :)
All to true. Some companies are better than others but most companies have just enough people like this to make life hard for the rest of us. It certainly isn't the fault of guest workers but many companies do abuse them and anyone else they can get that will work dirt cheap. Just hope that with the high levels of Xmas sales online and of electronic gizmos that tech will boom again soon. I certainly would not quit right now unless you have another job lined up first. Unemployment really sucks especially when your unemployment benefits have run out. Especially if you have a family to take care of.
I got my first paying job as a computer technician when I was 14. They only paid me something like $3/hr and no more than about 10 hours a week but it was a real job and I gained a lot of experience from it. Figuring out how to network ancient Apple, PC, Amiga, Atari, and TI machines together was incredibly tricky. The job also included some programming (I won an award in a state contest for one of the programs). I've been working on computers sense that time and I know all about living with discremination because of your age or lack of a degree. Even now that I'm 23 a lot of companies act like they can treat me like a kid even if their whole business relies on me to keep running.
Finding a job in the current economy is a nightmare too. Submit a resume like mine to Burger King and they think I'm insane.. submit it anywhere that hires more advanced employees and they take a look at me and trash it. I almost never get interviews but I've been hired by almost every company that has ever interviewed me even once.
If I could afford to live in a hotel at $200 a night I'd take my date to Milan and find a nice Italian resturant for dinner. I think at that point she'd be perfectly okay with staying in the hotel room with me. Who needs more than one room to live in when you can afford to go anywhere you want? I hate living in a house or apartment. Who wants to live the same place every single day. Yick. :)
I think an important thing to clarify is that documentation is good and comments usually mean your code is bad. Comments are not documentation.
I attempt to keep a documentation/history somewhere for each function, class, or any other major component. In this documentation I typically explain what the code is for, it's inputs and outputs, and a history of why certain things were done in the way they were. This is often just one or two lines but despite good naming practices and good coding there are times where it just isn't obvious that on platform Foo you have to do it this way or you see Bar bug. I don't however go through code line by line commenting what it's doing and why. That should be perfectly obvious if your code is any good.
If anything OS X will finally bring the Mac back to a level to compete with Windows at every level. This, and the growing strength of Linux (and FreeBSD, etc) will help convince hardware developers that they need to make sure their hardware works with more than just Windows and software developers that their software needs to be designed around portability.
OS X will pull both current Mac users and Windows users into the Unix world and as any Unix geek knows once you learn it on one OS most of it translates pretty easily to any other Unix OS. After all these people learn Unix enough to accomplish their daily tasks they'll be much more likely to consider the free (as in beer and freedom) alternatives they keep hearing about.
Software ported to OS X should be easy to port to FreeBSD, Linux, and any Unix OS so this should mean a lot more commercial apps and games available for these Unix platforms and more programmers remembering the things that make Unix great.
Both Gnome and KDE are very strong platforms these days. They don't have the polish of the Mac GUI but it's my experience that they are more flexible and lighter in general. They are improving rapidly. Much more so than I would have expected possible a couple years ago.
Almost every basic home or business app that could be desired now exists for Linux, mostly as opensource, including games. With the extra pull Mac OS gives us we can seriously expect to start seeing the Windows empire crack even in their desktop stronghold.
I don't think Windows or Mac OS is going anywhere any time soon but if anything Mac OS and Linux will work together to end Microsoft's monopoly. A solution to fit every need.
LOGON PLEASE:
What's going on here? Who are these guys? What are they doing? What am I doing?
If you don't like it the thing to do is to create a better standard, make it 100% free, write a software encoder/decoder and opensource it, make the plans for the hardware decoder and open them to. That'll make adding support for the format as easy as possible for those making players. Then make some movies, good movies, encode those movies in your format and give them away too. The titles that are released only in your format are what will drive support.
I think there are already decent open codecs for video encoding so if it were me I'd probably use one of those. I think using XML and/or Python as standard formats for defining on-screen menus and extras would be good. Being able to burn a cd or dvd myself and create my own menus and everything would be awesome. That is what I want.
I loved the look of this case too. Very stylish. If one of these projects to make a Linux based console wanted to hire somebody with some experience and a groovy sense of style this guy would be the guy. I only wish he could mass produce these and sell them.
I code for fun, reputation, and to scratch an itch. I'd rather code than play games or watch tv. I enjoy knowing people are downloading and using my code and love feedback. I enjoy watching the download statistics for my newest releases. I always want to do new things and experiment so I do. I never buy software I write my own that does exactly what I want and again lets me enjoy myself while making it.
:)
I do put my code on my resume but thus far it's never made a difference for me so I do it mostly to show off. I'd love to be paid to write opensourced software and would love someone to like my work enough to make donations but that is not why I do it. Even when I've had a good job I've still written opensourced software. It is true that I've been more active since being unemployed but that is directly related to the amount of free time I've had to scratch itches and keep myself busy. I hope it does help me find a job but I think that sending resumes out is more effective than coding.. but coding is more fun.
This was an interesting article and I'd like to see deeper studies that included other opensourced projects. I strongly suspect that the U.S. would have a high number of new projects as we've always been creative as a nation. I also suspect that if you broke us down into states and drew a line between hacker-types and visual basic weenies that our numbers would be much more interesting. You also should consider how strong capitalism is here and how strong the internal battle sometimes is between our giving nature and our greed. Take 9-11 as an example. Billions of dollars and lots of time have been given to help those harmed. At the same time you have lots of companies trying to cash in by getting government gifts, selling patriotic crap, and trying to make people think that buying makes them more American. More so than any other country America is buried into capitalism so it makes plenty sense that while many of us are generous and giving we also have a strong materialistic side.
I think the X-Box will boom for a while due to it's power but the GameCube will eat into that market a lot. Unless they get some good games they will sink. So far Halo seems to be their only winning game. DOA3 will be another good one I think. But is that enough for that price tag?
If X-Box wants to live they need to take on Playstation which while not so powerful has a lot of really good games and programmers experienced in writing those good games. They could try to convert all those programmers to writing X-Box games and eventually they'd get good games coming in but they'd never catch up. I can see Microsoft buying off the dead Bleem and using that technology to make PSX games playable on the X-Box. They have the money to fight Sony endlessly in court over the legality of the move and in the mean time they'd suddenly be making thousands of games people already own playable on their own box.. possibly better than they play on the PS2. Of course little profit is made from making those games playable but if they can convert those gamers over and feed them their new games then they might just be able to severly dent the Playstation market. If they could make the X-Box also play PS2 games and match the price of the PS2 they might even be able to kill off the Playstation. With Microsoft's history of dirty tricks I can see them making such a move.
Playstation is my love but this Christmas I'm buying myself a Dreamcast. At $50 each I just can't help it. Hey it runs Linux and keyboard, mouse, and net connection are available. Get the damn thing a decent PSX-style controller and it ain't half bad. Skies of Arcadia is the #1 game on my list for it and Omikron is a possible 2nd. Toy Commander looks like a fun 3rd. My only question.. did Bleem ever release their Final Fantasy discs for Dreamcast?
Way back in the days of 2400 baud modems I had a lil research project for online VR sex. My girlfriend at the time was going to school halfway across the country which as every geek knows leads to lots of online flirting. Both of us being geeks we were developing a pair of suits that would stimulate each user according to what the other was doing. It couldn't handle live images/sound but it could playback canned samples to fit the situation as best as possible and certain lil toys would be stimilated in the suits depending on your actions together. I've sometimes wondered if something like that would sell. It's not the real thing but it's better than most toys. ;)
One of my current projects is a combination of Google's image search and Slashdot's community. Allowing images to be searched, user moderated, discussed, put in albums, etc. If I had a financial backer I'm sure I could turn it into something very cool but there is just no way I can afford a server with the needed bandwidth and harddrive space to make the site into a real business.
I didn't mean to say that users won't use a site if the owner does well. I meant that users won't use a sucky site, contribute 100% of the content, etc just so someone can get rich with little effort. Users don't give a damn about your business plan.. users want something interesting or useful. Having a strong user community doesn't mean you'll make money though. A successful site needs both a business plan and an interested community.
/. went PPV I'd probably dump them simply because they don't provide enough unique content to be worth my while of paying for. /. is a strong enough site to be my homepage but not strong enough to make me pay for their service.
*shrugs* If
Actually porn doesn't really work very well. I've tried it. There is just so much of it available that it's difficult to generate actual interest unless you can really put some advertising dollars in.
If you try to start a community like a business it's going to suck. Nobody wants to join a site just so the site owner can retire to six mansions. Do something you're interested in and make an effort to do it well and then just build in ways the community can add on to what your already doing.
Advertise. It sucks but yes if you want to get your site going quickly the best way to do so is to find newspapers, magazines, etc about the same topic and advertise your site. If people don't know about your site nobody will come to it.
I've worked with the disabled and poor before also and it has led me to think that sometimes it can actually be more useful to provide tech support than to provide food.
The disabled benefit a lot by hackers like us donating time, code, plans, etc. Setting up a computer with a voice reader, writing a more handicapped friendly UI to a common program, or donating opensourced wheelchair designs could be incredibly helpful. I do hope everyone here knows that the average childrens wheelchair is kludged together by idiots who've never sat in a wheelchair (and thus make some pretty horrible designs), has about the same number of parts as a bicycle, and typically cost about $5000. If you could provide a good design for common items such as a wheelchair that were opensource and had a charity that would build them and give them away at cost you'd be doing an incredible favor.
As for the poor I take the opinion that you're better off letting others feed them but pick some that are being fed and teach them some useful skills. Advanced farming techniques, programming, engineering, etc. Teaching poor people to read Bible lessons or plow a field the old way is pretty useless if you're trying to break them off the starvation/welfare cycle. Skills are what makes the difference. That gives them some pride and the ability to compete on equal ground with the best of us.
The point isn't only to boycott, that only works if you have a LOT of people actively boycotting that were actively buying before. If you want to fight the MPAA then it is a must to produce alternative products to the ones they offer.
:)
Of course the opensource community isn't likely to make huge multimillion dollar movies at this time but we should be active in the independent films and in promoting alternative DVD technology. No-region unencrypted DVD's that don't pay the MPAA protection money. When you seriously challenge someone at their own game they take you more seriously than if they just think your a pirate. At the same time you're making more options for other consumers to avoid those tainted products.
Not to be overly radical but if you don't like such anti-American laws as the DMCA then the best solution is to stop buying all products from the companies buying such laws. We probably can't afford to buy back our government but we can cut off the money our enemies use to buy the votes in the first place.
Sure then you have to accept your own responsibility. If you are lazy (we all are sometimes) you just bootleg the product. A better solution is to create high-quality alternate products and offer them to others without all the legal bullshit we're against. Open your specs, open your code, open your documentation, give away what you can and sell the rest without these unethical restrictions. It is our responsibility to make the world better. Whining doesn't do a damn thing.
I've never seen any science taught to a computer. A computer is a glorified calculator. It doesn't understand beauty and it doesn't understand the abstract connections the mind makes in science either. There is a process by which we 'prove' theories but the innovation involved is very non-linear.
I believe the argument is that code is like law in that it sets the rules by which the world runs and in order to maintain our freedom over these rules they must be available for all to see and know and make changes to. I could be wrong.. feel free to correct my impression.
:)
As a programmer and artist I don't mind giving away ALL my work and I don't really see a line between science and art. Very few people make a very good living off either and they are usually both appreciated most long after they are dead.
I was sort of disappointed to see them close some of the source. I really hope they open it back up after they've earned back the money they invested. We all deserve to pay our bills if we are willing to work but it doesn't hurt to give as much as we can to the public good. Sure a game isn't life or death but even entertainment can do people good.
Anyway it looks great and I'll buy a copy. I'd buy a copy regardless of license if I like it.. especially if it comes with some fun extras like manuals, pretty cd's, posters, stickers, etc. Hope to see some more games from this company.
Transparency in menus makes lots of sense to me but transparency in apps means eye strain I think. I like high contrast interfaces without to many nasty color clashes.. something my eyes can work with easily. Not see-thru apps. I don't want to see four windows stacked at the same time. I want more powerful menus that let me access what I want faster. I wasn't impressed with transparent windows in Linux or MacOS and I'm not impressed to see it on Windows. :)
Blackmarket hosts files! Alright a way to pay my bills even during the tech recession using nothing but my mad Unix skills. Okay who will be the first bidder of the day! :)