If it's something aimed at field operatives then it has to be simple enough for a human to decode without needing a computer or a key book or something (presumably, I'd think you'd want the code to be simple enough that you could do it in your head if you were broadcasting it that way, you wouldn't want them to write it down or lose some piece of evidence should they get captured)
If it is a code, it should be crackable, unless it was OTP but why broadcast it that way?
Another possibility is that it isn't a code. Perhaps it's a decoy. Perhaps it's just extra noise on certain radio frequencies (it would be stupid noise becase it draws attention) or maybe even something more mundane.
Yeah but I've got MP3 and not minidiscs. I really don't care for the MD music format, CD is better, no loss of quality, same digital sound.. MD as a data format is much more compelling, you can fit something like 140M on a conventional MD and 650-700 on "new generation" ones.
WHen pushing it as an audio format it has to go uphill against CD and it only offers size and durability as advantages (CDs are pretty durable) and it costs more. As a data format it could have been the zip-drive.
I would have though that MD would have been a compelling product to place against the zip-drive.
Now there are tons of digital products where MD would be perfect, like cameras.. It's about time. When can I get an MP3 that uses MD? And an MD to plug in to my scsi card?
I was beginning to think "for really dumb people" would be better anyways. I've never bought a "dummies" book but from what I've seen they been embarassing elementry.
One of the possible solutions for this problem that has already been implemented in iSky (I believe) is TCP ACK faking.
I'm not sure about the details and the implementation has to be really messy but while the latencies will still be kind of long you can stream data quickly and sort of do tricks to cut down some latencies.
I just took a job with Echostar and we are partnered with both iSky and Gilat, I'll send more details to slashdot when I can get them. The customer set we are really aiming at (I believe) are the out lying customers who can't get a DSL connection.
You might as well start them off with what they're going to want to use down the road...
Seriously, you can use the arrow keys, it has a button bar with copy/cut/paste. It has a menu that covers the common editing tasks. gvim is probably as good.
gnotepad is rather friendly looking also but any proper intro course for Linux or UNIX should definitely point the users at emacs or vi.
First off, congrats on a great project. I'm in charge of learning about mozilla for a set-top box and I've been digging in to it hardcore for a while now. For a project of it's size it is remarkably clean. I'm very impressed with the overall high quality of things.
Any estimates on a minimal system to run mozilla? it looks like 32M is possible, 16M looks out of the question. So much of the function is coupled into javascript and XUL that it doesn't look very easy to take things out. (or worth while, since the function will generally need to come from somewhere...)
Thanks for your work, and I'm very impressed with the product and it's evolution.
In the grand scheme of things, I don't think this is as serious as something like retooling parts of the Linux kernel and then keeping them secret. Do we have to make an example out of him?
If we don't beat him down with lawyers then does it set up a bad precident for future code pilferers?
I can respect his position, I think it is bogus, but I can respect it. In one light I see this as a really good thing for free software and the GPL, Carmack and the FSF are probably on better or at least equal financial ground should it come to the courts and it's better to set the standard in a place where you can definitely win than to do it against an MS or IBM or somebody with an endless supply of money and lawyers.
Secondly, would it be possible to subpoena his other "non-GPLed" code to make sure it's clean? When put in that kind of position he may be more likely to go a long with it. We already know and he has already admitted that he's trying to make a point and he's not being fully compliant with the GPL. Probably not yet, but in a few years there will be some big boys, Redhat, SuSE, VA, who have serious cash invested in the GPL and it's purity. I could see some big legal clashes coming, a lot of businesses are scared to death of the GPL's viral properties.
I've been watching the last couple years unfold and it is amazing to see the social disconnection that is going on.
For example, MS, fights brutally in the software industry. Nobody has ever questioned the fact that they are intensly competitive. Then they start using leverage, it's against the law and for a good reason, they raise the price of entry into the market to protect themselves and a good portion of the populus just thinks that they are being really competitive. I think most MS employees think that's the case too. Placing price barriers on the market is a competitive tactic, never mind the fact that they trickle down to your own customers also... They are doing the right thing because they are being really competitive, not anti-compeititve. End user cost is a non-factor, it's all focused around the company and their stock.
Then there is the MPAA. The first thing that grabs me is that movies and music may be the only industry on the planet where the price continuely goes up but the output doesn't significantly improve and they are protected by laws. Even cars get more expensive but you get some value added, airbags, anti-lock brakes, etc.. stuff that wasn't there 20 years ago and the costs generally stay pretty close to a constant with inflation calculated in. In movies they have no competition, they have no reason to lower prices. Valenti's argument against putting the superbowl on the web was that the NFL couldn't then charge millions of dollars for broadcast rights. well, duh! the whole idea is to make it more affordable, easier to access, more convienient. The NFL has a monopoly on pro football and there is no competitive pressure to drive down costs. His whole mindset is based around protectionism, just like MS and their supporters.
What's even worse is that he doesn't understand that they create new content all the time, they could experiment, they could take 10% of the movies from one year and try to openly license them and see how it turns out, if they are getting robbed then they could stop it and only lose the movies from that year. It's not like they have to bet the whole farm on this new technology "the will be primitive in 18 months"
There needs to be some parity. And more people need to recognize the disconnection and call it for what it is. This is monopoly protection, and they are screwing us with it. they never lose money, they never have to "compete." They keep pumping out crap.
Solaris had other reason. SunOS made it to 5.0 before they switched the name and version to solaris. Solaris 7.0 should be SunOS 7.0. It's not entirely like they skipped up 4.3.
It's all marketing anyways. And you want to know the sickest part? it makes a difference. At work now we ported a unix product to NT and we're getting ready to GA. The Unix product is going to be 3.20 (up from 3.13) and the NT product is starting at 1.1, not 1.0, for marketing reasons. We've presold licenses for the 1.1 product where we were having trouble when it was 1.0.
That's not entirely true. That was the initial idea but Sun changed the rules of the license. There are 2 IBM JVMs, the Sun created, IBM compiled JVM (Sun's JVM, packaged by IBM) and the the Sun created, IBM modified, and IBM built JVM with better garbage collection and all sorts of other goodies. They have full access to the sun source.
There is still fear though because sun can and might change the license structure or restrict future versions so they are still careful about who they let see the code.
I've always been in to them. The Casio thermo watch, back in the day was semi cool, not a terribly accurate thermometer though. I got the Avocet alpine watch, it is much better but rather hefty, it's flaw is one of calibration it could be accurate or it could be terribly inaccurate if it wasn't calibrated. Then I got a polartec heart monitor, it has changed the ways I workout, not terribly accurate but provides enough information to make adjustments if you're training for something. I've looked at Suunto's recently. There seems to be a theme, these gadgets are remarkably cool ideas but they never seem to work very well. I'm comparing the suunto to the avocet and while neither is going to be 100% accurate both are reasonable and then both are flipping huge, wear it daily and you'll probably need to go to the chiropractor because you back will get screwed up with all the extra weight on one arm. When it's all said and done, I have my specialty geek boy watches but for daily wear I wear the timex.. it's much smaller and more comfortable and for some crazy reason I feel like it is more likly going to get destroyed and I'd rather buy another $30 ironman than a $200 Suunto Vector. Most important, it keeps the time very well. The avocet runs out of batteries about every 18months and I've always been on top of a mountain when it happens.
I like that camera watch.. I see two good uses for it, snapping pictures where you aren't supposed to and those candid moments where you wish you had a camera and don't. The pictures will be low quality, read fun snaps, but it's a picture where you otherwise would have none. I'm guessing the actual model will make the avocet vertech alpine look like a feather. It will be a great watch if you wear it every day but it will be too big to wear every day. In my weakness, I could see my self forking over the cash even though I know it won't work so well. I suspect this watch will end up being outlawed in a few places.
The MP3 watch is also a wicked cool idea but I just don't see the practcality in it. I'd rather go buy a rio and then have a watch that doesn't run out of batteries and lose the time. I'm betting this one will be a real piece of junk.
Then the palmpilot watch is cool but I've got a palmpilot. Watches aren't terribly good interfaces for a lot of stuff, I think my palmpilot will be magnitudes easier to use and it's small enough. Probably the best functioning one of these watches but it will be a pain to use it and it's not nearly as cool as the camera.
Why no cellphone watch yet? I would think that Casio's number one competition with this stuff is the integrated PCS phone market, if palm signs a deal with Ericson or something and integrates a pilot into a cellphone that would be a pretty killer product.
I'm betting that all of them will be junk but at least the camera will be cool enough that people will buy them.
Don't most drinking games have some chugging rules
on
Humpday Quickies
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· Score: 1
The slashdot drinking games doesn't involve any chugging, what kind of game is that?
I suspect that itaniums will cost as much or more than the alpha. Part to part, the alpha is cheaper than the itanium and if you're going to build a machine of that caliber the supporting components will be similar in price.
If Intel can sell itanium machines at 1/4 the cost of a fast alpha box then they deserve to dominate. At least for the first year or two I think itaniums will be incredibly expensive.
You're right. It wasn't always that way but other than file format and import/export issues, Office 97 and 2000 are very slick. Particularly Word. It's bloated by 1991 standards but it's a very lean and mean application by todays standards. I have used Lotus Word Pro ('word poor') Wordperfect, Star, and numerous others and as WYSIWYG word processors go, Word is among the best. You can come up with "better" tools for a lot of what it does but I can't think of a better product that does what it does. Office is by far MS's best product.
I'll tell you what sucks more, after using word periodically at work (maybe 10 hours on it over the last year, compared to about 10 hours with other products) I pull up the newest wordperfect for linux and it feels down right primitive in comparison. It's not, wordperfect and word are both very similar in terms of features but there is something that makes word really nice to use. If your machine is fast enough, it's compelling.
MS has gotten where they are by delivering products quickly, usually shoddy, and then following up with solid products in version x + 1. MSIE was that way, Office was that way, VC++ is that way. Even windows is that way. Not that it's solid but it has improved. If the competition makes any mistakes (like wordperfect did in committing to alternative platforms and then never delivering and then killing to projects and then rebirthing them after 3 changes in ownership...) then MS steps in and starts owning the market.
StarOffice would be my second favorite and it's a full tilt office clone, that's also what frustrates with it, they copied all the good stuff but it's a little rough. It still feels great and is nice to use but the need to do a little more to close the circle and fill it out.
Hopefully Abiword, KOffice, and GNOME catch up soon.. They will, I'm just impatient, we will beat them, it will just take a while. StarOffice too, but it sounds like they're focused on this java thing more than bulking up their native products... (opensource it sun!)
I mean, I think of my entire GNU/Linux system as a component repository.
I think this would be an interesting challenge though. It's been my experience that in the commercial world, most components are either too limited because of the lack of source or too hard to use becuase they don't want you to have the source and they are too focused on being a "component" or "reusable" and generally end up sucking. It's a rare balance of ease of use and power that makes a good component. opensource throws all that out the window because you can customize and tailor pieces for your task and as a result not too many are focusing on producing just pieces. You have to do more work to get at the pieces but you can make them do what you want.
It should be an interesting experiment, if nothing else. It will be interesting to see what is "good" and what isn't. It will also be interesting to see the "component granularity" that is popular. (the classic example is to have reusable hashtable, tree and list classes but those are very easy to implement and don't buy you a lot by reusing them. An HTML widget or an RTF widget, on the otherhand, is a substantial amount of effort and can buy a lot if they work nicely.)
I've been disappointed for quite some time. I look at altavista and infoseek and some of the other searchengines that have gone portal and they do it in a much more tasteful way, it's still about searching. Lycos appears to make searching secondary.. They have also changed their look and feel more times than I care to count. I think they got in over their head and then when they hired professional administrators and what-have-you the business effect came and took hold.
That's really parochial thinking. "Industry standards" my arse. Windows NT is an industry standard, does that mean that linux isn't good or people shouldn't use it? Portability? Please expand on what you mean by that. Linux apps are far far more portable than most windows apps, they run on linux (on multiple platforms) and they run on the BSDs and usually other UNIXi.
I'll grant that GIMP has weaknesses, lack of CMYK pretty much locks it out of publishing. If you're doing web graphics or dealing strictly with online stuff I have yet to hear a good reason why GIMP doesn't cut it other than the parochial "it's not from Adobe" line and if you're thinking that way then Linux isn't really for you in the first place, is it?
Please list the gimp short commings other than a brand name. So far you've said that Kai's plugin's aren't there.
I'll do it again if asked... I'll crash the party if not.;) (It's supposed to be at a tropical type place next time)
I entered on a whim, never thought I'd get picked. I got picked and never thought my company's legal group would let me go. Then I worried because I had never played the game so I ran out and bought a copy to get a few hours on before the trip, I don't hardly know how to play. Then I got there and had a wonderful time, meet a lot of cool people, hopefully did some good for something or somebody somewhere, and now it's too sureal and I almost can't believe it just happened.
I was a little stressed initially, I didn't want to win so much as not look really bad. Then we just started talking and hanging out and I meet a lot of really cool people and had fun for a couple of days. Loki was 100% class, they kept us fed and were very friendly. (good meals too) It wasn't a competition and that's why it was so much fun. There was desire to do well but there was also desire to see each other do well and we helped each other. The biggest problem was the length of time, if we knew each other before hand we probably would have helped each other much more, it took about 6-10 hours for people to really start talking a lot.
As for exploitation and some of the Opensource/freedomware debate issues. It is very clear to me that loki is committed to opensource, we had several "waiting-for-the-build" chats where those philosophical issues were discusses and Scott seemed to be as much an opensource advocate as anyone. I work for a major corporataion, it's part of my job to advocate progressive trends within the company and explore things, I admit that I'm working for the enemy in some ways but I also think I'm doing my part to try and make things better. I think Loki is doing the same thing, Civ is their business, if feeds them and they don't own it so they can only do so much, and they made some huge steps toward the community, they have real tangible results to show to Activision. in 48 hours some real improvments were made to the game, it's pretty remarkable, I watched Opensource in realtime. I don't think there was any exploitation, and if there was then I'm all for it because I had a great time.
That's the trend, don't confuse cheap with what the people are demanding. That's the whole idea behind calling music "alternative" if we try to make people think that it's not produced and not big budget then it will be cool. Viacom has plenty of money and as far as road rules and real world go, they could be renting a place in Manhattan, or driving a fleet of ferarris downtown and it would be "cheap" compared to what the TV and movie industry is used to historically.
It's all about marketing to the masses, the masses don't want to be marketed to right now so they will market us non-marketing.
The funny thing about "hacking" is that it's just not entertaining. They could probably find someone real and someone good and our hacker community will be amazed at how good he's not (crackers don't code a lot) but the masses would never find it entertaining. It only makes sense to put a script kiddie up there or someone "who could break into a bank, but doesn't" which might as well be a script-kiddie for all practical matters. It's just not entertaining stuff.
Not to kick the dead horse more but while we're on the subject of keyboards I just want to put out another kinesis endorsement. They make some damn fine switchable (Dvorak and QWERTY both on the same keyboard) that are also ergonomically sculpted.
I don't have any hand injuries but I have noticed the difference.
Slashdot Mirror
If it's something aimed at field operatives then it has to be simple enough for a human to decode without needing a computer or a key book or something (presumably, I'd think you'd want the code to be simple enough that you could do it in your head if you were broadcasting it that way, you wouldn't want them to write it down or lose some piece of evidence should they get captured)
If it is a code, it should be crackable, unless it was OTP but why broadcast it that way?
Another possibility is that it isn't a code. Perhaps it's a decoy. Perhaps it's just extra noise on certain radio frequencies (it would be stupid noise becase it draws attention) or maybe even something more mundane.
WHen pushing it as an audio format it has to go uphill against CD and it only offers size and durability as advantages (CDs are pretty durable) and it costs more. As a data format it could have been the zip-drive.
Now there are tons of digital products where MD would be perfect, like cameras.. It's about time. When can I get an MP3 that uses MD? And an MD to plug in to my scsi card?
I was beginning to think "for really dumb people" would be better anyways. I've never bought a "dummies" book but from what I've seen they been embarassing elementry.
I'm not sure about the details and the implementation has to be really messy but while the latencies will still be kind of long you can stream data quickly and sort of do tricks to cut down some latencies.
I just took a job with Echostar and we are partnered with both iSky and Gilat, I'll send more details to slashdot when I can get them. The customer set we are really aiming at (I believe) are the out lying customers who can't get a DSL connection.
Seriously, you can use the arrow keys, it has a button bar with copy/cut/paste. It has a menu that covers the common editing tasks. gvim is probably as good.
gnotepad is rather friendly looking also but any proper intro course for Linux or UNIX should definitely point the users at emacs or vi.
First off, congrats on a great project. I'm in charge of learning about mozilla for a set-top box and I've been digging in to it hardcore for a while now. For a project of it's size it is remarkably clean. I'm very impressed with the overall high quality of things.
Any estimates on a minimal system to run mozilla?
it looks like 32M is possible, 16M looks out of the question. So much of the function is coupled into javascript and XUL that it doesn't look very easy to take things out. (or worth while, since the function will generally need to come from somewhere...)
Thanks for your work, and I'm very impressed with the product and it's evolution.
If we don't beat him down with lawyers then does it set up a bad precident for future code pilferers?
I can respect his position, I think it is bogus, but I can respect it. In one light I see this as a really good thing for free software and the GPL, Carmack and the FSF are probably on better or at least equal financial ground should it come to the courts and it's better to set the standard in a place where you can definitely win than to do it against an MS or IBM or somebody with an endless supply of money and lawyers.
Secondly, would it be possible to subpoena his other "non-GPLed" code to make sure it's clean? When put in that kind of position he may be more likely to go a long with it. We already know and he has already admitted that he's trying to make a point and he's not being fully compliant with the GPL. Probably not yet, but in a few years there will be some big boys, Redhat, SuSE, VA, who have serious cash invested in the GPL and it's purity. I could see some big legal clashes coming, a lot of businesses are scared to death of the GPL's viral properties.
For example, MS, fights brutally in the software industry. Nobody has ever questioned the fact that they are intensly competitive. Then they start using leverage, it's against the law and for a good reason, they raise the price of entry into the market to protect themselves and a good portion of the populus just thinks that they are being really competitive. I think most MS employees think that's the case too. Placing price barriers on the market is a competitive tactic, never mind the fact that they trickle down to your own customers also... They are doing the right thing because they are being really competitive, not anti-compeititve. End user cost is a non-factor, it's all focused around the company and their stock.
Then there is the MPAA. The first thing that grabs me is that movies and music may be the only industry on the planet where the price continuely goes up but the output doesn't significantly improve and they are protected by laws. Even cars get more expensive but you get some value added, airbags, anti-lock brakes, etc.. stuff that wasn't there 20 years ago and the costs generally stay pretty close to a constant with inflation calculated in. In movies they have no competition, they have no reason to lower prices. Valenti's argument against putting the superbowl on the web was that the NFL couldn't then charge millions of dollars for broadcast rights. well, duh! the whole idea is to make it more affordable, easier to access, more convienient. The NFL has a monopoly on pro football and there is no competitive pressure to drive down costs. His whole mindset is based around protectionism, just like MS and their supporters.
What's even worse is that he doesn't understand that they create new content all the time, they could experiment, they could take 10% of the movies from one year and try to openly license them and see how it turns out, if they are getting robbed then they could stop it and only lose the movies from that year. It's not like they have to bet the whole farm on this new technology "the will be primitive in 18 months"
There needs to be some parity. And more people need to recognize the disconnection and call it for what it is. This is monopoly protection, and they are screwing us with it. they never lose money, they never have to "compete." They keep pumping out crap.
It's all marketing anyways. And you want to know the sickest part? it makes a difference. At work now we ported a unix product to NT and we're getting ready to GA. The Unix product is going to be 3.20 (up from 3.13) and the NT product is starting at 1.1, not 1.0, for marketing reasons. We've presold licenses for the 1.1 product where we were having trouble when it was 1.0.
Speech won't be the exclusive way to input data into these devices, just an option that is potentially very useful to some.
I have a doctor friend who has been asking for that technology for years for taking patient notes.
There are 2 IBM JVMs, the Sun created, IBM compiled JVM (Sun's JVM, packaged by IBM) and the the Sun created, IBM modified, and IBM built JVM with better garbage collection and all sorts of other goodies. They have full access to the sun source.
There is still fear though because sun can and might change the license structure or restrict future versions so they are still careful about who they let see the code.
I like that camera watch.. I see two good uses for it, snapping pictures where you aren't supposed to and those candid moments where you wish you had a camera and don't. The pictures will be low quality, read fun snaps, but it's a picture where you otherwise would have none. I'm guessing the actual model will make the avocet vertech alpine look like a feather. It will be a great watch if you wear it every day but it will be too big to wear every day. In my weakness, I could see my self forking over the cash even though I know it won't work so well. I suspect this watch will end up being outlawed in a few places.
The MP3 watch is also a wicked cool idea but I just don't see the practcality in it. I'd rather go buy a rio and then have a watch that doesn't run out of batteries and lose the time. I'm betting this one will be a real piece of junk.
Then the palmpilot watch is cool but I've got a palmpilot. Watches aren't terribly good interfaces for a lot of stuff, I think my palmpilot will be magnitudes easier to use and it's small enough. Probably the best functioning one of these watches but it will be a pain to use it and it's not nearly as cool as the camera.
Why no cellphone watch yet? I would think that Casio's number one competition with this stuff is the integrated PCS phone market, if palm signs a deal with Ericson or something and integrates a pilot into a cellphone that would be a pretty killer product.
I'm betting that all of them will be junk but at least the camera will be cool enough that people will buy them.
The slashdot drinking games doesn't involve any chugging, what kind of game is that?
If Intel can sell itanium machines at 1/4 the cost of a fast alpha box then they deserve to dominate. At least for the first year or two I think itaniums will be incredibly expensive.
I'll tell you what sucks more, after using word periodically at work (maybe 10 hours on it over the last year, compared to about 10 hours with other products) I pull up the newest wordperfect for linux and it feels down right primitive in comparison. It's not, wordperfect and word are both very similar in terms of features but there is something that makes word really nice to use. If your machine is fast enough, it's compelling.
MS has gotten where they are by delivering products quickly, usually shoddy, and then following up with solid products in version x + 1.
MSIE was that way, Office was that way, VC++ is that way. Even windows is that way. Not that it's solid but it has improved. If the competition makes any mistakes (like wordperfect did in committing to alternative platforms and then never delivering and then killing to projects and then rebirthing them after 3 changes in ownership...) then MS steps in and starts owning the market.
StarOffice would be my second favorite and it's a full tilt office clone, that's also what frustrates with it, they copied all the good stuff but it's a little rough. It still feels great and is nice to use but the need to do a little more to close the circle and fill it out.
Hopefully Abiword, KOffice, and GNOME catch up soon.. They will, I'm just impatient, we will beat them, it will just take a while. StarOffice too, but it sounds like they're focused on this java thing more than bulking up their native products... (opensource it sun!)
Could the Bush campaign say that they were victims of a squater and get the domain name changed to something else?
They have to allow satire.
I think this would be an interesting challenge though. It's been my experience that in the commercial world, most components are either too limited because of the lack of source or too hard to use becuase they don't want you to have the source and they are too focused on being a "component" or "reusable" and generally end up sucking. It's a rare balance of ease of use and power that makes a good component. opensource throws all that out the window because you can customize and tailor pieces for your task and as a result not too many are focusing on producing just pieces. You have to do more work to get at the pieces but you can make them do what you want.
It should be an interesting experiment, if nothing else. It will be interesting to see what is "good" and what isn't. It will also be interesting to see the "component granularity" that is popular. (the classic example is to have reusable hashtable, tree and list classes but those are very easy to implement and don't buy you a lot by reusing them. An HTML widget or an RTF widget, on the otherhand, is a substantial amount of effort and can buy a lot if they work nicely.)
good luck
thanks
I've been disappointed for quite some time. I look at altavista and infoseek and some of the other searchengines that have gone portal and they do it in a much more tasteful way, it's still about searching. Lycos appears to make searching secondary.. They have also changed their look and feel more times than I care to count. I
think they got in over their head and then when they hired professional administrators and what-have-you the business effect came and took hold.
It used to be my favorite.
I'll grant that GIMP has weaknesses, lack of CMYK pretty much locks it out of publishing. If you're doing web graphics or dealing strictly with online stuff I have yet to hear a good reason why GIMP doesn't cut it other than the parochial "it's not from Adobe" line and if you're thinking that way then Linux isn't really for you in the first place, is it?
Please list the gimp short commings other than a brand name. So far you've said that Kai's plugin's aren't there.
I entered on a whim, never thought I'd get picked. I got picked and never thought my company's legal group would let me go. Then I worried because I had never played the game so I ran out and bought a copy to get a few hours on before the trip, I don't hardly know how to play. Then I got there and had a wonderful time, meet a lot of cool people, hopefully did some good for something or somebody somewhere, and now it's too sureal and I almost can't believe it just happened.
I was a little stressed initially, I didn't want to win so much as not look really bad. Then we just started talking and hanging out and I meet a lot of really cool people and had fun for a couple of days. Loki was 100% class, they kept us fed and were very friendly. (good meals too) It wasn't a competition and that's why it was so much fun. There was desire to do well but there was also desire to see each other do well and we helped each other. The biggest problem was the length of time, if we knew each other before hand we probably would have helped each other much more, it took about 6-10 hours for people to really start talking a lot.
As for exploitation and some of the Opensource/freedomware debate issues. It is very clear to me that loki is committed to opensource, we had several "waiting-for-the-build" chats where those philosophical issues were discusses and Scott seemed to be as much an opensource advocate as anyone. I work for a major corporataion, it's part of my job to advocate progressive trends within the company and explore things, I admit that I'm working for the enemy in some ways but I also think I'm doing my part to try and make things better. I think Loki is doing the same thing, Civ is their business, if feeds them and they don't own it so they can only do so much, and they made some huge steps toward the community, they have real tangible results to show to Activision. in 48 hours some real improvments were made to the game, it's pretty remarkable, I watched Opensource in realtime. I don't think there was any exploitation, and if there was then I'm all for it because I had a great time.
Ian Nelson
It's all about marketing to the masses, the masses don't want to be marketed to right now so they will market us non-marketing.
The funny thing about "hacking" is that it's just not entertaining. They could probably find someone real and someone good and our hacker community will be amazed at how good he's not (crackers don't code a lot) but the masses would never find it entertaining. It only makes sense to put a script kiddie up there or someone "who could break into a bank, but doesn't" which might as well be a script-kiddie for all practical matters. It's just not entertaining stuff.
I don't have any hand injuries but I have noticed the difference.
http://www.kinesis-ergo.com
check out the contour