I don't think Linux was designed to "free people from Microsoft." I think that it was designed as an alternative to closed-source operating systems in general, which being "freed" from Microsoft Windows is a side effect.
Journalists are not interested in actually researching their topics since this is not economically-efficient. And truthiness sells better than truth anyway..
The rational pirate would keep a low profile, or at most, only distribute links to really poor content.
Currently all 'content' is indeed poor. That's because commercial consideration override artistic ones. In order to produce art that doesn't suck, commercial stuff must be decoupled from artistic stuff.
Planescape, while entertaining, isn't very highly regarded by many of my game-writing collegues.
Games and writing in games has moved on a great bit since PS:T and the skills required from a game writer today are different from back then:
They had moved on a great bit backwards. No current games can match PS:T or Betrayal at Krondor. Not being highly regarded by current "industry"'s game writers is a praise.
Then you get to enjoy a free trip in the back of a truck to somewhere with a net connection, and then you get pushed in front of a monitor and keyboard and told to log in and delete the photos by men with guns.
That would be pointless. Once something gets on the web, it stays there forever. Google's cache, other people mirroring it, etc..
What makes you think that there are no licensing costs? It's not easy to fit four players around one 19" computer monitor, and the console makers tend to control access to the (bigger) SDTV with an iron fist and licensing costs. In addition, a lot of players tend to prefer to play video games based on a non-free book (e.g. Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings), movie (e.g. Star Wars or GoldenEye), or TV show (e.g. anything on Nickelodeon), and lawfully making a game based on one of those requires (you guessed it) licensing costs.
I didn't notice that much of price difference between games based on original IP vs games based on movie or book IP.
And btw I'm not very fond of copyright in general..
And how will developers recoup development cost with support fees if someone else releases a patch that fixes most of the program's defects for which support would be needed?
That someone else will most likely finish his work when the game will already be in bargain bin.
But is it $40 per player more convenient, especially when a lot of the players will be too young for a good job?
Players that are too young for a good job pirate anyway. And no law will be able to do anything about that. Even if it would, those people would not play games at all which won't increase sales..
And, naturally, Free games will be cheaper than $40 since FOSS model will make development more efficient(no licensing costs, reuse of existing code and other resources instead of constantly redoing everything from scratch)
When you torrent a game you first must endure a long wait(they're large) and then burn them to CD/DVD. And you must have necessary knowledge to do that. While with a bought CD/DVD you need to just put it in the drive.
Also, for most people asking technical support will be more convenient than searching fan forums.
Games houses couldn't make today's games without the income raised from selling/licensing software as a product. How could Rockstar have sold 'support' for GTA3 on the PS2 ? Would that have raised the same income as disc sales ?
I'm not a fan of modern games. IMO their development methods are very inefficient and products are mediocre.
And you can still sell disks even if your software is GPLd.
Sometimes it's good to reward people for writing software and provide them with a source of income with which they can support their families while continuing to improve and support their product.
I agree with this. People should be rewarded for writing software, *not* for licensing it. Selling support is a viable alternative to nonsense notion of "selling" the software itself.
If the OSS advocates were really acting in the public interest, they would permit resale of open source code. This would not damage OSS, but would increase the variety and quality of software on offer, either free or not free. Instead they have progressively taken the licence in the opposite direction. Embrace, extend, extinguish indeed.
IMO killing proprietary software is a Good Thing so they're acting in public interest. Nothing prevents current proprietary software businesses from embracing FLOSS model and sell support instead.
Slashdot Mirror
s/patent/trademark. D'oh!
You keep using that "patent" word. I don't think that it means what you think it means.
I don't think Linux was designed to "free people from Microsoft." I think that it was designed as an alternative to closed-source operating systems in general, which being "freed" from Microsoft Windows is a side effect.
No. Linux is made just for sheer fun of it.
Journalists are not interested in actually researching their topics since this is not economically-efficient. And truthiness sells better than truth anyway..
You obviously care since you bothered to post..
Whoosh!
The rational pirate would keep a low profile, or at most, only distribute links to really poor content.
Currently all 'content' is indeed poor. That's because commercial consideration override artistic ones. In order to produce art that doesn't suck, commercial stuff must be decoupled from artistic stuff.
s/Windows 95/Windows 3.1
Copyright merely restricts the use of expression of the idea, not the idea itself.
Planescape, while entertaining, isn't very highly regarded by many of my game-writing collegues.
Games and writing in games has moved on a great bit since PS:T and the skills required from a game writer today are different from back then:
They had moved on a great bit backwards. No current games can match PS:T or Betrayal at Krondor. Not being highly regarded by current "industry"'s game writers is a praise.
The best and cheapest defense against patent trolls is defensive publication.
It does
Then you get to enjoy a free trip in the back of a truck to somewhere with a net connection, and then you get pushed in front of a monitor and keyboard and told to log in and delete the photos by men with guns.
That would be pointless. Once something gets on the web, it stays there forever. Google's cache, other people mirroring it, etc..
Linking is much slower with debug symbols enabled than without, but still not slow enough to be significant.
We started around 2000 and we had comparable features to a commercial game released around the same time in 2002/2003 for a space sim game.
Too bad you didn't have a good single-player campaign.
Oh and Azureus isn't even the name, its now "Vuze" (at least according to wikipedia). Such super name recognition, they don't even use it anymore!
Their bittorrent engine is still named azureus
If FOSS is such a great model, why are people still flocking to the proprietary games ?
Because most people don't care about development models, therefore it doesn't make much difference for them whether it's FOSS or proprietary.
FOSS model matters only for developers allowing them to reuse existing resources without insane license fees.
In that situation, people would buy their games from Knock-Off Nigel for £2 rather than Rockstar for £40.
Instead of pirating them like they do now.
What makes you think that there are no licensing costs? It's not easy to fit four players around one 19" computer monitor, and the console makers tend to control access to the (bigger) SDTV with an iron fist and licensing costs. In addition, a lot of players tend to prefer to play video games based on a non-free book (e.g. Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings), movie (e.g. Star Wars or GoldenEye), or TV show (e.g. anything on Nickelodeon), and lawfully making a game based on one of those requires (you guessed it) licensing costs.
I didn't notice that much of price difference between games based on original IP vs games based on movie or book IP.
And btw I'm not very fond of copyright in general..
And how will developers recoup development cost with support fees if someone else releases a patch that fixes most of the program's defects for which support would be needed?
That someone else will most likely finish his work when the game will already be in bargain bin.
But is it $40 per player more convenient, especially when a lot of the players will be too young for a good job?
Players that are too young for a good job pirate anyway. And no law will be able to do anything about that. Even if it would, those people would not play games at all which won't increase sales..
And, naturally, Free games will be cheaper than $40 since FOSS model will make development more efficient(no licensing costs, reuse of existing code and other resources instead of constantly redoing everything from scratch)
When you torrent a game you first must endure a long wait(they're large) and then burn them to CD/DVD. And you must have necessary knowledge to do that. While with a bought CD/DVD you need to just put it in the drive. Also, for most people asking technical support will be more convenient than searching fan forums.
E.g. sell support contract bundled with game disk.
Games houses couldn't make today's games without the income raised from selling/licensing software as a product. How could Rockstar have sold 'support' for GTA3 on the PS2 ? Would that have raised the same income as disc sales ?
I'm not a fan of modern games. IMO their development methods are very inefficient and products are mediocre. And you can still sell disks even if your software is GPLd.
Sometimes it's good to reward people for writing software and provide them with a source of income with which they can support their families while continuing to improve and support their product.
I agree with this. People should be rewarded for writing software, *not* for licensing it. Selling support is a viable alternative to nonsense notion of "selling" the software itself.
If the OSS advocates were really acting in the public interest, they would permit resale of open source code. This would not damage OSS, but would increase the variety and quality of software on offer, either free or not free. Instead they have progressively taken the licence in the opposite direction. Embrace, extend, extinguish indeed.
IMO killing proprietary software is a Good Thing so they're acting in public interest. Nothing prevents current proprietary software businesses from embracing FLOSS model and sell support instead.