What I want to know is how much it pays to claim that.NET is a good technology. I mean, is this something where I could get a second house paid for by embracing MS? We know they have more money than design experience.
I don't really think that Miguel is being paid... but then, if someone offered evidence, I wouldn't be surprised.
A very good point. Likewise, most of the rapists out there would never get laid if they had to wait for someone to put out, so it serves those scantily-clad tramps right.
Nice work.
You may be right that most of the pirates wouldn't pay for this stuff - in which case, no loss to the world if every one of them were simply killed, they aren't contributing. However, statistics suggest that, when they can't easily steal, they happily pay; most of them can afford plenty of software.
But, as you say, they're probably totally worthless.
BSD, for me. I support the idea that *I* will write code, which I generally give away - but if you feel you need to sell code to make money, go ahead and sell code. I won't try to stop you, and you can use my code.
Thus, I'm making it cheaper to develop software, closed or not, and I'm not barring people from making money using my code.
I still have a day job, but I do a fair amount of bespoke programming, and that pays the bills. In the long run, maybe that'll be the dominant form - or maybe it won't.
However, the key distinction is *consent*. When I download NetBSD, I'm downloading something that was *given away by the owner*. I'm not stealing something. Free software is not about getting stuff you don't pay for - it's about giving away stuff you don't need to get paid for.
And a hearty round of thanks to all the Warez dudes out there. Remember, piracy is a purely victimless crime; anyone actually put out of work when a product doesn't sell is obviously making stuff up, we all know programmers drive Ferarris and do lots of coke.
Reproduced here for grins. I couldn't help but notice that their FAQ provides an email address, so I emailed them.
---
Just a data point: I buy a fair number of CD's (I probably own two or three
hundred, but I have long since lost count). I have not used a non-computer
CD player to listen to a CD in probably a year and a half, maybe two years.
Probably 90% of the time, I listen to music in my car - using my MP3 player.
There is absolutely no way I will buy any music if I can't convert it into
a format that my car can play.
Furthermore, I don't run Windows. Plain old CD's work fine for me; the things
you sell, which superficially resemble CD's, don't. Given that, all I can do
for now is be very careful to make sure that, if I'm buying CD's, they don't
have your logo on them, because I don't want to get stuck with a CD I can't
use, and which no store in town will take as a return.
Even beyond that, I don't see how this helps you; MP3's are pretty low
quality, and if I desperately needed to make an MP3 of a CD, and I had an
analog CD player, I could just record the output of the CD player and encode
that - and probably never know the difference. (For that matter, what about
my nice expensive component CD player with the digital outs?)
I work as a programmer, and I share your concerns about piracy. What I don't
share is your belief that it's okay to f*ck millions of consumers up the ass
with rusty tent spikes to try to get at a few pirates. There are lots of
legitimate ways to get people to pay for your products; intentionally making
the products defective is not one of them.
---
A good point. I was doing the first round of getting it running under BSD/OS; it won't be nearly that much work next time.:) We also needed a few supporting tools, such as jadetex.
Cool! Now, let's say you spend ten seconds per month (that's not much at all) disabling the ads of each of the twenty million or so small businesses in the U.S. - that's about two hundred million seconds a month, out of the two and a half million or so you actually have.
If the best you can suggest is that we tolerate extortion, then maybe you need to rethink a bit. "Do this every month or we hit you" is not okay.
I'm doing a bunch of documentation right now, and I *LOVE* docbook. I agree, it's a bit of a pain to set up; we started with openjade as a basis, and worked from there.
Still, I love the format; it's clear, it's precise, and it's very well-suited to documentation.
BTW, I'd like to point out that, if you think documentation is the worst part of programming, you're probably not writing very good documentation. Documentation can be a lot of fun. Think of it as a way to make sure that you won't have to do the maintenance later, because anyone will be able to do it based on your writing.:)
I think Linux was crippled by the lack of a language totally controlled by a monopolistic power that hates Linux. We should rewrite major applications so they depend on Microsoft's pet language, so that any change in the Microsoft spec can cause untold damage as the compatability problems spread.
This will help us sympathise with people who are stuck using systems based on closed, proprietary, systems. It's the best possible use of developer time there could be.
I don't really want to spend time comparing feature lists in detail. As I recall, civ3's newer enemy AI is a big improvement, and it allows a broader variety of treaties. I don't think I've seen culture implemented before, at least, not exactly; this allows for stuff similar to alpha centauri's borders, only better, and provides a non-hostile way to acquire enemy cities. (Not bribery; they just decide to come over.)
Civ III does a lot of neat things that are not yet implemented in any other civ programs. Also, I found freeciv fairly annoying the last time I tried it. Maybe again later - maybe not. I only have time for a very small amount of hacking-to-play-games.:)
The only Unix-based games I play much are Angband and pysol. I play Civ III on Windows, because that's where the current patches will be, and I play a few things on MacOS.
The games that have been ported (with a few exceptions) are almost all shooters - which I simply don't enjoy playing.
I like RPG's and turn-based strategy, for the most part.
The commercial offerings just haven't appealed to me much yet.
This is unclear. Many many more Chinese speak English than other people speak Chinese. Just as Latin continued to be the main Church language, even in areas where it was not otherwise widely used, English may dominate on the internet whether or not the majority of current users are native English speakers.
Because this game will encourage idiots to think that breaking into computers is "hacking". Innovative problem solving may be hacking; script-based attacks aren't. Most hacks have nothing to do with security, etc etc etc., and all this will do is make the AOL users more certain that, if I have a list of hacks on my home page, it means I can break into computers.
I'm getting one, I'll probably try to get NetBSD to run on it. My thinking is to use the CF card to store a kernel, but to use NFS for all the real disk space.
Looks to me like a very cute little x terminal. Anyone know if the memory is upgradeable?
This is not a no-brainer guaranteed win. It is easy to make autoconf do horrible, silly, things - which make your code less portable. As always, the very first thing you do should be to make your code as portable as possible to begin with; this is much, much, more efficient than any kind of configuration system.
Current versions of configure seem to sometimes produce makefiles which can't be used with classic Berkeley make, and depend on GNU extensions...
I sure as hell wouldn't pay in advance for the possibility that someone would write a game I might like. I want the game to exist, and I want to know whether it's fun, *THEN* decide whether or not I want it.
The current system serves my needs quite well for video games. No "escrow system" will ever serve the same purpose. As is, each customer can individually say whether the game meets his needs, and only pays when the game is done. The escrow agent would be horribly overpowered, and could easily screw either or both sides.
Re:Actually, one more factual error...
on
Freedom or Power Redux
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
So what? Your code is still free. Other people's code may not be. There's no problem here. Obviously, no, if someone makes a proprietary program that includes some public domain code, their program isn't about freedom - but the PD code gave them the freedom to do that, and gives you the freedom to do whatever *you* want *WITH THE FREE CODE*.
The GPL is only a good thing if power over other peoples' code is more important to you than their freedom to use your code however they want. If that's the case, it's a great license. I'd rather make my moral decisions for myself, and let them make theirs.
I still say copyright makes sense, it's the long durations that are screwed up. Code could have MUCH shorter copyright periods than books.:)
I don't like patents for games at all; that would prevent clones, and clones are how that industry stays strong and vibrant. If Quake could get a patent on a crucial piece of the engine, there'd be no Half-life or Unreal.
Finally, I object very strongly to the idea that some kinds of creative work should be unable to get the same protections as others. Programming is creative work, which, once done, is physically easy to reproduce the results of; we should protect it the same way we protect writing and music.
You also aren't allowed to distribute GPL'd code without an attached political screed you may not agree with, nor are you allowed to release free software which links with GPL'd code, but doesn't contain any. Consider RIPEM; a program was released, which was self-contained, and had a sed script to change it to link with the GNU fast MP math library. They got harassed because it was *POSSIBLE* to make their code *WORK WITH* GPL'd code, but it wasn't free enough.
That's a far cry from "the only thing you can't do is take away the freedom". It is a lie, and a willful one, to claim that you can take away the freedom of *ANY* free code. If I put code in the public domain, no one can ever make it unfree. They can make their own versions with whatever restrictions they want, but *MY* code remains free, forever. No other license can say as much.:)
Slashdot Mirror
What I want to know is how much it pays to claim that .NET is a good technology. I mean, is this something where I could get a second house paid for by embracing MS? We know they have more money than design experience.
I don't really think that Miguel is being paid... but then, if someone offered evidence, I wouldn't be surprised.
A very good point. Likewise, most of the rapists out there would never get laid if they had to wait for someone to put out, so it serves those scantily-clad tramps right.
Nice work.
You may be right that most of the pirates wouldn't pay for this stuff - in which case, no loss to the world if every one of them were simply killed, they aren't contributing. However, statistics suggest that, when they can't easily steal, they happily pay; most of them can afford plenty of software.
But, as you say, they're probably totally worthless.
BSD, for me. I support the idea that *I* will write code, which I generally give away - but if you feel you need to sell code to make money, go ahead and sell code. I won't try to stop you, and you can use my code.
Thus, I'm making it cheaper to develop software, closed or not, and I'm not barring people from making money using my code.
I still have a day job, but I do a fair amount of bespoke programming, and that pays the bills. In the long run, maybe that'll be the dominant form - or maybe it won't.
However, the key distinction is *consent*. When I download NetBSD, I'm downloading something that was *given away by the owner*. I'm not stealing something. Free software is not about getting stuff you don't pay for - it's about giving away stuff you don't need to get paid for.
And a hearty round of thanks to all the Warez dudes out there. Remember, piracy is a purely victimless crime; anyone actually put out of work when a product doesn't sell is obviously making stuff up, we all know programmers drive Ferarris and do lots of coke.
*sigh*.
Reproduced here for grins. I couldn't help but notice that their FAQ provides an email address, so I emailed them.
---
Just a data point: I buy a fair number of CD's (I probably own two or three
hundred, but I have long since lost count). I have not used a non-computer
CD player to listen to a CD in probably a year and a half, maybe two years.
Probably 90% of the time, I listen to music in my car - using my MP3 player.
There is absolutely no way I will buy any music if I can't convert it into
a format that my car can play.
Furthermore, I don't run Windows. Plain old CD's work fine for me; the things
you sell, which superficially resemble CD's, don't. Given that, all I can do
for now is be very careful to make sure that, if I'm buying CD's, they don't
have your logo on them, because I don't want to get stuck with a CD I can't
use, and which no store in town will take as a return.
Even beyond that, I don't see how this helps you; MP3's are pretty low
quality, and if I desperately needed to make an MP3 of a CD, and I had an
analog CD player, I could just record the output of the CD player and encode
that - and probably never know the difference. (For that matter, what about
my nice expensive component CD player with the digital outs?)
I work as a programmer, and I share your concerns about piracy. What I don't
share is your belief that it's okay to f*ck millions of consumers up the ass
with rusty tent spikes to try to get at a few pirates. There are lots of
legitimate ways to get people to pay for your products; intentionally making
the products defective is not one of them.
---
A good point. I was doing the first round of getting it running under BSD/OS; it won't be nearly that much work next time. :) We also needed a few supporting tools, such as jadetex.
Cool! Now, let's say you spend ten seconds per month (that's not much at all) disabling the ads of each of the twenty million or so small businesses in the U.S. - that's about two hundred million seconds a month, out of the two and a half million or so you actually have.
If the best you can suggest is that we tolerate extortion, then maybe you need to rethink a bit. "Do this every month or we hit you" is not okay.
I'm doing a bunch of documentation right now, and I *LOVE* docbook. I agree, it's a bit of a pain to set up; we started with openjade as a basis, and worked from there.
:)
Still, I love the format; it's clear, it's precise, and it's very well-suited to documentation.
BTW, I'd like to point out that, if you think documentation is the worst part of programming, you're probably not writing very good documentation. Documentation can be a lot of fun. Think of it as a way to make sure that you won't have to do the maintenance later, because anyone will be able to do it based on your writing.
Is it that sun "doesn't get open source", or does sun get open source, but still see value in other models as well?
I particularly like the way people use mod points to suppress opinions they disagree with. Go slashdot! Keep the groupthink up.
I think Linux was crippled by the lack of a language totally controlled by a monopolistic power that hates Linux. We should rewrite major applications so they depend on Microsoft's pet language, so that any change in the Microsoft spec can cause untold damage as the compatability problems spread.
This will help us sympathise with people who are stuck using systems based on closed, proprietary, systems. It's the best possible use of developer time there could be.
I don't really want to spend time comparing feature lists in detail. As I recall, civ3's newer enemy AI is a big improvement, and it allows a broader variety of treaties. I don't think I've seen culture implemented before, at least, not exactly; this allows for stuff similar to alpha centauri's borders, only better, and provides a non-hostile way to acquire enemy cities. (Not bribery; they just decide to come over.)
Civ III does a lot of neat things that are not yet implemented in any other civ programs. Also, I found freeciv fairly annoying the last time I tried it. Maybe again later - maybe not. I only have time for a very small amount of hacking-to-play-games. :)
The only Unix-based games I play much are Angband and pysol. I play Civ III on Windows, because that's where the current patches will be, and I play a few things on MacOS.
The games that have been ported (with a few exceptions) are almost all shooters - which I simply don't enjoy playing.
I like RPG's and turn-based strategy, for the most part.
The commercial offerings just haven't appealed to me much yet.
This is unclear. Many many more Chinese speak English than other people speak Chinese. Just as Latin continued to be the main Church language, even in areas where it was not otherwise widely used, English may dominate on the internet whether or not the majority of current users are native English speakers.
So, what happens if you ask it to factor a prime? Does it explode? ;-)
You can be sure it's a "fair" price if you're willing to pay it. If you don't like the price, don't pay it.
They are almost certainly "just throttling what they used to give away for free" - probably because it cost *THEM* a lot of money.
Because this game will encourage idiots to think that breaking into computers is "hacking". Innovative problem solving may be hacking; script-based attacks aren't. Most hacks have nothing to do with security, etc etc etc., and all this will do is make the AOL users more certain that, if I have a list of hacks on my home page, it means I can break into computers.
What's depressing is the realization that this will just result in more AOL users writing me to ask if I can change their credit files.
(I get a couple a week, these days.)
I'm getting one, I'll probably try to get NetBSD to run on it. My thinking is to use the CF card to store a kernel, but to use NFS for all the real disk space.
Looks to me like a very cute little x terminal. Anyone know if the memory is upgradeable?
This is not a no-brainer guaranteed win. It is easy to make autoconf do horrible, silly, things - which make your code less portable. As always, the very first thing you do should be to make your code as portable as possible to begin with; this is much, much, more efficient than any kind of configuration system.
Current versions of configure seem to sometimes produce makefiles which can't be used with classic Berkeley make, and depend on GNU extensions...
I sure as hell wouldn't pay in advance for the possibility that someone would write a game I might like. I want the game to exist, and I want to know whether it's fun, *THEN* decide whether or not I want it.
The current system serves my needs quite well for video games. No "escrow system" will ever serve the same purpose. As is, each customer can individually say whether the game meets his needs, and only pays when the game is done. The escrow agent would be horribly overpowered, and could easily screw either or both sides.
So what? Your code is still free. Other people's code may not be. There's no problem here. Obviously, no, if someone makes a proprietary program that includes some public domain code, their program isn't about freedom - but the PD code gave them the freedom to do that, and gives you the freedom to do whatever *you* want *WITH THE FREE CODE*.
The GPL is only a good thing if power over other peoples' code is more important to you than their freedom to use your code however they want. If that's the case, it's a great license. I'd rather make my moral decisions for myself, and let them make theirs.
I still say copyright makes sense, it's the long durations that are screwed up. Code could have MUCH shorter copyright periods than books. :)
I don't like patents for games at all; that would prevent clones, and clones are how that industry stays strong and vibrant. If Quake could get a patent on a crucial piece of the engine, there'd be no Half-life or Unreal.
Finally, I object very strongly to the idea that some kinds of creative work should be unable to get the same protections as others. Programming is creative work, which, once done, is physically easy to reproduce the results of; we should protect it the same way we protect writing and music.
You also aren't allowed to distribute GPL'd code without an attached political screed you may not agree with, nor are you allowed to release free software which links with GPL'd code, but doesn't contain any. Consider RIPEM; a program was released, which was self-contained, and had a sed script to change it to link with the GNU fast MP math library. They got harassed because it was *POSSIBLE* to make their code *WORK WITH* GPL'd code, but it wasn't free enough.
:)
That's a far cry from "the only thing you can't do is take away the freedom". It is a lie, and a willful one, to claim that you can take away the freedom of *ANY* free code. If I put code in the public domain, no one can ever make it unfree. They can make their own versions with whatever restrictions they want, but *MY* code remains free, forever. No other license can say as much.